Seven Spanish Angels

by Stephen Graham Jones

  I nodded, looked out into the parking lot again.

  Monica Corrido Armendariz Iglesias. Because we’d taken her—because I’d had her name announced on the news—my jacket had shown up with girl 6, like an afterthought. I was having to pay now, with my life. That was the message. Richard was right: it was communication. With me.

  It was probably better this way, though. She had enough names that her family would have packed her funeral all the way to the fences. I didn’t even know who my mother was. But the child in her, that I was trading myself for. That was going to grow up special now—charmed, spared. It wouldn’t mean anything down in Chihuahita. Would probably ruin him, really, get him shot at twelve years old because he thinks bullets can’t touch him.

  “So this where I get out?” I said up to Liz P, but she was leaned forward now, looking down the back of her cameraman’s camera. I looked too.

  My house. Davidson just pulling up in his Brat.

  “What’s he—?” Liz P. started, her hand to her cameraman’s shoulder.

  I stepped past the camera down into the parking lot, felt different than I ever had in El Paso. Not like just another Mexican girl in a sea of Mexican girls, invisible, anonymous, safe because of that, but conspicuous, like all the mothers in the parents’ lane were looking at me. Their children too.

  I stared straight at my house, walked to it.

  Davidson saw me as he was making his way back from my front door. He lowered his face to his sunglasses and leaned against his car like an airbrushed lowrider picture. Except for the Brat.

  “Buenos días,” he said.

  I didn’t tell him he was being recorded for the six o’clock news, just asked him what he was doing here, didn’t look at him as I asked but down the road behind him. Into the yards. My neighborhood. I’d never seen it at this time of the morning. It was a different place: all the worker bees balancing coffee on their dashboards, the mothers herding their children into minivans. The senior citizens shuffling across the grass in their slippers, reaching down for their papers, their other hand keeping their robes closed at the neck, like they were somebody else under all that flannel.

  I’d been here for nearly a year, never seen any of them, never realized how Twilight Zone this was compared to Ascarate. That was why I was here, probably.

  After this was over, though, maybe these neighbors would come over one at a time, ask indirect, shuffling questions. What all the cameras were for that one night, the helicopter. And maybe I would tell them. Or make something even better up—how the news had blown the whole thing out of proportion. How we’d had it under control, like the song said: could have had him any day.

  “What am I doing here?” Davidson said, bringing me back to him. “What are you doing not here’s more like it, yeah?”

  I looked behind me, to the elementary he had to think I was just at. The news van he couldn’t see, a woman inside he’d probably smuggled an autopsy report to not three hours ago. He didn’t care anymore, I could tell. I didn’t call him on it.

  “I asked first,” I told him.

  He shrugged, said, “Mitch was worried, know? Nobody knew where you were. When I was signing out he told me to swing by, make sure you were all right.”

  “I am,” I told him.

  Davidson just stared at me about that. “What about your door, then?”

  I looked to it, felt myself collapse a little on the inside. Because Richard had his key, I’d deadbolted it from inside when I went to meet him last night, then gone out the back door, which didn’t have a key. Now, the frame around the front door was splintered. Meaning the deadbolt had held, just everything around it gave.

  “Don’t tell him,” I said, then held Davidson with my eyes. “Trevana, I mean.”

  “Mitch is okay,” Davidson said, then lifted his chin, said, “What is it?”

  Just barely, I didn’t tell him about the windbreaker last night. That I was the seventh Spanish Angel. That the reason nobody knew it but me was because, once CSU rolled up, it had become one of theirs, never got vouchered in.

  “Just go to sleep,” I said, touching him on the arm.

  Davidson flinched away, smiled. Produced a pill bottle from some pocket, held it like Liz P. had, between thumb and forefinger. The Prevacid.

  “I can’t get caught with this,” he said.

  “Because it’s evidence…” I said, stepping between him and the elementary to take it, but he shook his head no, pulled his lips to the side like it hurt, said, “Because it’s prescription, probably schedule two or some shit.”

  I nodded thanks, looked at an old man across the street, watering his lawn drop by drop. Realized I was paying so much attention because I might not be getting to see any of this anymore. To see anything.

  I punched Davidson on the arm again in farewell and he rolled with it into the bucket seat of his Brat, then, as I watched from my kitchen window, trying to hold onto him too, he leaned forward, into his ashtray probably, or bag. In three puffs, his small cab was thick with smoke.

  “Buenos días,” I said to him, then, quieter, “buenas noches.”

  Six hours later Richard was just suddenly there, in the reflection of my kitchen window. I was standing at the sink, washing every dish in the cabinet for the second time. He leaned against the refrigerator, crossed his arms.

  “Forgot to thank you for the TV modifications,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything, just kept tracing the flower print on a saucer with my steel wool, leaving white lines in the pattern of petals. Two glasses, one bowl and fifty-nine seconds later, Richard shrugged, said, “You shouldn’t have run last night. Thought you believed it wasn’t me.”

  I stopped scrubbing, closed my eyes to think of the best response. Except there wasn’t one. “This isn’t going to work,” I finally told him.

  Richard pushed away from the fridge with his shoulder, almost out of the reflection in the window. “I agree,” he said. “You should use the machine, maybe.” The dishwasher. It was supposed to be a joke. In response, I let the coffee cup I was holding go. It splashed into the water, tapped the bottom of the sink, didn’t shatter.

  Richard stepped forward, took both my shoulders in his hands.

  “I can’t protect you if you won’t let me,” he said.

  The sky outside was stale, used up.

  Inside, I was hollow.

  “Protect me,” I repeated, taking a plate, dipping it into the water.

  “The rest of the force has three hundred nineteen girls in lock-ups and safe houses all over town,” Richard said. “And me, I’ve got one, out here.”

  I laughed, smiled now. “I’m just getting it. Lote Bravo. Las Muertas de Juarez. Even if it’s—if it’s not him, doing this.” Richard let me go. I kept scrubbing the plate. “Even if it’s not the real guy, he’s still following that pattern.” I looked up to Richard, in the reflection again. Shrugged, like it was obvious. “And everybody knows that the killers down there are the police.”

  “You’re falling for it,” Richard said, disappointment in his voice. “Can’t you see it, Marta? Whoever this is, he’s—he’s not just killing these women. He’s playing Batman and Joker. Just wants you to see how smart he is. For you to be impressed. Seduced.”

  I kept scrubbing. “Tell me something else smart,” I told him. “Impress me.”

  The weight of his eyes on my back. Finally, “Okay. You want something smart? How’s this. That one last night, at the shop. I made some inquiries—”

  “She was wearing maternity underwear,” I interrupted.

  “What? No. I don’t know. But did you ever stop to maybe wonder why she was found at nine in the evening instead of nine in the morning, when the staff showed up?”

  He was right: the shop would have closed at six.

  Richard nodded, said, “He wanted us to find her. Then. Left a message at the station reporting a break-in. Not the emergency line, but that machine at the front desk.”

  I knew that mach
ine: it was for calling in sick. Got checked each shift-change.

  “Only we know that number,” I said. “Police.”

  “I know,” he said. “But it was Spanish, distorted. On purpose.” And then he stopped.

  “What?” I said, narrowing my eyes at the kitchen window. “Ya dígame.”

  “It’s where the call originated from,” he said.

  “That phone doesn’t have caller ID.”

  “The phone company has records, though. It was over in Ascarate Park. A residence. Pecos street.”

  In the reflection, Richard nodded once, yes: my father.

  I dropped my plate into the sink and this time it shattered, holding its shape in the water for a moment then collapsing silently, along prescribed lines.

  “You could have told me this already,” I said, turning around.

  “Units have already—” he said, but I was brushing past him, pushing him as hard as I could into the refrigerator. He didn’t stop me.

  Because we were probably going to get stopped, racing across town, have to show some ID, I drove, and it was for the best: there was a black and white across the street from my father’s house. Richard stepped out at the corner, said, “Don’t forget about me.”

  I pulled away without saying anything. Showed my ID to the patrolmen. Told them that I had grown up here. My father was standing in the door between the kitchen and the living room when I walked in. In one of his old man undershirts.

  “¿Qué pasó aquí?” I said, breathless.

  “Ya les dije,” my father said, nodding across the street.

  The place smelled crudo, like beer. Days of it. Ruca del pedo.

  “¿Cuando…” I started, then knew when the call had been—between the six and nine o’clock shift changes last night. After that, I didn’t know what else to ask, then didn’t know anything: my father was stepping closer, his hand coming up to my face, to my lip, still colored from Richard slapping me at Jennifer Rice’s. Without meaning to, I flinched, stepped back, feeling for the wall. Was for some reason more afraid that my father would see me as I was when I was hit—naked—than that he would see me getting hit.

  After I’d backed away, he left his hand like that, extended, covering half the distance between us, the index finger he’d meant for me trembling. From what, I couldn’t tell. Beer, maybe. I had to look away from it.

  “You’ve got to leave here,” I told him. “Last night somebody called from—”

  “They told it to me,” my father said, using the English I was using on him.

  His hand was back at his side, the fingers unsure how to hang anymore.

  “He did that to you,” he said—my lip.

  “Dad,” I said, then said it again with my eyes. I couldn’t hide behind my hair because it was pulled back into a coleta, trailing down my back. “I thought you were…” I started, didn’t even know how I was going to finish: I thought you were the one who called? that you were hurt?”

  He shrugged, turned back to the kitchen. He was making coffee, watching the water boil. I followed him in.

  “You’ve got to leave,” I said, again.

  “Pero mi espalda todovía está mojada,” he said, smiling about it: his back was still wet. It meant he’d just got here. Sixty years ago.

  “I can have you arrested,” I said. “To keep you… seguro.”

  It was a terrible thing to say to a father. To a Mexican man. That a woman, younger than him, was going to keep him safe. He didn’t say anything back, just watched the vapor rise from his water then hang above it.

  On the refrigerator was a cutout of me, from the Sunday paper. Black and white like the past feels. I touched it with my fingertips, had no idea it even existed. No idea that my father was following me like that. I watched him watch his water for maybe twenty more seconds then turned, rummaged in the cabinet for a big-enough plastic bowl and went around the house, to each phone, for prints that might have been missed.

  The one in the living was olive green, rotary; no redial. I put my gloves on, unplugged it, set it into the bowl. The phone by my father’s bed was a twin of the living room. They’d probably been there when he’d moved in, back when telephones were a fixture, not an accessory. The one in my old bedroom was the only modern one. A room I hadn’t stood in for years.

  In the kitchen, I could hear my father’s spoon against his cup, making the sugar disappear. He wouldn’t dose his coffee like that in public, at Chorizo’s, but at home he could indulge. Creamer even, maybe, his coffee getting lighter and whiter con leche.

  I listened to his spoon and watched my old phone, making myself count to ten, in case it was going to ring. It didn’t. I picked it up, hit redial.

  On the sixth ring, the machine at the front desk of the station picked up.

  I stood, all three phones in the bowl now, and finally saw the window above my bed. It was shattered, the glass fanned out on the bedspread.

  My father hadn’t heard it because he had been at Chorizo’s, hearing again what I’d left him with, maybe: that this might be his last chance to tell me bye.

  He was standing behind me now. I could feel him.

  “Why do you still go there?” I said, letting my hair down because I was nervous.

  He didn’t need me to tell him where, just shrugged like he didn’t know. It was the same reason I did, though. I lifted my chin to the window, shook my hair out.

  “Don’t fix it yet,” I told him.

  He sipped the top off his coffee. “Fingerprints,” he said, finally, in English.

  I nodded, watched him. He stepped aside and we stood in the living room, and he took another hot drink, forced it down, then looked up to me.

  I set the phone bowl down. “You might need to call,” I said, and handed him my cell phone—Richard’s cell phone.

  “Just dial the number, push the green button,” I said. “It’s charged.” He held it in his hand just as I’d given it to him, until I had to guide it down, make him take it.

  “Who do I call?” he said, and he was right.

  I looked to the door again, shrugged, then palmed my pistol—Richard’s, again—held it out to my father. He took it gingerly.

  “If you’re not going to leave…” I led off, backing away before he could give it back. “You don’t understand what’s going on,” I said, finally, and he looked from the gun in his hand then back to me, and said it when I was at the door, halfway out: “¿Tú entiendes?”

  And you do?

  I let the door close behind me, stepped back out into the heat. It was two o’clock, maybe, a Friday, the seventh day. I had a bowl of phones.

  “What now?” Richard said, in the backseat somehow.

  Before I could make something up, his—my—cell rang. He answered it lying down, was talking too low for me to hear. Like he didn’t want me to hear. So I started the engine and jerked the car backwards, throwing him against my seat. When his hand came up to catch himself, it was his phone hand. I took the phone, and, because of the black and white across the street, he couldn’t take it back.

  We pulled away slow, me nodding to the patrolmen, swinging my hair out of the way to get the cell phone to my ear.

  “Mitch Trevana?” I said, over-polite.

  Not a beat skipped, he told me: Jessica Bueno-Vasquez had been dropped. At an old cemetery.

  “Where?” Richard asked after I’d hung up. We were far enough away from my father’s house that he could sit up, glare at me in the rearview.

  I folded the cell into my front pocket, said, “Socorro,” and Richard pulled his eyes away too fast. Didn’t say anything.

  In the movies it’s always drizzling at the cemetery. In El Paso, the sun just beats down, baking the ground into a hard shell, so nobody can climb out.

  I pulled into the packed-dirt parking lot, the dust rising around me, settling back, coating my windshield. Behind me was the old mission, encased in scaffolds. The cemetery over my hood was grassless, like it had been moved, or the top dis
ced, scratched open. On the halfwall around it: Mission De Nuestra De La Purisma Concepcion Del Pueblo De Socorro. The historical marker told the story of how, before the 1829 flood changed the course of the Rio Grande, this ground had been Mexico. Meaning a girl found here could be a real Juarez girl, this time. Just in the wrong year.

  I stepped out of my car, closed the door behind me.

  Again, I’d dropped Richard up the street. Because we expected cops to be on-scene. But they weren’t. Instead, it was just me and, in the middle of the cemetery, a large, white cross. It was leaning over. Just past it, in the southeast corner by the road, the tent the girl was going to be under. Something the groundskeeper had erected around her.

  He came around the mission in his backhoe, turned it off when I got close enough.

  “You’re parked on somebody,” I said, nodding down to the grave the cleats of his right rear tire were digging into. The headstone was poured concrete, the 1903 exactly as wide as a finger. The most deliberate numbers I’d even seen.

  He didn’t follow my eyes, just said, “They don’t care, ma’am.”

  “Where are the cops?”

  “You’re the cop.”

  I turned from him, was suddenly afraid of talking to him too much.

  “I’m supposed to tell you about her?” he said to me then, over his fender.

  “What’s there to tell?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Okay.” I was trying to think of what would be good to ask him—what Richard would ask. Finally I came up with it: “How long could she have been here?”

  The groundskeeper looked across the cemetery at the tent, thought for what felt like too long, then shrugged, said a couple of days, maybe.

  “You were here on Wednesday, then?”

  He nodded, pointed to something by the scaffolds he’d done or helped with. I already wasn’t listening, but then he changed directions. The end of it was how, from the road, before he put the tent up over her, she’d looked like a widow, except not in black.