Total Victim Theory

by Ian Ballard

  Silva's tone is solemn. “I would bet he watched each of them draw his last breath.”

  I rub at the scar on my right hand. Nervous habit. “Each of them, except the girl. She was still alive when the villager found her, right?”

  “Right,” says Silva. “Sounds like the villager interrupted him and scared him off—which would explain why he broke protocol and didn't bury them.”

  “And that could also suggest a reason for taking the girl's body back,” I suggest.

  “How so?” asks Silva.

  “If he wasn't done cleaning up and didn't want to leave evidence behind?”

  Silva runs his hand over his mustache. “Or for that matter, it could be something psychological. Some piece of his ritual that wasn't finished.” Silva looks down, studying the scene. “But something else feels different this time.” He pauses. “I mean, maybe he was interrupted and that's why he didn't bury them. But, to me it feels . . . staged.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “That's my sense too. Like he's showing us something.”

  We stand there, mulling it over. Below us, in the midway air, a few dark shapes are circulating about. More birds. It’s a curious reversal peering down on them. Like they're the murky shapes of fish trolling beneath the surface of a pond. The only other movement comes from police officers—they must be Juárez PD—little stick figures traipsing in and out of the pools of light. Their movements remind me of foraging ants—

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  The silence is suddenly interrupted as three crisp gun shots ring out, the reports echoing across the dune.

  Fear jolts through me. I fumble for my gun, trying to discern the source of the shots.

  “Relax, Jake,” Silva says. “They're just trying to keep the birds away.”

  It takes me a second to get it. “Oh,” I say, a bit chagrined. “I guess I'm a little jumpy.”

  “If you've gotta choose a time to be jumpy,” Silva says, “this is as good as any.”

  I give Silva a wry smile as I button the snap on my holster. Silva prompts me with a nod and we begin our descent into the bowl. At first we tread real slow with cautious steps. But the grade isn't very steep, and managing it easily, we soon pick up the pace.

  My eye tracks the body closest to us. At this distance, the shape beneath the oval of light reminds me of a burrito languishing under a heat lamp. It's about three-quarters of the way down, but maybe fifty yards to the left of our current trajectory.

  “Mind if I take a gander at that one?” I ask.

  “Be my guest,” says Silva and we veer off toward it.

  About this time, other sounds from farther below begin to filter up. Officers and detectives at the bottom, bantering away in hard-boiled Spanish. Footsteps and the clanking of police gear. The snapping of a photographer's camera.

  Soon we're standing over the first body.

  The ground around us is littered with slain birds. Grotesque patches of feathers and sideward glances. I enter the circle of light and squat down next to the corpse. There's a murmur of flies. They gather on the leg wounds and along the edge of the severed neck.

  This one's a Hispanic male, as Silva mentioned they all are. I'd say late fifties, though it's a bit hard to judge without seeing the face. The body's turned on its side, toward me, right arm stretched out in front of the torso. The limbs are bent in the awkward mannequin angles that are always the hallmark of the lifeless.

  I note the missing feet and the lower legs tied together with Cattleman rope—the aspects of the MO with which the killer apparently does not permit himself any flexibility. I put on a pair of latex gloves and give a little tug at the three-point lasso knot. This is Ropes’ trademark—what earned him that nickname. It's a slip knot he can tighten or loosen as he sees fit, speeding up or slowing down the blood loss from the legs. It's basically a tourniquet he can adjust like the flow of a garden hose—deciding how long the victim lasts.

  The light, which comes from behind the body, casts much of the torso in shadow. I carefully roll the body over on its back to get a better look.

  A feeling—half-confusion, half disgust—wells up in me. Like what you might feel if you turned over a log and found it swarming with maggots. “What the heck is this?” I exclaim.

  Most of the man's chest and large portions of his forearms and hands are covered in scars. The mottled, twisted kind that result from severe burns. I initially draw back, as if the sight posed some physical threat to me. But the next moment, I'm leaning in, reaching out to touch him. I run a gloved finger along the swath of scars on his chest.

  “Those scars are old,” Silva says. “Ropes had nothing to do with them.”

  I take off my right glove and hold out my hand, comparing it to the scars on the dead man's chest. Both mine and his have gnarled swirling patterns that, at least in this light, look much the same. Almost like the fabric on a pair of matching gloves. “They kind of look like mine, don’t they?” I say in a low and tentative voice.

  Silva stoops over to get a better look. “Hmm . . . yeah, maybe a little,” he says, noncommittally, as if reluctant to acknowledge what's readily apparent.

  I keep looking at the burns. Mine and his. Comparing different points of the turbulent and desiccated surfaces. It's like these flames left their fingerprints on us. I wonder what one of our forensic experts from the Bureau could tell me about the fires that caused them. If they came from the same type of fuel or burned at the same temperature.

  Silva’s shadow intrudes into the ring of light. I look up at him, feeling self-conscious now. “Quite a coincidence,” I say, pulling my hand away from the dead man.

  “Well, if you get spooked by coincidences, then you might want to brace yourself.”

  “What do you mean?” For a split second I think Silva might be joking, but I see from his face that he's not.

  “They all have them,” he says, turning and gesturing at the bodies.

  “They all have what?”

  “Scars . . . like his.”

  “All of them?” I ask in astonishment.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Not really sure what to make of it.”

  I draw a deep breath trying to organize my thoughts. Then I rise unsteadily to my feet.

  Silva snuffs out the butt of his cigarette on the thick heel of a cowboy boot. A swatch of greenish reptile leather ventures into the light. “Maybe they were all firemen or something,” Silva says. I can tell he's trying to play this off casually. Pretending this isn't something personal to me—presumably to lessen my misgivings.

  I glance again at the scars on my hand. “Or maybe they were all in the same fire,” I say. Now there's a glint of something familiar deep inside me. Some distant, black-sheep cousin of déjà vu. I've been here before. Or I've seen some piece of this before. I tell myself to snap out of it. This isn't the time or place for a meltdown or a mystical revelation—or whatever it is these unconscious flickerings might be prologue to.

  I shrug it off and we recommence the grim tour, continuing down toward the center, and stopping to have a look at several other bodies along the way. All show the marks of old burns, as Silva promised, though the extent of the scarring varies considerably from victim to victim. In several cases, the damage is quite minor, limited to just a few square inches of skin, most commonly on the hands and arms. However, on two of the bodies, scarring is more severe. Large portions of the skin have been obliterated to the point you'd call it a disfigurement. A handicap that would have crippled these people and changed how strangers looked at them on the street.

  With each successive set of scars, my apprehension grows. Weird speculations nibble at me like sharp-toothed fish going at a swimmer's naked legs. I do my best to act composed, but I fear the act is obvious. When other detectives greet us, I stumble and stammer, my preoccupation, I imagine, plainly written on my face.

  My examination of the last body—whose condition is consistent with the other six—brings us near the dune's central and lowest point. When I ris
e, I turn my attention to the pile of belongings no more than twenty feet away.

  “So this is just their personal stuff?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” says Silva. “Probably what they were wearing and carrying with them when they were abducted.”

  We step up to the heap. My head tilts to the side and my eyes rove over the grim display. “He's never done this, has he?” I ask.

  “No,” Silva says. “He's always put the victim’s things in a plastic bag and buried it alongside the body.”

  The heap contains shirts and glasses and shoes and cell phones, a couple of knapsacks, a fishing rod, and I belatedly observe—as if my mind were trying to censure the fact—severed human feet.

  Now that I perceive them, they seem quite obvious, sticking out at rakish and lurid angles, like a troop of sore thumbs. Most are brown with thick callouses on the bottoms and yellowed toenails—about how I would have expected the missing extremities of the six victims to appear. There must be twelve of them in all. As I'm doing a rough tally, I notice the smaller, paler left foot of a female at the bottom of the heap. Its toenails are painted pink and it's sticking out of a green, overturned fedora, in an image that seems appropriated from a gallery of surrealist art.

  The sight provokes further uneasiness. Unleashes a distant echo somewhere inside me. The echo of an echo of an echo, diminished to a sound so soft you aren't sure you heard it. I squat down to get a closer look at this out-of-place female appendage.

  Then I realize what's caught my attention. That shade of pink polish on the toenails feels familiar. . . . I don't know if this pink is maybe just the industry standard, but I'm pretty sure this is the same color Lisa used to wear. Lisa being a girl I fell pretty hard for many moons ago. My second old flame, if you will.

  In reality, it's probably not the same color at all, but my mind tends to find nostalgic traces of her everywhere—though this has to be the most untimely of these forced marches down memory lane. I weather a weird shudder and then shake it off, pretending the thought never happened.

  “Did your guys sort through any of this stuff yet?” I ask, looking over my shoulder at Silva.

  “We did. There are clothes and shoes for each of them.”

  “Including the girl?”

  “Yeah, except we only found one of her sandals . . . but the pile yielded one more biggie. I was kind of saving it as a surprise.”

  I want to say I've had enough surprises for one day. But “Do tell,” is what comes out instead.

  “The killer left a wallet in the back pocket of each pair of pants. Wallets with IDs.” Silva smiles. “We don't have anything on the girl, but we've already got all six of the men matched with names.”

  “Holy shit,” I say. “That ought to put this one on the fast track.”

  “Almost seems like he's daring us to catch him.”

  “He's been at it a long time,” I say. “Maybe he's ready to hang up his spurs.”

  “You mean his ax,” Silva says.

  I give a half-hearted laugh, glancing around at the bodies. “What have you found out about the six? Do we have anything on the disappearances?”

  “We didn't find the wallets till a few hours ago. A couple of detectives are making calls as we speak. We should know more by tomorrow morning.”

  I keep thinking about the burns on the bodies and about my own burns. And about who these people are. And then, right then, a strange thought wedges its way into my brain. “Do you have those IDs handy?” I ask Silva.

  He wrinkles his brow. “I think Detective Montalvo is following up on them. Why? What is it?”

  “Just had a thought,” I say. “An idea I wanted to test out.”

  “Gimme a sec,” Silva says and walks over to one of the other detectives who's standing on the far side of the heap. Silva and the other man exchange a few words, and then the man hands Silva a yellow legal pad, which he'd been holding under his arm.

  A moment later Silva returns. “I’m not sure if you need to see the IDs themselves,” he says, holding out the pad, “but here’s a list of the names and addresses for the six of them. Will that work?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I just want to see their names.”

  He hands me the pad and I look it over. I run my finger down the yellow sheet, reading the list of first and last names slowly, syllable by syllable, in my head:

  Marcos Villarreal

  Miguel Robles

  Juan Estrada

  Carlos Jimenez

  Gregorio Soto

  Mateo Marquez

  After reaching the end of the list, for a moment I don’t react. An inner voice assures me what I'm seeing's impossible—that I must have misperceived or misread something. These denials work to head off any hysterical impulses I might have otherwise felt. Again, I read over the list, as if expecting the words to recant themselves.

  “What is it, Jake?” Silva asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I think maybe I've seen six of them,” I reply.

  Silva frowns and waits for me to explain.

  I hesitate. My intestines have curled themselves into a question mark. Sure, what I want to tell him is just an observation, and strictly speaking, it's a fact, but it's not the kind of thing an agent typically blurts out at a crime scene—at least no agent who wants to be taken seriously by his colleagues. It’s a notion that smacks of something unsavory. The metaphysical or the occult. At the very least, it signals the complete abandonment of the scientific method.

  Then again, Silva's a friend of mine and if my thoughts later prove demonstrably insane, I'll no doubt be extended some friendly latitude.

  “What’s going on, Jake?” Silva repeats.

  I draw a deep breath, hold it in for a long time, and let it out. “You remember how I told you about that ledger—that one that showed up on my doorstep a few months back?” I ask.

  “Of course I remember. You went on and on about it.” Silva studies me. “What does the ledger have to do with this?” he asks, waving an arm at the crime scene around us.

  “Probably nothing,” I say. “But it seems like today's given itself over to weird coincidences . . . and we've just stumbled on another one.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “On the last two pages of the ledger—the pages that had the blood drops on them—there were twelve first names listed. Do you remember?”

  “Sure. They all had the last names cut out with a razor blade.”

  “Right . . . well, all six of the first names on this list here,” I gesture at the paper in my hand, “were also on the last two pages of the ledger.”

  10

  Mexico

  The coincidence of the burns and the ledger names leaves me stunned. The fact seems to flutter about within me, as incongruous as a pigeon that flew into someone’s living room. The idea that this is merely a coincidence, apropos of nothing, seems unthinkable. But more unthinkable still is the notion there may be something behind it. But I resolve not to let that second option run rampant in my brain. Speculation, knowing as little as we do at this point, will do nothing but further unnerve me.

  And yet, there are one or two bleak hypotheses which, though they don’t bear repeating, I can't quite keep a muzzle on. In fact, I'm more flustered than I want to admit, and I keep catching myself scratching away at my scars or repeating the names from the last pages of the ledger as if they were some morbid mantra.

  But I can handle it. Everything’s under control.

  We remain in the dune about an hour longer. Silva and I briefly discuss the coincidence in hushed tones out of earshot of the other detectives. His demeanor suggests a generally skeptical stance on the topic and a reluctance to entertain conjecture without more facts. This muted response is, no doubt, the more prudent one and helps me to keep things in perspective and to steady my nerves.

  After the six bodies are loaded into a black paddy wagon and the other evidence is packed up, we adjourn from the dune for the night. Silva drives me and two
other District C detectives back to Juárez. They're names are Montalvo and Luna. I ride shotgun with the two of them behind me in the backseat.

  Luna points out that they haven't eaten since arriving at the scene before noon and suggests we grab a bite and unwind before turning in. A rumble from my belly region shows my stomach to be in favor of the idea. Neither Silva nor I mentions the matching first names in front of the other detectives, thus establishing a tacit agreement to keep the matter between ourselves. I'm gradually feeling calmer, although I never manage to completely evict the matter from my mind.

  The restaurant where we end up, Diego's Taqueria, is the shape of a shoebox and not much bigger than one. It’s two blocks from the District C station at a giant, congested intersection. The only light comes from a few small windows looking out on the street and from the flickering candles in red jars on the tables. The air's humid with the smell of grilled meat, and onions, and cigarettes. The place is dirty, and I would bet there's a rat or two scurrying around in the corners, twitching inquisitive whiskers at scraps of fallen food and, occasionally, brushing past a patron’s unsuspecting ankle.

  Within minutes of ordering, our turnip-shaped waitress with runny mascara plops down four still-sizzling plates before us. We don't talk much as we inhale our tacos al carbon. Soon we've demolished the once-plentiful contents of our plates, and all that's left are bits of pico de gallo and smears of guacamole, like the carnage of some culinary battlefield.

  “Don't look so serious, Jake,” Silva says. “It's only your first day.”

  I glance up at Silva, dismayed to learn my face has betrayed my gloomy mood.

  Luna nods. “You've got to pace yourself, Wey. Learn to unwind. You're gonna see some raunchy stuff on this case. You can't let it get to you. I remember my first Ropes’ crime scene. There was this girl who—”

  Montalvo interrupts him. “And we've found it's good for digestion not to talk about Ropes at the table.”

  “I second that motion,” Silva says.

  “Fair enough.” Luna wipes his face with a napkin, wads it up, and sets in the middle of his empty plate. “So what do you think of this little hole in the wall, Radley?”