by Leigh Jones
“Oh, yeah, she liked it rough,” the man who had been with her sister was telling the others. “I’m not sure she’ll have much left for either of you.”
“That’s all right,” one of the men said, setting his drink down and heading for the hall. “I’ll get my money’s worth.”
“I guess that leaves you for me,” the fourth man said, pulling Esperanza to him. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”
This time, Esperanza didn’t hear anything from the other room. The fear of what that might mean clawed at her mind, shredding the last remnants of her hope for the night. How had everything fallen apart so quickly? When she was free, she got dressed again and went back to the living room. El Jefe sat with the two other men on one couch. Jim still sat in the corner of the other, his mouth set in a hard line, his eyes vacant. Esperanza busied herself behind the bar, where she could avoid notice but still hear and see everything in the living room. A few minutes later, the third man emerged from her sister’s room, a smirk on his face. He made a big show of buckling his belt. The others laughed.
“I’ve got to say, you sure know how to throw a party,” he said, raising his hand to his forehead in a mock salute to El Jefe.
“And there’s plenty more where that came from, mi amigo,” El Jefe said, standing and stretching his arms over his head. “But tonight, it’s late. I think we’ve all had enough fun for one day, no?”
The others stood too, draining the last of their drinks and swapping self-satisfied smiles. El Jefe opened the front door and motioned for the men to head down the stairs. Before following them, he turned to fix Jim with a long, cold stare.
“She’s all yours, mi amigo. But make it fast, no? Gloria needs her beauty sleep.”
As El Jefe's heavy footfalls echoed down the steps, Esperanza glanced out the side door to the deck. The embers of El Carcelero’s cigarette glowed in the dark, a barely perceptible sign of his constant presence. El Jefe had probably warned him to keep a close watch on his unwanted guest. If Gloria could persuade Jim to take her with him tonight, could the three of them overpower their jailer? Esperanza had never seen him with a gun, but she didn’t doubt he had one close by.
Esperanza wanted to see her sister before Jim went to her, but she didn’t want to delay their meeting any longer. She watched him stand from the couch, draining his drink like the others had done. She tried to read his face. Anger had transformed his gentle features into a rigid mask. She knew he was furious. El Jefe had humiliated him. She hoped that would only make him more likely to heed her sister’s plea for help.
He didn’t even glance her way as he strode down the hallway and opened her sister’s door. She began to tremble, tears stinging the back of her eyes, when he shut it firmly behind him. She hurried back to her own room and pulled her chair up to the wall. For about forty-five minutes she sat with her ear pressed to the sheetrock, straining to pick up any little sound. Her eyelids were starting to get heavy when a long, low moan broke the silence.
“Why, Gloria, why? You know how I feel about you.”
Esperanza jumped up from the chair. A spike of adrenaline set her heart hammering. She ran to her door but hesitated as her hand closed around the knob. She couldn’t hear anything else. She ran back to the wall and pressed her whole body against it, willing another clue that would tell her what was going on.
Another series of moans slowly turned her anxiety to fear. She had never heard Jim make a noise when he was with her sister. Was he giving voice to his passion or his anger? As he continued to cry out, Esperanza strained to hear her sister. Nothing. But Jim continued to moan, his cries broken by jagged gasps. They finally reached a crescendo and then died away, leaving a heavy silence. For a few minutes, all Esperanza could hear was the thudding of her heart.
Then a long, low howl split the night. It tore through Esperanza’s ears, a harbinger of utter destruction.
“Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!”
Esperanza sprinted out her door and burst into her sister’s room. El Carcelero was right behind her.
Gloria lay in the middle of the bed, her eyes closed. Jim was on his knees next to her, his hands on her shoulders.
“Gloria! Gloria, wake up.” He shook her gently at first then more vigorously. “Oh, God. God! What’s happened? I’ve killed her!”
Esperanza ran to the bed and flung herself on her sister. Frantically, she wiped the hair away from her face and rubbed her cheek.
“Wake up, chula. Wake up! I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.”
On the other side of the bed, El Carcelero dragged Jim to the floor and placed two fingers on the side of Gloria’s neck.
“No! NO! She’s just fainted. It was all too much. Gloria, wake up!” Esperanza’s voice rose with every word, until she was finally screaming. “Gloria, WAKE UP!”
But her sister never moved. She looked like she was asleep, but as the reality of what had happened began to sink in, Esperanza let out a long, keening wail. Burying her head in her hands, she screamed and screamed. While the men looked on, seemingly unable to move, Esperanza finally looked up to the ceiling and let out a piercing howl.
“What did you do?” El Carcelero growled, turning on Jim where he stood at the end of the bed, clutching a sheet to his chest. When he responded with just an inarticulate gurgling, El Carcelero shoved him up against the wall. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know! We were making love. I guess I put my hands around her neck. I was so overwhelmed with the other men, all of it. I just wanted her to know how much she meant to me.”
“Yeah, you showed her alright,” El Carcelero said.
Esperanza was gasping for breath. She felt like Jim’s hands were around her throat. Bright spots danced before her eyes. All she could do was wail as she continued to stroke her sister’s lifeless cheek. The blow across her jaw caught her by surprise and cut off her cry.
“Shut up! Shut up and let me think!” her jailer shouted. Pointing at Jim, he said, “You, don’t move.”
El Carcelero’s fist had stopped her cry, but it couldn’t stem the flow of tears cascading down Esperanza’s cheeks. Her sister’s sweet face, impossibly serene in death, swam before her eyes. She patted the folds of loose sheet until she found Gloria’s hand. Grasping it gently, she brought it to her face and kissed the palm. The last time she had done that, they were sitting at their mother’s bare kitchen table, talking about the man who had offered Esperanza the chance to come to America. Gloria had begged to come too. Esperanza refused at first. Her sister was too young to leave school to work in a country where they would have no legal status, no friends or family to help them. Esperanza had read stories of men and women caught by the police and bused back across the border. She was willing to take the risk, but she didn’t want her sister to suffer the indignity of being unwelcome in a foreign land.
But Gloria persisted. She wheedled, begged. Their mother even took her side. She would rather her girls be together, she said. You will be a comfort to each other, she insisted, finally persuading Esperanza by telling her Gloria had no prospects of a future at home. When she finally gave in, they were sitting in the kitchen, the warm, spicy punch of chorizo filling the air as their mother cooked dinner. After she told Gloria she would take her to America, she had lifted the teen’s hand to her mouth and kissed it. I’ll keep you safe, she had promised.
The agony of everything they had endured, from the moment the broker handed them over to the men at the dock to the final forced act of intimacy that took Gloria’s life bore down on Esperanza, bowing her back and pressing her facedown on the bed. She would do anything to trade places with her sister.
Through the fog of her grief, Esperanza could hear El Carcelero in the hallway, talking on his phone. She didn’t even bother to sit up when she heard him walk back into the room.
“You, get dressed,” he barked. Esperanza could hear clothes being tossed across the room.
“What are you going to do?” Jim said, his voice trembling.
“I’m going to clean up your mess. And you’re going to help me.”
“What do you mean?” Jim asked. It sounded like he was putting on his pants.
“We’ve got to get rid of the body, tonto. We’re going to dump it in the Bay. Hurry up.”
Esperanza sat up and spun around wildly.
“What? No! No! You’re not taking her anywhere!” she said, still clinging to Gloria’s hand. She looked frantically from one man to the other. “We have to call the police! He murdered her.”
El Carcelero snorted. Esperanza watched, struggling to understand what was happening as he snatched up the sheet piled at Jim’s feet and spread it out on the floor. He grabbed Esperanza by the shoulder and yanked her off the bed, sending her tumbling to the floor.
“Grab her feet,” he barked at Jim as he hooked both hands under Gloria’s armpits.
Dazed, Esperanza watched as they swung her sister from the bed and set her down in the middle of the sheet. Her head made a sickening thud on the wood plank floor. Esperanza screamed, the sound exploding from her mouth in an involuntary rush. She scrambled onto the sheet and threw herself onto her sister’s body, wrapping her arms around Gloria’s limp shoulders.
“No! Don’t touch her,” she wailed, rocking back and forth.
From behind, El Carcelero grabbed both her arms, pulling her up and off her sister. Gloria’s head fell back again, smacking the floor. Esperanza thrashed and kicked, trying to break free of his vice grip. He grunted when her heel connected with his shin. But that was the only satisfaction she got for all her fighting. He pinned her arms behind her back and wrestled her to the ground.
“Get the tape,” he grunted, nodding toward the door to Gloria’s room, where Esperanza could now see a roll of silver tape and a pile of rope. When Jim came close enough to hand El Carcelero the tape, Esperanza spit at him.
“Murderer!” she screamed, as El Carcelero wrapped the heavy tape tight around her wrists. He spun her around, so that her back was up against the bed and wrapped more tape around her outstretched legs. He pressed the final piece firmly across her mouth. Over his shoulder, Esperanza could see Jim kneeling over her sister. Tears streamed down his face.
“I never meant to hurt her,” he said, looking at Esperanza with pleading eyes. “It was an accident.”
“Enough!” El Carcelero barked. “Wrap her up.”
“We can’t leave her like this,” Jim said. “Please, at least let me put her clothes on.”
“Fine. Just hurry up.”
Powerless, Esperanza watched as the man she had foolishly pinned so many hopes on clumsily redressed her sister in the slinky black sheath she’d put on so many hours ago. He struggled to get it over her head and pull her limp arms through the armholes. When he was finally done, he smoothed the hair back from her face and carefully adjusted the gold heart at her throat. Under the thin chain, Esperanza could see the purple smudges beginning to appear where his hands had clamped down until they snuffed out her sister’s life. Tears pooled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks.
When Jim finally sat back, El Carcelero flipped one side of the sheet over Gloria and rolled her into the rest of it, until she was completely shrouded in the white linen. Esperanza whimpered uncontrollably as he wrapped tape around her sister’s ankles, her waist, and finally around her neck, folding the end of the sheet down to make a tight hood.
“All right,” he finally said, straightening up and wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Lets get her to the boat. We don’t have long before the sun comes up.”
The trickle of Esperanza’s tears turned to sobs as the men lifted her sister and carried her into the hallway. She tried to quiet her cries so she could hear what they were doing once they made it under the house. After some scraping and banging, she heard a faint splash followed by the purr of an outboard motor. She held her breath until she was absolutely sure the sound had died away, leaving her enveloped in a heavy, empty silence.
She leaned her head back into the side of the bed, inhaling the fresh scent of her sister’s perfume. A wave of nausea sent bile surging into her throat. She gagged against the tape over her mouth, and a fresh wave of sobs shook her body. When the sobs finally melted into whimpers, she slid sideways until she was laying on the floor, her cheek pressed against the cool boards. Her eyelids, swollen with tears, slowly closed and her sister’s smiling face faded into the darkness. The image stretched and widened until she could see the whole, bright scene. The memory was so vivid, Esperanza thought for a moment she was really there. Gloria was at home, in the kitchen, twirling around the table to show off the colorful skirt her mother had just finished sewing. She was laughing, her eyes full of life and her face fresh with the promise of future hopes and dreams.
“Lo siento, Gloria,” she whispered. “Lo siento.”
Chapter 27
A cool wind knifed through Kate’s thin hoodie and propelled her toward the knot of police officers clustered at the water’s edge. The first cold front of the fall had blown in overnight, rattling the windows in her loft and driving away the last traces of summer’s misery. When she woke up, she figured she would spend the day working on a weather story. She was saved from that reporter’s hell by a call over the police scanner announcing a body had washed up near Channelview Drive.
The street ran parallel to the island’s north shore. Its row of large houses, most of which had private piers jutting out into Galveston Bay, looked across the water to the mainland. Tucked away behind Harborside Drive, past all of the port’s docks and warehouses, it had a secluded feel. People paid good money for a house here because they didn’t want to deal with the tourists on the West End or the traffic in Offats Bayou.
Kate spotted Johnson among the group of officers standing near the water. Between their dark blue uniformed legs, she caught glimpses of a dingy white sheet.
She hung back until the coroner arrived. When the officers broke their huddle to make way for the gurney, Johnson looked up and Kate caught his eye. The familiar flutters of excitement started to stir. When Johnson held up one finger to let her know he would come give her the details in a minute, the flutters accelerated into a full hurricane.
While she watched from about 50 feet away, the coroner and his assistant lifted the body onto the gurney. It looked like a mummy with duct tape wrapped around its ankles, waist, and neck. Pulling a pair of scissors out of his bag, the coroner carefully cut through the tape around the neck and folded back the cloth until he could lift it away from the body. Kate strained to see but the angle completely blocked her view. Frowning in frustration, she took a few steps forward. Johnson looked up and shook his head at her, almost imperceptibly. But she saw. If she wanted any information, she’d better not take another step.
Johnson pulled a small notebook and pen out of his front pocket and started taking notes as the coroner pointed to the body. His eyebrows rose. He nodded rapidly. His pen made circular motions on the paper, as though he was sketching something. What had him so excited? Kate stomped her foot with impatience. Johnson’s head snapped up and he frowned at her. She had to wait through five more minutes of pointing and nodding before Johnson flipped the notebook closed and the coroner wheeled the gurney back to his van. As he drove off, Johnson walked slowly over to Kate. Butterflies beat a steady rhythm against her ribs.
“Hey,” he said, flashing her a lopsided smile.
Heat crept across Kate’s cheeks. The memory of their last conversation briefly crowded out all the questions that had been building in her mind.
“Hey yourself. So, what do we have here? Something seemed to have you pretty excited.”
“It’s another young Hispanic woman.”
Kate couldn’t hide her excitement as she looked up with wide eyes and parted lips.
“It’s hard to tell, but she looks no older than twenty.”
“Just like the first murder,” Kate said, her hand shaking slightly. “Could you tell what happened to her?”
“Could you tell how long she’s been in the water?”
“Not long. Probably just a few days.”
“Well, somebody obviously dumped her after they killed her. I don’t suppose she had any ID.”
“We won’t know for sure until we get her fully unwrapped. But she’s wearing a party dress, and I doubt it’s got any pockets.”
“So, we’ve got another unidentified dead woman and no way to figure out who she is.”
“Maybe. But we may have gotten lucky this time.”
“What do you mean?”
Johnson paused and looked at her intently, like he was trying to figure out how much to tell her. “This is off the record. Completely off the record.”
“Oh, come on. You’re killing me.”
“I mean it, Kate. This could be big, and I have to talk to the chief to make sure he agrees with making it public.”
Kate signed and rolled her eyes.
“Hey! At least you’re the first to know about it. I could make you wait.”
“Okay, okay. Spill it.”
“She’s wearing a necklace, a gold heart pendant. It looks pretty unusual, like it was handmade. Maybe one of a kind. If we can find out where it came from, maybe we can figure out who she is.”
“Do you really think it will be that easy? What are the chances it’s that unique?”
Johnson shrugged. “It’s one more clue than we had last time a young woman was murdered. I’ll take anything I can get.”
Kate pursed her lips and tapped her pen on her notepad. “When you decide to go public, I’ll be the first to know, right?”
“Of course.” Johnson grinned. “I can’t promise you’ll have exclusive access, but I’ll call you first.”