“A mall opening. Are you serious?” Leah said, her voice flat. “How about I write it now and skip driving over there?”
Margaret’s smile hardened. “No, I want you to go down and talk to some of the shop owners. Get some local color to sprinkle through the piece. How excited they are, that sort of thing. I don’t know how things operate in New York, but here what sells papers is local color. Personal interest. People like to read about themselves and the places they go. You may feel it’s beneath you, but we know our market.”
Leah had two options: she could refuse and go to Ridley Talbert, the editor, to protest being handed an assignment that was a complete waste of her time; or comply, keeping the fragile peace with Margaret but flushing her day and the research she’d hoped to continue on the series she’d started with such a bang.
She opted for the safe route. She could always work late again after the mall event. The Internet never slept, even if she had to occasionally.
“Sure…you’re right, of course. Let me check my messages, clear my desk, and I’m all over it, Margaret.”
Margaret’s eyes swept over Leah’s ensemble. “You might consider wearing clean clothes to work so you’re presentable.”
Leah looked down at the coffee stain. “Some jerk spilled on me at the store on the way in. I can always go back home to change if you think it’s important.”
Margaret didn’t take the bait. “No, no, there wouldn’t be time now. Just try to get the worst of the coffee out of it and head to the mall.”
“Do you want me to take photos?”
Margaret shook her head. “We’ll use some of the stock ones they sent us.” She gave Leah a final look that managed to convey annoyance and superiority in a single glance, and then turned on her heel, leaving Leah almost trembling with anger.
Leah was used to the woman’s arrogance, but that didn’t help with her frustration over the incessant undermining, which sometimes bordered on sabotage ever since her big story had broken and Talbert had commended Leah on a job well done. Leah should have expected it – she’d known Margaret for years and was more than aware that she despised her own situation, working as an associate editor for a third-string rag in a dusty backwater with no future. She had the personality of a weasel and, like most petty bureaucrats, took out her feelings of inadequacy on her staff, particularly someone like Leah who had dared to achieve something she never would.
Leah plopped down in a worn swivel chair behind a cheap metal desk and eyed her computer screen as her system booted up. The PC was older than her degree and took forever to do even the simplest of tasks. She’d been spoiled at the Herald, where everyone had state-of-the-art equipment, and she’d gotten used to the fastest systems money could buy. Here at the Examiner, everything associated with the business was a relic, from the phone system to the furniture, which was to be expected, as circulation revenues had shrunk in the wake of the Internet. Talbert had been a cheapskate even when times had been relatively good, and now that they were lean and headed worse, she was grateful that the Examiner still supplied toilet paper and meager air conditioning for its underpaid staff.
Leah’s eyes were drawn to her telephone and its blinking message light. She lifted the handset to her ear and entered her passcode, and the system informed her that she had one new voicemail. A male Hispanic voice, heavily accented and gravelly, spoke slowly, as though unsure of how to proceed.
“Miss Mason? Leah Mason? This…my name is León Sánchez. Congratulations on your article about the killings of the factory workers in Ciudad Juárez. It attracted my attention, and I wanted to call…and…here is my number. I would like to meet with you as soon as possible. I can’t say much on the telephone, but it will be worth your while to talk.”
Leah groped amidst the clutter on her desk, found a pen, and scrawled the Juárez phone number on a scrap of paper before the message stopped with a beep. She rewound it and listened to it again, and then depressed a button to check the time stamp. Only twenty minutes ago.
Leah had written a four-thousand-word think piece on the infamous Juárez murders of the nineties, when hundreds of young female workers had disappeared, later turning up in mass graves. A number of perps had been prosecuted after an almost decade-long investigation, but even after a series of convictions, some believed the entire proceedings had been a cover-up. She’d penned an exposé that highlighted the fact that the disappearances had never really stopped until two years after the convictions and, more ominously, had recently started again, with six women gone missing over the past four months – the latest only a few days before. The end of the piece had speculated that the killers might have never been apprehended, and promised follow-ups that would pursue the cases until the truth was revealed.
The article had been sufficiently lurid to catch the imagination on a slow national news day, and her words had gone viral after several papers on the coasts picked it up, making her a minor sensation for the second time in her life.
She shook her head to clear it, trying not to think about the first time.
That hadn’t ended well.
Leah checked her email and saw nothing urgent and, after a final scan of her desk, gathered her purse and messenger bag again and made for the door, tossing a salute to Talbert through his office window as he berated some unfortunate over the phone, her mind replaying the unusual message and wondering what could be so sensitive that Sánchez needed to discuss it with her in person.
Chapter 3
Leah arrived at the mall as the local high school marching band was finishing its performance in the relentless broil of the late summer morning, the sun a blinding orb in an azure sky devoid of clouds. A new parking lot with thirty or so vehicles scattered around the periphery shimmered from the heat, and a handful of minor dignitaries stood by a ribbon, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.
She killed the engine and stepped from the car. The swelter assaulted her as she made her way to the gathering. The toot of a tuba and snap of a snare drum signaled the end of an uninspired rendition of The Yellow Rose of Texas played to a crowd of largely bored unemployed laborers, taking advantage of free lemonade and snacks, plus a huddle of beaming band member parents who clapped like they were attending a Broadway premiere.
The mayor offered a smattering of applause before stepping to the ribbon, accompanied by a local beauty queen in a ball gown wholly inappropriate for the outdoor event, and what Leah guessed was the developer – a lanky, tanned man with the look of a golf pro who dabbled in real estate between tournaments. The man grinned at the gathering, displaying a full set of blindingly white teeth that would have been the envy of a Kardashian, and launched into a speech about community, diversity, opportunity, ultimately finishing with a rousing plea to the Almighty to bless this proud undertaking. Leah had to bite her lip to keep from rolling her eyes. It was a frigging strip mall, not the Sistine Chapel, but to hear his oration it was the eighth wonder of the world.
The mayor, his brow beaded with sweat, his suit inadvisable given the temperature, went next, and his speech was thankfully short. When he was done, Miss Armadillo or whatever handed him a pair of oversized scissors and he cut the ribbon strung across the doors of the grocery store that was the anchor tenant, and more applause signaled that the festivities had reached their dizzy crescendo.
Leah circulated among the few shop owners who stood beside their storefronts like dazed night creatures exposed to light, waiting with banners announcing grand opening sales and promising unbelievable discounts. She made small talk and got a few obligatory quotes she could have invented while in the john, and after taking down their names, put away her notepad and felt for her cell phone.
The Mexican line carried a hum of static, and the ringing warbled tremulously in her ear. It was answered by the same voice that had left the message for her, a scratchy baritone that sounded challenging with just a single syllable.
“Si?”
“Mr. Sánchez? Leó
n Sánchez?”
“Yes,” Sánchez said, switching to English.
“This is Leah Mason. You left a message for me earlier?”
“Ah, Miss Mason. Of course. Thank you for calling me back.”
Leah waited, hoping he would get to the point before she melted in the sun. She cleared her throat expectantly. “Sure.”
“As I said, I read your article with great interest. It presented many of the questions we’ve all had about the case of the missing girls,” Sánchez said, his English oddly formal. “I was instrumental in the investigations that led to the prosecutions being brought, but was never satisfied with the resolution.”
Leah’s ears perked up. “You were with the police?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“You mentioned that you’d like to meet?”
There was a long pause, and Leah felt a bead of sweat trickle from her hairline and work its way down her spine.
“If you can, yes. I have information…I can’t discuss it on the phone, but if we can meet somewhere today…I have a file you must see.”
“A file?”
“That’s all I can say.”
“Why me? Why don’t you take it to one of the papers down there?”
“No one cares. They are all corrupt. Nobody here would print this story. It would be killed immediately.”
Leah considered his words, her curiosity piqued. “Can you come to the U.S.?”
“That would be difficult for me. It would be better if you could come to Juárez.”
The thought of crossing the border didn’t thrill Leah. She’d been enough times to hate the place, and hadn’t been back in years. Bad as she thought El Paso was, Ciudad Juárez was a whole different level of despair and poverty, and she had little interest in subjecting herself to it if she could avoid it.
“I don’t know, Mr. Sánchez. I have a pretty full day,” she said, eyeing the throng in front of the grocery store dispersing now that the free show was over.
“I can assure you it would be worth the effort. This…it is the story of a lifetime. No exaggeration.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Another long pause. The faint humming on the line buzzed in her ear. A jet soared overhead on takeoff, and she winced and jammed a finger in her other ear, straining to hear the Mexican’s response.
“It is not safe to talk over the phone.”
Leah sighed. Fine. Part of her job involved melodrama, and this guy was pouring it on thick. But there was something in his voice and his cautious words that commanded attention. He didn’t sound like a kook. She’d spoken to her share of nut jobs, and this was…different. Serious.
“I can be there in an hour and a half, tops. I have to get my passport, and I’d rather walk across than take my car and hassle with insurance. Is there someplace near the border we can meet?”
She could hear his breathing. “Yes. A cantina. Mi Ranchito. It is in the town center. Any taxi here can take you. They will all know the place.”
“Mi Ranchito,” she repeated. “Too far to walk from the bridge?”
“I’m afraid so. But a short ride.”
She glanced at her watch. “Want to say…one thirty?”
“Or two. I must get the file.”
“Fine. I’ll see you at two. How will I recognize you?”
“You won’t have to. I have seen your picture on the Internet.”
Leah disconnected and stared doubtfully at her phone. Going to Juárez when she was supposed to be covering the mall shindig was crazy, but her gut said that Señor Sánchez was the real deal. When he’d said that he had the story of a lifetime, she’d actually shivered. If he was pulling her leg, he deserved an Oscar, because she believed him. And if he’d been part of the original investigation of the girls, the mystery file might hold the key to breaking the story wide open.
God knew she needed a break – one big bombshell that could put her back on the industry radar rather than spending a career covering minor celebrity weddings and missing pets, tormented by the Wicked Witch of the Southwest.
Her heart beat faster as she slipped behind the recalcitrant car’s wheel and started the engine. She might have been thrown a few curveballs, but she was still at bat, and as long as she could swing, she was doing what she’d always wanted for a living, even if it was from the armpit office of the local fish wrap. The Juárez murders had been shocking and brutal, and her revisiting of the story had struck a chord. If she could follow it up with something nobody had ever seen before, it could be what she’d been dreaming of ever since her disastrous departure from the Herald.
Leah hurried home, thankful that her aunt was now closeted away with the AC blowing, watching her soap operas and crocheting more doilies that nobody wanted. Inside her apartment Leah ferreted around in her nightstand drawer and found her passport, issued when she’d moved to New York with visions of traveling the world in pursuit of the stories lesser reporters didn’t dare cover. Now its unstamped, blank pages were just another reminder of how far she’d fallen since then. She slid it into her back pocket, changed into a clean top, and was out the door with just enough time to grab a hasty lunch and walk across the bridge at the Paso Del Norte border crossing.
The Puente Internacional was dense with pedestrians trudging over the dry riverbed that delineated the Mexican border. The fifteen-minute walk in the heat of the day felt like an hour’s forced march, and when she passed through the Mexican customs building, she sighed in relief. Leah stepped from the immigration checkpoint into a dusty haze of Juárez exhaust and contrasted the antiseptic U.S. side to the chaotic pandemonium of Mexico, with vendors hawking every manner of snack and junk to anyone who would listen and cars growling past, blaring their horns as tempers frayed in the heat. A sweating one-legged man with copper skin and clown makeup on his face juggled bowling pins by a line of taxis, his dog beside him with a party hat affixed to its head and a tip basket clenched in its jaws. Leah deposited a dollar into the basket, mainly for the dog’s sake, and continued to the head of the queue.
The cab driver knew Mi Ranchito and, after they negotiated a price, swung into traffic with suicidal abandon, Banda music screeching from the car radio.
“Do you have air conditioning?” Leah asked from the backseat.
“Oh, no, señorita, I’m sorry, ees broken. But the breeze is fresh from the windows, no?”
Leah shook her head. “No.”
“Ees no very far. You will see.”
The cantina was a seafood restaurant with garish pink paint and a palapa roof. Leah paid the driver and ducked into the shade of the interior. Only a few tables were occupied, all by locals, and a young waiter led her to a corner beneath a ceiling fan that afforded slim ventilation. She checked the time, ordered a soda, and thanked the universe that she only had twenty minutes to wait before Sánchez was due.
Two hours later she paid her bill and stalked to the entrance, where the waiter had called her a taxi. She’d tried Sánchez’s number three times, with no answer, and had ignored a call from Margaret a half hour earlier, not wanting to deal with it. Leah fumed at having been suckered into a wasted trip as the cab wended its way back to the border. She’d squandered precious time she didn’t have on the empty promise of the story of a lifetime that had turned out to be a hoax.
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Table of Contents
Books by Russell Blake
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Excerpt from A Girl Apart
The Day After Never - Insurrection (Book 5) Page 26