by Mark Pryor
“Ha! My wife would kill me.”
“So it may not be prostitutes, but you think Señor Barsetti is perhaps being indiscreet, either with his choice of partner or in where he’s taking her.”
“That’s another thing,” Garcia said. “If it’s not a her, Señora Figueroa might not like it. That’s a different type of deception.”
“All the more reason to talk to him, and the people he works with.” And maybe have Tom do a little covert surveillance.
The address written on the inside of the envelope didn’t take them to a hotel. Instead it led them into an industrial pocket southwest of Barcelona, near the busy port. Hugo looked out of the passenger window as the stone buildings and residential streets flattened out into the bland boulevards and grimy square units that were the nuts and bolts of the city, the gritty but necessary connectors that kept the shops full and the tourists fed.
Garcia piloted the car, with only Hugo for company. Behind them, two more police cars ferried eight police officers for backup, and the farther away from the city they got, the happier Hugo was they were there. Tom had protested mightily at being excluded from the expedition, but Garcia had insisted that until they knew what was awaiting them, the Barcelona police would go alone, with Hugo as the only exception.
Claudia had pouted a little, too. The journalist in her felt aggrieved that she’d taken risks for the investigation and been rewarded with a seat on the bench, far from the action. Hugo had felt worse about leaving her behind than he did about Tom’s relegation. After all, she wasn’t the one likely to pull some stunt to land them all in hot water. She really would, if asked, have trailed behind the armed police and kept her role to a watching one only.
As it was, Hugo had sold Tom on his replacement mission, unashamedly tapping into his friend’s more lascivious side.
“We think he’s having an affair,” Hugo said. “We’d like to know who with.”
“You want me to follow the guy around until he meets his dame. I’m not some scrubby private eye, you know.”
“True, but you might get to photograph him with a beautiful lady in some compromising positions.”
“Well, since you put it that way,” Tom mused.
“Claudia, you want to go with him?” Hugo knew Tom had a crush on her, and an assignment like this would be irresistible to him. And the pair of them, Hugo knew, loved to flirt with each other when he was around, as if the competition was not for his affections but for his jealousy.
She shrugged. “Sure. He’s more fun than you anyway.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Hugo. But they both knew she wasn’t there just to watch for Barsetti, but to keep an eye on Tom himself.
The three police cars pulled up to the curb beside a chain-link fence, which separated them from an acre of storage units, rows of little white garages all sporting wide, blue roll-up doors.
“This is the address,” Garcia said. He picked up the radio handset and said something in Spanish.
“Makes sense,” Hugo said. He pointed ahead. “There’s the entrance, I’d bet the key card is to get onto the property, and the key is for a padlock on a specific unit.”
“The number written in the envelope was one seventeen, so we’ll look for that one. Also, I think we should go in on foot,” Garcia said. “Could be little alleys and walkways in there, we can be stealthier and more thorough without the vehicles.”
“Agreed.”
They walked forty yards to the entrance, and Garcia swiped the card. The front gate clanked and rattled its way open, and the men slipped inside one by one, each scanning the facility. The shuttered doors of the storage units were like closed eyes, giving nothing away, and for a moment everyone stood silent, watching and listening. No people, no signs of movement or life whatsoever.
“Let’s get on with it,” Garcia muttered.
“Agreed,” Hugo said. “This way.”
Garcia put a hand on his arm. “Let us go first. Remember, we were talking about traps earlier.”
Hugo nodded. “I don’t think this is one, but point taken.”
“Bueno.” Garcia spoke to two officers, gesturing at Hugo. The men moved closer to the American.
“Babysitters?” Hugo asked.
“You’re the brains of this operation,” Garcia said with a smile. “We don’t want to see them splattered on the concrete.”
“Nicely put.” The truth, Hugo suspected, also had a little to do with not letting an American command Spanish police or be seen by junior officers to be leading an important and potentially dangerous operation.
“Thank you.” Garcia waved an arm and took lead on the squad as it moved along the front of the storage units. Hugo saw that the numbers were written along the side of each one, the first being 001. The squad of men moved fast but quietly, Hugo swept along in the middle of them in a way that told him they were very good at their job. The two men behind him, making up the tail end of the group, scuttled sideways, their eyes glued on where they’d come from, in case danger rose up from behind.
They rounded the last unit and started down the row behind it, Hugo’s heart beating faster as they moved past the numbers, 109 . . . 110 . . . 111 . . . 112 . . . When they reached unit 115, Garcia raised an arm and the officers stopped as one. He pointed at two men, and they trotted ahead, past 117, putting two units between them and the target.
From thirty feet away, Hugo studied the padlock that clamped the roll-up door to a metal hook in the concrete. It looked normal enough, but he couldn’t be sure until he was in front of it. He fished in his pocket for the key.
“I should take that,” Garcia said, his hand out. Hugo gave it to him, and Garcia immediately moved to the unit’s door, knelt, and tried the key in the lock. He looked over and nodded, then removed the padlock entirely. The police officers closed in on the storage unit, and Garcia stood back as two of them knelt and pointed their semiautomatic weapons at the metal door. One other grabbed the handle that would roll the door up, and he counted down from three, silently, using only the fingers on his left hand.
When he hit “1,” the officer stood and flung the door up. With a screech of metal, the unit’s eye blinked open. Hugo couldn’t see inside, but he knew immediately something was wrong: none of the police officers had moved. At least two of them should have darted into the space to clear it, but instead they all just stood there, staring. Even Garcia just stood there, and after a few seconds, the gun he’d leveled at the entrance dropped down to his side, as if any desire for self-protection had wilted away.
Hugo started toward them. His movement caught Garcia’s attention, and the chief inspector seemed to drag his eyes away from the space to look at Hugo. His face was white and his eyes entirely blank, as if unable to process what he’d seen. When Hugo got to the unit, he looked inside and felt his stomach lurch. His first reaction was to run in there, to see if it was her, if it was Amy. It took every ounce of professionalism and self-control to hold his ground, but he knew he’d potentially screwed up the Castañeda crime scene and he simply couldn’t do that again, no matter what. He slowed his breathing until he felt he could speak, then turned to Garcia.
“No one goes in here. Call a crime-scene unit. Have them process the place as soon as possible.”
Garcia waved an arm toward the open space. “Shouldn’t we . . . I mean, maybe she’s not . . .”
“She’s dead, Bartoli. She’s dead.” Hugo stood in front of Garcia, wanting to block out the image so the policeman could concentrate on his job. “We need to get who did this, so get the crime-scene people here. And have your men scour this place for surveillance cameras and tell them to seize all of the footage, no matter how far back it goes.”
“Sí, sí.” His voice was a whisper. “Is it her? Is it your friend’s daughter?”
Hugo felt the bile rise in his throat and again took a few breaths to calm himself. “I don’t know. I can’t be sure without seeing her face. But even if it’s not Amy, we need to do this righ
t, because someone lost a daughter today.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hugo paced outside the yellow crime-scene tape. The girl’s face had been covered, so he didn’t know who she was, but a sickness weighed heavy in his stomach at the fear that the naked body on the concrete floor was that of Amy Dreiss.
Whoever she was, she’d died horribly. Her killer, or killers, looked to have laid her out on plastic sheeting and butchered her in a gruesome reprise of the murder of Rubén Castañeda. The girl lay face down, and her head had been wrapped in the plastic sheeting, possibly to suffocate her or perhaps to disguise her for a little while or maybe just to keep her quiet during the cutting. A spear jutted out of her back, a short banderilla, just like before.
The on-call medical examiner was old and crotchety, barking instructions to the patrol officers and his assistant from the moment he arrived. Garcia had warned Hugo that Tomás Miguel Chavez was the short straw when it came to medical examiners—he was thorough enough but agonizingly slow and unpleasant to deal with. He looked ridiculous, too, Hugo thought, with a short, stocky body, a large bald head, and a bushy beard that he contained in a sterile blue beard cover. He took an age to put on his scrubs, seeming to relish the frustration of the officers watching and waiting for him, like a prima donna preening on stage. When he finally entered the crime scene, he insisted everyone, police included, stay outside the tape. He then spent almost a good twenty minutes in the storage unit, Hugo chaffing at the delay, the theatrics. When Chavez came out to talk to Chief Inspector Garcia, Hugo’s temper was primed, and he couldn’t help but to walk over and join them.
“¿Y quién es él?” snapped Chavez.
“Es un colega estadounidense, Hugo Marston.”
“Yo no le rindo informes a los estadounidenses, dígale que se retire.”
“I’m not asking you to report to him,” Garcia said in English. “You are reporting to me, Doctor Chavez, and you and I both know that you speak English fluently, so doing so will be no hardship.” Garcia wagged a finger. “Please remember that in your offices you are in charge, but out here I decide who’s involved in the investigation, not you.”
The ME drew himself up to his full height, which was roughly Hugo’s shoulder, and glared at both men. “I do not appreciate interference from outsiders, particularly Americans.”
“What’s your problem with Americans?” Hugo asked.
“You know best. Always. About everything. I have been doing this job for thirty years and have no intention of suddenly changing the way I package evidence or determine the cause of death of a murder victim because you are here.”
Hugo shook his head in bewilderment. “No one’s asking you to do any of that.”
“Then why are you here?”
Hugo put his face close to the doctor’s. “Because the young lady in there might be a friend of mine. Because even if that’s not her, she’s still missing and I’m trying to find her before . . . before that does happen to her. And yeah, she’s an American too, so if that means you have to wear an extra pair of gloves or chin strap so you don’t get infected, then I suggest you fucking do just that. In the meantime, I have no interest in your petty dislike of me or anyone else, so how about you act like a professional and do your goddam job.”
Garcia tugged on Hugo’s sleeve, pulling him away. “Enough, that’s not helping.”
“I don’t like pettiness and I don’t like bullies,” Hugo said. “That jackass is both.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Garcia said. “But I’m not refereeing a boxing match between two stubborn men, even if one is a . . . whatever you said. Understood?”
“Tell him the same thing.”
“Bueno, I will. Now, take a deep breath and let me do the talking.”
“In English, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” Garcia said with a tight smile. “But he might.”
Hugo lingered behind Garcia, and even though Doctor Chavez deigned to speak in English, he pretended that Hugo wasn’t there.
“She was naked and I didn’t see any clothes in there. No indication of her name, and obviously I can’t tell her nationality. I also can’t tell you how she died. Possibly suffocated. As you may have noticed, her body was cut up by someone with a little medical knowledge.” Chavez shrugged. “Or someone with a lot of medical knowledge, trying to hide that fact. Anyway, whoever it was took her kidneys.”
“Before or after death?”
“Possibly during. There was a lot of blood in there, so I am certain it was as she died, or immediately after.”
“If it’s not our missing kidnap victim, do you think you will be able to identify her?” Garcia asked.
“I have sent my assistant back to headquarters. He has her fingerprints and will run them first thing, if she has any sort of criminal record, we will identify her.”
“And if not?” Hugo said.
“Then we will think of something else,” Chavez snapped. “We have done this before, you know.”
“Always with such charm and professionalism?” Hugo growled.
“And time of death?” Garcia said hurriedly.
“I am not sure yet. I would estimate twenty-four hours, but I cannot be precise right now.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Garcia said. “We appreciate the information.”
Chavez didn’t reply, just turned and walked to his van.
Hugo turned to Garcia. “Let me see her face. That’s all I ask.”
“When the photographer and crime-scene team is finished,” Garcia said.
Hugo ground his hands in his pockets as he waited. Several times he started to do a lap of the storage units to keep himself busy, but each time he turned back, not wanting to be too far away when the crime-scene team finished. It was only ten minutes, but it felt like an hour.
“You can go in,” Garcia said. “You have gloves?”
“Yes.”
“Please touch only the plastic sheeting. My colleague here will record your entry on video, and the identification, to ensure no allegation of contamination can be made.”
Hugo nodded and, after a moment’s hesitation to steel himself, walked into the storage unit. The woman’s body lay on her plastic shroud still. Her blood pooled in the wrinkles of the material, mini trenches and lakes of dark liquid, darker than the thin streaks that crisscrossed the rest of the sheeting like tendrils. He stood at her head and pulled on his surgical gloves, the familiar clamminess somehow a comfort in the moment.
He knelt and took a steadying breath, ignoring the video camera catching his every move. Dr. Chavez had unwrapped her head to examine her, but he draped the plastic back over her to leave the crime scene as close as he could to how he’d found it. With trembling fingers, Hugo pulled at the sheeting, but it caught and didn’t come off. He realized he was holding his breath and exhaled slowly. When he inhaled again, the smell of her blood reached his nostrils, another flashback to the body of Rubén Castañeda, and a hundred other murders in his past. He breathed through his mouth and lifted the girl’s head to uncover it, fighting against the stiffness in her neck, death’s grip resisting his deferential touch.
He adjusted his position and tugged at a corner of the plastic sheet that had caught under her face. Wisps of brown hair, matching Amy’s, showed through the thin material, poking out from under it. Whoever did this had wrapped the plastic tight on purpose, not merely to cover her up. That itself told Hugo it was no act of remorse, that the monster who’d killed and opened up his victim had no regrets at all, and quite possibly no soul.
With a final tug, the plastic mask slid from her head and Hugo pulled it away, at the same time turning her head to see her face. His heart lurched at the sight of the girl’s pale features, drained of blood and life, her waxen lips, and the half-closed eyes that stared at him, dull and empty. He felt the sob before it hit him, and he sat back on his haunches, unable to control the tears that flowed, tears of sorrow, of disgust, and wretched tear
s of relief that the poor dead girl in front of him wasn’t their beloved Amy.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As gently as he could, Hugo loosely placed the plastic over the dead woman’s head. He stood slowly, more aware now of the smell of her body that had been lying open to the elements, to the flies that had started to collect in the unit, buzzing over her.
“Señor,” the videographer spoke, his English slow and painful. “El jefe, my boss, he said you have to see that.” He was pointing to the wall, but with the light pouring in, with his eyes still blurred from tears, all Hugo could see were shadows.
“That, there.” The man was pointing again. “I have pictures, but he wants you to see it.”
Hugo squinted, and slowly the drawing on the wall came into focus. It was a picture in blood, the same mean streaks they’d seen at Castañeda’s apartment, but this time the picture was complete, fully formed. The top two lines were curved this time, not straight, twin crescents that descended into what he’d previously thought was a heart. Except it wasn’t, he’d been wrong, because beneath those curved lines was the face of an animal.
“A bull’s head,” Hugo whispered to himself. “Those were horns.” He looked back at the body, the banderilla projecting from it, and wondered if that’s what the line was. Or maybe . . . ? He turned to the videographer. “That line through the head. Does it look like anything to you?”
The man just shrugged, the flickering of his eyes telling Hugo he probably didn’t even understand the question. Hugo took out his phone and took several pictures of the mural, then backed out of the unit, stealing one more glance at the still form of the dead girl.
Outside, he found Garcia. “It’s not Amy, but that picture in there . . .”
“A bull.” Garcia shrugged. “I don’t know what it means, do you?”
“No, but look at this.” Hugo pulled out his phone and both men looked at the photos he’d taken. “The line through its head.”
“A protest against bullfighting?”