Border Crossings

by Michael Lee Weems

  After the services Catherine met the Woodalls at their home, along with other personal friends and family. She was already packed and ready to return to Cancun, though she hadn’t told Jim and Amy this, yet. There were a lot of things she hadn’t told them yet, and she wasn’t looking forward to having to be the one to break even more bad news to them. As if losing Kelly weren’t enough, she thought. She was anxious to return, though. She was still worried about Julio, though not sure what she was going to do with the boy. She felt lucky Matt was looking after the boy. His quick arrival had been perfect timing.

  The hours ticked away and the house thinned out, until finally it was just the Woodalls, Amy’s parents, and Catherine. She was sitting in Jim’s study with an old bottle of Chivas Regal, which had sat for years in his cabinet until now, a large glass full of ice, and two smaller glasses, watching CNN on a small flat-screen television in the corner when Jim finally came in and closed the door. She was listening to the report nervously. She’d hoped it wouldn’t be on the news so fast so she could tell him in her own way, but there was no good way to try to explain this so she just prepared herself.

  “Officials released a preliminary report this morning on the murder investigation of Kelly Woodall that has many stunned,” said the reporter. “One anonymous official said a large amount of cocaine and other drugs were found in the girls’ system, alluding that her death may have been drug related.”

  Jim’s face turned white as he stared at the television. “Bullshit,” he said. “Did they just say what I think they said?” He turned and glared at Catherine, “Did you hear that?”

  Catherine clicked the remote and turned the T.V. off. “That anonymous official was probably Fuentes. If not, then it was probably an intentional leak to the press. His office has been trying to spin this from the moment we found her.”

  Jim looked shell-shocked before he saw something he recognized in Catherine’s demeanor. “You knew,” he said accusingly. “You’ve already heard this and didn’t tell me. Haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she told him softly, “I heard. I wanted to tell you privately so you could decide how to broach the subject with Amy. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. We just haven’t had time yet. They only just started reporting this earlier today.”

  “Oh, God, when Amy hears this crap . . . I’m not sure how much more she can take. I ought to sue those bastards for slander. How could they say that?”

  “They’re looking for any excuse to rationalize why it wasn’t the random act of violence that it was,” she told him. “They want everyone to think Kelly was culpable in some way, but we all know it’s crap. The truth will come out. You’ll see.” Catherine had already heard that Kelly’s toxicology report had revealed met amphetamines in her system. How it got there, though, was the real question. She decided not to go into it at the moment and instead changed the subject. “How is Amy?” She hadn’t really talked to Amy since she broke the news to them of Kelly’s death.

  He was still lost in his own contemplation of what he’d just heard, but he managed to bring his thoughts back to answer, “She’s holding up. The doctor has her on Valium, so at least she can sleep. She’s upstairs resting now.”

  “And you? Are you sleeping?” Catherine filled the glasses and handed Jim one of them.

  He took it and slumped in his chair behind his desk. “Not really. But I’m fine without it. I don’t want to sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see her.” He gulped down his drink and got up to refill it. “I see her like that day in the morgue on the computer screen. Her face beaten,” his voice broke and he took a drink from his glass to keep composure. She was glad he hadn’t seen her the way she had. He’d been the one to make the positive identification formally, but at least they’d managed to clean her up a bit before he saw her. “I can’t get the image out of my head.” Catherine, meanwhile, drank from her glass a little slower, but she wasn’t being bashful, either. Both intended on getting drunk. Both needed it. His tears having ebbed back behind his eyes, Jim asked, “Have you heard anything?”

  “Not much you don’t already know,” said Catherine. “Except of course this,” she said, pointing to the now blank television, “local officials are trying to downplay it, make it into something, anything, other than what it is.”

  Jim stared blankly off into the distance, “That Fuentes . . . what a little snake. Kissing our ass and then pulling this shit behind our back. Well, they’re not going to do it. I’m not going to let them turn her into something she wasn’t so they can tell the world it wasn’t their fault and pretend like it didn’t happen.”

  “No, we won’t let them,” she agreed. “This isn’t over, Jim. We’ve still got a lot more searching to do.”

  Jim nodded. “What about that boy you found? How’s he doing?”

  “He’s getting better. Luckily, the bullet missed all the tendons and arteries. He really needed to go to the hospital but I couldn’t convince him. I can’t say as though I blame him. He’ll have a nice little scar, but I expect he’ll be good as new otherwise.”

  “You didn’t leave him alone down there, did you?”

  “No, of course not. He’s with a friend.”

  “Have you found out yet who was after you in the market?”

  “Well, I still think they were after the boy more than me, but of course the police down there aren’t much help. That guy Vargas wrote it off as a carjacking, which is beyond stupid. I really don’t think he could be that big of an idiot. He’s shady. ”

  “You don’t think we can trust him?”

  “Oh, I know we can’t,” she said. “I’m just wondering how untrustworthy the guy is. Let’s just say I won’t be walking down any alleys with my back to him.”

  “Well, you don’t think he’s in with any of the drug people, do you? I mean, just that he’s looking out for Cancun’s interest more than us, right?”

  “No,” she told him, “I mean he’s shady in the other kind of way. I don’t know it for sure, but I’m getting a distinctly bad vibe from the guy. And then there’s thing with him being the last person the missing kid was with. That’s just sending alarm bells off in my head. I don’t think we need to have anything to do with that guy and we should probably ask that he not be involved in any further investigation. I don’t have any proof he’s done anything wrong but there’s just too many bells ringing in my ears telling me the guy’s bad. You wouldn’t believe the level of corruption down there, Jim. Last year the Chief of Police for Cancun, Francisco Velasco Delgado, was arrested for ties to the cartel and suspected in the torture and murder of the newly appointed chief of the drug task force.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Jim.

  “No, I’m sorry to say I’m not. And he was the Chief of Police. You can just imagine how many more are working for the cartel. Law enforcement is a for-profit business down there. And it gets even worse. The last mayor they had, who had taken leave of absence to run for governor of Quintana Roo, by the way, was arrested for aiding and protecting the cartel. And that’s just a few samples of the things that go on down there. You got college kids sunning themselves on the beach while cartels behead people in the streets. Makes you wonder if the whole damn country isn’t run by the cartels these days. There’s kind of been an unspoken rule about tourists, though. They brought in the money so generally have been off limits, but obviously that’s starting to not be the case. More and more you’re seeing kidnappings and ransom on the border. Hell, a top U.S. anti-kidnapping expert who worked to free victims was in Mexico last year for speech. He went out to eat with some colleagues, stepped outside for a phone call, and disappeared into thin air . . . kidnapped.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Felix Batista,” she recalled. “That was his name. Nobody knows. There was

  never a demand. He just disappeared.”

  “That’s what would have happened here, if not for you. At least we know,” he added, his voice choking a bit. He cleared his throat f
orcefully and then asked angrily, “Jesus, how in the hell can they all be corrupt? I mean who the hell can we trust?” The information Jim was hearing was infuriating. He’d always heard about the problems in Juarez or Mexico City, but he never paid attention to Cancun. It was always advertised as a beautiful getaway. Only now, after it was too late, was he hearing what really went on there. “Can we even trust that Detective Ramirez guy, or any of these people for that matter? They keep telling us how they’re going to find out what happened and do all they can, but then I turn on the TV and hear this bullshit. Lies, lies, lies. That’s all we’re getting. We wouldn’t have even found her if you hadn’t stepped in.”

  She tried to think about things from Jim’s perspective and understood his skepticism completely. She shared his sentiment for the most part, but the jury was still out on Rodriguez. “Ramirez seems okay so far. He cares, I think. But he’s got people pulling his strings for him. Hence, the kind of stuff we just heard. And these drug gangs are just too far imbedded on the politics. They’ve got way too much power down there.”

  “Well,” said Jim. “I’ve got a fix for that. I’ve got CNN camping out on my front lawn. I’m going to go out there and tell them what’s what. There’s no way in hell this was drug related. Kelly would never be into that kind of thing. And I’m going to tell everyone just what I think of this smear campaign they got running against the victim in this case, my little girl. Let’s see how many people I get to cancel their summer plans in Mexico then.” And he was so moved by his anger that he put his glass down and made to get up and go right then and there.

  “No,” said Catherine. “Look,” she told him. “There are still a lot of questions that need answering before you do that.”

  “Like what?” he asked, seating himself back down angrily. Catherine paused to gather her thoughts and he grew frustrated, “What else could you possibly not be telling me?”

  “There are some things the law enforcement down there hasn’t released to the public, certain ugly facts about Kelly’s remains. Things they don’t want to get out. And I think it might hurt our chances of finding these people if they did get out.”

  “Such as?” asked Jim. He’d been told where Kelly was found, and that she had been shot. He also knew her face looked abnormally swollen and bruised when he made the identification, but he didn’t know if it was just part of the decomposition or exactly what caused the abnormal appearance. After being told she’d been shot he didn’t think to ask what else might have happened. Part of him suspected but didn’t want to know.

  Catherine breathed heavily. “I’m not sure how much to tell you, Jim. Knowing all the details won’t bring her back.”

  Jim looked over his shoulder, drank a heavy gulp from the glass, refilled it, and said, “Just tell me. I deserve better than to be left in the dark like this with everyone else knowing things that I have to find out from the news.”

  “Her clothes were gone,” started Catherine. Jim gave no reaction, and that worried Catherine even more.

  “And?” asked Jim. Catherine stared at him, trying to decide what to do. Jim looked up from his glass at her. “God damn it, Catherine. That was my child. I deserve to know how she left this world.”

  Catherine killed her drink. She was visibly upset. He already knows part of it, she thought. Why does he want to hear it? “I’m your friend, Jim. And as such I’m not sure you do need to know. At least not right now. Let me put some more pieces together first.”

  He leaned in towards her, “Catherine, I can never repay you for what you’ve done by finding her, but I need you to listen to me now. I am her father. My life, our life, was about raising our child and seeing her on to have her own family raise her own children and life a full and complete life. That’s gone now. All we have left is finding the truth. We can’t do that if you hide things out of a misguided since of protection. We’re parents who lost our child. There’s nothing left to protect us from . . . that worse has already happened. Now we have to pick up the pieces and make them fit. Otherwise, there’s no moving on from this. And we can’t do that without knowing everything.” He reached out and put his hand on her arm, “Everything.”

  She didn’t want to say it, but she knew she had to. She didn’t want Jim to know how bad it was, but if she didn’t tell him nobody else was going to, and it was things he might need to know when dealing with the authorities in finding Kelly ’s killers or talking to the press. He was right. He needed all the pieces or there’d never be any way of putting them together again. “She was raped, beaten, strangled, and then shot.” She heard herself say the words as if in a dream. She didn’t mention the strange burns. What she said was bad enough, and she could go no further. “And there were drugs in her system like they’re saying, though I don’t think anyone believes she consumed them of her own will. She was drugged to make her more easily subdued, more like. Which is precisely what they were trying to do in the club to begin with.”

  Jim stared at Catherine blankly for what seemed an eternity. Tortured. He could barely wrap his mind about it. He’d believed she’d been killed early, quickly. He thought it had likely been a kidnapping gone awry after the incident in front of the hotel . . . maybe Kelly had fought and they had shot her right off before asking for a ransom, or maybe they caught her trying to escape early on, but, no. If they drugged her into a stupor . . . . the realization was too much. They’d forced her drugs, then assaulted her for what could have been hours, then brutally killed her. Inside the rage he couldn’t find in the car when he’d seen the crazy man’s poster suddenly welled up. He jumped up and threw his glass against the door, shattering it. He punched a computer monitor on the desk, cracking it and sending it sliding off the desk unto the floor.

  Catherine thought for a moment of stopping him but she knew at this point it could be cathartic for Jim. This was a rage that needed to come out.

  He yelled and swiped everything off the desk into a nearby bookshelf.

  “Jim,” Catherine said. “Amy.” She was asleep upstairs and while Catherine wanted to see Jim express his anger, she knew he didn’t really want to wake his wife.

  He sat down again and composed himself as best he could. Catherine sat quietly, occasionally stirring the ice in her glass around. Finally, he was calm enough to speak again. “They’re going to get away with it.” He looked at her, helpless, his eyes watery and red pained. “Whoever did this . . . they won’t find them. They’re out there somewhere, watching all this on the news, laughing to themselves. They’re going to get away with it and there’s not a God damn thing I can do, is there?”

  “They won’t get away with it, Jim.”

  “What can we do?” he asked her, the tears in his eyes falling before he quickly and angrily wiped them away. “You’ve got the boy who saw these people, but what good is that with no suspects. They’re probably long gone to some backwater village nobody’s ever heard of.” Jim looked at her. “I have to ask you a favor, but you can say no if you want.”

  “I won’t,” said Catherine.

  “Whoever did this to her,” started Jim. “I have to find them.” Catherine merely nodded. “I know you have a business to run, Catherine. But if you could spare some more time . . .” He knew he was asking more than what was right. But he did so, not for himself, but for Kelly. “We wouldn’t have found her without you, Catherine. And I don’t think those people down there are going to find these people. You’re the only person I know who has connections there and can actually get something done. Amy and I have quite a bit saved. We plan on paying that reward, but we’ve still got nearly two hundred thousand in our combined retirement accounts, not to mention the savings we were using for Kelly’s tuition and rent.”

  “Stop it,” said Catherine, angry. She’d been slapped by what he’d said and stood up to let him know it. “Why do you think I’m here, Jim? You can’t hire me like this is a job. This isn’t about money. This about what’s right and wrong. I’m not here because I feel obligated o
r because I’m expecting to be paid. Don’t insult me, Jim. This could never be just another job for me. The people who did this have to be found, or they’re going to do it again, Jim. They killed Kelly, they killed a homeless child, and they tried to kill me and that child’s friend.” She knelt down in front of him and grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard. “This is about right and wrong,” she told him again. “I’m staying because I want these people found and punished, because that’s what’s right and just. Don’t you dare think you’d need to offer me money to stay.”