A Desperate Silence (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 3) (31 page)

     
"Bopping?"

     
"Doing the nasty thang! Whatever. Look what I found!" Rosie scurried to a freestanding museum-sized glass case; small pieces of sculpture and folk art were on display.

     
She pointed to a figurine occupying the prominent space. It was roughly three feet high, cast in dark metal, a gruesome goddess: her skirt was made of snakes, a necklace of human hearts and hands encircled her shoulders, a skull's pendant hung from the necklace; blood gushed from her headless neck, spouting upward to form double rattlesnake heads.

     
"Coatlicue.'' Noelle Harding had quietly entered the room. "She's Aztec. As you can see, she has a thirst for blood."

     
Sylvia was embarrassed and startled, but she hoped her question sounded casual. "Did you find her in Mexico?"

     
"I didn't. She was a gift from Jim. And yes, I believe he picked her up on one of his junkets to Mexico City."

V
ICTOR
V
ARGAS GUIDED
the taxi along the river-frontage road, heading west. Matt occupied the backseat, posing as a fare. Chupey was invisible in the front seat; his head didn't top the dash. The paved road gave way to dirt, the glow of the city lights dimmed, and the air was uncomfortably warm, even at ten-forty
P.M.
As they drove deeper into Anapra, the sprawling barrio that grew like a cancer on the western edge of Juárez, the dirt side streets were represented by numerals instead of names, then they were only eroded trails and, finally, ruts. Power lines ended abruptly with the main road; raw sewage flowed along rough acequias. The reflected haze of downtown softly illuminated the barren hills and the shanties that perched along their steep sides. The sounds of music, voices, and traffic drifted like a mist over the jumbled landscape. Children and dogs wandered the streets. Scrawny chickens roosted on abandoned vehicles. Every few blocks the taxi passed a local grocery or liquor store. Here the crowds were denser, as people had gathered to drink and pass the time.

     
Chupey sat high enough to guide Vargas along the maze of streets. His small dirty fingers pointed right, then left. After twenty minutes of winding, twisting navigation, the boy sat rigidly upright in his seat. "
¡Aquí! La niña vivió aquí!
"

     
Victor let the taxi roll past the house, braking to a stop about two hundred feet downhill. Matt got out of the car and rested his butt against the warm hood. The bad air, the border conditions, the trappings of poverty were all manifesting in a vague headache.

     
He looked up, across the street, to the residence Chupey had selected. It was set off the road, riding the edge of a ruined hillside maybe fifty feet above street level. A yard light set on a twenty-foot pole illuminated a section of the crumbling earthen wall and its foundation—hundreds of old tires. They were stacked like poker chips, jammed into the side of the hill, supporting however many tons of disintegrating clay.

     
A multiple-story structure—part adobe, part cinder block—occupied the space behind the adobe wall. Although the property was a ruin by middle-class standards, it appeared almost luxurious in the half darkness of the primitive surroundings. The wall probably enclosed more than an acre of property. Matt guessed it had been a prosperous villa many years ago, before the slums had overtaken it like a deadly virus.

     
Two
portals
—ground-level and second-story—ran the length of the main residence. Each verandah was enclosed by ten- or twelve-foot-high grillwork. A grilled exterior stairway descended the southeast wall from the second story. Another high fence enclosed the rooftop.

     
From the street, the residence resembled a cage, a walled fortress, a broken-down castle. Something that would wash away with the next wave. If this had been Serena's home in Juárez, the child had lived in prison.

     
Victor and Chupey were already making their way up a rough foot trail cut into the hillside. Matt followed. As they drew closer, he saw that a satellite dish was attached to the edge of the roof. Just below the dish, a small bare bulb burned from the upper portal, and the hot buzz of insect wings hummed on the night air.

     
Matt swung around abruptly at the sound of footsteps. A group of small, dirt-smeared faces stared up at him. The arrival of Victor's taxi had attracted street urchins, just as the bare lightbulb attracted moths. There was no discouraging the underage entourage. Five of the boldest children followed Matt, Victor, and Chupey to the high metal gates. While Victor dealt with the padlock, Matt tried to banter with the children. They all responded with the same good-natured shrug. The big gringo's New Mexican Spanish was sadly indecipherable.

     
When the men were inside the gates—followed now by at least eight street kids—Chupey led the way under the branches of a dying elm tree to double wooden doors. These opened into the main house. This time, there was no problem with the locks—they had been pried open by other hands. Matt pushed the doors wide and entered a kitchen. He used the small light on his belt, while Vargas produced a full-sized flashlight. Beams glanced off walls painted turquoise, modest furnishings, and a confusion of pots, pans, cutlery, towels strewn across the floor.

     
The small living room, a bathroom minus running water, and a bedroom were all in similar condition—someone had made a thorough search of the ground floor.

     
Victor and Matt both questioned the children.

     
Who lived here?
A little girl
.

     
Who took care of her?
Maids
.

     
Where was the girl?
Gone away
.

     
How long had she lived here?
Forever
.

     
Did anyone come to visit the girl?
No. Yes. An old man came to visit every week. And sometimes the children were allowed inside to watch TV
.

     
Did the girl go outside the house?
Never. Well, almost never. Sometimes the man who visited took her for rides
.

     
What was her name?
Serena
.

     
While Matt was searching the residence, he noticed a small cupboard set in a dark corner of the living room. It was so narrow, he had to hunch down and turn sideways to look inside. But it wasn't a cupboard, it was a door.

     
He knelt down and crawled into a pitch-black space. Just past the wooden doorway, he cautiously stood and shone his light off the close walls. It was a small shrine; hundreds of unlit candles had been placed on an altar. Each wall was adorned with a framed picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe. With his head bowed to avoid the ceiling, Matt approached the altar. His flashlight sent eerie shadows dancing in the gloomy room. He stepped carefully to avoid the fresh piles of rodent shit littering the floor. The altar was wooden, hand-painted, simultaneously rustic and ornate. A small framed photograph had been placed midpoint on the altar. Matt recognized the subject of the first portrait. It was the child, Serena.

     
Under the portrait, stacked neatly, were dozens of yellowing newspaper articles following the trial and incarceration of Cash Wheeler.

M
ATT FOLLOWED
V
ARGAS
and the children outside the house and up the exterior stairway. They entered through a room—a second bedroom—which had been searched in the same manner as the rooms below. Clothes spilled from a discarded dresser drawer. A pair of rubber boots, stockings, a T-shirt lay near a large television set. A few toys were scattered about the room as well. A stuffed giraffe lay prone on the tiled floor. One of the children, a small boy, squatted next to the stuffed animal; he gazed at it longingly.

     
There was one additional door. Matt pushed it open, Vargas at his side. Simultaneously their flashlight beams illuminated a long, narrow room. Both men stared, speechless. Victor whistled.

     
It was Chupey, nudging his way past the adults, who exclaimed, "
¡Milagro!
"

     
Miracle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

R
ENZO
S
ANTOS GAZED
at his seminaked reflection in the mirror as he tossed the hotel key into the air. He saw the fingers of his gloved left hand snap at metal, pluck the key from its gravitational fall, secret it safely in the pocket of his black jacket. His next breath was one of approval; those particular reflexes were functional. The stitches along his thigh tugged uncomfortably at the damaged, swollen tissue. He flexed his gloved right hand, pain traveling from wrist to forearm to the injured shoulder. Not so good. He had limited ambidexterity; he would have to rely on his left arm for strength.

     
As he slipped out of the jacket, there was a short knock at the door of the hotel casita. He knew the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign was attached to the knob. Still wearing the gloves, he stepped naked from the bathroom and called out: "I'm in the shower; please slide it under the door." A single folded receipt appeared between door and carpet. Renzo collected his room receipt—or, more accurately, the receipt belonging to the gentleman known as Mr. Eric Sandoval.

     
Next, he walked to the bed and gazed down at the collection of equipment neatly laid out on the spread: modified cell phone, shortwave radio and police scanner, handcuffs, mace, numbered badge, .22-caliber semiautomatic and silencer, nine-inch switchblade. Each item was polished. Even the body armor was free of visible lint or soil. He reached down and plucked an eighth-inch strand of thread from the vest, which was imprinted with the words
SPECIAL AGENT.

     
Renzo returned to the bathroom, where he slowly unzipped his alligator case. He measured out a small amount of powder, liquefied the drug, and filled a sterile disposable hypodermic needle. As he proceeded methodically with work he had repeated hundreds of times, a strand of saliva glistened on his lip. He chose to inject the drug into his uninjured thigh, near his genitals.

     
The tingling itch of warmth flowed into him almost instantly, and unlike even the purest heroin, this synthetic drug's euphoria wasn't measured by experience and repetition like everything else in Renzo's life—this white powder kept pushing him far beyond the edge to a place where he could walk on air and dance on water. It was so much better than orgasm.

     
When he checked his watch, the digital face showed ten minutes after eleven
P.M
. He dressed carefully in the dark uniform. He donned his field jacket and then the vest. The loaded .22 went into a holster, the switchblade slid into his left pocket. The gold badge with its registration number clipped onto the vest. He checked himself in the mirror. The layers had added fifteen pounds to his frame. The dark blue baseball cap rode low enough to touch his eyebrows and change the shape of his face. The bruise on his cheek was fading to yellow. In the center of the bruise, the single fang mark from
el lobo
had dried to a black scab.

     
He was almost ready. But first, the room. Earlier he had collected all the bloody towels, had compressed them into three plastic laundry bags, courtesy of the hotel. That same morning, the city had collected trash from its Dumpsters; the bags had been among the hotel's other waste.

     
He had refused maid service for three days—murmuring through the door that he had a twenty-four-hour flu. The bloodstained sheets and the mattress pad from his bed had been disposed of along with the towels. He had stolen clean sheets from a maid's cart and remade the bed himself. The mattress bore only the faintest ghost of his blood. Nothing that would arouse suspicion.

     
He had to ignore the traces of blood on the throw rug. Even if he scrubbed all night, evidence of the blood would remain for years.

     
The bathroom had been washed down, the room surfaces meticulously wiped with Windex, purloined from hotel supplies. Although he knew it was impossible to erase every trace of his existence, Renzo had come close to accomplishing that aim within the casita's twenty square feet. He had worn gloves for the last seven hours.

     
He left the room. A gleaming black car—a Cadillac Seville registered to a nonexistent man named Martin Diaz and supplied by a local associate—was parked fifty feet from his casita. As he covered the distance, he heard women's voices drifting across the parking lot, but he saw no one as he unlocked the Cadillac and climbed inside. On Palace Avenue he turned left, heading for Mesa Verde Hospital. The traffic lights turned green as he approached—one after the other—and he crossed town within minutes. The trip went smoothly, but why not? He had already practiced his final route to the girl they called Serena.

S
YLVIA ISOLATED THE
staff key on her ring as she walked up the long, shadowy path to the hospital. She glanced back at the street expecting to see a patrol car; the Santa Fe P.D. was supposed to send a car past the hospital every hour. No sign of the cops, but several vehicles were parked along the residential street. The illuminated face of her watch showed eleven-thirty. Five minutes earlier, Rosie Sanchez had dropped Sylvia off at Matt's pickup truck, which was parked in the hospital lot. Sylvia had planned to check on Serena before heading home, where she would stay up late reading more of the files on Cash Wheeler's case. She'd limited her alcohol intake at Noelle Harding's party to a glass of wine, and she felt energized.

     
It was only after Rosie had driven away that Sylvia realized she'd left her briefcase—and Teague's files—in the trunk of the Camaro. The briefcase contained her cell phone and Day-Timer, not to mention hundreds of confidential documents detailing Cash Wheeler's murder defense. At least she still had her purse. But shit—now she was wide awake with nothing to read. Change of plan—she would hang out longer with the sleeping child. She was feeling very protective of Serena these days.