‘Who’s them? Part of a cartel?’
He saw her eyes shift towards him and her jaw tighten. She looked down and away before her eyes settled back on the road. ‘Yes.’
He grabbed the back of the front passenger seat, and pulled himself forward. ‘That’s not what you meant, though, is it? When you said “them”, you weren’t talking about a cartel.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘So what did you mean? Who are they?’
Another army truck sped past them. One of the soldiers leered at Rafaela from the back.
‘He’s one of the men who are killing the women here.’
‘If you know he’s killing women, why don’t you go arrest him?’ he asked.
He caught sight of Rafaela’s lips parting in a sad smile in the rear-view mirror. ‘How long have you been in this part of the country?’
‘People don’t get arrested here?’
‘That depends on the evidence — and who they are.’
‘So, who is he? There’s something you’re not telling me.’
She turned, facing him briefly. ‘He’s a police officer.’
Thirty-seven
Rafaela turned off towards the centre of Diablo. They were moving down a main avenue, busy with bars, stores and restaurants. The traffic began to slow. Through the front windshield, Lock could see people crowding a small section of sidewalk and spilling out on to the road. At first he thought it must be another killing, with the inevitable ghoulish assembly that death attracted. Rafaela braked.
‘Someone been shot?’ Ty asked.
‘No,’ said Rafaela. ‘It’s a shrine.’
As they drew level it didn’t look much like a shrine, and the people gathered around it didn’t look much like worshippers. It was a plain storefront with a couple of tables stacked out front, and the crowd was low rent — lots of overweight girls sporting tattoos, and men clutching beer bottles or smoking spliffs.
‘A shrine to Santa Muerte,’ Rafaela said. ‘Saint Death.’
That was when Lock, who was still digesting the notion of a police officer moonlighting for a major drugs cartel, saw it. Right at the front, bathed in candlelight, a human skeleton was wearing a blonde wig covered with a black shawl.
‘They believe she can offer protection. They come here every night and bring her offerings.’
Next to him, Ty sucked his teeth. ‘Maybe someone should bring her something to eat — she looks like she could use a good meal. I mean, I like my chicks skinny an’ all, but there’s such a thing as taking it too far.’
‘We shouldn’t stick around here. A lot of the people who work for the traffickers come to worship,’ Rafaela said, nudging the car past the edge of the crowd.
Lock looked through the rear window as a hulking Mexican guy, with full sleeves of tattoos running up his arms, made the sign of the cross before the skeleton, then retreated back into the gathering. ‘This why they call it Diablo?’ he asked Rafaela.
‘No. They worship Santa Muerte all over the country.’
‘What’s with the name?’ said Ty.
Rafaela shrugged. ‘It’s an old name, but the joke now is that Santa Maria is so bad that the devil himself is afraid to come within forty miles of it. This is the closest he’ll get to the city, hence Diablo.’
Lock chewed it over. ‘You believe in the devil, Rafaela?’
‘I’m Catholic. It comes with the territory. God. Jesus. The Holy Mother. Can’t have God without the devil, right?’
Before they turned the corner and saw the bar, they smelt smoke. Two fire crews were still at work, dousing it with water, even though all that was left was the charred outline of the frame. Forgetting himself, Lock opened the door and got out as Rafaela pulled up opposite.
The crowd here was sparser than the one that had stood around the skeleton with the bad haircut but the smell of death was more real. There were four bodies laid out on the sidewalk. A fireman was covering each with a white cotton sheet, but Lock could see that they were badly burned. As he drifted through the crowd towards them, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.
‘Go and wait in the car,’ Rafaela said.
He shrugged her off and kept walking. Perhaps not wanting to make a scene, she let him go. As Lock reached the bodies, the fireman had covered two. The others lay on their backs, clothes burned from them, faces blackened by smoke.
He knelt down beside them, recognizing the American who had given him the picture of the bodyguard. There was a gaping hole in the man’s chest. Before he’d been asphyxiated by the smoke, he had been shot.
‘ Senor! ’ A fireman waved at him to move back. A couple of local cops were eyeballing him. Lock filtered into the small crowd of bystanders.
Ten minutes later, Rafaela got into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. She had spent several minutes talking to one of the fire crew as the bodies were loaded on to a truck for the short journey to the local morgue. ‘They were all men. One American, your friend, the bartender and two locals. They’re saying it was an electrical fire.’
‘What about the gunshot wounds?’ Lock asked.
She gave him the same sad smile as when he’d asked about arresting the bodyguard. ‘You must have a fertile imagination. They are saying no one was shot, even though I saw the same thing you did.’
‘Any sign of the girl?’ Ty asked.
Rafaela shook her head. ‘Did your friend tell you what she looked like?’
Lock detailed the thumbnail sketch he’d been given.
‘If she was American, we can check the hotels, see if anyone has been reported missing,’ Rafaela said, turning the key in the ignition and pulling away from the sickly sweet smell of charred flesh, which hung in the air. ‘If she’s missing, they may have taken her with them.’
‘And if they have?’ Lock asked. ‘What then?’
Rafaela stared straight ahead. ‘It might be better for her if she had died in the fire back there.’
They stayed in the car while Rafaela went inside each of the hotels that catered to American tourists. When she emerged from the third, they knew before she reached the car that it was bad news.
She got in, massaging her temple. ‘I spoke to the manager. They are trying to keep it quiet but an American girl went missing at the same time as your friend saw the girl in the bar with Mendez. Her parents are going crazy. They’ve contacted the American consulate.’
‘What about the local cops?’ Ty asked. ‘I mean, they have to make it look like they’re doing something, right?’
‘When they first went in to make the report, they told them that a person has to be missing for forty-eight hours before they can do anything,’ Rafaela said.
‘I take it that’s not procedure,’ Lock said.
‘No, it’s not. They have to start investigating as soon as a report is taken, but if they say they can’t take a report and the person doesn’t insist, they have forty-eight hours. They use it all the time to put off the families of the girls who go missing.’
‘I’m guessing these folks didn’t buy it,’ Ty asked.
‘No. They went straight to the American consulate so the cops are out looking for her,’ Rafaela said sombrely.
Lock leaned forward. ‘And after that?’
‘They’ll get to her,’ said Rafaela, her shoulders slumping. ‘But she won’t be alive when they do. Then they’ll find someone to take the blame. They’ll arrest them, plant evidence, torture a confession out of them, send them to prison, wait until things settle down, and then it will start all over again.’
Lock met her eye. ‘You know who’s doing this, don’t you?’
‘Knowing isn’t enough, Mr Lock.’
‘Listen, your hands are tied down here. But ours aren’t. Let us help you. If we can find the girl, find Mendez, then maybe we can get you the evidence you need.’
Thirty-eight
Rafaela’s home was a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a four-storey walk-up where the communal areas smelt of fetid garbage and even staler urine. Lock knew that he could be sure of one thing about her now: she wasn’t on the take.