Redemption (28 page)

The police reacted by establishing a special squad for the San Matanza murders. Again, months passed. No results were forthcoming and the murders continued. Several strange elements surfaced, the possibility of crime scene contamination notwithstanding. The murders continued and the years passed. It seemed more and more plausible that several murderers, a group, was to blame. Groups of citizens for the aid of the victims’ families began to exercise exterior pressure, crying out to the whole world for help to end this crime against humanity. According to these groups, there was an organized crime network in San Matanza – so it must be, if, after hundreds of murders, nobody had witnessed anything. It was practically impossible unless the killers were professionals, organized, and capable of buying silence.

The media tried to dig around for this phantom network. Some claimed the network had ties to the police; others, that a powerful cartel had corrupted the authorities, which was the reason for the silence and blindness. Maybe it was a sect that killed and sold women for money, or pleasure. Why some were found dead and some never seen again was a mystery. For most of the citizens, there were too many weird and inexplicable details for the murders to be the work of one person. These were all assumptions, and there was no evidence to confirm anything.

The foreign authorities and international coalitions showed interest in the situation, but their help was politely refused with the explanation that the problem was Mexican, and the intervention of strangers was not welcome. It would broadcast that the country couldn’t manage their own problems. They feared a political and diplomatic conflict, foreigners ready to intrude upon seeing the aberration, the impoverished families taken hostage, forsworn one at a time. The children and young women were all from poor families, which meant that their loved ones couldn’t go far to obtain responses. Some tried to start their own investigation, but once again, they received only kind smiles and sympathetic words from the authorities who patiently explained that the investigation was still ongoing and that they were taking all leads seriously. Evidently, nobody had heard from the aid associations for the families of victims that tried to put pressure on authorities on behalf of families with no fight left in them.

Over the years, the murders that ran rampant in San Matanza became a curse. The people lived in fear from dusk until dawn and all parents constantly feared the worse for their children. Then, after the kidnappings had ceased for a time, they wondered whether the murders had stopped and if the nightmare was over. And then after a time, there was a new photo of a child or young woman in the papers and on television indicating that the curse was always on them. The people hated discussing it because it was shameful, proof of their inability to defend their women and children, proof of their poverty, proof of the authorities’ indifference toward them. They avoided the subject as much as possible and went about their lives, praying that these monsters wouldn’t get one of theirs.

CHAPTER 39

She didn’t know how long she’d been wherever she was. All she had felt was the hands of whoever had attacked her from behind around her neck. Suddenly, she was fainting, everything faded to black. She had awoken in this little dirty room of reinforced concrete. There was no window, and only a dirty blood-stained urine-soaked mattress was thrown in the corner. Jovanna was terrified of this place and of what was happening to her. Her only contact with the outside were the noises she heard outside her cell. Men talked and laughed, and doors opened and shut with metallic screeches that froze her blood in her veins.

She must have been in here for days and it never got better. Nothing had happened to her, yet. She knew she wasn’t the only one in here only because the women’s screams came from all different directions. She cried in silence, hiding in the corner of the room, trying not to hear the fear and lamentations. She realized that she would probably never get out alive when she heard a women’s voice that seemed to come from the next room over. The woman, who sounded older than Jovanna, began to cry and scream. Multiple men laughed. The woman’s cries crescendoed and then decrescendoed, as though the suffering was so intense that the fear didn’t matter. Jovanna tried to shut up her ears, think of her mother, but there was nothing she could do to block out the horrors in the next room. The shouts and sniggers lasted for twenty minutes and then gave way to deathly silence. Jovanna never heard that woman’s voice again. She didn’t know exactly how the woman had died, but she knew it was in the worst way.

She looked around the room. The walls, the ceiling and the floor were all made of concrete. The door was steel. She was trapped. Jovanna would have cried, but she didn’t have any more tears. She wanted her mother, her house, her friends, the heat of the hearth. This couldn’t be real. She wondered if anyone was looking for her yet. She prayed for it to be a dream from which she would wake safely in her bed. But she knew it was real. She prayed that the men whose voices she heard would never enter her cell, that they would forget her, but it wouldn’t be long before the metallic screech of her own door laid waste to all her hopes. Her heart began to pound. A man in his thirties tiptoed into the room. He wore a moustache and a cowboy hat speckled with dust. He was of medium height and his clothes were sweaty and dirty. He smiled in the silence when he saw the little girl in the corner of the room.

“Come here,
bonita
.”

Jovanna, unable to move, stayed where she was, wishing painfully hard for it to stop. The man advanced and, with his left hand, took her throat with a jerk. He hauled her up from the ground and slapped her with his right hand. There was a dull banging and she was thrown completely to the other side of the room. Disoriented and in tears, she raised her head to look again at her attacker.
A pretty little girl like that would fetch a lot
. He had to keep her alive, but,
nothing wrong with amusing myself with her until then.

“If you’re nice and not too difficult, I won’t kill you, understand?”

“Ye-yes sir,” she sobbed. “Please, tell me where I am, I want to go, I want to see my mother!” she begged.

The man was dripping with sweat and there was a grin on his half-obscured face. He looked demented. There were mad glints of light in his eyes.

“Don’t cry, we’re going to have a good time, little girl.” He stood before her and felt for the zipper on his pants.

CHAPTER 40

Manhattan, New York, USA.

Namara contemplated the piles of documents Andy had brought and which littered the table around which they sat. Andy and his team had taken the time to get to know each other. At this point, they were conversing easily over a few bottles of beer. They were enjoying each other’s company and discussion meandered over several subjects.

“So, Andy, what do you have for us,” he asked, tantalized by the piles of documents. Andy’s face changed, hardened, indicating that his next words wouldn’t be so easy to hear.

“All right… I’ll explain. For about ten years, women have been dying in the city of San Matanza, Mexico. The victims are all Mexican women in their twenties, and very young girls aged five to eight. They’re all from the slums. I got my hands on all the police files, crime scene photos, data lists, autopsy reports. There’s been a total of four-hundred-and-fifty-three victims and the number grows each day. You have a photo of each victim and the intelligence I’ve provided in these documents. All the hypotheses as to the identity of the killers were included, but nothing’s been certified over all these years. Any attempts to find the culprits have failed. The murders continue. The story was broadcast by all means, but nothing changed. It’s a complete mystery. The more people try to figure it out, the more confused everyone gets. The police dossiers I’ve seen are badly done and there’s no credible suspect listed. I can’t say whether it’s because of the lack of police training or if it was done deliberately. Again, a mystery. Basically, your mission consists of finding the one or those responsible for the murders and to do what you must to put a stop to it. When you read through the details in these documents, you will have all the information anyone knows. Some are public access, but most are confidential. However, you’ll realize quickly that there are no viable leads. Any questions?” asked Andy from his puffy armchair at the head of the table.

“What do the autopsy reports say?” Namara asked.

“In short, they were all sexually abused and tortured before their death. The ones that were found, that is.”

“What kind of abuse exactly?”

“Depends. Some had their breasts cut off, some showed laceration all over with a blade. Some were burned or had their genitals mutilated.”

“And the children?” asked Ming Mei.

“We don’t know, because no children were found. We don’t know what they’re doing with them at the present time.”

“San Matanza is a mill town at the US border. It’s controlled by drug cartels and we know for a fact that the level of criminality is astronomical. Couldn’t it be that the murders of these women are the result of hundreds of killers for any number of reasons? We know their police force is inadequate, the murders come from everywhere to find easy prey… simple, don’t you think? That explains why no-one can find the culprits or any decent leads. There’s no other correlation between them because they all operate independently of one another,” Guerra offered.

“It could be an interesting hypothesis, James, given that the number of murders in the region well surpasses anywhere else in the world in terms of violent crimes. It’s clear that this city has a huge problem with criminality in general because of the poverty and drug cartels. However, you know what they say… the bodies speak for themselves. They’re all tied up with the same knot. They’re all laid in the same sort of way, in the same types of places. It’s all circumstantial elements that indicate it’s the work of the same entity. Some of the details I’ve mentioned are not public knowledge. The placement of the bodies, the knots, the place they’re found, the wounds. The concordance of the elements is above coincidental. Sorry, James.”

“Do you have a description of a suspect?” asked Shinsaku.

“One suspect, a women named Shanti. According to a report, she was found working in
maquiladoras
, which are cheap labor factories where some victims working there disappeared. When women are missing in a place, she disappears to find another factory not long after. She may be a spotter for the killers, she may be there to look for women, so... they may be chosen in advance in some cases. Only a picture was taken by a security camera outside a factory some years ago. It is a brunette, but the picture is not good as you will see, impossible to see her face. She is still at large, unidentified and they are not sure if she is a suspect or not. It is a cold lead. You can take a look at the picture. Apart from that, nobody saw anything, heard anything. It’s completely infuriating.”

“Yeah, it’s ridiculous! Over four hundred women disappeared over a period of ten years in the same area and nobody saw shit. It doesn’t make any sense,” Shinsaku retorted.

“True, and that’s why we called you! I should tell you that the abduction sites were in the middle of the desert, for the most part. There’s not a soul for kilometers around. It’s easy to hide in such a countryside… just like it’s easy to disappear.”

“Yes, or it would indicate that it’s not a solo murderer, but several that work in a cohesive group,” said Kamilia.

“Yes, indeed, it’s a possibility. This is what I need from you, to find answers.”

“What’s the most probable hypothesis?”

“Plenty. A cult, a cartel, a solo murderer, several murderers, the police themselves, a network involving customs offices and the influential people of the country. Their goal could be human trafficking, sexual slavery, ritual murders, organ trafficking, a network of pedophiles and so on. Take your pick. They’re all viable possibilities, but nothing’s been proven. There’s the rub. There’s no real collaboration with the Mexican authorities. Anyone who’s tried to intervene has been rebuked. And the scary thing is, these murders aren’t stopping. The local population is imprisoned by the laxity of the authorities. Forget outside help as well, because no-one gets Mexican jurisdiction.”

Kamilia began to leaf through a pile of confidential documents to look at the crime scenes Andy had obtained through various means. Her gaze fell on the body of a woman laid out on her side in the desert. The woman, dead and half-buried in the sand, who must have been in her early-twenties, had eyes half-plucked from their sockets, and her still-human form was smeared with blood. The gash in her throat was over five centimeters long.

“Who would do something like that, it’s awful,” she muttered, dropping the photo onto the pile.

She pulled out a file in which Andy had placed a photo of the each victim when she was alive. The file was as thick as a dictionary. They were all young, pretty, and (for the most part) smiling. Most were young Mexican girls in their twenties.

“My god, there’s so many,” said Kamilia, turning page after page.

“Yes indeed. I want you to go to San Matanza, where you’ll find the murderers, and where you’ll do what you need to do to bring them to justice. Your presence there is a secret. Everything you do must remain under the raider, understand?” he ordered.

“And for the financing we talked about?” said Namara.

Andy slid a paper out of his pocket and placed it in front of Namara, which he unfolded.

“You don’t know it yet, Danny, but you opened a bank account at this bank. That number is your account number. All the money you need will be deposited there. The funds will be available starting now. If you ever need more, which would surprise me… well, you only have to ask.”