The Girl in the Glass Box

by James Grippando

  “You can’t beat yourself up about these things,” said Jack.

  “I should have told you it was Jorge.”

  “Why didn’t you?” asked Jack. “Was it because you wanted to keep it a secret from Beatriz?”

  She looked away. “Partly.”

  “What’s the other reason?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Truthfully? I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Him.”

  “Still? You said he left two years ago.”

  “Yeah, but you have to understand that this was not a onetime thing that happened six years ago. This started before Beatriz was even born, and it kept on going until the day he left. He always told me he’d find me if I ever told anyone what went on inside our house.”

  “Do you have any reason to think he’d actually find you here?”

  She paused, as if not sure how to answer. Or maybe she just wasn’t sure Jack could ever understand. “Have you ever lived with someone who controlled everything you did, everything you said, everywhere you went? Have you ever felt worthless, like nothing you ever do is right? Have you ever been afraid to have your own thoughts? It doesn’t matter where I go, Jack. Even inside this place—a detention center for women—I sometimes find myself looking over my shoulder. I have no reason to think he won’t find me, no matter where I go.”

  “I’m sorry you have to live like that.”

  “Me, too. He’s been gone for two years, but it’s always on my mind. When I applied for the job at Café de Caribe, people thought I lied about being Dominican and part Haitian to work in an island coffee shop. But that’s not it. Sometimes I wish I could just reinvent myself. Be someone else. Does that make any sense?”

  “It does. And all of this could be part of your final hearing on deportation. But right now we have to focus on getting you out of detention.”

  “Does this change anything?”

  “It might. The reason this came up in the first place is that you were convicted under El Salvador’s ban on abortion. ICE took the position that you were a convicted felon ineligible for bond. The judge seemed willing to disregard that conviction if you terminated the pregnancy because you were sexually assaulted.”

  “I was sexually assaulted.”

  “Yes. But I know what ICE will argue. The El Salvador law has no exception for rape, and this is not a case under U.S. immigration law where the judge should recognize one.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you and Jorge were husband and wife, and if the child had been born, he or she would have been Beatriz’s full sibling.”

  “Do you think the judge will agree with that argument?”

  “He shouldn’t, but he might. Immigration judges work for the Department of Justice. They aren’t bending over backward to find reasons to keep you here.”

  “Okay, let’s say the judge agrees with ICE and says I violated the law of El Salvador, no exception. Then what?”

  “Then you’re a convicted felon under U.S. immigration law. There’s no way you’ll be released on bond, and it’s almost a certainty that you’ll be deported after the final hearing.”

  “That’s just not right.”

  “We’re working in an arena where anything that can be used against you will be used to the fullest. That’s the way ICE operates.”

  She looked away, thinking. “What if I didn’t want the abortion?”

  “Then why did you get one?”

  Her gaze shifted back to Jack. “I didn’t have a choice. Jorge wanted it. He found the doctor who did it. I don’t even know what kind of doctor he was. Jorge took me to the house and we did it in the bedroom. He stood there and watched to make sure it was done. He paid for it.”

  Jack considered it, thinking aloud: “Your abusive husband rapes you and forces you to get an abortion. You don’t sound like a criminal to me.”

  “So you think we can win? I might get out of here on bond?”

  “I’m liking our case,” said Jack. “But there’s a big ‘if.’”

  “If what?”

  “If we can prove it. We have your testimony, and we have Beatriz’s.”

  “Not Beatriz. Cecilia and I talked about it. This is too much for her. I won’t let Beatriz testify.”

  The decision didn’t shock Jack, and it sounded nonnegotiable. “All right, then. We have your testimony.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I guess it will have to be,” said Jack.

  Chapter 19

  “It’s not enough,” said Jack.

  Theo grabbed Jack’s half-empty beer glass from the bar top, refilled it from the tap, and placed it back in front of Jack. “How’s that?”

  “Thanks, but I meant Julia’s testimony. By itself, it’s not enough to convince an immigration judge to release her on bond. Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

  Jack’s flight from Jacksonville had landed him in Miami early that evening, and he had driven straight to Cy’s Place, the jazz club that Theo owned and operated. It was named after his sax-playing uncle, Cyrus Knight, who’d played in Miami’s Overtown Village, once known as Little Harlem. Happy hour had just gotten under way, and cocktails were starting to flow at the big U-shaped bar. The Friday-night musicians were setting up, and in an hour or so Cy’s Place would ooze that certain vibe of a jazz-loving crowd, with crowded café tables fronting a small stage for live music. It was at one of those tables that Jack had proposed to Andie.

  “Yeah, I’m listening,” said Theo. “You got a dog-breath case. What else is new?”

  “It’s not a dog-breath case. I just need more evidence.”

  “Uh-huh. See that short guy over there?” he said, indicating with a jerk of his head.

  Jack glanced down to the other end of the bar. “What about him?”

  “He’s not short. He just needs more height.”

  Jack drank his beer. “I take your point. But my case is not impossible. I can get more evidence.”

  “Yeah, how? Julia won’t let her daughter testify. She’s so scared of her husband that she thinks he might track her down inside a women’s jail, so don’t be surprised if she folds on you, too. That will leave you with zero witnesses.” Theo rinsed a couple of cocktail glasses in the sink behind the bar. “Sounds like you got a dog-breath case to me.”

  Jack glanced up at ESPN on the flat-screen TV, thinking. Theo wasn’t off the mark. It wasn’t just a question of whether the judge would believe Julia. It was entirely possible that she’d fold on the day of the hearing, too afraid to testify about certain things or to testify at all.

  “There is another way to go about this,” said Jack.

  “Yeah, but isn’t it a crime to bribe an immigration judge?”

  Jack ignored it. “Andie put the kibosh on a trip to El Salvador when I mentioned it before. But I think I need to go.”

  Theo extended his hand across the bar top. “It’s been really nice knowing you.”

  Jack didn’t take the offered handshake, so Theo withdrew it. “You honestly think I can’t go to El Salvador without getting myself killed?”

  “No. I think you can’t ignore a direct order from Sergeant Henning without getting yourself killed.”

  “Agent Henning. They don’t have ranks like that in the FBI. But never mind that. The only thing I can say to you is this: I’m going to El Salvador.”

  Theo leaned into the bar, resting his forearms on the polished granite top. “Let me ask you a question. Julia seems cool, not to mention gorgeous.”

  “You really do have a thing for Latin chicks, don’t you?”

  “Who doesn’t? But forget that. I just wanna know: Why you puttin’ so much of yourself into a case like this?”

  “I could give you about a hundred reasons. I’ll give you one. In all the years you’ve known Abuela, how many times has she asked me for a favor? Me as a lawyer, I mean.”

  “I’m gonna say none.”

  Jack slapped the bar top. �
��Close enough, dog breath!” he said like a game-show host. “And for being so smart, you have won this prize chosen especially for you: a round-trip ticket to the exotic and always exciting San Salvador!”

  “Cool. Like old times.”

  Jack took another drink. “But safer.”

  Theo smiled. “Sure, Jack. Whatever you say.”

  They landed at Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport on Monday, midmorning. Theo haggled over the airport’s departure tax, which went nowhere, but Jack was able to lock the cabdriver into a flat fare for the thirty-mile trip north, away from the Pacific coastline, and into San Salvador.

  “Where in the city?” the driver asked in Spanish.

  Jack had a printed map and circled the building to avoid any confusion. “Office of the General Prosecutor.”

  The route took them through the dry terrain south of the city, then through the barrios, some lower-middle-class apartment buildings and some dirt-poor shacks, many of which appeared to be abandoned. According to the driver, entire families would just pick up and go, forced from one town to the next by gangs who recruited their children and stole whatever money their working relatives in the United States sent back to El Salvador. The backdrop for such problems was a city nestled in natural beauty. Several of this tiny country’s twenty volcanic cones flanked the metropolis, the most stunning of which was the mile-high Boquerón Volcano, touching the sky at over six thousand feet.

  In the distance, a green agricultural field stretched across a hillside. “Is that sugarcane?” Theo asked the driver.

  “The cemetery,” the driver answered in Spanish, and Jack understood most of his explanation, which he translated for Theo.

  “He says all the cane fields in El Salvador are cemeteries. It’s where gangs like MS-13 dump the bodies. Bus drivers who won’t pay extortion. Kids who refuse to join the gang. The cane cutters find them during harvest season. When the fields are combed over, the bones—mountains of bones—turn up. Many of the bodies have been hacked to pieces. Bodies missing legs, missing hands, missing their head.”

  “Maybe Captain Henning had a point,” said Theo.

  It was lunchtime, and the driver recommended a quick stop at a pupusería, which was the Salvadoran version of a diner dedicated to the confection of pupusas, the country’s iconic dish. It was like a tortilla, made with corn dough and filled with cheese, pork rind (chicharrones), refried beans, or tropical vine flower (loroco). Topped with tomato sauce and a kind of tropical sauerkraut known as curtido, it was foolish to eat a messy pupusa with your bare hands, but that didn’t stop Theo from being “that guy.” Twenty minutes and as many napkins later, they were on the road again. The driver dropped them at the curb in front of the building and warned them not to wander too far into El Centro, which wasn’t safe. Before pulling away, he asked Jack to tell the president about the gangs when he got back to the United States, as if Jack had a direct line to the White House. Jack told him he’d try.

  The prosecutor in Julia’s abortion case had never returned Jack’s phone calls from Miami, so Jack’s only official appointment was with a criminologist who worked in the same building. Israel Tovar was a portly man who thought carefully before he spoke, with more than twenty years of experience in the Office of the General Prosecutor. He and his assistant were the only forensic investigators in the country who did exhumations. Jack thought Tovar would be a good starting point on the disappearance of Julia’s husband.

  “He’s been missing for two years,” said Jack. “His wife and daughter have no idea where he is.”

  Tovar nodded, as if he’d heard such words too many times before. He rose from behind his cluttered desk and invited Jack to walk with him to a huge map on the wall that was covered with colorful dots.

  “Each dot is a burial site,” he said.

  Jack studied the map. Most of the dots—he estimated about fifty—were in and around San Salvador. Dozens more extended toward La Libertad, Santa Ana, and Sonsonate. Not a single one of El Salvador’s fourteen departments was free of dots.

  “The purple ones are wells,” said Tovar, “and the green ones are clandestine cemeteries that my team has already excavated. The blue and red dots are wells and clandestine cemeteries that haven’t been explored yet, where there should be more bodies. The yellow dots are mass graves from the civil war that have been excavated. Fifteen at last count, about fifty-five bodies found. The orange dots—ten or eleven there—mark places where I know there are more victims. Just haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “How long you been doing this?” asked Theo.

  “Fifteen years. We started with two or three clandestine graves. I’m sorry to say that now we’re the country with the most clandestine graves in the world.”

  “How many bodies have you recovered?” asked Jack.

  “About five hundred. We pull them from wells, septic tanks, caves, you name it.”

  “Cane fields?” asked Jack, checking the taxi driver’s story.

  “Yes, cane fields, too. You get to notice patterns after a while. Gangs have their own signatures, kind of like serial killers. Those who kill in San Vicente, in the middle of the country, dig circular graves. In the west, it’s rectangular graves. In La Libertad, San Salvador, and San Miguel, we find oval-shaped graves. And the bodies tell a story, too. The victims might be naked or put in the ground facedown. Some are marked with a stake and bottles, with wire tourniquets twisted around their necks. Some have been buried alive—you can tell from their body language. Other gangs dismember their victims and cover them with lime. The most gruesome sites are for members of a competing gang. And of course the majority of them are young.”

  Jack could have told him that Julia’s husband probably deserved what he got, but he let Tovar finish the point he was making.

  “So you ask me about a woman’s husband who disappeared two years ago never to be heard from again. Tell me where you’d like me to start, Mr. Swyteck.”

  Jack took another look at all the colorful dots. “I wish I could. But maybe there’s something else you can help me with.”

  “Please,” said Tovar.

  “There’s a prosecutor I was hoping to meet,” said Jack.

  Chapter 20

  It was Hugo’s first crossing of the Rio Grande. But it was not his first trip to America.

  Hugo was a child when he and his parents fled a twelve-year civil war that had displaced thousands and turned countless Salvadoran families into refugees. Because they reached the United States before 2001, his entire family qualified for El Salvador’s Temporary Protected Status under U.S. immigration law. They settled in Los Angeles, at the intersection of 18th Street and Union Street, the cradle of Barrio 18. Gangs ruled, and on his fourteenth birthday, Hugo tattooed the gang symbol “18” onto his neck. His mother endured more heartache than any mother should bear, and finally his father kicked him out of the house. An arrest on illegal weapons charges sent him bouncing between detention centers and correctional facilities in South Central Los Angeles. There he found God, but not even He could save Hugo from deportation to El Salvador. Hugo wanted no more of gangs, but a promise of loyalty to any Salvadoran gang was a lifelong commitment. With “18” inked onto his neck, he feared that his only options in San Salvador would be a life of violence with “18” or death at the hands of rival gangs, like Mara Salvatrucha, who would happily run a blade across that tattoo and slit his throat. Before he boarded the ICE flight, however, one of the prison ministers in Los Angeles gave him a tip.

  “Go to the Ebenezer Church in the Dina neighborhood of San Salvador,” she’d told Hugo. “There’s a bakery in the back of the church. Ask for a woman named Julia.”

  Hugo found the church. He found Julia working in the bakery. He found an angel from heaven—who was married to the husband from hell.

  “Is it time yet?” his friend asked in the darkness. It was Paco, the last man on the grill at the ransom hotel. The police raid in Cárdenas had left most of the kidnapp
ers dead. Hugo, Paco, and two other hostages had used the confusion to their advantage, disappearing into the night, and in the morning had caught up with another group of northbound migrants.

  Hugo checked the watch he’d taken from the wrist of a dead Zeta. “Almost midnight,” he said.

  A group of about twenty migrants had been waiting on the Mexican side of the border since noon. Their “coyote,” a term that could mean anything from a paid guide to a human smuggler, would lead them across the Rio Grande at the southernmost tip of Texas, west of Brownsville and about sixty miles upriver from where the fourth-largest river system in the United States emptied its snow-fed waters into the Gulf of Mexico.

  “You scared?” asked Paco.

  It was a cool and cloudless night. Hugo’s gaze was fixed on the starlit horizon on the other side of the river, as he kept a sharp eye out for any “stars” that moved at the speed of an ICE patrol helicopter.

  “After all we’ve been through, Paco, you want to know if I’m scared about crossing a river?”

  Paco chuckled, but it broke off nervously as their coyote approached and said, “Time to go.”

  The group gathered at the base of a hill about a hundred yards from the riverbank. Their coyote, a young man named Esteban, did a head count. Five men, eleven women, five children. Two of the children, a boy and his older sister, were traveling on their own, no adult to look after them. Esteban gave final instructions. Anything that can’t get wet goes in the plastic bag. Be aware of the undercurrent; when you step on the bank on the other side, you’ll be about 200 yards down from where you entered on the Mexican side. If you encounter border patrol anywhere after crossing, keep your hands out of your pockets and never run toward them.

  “Is the water polluted?” one of the women asked.

  They were about a hundred miles downriver from Nuevo Laredo, where broken old pipes sent raw sewage flowing like a waterfall—up to five million gallons every day—into the Rio Grande. “I wouldn’t drink it,” said Esteban.