After Cotulla, still an hour north of Laredo, only Spanish radio stations came in clearly. An AT&T billboard advertising international rates read: HAHAHAJAJAJA. Eighteen-wheelers now had Mexican license plates. Every few miles, I reflexively slowed before the white and green Border Patrol vehicles parked beneath the gap-toothed shade of mesquites.
The sun bounced off the long white flanks of semi-trucks as I eventually passed a customs station off the northbound lane of the highway. Two rows of cameras on either side of the southbound side flashed as I drove through. A few miles later, a billboard inexplicably featuring a blonde in a velvet colonial gown welcomed me to Laredo.
Nothing else indicated I’d reached a city. No spray of silver high-rises, like San Antonio or Austin, or quaint Main Street, like Enid. Laredo emerged first as a stream of billboards for a mall and fast-food restaurants before opening to gray industrial parks, a smattering of secondhand car lots, and trailers with bilingual advertisements for naturalization assistance. I was on mile marker nine before I saw a hospital and strip malls, H-E-B and Starbucks and Chick-fil-A.
This was where I exited to meet Detective Ben Cortez.
Outside, the air felt scalding. Heat bore down from above and radiated up from the black asphalt parking lot, pressing against me from all sides.
“Jesus,” I muttered, already sweat-slick when I stepped inside the frigid Starbucks.
I spotted Cortez immediately. Sitting on a bench seat, back against the faux brick wall, he radiated retired cop: mid-to late sixties, thick cinder-block-gray hair, belly straining the buttons of a worn denim shirt, a casual slump to his shoulders though he scanned the room with bristling awareness. He clocked me as easily as I did him. It was my blond hair. I seemed to be the only white person in this space, possibly—I realized with discomfort—for the first time in my life.
“Detective Cortez?” I asked, approaching.
“That’s me.” Cortez stood, and a gold belt buckle the size of my hand caught the light. His handshake rubbed my knuckles together.
“I appreciate you making the time to see me.” A folder peeked out from beneath his newspaper, a cardboard box on the bench seat beside him. It took every ounce of restraint not to reach for them. “Thanks again for helping me out.”
“My pleasure.” Cortez lowered back into his seat. “Like I said on the phone, I’m retired. Got all the time in the world now.”
The light words were edged with something bitter. I’d found Cortez on Facebook, and he’d responded to my direct message in minutes. I pictured him sitting in a dark room at home, scrolling through his news feed, wondering where the day had gone, where his life had gone. When I’d asked on the phone whether the case file would still exist after thirty years, he’d chuckled. That had told me everything I needed to know: he would help me, as long as he could feel some of that old power while doing it. I had no problem giving him that.
“So,” I said, after buying myself a coffee. “This was a quick close for you guys. Three weeks, right?”
“Well,” he said, all gruff modesty as he pulled out the folder, “it fell like dominoes after we figured out it had nothing to do with drugs.”
“Drugs?” I repeated, surprised. Maybe the border connection was more important than I’d thought. “Why did you think that?”
Cortez licked his finger and turned the pages. “Motel, no forced entry, single gunshot to the chest. Wallet’s missing. First glance, seemed random. Cold.”
“His wallet was missing?” I pulled out a notepad, checked to make sure the recording app on my phone was running. “So, it was staged to look like a robbery?”
Cortez scoffed. “More like the perp panicked and tried to throw us off track.”
“Right . . .” I trailed off. “But panic would suggest lack of intent, wouldn’t it?” Which one was it? Had Fabian gone to the room to kill Andres, or had he only wanted to talk, and things got out of hand?
“Well, now you’re getting into lawyer stuff.” Cortez smiled, still friendly, though with a new set to his jaw. He was here to relive the triumph of a quickly closed case, not to be interrogated for a nuance he clearly hadn’t thought mattered at the time, let alone thirty years later. As long as he could still walk out of here with the case file, I needed him on my side.
“It must have been tricky to ID Russo,” I said, leaning forward. “Without his wallet. How’d y’all do that?”
Cortez relaxed. Men who need control are so easy to manipulate. All you have to do is give them what they want, right up until the moment you take it from them. “Passport was in his bag,” he said. “Plus, motel records. Got no answer on his home phone so we tracked down the ex-wife. She was the one who told us he was in town to see the new wife.”
For a moment I let myself imagine that phone call. However Andres’s ex may have felt about him at that point, he was still the father of her children. Maybe she could hear Penelope and Carlos in the next room. Maybe she’d waited a few minutes before telling them, if only to extend the percentage of their lives they thought their father was in.
Quietly, I said, “You must have looked at Dolores Rivera as a suspect.”
Cortez laughed. “Damn straight. Then it turns out she’s already married!”
Three teen girls squeezed into the table beside us, giggling. “Pero ?lo viste?” one of them asked, and laughed that immortal teenage laugh. Cortez cut them a look, and the girls on the bench side slunk away like mercury toward the wall.
“How did you eliminate Dolores?” I asked.
When Cortez turned back to me, the girls laughed again, lower, conspiratorially this time. I resisted the urge to meet their eyes, to align myself with them in some way.
“She alibied out,” Cortez said. “And wasn’t like the guy was a genius. Used a gun registered in his name, left a partial print in the room, got ID’d on his way out. Plus, he and the vic were seen arguing outside the Rivera house the day of the murder. I mean, you do the math.”
“Andres Russo went to their house?” I hated how much it thrilled me, imagining Andres’s finger on the doorbell, the two men staring at each other. The disbelief that must have melted their bones. This story was too good.
Cortez nodded. “Neighbor witnessed their altercation.”
“And Dolores?” I asked, pen poised. “Where was she at the time?”
Cortez flipped through the folder. “Around four thirty P.M. that Friday—doctor’s appointment. She had alibis all throughout the evening, including TOD. Weird thing is—” Cortez took a gulp of coffee. “She actually alibied Fabian Rivera. Said the family was all together from about nine P.M. on. Held firm, too, till everything else fell to shit. Pardon my French.”
“Wait. Why would she do that?” If Dolores had falsely alibied Fabian, she must have either believed he was innocent or known he was guilty. Already, it felt crucial to determine which one was correct. Because if Dolores had loved Andres, wouldn’t she have wanted justice? And if she hadn’t loved him—or if she’d loved Fabian more, enough to protect him with a false alibi, why had she compromised her entire life to marry Andres?
Cortez stared at the patio, where two crows fought over something stuck in one of the iron grooves of a table. “Who knows? Seems like lying’s just what she did.”
“Right . . .” It must have been so easy for them to leave it at that, once they had evidence against Fabian. It’s easier for men to dismiss a woman than attempt to understand her—especially a woman like Dolores, who didn’t just cast off societal expectations but burned them to the ground.
“Between us,” Cortez said, turning back to me, “I would’ve rather put that woman away than the poor cabrón she was married to. Not his fault, you know? I mean, in the eyes of the law, yes, but . . .”
Heat crawled up my neck, slow but relentless, until I felt it staining my cheeks. Whatever Dolores represented to Cortez—as a cop, as a man—apparently it was worse than murder, and he had no problem saying that out loud.
“Well,” I said, standing. “Thank you again for your time.” I gestured for the case file. “May I?”
Cortez looked surprised. “Don’t you want to hear more about the murder?”
I smiled tightly. “It’s not really that kind of story.”