The Black Minutes (14 page)

He pushed the crooked door open again and noticed a thin layer of dust on everything and a fine fuzz floating inside the stall, visible in the sun’s rays; however, more than anything else, what grabbed his attention was the state of the body. Damn, what’s going on here? Why does this get to me so much? There was something strange in there, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Let’s see, pay attention, man; what’s getting to you? I know it’s a gruesome scene but pay attention; you have to do something.

He looked at the bag again. If there was a clue there, it escaped him. Then he asked himself what his uncle would have done, the legendary Lieutenant Rivera who had died two years before. If his uncle had been there, no doubt he would have said to him, “You look like a faggot, not my fucking nephew. Your hands all slimy and sweaty. Let me through, get out of the way.” He could almost see his uncle walking up to the body and carrying out his detailed examination of the crime scene, even the floor tiles in the stall and in the one beside it. “Aha! Yeah, I get it.” He observed everything just to get an accurate picture of the place. “Aha. Aha. Aha.” Then and only then did his uncle move in closer to the cadaver, once he was sure he wasn’t destroying any evidence. It wouldn’t take him long to come up with his first explanation: “It reminds me of the El Palmar girl. I know they’re different circumstances, but that’s what I think. . . . Remember, the first impression is always the most important, always ask your gut what it thinks; don’t forget the system,
nephew; it’s like you only got this job ’cause you knew somebody: I go through so much bullshit with you.”

As he half closed the door, Rangel caused a draft of air that stirred up a cloud of dust and fuzz.

The doctor sneezed. “Excuse me, I’m getting a cold.”

He noticed that the bars on the front door shuddered as someone kicked it on the other side. Don’t let anyone in unless they’re a detective, he ordered the manager.

When he was alone with the older woman, he asked her, “What did they use to do this?” He pointed to one of the wounds.

“The one on top? I’d say a hunting knife, a little more than an inch wide. I’ll tell you exactly how big when I take the body to the morgue. Yeah, for sure it’s a hunting knife.”

“About an inch wide? Like the other one?”

“At first glance, yeah. I’d say that’s correct.”

All evidence seemed to point to the fact that it was the same guy. The idea wasn’t at all pleasant, and both Rangel and the doctor fell silent. Finally, Rangel said, “Before going to the morgue, look for initials on the clothes. Our first priority is to find out who she was and what school she went to.”

He heard a voice saying, “Right this way.” Finally, he thought, it’s Wong and the Professor, but it was just Ramírez coming back in from outside. The photographer walked toward the bathroom and just as he was about to go in, Rangel grabbed him by the arm.

“Before you go in there, you need to take pictures of the floor.”

“Sorry, but I don’t work that way with Mr. Taboada.”

Don’t fucking mention El Travolta, he thought; I already know how he runs his cases. “Today you’re working with me,
cabrón,”
he shot back at him.

“What do you want me to look for?”

“Evidence, any kind of evidence. It’s like you don’t know how to do your own job, Ramírez!”

“I’ll tell him what to do,” the doctor answered coldly and started to give instructions.

As they waited for the ambulance and backup, Rangel interviewed the staff. No chance the perpetrator was one of them: the cook hadn’t left his area since eleven, the manager was watching over the cash register, the bartender wasn’t allowed to leave his spot behind the bar, and the waiters had never left the main room. Raúl Silva found the body a little before 2:50. I’ll be damned, Rangel thought.

The first thing he had to do was figure out what time the body was left there. Once he’d cleared that up, Rangel had to check to see if anyone present at the scene was a suspect, arrest him if necessary, and reconstruct what happened in the last hour. All of this while under pressure from the reporters just starting to arrive and, of course, not even mentioning the threat that El Travolta represented. Taboada wasn’t going to like the fact that another dog was sniffing around his territory. Fatwolf handled drugs and sex crimes. Rangel was homicide and kidnappings, especially kidnappings, but he also investigated robberies occasionally, using the contacts his uncle had passed on to him. Fucking fat ass, he thought, he should thank me for covering his back. For now, though, he had to hurry up. An angry crowd was milling around outside; they were demanding results and the ambulance lights were nowhere to be seen. He looked at his watch: it was 3:30. From now on, every minute counted.

Let’s see, he said to himself as he looked over the people who were present, could one of these guys be the killer? Knowing he was about to ask them questions, the majority of the people looked
off into space, as if the ceiling were suddenly intensely interesting: Damn, you seen those huge stains? How’d they get there? Trying not to wear himself out for no reason, Rangel looked at the tables and picked the one with the most bottles on it.

Twelve minutes later, he’d established the killer must have left the girl there after 2:20. Usually, Rangel would have arrested the office worker, but everyone had seen that Raúl Silva Santacruz wasn’t carrying a plastic bag when he went to the bathroom.

“Listen to me good,” he said to Raúl Silva. “You aren’t under arrest, but you have to go to headquarters to finish your statement.”

A waiter told him another person had gone into the bathroom before Silva: “That guy next to the door.”

The suspect was a traveling salesman, a guy named René Luz de Dios López. He was eating with his boss, a Mr. Juan Alviso, owner of a local chain of candy stores. The waiter stated that he saw him go to the bathroom after ordering his drink. He didn’t have anything in his hands or take more than a minute in there. René Luz de Dios explained he’d just finished loading boxes and it was normal for him to wash his hands before eating. His boss confirmed his alibi: “He was loading the orders into the truck, ’cause it was going to Matamoros in a little while. My distributor’s there.” One look at the guy was enough for Rangel to know he was innocent, but he still had to take him in to get his statement.

“Officer,” Mr. Alviso explained, “my assistant came with me, he was in the office all morning, and we came together. There’s no way a man sitting by the door could walk across the entire bar with a girl in his arms, is there?”

Rangel knew Alviso was right, but he couldn’t let the driver go. René Luz de Dios would have to go through the purgatory that the legal process is for innocent people. It was clear to him after six years on the force that no one ever left headquarters
unscathed. The experience of being guilty until proven innocent changed people. Besides, while he was waiting to be called in, René Luz ran the risk that any one of the guys there, even El Chicote, would try to extort money from him. Most likely, El Chaneque or El Travolta would handle it. Rangel didn’t like that part of his job, but if he didn’t do things by the rules, it’d seem like he was protecting the driver; in the unlikely case that René Luz turned out to be guilty, he himself could face jail time. So he held fast.

“I’m sorry, but I have to follow procedure. If I don’t, I’d be under arrest,” and he put the driver’s ID in his pocket.

“Right, but you let the big shots go, don’t you?” Mr. Alviso shot back. “Even though they were in the bathroom longer. It’s obvious whose back you’ve got.”

Rangel stared at the businessman. “What? What’d you say?”

“Mr. Williams was in there for half an hour, right? And my driver here, who was only in there for a minute, just to wash his hands, you want to arrest him? That’s outrageous.”

Rangel made a note to ask Junior a few questions, but in any case he’d have to take the driver in.

“Look.” He lowered his voice. “I give you my word that this is a routine procedure. I’m sorry,” he said. What a fucking joke, he thought, this job is bullshit.

The Professor and Wong arrived at 4:05. The first one interviewed the drunks waiting their turn at the bar, and Wong used his irritable oriental look to interrogate the regulars at the tables in the back. At 4:30, Rangel went to see the forensic experts.

They’d already placed the body on the ground, and Ramírez was taking the last pictures. They’d laid it out on a yellow tablecloth with the Cola Drinks logo on it, provided by the bar’s owner.
Rangel was an experienced police officer, but he couldn’t keep his stomach from turning. When they emptied the remains from the bag, a leg came out and almost fell off the tablecloth. Rangel and the doctor stared. In view of the fact that the extremities were separated from the torso, there was no doubt it was the same perp.

“Hurry up,” he told Ramírez. “I want to get this done already.”

They were examining the marks on the body when a strange phenomenon caught their attention. Every time Ramírez pressed the shutter of his camera, it seemed like the lightning flash had a kind of echo effect that made it last longer than normal. The phenomenon was repeated twice, until they raised their eyes and discovered La Chilanga was focusing her camera on them through a window. Fucking nosy bitch, Rangel said to himself, I can’t believe it. Rangel pointed a finger at her.

“Hey, you; stop!”

La Chilanga made like she was going to leave, but her shirt got caught on the window. When she tried to get free, the window moved a little and Rangel understood everything: Of course, he said to himself, I look like such an idiot. The girl was understandably upset and shot back at him with some Marxist rhetoric, but Rangel ignored her.

“What’s on the other side of those windows?” he asked the manager.

“Customs Alley.”

Sure, he said to himself, it all made sense.

“Wong,” he said, “you take charge for a minute, OK?”

Three dozen onlookers had gathered at the bar’s front door. They asked him what was going on, but he didn’t respond. He went around the block, all the way to the alley. He didn’t want to run into El Albino. When Rangel went into the alley, the photographer came out, but the officer didn’t do anything to stop him.
Maybe he didn’t want to accept it, but he was always a little freaked by the albino. Maybe he was intimidated by the guy looking at him; he was always so quiet, and his eyes were so pale. El Albino shot him a calculated look, like a gravedigger taking measurements of a body, and left without saying a word. Rangel didn’t breathe until he saw him move away. Then he noticed the photographer was rewinding a roll of film.
Ay, caray
, he guessed: he took snapshots of the girl and I didn’t even hear him working. Rangel didn’t know which paper El Albino worked for, but he didn’t want to ask. Deep down, he was afraid he didn’t work for any newspaper at all. One time, he asked his uncle about him: An albino? Who? I don’t know him, and Rangel left it at that.

The alley behind the Bar León was a trash dump for all the buildings around it. There were six dumpsters, countless cardboard boxes, and the metal skeleton of an old rusty refrigerator, abandoned there a few decades before. La Chilanga was struggling on top of it with one of her sleeves caught on the edge of the window. Fucking broad, he thought, she might
say
she’s a Marxist but she needs a lot more experience; you can tell she just got out of college.

There were three different routes to get to the back window of the bar: one was coming from Calle Aduana, another from Calle Progreso, and the last was from the Avenida Héroes de Palo Alto. Sure, Rangel said to himself, three buildings come together here, the killer could’ve gone in and come out on any one of the three streets; he just had to climb onto that refrigerator and throw the body through the window. But why leave the girl’s body in the bar if he could throw it away outside with no danger of being seen? There was something very strange about all this. It doesn’t make sense.

He helped La Chilanga down; she was raging mad. Assholes, gangsters,
cabrones!
He climbed onto the refrigerator. He immediately
realized the window was only half-open. From inside the bathroom, Wong and Dr. Ridaura were watching him.

“Of course,” he said to them. “He put the girl in through here.”

He looked over that section of the alley quickly and determined that there weren’t any other bloodstains. He didn’t kill her here; however, as he examined the window, he discovered there was a dark stain on the outside edge. Ramírez has to check this out, he said to himself; it’s too bad the metal’s so rusty, I don’t think he’ll get any fingerprints. Fucking sea air destroys everything. He was examining the stain when he heard the sound of the shutter click.

“Listen, smart-ass, who do you think you are?” he asked the girl.

“I’m doing my job!”

He was trying to think of what to say when he saw the department pickup truck, La Julia, drive by. Finally, he said to himself. He was sure that Fatwolf had recognized him. The truck ground to a halt a few meters farther on, went in reverse, and stopped so Cruz Treviño could get out and go into the alleyway. The huge guy looked at La Chilanga suspiciously. I should have run her off, Vicente said to himself, this guy’s going to think I was the one who leaked the news to her.

Cruz Treviño was incredibly rude. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “You can’t be around the crime scene.”

The woman spit out a slew of insults at him. When she walked by, Treviño watched her angrily and then said hello to the detective.