Authors: Roberto Bolaño
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary Collections, #Mystery & Detective, #Mexico, #Caribbean & Latin American, #Cold Cases (Criminal Investigation), #Crime, #Literary, #Young Women, #Missing Persons, #General, #Women
An
hour later they left and everything was much clearer to Epifanio. Klaus Haas
was German but he had acquired American citizenship. He owned two stores in
Santa Teresa where he sold everything from Walkmans to computers, and he had
another similar store in
which meant he had to travel once a month to check the books, pay the
employees, and replenish stock. He also traveled to the
although not on a fixed date or in a regular way, except that none of his trips
ever lasted more than three days. He had lived for a while in
liked women, but as far as anyone knew he wasn't married and he didn't have a
girlfriend. He frequented clubs and brothels downtown, and he was friendly with
a few of the owners, for whom he had at some point installed security cameras
or computer accounting programs. In one case, at least, the boy knew this for a
fact, because he had been the programmer. As a boss Haas was fair and
reasonable and he didn't pay badly, although sometimes he got angry for no good
reason and might hit anyone, no matter who it was. The boy had never been hit,
but he had been scolded for coming in late to work a few times. Who had Haas
hit, then? A secretary, the boy said. Asked if the secretary he'd hit was the
current secretary, the boy said no, it was the previous one, a woman he hadn't
met. Then how did he know she'd been hit? Because that was what the oldest
employees said, the ones at the warehouse, where the
güero
stored part of his stock. The names of the employees were all
neatly recorded. Finally, Epifanio showed the boy the picture of Estrella Ruiz
Sandoval. Have you seen her around the store? The boy looked at the picture and
said yes, her face was somehow familiar.
The next time Epifanio visited
Klaus Haas it was close to midnight. He rang the bell and had to wait a long
time before anyone came to the door, although there were lights on in the house.
The place was in Colonia El Cerezal, a middle-class neighborhood of one- and
two-story houses, not all of them new, where you could walk to buy bread or
milk along quiet, tree-lined sidewalks, far from the noise of Colonia Madero,
which was a little farther out, and away from the din of the center. It was
Haas himself who opened the door. He was wearing a white shirt, untucked, and
at first he didn't recognize Epifanio or pretended not to recognize him.
Epifanio showed his credentials, as if it were a joke, and asked Haas whether
he remembered him. Haas asked what he wanted. Can I come in? asked Epifanio.
The living room was nicely furnished, with armchairs and a big white sofa. Haas
took a bottle of whiskey from a liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass. He
asked Epifanio if he wanted some. Epifanio shook his head. I'm on duty, he
said. Haas shook with a strange laugh. It was as if he'd said ahhh, or haaah,
or sneezed, but only once. Epifanio sat in one of the armchairs and asked if he
had a good alibi for the day Estrella Ruiz Sandoval was killed. Haas looked him
up and down and after a few seconds he said sometimes he didn't even remember
what he'd done the night before. His face turned red and his eyebrows seemed
whiter than they really were, as if he was making an effort to control himself.
I have two witnesses who say they saw you with the victim, said Epifanio. Who?
asked Haas. Epifanio didn't answer. He looked around the living room and
nodded. This must have cost you a fortune, he said. I work hard and I don't do
badly for myself, said Haas. Will you show me around? asked Epifanio. What? asked
Haas. The house, said Epifanio. Don't fuck with me, man, said Haas, if you want
to search my house, come with a warrant. Before he left, Epifanio said: I think
you killed that girl. Her and who knows how many others. Don't fuck with me,
said Haas. See you later, said Epifanio, and he held out his hand. Don't fuck
with me, said Haas. You've got balls, said Epifanio from the door. For God's
sake, man, for God's sake, quit fucking with me and leave me alone, said Haas.
From
a friend on the El Adobe police force, Epifanio got Klaus Haas's police record.
That's how he found out that Haas had never lived in
but in
where he had been accused of attempted rape by a woman named Laurie Enciso. He
was locked up for a month and then
Laurie Enciso dropped
the charges and they let him go. He had also been charged with exhibitionism
and indecency. When Epifanio asked what the hell the gringos meant by indecency
he was told that it basically referred to groping, off-color verbal
insinuations, and a third offense that was a combination of the first two. In
fined several times for soliciting sex with prostitutes, nothing very serious.
He was born in
citizen. Coming to live in
in northern
choice, because he soon opened a second store in Santa Teresa, where his client
portfolio continued to grow, and another in
night, accompanied by two Santa Teresa policemen and an inspector, Epifanio
paid a visit to Haas's downtown store (the other store was in Colonia Centeno).
The place was much bigger than he'd thought. Several rooms in the back were
full of boxes of computer parts that Haas himself would later assemble. In one
of the rooms there was a bed, a candlestick with a candle, and a big mirror
next to the bed. The light didn't work, but the inspector who had come with
Epifanio realized right away that the only reason it didn't work was because
someone had unscrewed the bulb. There were two bathrooms. One was very neat,
with soap, toilet paper, and a clean floor. Next to the toilet was a toilet brush
that Haas required his employees—accustomed to just pulling the chain—to use.
The other bathroom was so dirty that it might have been abandoned, even though
the water was running and the toilet worked, but instead it seemed set there on
purpose to illustrate an asymmetrical and incomprehensible phenomenon. Then
came a long hallway that led to a door onto an alley. The alley was full of
trash and cardboard boxes, but from the door you could see one of the busiest
corners in the city, the center of Santa Teresa's nightlife. Then they went
down to the basement.
Two days later, Epifanio, two
inspectors, and three Santa Teresa policemen showed up at the store bearing
warrants authorizing the arrest of Klaus Haas, forty-year-old American citizen,
as a suspect in the rape, torture, and murder of Estrella Ruiz Sandoval,
seventeen-year-old Mexican citizen, but when they got to the store, they were
told by the employees that the boss hadn't come in that day, so the party split
up, and while one inspector and two Santa Teresa cops drove to the other store,
located in Colonia Centeno, Epifanio, one inspector, and the remaining cop left
for the German-American's house in Colonia El Cerezal, where they scattered
strategically, the Santa Teresa officer covering the back of the house while
Epifanio and the inspector rang the doorbell. To their surprise, Haas himself
came to the door, looking as if he was in the throes of a cold or the flu, or
at least showing clear signs of having spent a bad night. The policemen declined
his invitation to come in, and Haas was immediately informed that he was under
arrest, then shown the arrest warrant and given a brief glance at the search
warrants for his house and two stores. The cuffs went straight on after that,
because the suspect was a big man and no one knew how he might react once he
had gathered what was happening. Then they put him in the back of the patrol
car and drove immediately to Precinct #1, leaving the Santa Teresa cop guarding
the suspect's residence.
The
interrogation of Klaus Haas lasted four days and was performed by Epifanio
Galindo and Tony Pintado of the Santa Teresa police and Ernesto Ortiz
Rebolledo, Angel Fernandez, and Carlos Marin of the judicial police. Present at
the interrogation was Santa Teresa police chief Pedro Negrete, who brought as
special guests two city judges and Cesar Huerta Cerna, head of the Deputy
Attorney General's Office of Sonora's Northern Zone. The suspect was seized by
two attacks of uncontrollable rage, during which he had to be subdued by the
officers interrogating him. After this, Haas acknowledged having had dealings
with Estrella Ruiz Sandoval, who had visited him at his store on three
occasions. Five
Special Anti-Kidnapping Group of
Policia Judicial searched for incriminating evidence at Haas's house as well as
at his two Santa Teresa stores, paying special attention to the basement of the
downtown store, and found traces of blood on one of the blankets in the
basement room and on the floor. Estrella Ruiz Sandoval's family members came in
for DNA testing, but the blood samples were lost before they got to
lab in
Asked about the blood, Haas said it was probably from one of the women with
whom he'd had relations during her menstrual period. When Haas relayed this
information, Inspector
Ortiz Rebolledo asked
what kind of man he thought he was. An ordinary man, said Haas. An ordinary man
doesn't fuck a woman when she's bleeding, said Ortiz Rebolledo. I do, was
Haas's answer. Only swine behave like that, said the inspector. In
Ortiz Rebolledo got too agitated and was replaced in the interrogation room by
Angel Fernandez and Santa Teresa police officer Epifanio Galindo. The crime
scene technicians from the Anti-Kidnapping Group didn't find fingerprints in
the basement room, but they did find several sharp instruments in Haas's
garage, including a machete with a thirty-inch blade, old but in a perfect
state of preservation, and two big hunting knives. These weapons were clean and
not a single trace of blood or fabric could be found on them. During his
interrogation, Klaus Haas had to be taken to the General Sepulveda Hospital
twice, first when his flu took a turn for the worse and he developed a high
fever, and the second time so he could be treated for cuts and bruises to his
eye and right eyebrow, incurred on the way from the interrogation room to his
cell. On the third day of his stay, at the suggestion of the Santa Teresa
police themselves, Haas agreed to call his consul in the city, Abraham
Mitchell, whose whereabouts were revealed to be unknown. Another official, Kurt
A. Banks, took the call, and the next day he came by the precinct, where he
spoke for ten minutes to his fellow countryman,
after which
he
left
without
filing a
single
complaint. Shortly afterward, Klaus Haas was put in a van and driven to
the city jail.
•
While
Haas was at the precinct, some cops came to look at him. Most stopped by the
cells, but all Haas did there was sleep or pretend to sleep, his face covered
with a blanket, and the only thing they could do was ogle his huge bony feet.
Sometimes he deigned to talk to the officer who brought him his meals. They
talked about food. The cop asked if he liked Mexican food and Haas said it
wasn't bad and then he was silent. Epifanio Galindo brought Lalo Cura to see
Haas during one of the interrogations. Lalo thought Haas seemed sharp. He
didn't look sharp, but Lalo guessed he was by the way he answered the questions
the inspectors asked him. And he seemed to have endless stores of energy, too,
making the men who were shut in the soundproof room with him sweat and lose
their patience as they swore friendship or understanding and told him to talk,
unburden yourself, in Mexico there's no death penalty, get it off your chest,
and then hit him and insulted him. But Haas was unwearying and he appeared to
escape reality (or try to make the inspectors lose their grip on it) with
unexpected remarks and incoherent questions. For half an hour Lalo Cura watched
the interrogation, and he could have stayed two or three hours longer, but
Epifanio told him to leave because the boss and some other important people
were coming soon and they didn't want the questioning to turn into a spectacle.
At
the Santa Teresa jail Haas was placed in a private cell until his fever went
down. There were only four private cells. One of them was occupied by a
narco
accused of killing two American
policemen, another by a mercantile lawyer accused of fraud, the third by the
narco's
two bodyguards, and the fourth
by a rancher from El Alamillo who had strangled his wife and shot and killed
his two children. To make room for Haas, they moved the
narco's
bodyguards to Cell Block Three, into a five-inmate cell.
The private cells were furnished with only a bed, bolted to the floor, and when
Haas was left in his new home he could tell by the smell that two people had
been there, one who slept on the bed and another who slept on a pallet on the
floor. The first night he spent in prison he had a hard time sleeping. He paced
the cell and every once in a while he slapped himself on the arms. The rancher,
who was a light sleeper, called out to him to stop making noise and go to
sleep. Haas asked, in the darkness, who had spoken. The rancher didn't answer
and for a minute Haas stood motionless, silent, waiting for someone to say
something. When he realized no one was going to answer he kept circling the
cell and slapping his arms, as if he were killing mosquitoes, until the rancher
demanded again that he stop making noise. This time Haas didn't pause or ask
who had spoken. Nights are made for sleeping, you gringo son of a bitch, he
heard the rancher say. Then he heard him tossing and turning and he imagined
the man covering his head with his pillow, which triggered an attack of
hilarity. Don't cover your head, he said aloud and in a booming voice, you're
still going to die. And who's going to kill me, you gringo son of a bitch? You?
Not me, motherfucker, said Haas, a giant is coming and the giant is going to
kill you. A giant? asked the rancher. You heard me right, motherfucker, said
Haas. A giant. A big man, very big, and he's going to kill you and everybody
else. You crazy-ass gringo son of a bitch, said the rancher. For a moment no
one said anything and the rancher seemed to fall asleep again. A little while
later, however, Haas called out to say he heard footsteps. The giant was
coming. He was covered in blood from head to toe and he was coming now. The
mercantile lawyer woke up and asked what they were talking about. His voice was
soft, sharp, and frightened. Our friend here has lost his mind, said the
rancher's voice.