The Black Minutes (15 page)

“Another girl?”

“Like the El Palmar one.”

Cruz Treviño took a step back. “That’s Taboada’s case.”

“They sent me. I was on call.”

“Okay, it’s up to you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Everybody gets the same treatment?”

“It’s your decision.”

The huge guy nodded and went to leave. Before turning halfway around, he patted his pants. “You got cuffs?”

“I’m gonna use ’em.”

“I need ’em more than you do.”

Reluctantly, Rangel stuck his hand into his right pants pocket and threw him the handcuffs. Cruz Treviño was right: what he found out about the window made it practically impossible that one of the regulars was the killer. If they were going to arrest a suspect, they wouldn’t find him in the bar. He said that to himself and then went to coordinate transportation for the dead girl’s body.

All in all, they were there for two hours. During that time, Fatwolf and Cruz Treviño picked up all the suspects they could find in the area. Cruz Treviño parked La Julia a block away from the Bar León, and the two officers walked to the historic center of the city. They walked around the Plaza de Armas, paying attention to every detail, and when they found a bench full of gang members, Fatwolf went up to them and dragged them to the truck. One of them tried to get away, but Cruz Treviño caught him by the arm and knocked him to the ground in one fell swoop. Cruz Treviño could throw a good punch. Then they went down to the train station, where they picked up the bums sleeping on the benches; after that, they stopped at the black market stands and repeated the same operation.

Cruz Treviño was from Parral, Coahuila. A good friend of El Travolta, Cruz Treviño was in a very bad mood whenever it was hot out.

That day, Cruz and Fatwolf put all the prisoners into one cell, including two hippies who were on their way to Acapulco. Fatwolf wrote the suspects’ names in the registry, while Cruz Treviño rolled up his sleeves and got his arms warmed up. When he was ready, Cruz went into the cell with the prison guard behind him.

“Door.” He was asking them to open it. “You.” He pointed at one of the hippies and made him come out.

Once in the hallway, Cruz took a step toward the prisoner—he had a John Lennon look, long hair, sideburns, round glasses, and shoved him.

“What’s the deal with the girl?”

The hippie—a political science student from the Universidad Nacional on vacation in the port—adjusted his glasses and replied, “What girl?”

He never should have said that. The punch took the wind out of him; at least that was the guard’s judgment. The guard was named Emilio Nieto, aka El Chicote, and he elected to study the ceiling as Cruz Treviño got ready to repeat the treatment in controlled doses. The prisoner panted until he could gather enough air to ask again, “What girl?” and take another punch. Meanwhile, the prisoners started to whisper “Assholes,” and the second hippie’s face went pale.

Then Cruz Treviño shouted, “Door!” and the suspects, like sheep in a flock, scurried out of the way.

Identifying the body took half an hour. One of the waiters confirmed that the uniform was from Public School Number Five, which wasn’t too far from there. The Professor telephoned the principal and found out that the mother of one of the girls had called asking about her daughter.

“Send her over here.”

The mother arrived, escorted by two female neighbors. She was carrying a rosary and a few holy cards in her hand. What a shame, Rangel thought, those aren’t going to help her at all. The woman erupted in tears as soon as she saw the shoes, and there was no way to calm her down. Finally, they injected her with a tranquilizer and she left in the same ambulance as her daughter. They found the husband an hour later, thanks to the neighbors who came with the mother. His name was Odilón and he worked in the refinery. It’s always painful to see a grown man break down.

“Yes, that’s her,” said the man. “It’s my daughter.”

The girl was named Julia Concepción González. Once they were at headquarters, the father mentioned that his daughter was in her second year in elementary school and was about to turn nine years old. Nine years old, thought Rangel. Who could attack a defenseless little girl? Only a sick murderous bastard.

“Taboada’s not back?”

It was the second time in an hour that Chief García had asked for him. For the last few months, the fat guy had become the chief’s favorite, so much so that he even let him take the patrol car for personal business for as much time as he needed. Anyway it doesn’t matter, Rangel thought, as soon as he gets here, they’re going to screw him. Supposedly, El Travolta was the one in charge of the case, since he was the one who picked up the first girl’s body. But, knowing his coworker’s ways, Rangel doubted the chief would find him that day. On Fridays, after eating lunch, El Travolta would head to the docks, perhaps to the Tiberius Bar, pick up a prostitute or two, and go party.

When Rangel got back to headquarters, they told him Dr. Ridaura had called. Rangel pulled out his tiny phonebook from his back pocket and dialed the university morgue. It was six in the afternoon.

“Doctor? It’s Rangel. You got something?”

“I’m finished already. But before I say anything, tell me something. Did you send a photographer over here?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Hold on, hold on, what do you mean?”

“A guy with a
norteño
accent called and told me you ordered him to come.”

“And you let him in?”

“Of course not, even though he tried to intimidate me. I told him I was going to confirm what he said, and he hung up.”

An accent from northern Mexico, Rangel thought. It must be Johnny Guerrero, that fucking piece of shit.

“Thanks, Doctor. Did you find out anything?”

“Yes, but I’d rather tell you in person. They’re probably tapping our call.”

He got to the morgue at nine
P.M.
on the dot. Rangel parked at the university medical school and walked down the wide staircase leading to the student amphitheater. He had to knock hard for someone to open the door. A sweaty young man led him to the laboratory, a room covered in tile where the smell of chemical products was particularly strong. The doctor was still working. As soon as she saw Rangel, she sent the young man away and let out a tired sigh.

“Welcome.”

“You’ve been at it a long time.”

“If I don’t do it myself, someone else will do it worse,” she said. “Can you imagine El Travolta managing all this?”

Rangel didn’t respond. He didn’t like to talk badly about other officers, even though he agreed with her.

“Do you have any news?”

“I’m almost finished typing it all out.” She pointed to a hefty Olivetti typewriter. “The first thing you’ll be interested to hear is that it’s the same weapon they used in El Palmar. See? This cut here, and see this photo?”

“Was any organ in particular affected?”

“What are you looking for?”

“Do you think it was a doctor, a butcher, a medical student, or an employee at the city market? Did the person know where to cut to cause harm?”

“I don’t think so. Do you remember the sailor?” The doctor was referring to a drunk sailor who stabbed a prostitute two months previous. “I’d say it’s the same: mindless violence, completely irrational. If he had started cutting here, for example,” she pointed to a specific point on the torso, “the knife would have traversed the heart and death would’ve been instantaneous. Instead of that: look. See? And again, look.”

“Right-handed?”

“Yes, without a doubt.” Using a metal rod, the doctor lifted the skin away from the cadaver. “Look at the trajectory. The cut slants to the left as it moves down; I think he cut her like this.” The doctor lifted the little rod and swiped it downward. “But first he had to lay her down on the ground.”

“Was there sexual violence?”

“Just like the other.”

“The same way?”

The doctor nodded.

“Before or . . . ?”

“No, after she was dead, like before. And this. You remember the first one? I asked myself, How could someone hate a little girl this much? And now I’m saying to myself, How could someone
do this to two girls in a row? I can’t understand it.” She sneezed.

Rangel asked if she could do a blood test on the two girls. The doctor wrinkled her nose.

“What’re you looking for?”

“Anything that would put them to sleep. I’m wondering if he sedated them.”

“I’ll have it for you tomorrow. I need reagents that only Orihuela has in his lab.”

A moment later, she handed him the report, which Rangel read immediately. When he was almost finished, the doctor interrupted him again:

“Is that all, officer?”

“Huh?”

“I’m asking if they can take her already. The father’s called twice.”

“Tell him they can; we’re finished. But one thing: no one’s authorized to photograph the body. Tell the parents. Only family gets to see.”

“Yes, of course.”

Then the doctor did something Rangel would never see her do again. Already a black blanket covered the girl’s body from the neck down, but the old woman took out a white handkerchief and used it to cover the girl’s face.

“Poor thing. Here,
chiquita
, it’s all over now. Your parents are on their way.”

He was up writing his report until three in the morning. Like usual, he hit a wall eventually; he couldn’t do anything else and there was no other choice but to wait. El Chicote was snoring at the front desk, and Crazyshot had gone to sleep in his car. The last person to come in was at one o’clock, when Wong came back from interviewing the parents at the funeral home.

“The parents don’t suspect anyone, the father doesn’t have any enemies, and no one has seen anyone suspicious on the street. It’s the same thing as El Palmar.”

Wong was a good officer. He identified leads quickly and pointed them out so the investigation could proceed. Thanks to him they were able to establish the approximate time when the killer went into the bathroom. As soon as Rangel proved the murderer had climbed through the window, Wong had found out that two of the regulars had heard a noise around 2:30. It was the psycho, thought Rangel.

Now we’re getting somewhere, Wong cheered, we can move forward. Rangel said yes, even though deep down he had the feeling that the investigation wasn’t going anywhere. All he had to do was close his eyes and remember the bizarre way the body was found. There was something about all this that was irrational, hidden, reminiscent of something else; as if someone were
sending a message he couldn’t decipher. Shit, he said to himself, how could he break the code?

As Rangel wrote his report, El Chicote dropped off the latest edition of
El Mercurio
, hot off the presses:
THE JACKAL IS BACK
. Ah,
cabrón—
and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach—how irresponsible can they be? Now they had really gone too far giving the murderer a name: the Jackal. In the article, the reporter wrote he was shocked by the number of rapes in the city: “At least three every month, according to official statistics.” I didn’t think there were so many, Rangel thought. The reporter argued that the guilty party was “a real-life jackal.” They said men who attacked minors were like jackals, predators that hunt in a pack and when they’re sure their prey is small and defenseless. “The authority’s ineptness is what laid the foundation for the Jackal to emerge.” Just a second here, Rangel said to himself, I don’t like this one bit.

The article was by a new columnist, Johnny Guerrero, a guy from Chihuahua. Rangel didn’t like his style. From the first day, he was writing articles attacking the chief, like he was on the mayor’s payroll. He interspersed his opinion with the facts and he exaggerated things, but more than that he seasoned his writing with flowery words: he made a bum into a
derelict
, a prostitute into a
strumpet
. For him, an autopsy was
the legal necropsy
and he wrote mean-spirited captions under photos:
This is the miserable construction worker; Here we find the despicable ranch hand
. The first time Johnny tried to interview him on the phone, Rangel took an immediate dislike to him. He imagined him as crippled, fat, squat, and greasy-faced. And he didn’t get the reporter’s sense of humor, which seemed to require that someone else be humiliated.

Rangel read this article quickly, because he already knew what it would say:
Efforts in vain, murderer on the loose, defenseless public,
incredibly slow, disgraceful investigation, police incompetence
. Incompetence? He said to himself, Fuck him! I’d like to see him in my shoes, the piece-of-shit reporter. The article was cut off abruptly:
Continued on page 28
. He set the main section of the paper aside and looked through the rest until he found, in the section with the horoscopes and comics
(Continued from page 1
):
because we can’t expect anything from this system. A lead could stare them in the face, and they wouldn’t even notice it
.

Fucking jerk! The column was an attack on his boss, but for a second Rangel took it personally. Of course. Johnny was in complicity with the mayor.