The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (44 page)

“Delores,” she said quietly. Her grip was limp and damp.

“This is my colleague, Leon.”

Leon shook her hand, too, then pulled a chair out and pushed it gently back as Delores rather reluctantly sat.

“Can I order you a drink? A glass of water?”

“No, thank you.” She looked around the room, nervous, like a rabbit after it has sensed the approach of a hawk. “You weren’t followed?”

“No,” Caterina said, smiling broadly, trying to reassure the girl. “And we’ll be fine here. It’s busy. Three friends having a meal and a talk. All right?”

“I’m sorry, but if you think a busy restaurant would stop them if they had a mind to kill you, then you are more naïve than you think.”

“I’m sorry,” Caterina said. “I didn’t mean to be dismissive. You’re right.”

“Caterina and I have been working to publicise the cartels for two years,” Leon said. “We know what they’re capable of, but you’re safe with us tonight. They don’t know our faces.”

Delores flinched as the waiter came to take their orders. Caterina asked for two beers, a glass of orange juice and a selection of appetisers—tostadas, cheese-stuffed jalapenos, enchilada meatballs and nachos—and sent him away. She took out her notebook and scrabbled around in her handbag for a Biro. She found one and then her Dictaphone. She took it out and laid it on the table between them.

“Do you mind?” she asked. “It’s good to have a record.”

Delores shook her head. “But no photographs.”

“Of course not. Let’s get started.”

LIEUTENANT JESUS PLATO decided that the two gringo college boys needed to cool their heels for the night. They were becoming boisterous and disruptive when he brought them back to the station to book them, and so, to make a point, he chose to delay the fine he had decided to give them until tomorrow. They could spend the night in the drunk tank with the junkies, the tweakers and the boozers; he was confident that they would be suitably apologetic when he returned in the morning. And besides, he did not particularly want to go to the effort of writing them up tonight. He was tired, and he had promised Alameda and Sanchez that he would go out with them for something to eat. The meal was a self-justifying camouflage, of course; the real purpose was to go out and get drunk, and he had no doubt that they would end up on the banks of the Rio Bravo, drinking tins of Tecate and throwing the empties into what passed for the river around here. Plato had been on the dusty street all day, more or less; he certainly had a thirst.

His shift had been straightforward after booking the two boys. He had pulled over a rental car driven by a fat American sweating profusely through layers of fat and the synthetic fibres of his Spurs basketball shirt, a pimpled teen beauty in the seat next to him with her slender hand on his flabby knee. A warning from Plato was all it took for him to reach over and open the door, banishing the girl as he cursed the end of the evening that he had planned. The girl swore at Plato, her promised twenty bucks going up in smoke, but she had relented by the time he bought her a Happy Meal at the drive-thru on the way home. He had finished up by writing tickets for the youngsters racing their souped-up Toyota Camrys and VW Golfs tricked-out with bulbous hubcaps and tweaked engines, low-slung so that the chassis drew sparks from the asphalt. They, too, had cursed him, an obligatory response that he had ignored. They had spun their wheels as he drove off, melting the rubber into the road, and he had ignored that, too.

Captain Alameda waved him across to his office.

“Your last week,
compadre
,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“How was today?”

“Quiet, for a change. Couple of drunk gringo kids. Thought a couple of hundred bucks would persuade me to let them off.”

“They picked the wrong man, then. Where are they?”

“In the cells. I’ll see if they’ve found some manners tomorrow.”

“You heard about what happened at Samalayuca?”

“Just over the radio. What was it?”

“Six men. They didn’t even bother to bury them. Shot them and left them out in the desert for the vultures.”

“Six?
Mierda.
We know who they are?”

“American passports. The
federales
will look into it.”

Plato slumped into the seat opposite the desk.

“Jesus?”

“I’m fine.” He sighed. “Just tired is all. How is it here?”

“Twenty-eight no-shows today. Worst so far.”

Plato knew the reason; everyone did. Three weeks ago, a wreath had been left on the memorial outside police headquarters on Valle Del Cedro Avenue. A flap of cardboard, torn from a box, had been fastened around the memorial with chicken wire. It was a notice, and written on it were two lists. The first, headed by FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE, contained the names of the fifteen police officers who had been slain by the cartels since the turn of the year. The second, FOR THOSE WHO CONTINUE WITHOUT BELIEVING, listed another twenty men. That section ended with another message: THANK YOU FOR WAITING. The wreath and the notice had been removed as quickly as they had been found but not before someone had snapped them with their smartphone and posted it on Facebook.

The press got hold of it, and then everyone knew.

It had terrified the men.

“Twenty on long-term sick now. Stress. Another fifteen won’t go out on patrol. It’s not safe, apparently.”

“Ten men for the whole district, then?”

“Nine.”

“
Hijo de puta
.”

“Halfway to last year’s murders and it’s only just turned Easter. You’re getting out at the right time,
compadre
.”

“Feels like I’m abandoning you.”

Alameda chuckled. “You’ve done your time, Jesus. If I see you here next week, I’ll arrest you myself.”

“What about you?”

“If a transfer came up? I’d probably take it.”

“If not?”

“What else can I do? Just keep my head down and hope for the best.”

Plato nodded. It was depressing. There was a lot of guilt. He couldn’t deny that. But, and not for the first time, he was grateful his time was up.

“You ready for that beer?” Alameda asked.

“Let me get changed. Ten minutes?”

“I’ll get Sanchez and see you outside.”

Plato went into the locker room and took off his uniform, tracing his finger across the stencilled POLICIA MUNICIPAL that denoted him as a member of the
municipio
, the local police force that was—laughably, he thought—charged with preventing crime. There was no time to be doing any of that, not when there was always another murder to attend to, another abduction, and then the flotsam and jetsam like the two drunken college boys from this afternoon. Prevention. That was a fine word, but not one that he recognised any more. He had once, perhaps, but not for many years.

The cartels had seen to that.

He clocked out, collected his leather jacket from the locker room, and followed Alameda and Sanchez to the restaurant.

THE GIRL talked in a quiet voice, her hands fluttering in her lap, her eyes staring down at the table except when they nervously flicked up to the entrance. Caterina took notes. Leon sat and listened.

“I moved to Juárez from Guadalajara for a job,” she said. “It was in one of the
maquiladoras
on the banks of the river. Making electrical components for an American corporation. Fans for computers. Heat sinks and capacitors. I started work there when I was fourteen years old. A year ago. They paid me fifty-five dollars a week, and I sent all of it back to my mother and father. Occasionally, I would keep a dollar or two so that I could go out with my friends—soda, something to eat. It was hard work. Very hard. Long hours, no air-conditioning, so it got hot even by nine or ten in the morning. Complicated pieces to put together. Sometimes the parts would be sharp, and when you got tired—and you
always
got tired—then they would cut your fingers. I worked from seven in the morning until eight at night. Everything was monitored: how fast you were working, the time you spent on your lunch, the time you spent in the bathroom. They would dock your pay if they thought you were taking too long. None of us liked the job, but it was money, better money than I could get anywhere else, so I knew I had to work hard to make sure they didn’t replace me.

“It wasn’t just the work itself, though. There were problems with the bosses—there are more women than men in the factories, and they think it is all right for them to hit on us and that we should be flattered by it, give them what they want. The bosses have cars, and the women never do. Some girls go with the bosses so that they can get rides to work. It’s safer than the busses. I never did that.”

“They hit on you?”

“Of course.”

“But you were fourteen.”

“You think they care about that?” Delores smiled a bitter smile. “I was old enough.” She sipped at the glass of orange juice that Caterina had bought for her. “They have those busses, the old American ones, the yellow and black ones they use to take their children to school. They were hot and smelly, and they broke down all the time, but it was better than walking and safer, too, once the girls started to disappear. I had a place in Lomas de Poleo—you know it?”

“I do.” It was a shanty of dwellings spread in high desert a few miles west of Juárez. Caterina had been there plenty with the
Voces sin Echo.

“It was just a bed, sharing with six other girls who worked in the same
maquiladora
as I did. The bus picked us up at six in the morning and took us up to the river; then, when we were finished at eight or nine, then they would take us back again.”

Caterina’s pen flashed across her pad. She looked at the recorder, checking that it was working properly. “What happened to you?”

“This was a Friday. The other girls were going out, but I was tired and I had no money, so I told them I would go home. The bus usually dropped us off in Anapra. The place I was staying was a mile from there, down an unlit dirt track, and it was dark that night, lots of clouds and no moon, darker than it usually was. I was always nervous, and there were usually six of us, but I was on my own, and it was worse. I got off the bus and watched it drive up the hill and then walked quickly. There was a car on the same side of the street as me. I remember the lights were on and the engine was still running. I crossed to the other side of the street to avoid it, but before I could get there, a man came up from behind me, put his hand over my mouth, and dragged me into the car. He was much stronger than I am. There was nothing I could do.”

“Where did they take you?”

“There is a bar in Altavista with a very cheap hotel behind it where the men take the women that they have paid for. They took me there. They put me in a room, tied my hands and my feet, and left me on the bed. There was another girl there, too, on the other bed. She had been taken the night before, I think. She was tied down, like me. There was blood. Her eyes were open, but they did not focus on anything. She just stared at the ceiling. I tried to speak to her, but she did not respond. I tried again, but it was no use—she would not speak, let alone tell me her name or where she was from or what had happened to her. So I screamed and screamed until my throat was dry, but no one came. I could hear the music from the bar, and then, when that was quiet, I could hear noises from the other rooms that made me want to be quiet. There were other girls, I think. I never saw any of them, but I heard them. I must have been there for two or three hours before he came in.”

“Just one?”

“Yes. I don’t know if it was the same one who took me. I can remember him and yet
not
remember him, if you know what I mean. He was nothing special, by which I mean there was nothing about him that you would find particularly memorable. Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Normal looking. Normal clothes. He reminded me of the father of a girl I went to school with when I was younger. He was a nice man, the father of my friend. I hoped that maybe this man would be nice, too, or at least not as bad as I expected. But he was not like him at all. He was not nice.”

“You don’t have to tell me what happened.”

But she did. She drew a breath and explained, looking down at the table all the time. She was a little vague, relying on euphemism, but Caterina was able to complete the details that she left out. Delores’s bravery filled her with fury. She gripped her pen tighter and tighter until her knuckles were pale against the tanned skin on the back of her right hand. A fourteen-year-old girl. Fourteen. She vowed, for the hundredth time, the thousandth, that she would expose the men who were responsible for this. She did not care about her own safety. The only thing that mattered was that they were shamed and punished. Now that she had her blog and the thousands of readers who came to read about the disintegration of Juárez, now she was not just another protester. She had influence and power. People paid attention when she wrote things. This would be the biggest story yet.

Femicide.

The City of Lost Girls.

She would make them listen, and things would be done.

“How did you get away?”

“He untied my hands while he—you know—and then he did not tie them again when he went to use the bathroom. I suppose he was confident in himself, and he had made it plain that they would kill me if I tried to run. I knew that my prayers had been answered then and that I had been given a chance to escape, but at first, I did not think that my body would allow me to take advantage of it. It was as if all of the strength in my legs had been taken away. I think it was because I was frightened of what they would do to me if they caught me. I know that is not rational, and I know that they would have killed me if I had stayed—I knew about the missing girls, of course, like everyone does—but despite that, it was as much as I could do to take my clothes and get off the bed.”

“But you did.”

“Eventually, yes. I tried to get the other girl to get up too, but she told me to leave her alone. It was the first thing she had said to me all that time. She looked at me as if I had done something terribly wrong. She was still tied, too, and I am not sure I would have been able to free her, but it would not have mattered—she did not want to leave. I opened the door—he had not locked it—and I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I ran all the way to the Avenue Azucenas, and I found a policeman. I did not know if I could trust him, but I had no other choice. I was lucky. He was a good man. One of the few. He took me to the police station, away from there.”