Without a word, he jerked the girl from Santos' arms and cuffed her with the back of his hand. When she landed on the carpeted hall, he kicked her with the toe of his boot, but not too hard because damaged merchandise was not valuable.
Isabella Torres turned toward the window, wrapping her arms around her waist as if to keep the core of herself – heart, lungs, soul – from spilling out.
While he waited for the attorney to make her decision, Santos remembered the night Maria had died, five years after she'd been among the very first vanload of girls that came over the border from Mexico.
Diego was in a foul mood that matched the nasty fog settling in the Central Valley during that winter. As his driver, Santos kept one eye on the dangerous, fog-slicked road and one on the rearview mirror where Diego sat with the dull-eyed and lackluster girl. She had aged ten years since Santos had last seen her, track marks on her arms indicated the drugs used to subdue her, and she no longer spoke to anyone, let alone appealed to the boss's bodyguard.
When Diego began to paw at the girl's clothing, she simply lay back on the leather upholstery and spread her legs. Santos knew she would not last long. Already she was past the age of girls that held Diego's interest. In truth, Santos did not know why the boss had kept her so long. If she did not die of a drug overdose, she would surely perish at the hands of Vargas' insatiable violence or one of the patrons he passed her off to.
When Isabella Torres turned back to him, Santos saw the steel in her jaw and the determination in her eyes. "Yes, I want the details," she said. "I want to know every single moment of her life after she was stolen from us."
"Pero, por supuesto. But, of course. Ask the questions and I will answer."
"Did she suffer?"
Santos shrugged. "How does one measure the suffering of another person?"
"Don't play games with me," she snapped. "You are getting – what did you call it? – an excellent deal." She sat down, leaned forward across the desk, her hands bracing her tight body. "Did. She. Suffer?"
"Solamente un poco. Only a little. She was not passed from man to man as the other girls were, but stayed with one protector the entire time." A lie, but perhaps a small consolation, although, in truth, Santos did not know why he bothered with it.
"Vargas?"
"You expect me to believe a man like Vargas treated her well?" Her face had lost all color, but her voice dripped with scorn.
"Believe what you wish, but Diego Vargas was a younger man then and he seemed fond of her in his own way. Perhaps his later… proclivities were not fully developed."
She nodded slowly. He realized with surprise that she believed him and took some comfort in the false knowledge.
"How did she die?"
Santos had driven the girl and Vargas to a very upscale motel. The fog was a deadly blanket that made further driving northeast to Sacramento impossible. He booked two adjoining rooms, one for himself and one for the girl and his boss. Why Diego had taken the girl with him on this particular trip Santos did not know at the time, but later the truth of his boss's actions became clear. He had another, younger girl waiting for him in Nevada.
"She perished in a car accident," Santos answered. "She and Diego were going from Los Angeles to Sacramento by automobile. Passing through Modesto, we hit a severe fog bank. That is when the accident occurred." So easy to sequester a lie within the truth, he thought.
"You were driving?"
"Sí. The car rolled over several times. Diego and I were trapped in the vehicle, but the girl was thrown from it."
The noises had come through the walls separating the two motel rooms several hours after Santos had fallen asleep. The sounds woke him up and he lay in the darkened room, listening for signs that he was needed. Another loud thump.
He knocked on the adjoining door. "El Jefe, is everything all right?"
No sound but the dull thud of pounding and then Diego's heavy breathing, a guttural nastiness that Santos knew well.
"¿Diego, qué usted?"
"¡Nada!" the man growled through the door while the steady, sick thumping of flesh on flesh continued.
Santos shouldered the door open and took in the scene at a glance.
"Did she die quickly?" Isabella Torres asked.
"Yes. Instantly. She did not suffer. I tried to perform emergency medical aid at the scene." He spread his hands in a sign of futility. "But she was dead before the ambulance arrived. Very quickly."
Great glimmering tears pooled in Isabella's dark eyes, but she did not allow them to fall. "There was no police report?"
"There are ways to cover up such matters."
"Of course."
A long, sad sigh flowed from her mouth like a funeral dirge filling the room.
"Diego Vargas is a man with many faults, many sins," he reassured her, "but Maria's death is not one of them. He treated her with care. He may have been a bit in love with her."
Santos looked at the unlit tip of his cigarillo and realized he was not speaking of El Vaquero at all, but of the long-ago, foolish boy-man who had been Gabriel Santos.
The room had been a bloody mess, and the girl ceased to breathe long after Diego continued to pummel her broken body with his fists and feet. Santos checked the pulse at her neck and closed the once-luminous eyes.
"Get this fucking piece of shit out of here," Santos roared, sweat dripping down his face onto his already thickening body, his cock still hard and jutting from the thrill of beating the girl to death.
Santos could not revive her, and he was a long time cleaning up the mess.
"Is there evidence that I can use to tie her death to Diego Vargas?" Isabella Torres asked.
Santos shook his head, sadness and relief warring within him. "The evidence disappeared long ago."
"Then I will hang him with what you tell me."
"Verdad."
Chapter Thirty-seven
Three hours later, Santos had given the assistant district attorney all that she needed, and she had agreed to grant him full immunity in exchange for his testimony against Diego Vargas in a court of law.
"I'll need to run this by the district attorney." Weary lines etched around her mouth and between her eyes. "But I don't anticipate any objections."
In fact, Santos knew that Charles Barrington would be delighted that the ADA had resolved the case without further media criticism. And he would likely garner the credit for himself instead of giving it to her.
"You can sign your official statement after it's processed," she said. "If Vargas finds out that you've informed on him, you won't survive long enough for the trial."
Santos thought Isabella would not mind his death so much as losing him as a witness. He smiled and stretched his hand across the desk. Surprisingly, she extended hers and his large bear's paw engulfed her small hand like the mating of a giant and a dwarf. But her grip was firm and when she squeezed his hand, he knew that she was a survivor.
He was glad that he had not told her the truth about her sister.
Ay, ella era un ángel que se vengaba. The little lawyer was an avenging angel.
As soon as Santos left, Bella contacted Rafe on his cell phone. "It's done" was all she said when it went straight to voice mail.