The Devil's bounty

Sixty-five

Rafaela walked back into her apartment, threw her bag and keys on to the kitchen counter and took off her jacket, but kept on her holster with her loaded service weapon. She had been relieved of her duties pending an official inquiry into the ‘unauthorized release of the two Americans’: her boss wanted her out of the way while he assured the consul general that everything was being done to find Charlie Mendez. That part was true enough. For once they weren’t just putting on a show. They did want Mendez — and Lock — just not alive and talking.

She filled a plastic jug from the kitchen tap and watered the plants out on her little terrace balcony. After the death of her husband and everything that had followed, she had clung to work, though in her darker moments she told herself that she was more social worker than cop. Cops found the bad guys, gathered evidence and made sure they were put behind bars. Rafaela picked up the rag-doll bodies of young women from the streets and comforted their heartbroken parents as best she could. What good was that? What good was she? The bodies piled up anyway and she made no difference. The streets weren’t any safer. Worst of all, the dead girls weren’t even the main event: they were a sideshow. Sure, the media got excited as they speculated on the serial killer or killers but really they were nothing. There was a war on drugs. There would never be a war on the rape and torture of young women.

She put the jug away in a kitchen cupboard, walked into the bathroom, took off her clothes, dumping them in a small wicker laundry basket, and turned on the shower. She hung the holster with her service weapon on a hook at the back of the door, stepped into the shower and closed her eyes as the hot water pounded her face.