Chapter 45
The priest, his expression grim, finished speaking with the emergency police operator and hung up the telephone. He shook his head as he retraced his steps from his chambers behind the altar area to where the gunman was sprawled between the pews. How could this have happened? Even during the worst of the Juárez cartel wars the churches had remained inviolate, and he’d never even heard of violence in any of the city’s houses of worship.
And now, within days of one of the church’s most devoted parishioners being gunned down in cold blood within shouting distance – a man who had selflessly devoted himself to restoring and maintaining the building and its precious artwork – a shooting involving his son inside its hallowed hall?
The priest swung the door open, more troubled by the ominous turn of events than he’d ever been, and made his way toward the destroyed seating, his robe rustling as he rushed along.
A sound from the shadows to his right startled him, and he twisted to see who it was. A vague impression of a man with a disfiguring scar registered in his awareness, and then with a blow to the side of his neck, his knees buckled. A second powerful wallop to his head knocked him unconscious, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.
Lorenzo Aguilar stepped over the inert priest and continued to where Pedro lay. He took in the damage to the wood pews and the blood coagulating on the floor beneath the ex-cop’s skull, and leaned beside him and shook him roughly.
Pedro’s eyelids trembled, but he remained unresponsive. Aguilar straightened and nudged him with the toe of his boot. This time Pedro moaned and opened his eyes. When the assassin came into focus, he closed them again.
“You,” Pedro said.
“Yes. What happened?”
Pedro’s eyes flitted open once more. “We…we found it.”
“You did? Where is it?”
“I…I want the money.”
“Of course. But where is the file?”
“The girl has it.”
“How?”
“Sánchez hid it here, in the church. We figured it out,” Pedro said. The cartel had approached everyone who had worked for the Juárez police department at the time that El Guapo had been arrested, and made them the same offer via Aguilar, their emissary: two million dollars in cash, no questions asked. When that hadn’t yielded any results, the cartel had put all under surveillance. The call to the reporter had triggered the attack on Sánchez. The timing, however, had been premature – they had believed he’d had the file with him, headed to the meeting with her; a mistake that had created considerable aggravation for them.
“Why here?”
“Does it matter?” Pedro said, grimacing in pain. “Help me up. We need to find her.”
“I heard a shot.”
“My gun went off when Sánchez’s son tackled me. Wounded him.”
The assassin took in the blood beside Pedro. “Bad?”
“Bad enough. He’ll need a doctor. That’s how we’ll track them.” He paused. “Give me a hand.”
“I didn’t see them leave.”
“They probably went out the back way. It doesn’t matter. They’ll be at one of the hospitals.”
Aguilar nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. “Makes sense,” he said, and withdrew a pistol from his pocket and a sound suppressor from the other and twisted it into place.
“You can do that in the car. We’re wasting time,” Pedro said, battling to push himself to a sitting position.
Aguilar nodded again. “You’re right,” he said, and fired a single shot between Pedro’s eyes. The big man’s head slammed back against the stone with a wet thwack, and Pedro turned away as the distant caterwaul of approaching sirens echoed through the church. The retired cop was of no further use now that he knew the girl had the file, and there was no reason not to claim the two million for himself as his final payday before retiring to a secluded beach somewhere in the Yucatán.
Aguilar walked over to the priest, the gun held loosely by his side, and regarded him. He was still unconscious, his breathing shallow. Aguilar raised the pistol and drew a bead on the man’s head, and then made a popping sound with his mouth and smiled. He unscrewed the suppressor and slipped the weapon and silencer back into his pocket, and then made for the rear entrance, a small glowing exit sign guiding him as he felt for his cell phone.
Once outside in the alley that ran along the back of the church, his breath quickened at the sight of a wet globule of blood near the street, confirming his quarry had passed that way not long before. He dialed a number as he hurried back to his car. The sirens were growing louder now. When a voice answered, he spoke rapidly.
“I need a list of all public and private hospitals within five kilometers of Sánchez’s house.” He explained what had happened in clipped sentences. When he was done, the voice confirmed and told him it would be sent to his phone in moments.
Aguilar started the engine and powered on a handheld police scanner, listening intently as he waited for the hospital list to hit his phone. The device squawked static and he turned the volume down and then slipped the car into gear and turned it away from the sirens in case some bright lad decided to erect roadblocks once the police confirmed a homicide had been committed. As with most things involving the local cops, it was easy to evade them – their role was usually to mop up after a crime once there was little chance of finding themselves in the line of fire.
Any effort to catch him would be ceremonial and nothing else. So many died every year it was impossible to do anything but toss the bodies into graves and wait for the next one. Aguilar’s cartel paid off half the force for warnings anyway, so even if he was apprehended, it would be labeled an error before he’d been in custody for more than an hour, and he would be back on the street, his weapon returned with a sheepish apology and an outstretched hand for a bonus payment.
Aguilar swung onto another dark street and prowled down the lane as he waited for a transmission on the scanner confirming that the police had arrived at the church. His eyes swept the gloom automatically as he considered his pending good fortune. Two million in untraceable cash would go a long way, even with his bad habits.
His phone pinged to signal a message had arrived, and he thumbed the screen to life and studied the list. Five hospitals. And not a doubt in his mind that they would be at one of them.
From there, it would be child’s play.
Before the night was over, Aguilar would be a rich man, and the reporter would be facedown in a ditch with a bullet in her brain.
Chapter 46
Leah screeched to a stop in front of a brightly lit sign announcing the hospital’s emergency entrance and shut off the engine.
“Are you still with me?” she asked, twisting to look at Uriel.
He didn’t respond, but she could hear the rasp of his breathing, so he was still alive.
She threw her door open and ran for the hospital entrance. Inside, a reception nurse glanced up at her in surprise, and Leah approached with a panicked expression.
“Do you speak English?” Leah asked.
The woman nodded. “Leetle.”
“There’s a man outside. He’s been shot.”
The nurse turned toward a doorway and called out in Spanish, and a pair of orderlies came at a trot, pushing a gurney. A tall man in blue hospital garb with a stethoscope hanging from his neck followed them, moving more deliberately, his face intelligent and basset hound eyes alert.
Leah made to go out to the car with them, but the nurse tried to stop her. “You fill information,” she said.
Leah waved her away. “After I show them where he is.”
She exited the emergency room and hurried to the car, where the men had the back door open and were heaving Uriel onto the gurney. Leah looked down at her shirt and understood why the nurse had seemed shocked when she’d first spotted her – half of it was slathered with Uriel’s blood. She stood back to give the orderlies room to work, and her hand flew to her mouth at the sight of Urie
l, so white his tanned skin could have been alabaster.
The doctor barked instructions at the men as they pushed Uriel back inside, and he took the lead, marching quickly toward the trauma center. When Leah got back, the nurse was waiting with a clipboard and a determined expression.
“I need this,” she said, indicating a form and thrusting a pen at Leah.
“I’ll do my best, but he’s just a friend. I haven’t known him a long time,” Leah said. The woman didn’t seem to understand, so Leah tried some high school Spanish. “Solo un amigo.”
That brought a torrent of Spanish in response, which Leah interpreted as meaning to do the best she could. She nodded as though understanding and moved to a bank of chairs to take a stab at the admission document, which thankfully was in both Spanish and English, no doubt due to the number of patients from north of the border.
The pen hovered over the top of the form, and Leah realized she was shaking so hard she could barely control her hands. She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, but as adrenaline leached from her system, she was fighting an uphill battle. Pedro’s malevolent glare flooded her imagination as she relived the discussion with him, the cool feel of the plastic sheath containing the file against the skin of her back, her shirt concealing it.
Why would the Durango cartel be willing to pay so much for an old arrest record? And kill for it? It made no sense. Maybe they had so much money it didn’t matter to them what they paid? Or perhaps that was just how they did things in the cartel world? She honestly didn’t know.
That Pedro had turned on them had shocked her to her core, but it was his contempt for their efforts to get to the bottom of the disappearances that stung like lime juice in a fresh cut. All the energy, subjecting themselves to danger, the kidnapping…and none of it had been remotely related to the file? Part of her rejected the thought, but she recognized cognitive dissonance in herself and pushed it aside. He’d had no reason to lie, thinking them done. So that meant it really had all been a distraction intended to keep them occupied while he located the file.
Anger swelled through her at the thought of being played like a child, and her hands steadied enough to begin filling out the form. She got as far as Uriel’s name and realized that she had no idea what his birthdate was, much less his address or insurance information. The next of kin box also stopped her – Ana Maria was in jail, and Carla was in critical condition.
Leah rose and walked to the admission desk. “You need to get his wallet. I don’t know this,” Leah said, indicating the blank form.
The nurse frowned at her, and Leah tried again. “Identificacion,” she said with her best Spanish pronunciation, and tapped the clipboard with the pen.
The woman seemed to grasp the essence of what Leah was saying, and nodded. The physician who had accompanied Uriel into the rear of the facility emerged through the double doors and approached Leah.
“How is he?” Leah asked, and then switched to her border Spanglish, feeling foolish with every word. “Como es?”
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor replied in good English. “The wound is ugly, and we’re preparing him for surgery. It looks like it missed his lung, which is lucky, but it bounced around and did significant damage. Shattered some bone.”
“But he’ll live?”
The doctor nodded. “He is young and strong, so he has a good chance.”
“Thank God.”
“How did this happen?” he asked.
“He…we were in a church, and a man tried to rob us. Uriel fought him and got shot.”
“It is a bad idea to argue with a robber. Best to give them your money,” the doctor said.
“Yes, I know. But it all happened so fast…”
“I must return to the operating room. The nurse will notify the authorities. It is mandatory for a bullet wound.”
Leah nodded. “That’s fine. Can you tell her that she needs to get his information from his wallet? I’m not sure she understood,” Leah said, indicating the nurse.
The doctor rattled off some words, and the nurse nodded comprehension. He eyed Leah and frowned. “It will be several hours, at least. You might wish to clean up,” he said, looking at the rust-colored blood staining her shirt.
“Oh, right. Yes, I will. Thank you.”
“Very well. And you will be required to wait for the police so you can give them a report.”
“I know. I plan to.”
The doctor retreated into the rear of the hospital, leaving Leah to consider how to get a half gallon of blood off her shirt in a public restroom. She looked to the nurse, pointed at the blood, and made hand washing gestures. The woman nodded and indicated a bathroom to her right, and then returned to her phone call – probably the police, Leah realized.
The thought of another round of chatting with Juárez’s finest wasn’t appealing, but she understood it was necessary. They would need to charge Pedro for trying to kill them, and investigate his connection to his ex-partner’s murder. It was a bad situation all around, except perhaps for Ana Maria, whose name would be cleared based on the new information and the obvious complicity of Pedro in her father’s death – if not directly, at least materially enough to be able to provide an explanation for it that didn’t involve Ana Maria conspiring to do him in for gain.
Leah entered the restroom and confronted her reflection in the mirror with horror. She looked like an outtake from a low-budget horror film: spackled with blood, her face streaked with it, her blue shirt almost unrecognizable. She quickly pulled the garment over her head and twisted the faucet on, filling the sink with warm water, and then dumped handfuls of liquid soap into it and immersed the shirt. The water turned red as a ruby, and she scrubbed until her fingers were sore before draining the sink and rinsing for a good five minutes.
The result wasn’t stellar, but it was better than the Halloween costume she’d been wearing. After holding the damp shirt against her chest and verifying most of the blood was flushed away, she walked to the hand dryer and held the shirt beneath the high-velocity stream of air, grateful that she wasn’t going to have to wear a wet shirt for the hours to come.
Her eye caught the blue of the plastic envelope at her back, and she removed it and slid the file free. Inside the folder were two pages, crinkly with age – one with a photograph of El Guapo and his vital statistics, the second with his fingerprints and a description of the crime he was charged with, all handwritten in blue ink. Nothing about them looked particularly noteworthy, but Leah wasn’t equipped to devote the attention to the file it was due while washing away Uriel’s lifeblood; she would try to figure out why it was worth killing for later, in the safety of her office.
She replaced the folder into the sheath and slid it back into the waistband of her jeans, and then washed the remaining blood from her face and the tips of her hair, donned the shirt, and inspected herself in the mirror. If she’d looked much worse, she couldn’t remember when – but then again she wasn’t lying on an operating table with machines breathing for her, so all in all, it wasn’t so bad.
Leah straightened her top and took a final glance at herself, and then moved to the door and pulled it open. She walked out of the restroom and back down the corridor to the emergency room waiting area, and then froze when she spotted a man enter through the double glass doors at the far end of the room – a man whose face she recognized from outside the bank, the scar bisecting his cheek glowing in the harsh fluorescent glare.
Chapter 47
Leah’s heart jackhammered at the sight of the man, and she instantly connected him with the robbery of Uriel’s inheritance from her trunk. There was no chance his appearance at the hospital could have been coincidental – and judging by his body language as he approached the admissions desk, his purpose there wasn’t positive for either Uriel or her.
She backed down the hall, eyes locked on him, and nearly knocked over a cart stacked with bedpans. Cursing her clumsiness, she walked quickly to a junction in the hallway an
d turned the corner, intent on getting clear of the hospital before the nurse told scarface where she’d gone. Leah was painfully aware she only had seconds before he came after her, and she took off at a run once out of sight of the bathroom, determined to put as much distance as possible between them while she could.
Another turn, and she found herself face-to-face with three orderlies, who looked mystified at her presence. One of them motioned to her and rattled off something in Spanish, and Leah shrugged and said, “No habla.” The men exchanged glances, and one of the others pointed down the hall and said something that Leah guessed meant the area was restricted. She nodded as though understanding and gestured behind the men at where a sign with a radiation hazard icon hung over a door. They stepped aside and she took off at a sprint, continuing past the X-ray area until she arrived at another junction. A glance to the right yielded a dead end with a crash cart charging by the wall, so she jogged left and found herself at a steel door with an exit sign over it.
Leah pushed the door open and found herself outside the hospital in an employee parking lot at the rear of the building. She looked around in the dark, and then ran to the entrance gate, where a security guard was dozing in a booth. Leah slowed lest her footfalls wake the man, and then a cry from the exit door echoed through the night and the sound of running steps raced toward her.
She sprinted through the gate and down the street, throwing caution to the wind now that her pursuers had seen her, and pushed herself as hard as her legs would carry her. She reached the end of the block and squinted in the dim light. Ahead was the well-lit main street, where a running American woman would attract all the wrong kind of attention. To her right was the hospital, and to the left rose the hulking outlines of darkened rooftops stretching as far as she could see.
Leah made her choice and raced toward the buildings, her thighs pumping rhythmically. A painful stitch beneath her right rib protested the unfamiliar exertion. She reached the first of the structures and her heart sank – the white exterior of the deserted row house was covered with graffiti, the windows were broken out, and the front door was nothing more than a slab of plywood held shut with a chain and a padlock.
A Girl Apart Page 24