The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (49 page)

It also meant that they often visited hospitals to finish off the victims that they had only been able to wound the first time around.

Plato was staring at her face when the girl’s eyes slid open. It gave him a start. “Hello,” he said.

She looked at him, a moment of muddied confusion before alarm washed across her face. Her feet scrambled against the mattress as she pushed herself away, her back up against the headboard.

“It’s all right,” Plato said, holding his hands up, palms facing her. “I’m a policeman.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“I know I’d say this even if I wasn’t, but I’m one of the good ones.”

She regarded him warily, but as he took no further step towards her, smiling what he hoped was his most winning and reassuring smile, she gradually relaxed. Her legs slid down the bed a little, and she arranged herself so that she was more comfortable. The movement evidently caused her pain; she winced sharply.

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Sore.” The pain recalled what had happened last night, and her face fell. “Leon—where is he?”

Plato guessed that she meant the man she was with. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said.

Her face dissolved, the steeliness subsumed by a sudden wave of grief. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she closed her eyes, her breathing ragged until, after a moment, she mastered it again. She buried her head in her forearms with her hands clasped against the top of her head, her breathing sighing in and out. Plato stood there helplessly, his fingers looped into his belt to stop them fidgeting. He never knew what to do after he had delivered the news.

“Caterina,” he said.

She moved her arms away. Her eyes were wet when she opened them again, and they shined with angry fire. “The girl?”

Plato shook his head.

“Oh God.”

“I’m very sorry.”

She clenched her teeth so hard that the line of her jaw was strong and firm.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, not knowing what else he could say.

“When can I get out of here?”

“The doctors will want to see you. It’s early, though. I don’t think they’ll be here until morning. A few hours.”

“What time is it?”

“Half five. Why don’t you try to get a little extra sleep?”

She gave him a withering look. “I don’t think so.”

“One of my colleagues watched over you through the night, and I’m going to stay with you now,” he said. “The men who did this might come back when they find out that you’re still alive.”

“And you can stop them?”

There was the thing; Plato knew he would have no chance at all if they came back, and the girl looked like she was smart enough to know that too. “I’ll do my best,” he told her.

PLATO SPOKE to the girl for an hour. He got more of the story and wrote it all down. Eventually, her eyelids started to fall, and as dawn broke outside, she was asleep again. Plato covered her with the coarse hospital blanket and picked up her chart from the end of the bed. They had given her a mild dose of secobarbital, and he guessed that there was still enough of it in her system to make her drowsy. It was for the best, he thought. She would need all her strength about her when she was discharged. He wasn’t sure how best to go about that. There was no question that she was in a perilous situation. The cartels wanted her dead, and his experience suggested that they wouldn’t stop until that had happened or until she was put out of reach. There was no easy way for him to help her with that. Once she was out of the hospital, she was on her own.

He looked down at his notebook. Her name was Caterina Moreno. She was twenty-five, and she was a journalist, writing for the Blog del Borderland. He wasn’t as savvy with computers as some of the others, but even he had heard of it. It was generating a lot of interest, and the cartels had already murdered several of its contributors. The dead man was another of the blog’s writers, and the dead girl was a source who was to be interviewed for a story she was writing.

He sat down on the chair outside the room, his pistol in his lap. He watched as the hospital switched gears from the night to day: nurses were relieved as they went off shift, the doctors began to do their rounds, porters pushed their trolleys with their changes of linen, medicines and breakfasts. Plato watched all of them, looking for signs of incongruity, his mind prickling with the anticipation of sudden violence, his fingers never more than a few inches from the stippled barrel of his Glock. They might come in disguise, or in force, they might come knowing that the power of their reputation was enough to grant them unhindered passage. The girl was helpless. Plato resolved to do his best to slow them down.

His vigil was uninterrupted until Alameda arrived at nine.

“
Capitán
,” Plato said.

“How is she?”

“Not so good.”

“How much does she know?”

“I told her enough.”

Alameda scrubbed his eyes. “Stupid kids.”

“That’s harsh.”

“Pretending to be journalists.”

“They’d say they
were
journalists.”

“Hardly, Jesus.”

“We’re out of touch.”

“Maybe. But writing about the cartels?
Por dios
, man! How stupid can you get? They got what’s coming to them.”

Plato did not reply. He stood and stretched out his aching muscles.

“How did she take it?” Alameda asked, looking into Caterina’s room.

“She’s tough. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s made her more determined.”

“To do what?”

“This—it won’t shut her up.”

“You ask me, she should get over the border as fast as she can. She won’t last five minutes if she stays here.” Alameda sighed. Plato thought he suddenly looked old, as if he had aged ten years overnight. “
Diablo
, Jesus. What are we going to do?”

Plato holstered his pistol. “We’re gonna stand guard here until she’s discharged, which I guess will be when the doctor comes to see her this morning. We’ll make sure she’s safe getting to where she wants to go. And then it’s up to her.” He put a hand on Alameda’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Not really. Couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

“Go on,” he said. “I’m fine. Take a break.”

“Won’t be long. I want to talk to her again when she wakes up.”

He said he would take twenty minutes to get them both some breakfast from the canteen, and when Alameda lowered himself into the chair, his hand on the butt of his pistol, he quickly made for the elevator.

He did not mean to be very long.

MILTON CHANGED INTO his jeans and a reasonably clean shirt and walked to the hospital. He stopped in the coffee shop for an espresso and a copy of the morning paper. He scanned it quickly as he waited in line. There’d be nothing about the shooting at the restaurant yet. Instead, he saw a picture of some sort of memorial, a stone cross with a wreath propped up against it and a notice fixed up with wire. When he got to the checkout he asked the girl what time they got the afternoon edition.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t read it.”

“Can’t say I blame you.”

“Haven’t read it for years.”

“Is that right?”

“Don’t you think it’s all too depressing? When was the last time you read anything good in the newspaper?”

Milton shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Probably quite a long while.”

“I’ll say,” she said. “A long while.”

He handed her a ten-dollar bill. “I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “Young girl. Brought in last night. Gunshot wound. You know where they would’ve taken her?”

“Try up on the sixth floor,” she advised.

Milton told her to keep the change and followed her directions. There was a triage area and then a corridor with separate rooms running off it. He went down the corridor, looking into each room, looking for the girl. There was an empty chair at the door to the last room from the end. He walked quietly to the door and looked inside: the girl was there, asleep, her chest rising and falling gently beneath a single white bed sheet. A man in a white doctor’s coat was leaning over her. A loose pillow was lying across the girl’s legs. The man reached out his right hand, the fingers brushing against the pillow, then closing around it.

Milton opened the door all the way. “Excuse me.”

The man looked up and around.

“Hello.”

“Who are you?”

He had smooth brown skin, black hair, an easy smile. There was nothing remarkable about him. The kind of man you would never see coming. “My name is Martinez,” he said. “I’m a doctor here. Who are you?”

Milton ignored the question. “What are you doing?”

“Checking that she is okay.” He picked up the pillow and tossed it onto the armchair at the side of the bed. “Just making her comfortable.”

Milton tapped a finger to his breast. “You don’t have any credentials.”

The man looked down at his white medical jacket, shrugging with a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve just come on shift. Must’ve left it in my locker. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Do you know her?”

“I’m a friend.”

The doctor looked over Milton’s shoulder, and for a tiny moment, a flicker of something—irritation, perhaps, or frustration—fell across his face. He replaced it with a warm, friendly smile. “Nice to meet you, Señor—?”

“Smith.”

“Señor Smith. I’m sure I’ll see you again.”

The man smiled again, stepped around him, and left the room. Milton turned to watch him go just as the policeman from last night, Lieutenant Plato, came in the other direction. The two met in the corridor, Plato stepping to the side to let the other man pass.

Plato was carrying two wrapped burritos. He didn’t look surprised to see him. “Who was that?”

“Said he was a doctor, but there was something about him. Seen him before?”

“No.”

Milton started to move.

“Was there anyone else here?” Plato asked. “There should’ve been—”

“No one else.”

Plato’s face twisted with anxiety. “Is she all right?”

“You better check.”

Milton walked quickly and then broke into a jog, passing through the busying triage area to the lobby beyond. The elevator was on the first floor, so he couldn’t have taken that. He pushed the bar to open the door to the stairs and looked up and then down. There was no sign of Martinez anywhere. He quickly climbed to the seventh floor, but as he opened the door onto a paediatrics ward, he couldn’t see him. He went back down, then descended further, to the fifth, but there was still no sign of him. The man had disappeared.

PLATO SAT on the chair, and Milton stood with his back to the wall. They ate the breakfast burritos that Plato had purchased in the canteen.

“How many people died last night?”

Plato looked at him evenly. “Two of the three on the table—the girl died at the scene, the guy was DOA by the time they got him here. Apart from them, one woman eating her dinner got shot in the head. Three dead, all told, and that’s not even counting the five
sicarios
you took out.
Caramba
, what a world.”

“The girl who died?”

“That’s the coincidental part. Her name was Delores. Poor little thing. I knew I recognised her when they were wheeling her out. I found her a month ago on Avenue Azucenas. Half undressed and beside herself with panic. She was a worker in the
maquiladoras
. She’d been abducted and raped, but she managed to get away.”

“You think that had something to do with it?”

He shrugged. “Looks to me like she was there to talk to Caterina. Tell her story, maybe. I don’t know—maybe that’s why they got shot.”

“Why would Caterina want to talk to her?”

Milton knew that the information was confidential, but after just a moment of reluctance, Plato shrugged and said, “She’s a journalist. This isn’t a safe place to write about the news. The cartels don’t like to read about themselves. The dead guy was another writer.”

“Newspaper?”

“No,” Plato said, shaking his head. “They’re online. They call it Blog del Borderland. It’s started to be a pretty big deal, not just here but over the border, too. There was a piece in the El Paso
Times
just last week, all about them, and someone told me they’ve got a book coming out, too. The cartels are all they write about. The shootings, the abductions. It’s like an obsession. Most papers won’t touch that stuff, or if they do, they don’t write about it truthfully. It’s all under control, there’s nothing to worry about—you know the sort of thing. These kids are different. They’ve had writers go missing and get murdered before, but it hasn’t stopped them yet. This time, though? I don’t know, maybe they’ll listen now.”

“What would you do—if you were her?”

“I’d try to get over the border. But that won’t be easy. As far as I can make out, she doesn’t have any family here. No ties. She doesn’t have a job. She’s not the kind of person who gets a visa. As far as I know, no journalist has ever been given one. And I doubt she’d even get a border crossing card. They’ll say the chances of her staying over there illegally are too great.”

“So?”

“Join the dots. If she’s going to get across, she’ll have to do it the other way.”

Milton finished the burrito, screwed up the paper, and dropped it into the bin. “That doctor—?”

“Who knows. My guess? He was someone they sent to finish her off, and you got here just in time.”

“You didn’t recognise him?”

“No. No reason why I would.”

“Why was she unguarded?”

He frowned. “You’d have to ask my captain that.”

“But you’re still here.”

“How can I leave her on her own?” he said helplessly. “I’ve got daughters.”

“I’ll stay with her.”

Plato finished his burrito and wiped his hands with a napkin. “Why would you want to do a thing like that?”

“Like you say—how can we leave her on her own. I’m guessing you boys will have to leave her as soon as they discharge her, right?”

“Right.”

“And how long do you reckon she’ll last without any protection at all? Christ, they almost got her when she was supposed to be guarded. She won’t last five minutes, and you know it.”