cartel’s money — had offered to escort her out here. He was tall and handsome, with a warm smile, and in a different time and different place, Rafaela might have welcomed his company. But she had declined. It was better that she did this by herself. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. A relationship of any kind was out of the question.
Before she got out of the car, Rafaela checked her weapon. She was a woman alone in the colonia near dark. Walking to the house, she passed a tiendita, a tiny convenience store crammed from floor to ceiling with the kind of junk food you found in poor neighbourhoods — lots of fat and sugar to fill an empty belly. This one, like many others, was simply a tiny spare room in a house, with a rectangular hole punched in the wall to create a storefront. An older man sat on a stool by the counter and watched her pass. She said good evening. He pretended not to hear and began sorting through a box of loose candy.
She stopped for a moment outside the house and took a deep breath. Then she knocked at the door and stepped back. A radio was playing somewhere nearby, a song by a band called Los Tigres del Norte. Rafaela liked them. They sang about regular life, and that included the narcos. Many of their songs celebrated the gangsters, and Rafaela understood their popularity. The old-time gangsters were patrons of their communities and of the people. The politicians were neither.
A woman’s voice called from inside: ‘Who is it?’
‘Senora Valdez?’
The door opened a few inches and a middle-aged woman peered out, her face lined with fatigue.
‘May I come in?’ Rafaela asked her. ‘I have news about your daughter.’
The door closed again, there was the rasp of a chain being removed and then it opened. Rafaela stepped into a low-ceilinged room. There was a sofa, a coffee-table and a television set, which was switched on with the volume turned down. Rafaela recognized a couple of popular soap-opera stars. Her eyes settled on a table behind the sofa. It was covered with framed photographs. Rafaela’s heart sank as she saw that every picture was of the same young girl; only the settings and the age varied. There was one of her as a toddler, dressed in white for her confirmation; the most recent showed her in her late teens. An only child.
Senora Valdez’s hands grasped Rafaela’s arms. ‘Tell me she’s safe.’
In such circumstances there was a procedure to follow, a series of steps, a liturgy of words to mouth. Rafaela believed in none of this. When she had to arrest someone, or interrogate someone, or shoot someone, she was a cop. But at moments like this she was a woman.
Rafaela touched Senora Valdez’s hands, feeling the calluses on her palms and the tips of her fingers, the result of all those hours in the factory. ‘She’s with the angels, Senora. I’m so sorry.’
The woman’s body slumped, her chin falling on to her chest as she began to sob. Rafaela put her arms around her. They stayed like that for a long time. Rafaela spoke to her gently, as she would to a child. She had never known what it meant to cry your heart out until she had made the first of these calls. Then she had been brittle, detached, professional. Afterwards she had realized that there was no harm in showing her humanity. If nothing else, she reasoned, it must comfort the bereaved a little to know that one other human being cared.
Slowly, the woman’s sobs ebbed away as, over her shoulder, the soap opera continued, with beautiful, wealthy people grieving over a missed promotion, perhaps, or an extra-marital affair. She peeled herself away from Rafaela, eyes puffy and glistening. She glanced at the photographs of her murdered daughter and something new came into her eyes, something far worse than the grief. Surrender. It disturbed Rafaela more than the blood and mayhem. Your daughter left the house. She never returned. And that was life in this city.
‘Shall I take you to see her?’ Rafaela asked.
The woman looked around the room, searching for her coat. Rafaela helped her put it on and then they walked out into the night.
Seventeen
Rosary beads clasped in her right hand, Melissa’s mother, Jan, sat quietly by her daughter’s bedside. Although her face was lined with worry and her eyes were pouched from lack of sleep, Ty could see where Melissa had got her looks from. Watching her vigil, he was glad that she had her faith to sustain her.
Part of him wished he believed more than he did. His mother was a churchgoer and, as a child, he had gone with her on Sunday, sitting there listening to the preacher, swinging his legs and counting the minutes until he could get home and change out of the suit she insisted he wear. He had never really taken to it.
A nurse flitted into the room to check on Melissa. She spoke to Jan, scratched some notes on the chart at the bottom of the bed and made for the door.
‘How’s she doing?’ Ty asked her, as she left.
The nurse smiled. ‘All her vital signs are stable and she’s not bleeding now. That’s all in her favour.’
‘How long until she can leave?’
‘It’ll be a while,’ the nurse said, heading past him and into the next room.
Ty rose from the chair and stretched his long, lean frame. He tapped gently on the door and Jan Warner glanced up from her prayers. ‘If you need to take a break at any time just let me know,’ he said.
She smiled, got up and walked to the door. ‘Can I ask you something, Tyrone?’
Ty smiled. He probably only ever heard his full name from ladies who went to church, and Lock when he was being sarcastic. ‘Sure.’
Jan’s gaze fell away to the bed where her daughter lay sleeping. ‘Why are you doing this for us?’
Ty could have given her some story about how he was happy to help, but he wanted to be honest. Much as he felt for Melissa, he hadn’t welcomed her arrival in Lock’s life. ‘Because Ryan asked me to.’
Jan gave a tiny nod, apparently satisfied. ‘You must be good friends.’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve been through a lot together. Makes you close, I guess.’
‘Not one of Melissa’s college friends stayed in touch with her after what happened.’ Ty noticed that Jan’s eyes were moist. ‘The damage that man did to her. She was such a beautiful young woman.’
‘She still is,’ Ty said. ‘That don’t change.’
Jan took a pack of tissues from her handbag, took one out and dabbed at her eyes. ‘But it does. Not on the outside, maybe. But inside. She trusted people. She assumed they were good. He robbed her of that.’
‘You know she wants us to go after him? She talk to you about finding Ryan?’
Jan nodded again. ‘She thought he’d understand.’
‘She tell you why she thought that?’ Ty pressed.
‘She said his fiancee had been killed by a man like Mendez. Is that right?’
Ty tilted his head so that he was staring at the ceiling. ‘There was more to it but, yeah, I guess that’s what it came down to. Ryan and I were looking after a woman who was being stalked. One of them kidnapped Ryan’s fiancee as a way of getting him to back off. He didn’t and she ended up dead.’
Jan Warner didn’t say anything.
‘We were out trying to find her,’ Ty went on. ‘It was dark and the weather was real bad. She’d escaped from where he was holding her. She ran out into the road in front of our vehicle. I was driving but Ryan still blames himself.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jan.
Ty rubbed his face. ‘I sometimes think that if she hadn’t escaped, if the guy had killed her before she had the chance to get away, it might have been easier. Then I hate myself for thinking that.’
Jan reached out and touched his arm. ‘Life doesn’t always give us nice neat endings.’
‘But that’s what your daughter’s looking for,’ he said. ‘An ending.’
‘I suppose it is. She feels that until he’s behind bars she can’t move on with her life.’
‘And what do you think?’ Ty asked.
Jan blew her nose. ‘I just want my baby back to the way she was before. I don’t care about Mendez or what happens to him. I’m not interested in revenge. I only care about Melissa.’
Of course she did, thought Ty. She was a mom. But, sadly, the people who were hunting her daughter, who were seeking vengeance for her continued pursuit of Mendez, saw it differently. For whatever reason they believed that the only way of stopping the pursuit of Mendez was to murder his victim. Even if Melissa or Jan could speak to
