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After they had eaten, as both
of them stared out at the night through the windows of El Rey del Taco, Yolanda
Palacio said it wasn't all bad in Santa Teresa. It wasn't all bad, where women
were concerned. As if, with their stomachs full, tired and ready for bed, both
of them could appreciate the good, the fabricated hopeful details. They smoked.
Do you know which Mexican city has the lowest female unemployment rate? Sergio
Gonzalez glimpsed the desert moon, a fragment, a helicoidal slice, rising above
the roofs. Santa Teresa? he asked. That's right, Santa Teresa, said the head of
the Department of Sex Crimes. Here almost all the women have work. Badly paid
and exploitative work, with ridiculous hours and no union protections, but
work, after all, which is a blessing for so many women from
Oaxaca
or Zacatecas. A helicoidal slice? It
can't be, thought Sergio. It must be an optical illusion, strange clouds in the
shape of little cigars, clothes fluttering in the night breeze, Poe's fly or
mosquito. So there's no female unemployment? he asked. Don't be an asshole,
said Yolanda Palacio, of course there's unemployment, female and male; it's
just that the rate of female unemployment is much lower than in the rest of the
country. So in fact you might say, speaking broadly, that all the women here
have work. Ask for the figures and see for yourself.

In May, Aurora Cruz Barrientos,
eighteen, was killed in her own home. She was found in the conjugal bed, with
multiple stab wounds, mainly to the chest, in the middle of a big slick of
coagulated blood, her arms flung wide as if she was beseeching the heavens. The
discovery was made by a neighbor and friend, who thought it was strange that
the curtains were still drawn. The door was open and the neighbor walked into
the house, where immediately she sensed that something was wrong, though she couldn't
say what. When she got to the bedroom and saw what had been done to Aurora Cruz
she fainted. The house was located at 870 Calle Estepa, in Colonia Felix Gomez,
a lower-middle-class neighborhood. The case was assigned to Inspector Juan de
Dios
Martinez
,
who showed up at the scene an hour after the house had been occupied by the
police. Aurora Cruz's husband, Rolando Perez Meji'a, was at work at the City
Keys maquiladora and hadn't yet been notified of his wife's death. The police
who searched the house found some bloodstained undershorts, presumably
belonging to Perez Mejia, discarded in the bathroom. Early that afternoon a
couple of officers stopped by City Keys and brought Perez Mejia in to Precinct
#2. In his statement he maintained that before he left for work he'd had
breakfast with his wife, like every morning, and that they got along well
together because they didn't let their problems (which were mostly financial)
interfere with their lives. They had been married, according to Perez Mejia,
for a year and a few months and they never fought. When he was shown the
bloodstained undershorts, Perez Mejia recognized them as his own, or similar to
a pair that belonged to him, and Juan de Dios
Martinez
thought he would collapse. But
although he wept bitterly when he saw them, which struck Juan de Dios
Martinez
as odd, since a
pair of shorts isn't a picture or a letter, just a pair of shorts, he didn't
collapse. In any case, he remained under arrest in anticipation of new
developments, which weren't long in coming. First a witness appeared who said
he had seen a man prowling around Aurora Cruz's house. The prowler, according
to this witness, was an athletic-looking young man who rang doorbells and
peered in windows as if he wanted to check which houses were empty. At least
that was what he did at three houses, one of them Aurora Cruz's, and then he
disappeared. What happened after that, the witness didn't know, because he had
left for work, not without first warning his wife and his wife's mother, who
lived with them, of the intruder's presence. According to the witness's wife,
shortly after her husband left, she spent a while looking out the window but
didn't see anything. Then she went to work too, and the only person left at
home was her mother, who, like her daughter and son-in-law before her, scanned
the street from the window, without noticing anything suspicious, until her
grandchildren got up and she had to fix them breakfast before she sent them to
school. No one else in the neighborhood, for that matter, saw the
athletic-looking prowler. At the maquiladora where the victim's husband
worked,
 
several workers testified that
Rolando Perez Mejia had arrived at the same time as he did every morning, a
little before his shift began. According to the forensic report, Aurora Cruz
had been anally and vaginally raped. The rapist and killer, said the medical
examiner, was a person of great vitality, undoubtedly a young man, someone
completely unrestrained. Asked by Juan de Dios
Martinez
what he meant by unrestrained, the
medical examiner replied that the quantity of semen found in the victim's body
and on the sheets was abnormal. It might have been two people, said Juan de
Dios
Martinez
.
Possibly, said the medical examiner, and to find out he had already sent samples
to the crime lab analysts in
Hermosillo
for confirmation if not of the attacker's DNA then at least of his blood type.
Based on the anal tearing, the medical examiner was inclined to believe that
the anal rape took place after the victim was dead. For a few days, feeling
sicker and sicker, Juan de Dios investigated some neighborhood kids with gang
ties. One night he had to go to the doctor, who confirmed that he had the flu
and prescribed decongestants and patience. The flu took a more serious turn a few
days later when he came down with strep throat and was put on antibiotics. The
victim's husband spent a week in the cells of Precinct #2 and then was
released. The semen samples sent to
Hermosillo
were lost, whether on the way there or the way back it wasn't clear.

Florita
herself came to the door. Sergio hadn't expected her to be so old. Florita gave
Reinaldo and Jose Patricio each a kiss on the cheek and
shook Sergio's hand. We've been dying of
boredom, he heard Reinaldo say. Florita's hand was creased, like the hand of
someone who had spent a lot of time working with chemicals. The living room was
small, with two armchairs and a TV set. Black-and-white photographs hung on the
walls. In one of the photographs he saw Reinaldo and some other men, all smiling,
dressed as if for a picnic, gathered around Florita: the members of a sect
gathered around their priestess. He was offered tea or beer. Sergio requested a
beer and asked Florita whether it was true that she could
see
the deaths that had taken place in Santa Teresa. La Santa
seemed uncomfortable and took a while to answer. She tugged at the neck of her
blouse and her little wool jacket, possibly too tight. Her answer was vague.
She said that sometimes, like anybody, she saw things, and the things she saw weren't
necessarily visions but things she imagined, like anybody, things that sprang
into her head, which was supposedly the price you paid to live in modern
society, although she believed that anybody, no matter where they lived, at
certain moments
saw
or
pictured
things, and all she could
picture recently, as it happened, were the killings of women. A charlatan with
a heart of gold, thought Sergio. Why a heart of gold? Because all little old
Mexican ladies had hearts of gold? More like a heart of flint, thought Sergio,
to endure so much. Florita, as if she'd read his mind, nodded several times. So
how do you know these killings are the Santa Teresa killings? asked Sergio.
Because they're such a burden, said Florita. And because they come one after
the other. Urged to explain herself better, she said that an ordinary murder
(although there was no such thing as an ordinary murder) almost always ended
with a liquid image, a lake or a well that after being disturbed grew calm
again, whereas serial killings, like the killings in the border city, projected
a
heavy
image, metallic or mineral, a
smoldering image, say, that burned curtains, dancing, but the more curtains it
burned the darker it grew in the bedroom or the living room or the shed or the
barn where the killings took place. And can you see the killers' faces? asked
Sergio, feeling suddenly weary. Sometimes, said Florita, sometimes I see their
faces, but when I wake up I forget them. What would you say their faces are
like, Florita? They're ordinary faces (although there's no such thing as an
ordinary face, at least not in
Mexico
).
So you wouldn't say these people look like killers? No, I'd just say they have
big faces. Big? Yes, big, somehow swollen, or inflated. Like masks? I wouldn't
say that, said Florita; they're faces, not masks or disguises, they're just
swollen, as if the killers were taking too much cortisone. Cortisone? Or any
other kind of corticosteroid that makes you swell up, said Florita. So they're
sick? I don't know, it depends. Depends on what? On the way you see them. Do
they consider themselves sick people? No, not at all. They know they're
healthy, then? If by knowing you mean they really
know,
no one in this world knows anything for sure, child. But they
think they're healthy? Let's say they do, said Florita. And their voices, have
you ever heard them? asked Sergio (she called me
child,
it's the oddest thing, she called me
child).
Not often, but I have heard them talk once or twice. And
what do they say, Florita? I don't know, they speak Spanish, a mixed-up Spanish
that doesn't sound like Spanish, it isn't English either, sometimes I think
they speak a made-up language, but it can't be made up because I understand
some words, so I'd say it's Spanish and they're Mexican, except that most of
their words are incomprehensible to me. She called me
child,
thought Sergio. Just once, which means it's fair to think it
isn't only rhetoric. A charlatan with a heart of gold. He was offered another
beer, which he refused. He said he was tired. He said he had to get back to his
hotel. Reinaldo looked at him with poorly disguised resentment. What have I
done? wondered Sergio. He went to the bathroom: it smelled like old lady, but
on the floor there were two potted plants, so dark green they were almost black.
Not a bad idea, plants in the bathroom, thought Sergio as he listened to the
voices of Reinaldo and Jose Patricio and Florita, who seemed to be arguing in
the living room. From the tiny bathroom window he could see a small cement
yard, wet as if it had just rained, where, among the potted plants, he spied
red and blue flowers, of an unknown variety. When he got back to the living
room he didn't sit down again. He shook Florita's hand and promised her he
would send her the article he planned to publish, although he knew very well he
wouldn't send her anything. One thing I do understand, said La Santa as she
walked them to the door. As she spoke, she looked Sergio in the eye and then
Reinaldo. What is it you understand, Florita? asked Sergio. Don't tell, Florita,
said Reinaldo. When a person speaks, his joys and sorrows shine through, even
if only in part, wouldn't you say? That's God's truth, said Jose Patricio.
Well, when these figments of mine speak among themselves, even though I don't
understand their words, I can tell for a fact that their joys and sorrows are
big,
said Florita. How big? asked
Sergio. Florita fixed him with her gaze. She opened the door. He could feel the
Sonora
night
brushing his back like a ghost.
Huge,
said
Florita. As if they know they're beyond the law? No, no, no, said Florita, it
has nothing to do with the law.

On June 1, Sabrina Gomez
Demetrio, fifteen, arrived on foot at
IMSS
Gerardo
Regueira
Hospital
.
She'd been stabbed multiple times and shot twice in the back. She was admitted
immediately to the emergency ward, where she expired a few minutes later. She
didn't say much before she died. She gave her name and the street where she
lived with her sisters and brothers. She said she had been locked in a
Suburban. She said something about a man with the face of a pig. One of the
nurses who was trying to stop her from hemorrhaging asked if he was the man who
had kidnapped her. Sabrina Gomez said she was sorry she would never see her
brothers and sisters again.

In June, Klaus Haas made some
phone calls and convened a press conference at the Santa Teresa penitentiary,
attended by six reporters. His lawyer had advised against the conference, but
by now Haas seemed to have lost his previous composure and he refused to listen
to a single argument against his plan. Nor did he, according to his lawyer,
advise her of the subject of the conference. All he said was that he was now in
possession of a piece of information that he'd been lacking before, something
he wanted to make public. The reporters who came weren't expecting anything
new, let alone something that would illuminate the dark chasm that the regular
appearance of dead women—in the city or just outside the city or in the desert
that closed around Santa Teresa like an iron fist—had become, but they came
because ultimately Haas and the dead women were their news. The big
Mexico City
papers didn't
send any representatives.

In
June, a few days after Haas, by phone, had promised the reporters a statement,
a stunning revelation, as he put it, Aurora Ibanez Medel, whose disappearance
had been reported a few weeks ago by her husband, appeared dead by the side of
the Casas Negras highway. Aurora Ibanez was thirty-four and worked at the
Interzone-Berny maquiladora. She had four children between the ages of fourteen
and three and she had been married since she was seventeen to Jaime Pacheco
Pacheco, a mechanic, who at the moment of his wife's disappearance was
unemployed, a victim of factory-floor layoffs at Interzone-Berny. According to
the forensic report, the cause of death
was asphyxiation, and despite the passage of time, lesions were still visible
around the victim's neck. The hyoid wasn't fractured. It was likely that
Aurora
had been raped. The
case was handled by Inspector Efram Bustelo, in consultation with Inspector
Ortiz Rebolledo. Following inquiries among the victim's acquaintances, they
proceeded to arrest Jaime Pacheco, who, after being subjected to an
interrogation, confessed to the crime. The motive, Ortiz Rebolledo told the
press, was jealousy. Not of any man in particular, but of all the men she might
have encountered or because of his new situation, which was intolerable. Poor
Pacheco thought his wife was going to leave him. Asked about the means of
transportation he had used to get his unwitting wife out past the fifteen-mile
marker on the Casas Negras highway or to dispose of the body there, supposing
he had killed her elsewhere, which was a matter Pacheco refused to discuss
despite the harshness of the interrogation, he stated that a friend had loaned
him his car, an '87 Coyote, yellow with red flames on the sides, but the police
were unable to find this friend or failed to search for him as diligently as
the case warranted.