The Devil's bounty

Forty-one

Rafaela walked into her office at Police Headquarters and closed the door behind her. It was after lunch, and the building was close to empty, not that it was ever full. The city of Santa Maria had eight hundred officers but at least three hundred of them never showed up or did anything that people would recognize as police work. They were on the payroll of the cartels, recruited even before they had entered the academy to train. They wore the uniform, they were paid by the city or the government (as well as the cartels), they carried a badge and a gun and drove around in police cars, but they spent their days and nights working for the bad guys. They escorted shipments of money and drugs. They kidnapped low-level dealers, people who owed the cartel money or who had crossed them in some way, however significant or slight. Often, after a phone call from their superior, they killed those people and buried them in the dozens of hidden mass graves around the city. Rafaela believed that some had taken the girls, killed them and buried them too. It was said that, as a cop in the borderlands, you had only two choices. Plata o plomo? Silver or lead? You took a pay-off or you took a bullet.

Now that she was alone, and had time to think, she was regretting her change of heart with the Americans. More than regretting it. She had done many stupid things in her life, but this had to be the dumbest of them all. She should have insisted that they go home. But Lock had swayed her. How could he change things here? She wasn’t even sure that he could help her find the American girl. Before she arrived at the office, she had checked the two locations but seen nothing out of the ordinary. If the girl was there she would have sighted extra security but everything had been as always.

There was a tap at her office door. A young police officer poked his head in. He was always earnest. He took the job seriously. Rafaela wondered how long his idealism would last. Probably until the first time he was shown five thousand dollars to look the other way or the first time his mother received a phone call asking if she had reserved a cemetery plot for him.

‘The boss wants to see you.’

‘Thank you. Tell him I’ll be there in a moment.’

‘He said it’s urgent.’

‘Very well.’

She got up and followed him out into the corridor. He headed back to his cubicle and she kept going. She was more curious than nervous when the boss’s secretary made her wait for a few moments before she ushered her in.

Zapatero was at his desk. He was wearing a white dress shirt, slacks and loafers. This was his new uniform since his return from a management seminar in America about leadership. She wondered if the DEA, who had paid for his attendance, knew that he took money from the cartel. That was the thing about the people who had been bought: unless you had been close to them for a long time it was difficult to tell. The only obvious clue was how they could afford to send their kids to private school and drive the cars they did. Other than that, they spoke and behaved in exactly the same manner as the others. Some probably believed that by aligning themselves with one cartel they were somehow bringing order to a bad situation, that they were doing the right thing.

‘Detective Carcharon, please, sit down,’ he said, with a wave of his hand. When he opened his mouth all she could think of were the disgusting words he hissed down the phone at her late at night when he was drunk.

She sat opposite him. There were family pictures on his desk. A wife and two girls. She wondered what the children would think if they knew about their father. Presumably he loved them and wouldn’t want any harm to come to them. She found it strange that someone could feel so deeply about their own, yet have no regard for the children of others. That was the heart of the sickness that had enveloped these people. As long as their own needs were fulfilled, their own children safe, they didn’t care about anything else.

‘The two American bounty hunters we apprehended,’ he began. ‘I understand they have left the country.’

She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, I made sure of it myself.’

He smiled across his desk at her. ‘Good, that’s very good. We have enough problems of our own without these…’ he paused theatrically ‘… mavericks causing trouble. We will find the man they are looking for. This Charles Mendez.’

‘Yes, sir. I’m sure of it,’ she said.

He picked up a file from his desk. ‘And speaking of Americans, it seems we have another to cause us concern.’

He passed a file to Rafaela, his eyes scouring her blouse for a loose button as she leaned over to take it from him. He truly made her skin crawl.

She opened the file. There was a missing person’s report and a photograph.

‘This girl is missing. Her parents are very concerned,’ he said. ‘It’s probably nothing. No doubt she is with some boy she has met. I’m sure we all know how young women can behave at that age. Anyway, the consulate are very concerned, too, so I told them that even though a missing person is hardly a priority, with everything that is happening now, I would assign one of my top people to investigate.’ He smiled again. She felt sick. ‘Someone whose integrity could never be questioned. Someone of the highest moral standards.’

‘You think something has happened to her?’ she asked, wanting, needing to hear the lies pour from his mouth.

‘I don’t think so. But who knows? There are so many criminals out there, bad people. We know that better than most. We have to deal with them every day.’

She smiled back at him. ‘Yes, we do. Very bad people.’

He gave a little nod, his sign that the meeting was over. She got up and walked out. She could feel his eyes all over her every step of the way.

In the corridor, she opened the file again. It was as much as she could do not to laugh. This was perfect. This was how they operated. They gave the case to someone whom everyone, the Americans included, knew was beyond reproach, not because they wanted the girl found — hell, they could do that with a phone call — but to give the appearance that they did. Smoke and mirrors. Deception. Double talk. But perhaps this time they had been too clever for their own good. She was looking for the girl in any case, but now she had their approval. They were counting on her not being crazy enough to find her. Maybe they were right. Or maybe they were wrong. By doing her job and finding a girl whom important people did care about then perhaps she could secure justice for all those whom no one cared about.

And if she was wrong about that she could be wrong about the Americans. As her boss had told them when he had returned from his management training across the border, ‘There is no such thing as a problem. There is only an opportunity in disguise.’