She knew instantly where she was. As part of her research on the disappearances, she’d read about whole neighborhoods that had been abandoned by residents who’d picked up their belongings and walked away from their homes, the danger from daily gang murders worse than living in a war zone. At one point before the cartel wars the population of Juárez had been over a million, but nearly half that number had left in the mass exodus from a city on the brink.
Leah continued running along the façades, the windows black as pitch, some of the doorways yawning wide, the doors kicked in, the openings like screaming mouths in the night. She was nearing the end of the first block of dwellings when the sound of an engine approached from the area by the hospital, and then headlights played across the buildings as a vehicle turned onto the street.
She ducked down a walkway and made it to the empty doorway moments before the headlight beams swept past the house. Leah gasped, her chest heaving as she edged deeper into the empty home, the stench of stale urine almost overpowering – reminding her that whoever was chasing her might not be the only predators in the abandoned community. She stopped at what had once been a small living room and listened for the sound of the vehicle pulling past, but instead heard car doors slam outside. A second engine, deeper in tone, drew up, and more doors opened, signaling that she was out of options.
Leah tore through the house into the small backyard, separated from the neighbor by a four-foot cement wall, and pulled herself over it, grunting from the effort. Once in that yard she continued to the next and did the same. Pausing, she peered at an area of back wall that had collapsed and made for it without hesitation.
Leah climbed over the rubble and found herself in another yard that backed onto the row she’d just navigated through. She crept soundlessly to the two-story row house and stared into the darkened interior, where the shattered glass of the sliding back door was scattered across a cement rear porch. Inside, she cocked her head and listened, and when she didn’t hear anything, she dared a peek around the corner, back at the yard through which she’d just come.
Two men, one with an assault rifle, the other with a pistol, were climbing through the gap in the wall. Leah’s heart skipped as her worst fears were confirmed – these men meant to kill her, and any hope she’d had of losing them in the maze of abandoned homes was fantasy. She was playing a losing game, outnumbered and on her pursuers’ home turf, and it was only a matter of time until they found her.
The realization galvanized her, and she ran to the front of the house, trying to make as little noise as possible, but the debris beneath her feet crunched with every step. Outside she ran four houses down and darted inside; staying ahead of her pursuers was her only chance until help could arrive.
But help from where?
Leah felt for her cell in her back pocket, and Montalbán’s card fell to the ground when she pulled the phone free. She scooped it up and dialed the cell number on it, praying he would answer.
“Montalbán.”
“Inspector, this is Leah Mason. I’m in trouble,” she whispered.
“What? What do you mean? Are you in Juárez?”
“Yes.”
“I told you to leave and never come back. I can’t help you if the mayor–”
“It’s not him. It’s the Durango cartel. They’re chasing me. They have guns.”
A pause. “Where are you?”
“I’m…I’m hiding in a deserted bunch of houses behind the Hospital Ascension.”
“Hiding?”
“They’re going door-to-door. They want to kill me.”
“I know the area you’re in.”
“I can send you a precise location using the map on my phone.”
“Do so. But I can’t promise anything.”
“They’re going to kill me if you don’t do something,” she hissed, and then stopped talking at the crunch of broken glass beneath boots on the street outside. She hung up and sent a location marker to Montalbán’s phone, and then switched her cell to silent.
More footsteps sounded outside from the front walkway. If the killers were both in back and in front, that left her no alternatives. She eyed the stairway leading up into darkness, blinked away the sweat, and made for the stairs. Certain death awaited her on the ground floor, leaving the unknown above the only possible reprieve from the inevitable.
Chapter 48
Leah took the steps two at a time, past stairwell walls sprayed with gang tags, thankful that there was no debris underfoot here to give her away. When she reached the upper landing, she hesitated. The space was so small it was claustrophobic, and the faint moonlight filtering through the empty rooms illuminated the upstairs with a ghostly glow. She edged to the rear bedroom and paused at the doorway; the room had served as a shooting gallery or crack house in the not too distant past, judging by the tiny vials and used syringes littering the floor.
Leah withdrew and continued along the hall past a bathroom to a laundry area. She looked inside the space and spotted a panel door on the other end hanging from broken hinges – plastic or frosted glass, judging by the light seeping through. A scrape from downstairs provided the necessary motivation to drive her across the room, and she inched the door open, wincing at the faint groan it made.
Leah stepped outside into open air, where a rusted water heater was mounted beside steel rungs that ascended the stucco wall to the roof. Leah gazed up, hating the vertigo that had plagued her throughout her life, and frowned at what she knew she had to do. She pulled the door closed behind her, crossed to the rungs, and pulled herself upward, refusing to look down as she gripped the metal handholds for dear life.
Once on the roof, she spotted the reason for the ladder: a black plastic Rotoplast water cistern, the plumbing for which would require periodic maintenance. She scanned the expanse of connected roofs, the narrow homes abutting against each other, and muttered a thanks to whoever had designed the community so she could move from house to house without having to leap across gaps.
Leah was under no illusion that the cartel killers would give up on their search; but if she could stay ahead of them long enough for Montalbán to send backup, she might survive the night. If they believed she was making her way along the row of houses using the yards, that might buy her the time she needed.
She took soundless steps toward the next home’s roof, wary of telegraphing her presence to the men below with her footsteps. When she reached it, she paused to listen, craning her neck and closing her eyes, staying well away from the back edge of the roof. Hearing nothing, she continued to the next house and picked up her pace as she grew more confident.
When her boot caught on an uneven slab remnant, she was caught completely by surprise. She pitched forward with a cry and landed heavily, breaking her fall only at the last moment with her hands. She grimaced at the pain shooting from her ankle and the skin of her palms shredding against the rough surface, and her breath hissed from between gritted teeth. She lay still for a moment, stunned, blinking away tears of agony and hopelessness. The rooftop escape that only seconds before had seemed possible was now replaced by dread.
Leah forced herself to her knees and looked down at her hands, which were now thankfully numb, and shook her head as beads of blood bubbled from the flayed skin. Bad as the damage might be, she was still alive, but if she lay on the rooftop waiting for the gunmen to figure out where she was, her life expectancy would be measured in seconds.
Back on her feet, she limped along more cautiously, every step causing a lance of pain to shriek from her swelling ankle. She soldiered on toward the far edge of the housing block, not knowing what she would do once she reached it but afraid not to continue on her course. She was nearing the edge when gunfire exploded behind her, signaling that her flight to safety had just ended. Divots of cement tore from around her and she threw herself to the side, hitting the roof hard as rounds snapped past her head.
More gunfire shredded the area behind her, and then a male voice cried out
from below and the shooting paused. Leah used the break to drag herself toward the cement base of a cistern two meters in front of her and felt along the bottom for the pipes that would lead her to the ladder that descended below – assuming all the homes were the same floor plan, which seemed like a safe bet given the interiors.
She spotted a gap in the roof and was crawling to the edge when the shooting started again; this time slugs slammed into the cistern by her shoulder. She froze in the deafening gunfire, tears streaming from her eyes as she clenched them shut, the realization that she was about to die overwhelming her.
A different gun opened up behind her, the boom deeper than the staccato chatter of the assault rifle, and a scream pierced the night, which exploded moments later with the heavy thwack of blades beating at the air above. Leah didn’t dare roll over or move lest she draw more fire, but when there was no more shooting, she chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw the black outline of a helicopter with a gunman in full combat gear manning a machine gun at the open door.
Gunfire rattled from the street below, and she could make out answering volleys of higher pitched weapons on full automatic. She dog crawled to the edge of the roof to see the darkness punctuated with orange muzzle blossoms. A firefight was playing out between a cluster of police trucks and the cartel gunmen sheltered in the ruins of the homes. More shooting echoed from the far side of the roof, and she dragged herself over to it in time to see one of the two cartel cars explode when a police grenade detonated beneath it, flipping the rear section into the air before the gas tank caught in a blinding flare.
She winced at the whump and her ears rang from the blast, and then more gunfire volleyed back and forth. The cartel shooters were badly outnumbered by the police that kept rolling onto the street, headlights extinguished and machine guns blazing at the dwellings. Leah saw a figure dash from one of the doorways toward the intact car down the way, and thought she could make out the scar on the man’s face when shooting erupted from another doorway, arresting his progress. He jerked like a marionette from multiple hits and fell backward, his pistol firing impotently into the darkness as he collapsed.
A minute more of gunfire ravaged the structures around her and then the night fell silent except for the helicopter. A blinding spotlight from the aircraft blinked on and roved over the street, probing the doorways as teams of police determinedly worked their way from building to building, their faces hidden by black balaclavas and assault rifles at the ready. She held still, fearful of being mistaken for cartel by the police, and waited until running boots neared along the roof behind her. A warning in Spanish sounded out from ten meters away, and she rolled slowly onto her back, her glasses askew, hands over her head, thankful that Montalbán had been able to rally help in time to save her.
A trio of masked police materialized from the darkness, their rifles trained on her. Leah had never been so happy to be held at gunpoint in her life. One of the men gave the others a hand signal and the one on the far left approached her cautiously. After confirming she didn’t have a weapon, he keyed a mic affixed to the shoulder of his uniform and murmured into it. A moment went by, and then he reached out with a gloved hand to help her up, his companions now sweeping the roof with their rifles in search of any further threats, the helicopter’s spotlight moving from the street below and stopping where Leah sat, sobbing with relief, hardly able to believe she was still alive.
Chapter 49
Leah was sitting in the back of an ambulance when Montalbán arrived, his perpetual scowl firmly in place. He looked in on her, noting the bandages on her hands.
“You made it,” he said.
“Barely. Thank you for sending the cavalry.”
“You’re fortunate that we had one of our drills running – we conduct them periodically in conjunction with the military since the cartel wars.” He stepped away and had a discussion with the assault force commander, and when he returned, his frown lines had deepened to canyons. “Six gunmen in all. You’re lucky to be breathing.”
“So I keep hearing.”
He shook his head. “If you haven’t figured that out by now, I don’t know what to say.”
“Did you arrest Pedro? I hate to think he escaped,” Leah asked.
“Why would I arrest a dead man?”
“What?”
Montalbán nodded grimly. “One shot to the head, execution style. I have no doubt that ballistics will confirm the bullet came from one of the cartel weapons.”
“The priest…”
“Will have a bad headache, but he’s alive. For the record, he confirmed your story about Pedro pulling a gun on you and Sánchez struggling with him.”
“Because it’s the truth,” she said simply.
“Maybe. But the question of why he did so remains.”
“It has to be the investigation I’m working on.”
“An ex-policeman threatens you with a gun in a church, at night, less than a block from where his ex-partner was shot to death, and the best you can do is that it’s because of a story?”
“It is.”
“That sounds like it’s a hell of a story.”
“We’ll see,” Leah said evasively.
Montalbán shook his head again. “I’ve about had it with you acting like everything is a state secret. We have six dead cartel killers here, all of whom were trying to get you. Because of some journalistic investigation? Please.”
Leah looked away. “Again, thank you for saving my life.”
“I wish I could say it was my pleasure.”
She turned back and eyed him skeptically. “Still convinced Uriel’s sister killed Sánchez?”
“That is none of your affair.”
“It’s pretty obvious that Pedro and the cartel were working together, isn’t it? They killed him, not Ana Maria.”
“Why would they shoot Pedro if they were in on it?”
“To shut him up. Or because of a double cross. Who knows why cartels kill cops?”
Montalbán’s jaw tensed almost imperceptibly. “You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”
“Right now? I have no skin left on my hands, every bone in my body hurts, and I came within a nanosecond of getting shot. So clever?” She paused. “No. Not really.”
“You know more than you’re letting on.”
“I wish I was as confident of my abilities as you are.”
“I’m going to need to take you into the station for a statement.”
“Six dead gunmen aren’t self-explanatory enough? The cartel wants me dead because of an article I’m working on. I’d think that was as clear as anything could be.”
“What’s the story about?”
“All I can say is it’s the real reason Sánchez was murdered. By the cartel, not Ana Maria.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I can’t tell you anything more until I fact check what I know. But I will say that if you’re still holding Ana Maria when the article comes out, you’re going to look either completely incompetent or crooked.”
“We’re leaving,” Montalbán said. Leah stepped out of the ambulance, and one of the paramedics helped her until she was steady. They walked toward Montalbán’s car, and he slowed at a corpse in a black body bag. A tech stood nearby and he said something to the man. The technician unzipped the top portion of the bag, revealing Aguilar’s scarred features, menacing even in death.
“He’s a known cartel hit man. Responsible for at least fifty deaths,” Montalbán said. “A long way from home.”
Leah shuddered and turned away. Montalbán stepped closer to her and spoke softly. “You know they’re never going to stop, don’t you? They can reach you anywhere. You’ll never be safe.”
“Once the story breaks, I will be,” she countered.
“You really believe that?”
“At that point I’m incidental.”
“Keep telling yourself that. These scum take things personally.”
They got into his car
and he drove away. “Your boyfriend is still in surgery. I checked.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“I put a couple of officers there just in case they go after him, too.” Leah didn’t say anything. Montalbán checked the time. “You know I can keep you at the station all night if I want.”
“Why would you do that? Give the cartel another bite at the apple?”
“Make your life miserable.”
“But why? Because I solved your murder for you, and it turned out your operating theory was garbage? You don’t strike me as a petty man. So why behave like one?”
“You haven’t solved anything.”
“What do you think happens to your case when the defense attorney introduces six cartel killers and the victim’s ex-partner dead a block from the house? You really believe any prosecutor is going to want to go up against that?”
“My job is to get to the bottom of things, and that’s what I’m going to do. I understand you think you just tied everything up with a bow, but there’s no proof that she wasn’t involved in her father’s death, and the circumstantial evidence–”
“Just got flushed down the toilet, and we both know it.” She frowned. “Are you really going to keep me up all night just to get even?”
He gave her a sidelong glance that was anything but reassuring.
“I haven’t decided.”
Chapter 50
After giving her statement to Montalbán at the station, Leah took a taxi to the hospital and waited until Uriel was out of surgery and the physician had confirmed that he was going to make it. By the time she made it back to her car, it was three a.m., and she sat in the lot, eyes stinging, and read the two-page police report from thirty years earlier in the hopes it would give up its secrets. Unfortunately, her command of Spanish and the limited amount of information on it didn’t afford any revelations, and when she started her car, she knew little more than before.
A Girl Apart Page 25