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In
January 1996, Klaus Haas convened the press again. Not as many reporters came
this time, but those who showed up at the prison were able to go about their
business in the normal way, undisturbed. Haas asked the reporters how it could
be that with the killer (him, in other words) behind bars, murders were still
being committed. In particular, he talked about the identical knots in the
ropes binding Michelle Requejo and Estrella Ruiz Sandoval, and pointed out that
Estrella Ruiz Sandoval was the only one of the dead women who'd had direct
contact with him, due,
he specified, to her
interest in computer science and computers. The newspaper
La Razon,
where Sergio Gonzalez worked, sent a novice crime
reporter, who read the case file on the plane to
Hermosillo
. In the file were Sergio
Gonzalez's stories. Sergio stayed behind in
Mexico City
writing a long article on new
Mexican and Latin American fiction. Before the novice was assigned the story,
the crime editor went up the five floors to the arts section, despite the fact
that he almost never took the elevator, and asked Sergio if he wanted to go.
Sergio looked at him without answering and finally shook his head. In January,
too, the Santa Teresa branch of Women of Sonora for Democracy and Peace held a
press conference, which was attended by just two reporters from Santa Teresa, at
which they talked about the degrading and inconsiderate treatment suffered by
the family members of the dead women and showed the letters they planned to
send to the state governor, Jose Andres Briceno, of the PAN, and to the
attorney general of the republic. The letters were never answered. The Santa
Teresa branch of the WSDP grew from three to twenty activists and supporters.
And yet, January 1996 wasn't a bad month for the city police. Three men were
shot to death in a bar near the old rail line, apparently in a settling of
scores between
narcos.
The body of a
Central American with his throat cut appeared on a route used by
patterns.
A fat, short little man
wearing a strange tie printed with rainbows and naked women with the heads of
animals shot himself in the roof of the mouth while playing Russian roulette in
a night club in Madero-Norte. But no bodies of women were found in the city's
vacant lots, or on its outskirts, or in the desert.

•

At
the beginning of February, however, an anonymous call notified the police of a
body abandoned inside an old railroad shed. The body, as the medical examiner
established, was a woman of about thirty, although to look at her anyone might
have said she was forty. She had been stabbed twice fatally, and her forearms
were marked with deep cuts. According to the medical examiner, the weapon was
probably a bowie knife like those seen in American films. Asked about this, the
medical examiner explained that he meant Westerns, and the kind of knife used
for bear hunting. In other words, a
very
big
knife. On the third day of the investigation, the medical examiner supplied
another important clue. The dead woman was an Indian. She might be a Yaqui, but
he didn't think so, and she might be a Pima, but he didn't think that was it either.
It was possible she was a Mayo, from the south of the state, but frankly he
didn't think so. What kind of Indian was she, then? Well, she might be a Seri,
but based on certain physical characteristics it was unlikely. She might also
be a Papago, which would be only natural, since the Papagos were the Indians
geographically closest to Santa Teresa, but he didn't think she was a Papago
either. On the fourth day, after much deliberation and measuring, the medical
examiner, whose students had begun to call him the Dr. Mengele of
Sonora
, said the dead
woman was definitely a Tarahumara. What was a Tarahumara doing in Santa Teresa?
Probably working as a maid for some upper- or middle-class family. Or waiting
her turn to cross over to the
United
States
. The investigation centered on
pollero
informers and households whose
maids had left their jobs unexpectedly. It was soon neglected and forgotten.

The next dead girl was found
between the Casas Negras highway and the bottom of a valley without a name,
full of brush and wildflowers. She was the first dead girl or woman found in
March 1996, a terrible month in which five more bodies would be discovered.
Among the six policemen who reported to the scene was Lalo Cura. The dead girl
was ten years old, more or less. She was four foot three. She was wearing clear
plastic sandals fastened with a metal buckle. She had brown hair, lighter where
it fell over her forehead, as if it had been dyed. She'd been stabbed eight
times, three times in the chest. One of the policemen started to cry when he
saw her. The ambulance men climbed down into the valley and proceeded to tie
her to the stretcher, because the climb up could be rough and if they tripped,
her little body might tumble to the ground. No one came to claim the body. According
to the official police statement, she hadn't lived in Santa Teresa. What was
she doing there? How had she come there? That they didn't say. Her physical
description was sent by fax to police stations around the country. The
investigation was handled by Inspector Angel Fernandez and the case was soon
closed.

A few
days later, also down in the valley but on the other side of the Casas Negras
highway, the body of another girl was found, this one approximately thirteen
years old, strangled to death. Like the previous victim, she wasn't carrying
anything that might have helped to identify her. She was dressed in white
shorts and a gray sweatshirt with the logo of an American football team.
According to the medical examiner, she had been dead for at least four days,
which meant it was possible that both bodies had been dumped the same day.
According to Juan de Dios Martinez, this was a rather odd idea, to put it
mildly, because in order to leave the first body in the valley the killer
would've had to park his vehicle not far from the Casas Negras highway, with
the second body inside, running the risk not only that a patrol car would stop,
but even that some unsuspecting persons might come by and steal it, and the
same would be true if he had dumped the first body on the opposite side of the
highway, in other words near the settlement of El Obelisco, which was neither a
village nor exactly a suburb of Santa Teresa, but a way station for the poorest
of the poor who came each day from the south, people who slept there at night
and even died in hovels that they didn't think of as homes but as one more stop
along the road to something different or at least a place where they would be
fed.
 
Instead of El Obelisco, some called
it El Moridero. And in a way they were right, because there was no obelisk and
people did die much faster there than in other places. But there had once been
an obelisk, when the city limits were different, farther off, and Casas Negras
was what might be called an independent town. A stone obelisk, or rather three
stones, one set on top of the other, stones stacked in a haphazard column,
though with imagination or a sense of humor the stack could be seen as a
primitive obelisk or an obelisk drawn by a child learning to draw, a monstrous
baby who lived outside of Santa Teresa and crawled through the desert eating
scorpions and lizards and never sleeping. The most practical thing, thought
Juan de Dios
Martinez
,
would have been to dispose of the two bodies in the same place, first one and
then the other. And not drag the first body down into the valley, which was too
far from the highway, but dump it right by the road, a few yards from the
pavement. And the same with the second body. Why walk to the edge of El
Obelisco, with all the risks that entailed, when you could leave it anywhere
else? Unless, he said to himself, there were three killers in the car, one to
drive and the other two to dispose quickly of the dead girls, who hardly
weighed anything, and who, if carried between two men, surely were each no
heavier than a small suitcase. The choice of El Obelisco, then, appeared in a
new light, acquired new dimensions. Did the killers want the police to turn
their suspicions on the inhabitants of that sea of paper houses? But then why
not dump both bodies in the same place? In the interests of
verisimilitude'?
And why not suppose
that both girls had lived in El Obelisco? Where else in Santa Teresa could
there be ten-year-old girls no one claimed? So then the killers didn't have a
car? They crossed the highway with the first girl to the valley near Casas
Negras and left her there? And why, if they went to so much trouble, didn't
they bury the body? Because the ground was hard in the valley and they didn't
have tools? The case was handled by Inspector Angel Fernandez, who conducted a
raid in El Obelisco and arrested twenty people. Four were convicted of theft
and sent to prison. Another died in the cells of Precinct
#2,
of tuberculosis, according to the medical examiner. No one
admitted to the murder of either of the two girls.

A week after the discovery of
the corpse of the thirteen-year-old girl on the outskirts of El Obelisco, the
body of a girl of about sixteen was found by the Cananea highway. The dead girl
was a little under five foot four and slightly built, and she had long black
hair. She had been stabbed only once, in the abdomen, a stab so deep that the
blade had literally pierced her through. But her death, according to the
medical examiner, was caused by strangulation and a fracture of the hyoid bone.
From the place where the body was found there was a view of a succession of low
hills and scattered white and yellow houses with low roofs, and a few
industrial sheds where the maquiladoras stored their reserve parts, and paths
off the highway that melted away like dreams, without rhyme or reason. The
victim, according to the police, was probably a hitchhiker who had been raped
on her way to Santa Teresa. All attempts to identify her were in vain and the
case was closed.

Almost
at the same time, the body of another girl, approximately sixteen years old,
was found, stabbed and mauled (although the mauling might have been the work of
the dogs in the area), on the slopes of Cerro Estrella, to the northeast of the
city, many miles from where the first three victims of March had appeared.
Slightly built and with long black hair, the dead girl, said some policemen,
looked like the twin sister of the presumed hitchhiker found by the Cananea
highway. Like the other girl, she wasn't carrying anything that might have
helped to identify her. In the Santa Teresa press there was talk about the
cursed sisters,
and then, picking up on
the police version, the
ill-fated twins.
The
case was handled by Inspector Carlos Marin and was soon filed as unsolved.

As March came to an end, the
last two victims were found on the same day. The first was Beverly Beltran
Hoyos. She was sixteen and she worked at a maquiladora in General Sepulveda
industrial park. She had disappeared three days before the discovery of the
body. Her mother, Isabel Hoyos, had gone to a police station downtown and after
she waited for five hours she was attended and her report was processed,
signed, and passed on to the next stage, albeit grudgingly.
Beverly
, unlike the previous March victims,
had brown hair. Otherwise, there were some similarities: slight build, five
foot four, long hair. She was found by some children on a stretch of open
ground to the west of General Sepulveda industrial park, in a place that was
hard to reach by car. The body exhibited multiple stab wounds to the chest and
abdominal area.
Beverly
had been vaginally and anally raped and then dressed by her killers, since her
clothes, the same ones she'd been wearing when she disappeared, were entirely
free of rips or holes or bullet scorch marks. The case was handled by Inspector
Lino Rivera, who initiated and exhausted his inquiries by questioning her
coworkers and trying to find a nonexistent boyfriend. No one combed the crime
scene, nor did anyone make casts of the numerous tracks around the site.

The second victim of the day,
and the last of March, was found in a vacant lot west of Colonia Remedios Mayor
and the illegal dump El
Chile
,
and south of General Sepulveda industrial park. According to Inspector Jose
Marquez, who was assigned the case, she was very attractive. She was thin but
not skinny, and she had long legs, full breasts, and hair past her shoulders.
There was both vaginal and anal abrasion. After she was raped she had been
stabbed to death. According to the medical examiner, she must have been between
eighteen and twenty. She wasn't carrying identification and no one came forward
to claim the body, so she was buried, after a reasonable waiting period, in the
public grave.

On
April 2, Florita Almada made an appearance on Reinaldo's show along with some
activists from the WSDP. Florita said she was there only to introduce the other
women, who had something important to say. Then the WSDP activists stepped up
to talk about the climate of impunity in Santa Teresa, the laxity of the police,
the corruption, and the number of dead women, which had been constantly on the
rise since 1993. After that they gave their thanks to the kind audience and
their friend Florita Almada and said their goodbyes, not without first calling
upon the state governor, Jose Andres Briceno, to find a solution to this
unsustainable situation in a country that claimed to respect human rights and
the law. The station head called Reinaldo and came close to suspending him.
Reinaldo had a nervous fit and told him to go ahead and fire him if that was
what he'd been ordered to do. The station head called him a faggot and an
agitator. Reinaldo shut himself in his dressing room and spent a while on the
phone with some people in
L.A.
who owned a radio station and wanted to hire him. The show's producer told the
station head he'd better go easy on Reinaldo. The station head sent his
secretary for Reinaldo. Reinaldo refused to go and stayed on the phone. The
Chicano he was talking to told him the story of an
L.A.
serial killer, a man who killed only
homosexuals. My God, said Reinaldo, we've got somebody here who only kills
women. The
L.A.
killer liked to prowl gay bars. There are people like that everywhere, said
Reinaldo, wolves who prey on the flock. The
L.A.
guy seduced homosexuals in gay bars or
on the street where male prostitutes hung out and then took them somewhere and
killed them. He was as bloodthirsty as Jack the Ripper. He literally chopped up
his victims. Are they going to make a movie about him? asked Reinaldo. They already
have, said the Chicano at the other end of the line. So in other words the
police caught him? Of course, said the Chicano. What a relief! said Reinaldo.
And who was in the movie? Keanu Reeves, said the Chicano. Keanu as the killer?
No, as the policeman who catches him. So who played the killer? That blond guy,
what's his name? said the Chicano, he has the same name as a character from a
Salinger novel.
Ay,
there's an author
I haven't read, said Reinaldo. You haven't read Salinger? asked the Chicano.
That, my friend, is a giant gap in your education, said the Chicano. The thing
is, lately I read only gay writers, said Reinaldo. And, if possible, gay
writers
with a literary background like mine. You'll have to
explain that to me when you get to
L.A.
,
said the Chicano. When they hung up Reinaldo closed his eyes and imagined
himself living in a neighborhood of big palm trees, with pretty little
bungalows, and aspiring actors for neighbors, whom he would interview long
before they became famous. Then he talked to the show's producer and the
station head and both of them, standing in the doorway of his dressing room,
asked him to forget what had happened and stay. Reinaldo said he would think
about it, he had other offers. That night he threw a party at his apartment and
near dawn some friends suggested they go to the beach to watch the sunrise.
Reinaldo shut himself in his bedroom and called Florita Almada. On the third
ring, the seer answered. Reinaldo asked if he'd woken her. Florita Almada said
yes, but it didn't matter because she'd been dreaming about him. Reinaldo asked
her to tell him the dream. Florita Almada talked about a meteor shower on a
beach in
Sonora
and described a boy who looked like him. And that boy was watching the falling
stars? asked Reinaldo. That's right, said Florita Almada, he was watching them
fall as the waves lapped his shins. What a nice dream, said Reinaldo. I thought
so
 
too,
 
said
 
Florita Almada.
 
Such a very nice dream,
 
Florita,
 
said Reinaldo. Yes, she said.