Total Victim Theory

by Ian Ballard

  The first possible, Maximo Gonzalez, 36, is a factory worker at the Purina plant in the maquiladora district. Three years ago, he was pulled over for suspicion of DUI. When police searched his trunk, they found multiple sets of bloody clothes, a shovel, and pieces of a disassembled mannequin. When interviewed, several coworkers said Gonzalez had bragged about “cutting up girls” and “putting them where no one's ever gonna find 'em.” A search of his home revealed an extensive collection of knives and violent pornography, as well as a box beneath his bed containing an assortment of women's jewelry. Despite these developments, police were never able to connect Gonzalez to any known homicides or missing persons. When contacted, Gonzalez claimed he was working the graveyard shift at the Purina plant the night of the dune slayings. However, his employer contradicted this, telling police that Gonzalez was scheduled, but didn't show up for work.

  The second possible, Rehan Abdullah, 38, is an Egyptian national whose family moved to Juárez in his early childhood. His father and two of his uncles are prominent local merchants who own and operate textile plants, also in the maquiladora district. In 2012, Abdullah was arrested in District B and charged with the murders of three local prostitutes. In separate incidents, the victims were strangled, dismembered, and submerged in a pond less than a mile from Abdullah's residence. The charges against Abdullah were later dropped for reasons that are unclear, but which are rumored to have involved the payment of a bribe by Abdullah's family to local officials. The case file and all evidence pertaining to the prior killings is nowhere to be found. Abdullah still lives in Juárez and works at the family business in an unspecified capacity. Police have so far been unable to reach Abdullah or to determine if he has an alibi for the night in question.

  The final suspect Silva discusses is Adrian Caiman, age thirty-five. At nineteen, Caiman was arrested and convicted of six first-degree homicides. The murders took place while the teenager was employed as a barker at a small circus that traveled throughout Northern and Central Mexico. His victims included both employees of the circus and residents of cities and towns where the circus made its stops. Caiman confessed to the six murders he was charged with and hinted that there may have been others. His arrest followed the disappearance of a female contortionist last seen in Caiman's company. A search of Caiman's belongings yielded a coil of rope, an ax, and—most damningly—a pickle jar containing a collection of human eyes apparently extracted from his victims. After serving three years of a life sentence, Caiman's conviction was thrown out when an appellate court ruled the initial search unlawful and the confession coerced. Caiman was then retried, acquitted, and at age 24—and to the horror of many following the case—released. His current whereabouts are unknown.

  Silva wraps up his review of the suspect roster and fields a number of questions. Several officers bring up particular facts, which they say, make one or another of the suspects a stronger contender than the rest. However, on several occasions, Silva is able to point to some detail, overlooked by the officer, which tends to refute, or at least substantially deflate, the contention. After a protracted back-and-forth discussion, the room seems to reach the consensus that Gonzalez, Abdullah, and Caiman all remain viable suspects.

  12

  Mexico

  At the end of the meeting, Detective Ochoa pairs everyone off, assigning to each pair a high-priority task to be finished in the next twenty-four hours. I'm paired with Silva and our detail is to interview the first suspect, Maximo Gonzalez, following up on his apparently spurious alibi and concluding what we can as to his actual whereabouts on the night of the murders.

  We're able to get a hold of Gonzalez at the Purina factory, and surprisingly, he agrees to meet us when his shift ends to answer a few questions. His willingness to talk seems at odds with a guilty conscience and in my estimation, lowers the odds that this is our guy. Silva, however, disagrees. He's convinced the person who committed these crimes views himself as superior to the police. A person who would relish the chance to sit down with them face to face and subtly mock their efforts—as long as he judged that the odds of arrest were slim.

  Gonzalez doesn't get off till 8 p.m., which gives Silva and me a few hours of downtime before the interview. I hang around District C, brushing up on the three suspect files. Meanwhile, Silva returns home to eat dinner with his wife and daughter, whom he's barely seen in two days.

  At seven-thirty, Silva meets me at the station. We climb into the same black Land Cruiser from the night before, and Silva pilots us through the congested streets toward the Purina plant. The sun's setting as we enter the dreary maquiladora district, the slum industrial zone, occupying a long corridor of land a few hundred yards from the border. For miles the landscape is a collage of smokestacks, refineries, textile plants, and grotesque metal scaffolding that reminds me of something from an apocalyptic science fiction film. The roads are wide and unpaved, and hundreds or even thousands of workers are listlessly trudging about, going to and from their places of exploitation. Their eyes gleam with zombie dejection in the beams of our passing headlights.

  Just as we're approaching the gate to the vast Purina complex, a choppy message comes through on the Land Cruiser's police radio. “This is Officer Ignacio Sandoval. . . . I'm working the security detail at the Neruda Dune. . . .” The man's voice sounds confused and distraught. “I just arrived and I'm not sure what's going on, but . . . we have another body here.”

  Silva and I exchange a bewildered glance.

  “This is Detective Guerra,” says a second voice over the radio. “Please repeat your last statement, Officer Sandoval. Did not read you clearly.”

  “I just arrived about six minutes ago and I was making a round in my vehicle . . . circling the perimeter . . . and well, there's a body here on the Northern rim.”

  “Could you describe the body, Officer Sandoval?” asks the detective.

  There's a several-second delay. “Female. Caucasian. Just laying here on the ground. There are yellow ropes on her legs. Her feet are gone, cut off. There's a piece of cloth over her face. . . .”

  I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “That's got to be the one that went missing,” I say, turning to Silva.

  Silva's got a spooked look on his face. His voice is a whisper. “He brought her back.”

  Detective Guerra's voice is urgent. “Officer Sandoval, look around you. Do you see any other vehicles or any signs of another person? That body can't have been there long.”

  A pause, but I can hear the sound of the officer breathing. “No. I don't see anything at all. It's just me out here. . . .” he says and trails off. When Sandoval continues, there's a note of trepidation in his voice. “Detective Guerra, did you want to send someone else out here, for backup? Maybe one of the detectives ought to join me—”

  Silva glances over at me and picks up the radio. “This is Detective Silva—Agent Radley and I will proceed immediately to the scene.”

  I give Silva a nod to show we're on the same page as to this course of action. Clearly, this—whatever is going on out there—takes precedence over interviewing Gonzalez and may, depending on the timing, even eliminate him as a suspect.

  “Officer Sandoval,” Silva says, “just hang tight and leave the body as is. We should be there within a half hour.”

  “Roger that,” says Sandoval.

  Silva turns the car around and gives a honk for several people crossing the road to stay clear. Then he draws a deep breath and lets it out. “And away we go,” he says, gunning the engine.

  *

  You hear people talk about getting a bad feeling. The feeling where you know in your gut something's wrong. Either a small wrong, like this cab driver is charging too much. Or a big wrong, like there's a weird smell coming from underneath that porch. Well, the bad feeling that's swishing around my insides now is the be-all end-all of that squeamish sensation. And the closer we get to the dune, the worse it gets.

  Can't help thinking that the eerie drive through the sa
nds is a perfect prologue to what we've been summoned to see—the view along our desolate, star-lit path, ratcheting up the tension, mile by mile, as if the earth and the whole landscape have joined forces to unnerve us.

  Silva and I barely talk. There's not much, aside from astonished explicatives, that seems worth saying. The fact is what it is, and there's nothing we can say that will illuminate it. Silva chain smokes Marlboros and drums his fingers on the steering wheel—nervously or excitedly, I can't say which. For a minute, he tries to find something on the radio, but it's all static and he turns it off.

  Before long, I see the dune's vast, and now familiar, southern rim. Soon after, I make out the shape up ahead of what must be Officer Sandoval's Land Cruiser. For some reason, he's got his lights off. Silva flashes our headlights and a moment later Sandoval answers the signal.

  As we near him, our headlights penetrate the interior of the other vehicle. I can see the officer's silhouette through the window. Just sitting there waiting. Our high beams flood the vicinity with light, but I don't see any sign of the body yet. Silva pulls up next to the officer and yanks up the parking brake. Both men roll down their windows.

  “Detective Silva, I'm glad you're finally here,” Sandoval says, his face looking a bit pale. “It's a little creepy sitting out in the middle of nowhere with a body.”

  “Where is she?” Silva says.

  Sandoval clears his throat. “Just on the other side of my car.”

  Silva reaches in the glove compartment and grabs a flashlight that's beneath some paperwork. We both get out of the car, as does Sandoval. Car doors slamming.

  Sandoval appears in front of his Range Rover. “Here.” He gestures at a place on the ground that the vehicle is still blocking from view.

  Sand crunches underfoot as we walk over to where the officer stands.

  The dim outline of the body comes into view.

  Silva shines his flashlight on the woman.

  She lies on her back, arms straight at her sides. A white handkerchief covers her face and a profusion of blonde hair flows out from beneath. The beam lingers on her severed legs and seems to study the injury.

  An image of the woman's foot amid the pile of belongings flits through my mind—a flash of those pink toenails and a thought of who they reminded me of.

  On the cloth that covers her face, a pair of red stains darken the cloth just above where you'd expect to find the eyes. “Where did that handkerchief come from?” I ask.

  “The villager said he covered her face with a handkerchief when he found her,” says Silva. “Out of respect for the dead.”

  “You think it's the same one?” I ask.

  “I don't see why it wouldn't be.”

  “Is this the same place where she was the first time around?” I ask.

  Silva points the beam at a spot just behind the body and examines some marks in the sand. “Looks like he put her back exactly the way she was. Her legs are still lined up with the trail she made the first time around.”

  “Is this guy just fucking with us, or what?” I say.

  “I can't believe no one saw anything,” Silva says. He turns to Officer Sandoval. “Have you spoken with the officer who was here before you?”

  “No, sir,” the officer says, reluctantly. “I . . . I was a half hour late getting out here, so there was a gap in the coverage. It's possible the killer came during that time. . . .”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” says Silva. “We need to stop dropping the ball here.”

  “I'm truly sorry, sir. I had no idea that—”

  “Are there new tire tracks?” I ask.

  Silva's struggling to regain his composure. The anger on his face gradually subsides, and he canvasses the sand around the body with the beam. After a moment, the light freezes on a point about fifteen feet from the woman's head. “Yeah. Here are his tracks. These are the fresh ones. I'm gonna say it's the same Firestone tread we've seen before.”

  “From the red Ford truck they saw in Morelia,” I suggest.

  “Quite possibly,” says Silva.

  I squat down next to the woman's body to get a closer look. The light catches glimpses of her pale skin. “Doesn't look like she's from around here, does she?” I say.

  “She's kind of the odd man out among the seven of them.” Silva's standing a few feet behind me, looking down. I glance back at him, and for just a split-second I mistake his expression for a grin. Maybe it's the angle or just the configuration of his mouth that gives this impression—the way dogs seem to smile when they pant.

  The next second, I realize it must have been my imagination. His lips and eyes look as dour and disturbed as could be. Was this my first pang of paranoia? A first instance where I'm letting the stress and strangeness of the dune spread to the things around me?

  I turn back to the woman and study her profile as the lie of the white cloth reveals it. You can discern the shape of her nose and lips and chin. I look also at her hair and the shape of her body. She was beautiful once.

  Suddenly, an acute and electric pang runs through me.

  I stare at her. Feel frozen in place.

  “You okay, Radley?” Silva asks.

  I can’t yet put my finger on it. But there's that echo of familiarity again. Like when I saw the foot. But stronger now. A knowing pulse within me—like my body, through other levels of awareness, grasps something my brain cannot.

  Or will not.

  I glance down at the woman’s left arm, the one closer to me. The fingers of her hand are extended and her palm is pressed flat against the ground.

  Suddenly, everything is trembling. I reach out and turn her hand over—knowing before I do what I'll find. Yet, as I turn it over, I recoil in terror, and a tiny gasp escapes my lips.

  The inside of her wrist and forearm are covered with long, straggling scars. They’re old and fully healed and run both up and down and side to side, crisscrossing the pale skin like a pile of pickup sticks.

  They're scars from a suicide attempt with a razor blade.

  Scars I remember well.

  Throat constricts. Like I’m being choked by an invisible, phantom hand.

  I reach out and grasp the corner of the handkerchief and pull it slowly off her face.

  Even in this mutilated state, my mind finds within her an indestructible constant. An image burned into me eleven years before that will never fade or age or decay. That will endure as long as I endure.

  I reach out and touch her face.

  “Lisa,” I whisper and I lay my head down on her chest and weep.

  13

  Colorado

  This sting operation thing is actually happening. I agreed to do it, of course. How could I not—knowing that if he isn't caught, he's going to keep killing, knowing that we might be able to save other Jessicas?

  So, it's happening. As if my life needed any more drama. They—the FBI—have already set me up in this new apartment at University Terrace. It's a three bedroom and it comes furnished with two undercover agent roommates who are supposed to protect me. They're moving stuff into their rooms as we speak. There's a blond surfer guy named Bryce and a chick with short, dark hair named Ronette. The scenario is kind of like Point Break meets Three's Company.

  “Yo,” says Bryce, appearing in the doorway of my room. He's holding some sort of radio transmitter contraption in his arms.

  Bryce is attractive, I suppose. Super tan and muscly in the way people get when they drink too many protein shakes. He looks too young and baby faced to be an FBI agent, which I guess is the point, since he's pretending to be a college student. “Everything copacetic?” he asks.

  “Wicked nar,” I say, poking fun at his surfer roots.

  Bryce give me a thumbs up, looks me over just a split-second too long, then turns and goes.

  The sting operation was Quentin Bloom's idea. He's the head profiler on the Handyman case. We're not on the best terms. The rift occurred because the FBI recorded that cell phone conversation I had with “Chri
s” at my aunt's house. During the call, he mentioned leaving his glasses behind. Bloom, who knew no glasses were found at the scene, put two and two together and they searched the room at my aunt's and found the glasses in the nightstand. Pretty embarrassing. And I wish I had a sane explanation for what I did.

  But they must still consider me sane enough for undercover work. Unless I've been hand-picked precisely on account of my kookiness—since no one level-headed would have agreed to do it. At any rate, Bloom's hunch is that Chris may keep trying to “interact with me”—a term broad enough to include anything from him writing me an e-mail to him stopping by for a face-to-face chat. The more “interaction,” the better from the FBI's perspective, since that ups the odds of nabbing him.

  As far as that night goes, the cell phone records confirmed that he was really close. But that came as no surprise, since he knew about my Snoopy pj's. How he managed to follow me remains a mystery—

  Suddenly the thud of a bass beat starts up from Ronette's room. A moment later, she peeks her head into my doorway. “Does that music seem like it's at the right level?”

  “At the right level, how?” I ask.

  “I mean, does it seem realistic? Like a volume you or your friends would set your music at—but not so loud that it attracts undue attention to itself?”

  “It's fine.”

  “Sorry,” she says. “Just trying to make sure everything feels authentic, you know what I mean?”

  I honestly don't know what she means, but she ducks out again before I can express my perplexity. We're setting up to be ready by tonight. Bloom thinks if it's going to happen again, it's going to happen soon. Like in the next few days. Chris has my cell number, plus they published my new address in directory assistance and on the CU website. So, if Chris has even passable research skills, he'll be able to track me down. My job's just to act chill and be the bait. Maybe that role sounds questionable, but they've assured me there's only a very modest chance of me being killed.