Fernandez pulled into a gas station, bought some beef jerky and the newspapers. The boy who served him was Mexican and could hardly speak a word of English. Dawn Haze would have loved that: there were so many of them now they no longer bothered to learn English. They got by just fine with Spanish and a few random phrases in English.
The INS, the Rangers, the FBI were pathetic as organizations. Bungling and ineffective, and powerless to secure the borders or capture the Railroad Killer. With all those fingerprints he had left behind, this dimwitted undocumented worker had checkmated the security officers of the Empire. Bunch of morons: they’d had him in custody how many times? And in their fervor to rid themselves of these pests who were hell bent on invading their country like an army of flipping zombies from enemy territory, they’d simply thrown him back across the line. “Mexicans are like the Chinese,” Captain Smits had told him once; “they all look so much alike you lose them in a crowd.” The comment had offended him, but he had preferred to keep it to himself.
He got back in his car thinking that he too was just another good-for-nothing imbécil: how many years had he been following the trail of this serial killer, always showing up just a little too late? So what if they caught him now? What did it matter? It might curtail a few imminent murders, but it gave no solace to the families the killer had already been allowed to tear apart.
But yes, it did matter. Of course it did. Preventing a single murder in the future would make up for all the errors of the past.
By day’s end, Rafael Fernandez found out that the FBI had placed the Railroad Killer on its most wanted list with a twenty-five-thousand dollar reward for his capture. There he was, number one on the list, dethroning Osama bin Laden himself. Obviously their taste for hype hadn’t changed an iota. So much hoopla with their Wild West posters, when they’d do better to concentrate on catching the asshole.
Suddenly it occurred to him: Albuquerque. Could the killer be trying to contact his sister?
He’d better get cracking.
The phone rang later that evening. It was Debbie. He hadn’t called sooner, he explained, because there was a lot going on at work. He considered not seeing her but then changed his mind, thinking maybe a few hours with her would help him relax, so he asked her over. Debbie said that wasn’t what she called for, and hung up.
3
Landslide, 2009
I started going out again, hitting the university parties, trying to get back the urge to hang out with my friends and lose myself in their problems, all of which were infinitely more frivolous than what I’d been dealing with recently. Being with Fabián was exhausting, and it made me think about everything I had sworn to myself that I’d avoid. I had left College Station because I’d seen how all my college girlfriends’ lives were slowly but surely getting bogged down with responsibilities—children, careers—and they were turning into a troupe of the Living Dead. They were Corpse Brides. I’d already gotten my BA, but not because I thought of it as a means for gainful employment. I found a job in an advertising agency but left after a while and spent a full year not really knowing what to do, what direction to take, trying in vain to sell comic strips to the newspapers (they weren’t very original, I owed practically all my ideas to the Hernández brothers), until a Guatemalan friend who knew my passion for reading convinced me to apply for a scholarship for a doctoral program in Latin American literature. At Landslide, though, I’d finally to own up to my romantic notions: I’d never find the creative stimulation I was searching for in classmates and professors. I fully shared their passion for literature but not the clinical, scientific way they approached books. And Fabián? I relished the hours we spent in molten conversation and cannibal sex, but it was getting more and more difficult for me to dredge up the patience for his fitful five a.m. phone calls, feverish emails, and relapses, all of which proved that despite a slight change in behavior now and then, things remained pretty much the same. Neither was I the self-sacrificing type of woman the situation called for.
One night we went out for a walk in the rain after snorting a few lines (this time I gave in to the temptation). We were getting boisterous, laughing hysterically, when a van sped by and splashed us. Fabián threw a stone at it and shattered one of the windows. The driver lost control; the vehicle ended up stalled on the sidewalk with smoke coming out of the engine. Two guys jumped out and started arguing with Fabián. He antagonized them as if they were on equal terms, even though each one was at least a head taller than him. They shoved him around and he fell into a big puddle. He barked insults at them and tried to stand up but couldn’t. I begged him to just drop it, let it go. It was nearly impossible to get him to pay attention to me.
Another night he took me to the ghetto looking for his dealer. He said Travis got him premium shit at a good price; he had contacts in the Mexican coke cartels operating in Landslide. I heard Travis threaten Fabián in a back alley, refusing to sell him another gram: he owed Travis money.
On our way out, Travis gestured to Fabián to come a little closer. When he did, Travis pulled out a gun and put it to his temple. In the semidarkness I could just make out the silhouette of a skinny man dressed in an overcoat. He was standing next to someone who came up to his neck.
“You wanna stay alive, bitch?” Travis asked Fabián. “Don’t act like no smartass then, and don’t even think of coming back here without my money.”
I heard Fabián’s voice tremble, more out of humiliation than fear. He promised to pay him off at the end of the month when his paycheck was deposited. Travis sneered and punched him in the face. “Professor piece of shit. Your philosophy is fucked up, yo.”
Fabián touched his jaw and grimaced. He turned around to leave, head hanging low.
Where was the arrogant man who used to make such categorical decisions where I was concerned? The haughty intellectual who crusaded against “politically correct” academics like Ruth? Who did whatever he damn well pleased with his students?
Now, as we stood on the corner trying to hail a cab, all I saw was a little, shrunken man.
One night I went out with Sam to see a movie about a serial killer in Milwaukee. Sam wanted to talk about the case on his radio show. In the university theater as I hooked my legs over the seat in front of me, I tried in vain to concentrate on the film. All I could do was wonder what Fabián might be up to.
Around fifteen minutes before the movie ended, Sam got up and told me he’d wait for me outside. I answered “Where’s your stomach, man?” He left without responding. I reckoned the horror scene had upset him: the serial killer was trying to turn his victims into zombies, so he’d perforated the skull of a fifteen-year-old boy and mainlined hydrochloric acid into his brain.
I walked out and found him sitting down on the carpet with his back against the wall beneath a poster advertising a Will Ferrell movie. In a flash I saw what he was going to look like in ten years: a solemn bald professor, incapable of joking around with his students.
“Sorry, can’t take all that carnage.”
“How’s it go? In the shoemaker’s house they walk around barefoot.”
“Well, I think true crime is thought-provoking as a subject, but I don’t enjoy watching extreme violence. That movie was pure pornography.”
We walked to a bar a few blocks away called My House Is Your House. It was decorated with posters advertising wrestling matches, with photos of El Santo, the Blue Demon, and Huracán Ramírez. They had wrestling masks on sale, and the drinks were named after different wrestling moves. The screens were showing a video of El Santo.
“It’s totally Mexican,” I laughed, and ordered a Flying Scissors with lemon and salt.
“Actually no. You’d never find a bar like this in Mexico. Only the gringos could pull something like this off.”
Sam asked for a round of tequila shots and kept them coming. I amused myself reading the signs hanging on the mirror behind the register. “You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.” “Eve
ryone’s crazy except you and me, but I’m starting to worry about you.” “If you never see me again, baptize him.”
By the fourth shot, Sam said he had something to tell me.
“Does the name Railroad Killer ring any bells?”
“No. Should it?”
“Not necessarily. He struck the first time when I was a kid. Nobody knew it was him back then. There was this Swedish exchange student, I remember overhearing my parents talk about what had happened. For a long time her case remained unsolved. No suspects, no leads. But ten years later they were able to prove that the Swedish girl had been the serial killer’s first victim. They call him the Railroad Killer. He was number-one on the FBI’s most-wanted list.”
“Serial killers are a dime a dozen in this country, it’s hard to keep them straight.”
“It tells you the dimension of our national tragedy. Dude slaughters ten people and a short while later nobody even remembers his name.”
“What does the Railroad Killer have to do with you?
My cell phone rang. It was Fabián. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
“Hold on a sec. I can’t hear you, I’m going outside.”
Once outside, I asked what was up.
“Babe, I need you here within the next few minutes.” His voice sounded serious.
“What’s going on? You’re worrying me.”
“I’m scared. I’m really scared. And I can’t promise . . .”
Now I was seriously alarmed.
“I’m getting in a cab right now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I took off without saying goodbye to Sam.
The house was quiet and the lights were out. I paid the cab and ran to the front door. I gave it a slight push: it wasn’t locked. I switched the hall lights on and called up the stairs.
“Fabián?”
No answer. I ran up, trying to keep my wits. I turned the lights on in the main room of the second floor. My cell rang. It was Sam.
“Oh isn’t that sweet. You really just took off?”
“I’ll explain later, I promise,” I said and hung up on him.
He was lying face down on the bed with his feet on a chair, eyes half-mast, staring at the floor. He wasn’t wearing pants or shoes, and his white shirt was soiled. He was making guttural noises, as if his tongue were stuck in the back of his throat. I took a deep breath, kept my calm. I was so tired of his panic attacks.
I sat down on the unmade bed. There were photocopies of my most recent storyboard on the bedside stand. There was also an official letter from the deans notifying him that his contract had been terminated. They would pay him a year’s salary, but he would no longer be associated with the university as of next semester.
He must have received the letter that afternoon. He had chosen not to let me know.
“So that’s it. Fucking bastards. I told you this was coming, and you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’m sorry about the letter but you really scared me, I thought you were going to . . .”
“For Christ’s sake, it’s dead serious. I’m leaving. Tomorrow if I can. I can’t stand the thought of spending one more day in this fucking place.”
“You’ll find a good lawyer. You’re tenured, supposedly that makes you unfirable.”
“I want to be free of the university. It’s been a long time since I’ve given a shit about teaching. It’s time to make decisions now. Are you coming with me?”
I walked out of the room, sat down on the stairs.
“Michelle, are you coming or not? Answer me por favor!”
I just sat there for a while and didn’t say a word.
4
Texas and New Mexico, 1999
This time he crossed near Ojinaga. He had to wait a while for the Migra’s patrol car to drive by on the other side, till it was out of sight. He waded into the skinny part of the river and lost his balance. There was a point where he thought he was going to drown. It was a false alarm: when he stretched his legs, his feet touched the bottom and he realized the water wasn’t deep. He stepped across from stone to stone and scrambled into the brush once he reached the other side.
Jesús’s pants were soaked. He was carrying his shoes in a bag with some fruit and a few bottles of water. The sun scorched his back and shoulders. He knew to steer clear of El Paso, keep moving through the smaller towns where there weren’t so many cops. He mapped out a route through Marfa, then Fort Stockton—his only option. There was a manhunt on now; he knew they’d be inspecting freight trains, patrolling the highways. He was ready if they caught him, though, equipped with fake IDs and social security cards.
He followed a trail through the desert scrub and acacia trees. He startled some deer that darted away as soon as he came into view. A rabbit lay dying beside a hollow tree trunk; there were bloodstains on its white fur and back legs.
A Migra helicopter materialized in the sky above him. He hid in the undergrowth and waited for the danger to pass. Had to get a move on. His coyote friend’s instructions weren’t hard to follow. But the sun made him woozy; it was hard to think straight. He drank some water, cooled his face with it. They weren’t making his life easy. Some of his open roads now had dead ends.
In a sudden flash of lucidity he realized he might never be able to jump a freight train again, or nick a car and drive it back, and the ache of it overwhelmed him. Why was he being so reckless now, pushing his luck? He should never have risked coming back. He should have stayed in Mexico, lying low in one of the bigger cities.
“Holy be not thy name.”
He knew perfectly well why he’d come back.
The van dropped him off at a gas station in Fort Stockton. He paid them more than he wanted to but didn’t feel like wasting time negotiating. The contact was a rancher’s boy, Mexican, and he made a business out of aiding the illegals who showed up in the area; the Migra had arrested him a few times, but his old man had connections and they always let him walk.
Jesús wandered over to the Antro and took a seat at the bar. A parrot pecking at an ear of corn eyeballed him from its perch on a shelf behind the counter. Selena’s “Amor prohibido” was playing on the jukebox. Four men sat playing dominos at a table nearby, drinking beer.
He didn’t bother concealing his face. He figured the best of all covers was not to cover up at all. He wasn’t foolish though, he knew better than to expose himself gratuitously. So far nobody had recognized him; most likely things would keep running smoothly.
He scrutinized a Mr. T bobblehead on the counter. A beefy dude, no doubt he would be a tough rival for Mil Máscaras. But Mil Máscaras had that Mexican cunning going for him; he’d take the prize no doubt. He didn’t give a shit about wrestlers anymore, bunch of fucking fakes. Though he’d root for them over a puto gringo any day.
What about the Niners versus a Mexican football team? Now that’s a different story.
He flicked Mr. T’s head and let it bob. There was a television suspended on a rack in the corner, and an Operation Stop Train announcement came on. They showed a rendering of the man nicknamed the Railroad Killer. Dark skin, curly hair, high cheekbones, and a long nose. He wore thick-framed glasses and a mustache. He’d seen that face somewhere.
The man behind the counter looked at him, but he hadn’t been watching the television. He was as short as Jesús.
“Can I getcha something?”
“A beer please, any kind you got.”
The bartender set down a plastic coaster with the Michelob label and served a bottle of beer with a glass. Jesús tossed a few bucks on the counter and got closer to the television. The journalist was in Texas, reporting on a massive roundup of undocumented Mexicans that was under way. It seemed like all men of Hispanic origin found walking alone in border states with Mexico were in danger of being detained. Panic and paranoia were running rampant among the population, and calls were flooding in to the FBI phone lines. In a partly outraged, partly waggish tone he mentioned that even a sheriff’s son from
a small town in New Mexico had been taken into custody. After the reporter finished, the station anchor threw in his two cents: Operation Stop Train was proving successful at engaging locals in the widespread Railroad Killer manhunt, but it was also creating deep rifts in communities that had sizable Hispanic populations, which would be difficult to reconcile. Nobody felt safe, not even the most upstanding members of the community, who were now afraid that their Anglo neighbors and coworkers viewed them as potential suspects.
Was Jesús responsible for all this? Of course not. The hush-hush mistrust and side-glancing had existed long before he came along. He had simply been a catalyst, a means to an end.
He thought back to his time in Starke, how deeply suspicious Randy had been of the state. The incident in Waco had given the government a perfect pretext for getting rid of white supremacist leaders like David Koresh. Now Jesús was just another government excuse, this time to cleanse the country of Mexicans like him.
He went to the bathroom and washed his hands. The face staring back at him in the mirror wasn’t his. The cheeks began melting into bloody clumps, leaving spots of bare skull. His whole body shuddered.
He wanted to confess, to explain how difficult things had been, how hard it was to keep the faith. He wanted to go home.
He didn’t, though. He couldn’t fail Him now.
He’d been chosen specifically and had to embody the wrath of an avenging angel.
I ain’t gonna die, right? ’Cause you promised. I can’t die.
“Holy. Be not thy name. KILL THEM ALL.”
He found a public telephone on his way out of the bathroom and dialed his sister’s number.
When María Luisa answered, Jesús hung up.
He called back.
“Aló?”
“Hermanita . . . you recognize my voice?”
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