The Black Minutes

2

From the moment he entered, the regulars had stared at him like he was a priest about to perform a secret rite. F*cking a*sholes, he thought, as if I have any idea how to solve this thing. He figured there were seventy people. Damn, he thought, I’m going to need backup; no way I can interview them all, I didn’t bring a pen, paper, nothing.
“Where is it?”
“There in back, behind the jukebox,” explained the manager, and led him to the main restroom.
The agent shoved aside the tables blocking his path and noticed Rivas paused in the doorway, letting him go by. In that instant he asked himself: What am I going to do when El Travolta gets here? He’s going to give me shit, for sure: What’s up, dude, stepping on my toes? No way, cabrón, this is just the way it happened; if you don’t believe me, ask Lolita. And if he gets pissed off, it’s his problem, fat f*cking piece of shit; this is his case, not mine.
Rangel had been on the police force six years. He’d seen people killed by bullets, shot at close range, poisoned, drowned, strangled, and run over, heads smashed in with blunt objects, a suicide who’d jumped from a sixth floor, and even a man butted to death by a zebu. But he was completely unprepared for what he was about to find. What he saw before him was the worst thing that had happened to the city since the nineteenth century. And it was just getting started.
Paracuán was the third oil port on the gulf. The only time it had been on the brink of fame was in 1946, when John Huston came through scouting locations for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. According to the old guys, they were on the verge of filming in the port, but the cinematographer insisted that another city farther north was more photogenic, and the film crew took off for Tampico. That’s the story of Paracuán: everything good disappears right when it’s about to arrive. In its five-hundred-year existence, it’s suffered every kind of catastrophe. It was the center of indigenous commerce until the Spaniards destroyed it, it became a prosperous mercantile center until the invasion of the French, it had an important stock exchange until the Depression of 1929, and it had great oil fields until they shut down the Oil Workers’ Union. Being in an oil-producing region, it is plagued by the same curse as are the mining towns: great wealth is produced but little or nothing ends up benefiting its residents. Sensational bloody battles happen more or less constantly: when it’s not the sailors, it’s the ranchers, and when it’s not them it’s the unions or the smugglers. They’ve used switchblades, grappling hooks, harpoons, fishhooks, machetes, ropes, cords, frying pans, hydraulic jacks, car bumpers, and even freight cars—all to cause or to fake falls, crashes, work accidents, suicides, drunken deaths. At the political level, the only thing worth mentioning is the incipient opposition, both on the left and on the right. The left continues despite the infighting practically tearing them apart, and saying right in Paracuán is the equivalent of saying far right: ignorant people, racist and unaccustomed to actual thinking.
Another girl had been found in El Palmar a month before. Her name was Karla Cevallos. A pair of young lovers, whose names were left out of the papers, were crossing the lagoon in a row-boat when it occurred to them to stop and get out on a reed-covered islet. The woman was the first person to find her. It smells awful here, she said, it really stinks. As she was exploring in the underbrush, her heel got caught on a plastic bag, and when she tried to pull her foot free, she discovered the girl’s remains. El Mercurio didn’t spare its readers any unpleasant details or photographs: BODY FOUND AT LAGOON. The article said she appeared to have been chopped up into pieces and that wild animals had started to gnaw on her flesh. Ten days before, her parents had reported her disappearance. The last time she was seen alive she was leaving Benito Juárez Public School.
As he stepped through the doorway, he recognized Dr. Ridaura’s white hair. Despite her seventy years, the old lady was on her knees, conducting an exhaustive examination of the stall. She’s even more cold-blooded than Ramírez, Rangel thought. She was from Spain, an immigrant. They said she’d left her country at the end of the civil war. How had a biology professor ended up doing autopsies? Rangel asked himself. For years, her husband had worked at headquarters as their forensic expert, but for the last five years she’d taken over. The day they hired her, the chief asked if she felt capable of taking on her husband’s job, if she thought it would be hard for her to work with corpses. She had replied: “I’ve been a physician for forty years. You let me know if there’s something that can still shock me.” Rangel wondered if she thought the same thing after five years on the force.
When she noticed him, the doctor turned around and lowered her mouth mask.
“Ah! I’m glad you came! I don’t know where to begin. How do you want to proceed?”
She got to her feet and walked toward the agent. The toilet stall door slammed shut before Rangel could get a glimpse of the corpse. Up close, the doctor no longer seemed so calm. She had a pair of tweezers in her right hand and a plastic bag in her left, which amplified her hands’ barely perceptible trembling. Ay caray, I can’t let her get me nervous, Rangel said to himself, so he answered her in his calmest voice.
“She hasn’t been moved, right?”
“No, God forbid.”
“Don’t move her until they’ve taken photographs. You have any opinion?”
“It’s too early,” she answered. “I was just getting started, studying the scene. At first glance, she wasn’t killed in situ, they just tossed her here.”
“You sure?”
“It would be impossible to do this without leaving blood all over the floor. And look, there are no stains, and the bag is intact, except for that little hole. . . . You be the judge.”
The doctor moved to one side to let him past. Rangel hesitated, as if avoiding having to look, but was dissuaded by the expressions on the faces of the woman and the manager, who’d come through the door. It was as if they were saying, Do something, cabrón; you’re the law, well, show us; you’re supposed to protect us, get moving, don’t be useless. What the hell, Rangel told himself, this is supposed to belong to El Travolta . . . and he decided to go ahead.
He pushed open the stall door with one hand, and the first thing he saw was a black trash bag . . . something that looked like hair . . . strips of a white blouse and a plaid skirt. . . . All of a sudden, he saw the head. How awful, he said to himself; he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He remembered the time they sent him to the town of Altagracia to pick up the remains of a man devoured by a tiger. Ah, cabrón, he thought, who could’ve done this? He felt he hadn’t quite woken up yet, the forty-eight-hour shifts with no sleep had messed with his sense of reality. Oh, God, he said to himself, oh, God, I’m getting dizzy. But he had to get a hold of himself. He was the one conducting the investigation.
He pushed the crooked door open again and noticed a thin layer of dust on everything and a fine fuzz floating inside the stall, visible in the sun’s rays; however, more than anything else, what grabbed his attention was the state of the body. Damn, what’s going on here? Why does this get to me so much? There was something strange in there, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. Let’s see, pay attention, man; what’s getting to you? I know it’s a gruesome scene but pay attention; you have to do something.
He looked at the bag again. If there was a clue there, it escaped him. Then he asked himself what his uncle would have done, the legendary Lieutenant Rivera who had died two years before. If his uncle had been there, no doubt he would have said to him, “You look like a faggot, not my f*cking nephew. Your hands all slimy and sweaty. Let me through, get out of the way.” He could almost see his uncle walking up to the body and carrying out his detailed examination of the crime scene, even the floor tiles in the stall and in the one beside it. “Aha! Yeah, I get it.” He observed everything just to get an accurate picture of the place. “Aha. Aha. Aha.” Then and only then did his uncle move in closer to the cadaver, once he was sure he wasn’t destroying any evidence. It wouldn’t take him long to come up with his first explanation: “It reminds me of the El Palmar girl. I know they’re different circumstances, but that’s what I think. . . . Remember, the first impression is always the most important, always ask your gut what it thinks; don’t forget the system, nephew; it’s like you only got this job ’cause you knew somebody: I go through so much bullshit with you.”
As he half closed the door, Rangel caused a draft of air that stirred up a cloud of dust and fuzz.
The doctor sneezed. “Excuse me, I’m getting a cold.”
He noticed that the bars on the front door shuddered as someone kicked it on the other side. Don’t let anyone in unless they’re a detective, he ordered the manager.
When he was alone with the older woman, he asked her, “What did they use to do this?” He pointed to one of the wounds.
“The one on top? I’d say a hunting knife, a little more than an inch wide. I’ll tell you exactly how big when I take the body to the morgue. Yeah, for sure it’s a hunting knife.”
“About an inch wide? Like the other one?”
“At first glance, yeah. I’d say that’s correct.”
All evidence seemed to point to the fact that it was the same guy. The idea wasn’t at all pleasant, and both Rangel and the doctor fell silent. Finally, Rangel said, “Before going to the morgue, look for initials on the clothes. Our first priority is to find out who she was and what school she went to.”
He heard a voice saying, “Right this way.” Finally, he thought, it’s Wong and the Professor, but it was just Ramírez coming back in from outside. The photographer walked toward the bathroom and just as he was about to go in, Rangel grabbed him by the arm.
“Before you go in there, you need to take pictures of the floor.”
“Sorry, but I don’t work that way with Mr. Taboada.”
Don’t f*cking mention El Travolta, he thought; I already know how he runs his cases. “Today you’re working with me, cabrón,” he shot back at him.
“What do you want me to look for?”
“Evidence, any kind of evidence. It’s like you don’t know how to do your own job, Ramírez!”
“I’ll tell him what to do,” the doctor answered coldly and started to give instructions.
As they waited for the ambulance and backup, Rangel interviewed the staff. No chance the perpetrator was one of them: the cook hadn’t left his area since eleven, the manager was watching over the cash register, the bartender wasn’t allowed to leave his spot behind the bar, and the waiters had never left the main room. Raúl Silva found the body a little before 2:50. I’ll be damned, Rangel thought.
The first thing he had to do was figure out what time the body was left there. Once he’d cleared that up, Rangel had to check to see if anyone present at the scene was a suspect, arrest him if necessary, and reconstruct what happened in the last hour. All of this while under pressure from the reporters just starting to arrive and, of course, not even mentioning the threat that El Travolta represented. Taboada wasn’t going to like the fact that another dog was sniffing around his territory. Fatwolf handled drugs and sex crimes. Rangel was homicide and kidnappings, especially kidnappings, but he also investigated robberies occasionally, using the contacts his uncle had passed on to him. F*cking fat ass, he thought, he should thank me for covering his back. For now, though, he had to hurry up. An angry crowd was milling around outside; they were demanding results and the ambulance lights were nowhere to be seen. He looked at his watch: it was 3:30. From now on, every minute counted.
Let’s see, he said to himself as he looked over the people who were present, could one of these guys be the killer? Knowing he was about to ask them questions, the majority of the people looked off into space, as if the ceiling were suddenly intensely interesting: Damn, you seen those huge stains? How’d they get there? Trying not to wear himself out for no reason, Rangel looked at the tables and picked the one with the most bottles on it.
Twelve minutes later, he’d established the killer must have left the girl there after 2:20. Usually, Rangel would have arrested the office worker, but everyone had seen that Raúl Silva Santacruz wasn’t carrying a plastic bag when he went to the bathroom.
“Listen to me good,” he said to Raúl Silva. “You aren’t under arrest, but you have to go to headquarters to finish your statement.”
A waiter told him another person had gone into the bathroom before Silva: “That guy next to the door.”
The suspect was a traveling salesman, a guy named René Luz de Dios López. He was eating with his boss, a Mr. Juan Alviso, owner of a local chain of candy stores. The waiter stated that he saw him go to the bathroom after ordering his drink. He didn’t have anything in his hands or take more than a minute in there. René Luz de Dios explained he’d just finished loading boxes and it was normal for him to wash his hands before eating. His boss confirmed his alibi: “He was loading the orders into the truck, ’cause it was going to Matamoros in a little while. My distributor’s there.” One look at the guy was enough for Rangel to know he was innocent, but he still had to take him in to get his statement.
“Officer,” Mr. Alviso explained, “my assistant came with me, he was in the office all morning, and we came together. There’s no way a man sitting by the door could walk across the entire bar with a girl in his arms, is there?”
Rangel knew Alviso was right, but he couldn’t let the driver go. René Luz de Dios would have to go through the purgatory that the legal process is for innocent people. It was clear to him after six years on the force that no one ever left headquarters unscathed. The experience of being guilty until proven innocent changed people. Besides, while he was waiting to be called in, René Luz ran the risk that any one of the guys there, even El Chicote, would try to extort money from him. Most likely, El Chaneque or El Travolta would handle it. Rangel didn’t like that part of his job, but if he didn’t do things by the rules, it’d seem like he was protecting the driver; in the unlikely case that René Luz turned out to be guilty, he himself could face jail time. So he held fast.
“I’m sorry, but I have to follow procedure. If I don’t, I’d be under arrest,” and he put the driver’s ID in his pocket.
“Right, but you let the big shots go, don’t you?” Mr. Alviso shot back. “Even though they were in the bathroom longer. It’s obvious whose back you’ve got.”
Rangel stared at the businessman. “What? What’d you say?”
“Mr. Williams was in there for half an hour, right? And my driver here, who was only in there for a minute, just to wash his hands, you want to arrest him? That’s outrageous.”
Rangel made a note to ask Junior a few questions, but in any case he’d have to take the driver in.
“Look.” He lowered his voice. “I give you my word that this is a routine procedure. I’m sorry,” he said. What a f*cking joke, he thought, this job is bullshit.
The Professor and Wong arrived at 4:05. The first one interviewed the drunks waiting their turn at the bar, and Wong used his irritable oriental look to interrogate the regulars at the tables in the back. At 4:30, Rangel went to see the forensic experts.
They’d already placed the body on the ground, and Ramírez was taking the last pictures. They’d laid it out on a yellow tablecloth with the Cola Drinks logo on it, provided by the bar’s owner. Rangel was an experienced police officer, but he couldn’t keep his stomach from turning. When they emptied the remains from the bag, a leg came out and almost fell off the tablecloth. Rangel and the doctor stared. In view of the fact that the extremities were separated from the torso, there was no doubt it was the same perp.
“Hurry up,” he told Ramírez. “I want to get this done already.”
They were examining the marks on the body when a strange phenomenon caught their attention. Every time Ramírez pressed the shutter of his camera, it seemed like the lightning flash had a kind of echo effect that made it last longer than normal. The phenomenon was repeated twice, until they raised their eyes and discovered La Chilanga was focusing her camera on them through a window. F*cking nosy bitch, Rangel said to himself, I can’t believe it. Rangel pointed a finger at her.
“Hey, you; stop!”
La Chilanga made like she was going to leave, but her shirt got caught on the window. When she tried to get free, the window moved a little and Rangel understood everything: Of course, he said to himself, I look like such an idiot. The girl was understandably upset and shot back at him with some Marxist rhetoric, but Rangel ignored her.
“What’s on the other side of those windows?” he asked the manager.
“Customs Alley.”
Sure, he said to himself, it all made sense.
“Wong,” he said, “you take charge for a minute, OK?”
Three dozen onlookers had gathered at the bar’s front door. They asked him what was going on, but he didn’t respond. He went around the block, all the way to the alley. He didn’t want to run into El Albino. When Rangel went into the alley, the photographer came out, but the officer didn’t do anything to stop him. Maybe he didn’t want to accept it, but he was always a little freaked by the albino. Maybe he was intimidated by the guy looking at him; he was always so quiet, and his eyes were so pale. El Albino shot him a calculated look, like a gravedigger taking measurements of a body, and left without saying a word. Rangel didn’t breathe until he saw him move away. Then he noticed the photographer was rewinding a roll of film. Ay, caray, he guessed: he took snapshots of the girl and I didn’t even hear him working. Rangel didn’t know which paper El Albino worked for, but he didn’t want to ask. Deep down, he was afraid he didn’t work for any newspaper at all. One time, he asked his uncle about him: An albino? Who? I don’t know him, and Rangel left it at that.
The alley behind the Bar León was a trash dump for all the buildings around it. There were six dumpsters, countless cardboard boxes, and the metal skeleton of an old rusty refrigerator, abandoned there a few decades before. La Chilanga was struggling on top of it with one of her sleeves caught on the edge of the window. F*cking broad, he thought, she might say she’s a Marxist but she needs a lot more experience; you can tell she just got out of college.
There were three different routes to get to the back window of the bar: one was coming from Calle Aduana, another from Calle Progreso, and the last was from the Avenida Héroes de Palo Alto. Sure, Rangel said to himself, three buildings come together here, the killer could’ve gone in and come out on any one of the three streets; he just had to climb onto that refrigerator and throw the body through the window. But why leave the girl’s body in the bar if he could throw it away outside with no danger of being seen? There was something very strange about all this. It doesn’t make sense.
He helped La Chilanga down; she was raging mad. A*sholes, gangsters, cabrones! He climbed onto the refrigerator. He immediately realized the window was only half-open. From inside the bathroom, Wong and Dr. Ridaura were watching him.
“Of course,” he said to them. “He put the girl in through here.”
He looked over that section of the alley quickly and determined that there weren’t any other bloodstains. He didn’t kill her here; however, as he examined the window, he discovered there was a dark stain on the outside edge. Ramírez has to check this out, he said to himself; it’s too bad the metal’s so rusty, I don’t think he’ll get any fingerprints. F*cking sea air destroys everything. He was examining the stain when he heard the sound of the shutter click.
“Listen, smart-ass, who do you think you are?” he asked the girl.
“I’m doing my job!”
He was trying to think of what to say when he saw the department pickup truck, La Julia, drive by. Finally, he said to himself. He was sure that Fatwolf had recognized him. The truck ground to a halt a few meters farther on, went in reverse, and stopped so Cruz Trevi?o could get out and go into the alleyway. The huge guy looked at La Chilanga suspiciously. I should have run her off, Vicente said to himself, this guy’s going to think I was the one who leaked the news to her.
Cruz Trevi?o was incredibly rude. “Get out of here,” he ordered. “You can’t be around the crime scene.”
The woman spit out a slew of insults at him. When she walked by, Trevi?o watched her angrily and then said hello to the detective.
“Another girl?”
“Like the El Palmar one.”
Cruz Trevi?o took a step back. “That’s Taboada’s case.”
“They sent me. I was on call.”
“Okay, it’s up to you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Everybody gets the same treatment?”
“It’s your decision.”
The huge guy nodded and went to leave. Before turning halfway around, he patted his pants. “You got cuffs?”
“I’m gonna use ’em.”
“I need ’em more than you do.”
Reluctantly, Rangel stuck his hand into his right pants pocket and threw him the handcuffs. Cruz Trevi?o was right: what he found out about the window made it practically impossible that one of the regulars was the killer. If they were going to arrest a suspect, they wouldn’t find him in the bar. He said that to himself and then went to coordinate transportation for the dead girl’s body.
All in all, they were there for two hours. During that time, Fatwolf and Cruz Trevi?o picked up all the suspects they could find in the area. Cruz Trevi?o parked La Julia a block away from the Bar León, and the two officers walked to the historic center of the city. They walked around the Plaza de Armas, paying attention to every detail, and when they found a bench full of gang members, Fatwolf went up to them and dragged them to the truck. One of them tried to get away, but Cruz Trevi?o caught him by the arm and knocked him to the ground in one fell swoop. Cruz Trevi?o could throw a good punch. Then they went down to the train station, where they picked up the bums sleeping on the benches; after that, they stopped at the black market stands and repeated the same operation.
Cruz Trevi?o was from Parral, Coahuila. A good friend of El Travolta, Cruz Trevi?o was in a very bad mood whenever it was hot out.
That day, Cruz and Fatwolf put all the prisoners into one cell, including two hippies who were on their way to Acapulco. Fatwolf wrote the suspects’ names in the registry, while Cruz Trevi?o rolled up his sleeves and got his arms warmed up. When he was ready, Cruz went into the cell with the prison guard behind him.
“Door.” He was asking them to open it. “You.” He pointed at one of the hippies and made him come out.
Once in the hallway, Cruz took a step toward the prisoner—he had a John Lennon look, long hair, sideburns, round glasses, and shoved him.
“What’s the deal with the girl?”
The hippie—a political science student from the Universidad Nacional on vacation in the port—adjusted his glasses and replied, “What girl?”
He never should have said that. The punch took the wind out of him; at least that was the guard’s judgment. The guard was named Emilio Nieto, aka El Chicote, and he elected to study the ceiling as Cruz Trevi?o got ready to repeat the treatment in controlled doses. The prisoner panted until he could gather enough air to ask again, “What girl?” and take another punch. Meanwhile, the prisoners started to whisper “A*sholes,” and the second hippie’s face went pale.
Then Cruz Trevi?o shouted, “Door!” and the suspects, like sheep in a flock, scurried out of the way.
Identifying the body took half an hour. One of the waiters confirmed that the uniform was from Public School Number Five, which wasn’t too far from there. The Professor telephoned the principal and found out that the mother of one of the girls had called asking about her daughter.
“Send her over here.”
The mother arrived, escorted by two female neighbors. She was carrying a rosary and a few holy cards in her hand. What a shame, Rangel thought, those aren’t going to help her at all. The woman erupted in tears as soon as she saw the shoes, and there was no way to calm her down. Finally, they injected her with a tranquilizer and she left in the same ambulance as her daughter. They found the husband an hour later, thanks to the neighbors who came with the mother. His name was Odilón and he worked in the refinery. It’s always painful to see a grown man break down.
“Yes, that’s her,” said the man. “It’s my daughter.”
The girl was named Julia Concepción González. Once they were at headquarters, the father mentioned that his daughter was in her second year in elementary school and was about to turn nine years old. Nine years old, thought Rangel. Who could attack a defenseless little girl? Only a sick murderous bastard.
“Taboada’s not back?”
It was the second time in an hour that Chief García had asked for him. For the last few months, the fat guy had become the chief’s favorite, so much so that he even let him take the patrol car for personal business for as much time as he needed. Anyway it doesn’t matter, Rangel thought, as soon as he gets here, they’re going to screw him. Supposedly, El Travolta was the one in charge of the case, since he was the one who picked up the first girl’s body. But, knowing his coworker’s ways, Rangel doubted the chief would find him that day. On Fridays, after eating lunch, El Travolta would head to the docks, perhaps to the Tiberius Bar, pick up a prostitute or two, and go party.
When Rangel got back to headquarters, they told him Dr. Ridaura had called. Rangel pulled out his tiny phonebook from his back pocket and dialed the university morgue. It was six in the afternoon.
“Doctor? It’s Rangel. You got something?”
“I’m finished already. But before I say anything, tell me something. Did you send a photographer over here?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Hold on, hold on, what do you mean?”
“A guy with a norte?o accent called and told me you ordered him to come.”
“And you let him in?”
“Of course not, even though he tried to intimidate me. I told him I was going to confirm what he said, and he hung up.”
An accent from northern Mexico, Rangel thought. It must be Johnny Guerrero, that f*cking piece of shit.
“Thanks, Doctor. Did you find out anything?”
“Yes, but I’d rather tell you in person. They’re probably tapping our call.”
He got to the morgue at nine P.M. on the dot. Rangel parked at the university medical school and walked down the wide staircase leading to the student amphitheater. He had to knock hard for someone to open the door. A sweaty young man led him to the laboratory, a room covered in tile where the smell of chemical products was particularly strong. The doctor was still working. As soon as she saw Rangel, she sent the young man away and let out a tired sigh.
“Welcome.”
“You’ve been at it a long time.”
“If I don’t do it myself, someone else will do it worse,” she said. “Can you imagine El Travolta managing all this?”
Rangel didn’t respond. He didn’t like to talk badly about other officers, even though he agreed with her.
“Do you have any news?”
“I’m almost finished typing it all out.” She pointed to a hefty Olivetti typewriter. “The first thing you’ll be interested to hear is that it’s the same weapon they used in El Palmar. See? This cut here, and see this photo?”
“Was any organ in particular affected?”
“What are you looking for?”
“Do you think it was a doctor, a butcher, a medical student, or an employee at the city market? Did the person know where to cut to cause harm?”
“I don’t think so. Do you remember the sailor?” The doctor was referring to a drunk sailor who stabbed a prostitute two months previous. “I’d say it’s the same: mindless violence, completely irrational. If he had started cutting here, for example,” she pointed to a specific point on the torso, “the knife would have traversed the heart and death would’ve been instantaneous. Instead of that: look. See? And again, look.”
“Right-handed?”
“Yes, without a doubt.” Using a metal rod, the doctor lifted the skin away from the cadaver. “Look at the trajectory. The cut slants to the left as it moves down; I think he cut her like this.” The doctor lifted the little rod and swiped it downward. “But first he had to lay her down on the ground.”
“Was there sexual violence?”
“Just like the other.”
“The same way?”
The doctor nodded.
“Before or . . . ?”
“No, after she was dead, like before. And this. You remember the first one? I asked myself, How could someone hate a little girl this much? And now I’m saying to myself, How could someone do this to two girls in a row? I can’t understand it.” She sneezed.
Rangel asked if she could do a blood test on the two girls. The doctor wrinkled her nose.
“What’re you looking for?”
“Anything that would put them to sleep. I’m wondering if he sedated them.”
“I’ll have it for you tomorrow. I need reagents that only Orihuela has in his lab.”
A moment later, she handed him the report, which Rangel read immediately. When he was almost finished, the doctor interrupted him again:
“Is that all, officer?”
“Huh?”
“I’m asking if they can take her already. The father’s called twice.”
“Tell him they can; we’re finished. But one thing: no one’s authorized to photograph the body. Tell the parents. Only family gets to see.”
“Yes, of course.”
Then the doctor did something Rangel would never see her do again. Already a black blanket covered the girl’s body from the neck down, but the old woman took out a white handkerchief and used it to cover the girl’s face.
“Poor thing. Here, chiquita, it’s all over now. Your parents are on their way.”