The Janes

by Louisa Luna

  “Yes, because I’m in El Centro for a job.”

  She heard him exhaling in a huff.

  “Well, what the fuck, man. You didn’t think you might want to tell me? I don’t hear from you, you don’t show up to class—”

  “You can charge me,” said Vega.

  “That’s not the point, Vega,” he said, walking quickly, his breath uneven.

  “I had to leave right away for a job,” she said again.

  “Okay,” he said loudly, as if that were just the last straw in the stack. “I get it. I’m telling you, if I left town, I would tell you. That’s it.”

  Vega looked up from her phone. She could hear that he was upset. It was a thing she understood. She remembered him teaching her how to use her knee to dislodge someone’s abdominal organs in their one-on-ones. She pictured his stomach, and what it felt like under her hands. She did not want to hurt his feelings, but she also found no reason to lie.

  “John,” she said. “If you feel like this, we should not do this thing. And if you don’t want to do the classes anymore, or the one-on-ones, that’s fine.”

  He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.

  “That’s it, huh? Five months and that’s it.”

  Vega had not realized she’d been sleeping with him for five months. She’d been taking classes with him for eight months. She knew that because of her credit card statement, and also because she thought about fighting differently now than she used to, how to leverage her strength with her elbows and knees.

  “John, I have to go,” she said. “If you want, you can text me in a couple of weeks, when I might be back.”

  “If I want?” he said. He stopped breathing heavily; Vega assumed he was standing still. “You know what? Fuck you.”

  Then he hung up. Vega pulled the headphones out of her ears and placed them back in the case. She heard it a few more times in her head: Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you. She wished he didn’t feel the way he did, for his sake, but also wasn’t particularly sad or angry herself. This was a thing she was used to.

  She scanned her emails on the phone and then realized a text had come through from McTiernan while she’d been talking to John. She read it and called him, and as they spoke she got dressed, moving quicker and quicker until she was nearly running out the door and pounding on Cap’s with her fist, calling his name.

  * * *

  —

  Cap picked at a fruit salad in a cup as he left a message for Nell that went on too long, a problem of his that she’d pointed out many times before.

  “Hey, Bug, it’s me. Just having some fruit for dinner because, you know, it’s healthy eating here in California. Case is going good. Well, actually, we technically got fired this afternoon, or laid off, because, well, we don’t know why. And Vega, you know, she didn’t take to it, so we’re just going to keep moving it forward. Which may be against some laws, not real sure about that. But I trust her, Bug. I think I trust that she knows what she’s doing. Anyway, thinking about you. Give me a call or a text. Love you.”

  He hung up and ate a piece of pineapple so fresh it made his eyes water, and then in rapid succession, he heard the door to Vega’s room open and slam shut and, before he could get out of his chair, pounding on his own door. Cap ran to open it, and Vega stood there, her hair in a wet strip over her shoulder, making an even darker spot on her black T-shirt. She held her phone in her hand and waved it at Cap.

  “I just got off with McTiernan,” she said, stepping inside.

  “Really? So soon?”

  “He got a call from a guy claiming to be the brother of Jane Two.”

  Cap shut the door behind her and thought about it.

  “How did that happen?”

  “He called the station, asked to file a missing persons report. Guess who got bumped back to missing persons after our little meeting today?”

  “McTiernan,” said Cap.

  “He starts describing his sister to McTiernan, sends a picture.”

  Vega tapped on her phone and showed the screen to Cap. It was a picture of a girl so fresh and youthful it looked like she’d just taken a bath in a stream, her skin glowing, a mouth of slightly crooked teeth smiling widely. She wore a pink T-shirt and was leaning out a window, a washrag draped over the sill. She was alive.

  Vega flipped her phone back around and then scrolled to bring up another picture and showed Cap again. It was the head shot of the body of Jane 2, lips parted, frozen about an inch apart, crooked teeth hidden. But she looked like she had once been the girl in the previous picture. Once she had laughed and leaned out a window. Long before she wrote Vega’s name on a scrap of paper and clutched it in her hand as she died.

  “Looks like her,” Cap agreed. “So why is McTiernan calling you and not bringing it to Otero and the DEA guys?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d explain it when he got here.”

  “He’s coming here?” said Cap.

  “Yeah,” said Vega. “Now. With the brother.”

  “Shit,” said Cap. “You think he’s going off the grid?”

  “Seems that way.”

  They brainstormed about questions to ask the brother, and McTiernan, Cap jotting them down in a small black notebook. Then they waited, Vega checking her phone and also going to the window and peering out through the nearly closed curtains.

  Soon it was completely dark outside, and Vega’s phone began to buzz. She wrote a text with her thumb and went to the window.

  “That them?” said Cap.

  She nodded, and a minute later they heard two sets of footsteps on the landing outside, then a knock. It was McTiernan and a young Latino guy, short and stocky, wearing a baseball hat backward and a Padres sweatshirt. He had the shadow of a goatee on his upper lip and chin. He stood behind McTiernan and glanced around the room nervously, unsure if he’d have to talk or fight.

  McTiernan shook Vega’s hand with both of his as if it had been a long time since he’d seen her last. Then he shook Cap’s.

  “This is Rodrigo Villareal,” he said.

  Rodrigo stepped forward, nodding at Cap and Vega furtively. He said something in Spanish to McTiernan, who answered, “Sí, sí.”

  Vega then introduced herself and Cap in Spanish to Rodrigo, which was about the limit of Cap’s understanding of the language. Rodrigo nodded again, and McTiernan presented one of the chairs at the small table to him. Rodrigo looked at the chair, then at all of them. Cap took it upon himself to sit down first, thought it might make Rodrigo more comfortable.

  It worked. Rodrigo didn’t smile but sat in the chair opposite Cap. Vega sat on the edge of the bed closest to them, and McTiernan stood behind Rodrigo, leaning on the air-conditioning unit.

  “You speak Spanish?” McTiernan said to Cap.

  “No, unfortunately,” said Cap. “I can get a word here or there.”

  “We’ll translate for you,” said McTiernan, nodding to Vega.

  “You want to bring us up to speed?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but let me tell him first,” said McTiernan. He spoke to Rodrigo, who nodded, his eyes alert. McTiernan said to Vega: “He calls, gets patched through to the junior on Missing Persons, guy doesn’t speak Spanish so hands him off to me. He’s not exactly here legally, wants to meet me outside the station, so I did. He shows me the picture, looks like Jane Two, right?”

  “It does,” said Vega. “But there are questions.” Then she turned to Cap and said, “I’m going to tell him we’re not police.” She spoke to Rodrigo, who nodded. Cap picked up the “policía.” Then she asked his sister’s name.

  “Maricel,” he said.

  “Maricel,” Vega repeated, just to hear it again.

  Vega asked how old she was, and how old he was. Fourteen and nineteen were the answers.

  “I’m going to ask him how they go
t here,” said Vega, and then she asked.

  Rodrigo lifted his hat to run his hand over his hair, flat and black, and then he began to speak in a hushed voice, almost a murmur.

  McTiernan translated: “Where they’re from outside Mexico City, there aren’t a lot of jobs; everything’s very expensive. Water comes brown out of the faucets. Schools aren’t safe so he and his sister stopped going. They hear gunfire every night from the gangs. Maricel finds a bullet in one of the pots she cooks rice for the family in.”

  Rodrigo paused, pinched and rubbed his nose. Cap couldn’t tell if he was becoming emotional, preparing or fighting off the urge to cry. Rodrigo sniffed loudly and continued, and so did McTiernan.

  “Their mother was killed last year, shot, standing on the street during a gang drive-by. They get poorer and poorer. They all get thin and sick. A friend from the neighborhood says he knows someone who can get them into the U.S., but only two spots left, two spaces left,” said McTiernan, stumbling over the right words. Rodrigo holds up two fingers. “He says he can get Maricel a job as a housekeeper in a motel. But their father wants him, wants Rodrigo, to go with her to protect her. Also to get a job to send money back so they can send the grandmother someday. So they decide Maricel should go, work, and maybe go to school eventually. Rodrigo goes with her.”

  Rodrigo took his hat off, dropped it on the table. He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, like he was feeling his own temperature. He started speaking again, his voice growing louder.

  “They rode in the trunk of a car with two girls lying on top of them. Four of them in there. They get out when they cross the border, and the guy who brings them across, a white guy, says he only has a job for Maricel and he, Rodrigo, can’t come.”

  Rodrigo paused and pursed his lips, winced and shook his head like he’d been poked with a pin. Then he and McTiernan continued.

  “I knew I shouldn’t leave her. It was a mistake, and I knew it when it happened. Was happening,” McTiernan said, correcting the tense.

  He stopped talking for a minute.

  Vega said something to him then. Cap didn’t understand it, but her tone was blunt and interrogatory. Rodrigo reared his head back, and even McTiernan looked surprised.

  Then Rodrigo stood and kicked his chair back with his leg. He glared at Vega.

  “What the hell did you say?” said Cap to her.

  “I asked what I’m supposed to ask,” said Vega, keeping her eyes on Rodrigo. “I asked him why he left her. If he knew he shouldn’t.”

  Rodrigo pointed at her, said something quick and sharp.

  No one made a move.

  “He says I don’t know anything,” Vega said.

  She and Rodrigo continued to stare at each other until McTiernan broke it up.

  “I’m going to firm up the time line,” he said, then asked Rodrigo a question.

  Rodrigo slowly sat back down and started to speak. McTiernan translated: “We came six months ago. The white guy said he would find me and let me know how she was doing once a month. I got a job as a busboy and he showed up every month around the fifteenth with a picture on his phone and a letter.”

  Rodrigo reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small sheet of lined paper. He handed it to Vega, who read it aloud.

  “ ‘Rigo—I am fine. I have enough food and am working and making money. I will come and visit you soon. Love, Mari.’ ”

  “Ask him if that’s her handwriting,” said Cap eagerly.

  Vega asked.

  Rodrigo glanced at her sideways and said, “Sí.” He kept talking, and McTiernan continued to interpret: “Every month her letter says the same thing in different ways. I ask the white guy when will she come to visit, can I go visit her. He says no, her bosses won’t like it.” He shook his head angrily and knocked on the table with his fist. “I know something is very wrong with all of it, but I am too scared and weak to find her. Last week is the fifteenth. White guy doesn’t come. Each day I know I have to do something. I call the police two days ago but hang up. Today I wake up and say, I am nothing, not even an animal if I don’t do something. So I call.”

  Rodrigo stopped talking. They all sat in silence. Then he pointed up to McTiernan and spoke directly to Vega.

  “He says, ‘This cop tells me I have to meet you. Here I am. Do you know where my sister is?’ ” said McTiernan.

  Cap recognized Vega’s answer: “Quizás.” Maybe.

  He knew she wasn’t trying to be coy; just honest.

  Then she pulled out her phone and tapped on a photo. Cap braced himself for Rodrigo’s response to the Jane 2 photo. He’d delivered a lot of bad news as a cop and as a PI, but someone seeing the body of a dead loved one, especially when he didn’t expect it, was a singular trauma.

  But Rodrigo’s face brightened as he rose a bit out of his chair and pointed at the phone. He spoke a phrase a couple of times to Vega but to Cap’s ear it sounded like a cluster of “a”s and “s”s and “l”s.

  Vega showed the phone to Cap. It was Ben Davis’s driver’s license photo.

  “He says that’s him.”

  * * *

  —

  Mia met them in the parking lot of the ME office. She seemed a little sleepy, her eyes narrow, as she sipped a whipped iced coffee drink out of a long green straw.

  “Aw shit, Mc-T,” she said when she saw McTiernan, and she hugged him. McTiernan smiled warmly but was reserved. “Hey, Alice,” she said. Then to Cap, “Mr. Alice.”

  Cap couldn’t help but laugh, mostly because it was so silly.

  Mia wiggled her fingers in a wave to Rodrigo.

  “Mia Paiva,” she said.

  Rodrigo nodded solemnly and didn’t speak.

  “We need to see Jane Two,” said Vega.

  “That’s fine,” said Mia. “We moved them to the coolers downstairs since we’re done with the autopsies.”

  Mia led them into the lobby, unlocking the front door by keypad code and hand scans. Vega touched her gently on the arm and pulled ahead of the other three.

  “We think we have an ID. Rodrigo might be her brother,” Vega said quietly.

  “No shit,” Mia whispered. “Look, full disclosure, I smoked just the smidgiest amount of weed before I got here, okay?”

  “Can you still do your job effectively?” said Vega, fairly certain of the answer.

  “I can do my job asleep,” Mia said, leading them all down the stairs. “Just wanted you to know.”

  Mia pressed her hand against a pad by a set of double doors, which opened with a suctioned pop. The lights came on by sensor as soon as she walked in. She pumped hand sanitizer from a dispenser on the wall and rubbed her hands together, then pulled two fresh gloves out of a box and put them on. The room was big and cold, with rows of steel drawers, each with its own small keypad, lining the walls on three sides.

  “Does he know what’s coming?” Mia said under her breath to Vega.

  “I don’t know,” said Vega, because she didn’t.

  Mia went to the back wall, looked at her phone, and pointed her finger at the drawers and counted, looking for the right one. She stopped in front of the drawer marked B63 and punched in a four-digit code. There was a mechanical snap, and she pulled the drawer open. There was the gurney and the white polyethylene bag with Jane 2 inside.

  Vega took a step back, behind Mia, to get out of the way. Cap and McTiernan stepped to the sides to do the same, and Rodrigo came forward between them.

  “Next of kin?” Mia said to Rodrigo.

  He shook his head, said he didn’t understand.

  “Relative?” Mia asked in Spanish.

  Rodrigo nodded.

  Mia unzipped the bag from the upper right corner, across to the upper left and down, then peeled the flap open to reveal the body to the breastplate. Vega knew that bodies
looked not much like the people the way you knew them and more like well-fitted costumes.

  Rodrigo got up close and leaned down to Jane 2’s face. A sound came out of him, a cough and a cry combined. He brought his hand to his mouth as if it were someone else’s, continued to make the sound in spite of it.

  Vega never felt a lot of embarrassment—it wasn’t a conscious decision she had made to avoid it; it was just something she didn’t have, like not needing glasses. But the thing she felt while Rodrigo screamed into his hand tightly clasped over his own mouth as if he were taking himself hostage was part embarrassment, not for him, but for herself, for not having somehow stopped the thing that had happened. Also there was a distant, familiar chill chasing up her spine and neck, spreading to a patch on the back of her scalp, the feeling that something was horrifically wrong with a note of panic that it was too late to set it right. She and Cap looked at each other. She knew he felt the same thing.

  Mia stood a few inches away from the body, her hands clasped in front of her. She watched Rodrigo with soft, empathetic eyes but Vega sensed she remained a bit removed, so that she could do her job effectively. Vega liked that.

  Rodrigo eventually stopped making the noise and stood up straight. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he said.

  “Mr. Villareal, are you able to make a positive ID on this body?” said Mia, her voice soft and grave.

  He nodded.

  “It’s my sister. My little sister,” he said, coughing on the word “little.” He continued: “Maricel Villareal.”

  “Okay,” said Mia. Then she gestured to the bag and said, “May I close it?”

  He said yes, and Mia zipped up the bag, slid the drawer in gently. They all stayed in their places, and Rodrigo made his hands into fists, bit his lips but didn’t appear to be crying.

  “I didn’t see the whole thing,” he said, forming his hands into a dome shape, what Vega thought to encompass physically the whole thing. “I was stupid to let her go. I said, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’ ”