2666 (82 page)

Bustelo asked for the lists of
workers going back six months, he was told that a filing error had regrettably
caused them to be lost or mislaid. Before Efrain Bustelo could ask when they
might locate the lists so he could take a look at them, a File-Sis executive
handed him an envelope full of cash and Bustelo forgot the whole business. Even
if the lists did exist, even if no one had burned them, he thought, he probably
wouldn't find any trace of Evodio Cifuentes. An arrest warrant was issued for
the two siblings that circled various police stations around the country like a
mosquito around a campfire. The case remained unsolved.

Four
days later, the mutilated corpse of Beatriz Concepcion Roldan appeared by the
side of the Santa Teresa—Cananea highway. The cause of death was a gash that
sliced her open from navel to chest, presumably inflicted with a machete or big
knife. Beatriz Concepcion Roldan was twenty-two, five foot five, thin, and
dark-skinned. She had long hair halfway down her back. She worked as a waitress
in Madero-Norte and she lived with Evodio Cifuentes and his sister, Eliana
Cifuentes, although no one had reported her disappearance. Various parts of the
body showed evidence of bruising, but a single knife wound was the cause of
death, by which the medical examiner concluded that the victim hadn't defended
herself or was unconscious at the moment of the fatal attack. After her picture
appeared in
La Voz de Sonora,
an
anonymous call identified her as Beatriz Concepcion Roldan, resident of Colonia
Sur.
Four days later, when the police paid a visit to the victim's residence, the
property—four hundred square feet, two small bedrooms, a living room outfitted
with vinyl-covered furniture—was completely abandoned. According to the
neighbors, the man who called himself Evodio Cifuentes and his sister Eliana
had been gone for six days. One of the neighbor women saw them leave, each
dragging two suitcases. When the house was searched, few personal effects of
the Cifuentes siblings were found. From the beginning the case was handled by
Inspector Efrain Bustelo, who soon discovered that the Cifuentes siblings were
hardly any more substantial than a pair of ghosts. There were no photographs of
them. The descriptions he could come up with were vague, when not
contradictory: Cifuentes was short and thin and his sister was nondescript
looking. One neighbor thought he remembered that Evodio Cifuentes worked at the
maquiladora File-Sis, but the plant had no payroll record of anyone by that
name, now or in the last three months. When Efrafn

In
December, in a vacant lot in Colonia Morelos, up by Calle Colima and Calle
Fuensanta, not far from the
Morelos
Preparatory School
, the
body of Michelle Requejo was found. The victim had disappeared a week before.
The discovery was made by some children who often played baseball in the
lot.
  
Michelle
 
Requejo lived in Colonia San Damian, in the
south of the city, and worked for the maquiladora HorizonW&E. She was
fourteen, a thin, friendly girl. She wasn't known to have a boyfriend. Her
mother worked for the same company and in her free time she earned a few extra
pesos as a fortune-teller and healer. Her clients were mostly the neighborhood
women or a few of her coworkers with romantic
 
troubles.
  
Her father worked at
the
 
maquiladora Aguilar&Lennox. He
put in double shifts most weeks. She had two sisters under ten who were in
school and a sixteen-year-old brother who worked with her father at
Aguilar&Lennox. Michelle Requejo had been stabbed several times in the arms
and the chest. She was wearing a black blouse torn in a number of places,
presumably by the same knife. Her pants were tight, of synthetic fabric, and
were pulled down to her knees. She was wearing black Reebok tennis shoes. Her
hands were tied behind her back and a little later someone noticed that the
rope was knotted the same way as the rope that had bound Estrella Ruiz
Sandoval, which made some policemen smile. The case was handled by Jose
Marquez, who discussed some of its peculiarities with Juan de Dios
Martinez
. The latter
pointed out that the knots weren't the only strange coincidence, and that in
fact another crime had been committed in a field next to the
Morelos
Preparatory School
.
Jose Marquez didn't remember the case. The victim, said Juan de Dios
Martinez
, was a woman who
was never identified. That night the two inspectors stopped by the
vacant lot where Michelle Requejo's body had been found.
For a while they watched the play of shadows in the lot. Then they got out of
the car and walked through the brush, treading on plastic bags with soft things
inside. They lit cigarettes. There was a smell of dead flesh. Jose Marquez said
he was getting sick of this work, he talked about a job as a security chief in
Monterrey
, and he asked
where the school was. Juan de Dios
Martinez
pointed to a spot in the dark. There, he said. They walked in that direction.
They crossed several dirt roads and felt as if they were being watched. Jose
Marquez put his hand on the holster of his gun and although he didn't draw it
this calmed him. They got to the school fence, lit by a single lamp. That's
where the dead woman was, said Juan de Dios
Martinez
,
indicating a vague spot near the
Nogales
highway. The school janitor found the body. The killer or the killers must have
come by car. They hauled the dead woman out of the trunk and left her in the
vacant lot. It must have taken them at least five minutes. I calculate about
ten, because the spot isn't near the highway. They were either on their way to
Cananea or coming from Cananea. Based on where they left the body, I would say
they were heading to Cananea. Why,
mano'?
asked Jose Marquez. Because if you're coming from Cananea, there are lots
of better places to dispose of a body before you get to Santa Teresa. Also, I
think they took their time. According to what I was told, a stake had been
driven partway through the body. Shit, said Jose Marquez. That's right, Pepito,
and it isn't easy to stow a body like that, looking like that, all set to go,
you might say, in the trunk of a car. Chances are they drove the stake into her
by the school. Those people were animals,
mano,
said Jose Marquez. They dumped her on the ground and then they shoved a
stake up her ass, what do you think of that? Brutal,
mano,
said Jose Marquez. But she was dead by then, wasn't she?
That's right, she was already dead, said Juan de Dios
Martinez
.

The
next two dead women were also found in December 1995. The first was Rosa Lopez
Larios, nineteen. Her body was discovered behind a Pemex tower where couples
met at night to make love. At first they came in cars or vans, but then it
became fashionable to arrive by motorcycle or bicycle, and it wasn't even
unusual to spot young working couples on foot, since there was a bus stop
nearby. There had been plans to put up another building behind the Pemex tower,
but in the end the plans were scrapped, and now there was just an esplanade and
beyond it some prefab barracks, now empty, which had housed company workers for
a while. Each night, sometimes brazenly, with radios blasting, but most of the
time quietly, cars lined up along the esplanade and the kids who had come by motorcycle
or bike pushed open the falling-down doors of the barracks, where they turned
on flashlights and lit candles and put on music and sometimes even made dinner.
Behind the barracks, on a gentle slope, stood a grove of stunted pines that
Pemex had planted when it built the tower. Some kids, seeking greater privacy,
made their way into the grove, equipped with blankets. That was where Rosa
Lopez Larios's body was discovered. It was a seventeen-year-old couple who
found it. The girl thought it was someone sleeping, but when they shone the
flashlight on the body they realized she was dead. The girl screamed and went
running, terrified. The boy had the fortitude, or was curious enough, to turn
the body over and look at the dead woman's face. The girl's screams alerted the
people on the esplanade. Some cars drove off immediately. In one of the cars
was a city cop, and it was he who reported the discovery and tried,
unsuccessfully, to prevent the general flight. When the police showed up, only
a few frightened teenagers were still there and the city cop had them all at
gunpoint. At three in the morning Inspector Ortiz Rebolledo and Officer
Epifanio Galindo arrived on the scene. By then the other policemen had managed
to get the city cop to put away his nonregulation Taurus Magnum and calm down.
On the esplanade, leaning against a patrol car, Epifanio questioned the girl,
while Ortiz Rebolledo went up to the grove to take a look at the body. Rosa
Lopez had died of multiple wounds inflicted with a sharp instrument that also
ripped up her blouse and sweater. She had no identification on her, so at first
she was classified as an anonymous victim. Two days later, however, after her
picture was published in the three Santa Teresa newspapers, a woman who claimed
to be her cousin identified her as Rosa Lopez Larios and gave the police all
the information she could, including the address of the deceased, on Calle San
Mateo, in Colonia Las Flores. The Pemex tower was near the Cananea highway,
which, while not close to Colonia Las Flores, wasn't terribly far either, which
meant the victim might have made her way to the tower on foot or by bus, maybe
to meet someone. Rosa Lopez Larios lived with two friends, veterans like
herself of several maquiladoras located in the General Sepulveda industrial
park. Her friends said Rosa had a boyfriend,
Ernesto
Astudillo, from
Oaxaca
,
who worked delivering soft drinks for Pepsi. At the Pepsi warehouse the police
were told that, in fact, Astudillo had worked as a loader on a truck on the
Colonia Las Flores-Colonia Kino route, but he hadn't shown up for work for four
days, which meant, as far as the company was concerned, that he could consider
himself fired. Once his place of residence was located, a raid was conducted,
but the only person present was a friend of Astudillo's who shared the house, a
shack barely two hundred feet square. The friend was questioned, and it turned
out that Astudillo had a cousin or a friend, someone he loved like a brother,
who worked as a
pollero.
This case is
shot to hell, said Epifanio Galindo. Still, there was a search among the
patterns
for Astudillo's friend, but no
one would talk and nothing was discovered. Ortiz Rebolledo dropped the case.
Epifanio pursued other lines of investigation. He asked himself what it would
mean if Astudillo were dead. If he had died, say, three days before his
girlfriend's body was found. He asked himself what she had gone to look for,
whom Rosa Eopez Earios had gone to meet at the Pemex tower, the day or night
she was killed. Sure enough, the case was shot to hell.

The second dead woman of
December was Ema Contreras, and this time the killer was easy to find. Ema
Contreras lived on Calle Pablo Cifuentes,
 
in Colonia Alamos. One night the neighbors heard a man shouting. As they
described it later, it was as if he was alone and had lost his mind. Around two
in the morning the man stopped his ranting and was quiet. The house was plunged
into silence. Around three in the morning two shots woke the neighbors. The
lights were off in the house, but no one had the slightest doubt where the
noise had come from. Then two more shots were fired and they heard someone
shout. A few minutes later they saw a man come out, get in a car parked in
front of the house, and disappear. One of the neighbors called the police. A
patrol car showed up at about three-thirty in the morning. The door to the
house was ajar and the police walked right in. In the biggest bedroom they
found the body of Ema Contreras, her hands and feet bound. She had been shot
four times, and two of the shots had destroyed her face. The case was handled
by Inspector Juan de Dios Martinez, who, after reaching the scene of the crime
at four in the morning and searching the house, quickly came to the conclusion
that the killer was the victim's housemate (or paramour), Officer Jaime
Sanchez, who, days before and equipped with a Brazilian Magnum Taurus, had
tried to prevent the flight of couples from the Pemex tower. Juan de Dios
Martinez
radioed a search
order. At six in the morning Jaime Sanchez was found at Serafino's. It was late
enough that the place was closed, but a poker game was in progress inside. Near
the table of players and spectators, a group of late-night drinkers, more than
one policeman among them, were talking at the bar. Jaime Sanchez was in this
group. When he got the tip, Juan de Dios
Martinez
gave orders that the bar be surrounded and Jaime Sanchez not be allowed to
leave under any pretext, but also that no one should go in until he got there.
Jaime Sanchez was talking about women when he saw the inspector come into the
bar with two other officers. He kept talking. At the poker table, among the
spectators, was Inspector Ortiz Rebolledo, who got up when he saw Juan de Dios
and asked what brought him to Serafino's so early in the day. I've come to make
an arrest, said Juan de Dios, and Ortiz Rebolledo stared at him, smiling
broadly. You and these two? he asked. And then: don't be a dick, why don't you
go suck cock somewhere else? Juan de Dios
Martinez
looked at him as if he didn't know him, shook him off, and went over to Jaime
Sanchez. From there he could see that Ortiz Rebolledo had hold of the arm of
one of the two policemen, who was talking his ear off. He must be telling him
who I'm here to arrest, thought Juan de Dios. Jaime Sanchez gave himself up
without a struggle. Juan de Dios felt under his jacket until he found the
holster and the Magnum Taurus. Is this what you killed her with? he asked. I
flipped out and lost control, said Sanchez. Don't make me look bad in front of
my friends, he added. I don't give a flying fuck about your friends, said Juan
de Dios as he handcuffed him. When they left the bar the poker match resumed as
if nothing had happened.