staring down in paralyzed horror at the two rats that were chewing
busily at the throat of the four-month-old baby, Emesto. Everyone else
was outside, sitting in patches of shade along the dusty street, fanning
themselves, the children playing at quiet games and sipping at water,
the adults cooling off with the beer they’d purchased cheap from two
young ladrones who had successfully broken into a brewery warehouse the
night before. Little Julio tried to scream, tried to call for help, but
no sound would escape him, as if words and cries could not rise because
of the heavy, humid August air.
The rats, aware of him, turned boldly upon him, hissing, and even when
he lunged forward, swatting furiously at them, they backed off only with
great reluctance and only after one of them had tested his mettle by
biting the meatiest part of his left hand. He screamed and struck out
in even greater fury, routing the rats at last, and he was still
screaming when his mother and his oldest sister, Evalina, rushed in from
the sun-scorched day to find him weeping blood from his hand as if from
stigmata-and his baby brother dead.
Reese Hagerstrom-having been partners with Julio long enough to know
about his dread of rats, but too considerate ever to mention that fear
directly or even indirecily-put one of his enormous hands on Julio’s
slender shoulder and said, by way of distraction, “I think I’ll give
Percy five bucks and tell him to get lost.
He had nothing to do with this, and we’re not going to get anything more
out of him, and I’m sick of the stink of him.”
“Go ahead,” Julio said. “I’m in for two-fifty of it.”
While Reese dealt with the wino, Julio watched the dead woman being
hauled out of the dumpster. He tried to distance himself from the
victim. He tried to tell himself she didn’t look real, looked more like
a big rag doll, and maybe even was a doll, or a mannequin, just a
mannequin. But it was a lie. She looked real enough.
Hell, she looked too real. They deposited her on a tarp that had been
spread on the pavement for that purpose.
In the glare of the portable lights, the photographer took a few more
pictures, and Julio moved in for a closer look. The dead woman was
young, in her early twenties, a black-haired and brown-eyed Latino. In
spite of what the killer had done to her, and in spite of the garbage
and the industrious rats, there was reason to believe that she had been
at least attractive and perhaps beautiful.
She had gone to her death in a summery cream-colored dress with blue
piping on the collar and sleeves, a blue belt, and blue highheeled
shoes.
She was only wearing one shoe. No doubt the other was in the dumpster.
There was something unbearably sad about her gay dress and her one bare
foot with its meticulously painted toenails.
At Julio’ 5 direction, two uniformed men donned rubber boots, put on
scented surgical masks, and climbed into the dumpster to go through
every piece of rubbish. They were searching for the other shoe, the
murder weapon, and anything else that might pertain to the case.
They found the dead woman’s purse. She had not been robbed, for her
wallet contained forty-three dollars. According to her driver’s
license, she was Ernestina llernandez, twenty-four, of Santa Ana.
Ernestina.
Julio shivered. The similarity between her name and that of his
long-dead little brother, Emesto, gave him a chill. Both the child and
the woman had been le for the rats, and though Julio had not known
Ernestina, he felt an instant, profound, and only partially explicable
obligation to her the moment he learned her name.
I will find your killer, he promised her silently. You were so lovely,
and you died before your time, and if there is any justice in the world,
any hope of making sense out of life, then your murderer cannot go
unpunished. I swear to you, even if I have to go to the ends of the
earth, I will find your killer.
Two minutes later, they found a l0odspattered lab coat of the kind