The Dead Women of Juárez

by Sam Hawken

  Gaspar descended from his bunk and crouched on the floor with his back against the wall. “They can see it, too,” he said.

  “What?” Kelly asked.

  “When they come back for you, I get the bottom bunk again,” Gaspar replied.

  Kelly watched the cell door. The guard didn’t reappear. “They won’t kill me,” he said.

  “No,” Gaspar said. “They don’t kill nobody in here. People just die.”

  “I’m not going to say what they want me to say.”

  “Then you are more stupid than you look.”

  Gaspar fell silent and Kelly turned his eye on the man. He looked at Gaspar’s shirt and his clean work pants and his bare feet. Gaspar had heavy calluses on his toes, especially his big toe, and the faded lines of old scars. He had scars on his hands, too.

  “Are you a cop, or are you just working for the cops?” Kelly asked.

  Stretching made Gaspar look like a rangy stray cat. “Nobody asks questions like that in here,” he said at last.

  “I’m asking.”

  “I don’t got an answer for you,” Gaspar said, and then he looked away.

  Kelly smiled to himself. “You tell them whatever you want to tell them. Get what’s coming to you.”

  “Did you kill that girl?”

  The smile died. “She wasn’t a girl. She was a woman.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “No.”

  “You know I got to ask. It’s nothing personal.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” Kelly said. “And I’m not saying otherwise to anybody. You tell them that. Tell them that and see what they do.”

  FOURTEEN

  GASPAR CALLED FOR A GUARD AND after a while one came. He left without saying goodbye to Kelly. That was fine. Another jailor brought food that Kelly ate with his bare hands, chewed with loosened teeth and barely tasted. He shoved the tray back out through the bars when he was finished and someone picked it up.

  Only when he was alone did Kelly feel fatigue pressing down on him again. He lay on the bunk and slept and this time when he woke the lights were almost all shut off and the cellblock was utterly still. The cell itself was inked in darkness.

  It hurt to move, but he sat on the side of the bunk and removed his shoes. He put them side by side, neatly, the way Gaspar had done. His bare feet picked up the slight vibration of the living structure; hundreds of moving bodies translated through the concrete to something Kelly could feel, like trembling. One foot felt more than the other. A part of Kelly realized his injured leg would never function properly again, and strangely knowing that didn’t bother him so much.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” Kelly whispered aloud. His voice was scratchy and it hurt to speak. Once more he didn’t recognize himself. “I’ve been an idiot. I’m sorry.”

  Kelly put his hand on his knee as though he were touching the head of that poor dead boy in the street, or Paloma in her sleep. His fingers trembled. He was crying again.

  “I didn’t think about it… everything. I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I got. And I’m not gonna be the one who fucks things up anymore. I promise. I’ll make it right somehow. If God’ll let me, I’ll make it right.”

  He used the bunk to help himself stand, and from the bunk to the wall. He forced himself to walk the six feet from front to rear three times before collapsing into the bunk again, his flesh soaked in perspiration. His heartbeat surged and fluttered.

  A locked door opened and heels rang on cement. The inmates didn’t stir. The jailors patrolled the block hourly, sometimes alone and sometimes in pairs, the sound of their passing like a great ticking clock. Kelly panted on his bunk. He waited for the shadow to pass in the half-lit passageway beyond the cell door.

  The man came to his cell and stopped. Kelly recognized the older cop’s frame — broad shoulders, big head and thick neck — by shadows alone. The cop said nothing, but Kelly heard him breathing.

  “I didn’t do it,” Kelly said, but the words faltered. He tried again. “I didn’t do it.”

  Keys jingled and the cop opened the cell. He didn’t close the door behind him, but Kelly couldn’t run even if he wanted to; he was dying on the inside, broken up and going nowhere. When the cop stood over the bunks he seemed ten feet tall and Kelly only a child.

  “I… I won’t say I did it.”

  Other figures gathered at the door of the cell. They were also quiet and the cellblock refused to take a breath. Kelly knew if he called for help he might as well be alone; the policeman wasn’t there and the others weren’t there and every cell was completely empty because the prison was deserted.

  “Fuck you if I say I did it.”

  Kelly didn’t see the bat, but of course the cop must have had it all along. Wood connected with his flesh and Kelly felt meat and bone give away. His jaw was broken, his mouth filled with fresh blood. Pain had color and texture. Kelly put his hand up and had his wrist shattered. He turned to put his back to the worst of it, but the cop dragged him out of the bunk and onto the floor of the cell where kicks and blows followed one after another until Kelly couldn’t tell them apart.

  He waited for the bell to ring, but the referee never noticed when time came and passed. Kelly grabbed for the ropes and someone stepped on his fingers. The roar of the crowd was the rush of his blood in his ears. ¡Délo a la madre! ¡Délo a la madre!

  How would Denny get the bleeding to stop? There wasn’t enough time between rounds to bring down all this swelling. He was broken and the ref should have stepped in, but they were letting it go on and on. Ring lights beat down and faces outside the ropes were twisted and shadowed. Paloma was there. Estéban was there. The little boy was there with his shattered bicycle beside him. And Denny in the corner shouting for one more round, Kelly, you can make it one more round?

  On his back he saw Captain Garcia with his cut-down baseball bat dripping with crimson and spattered with it himself, but bringing the weapon up and down again and again and again bringing hurt so deep that it didn’t even register anymore.

  A prayer was a bubble of blood on busted lips. Begging was a murmur. When Kelly reached up, he raised the same mangled hand as a crushed child on the street as the train thundered by. And then all he heard was music, and Eliseo Robles singing for Ramón Ayala and the Brave Ones of the North as if from far away:

  Un rinconcito en el cielo

  Juntos, unidos los dos

  Y cuando caiga la noche

  Te daré mi amor…

  PART THREE

  Padre

  ONE

  WHEN RAFAEL TÉODULO SEVILLA Adán was young he chose beer and tequila as his poisons. These things were cheap and readily available and they got the job done, which was all a man could ask for. Over time Sevilla developed a taste for blended whiskies, especially Johnnie Walker, and now it was all he chose for himself.

  Drinking was something he did alone, not in a bar. And because Sevilla did not drink at home, he did it in the only place he felt comfortable: behind the wheel of his car, parked outside his front gate.

  Little houses were crowded up against one another here, but shielded by whitewashed concrete walls, wrought-iron gates and burglar bars. If Ciudad Juárez had any constant at all, it was those bars, always whispering nowhere was safe, nowhere, nowhere.

  The sun went down, but the heat lingered. Sevilla sat in the darkened car with a bottle of Johnnie Walker between his legs, swigging directly from the neck when the urge struck him. Tonight it was Red Label because he hadn’t enough cash for Black Label. The flavor was good enough, and the end result the same.

  Sevilla did not drink in the house because his wife forbade it. Smoking and drinking were things to be done elsewhere, not even in the tiny courtyard outside the house, where Sevilla could touch both walls with his extended fingertips. Liliana didn’t begrudge anyone their vices, not even her husband, but she could set a line against them beginning at her front gate.

  It was time to smoke. Sevilla put down his
window and lit a cigarette. He flicked the ashes into the street. When drunk, Sevilla was fascinated by the shifting pattern of burning tobacco at the end of a smoke. His legs had long slipped into a comfortable lack of sensation, as if his body were falling asleep apart from his mind. He let his head lay back against the rest. His eyes slid shut and forgot about the cigarette until the ash nipped at his fingers.

  Sevilla cast the butt out the window. Lights were on and he heard music and voices. His house was black and silent. A young woman in a maquila uniform walked past Sevilla’s car down the middle of the cracked road and Sevilla’s heart ached. Another pull on the bottle of Johnnie Walker put things in better order.

  He watched the woman in his rear-view mirror until she vanished out of sight. No one bothered her, or so much as called to her. Sevilla wondered where she lived; he didn’t remember seeing her before. That was the problem with Juárez: the faces were always changing.

  Sitting no longer appealed to him. Sevilla swished the last of Señor Walker around at the bottom of the bottle and then poured it out the open window. He got out carefully and locked the vehicle up. Thieves wouldn’t bother Sevilla’s car; even teenage joyriders passing through got the word that this was a policeman’s house. Graffiti marked the garden walls and even the garbage cans of his neighbors, but none marred Sevilla’s. This, along with a badge and a gun, was a privilege.

  He was gentle with the squeaking front gate even though there was no one at home. At the door he fumbled with his keys in the dark and caught a whiff of himself in the process: he smelled of drink and sweat and stale smoke. Once he got the lock open he let himself into the still shadows inside.

  “Hola,” Sevilla called softly, and shut the door behind him. He set two locks and the chain, though these too were unnecessary. A standing lamp near the entrance when switched on cast dim yellow light across a crowded front room. Sevilla put his keys in a bowl by the door and realized he still carried the empty bottle of Johnnie Walker. He tucked it into his jacket and felt ashamed.

  The furniture was simple, plain and comfortable. Liliana decorated with hand-sewn throws and pillows and a great painting of Jesus dominated one wall. Christ pointed to his Sacred Heart. Sevilla touched his chest unconsciously when he passed.

  Another wall was devoted to family photographs new and old. Frames brushed against frames, black and white with color in a sunburst radiating from a picture of Sevilla and Liliana on their wedding day. Sevilla wore his uncle’s best suit on loan and Liliana her mother’s wedding dress. They were outside, but though the sun shone in the photo it rained later on and the reception was driven indoors.

  Sevilla disposed of the empty whisky bottle in the kitchen and put a few pieces of newspaper on top of it. The squat, rounded refrigerator was the same one he and Liliana bought with their wedding money. The freezer had to be defrosted manually, but it still kept food cold. Sevilla found a bottle of Jarritos to wash away the lingering taste of Señor Walker.

  His home had two bedrooms. More family photos decorated the short hallway that divided the house. These were mostly of his daughter Ana in her growing years, though a few showed Ana and her daughter Ofelia. Once Sevilla and Liliana hoped to fill the hallway with pictures of all their children and grandchildren, but one wall was empty and the other only partly filled.

  Sevilla undressed in the bathroom and took a shower. He did not like the look of his reflection — the deep redness of his eyes, the heaviness of his cheeks — but he shaved and put on cologne and hoped for better the next day. Briefly he thought of Kelly, but forced from his mind the image of Kelly in his cell. “Mañana,” Sevilla said aloud.

  He put on pajamas, a tatty robe and slippers and went to his daughter’s room. Originally the space belonged to Liliana and him, but when Ofelia came without a father the decision was made to give up the room to the child and her mother. The bed was small and neat, Ofelia’s crib beside it. A changing table was still stocked with cotton diapers, pins and ointments. Once Señora Alvarez, who cleaned up, asked whether Sevilla wanted it all taken out, given away, but Sevilla said no, though he could not explain why.

  “Hola, hija,” Sevilla told the empty room. “Hola, nieta.”

  He sat on the bed. A picture of Ana with Ofelia rested on the endtable. Sevilla allowed himself to hold it, but not to look at the image directly: a young woman and a baby at the Parque Central in autumn. Ana’s smile had a crooked tooth in front.

  Sevilla didn’t cry because there were no tears anymore. He simply sat with a weight pressed on his heart until the whisky threatened to put him to sleep. When he could barely keep his eyes open any longer, he put the photograph away and went back to the room he once shared with his wife and went to bed.

  He slept, but it was not a good sleep, though at least the dreams were only half formed and he remembered none of the details whenever he woke, however briefly, during the night.

  TWO

  THE TELEPHONE RANG IN THE morning after coffee. Sevilla stood in the kitchen wearing rumpled pajamas with the early sun showing through the bars on the back windows. The house smelled of the fresh brew, but not of home. “¿Bueno?”

  “The American is dead.”

  Sevilla felt heat and pain in his ear. “What?”

  “Kelly Courter is dead,” said the man on the other end.

  “What? When? Who is this?”

  The line buzzed. Sevilla missed the cradle with the receiver and spilled his coffee at the same time. He cursed and got it right, but his hands shook while his mind turned.

  “I’ll clean it up,” he said to no one, and then made a new call.

  THREE

  SEVILLA DROVE TO THE HOSPITAL General, a plain hunk of functional building peppered with windows. He showed his identification to the attendant at the parking lot and parked in a space marked for a doctor. In his time Sevilla had spent hours upon hours at the Hospital General, enduring its crowded waiting rooms and cracked plastic chairs and the smell of death, urine, blood and cigarettes.

  It was no different at this early hour, though perhaps there were fewer people than usual. Sevilla saw an old man in a wheelchair, already hooked up to fluids and his leg elevated. People slept sitting up, leaning against one another. A television droned quietly near the ceiling of one corner, the color out of sync and the signal diffuse.

  The counter had cracked sliding windows to protect the staff and as Sevilla approached a nurse opened one. They had no computers here. At the Hospital General they used clipboards and awkwardly photocopied forms for everything. Her workspace was crowded with paper. Sevilla showed his identification again. “I’m looking for a patient: Kelly Courter.”

  “When did he check in?”

  “I don’t know. Sometime last night.”

  The woman was young, no more than twenty, and something about her made Sevilla’s heart ache. She sorted through her many layers of documents. The skin creased between her eyebrows, but when she looked up it was gone. “I’m sorry to say he is in Cuidado Intensivo.”

  “Which way is that?”

  “Through those doors. Down the hall. You’ll see the signs.”

  “Gracias, señorita.”

  Sevilla passed through double doors into a broad, greenly lit hall. He followed the signs until he saw the first uniformed policeman, and then another and another. A knot of six stood guard around the entrance to the emergency room, talking to each other or idly watching a television fixed on a stand.

  The cops snapped to when Sevilla came closer, then relaxed when he showed his badge and ID. He was one of them. “Where is he?” Sevilla asked them. “The American.”

  “In there. But he’s unconscious. The doctors say—”

  “I’ll find out,” Sevilla interrupted. “Con permiso.”

  He pushed through them and through the door. The room beyond was larger than he expected, with space for three beds though two were empty. Kelly lay twisted in the nearest bed. No television chattered here; the steady beep of a heart monitor
kept the quiet at bay. A respirator hissed in concert and in the far corner a woman in a coal-colored pantsuit spoke quietly into a cell phone.

  Kelly’s face was obscured by an enormous mass of gauze and the respirator hose snaked out of a nest of transparent tape that let the color of bruises and blood show through. Both of his arms were bound in casts from upper arm to fingertips. His lower legs bulged beneath the light blanket, cuffed in inflatable sheaths that breathed on their own, squeezing away clots that might form and kill the lungs or brain.

  “Damn you, Kelly,” Sevilla said under his breath.

  Sevilla wanted to go to Kelly’s bedside, but he waited for the woman on the phone. She raised a finger to him while she talked and Sevilla nodded. The conversation lasted another minute. When the woman closed the phone, she crossed the room and shook Sevilla’s hand. “Rafael Sevilla? It’s good to meet you. I’m Adriana Quintero. With the FEDCM.”

  “I know you,” Sevilla said. Quintero had a firm grip. He saw that her nails were manicured and painted a subtle shade of seashell pink. She smelled faintly of good perfume and her hair was perfect. “I’ve seen you on the television.”

  Quintero smiled briefly. The cell phone went into her pocket. When she looked at Kelly, the smile was gone. “They told me you helped secure his confession.”

  Sevilla didn’t want to look directly at Kelly. “If he confessed, he didn’t do it to me.”

  “No? Captain Garcia said—”

  “Someone called me this morning,” Sevilla said. “The man… the caller told me Kelly was dead. When did he come here?”

  Something flickered behind Quintero’s eyes when she looked at Sevilla, and then it was gone. “He was found in his cell during rounds at three o’clock. Why would someone call you? Did you recognize the voice?”

  “How did it happen?”