Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (11 page)

Down at the fence a horn sounded.  “Ah, we have another customer.”  She smiled wickedly at Yesenia.  “Get her cleaned up,” she told Arnulfo, “she has some entertaining to do.”  Turning to greet the new arrival, she sneered at Yesenia, speaking through a clenched jaw.  “And if you mess this one up I’ll really make you sorry.”

Julio had spent more than half of the next day still hiding in his hole, convinced they were waiting for him to come out.  He’d tied his shirt around his leg and the blood seemed to crust over the wound and stop the bleeding, which he was thankful for.  Finally, hunger and exhaustion took hold and he crept out around midday.  He stole another shirt off a clothesline, filched some food from a trash bin behind a restaurant, and then hid himself away in an empty old building.

As he lay there that night, jumping at even the slightest of sounds, his leg began to feel numb and heavy.  By midnight he was feverish, and by morning so sick he could barely summon the strength to stand up.  He knew he needed help or he was probably going to die.

The next morning Maria pulled a small wagon carrying the wares of their little store along the street, and
Auntie Nita followed along behind with her usual wobble.  They opened up their little
tienda
and Auntie Nita settled into her chair and started a little fire in their hibachi and began cutting up the chicken to make kabobs.  Maria stood near the front of the store pouring water into a huge jug.  She had her sugar and lemons already prepared for mixing and was about to pour the sugar into the water when something caught her eye.  Across the square she saw a little flag of some sort being waved around in the shadow between two stands.  As she looked a little more closely she could see it was a shirt.  A young boy had removed his shirt and was apparently trying to get her attention.  Then she realized it was Julio, probably anxious for what news she had.  She put her hand up a bit to let him know she’d seen him, and continued mixing the lemonade.

“I have to run to the bathroom,” she told
Auntie Nita.  She headed towards the market’s public restroom and gestured with her hand that Julio should go around the other way out of sight and meet her on the other side.

When she turned the corner beyond
Auntie Nita’s view, she stopped short.  Julio had crawled to the back of the store as she had directed, but he looked a mess.  Around his leg he had a dirty rag that was encrusted with an enormous patch of dried blood.

“Julio!  What’s happened to you?” she gasped as she crouched next to the boy.  He was covered in dirt and sweat, his eyelids heavy and his complexion awry.  She put her hand to his forehead, “My God!  You’re burning up!  And your leg!”

“The men,” he told her.  “We saw two men in the cemetery.  They killed the American girl.”  He began to cry uncontrollably.  “They killed Juan.  They told me.  They killed him and fed him to the crocodiles out in the swamps.”  His tears ran down his cheek leaving little streaks of clean skin through the dirt and grime he perpetually wore from his life on the street.

“What happened to your leg, Julio?” she cried, barely hearing what he’d just told her.  “Come, let me see.”  She bent down and began to unwrap the shirt covering his injury.  The things he’d told her had not yet sunk in.  “How did this happen?”

“One of the men shot me,” he told her.  “I ran as fast as I could, but one of the bullets cut my leg.”

“They were shooting at you!?” she asked in horror.

He nodded his head.  “They almost killed me, too.  I had to hide in a street ditch.  They killed Juan, Maria.  They killed him.”

“Oh, my God!” she said, both to what he told her and to the sight of his leg which was now revealed beneath the rag.  Already, pus had begun to form and it smelled of almonds roasting on a fire.  “I have to get you to the hospital.”

“No!” he cried.  “They’ll call the police, and then the gangsters will find me again.  Please, no hospital.”

“We have to do something,” she told him.  “You could bleed to death, or get an infection.  I think it may already be infected, Julio.  We have to do something.  I’m going to get
Auntie Nita.”  She stood up to go and get help, but Julio clung to her, his fingers balling the fabric of her shirt in a fierce grip.  “No,” he said angrily, his tears still falling.  “She’ll call them.  She’s the one who called them in the first place.  Please.  Please.  Please.”

It’d taken all his courage to come back to the market but Maria was the only person he knew would show him kindness and that he could trust.  It’d been a gamble, as he knew if
Auntie Nita saw him he’d have to run away even with his leg the way it was.  He pleaded with Maria so miserably she did not have the heart to call Auntie Nita or to leave him, but she didn’t know what to do.  She knew she had to get help.  She also thought about what he just told her about Juan.  He had a right to be afraid.  The police had talked to Juan, and if Julio was right, Juan was now dead.  She remembered the card she had on her, the one from the American woman, who suddenly seemed the best person to call.  She was an outsider, someone with no ulterior motives other than finding the missing American.  Stranger or not, she seemed to be the most trustworthy person in all of Cancun at the moment.

“Wait here,” she told Julio.  “I’m going to be right back.”

“Where are you going?” he asked frightened.  “You won’t call the police, will you?”

“No, I know someone else to call, not the police.”

He still held to her fiercely, “No Auntie Nita and no police!  Promise?”

“I promise.”

He unraveled his fingers from her clothes and she ran to the
caseta
while Julio crawled back into the shadows between the two little vending stands.

Catherine was already out in her rental car driving the strip, matching up the little dots on her map with the hotels along the way, when her phone rang.
  “Catherine James.”

“Miss Catherine?”

“Yes?”

“This is Maria Ortega, from the police station?”

“Yes,
señora
Ortega, how are you?”  Catherine noticed the woman was breathing particularly fast.

“Miss Catherine, I need your help.”

She assumed she meant getting the police to cooperate in searching for the missing boy.  “Okay, sure.  How can I help?”

“I need you to come to
Market 28.  Do you know where it is?”

“Yes, I know of it.  I’m doing some mapping right now, but I can meet you there this afternoon around  . . . “

“No, it has to be now.  It’s an emergency.”

Catherine was surprised by the urgency and desperation in the woman’s voice.  “May I ask what the emergency is?”

Maria seemed to hesitate.  “If I tell you, you can’t tell the police, not even Detective Ramirez.  I don’t know what’s going on or who to trust right now, but I think something horrible has happened to that little boy I told you about.”  She offered the statement as a contingency, waiting to see if the terms were accepted.

“Okay, Maria, I won’t call the police.  Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“It’s about the missing boy’s friend, Julio.  And it’s about the American girl, too, I think.  The boy, Julio, he says the American girl was killed and the two boys saw who did it, and now the men are after them.  Julio is here in the square and he’s been shot, and he says the other boy who I told you about, Juan, he says the boy was murdered.”  Her voice began to shake as Julio’s words took on meaning for her.  “He said they killed Juan, Miss Catherine!  I’m scared.  Julio wouldn’t let me call the police and I don’t know what to do.  His leg is bleeding and I’m scared the men who did this may come to the square looking for him.  I think he’s telling the truth.  If you saw him the way I just saw him . . . I don’t think he’s making this up.  I don’t know what to do!  Please, can you help?”

Catherine was stunned by the blur of information.  As the words soaked in she tried to organize them into their places.  Although she was a bit confused about it all, she felt a stabbing sensation in her gut, as one of the things she’d just heard had been clear enough.  If her information was right, Maria had just said Taylor Woodall was dead.

There was nothing she could do now, but get to the market as quickly as possible.  “I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t know who else to call.  I’m in the back of the market.  There’s a public restroom in
-between the back of the stores and the street.  Please hurry.  He’s hurt real bad and I don’t know how to treat something like that.”

Catherine made an abrupt u-turn and hit the gas.  When she arrived at the market it was eerily empty of tourists with only a few stragglers milling about shopping for souvenirs.  She walked towards the back and found the restrooms Maria had mentioned, but didn’t see any sign of her.

“Miss Catherine!”  She heard a whisper from the shadows and turned to see Maria crawl out from in-between two little stands.  She had tears on her cheeks and a little bit of blood on her dress.  “He’s in here,” she told her, gesturing towards the shadows from whence she just arose.

Catherine poked her head in and saw the little boy.

Julio scrambled away from Catherine when he saw her.  “Who’s she!?” he asked Maria in fear.

“It’s okay, Julio.  She’s an American.  She works for the American girl’s family.  She’s okay.  She won’t call the police, I promise.”

“My name is Catherine,” she told the boy.  “I only want to help.”

Julio had crawled further back into the V shaped shadow where Catherine couldn’t fit.

“Come out, Julio, please,” said Maria.  “We have to treat your leg.  Miss Catherine is a friend.  Please, come out of there.”

“The policeman said he was a friend, too,” said Julio.  “Juan went with him, and now he’s dead!”

“I’m not with the police,” said Catherine.  “And I don’t work for them.  You’ve heard about the missing girl, right?”

“Yes.”

Catherine reached into her pocket and pulled out a picture of the Taylor Woodall.  “She’s my very good friend’s daughter,” she told the boy, pushing the picture into the shadows where a small hand picked it up.  “I’m only here to find her, and am not with any police or other group here.  I live in Dallas, Texas, very far away from here.  I came to Mexico only to look for Taylor.”

Julio was still huddled in the back, but he pushed the picture back out and told Catherine, “She’s dead.  They killed her like they killed Juan . . . like they tried to kill me.”

Catherine let out a sigh and put the picture away. 
I hope that’s not true.
  Part of her wanted to believe the boy was lying, but as Maria had said, the sight of him hiding there in the shadows with his leg wounded made him very convincing.  She looked at him and thought about how scared he must be, not knowing who to trust and having no place to go.  “I would like to help you if you’ll let me,” she told him.  “I know you aren’t sure who you can trust right now, but I promise I won’t call the police or do anything without asking you first.”  Julio scooted forwarded a bit enough for Catherine to see his tear-streaked face.  She put her hand towards his forehead, “May I?” she asked.

He nodded and she felt his temperature, dangerously hot.  Then she looked at the boy’s leg.  She could distinctly smell the infection setting in.  “Your leg is in bad shape.  You’ve got an infection and it’s making you sick.  We need to clean your leg and get you some medicine for your fever right away.  Some antibiotics, too,” she added.

“It’s not too bad,” said Julio, as though letting Catherine know he could still run away if he wanted.  Nobody was buying it.

“Julio, please.  Let us help you,” said Maria.

He was still apprehensive.

“How about this?” asked Maria.  “There’s the pharmacy right over there,” she pointed to where the pharmacy was, “I’ll go and get some bandages and medicine and we’ll look at your leg.  We won’t even go anywhere, but we have to look at it,” she told him.

But her words frightened Julio.  “Don’t leave!” he said.  Catherine’s story seemed true to the boy, but he still didn’t want to be left alone with the stranger.  Everyone was a shark to Julio at that moment, and he was but a small fish trying to evade being eaten at every turn.

“I’ll go,” said Catherine.  “You wait here with Maria and I’ll go and get some things.”

“Okay,” said Julio.

Catherine walked to the pharmacy where she bought bandages, iodine, aspirin, antibiotics, and a cream that would keep the bandages from adhering to the wound.  She also purchased one of the flashlights that were lined along a shelf.

When she returned, Julio crawled forward enough that Catherine could lean in and treat his leg.  The few people who walked by stared at Catherine and Maria curiously, but otherwise they attracted no attention.

Catherine had taken a few first aid courses and tended a few wounded cyclists in her days with David and when she began removing the dirty rag she knew it was going to hurt.  Julio had simply wrapped the shirt around his leg and tied it, and now the dried blood held it against the wound like duct tape.  It would sting terribly when removed from the tender flesh.

“Can you go get a bottle of water?” she asked Maria, handing her a couple of dollars.  “The biggest one you can find.”  Julio tensed as Maria disappeared.  “She’ll be right back,” Catherine told him.  “And we’re not going anywhere.”  A moment later Maria returned with a gallon jug of water.  “Perfect,” she told her.

She poured the water over the rag hoping it would soften some of the caked blood, but it had little effect.  She gave Julio a long drink from the jug and began trying to pull around the edges of the wound where his old shirt was plastered in place.  Julio winced in pain.