Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (15 page)

It had been two days since Yesenia’s encounter in the hot box.  Like a nightmare, it played over and over again in her mind.  The smell of the dog piss in the air, the crazy man screaming jubilantly as she did everything she could to fend him off, and of course the pain and humiliation of it all.  Jose had all but dragged her, naked, across the ground back to the Pepto-pink mobile home.

  “That’s what happens when you don’t do what you’re told,” he told Yesenia and the other girls as they helped her inside.

Imelda was furious enough to rip Jose’s eyes out.  She had gone to Arnulfo, banging on his door.  “How can you just let this happen?” she demanded.

“She brought it on herself,” Arnulfo told her.  “Now go back to your room before Miss Lydia hears you.  You don’t want to get her any more upset than she already is.”

Half the next day, Yesenia slept in a fitful slumber filled with nightmares.  It had been the most disgusting, horrific trauma of Yesenia’s life. 
I’m disgusting,
she thought.
 
The things he’d done to her, the way he used her body as though she were nothing but his plaything.

“Are you okay?” asked Catalina.  She had walked over to visit as Yesenia lay listless in her bed, her right eye swollen badly from the mechanic’s handling.  “I know what he’s like.  I’ve had to be with him a few times, and he’s always the same, never nice, always too rough.  I don’t know why Miss Lydia lets him keep coming back.  He’s on drugs, you know.  That’s why he jumps around and yells all the time and why he’s so skinny.
  He’s skinny but strong.  We’re all scared of him.”  Yesenia rolled over.  She didn’t feel like responding.  “He choked me one time,” said Catalina, continuing on.  “So hard I passed out.  I thought he was trying to kill me.  Really.  Miss Lydia threatened not to let him come back after that, but he gave her a couple of hundred dollars and she let it go.  I don’t know what kind of mechanic he is but he makes money, I guess.”  Yesenia looked out the window, lost in her sadness.  “She gave me fifty of it like that was supposed to make it all right.  But it didn’t.  It’s not right she lets some of them treat us like that.”  Yesenia lay limp and un-answering.  “He told me to choke him one time,” she told Yesenia, who now rolled over and looked at her.  Catalina’s face lit up.  She wanted to desperately to cheer her up.  “It’s true.  He kept saying ‘Come on, girl!  See what you can do.’  So I did.  I was scared at first.  Scared he’d turn around and beat me up, but he didn’t.  So I tried to choke him as hard as I could.  His eyes started going all crazy and I quit ‘cause I thought he might die or something.”  She rolled her eyes towards the back of her head and thrust her chin up, breathing heavily as though someone gasping, “He looked like this.”

Catalina looked like a cartoon character and it was enough to make Yesenia let slip a smile.

Then Catalina stopped her impression and laughed.  “I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t stop.  I think he might have let me keep going ‘til he passed out.  There are all sorts of weird ones,” she told Yesenia.  “One man pays Miss Lydia fifty dollars just for one of us to spank him."

"Tell her about Jose,"
Evelyn said from the doorway as she entered.

Catalina stifled her laugh and shook her head no.

“Go on,” said Evelyn.

“If he finds out . . . “

“Oh, he’s not going to find out,” she assured.  “Tell her.”  She smiled wide and her eyes laughed.

Catalina looked as though she was frightened to speak of it, but she couldn’t help giggling at the thought.  “Okay, but you have to swear never to talk about it.  If he hears us laughing at him, we’ll all be in big, big trouble.”

“I want to hear,” said Silvia, who now also entered the room after hearing their voices from the kitchen.  But Yesenia wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  She had already learned what big trouble could mean.

“Well,” began Catalina.  “Jose cries sometimes when he does it.”

“What!?” cried Silvia, laughing in enjoyment at the idea of big, bad, boogie man Jose crying.

“It’s true,” confirmed Evelyn.  “Cries just like a baby while he tells you how much he hates you.”  She jumped on Catalina, pushing her back against Yesenia on the bed and then laid upon her, squinting her eyes together, imitating Jose pumping away while bawling his eyes out, “Boo, hoo, hooo.  I hate you.  Booo hoo hoo.  I hate you, whaaaaaaaa.”

“Oh, quit, Evy, quit,” Catalina cried through laughs.  All the girls were laughing, now.

“He tells you he hates you?  Why does he cry?” asked Silvia.

“Cause he’s a freak!” laughed Evelyn, getting up and leaving Catalina looking disheveled.  “That’s why you have to stay away from him.  He can be a real mean drunk anyway, but when he starts doing that he just cries and yells at you.  Boo, hoo, hoo, boooooo, hoooo, hoooo,” she mocked, her voice rising higher and her physical imitation more dramatic.

They all laughed and even Yesenia couldn’t help smiling.  She rather liked the idea of Jose bawling his eyes out.

“Don’t ever say anything to him about it, though,” warned Evelyn, her laugh quickly fading.  “Imelda got in an argument with him once and called him a crybaby.  He nearly broke her jaw because he hit her so hard.  So for God’s sake, never let him hear you talking about it.”

Silvia stopped laughing.  “I wonder what’s wrong with him.”

“It’s probably because of Miss Lydia,” Evelyn said.  “She’s always pushing Jose around.  Can you imagine what she must have treated him like when he was little?  She’s so mean.  I don’t know what happened to his dad, but as far as I know, it was always just Miss Lydia and Jose.  She’s really messed her little boy up.”

“I hope he doesn’t do that with me,” said Silvia.

“If he does, just lie there.  Whatever you do, don’t look him in the eye and don’t laugh,” said Catalina.

“Oh, I’d never do that.”

“Yeah, well, we all say there are things we’d never do, and then we end up doing them.  That’s just what kind of happens after you’ve been here a while,” said Evelyn.

The knock at the door came around four in the afternoon.  Catherine and Julio had spent the day talking and getting to know each other more, watching a few movies and ordering food.  He was still running a fever, but it was coming down.  Except for a brief call to Jim Woodall, Catherine had talked to no one and they’d gone nowhere.  She had wanted to be as far off the grid as possible for the moment.

She checked the peephole to make sure it was Matt and her heart raced a bit faster as she saw his squared and stubbly jaw and dark brown eyes under the mop of his dark brown hair.  She opened the door with an awkward smile.  “Hey,” she said.

Matt stood in the doorway looking at her.  She was still striking with her black hair and blue eyes, though for the first time since he’d known her, her porcelain features seemed to be wearing.  Perhaps it was age catching up, perhaps just the stress.  She was still a knockout, though, and he surmised she probably always would be.  “Hey,” he said back.

Relief swept over Catherine.  She instantly felt like she’d just been thrown a life preserver while floundering in the sea.  She stepped up to his broad shoulders and put her arms around his neck.  “Thanks for coming,” she said.  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.  I didn’t know if you would.”

“Of course,” he said surprised, dropping his bag and putting his arms around her.  “You know you can count on me.”

She felt her shoulders and ribs warm up as though the blood in her suddenly flowed freer, like she’d been freezing in a cold room and someone just lit a fire.  “Well,” she said, “Thanks just the same.”  She stepped back and aside to let him in.  And as he walked through he saw the little boy she’d told him about sitting on the bed watching them curiously.  “This is Julio,” she told him.  “He’s just about the bravest kid you’ll ever meet,” she said in Spanish with a smile.

“So I hear,” Matt told the boy.  “I also hear you’ve been having a hard time lately,” he told the boy, hoping it sounded sympathetic.  He wasn’t used to kids.

Julio nodded, “Yeah, I guess it could be worse.  If I hadn’t met Ms. Catherine, I’d probably already be dead.”

The kid’s a straight talker,
thought Matt.  He appreciated that in anyone.  He handed Catherine the bag full of clothes and asked, “Mind helping me put this in the closet?”  She knew there must be a reason for the request as Matt could have put it in the closet himself quicker than asking her, but she took the bag anyway and they both leaned in the closet to put the bags down.  As they did Matt unzipped the other bag a little so Catherine could see what was inside.  They didn’t say anything but she nodded that she understood.  Then Matt sat down in the chair Catherine had been sitting in just before he arrived and said, “So, what’s first?”

The next day and a half consisted of an elevation of media activity from a county fair Hoedown to a full-blown three-ring circus.  Taylor’s parents were prisoners in their hotel room.  If they so much as ruffled the drapes by the window, a hundred cameras outside zoomed in, prepared to catch even just a glimpse.  The sheer enormity of the story was mind-boggling, and everyone wanted some kind of scoop over the others.  Reputable reporters had resorted to paparazzi antics in an effort to get the story.  Everyone who went in and out of the hotel was surrounded and questioned about whether or not they were involved in the case, and if so, what information they knew.  One
Telemundo
reporter went so far as to dress as a hotel employee and sneaked up to the Woodall’s room.  Security pulled him away as he pounded on the door, “A word!  Just a word!  What do you want the people to know about what’s happened to your daughter?”

“Damn vultures,” said Amy Woodall, crossing her arms as she’d taken to doing so often recently.  She peered out of the window through a slit no bigger than a dime, then turned and spoke to Fuentes, who had come to visit.  “I don’t want my daughter to be cut up,” she told him.  “If an autopsy has to be done, it can be done back in Texas.”

Fuentes spoke in his ever-political calm voice, “I understand your concerns, ma’am.  While our laws require us to perform an autopsy, I assure you we will take every measure to leave your daughter as she is.  I will see to it personally that she is treated with the utmost respect.”

“How long until we can take her home?” asked Jim.

“Tomorrow, sir,” said Fuentes.  “We have arranged a private plane for you.  And again, if there is anything we can do to help, please do not hesitate to ask.  I'm at your service.”

The following day the Woodalls were on their flight back to Texas.  Catherine accompanied them, wondering what would be waiting for her when she returned to Cancun.  She and Matt had only talked briefly before she had to get ready to leave.  Julio hadn’t taken the news that she had to leave for a couple days very well, but she assured him he was in good hands.  She used the time during the trip to try and gain some perspective on everything and organize her thoughts.  She believed Ramirez was a good cop, but she had seen the way the officials were sweeping as much of the dirt under the rug as possible.  She’d have to remove some carpet when she got back, and was feeling better about calling Matt.  He’d have an idea of where to begin rather than sitting around waiting for the Mexican authorities.

And as for Ramirez, he was at his desk in Cancun in the middle of an angry outburst.  He had picked up the phone and called the coroner’s office.  In his hand he held the official cause of death report.  When the coroner answered he didn’t waste any time.  “What the hell is this?!”

“What do you mean?” asked the coroner, nervously.

“I mean, what is this report supposed to be?”

“That’s how the girl was killed, sir.  I don’t know what else to tell you.”

Ramirez wasn’t buying it.  According to the toxicology report Taylor Woodall had multiple drugs in her system.  Even if it was true, they’d conveniently included that information and excluded most everything else.  “You can tell me why the hell the rest of the information has been left out.  What about the ligature marks?  We all know what happened to that girl and you didn’t mention any of it in this report.  I want to know why!”

There was a long pause.  “She died from a gunshot wound.  I merely reported the cause of death, sir, as I was told.”

“
Told
?” asked Ramirez.  “What do you mean
told
?”

Another pause.  “I’m sorry if you are dissatisfied with the report, sir.  I’m afraid it’s out of my hands.”  And then Ramirez heard a click as the coroner hung up.

Fuentes
, he thought to himself. 
That son of a bitch.
  He ended the call on line one but started another on line two, this time calling Fuentes.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Fuentes, this is Detective Ramirez.”

“Hello, Detective, how may I help you?”

“I want to know what you’re doing.”

“How so?”

“You’re covering things up in this Woodall murder.  You’re intentionally hiding the facts from scrutiny.”

“I’m not,” said Fuentes defensively.  “And I would encourage you to take a moment before making such grave accusations.”

“I just got the autopsy report on the girl.  All it says is she was highly intoxicated, on drugs, and died by a gunshot wound.  It says nothing about her other wounds or the sexual assault, which seemed pretty apparent to me.  And I’ve already told you who the shooter in the market was.”

“I see no reason to believe the two are connected,” said Fuentes.

“With all due respect, sir, I can’t see how you could just dismiss . . . “

“I will not entertain conspiracy theories in this matter for the media to expound upon.  This situation is delicate enough.  We’re talking about the very lifeblood of our economy, Detective.  You do your job, let the coroner do his, and I’ll do mine,” warned Fuentes.

“And how am I supposed to do my job when information is intentionally being withheld?”

“Stick to your own affairs, Detective.  Your job is to bring this mess to an end without causing any more damage than what has already been done.”  And Fuentes hung up.

Ramirez slammed his phone down as well. 
Dammit! 
The wheels were turning and he was quickly putting the pieces together. 
They’re going to cover it up and blame it on the girl. 
He could see it now.  Soon there’d be a press conference or some other kind of media announcement.  They’d detail the drugs and alcohol in Taylor Woodall’s system and call the whole thing some seedy drug deal gone wrong. 
No, no, it wasn’t a kidnapping after all.  The girl was obviously an addict and her kidnapping and murder were an isolated, drug related event. 
It was going to be a smear campaign, and Taylor Woodall was the target.  Cool and calm Ramirez decided he’d about had enough.  It was time the puppet cut a few strings.