Disappeared Read online

  The volleyball team has ended their warm-up drills and Perla Rubi is walking toward him. She wears red shorts and a green T-shirt with the word Pumas in white letters. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. A radiant look of happiness lights her face, a happiness for him and because of him. How can it be that Perla Rubi likes him, maybe even loves him? He feels humble and proud all at the same time. So, so fortunate. So grateful. How can he possibly say no to this gift life is offering?

  “I was worried about you,” she says when they reach each other.

  “Why?”

  “You never answered the text I sent you last night.”

  “I was so tired. I put my head on the pillow and fell asleep.” The volleyball coach blows her whistle. Perla Rubi and Emiliano walk toward the court side by side.

  “Really? I couldn’t sleep.” She smiles.

  The way she looks at him. She’s telling him that she couldn’t sleep because she was thinking of him. “Actually, I couldn’t sleep either.”

  Perla Rubi stops and comes closer. “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Really? Truly? You seem different.”

  “Good different or bad different?”

  She peers into his eyes. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Well, that explains it.” They laugh. “Were you thinking about what you and my father talked about?” she says.

  The whistle blows again, but Perla Rubi ignores it. Emiliano smiles at her and she smiles back. He’s not imagining it: There is something new between them. Like a current of electricity flowing unimpeded in a complete circuit where before it traveled in spurts. She has given him something precious and in so doing made herself vulnerable. If he decides not to enter through the door she opened, she will be hurt.

  “Yes,” he says, “it’s the job I talked about with your father.”

  “My father knows a lot about business. You can’t go wrong with his advice.” She says this as if she knows exactly what her father wants him to do.

  “Would you like me to?”

  “Would I like you to follow my father’s advice?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should do what is best for everyone.”

  “Everyone?” He’s pretty sure that Perla Rubi and even the players down on the volleyball court can hear his heart pounding.

  “Everyone that matters.”

  “You matter.” He says it mostly to himself, but she hears him.

  She lowers her eyes briefly as if considering whether to say what she wants to say. When she raises her eyes again, she says, “You matter too.”

  They are facing each other now. Emiliano’s eyes fall to Perla Rubi’s lips. She is a magnet and he is all iron. They are leaning, falling almost imperceptibly toward each other, when the whistle blows and Perla Rubi’s teammates begin to chant: “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

  Emiliano and Perla Rubi pull back, blushing.

  “See you in a while,” she says, walking backward toward the court. “You better call me, Emiliano Zapata.”

  “I will, Perla Rubi Esmeralda.” He watches her run to her laughing, cheering teammates.

  He waits until she turns to wave and then he walks away, his heart bursting.

  He matters.

  Sitting there in the near-empty coffee shop, Sara reads Emiliano’s text message again.

  I won’t be able to meet you after work today. Make sure you take a taxi home.

  She remembers the two hundred pesos he left on the kitchen table this morning. She didn’t take them, because she knows how much work that money entailed. What’s going to happen to Emiliano’s business when she tells him that their lives are in danger? That he can’t go out bicycling all over the city anymore? Whatever she does to help Linda will affect Emiliano, Mami, Ernesto, Juana. She imagines someone hitting Emiliano on the back of the head with a rubber tube and it brings tears to her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” It’s the young woman who runs the espresso machine at the café. How long has Sara been sitting there? The young woman puts a cup down on the table. “I thought you could use this. It’s not coffee. It’s chamomile tea. My mother makes me drink it when I’m nervous.”

  “Thanks.” She tries to smile. “I do seem nervous, don’t I? I’ll leave in a few minutes, I promise.”

  “No, no. Stay as long as you want. I don’t know what it is about this table. Yesterday I saw a couple break up. The day before someone got some bad news when she was sitting here.”

  The girl is all of sixteen, maybe, and Sara can tell by the holes in her sneakers that she is poor, like Linda, like Erica. How can anyone hurt girls like her? What goes through the minds of men when they hurt them? Isn’t there a spark of conscience somewhere in them telling them to stop? How is it possible that they forget their sisters or mothers when they abuse another woman?

  “Thank you,” Sara says. And then, as the young woman is walking away, “God bless you.”

  “You too,” she says, turning around.

  Sara sits there staring at the screen of her phone for who knows how long. Then she taps the icon for her contacts and scrolls down until she finds Alejandro Durand’s number.

  Sara met Agent Durand when she wrote an article on a joint task force between the FBI and the Mexican Attorney General’s Office—a special investigation dedicated to the murders of six girls in one month on both sides of the border. She tried to get Agent Durand to admit that the Mexican State Police’s investigation of the murders was at best negligent and at worst corrupt. He would say only that the State Police were doing the best they could with the tools they had. It was clear to Sara, as it was to the families of the missing girls, that there were many officers in the State Police who were not helpful. Many were sympathetic but seemed to lack the resources needed to do their jobs, while others acted as if they were afraid. There were even a few whose behavior could not be explained by anything other than bribery.

  Although Agent Durand never said that corruption was the only possible explanation for the critical delays and loss of evidence in the investigation, Sara was able to get him to describe how the FBI would have handled the exact same situation. The comparison proved indirectly what everyone suspected—that people in the State Police were protecting the killers. Sara’s article was reprinted by La Prensa, one of Mexico’s most prestigious newspapers, and after that, it was translated into English by the El Paso Times. She received a letter from Agent Durand after the article was published: “Keep up the good work. You are on your way to becoming a good investigative reporter and a good writer, but most of all you have courage. If you ever get any good leads or if I can ever be of help to you, call me. You have my number.”

  It’s that number she calls now.

  “Agent Durand, this is Sara Zapata,” she says when she hears his voice.

  A few moments go by before he responds. “Sara! What a nice surprise.”

  “I need a favor,” she says.

  “Shoot.”

  Sara tells him her story from the beginning. She speaks as if she is writing a story for El Sol, making sure she mentions every detail, every person involved. She talks for ten minutes straight and he does not interrupt her once. Sara knows he is still on the line because she can hear him breathe, and when she tells him about Joselito Rentería, he sighs.

  “My friend Ernesto thinks he can find the location where Erica and Linda and maybe more girls are being kept.”

  “Mmm.”

  “What do I do if Ernesto gets that information?” Sara asks. “Who can I call? Who can rescue the girls? I know this is not your jurisdiction. But you’ve worked with Mexican law enforcement agencies. Do you know anyone I can trust?”

  “There are many good people within the State Police who can help. That’s not going to be a problem.”

  “Really?”

  Sara realizes she sounds incredulous when she hears a quiet laugh. “Believe it or not, there are lots of people
in Mexico who are trying very hard to fight crime. It’s an uphill battle against people with incredible resources of power and money, but they hang in there, doing what they can, like you.”

  “So you know someone?”

  “Yes. But, Sara, let’s think this through for a few minutes. The man in the picture, Leopoldo Hinojosa, he’s powerful. Really powerful. He commands the Public Security and Crime Prevention Unit, one of the most important divisions of the State Police in Chihuahua. But it’s his association with whoever is keeping the girls that makes him so … dangerous. It’s not just him, it’s the web of criminality he’s a part of.”

  “You knew there were places where they took girls?”

  “We suspected some of the kidnapped girls were being kept alive as sex slaves or sold to sex traffickers. You know that the bodies of most kidnapped girls show up sooner or later in fairly public places—almost as if the criminals want them to be found. So it didn’t make sense that certain girls were never found. And when you look at the girls who are still missing, it’s hard not to notice that they all fit a certain profile.”

  “They’re all beautiful,” Sara says, remembering Linda.

  “Yes. Slim, tall, long black hair, dark skin. So, I’m not going to lie to you, this lead you have is very substantial.”

  “The way I picture it, there’s this place where girls like Erica and Linda are kept like prisoners,” Sara says. She swallows, thinking about it. “So Erica and Linda are with Hinojosa and another man. Hinojosa falls asleep, probably drunk, and the other guy goes to the bathroom. Linda grabs Hinojosa’s cell phone, takes a picture, and quickly forwards it to the first e-mail address she remembers that won’t track back to her family. She’s afraid the other guy will come out of the bathroom at any moment, so she only has time to put puchi on the subject line, so I’ll know it’s from her. Then Linda or Erica hide the cell phone somewhere, and later that day, they find a way to sneak it out with the help of the boy who works for the laundry service.”

  “I agree that’s probably what happened. Well, if that’s Hinojosa’s phone, you can be sure that it contains a lot of names, telephone numbers, pictures, and all kinds of information that would hurt a lot of people if law enforcement had it. That’s why they did what they did to the Renterías.”

  Sara doesn’t say anything.

  Agent Durand continues, “I want to make sure, before you call me again with more information, you know what this will do to your life.” She knows what he’s going to say and part of her does not want him to say it. “I think that right now you are relatively safe. But once this horrible place is raided and any girls there are rescued, they’ll know that it was you or the Renterías who were responsible. I think they’ll rule out the Renterías because they’ll know it takes some technical savvy to find the place. So they’ll narrow it down to you, and maybe they’ll figure out that you had help from your friend in IT and the Jaqueros.”

  “You know about the Jaqueros?”

  “They’re one of our biggest and best sources of information. So, what I’m saying is that Hinojosa will do everything he can to protect himself. And if he’s threatened, he will stop at nothing.”

  Sara is silent.

  “Sara, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sure my good friends in Mexico would love to go after a guy as important as Hinojosa. I just want to make sure you know what’s at stake here.”

  She’s trying to process what exactly this all means. For her. For Mami and Emiliano. For their lives as they’re living them. “No one at El Sol knows where I live except Juana. I give everyone a post office box number. There’s no trace of our address in any public records. I changed it to a P.O. box ever since I got that threatening letter—you know, after the article I wrote on the joint task force.”

  “I wish I could tell you that was enough to keep you safe. But I know the people we’re dealing with. They’re not human beings like the rest of us. I’m sorry.”

  Sara looks up at the café’s ceiling fan going slowly around and around. She has no words, no response. Does she really have to give up her job? Will they need to leave their home? Where will they go? She feels like a small child who does not understand the overwhelming emotions she’s experiencing and all she can do is cry. So that’s what she does. “I’m sorry,” she says after a minute or so. She blows her nose on a napkin.

  “No. Don’t apologize.” Agent Durand’s voice is kind. “Why don’t you think some more about all this? Wait for your IT friend to call you with the location, if he finds it. Go home, talk to your brother and your mother. Their lives will change too, after all. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  “But don’t we have to move fast … for Erica and Linda?”

  “The only way Hinojosa’s people could have known all they know is if they got the information out of the girls. It’s likely that the worst already happened.”

  She gasps when she realizes what he’s saying. “They were tortured? They’re not alive anymore?”

  “I think you should assume the worst.”

  Sara can’t speak. Erica and Linda would be alive if it wasn’t for her. The e-mail was sent to her. The envelope was addressed to her. If she had done something to discover the missing e-mail sooner. If she had gotten to work half an hour earlier yesterday and found the envelope. It suddenly seems as if there were hundreds of things she could have done but didn’t.

  “Sara,” she hears Agent Durand say, “it’s not your fault. Do you hear me? I know that’s what you’re thinking. It’s not your fault. And it will be okay if you decide that you need to protect yourself and your family. I’ll work with the Mexican Attorney General’s Office. We’ll put Hinojosa under constant surveillance. Sooner or later he’ll take us to that place. We’ll take our time and work discreetly, so if we arrest him you won’t be implicated. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Sara says. She’s too tired and confused to say anything else.

  “If I don’t hear from you later today, that’s fine. We’ll go with that. Take care, Sara.”

  “Thank you.” She taps the red circle on her phone to end the call.

  Sara doesn’t know what to do next or where to go. The young woman who gave her the chamomile tea is wiping the table next to her. There is something very beautiful and soothing about the careful way she wipes the table. No one is in the café except the two of them, and Sara’s sure she isn’t being thorough just to impress her. It never ceases to amaze her how grateful poor people are for their jobs. Linda made six dollars a day in the shoe store where she worked. The young woman in front of her makes less than that. What if this young woman is kidnapped on the way home tonight and taken to that horrible place?

  As long as that place exists, young women like her will be taken there, Sara knows. Closing one place or putting away one man will not make a dent in all the evil in Juárez, much less in Mexico or the world. She remembers something she read in school once: The decision to act against evil is not measured by the impact it has on the evil but by the impact it has on the person who acts. She can’t remember who wrote it, but the words ring true. The only thing that matters is that she act in accordance with her conscience.

  She digs in her backpack for the twenty pesos she hid there for emergencies and leaves them under her cup. On her way back to the El Sol building, she makes a mental list of what she must do next. She wants to see Ernesto, find out if he’s gotten any more information on the location of the evil place. Then she’ll go get Mami at work and take her home. Hopefully, Emiliano will be there. She’ll tell them everything. They should be given the opportunity to decide their future, even if she already knows what they will say. Then, after that, she’ll go to Linda’s house and talk to Mr. and Mrs. Fuentes. They need to know all that she has found out.

  Ernesto isn’t in his office, so Sara leaves him a note on a sticky pad: I’m going home. Call me as soon as you can.

  The news floor is quiet. Sara feels entirely alone. She
knows what has to be done but she also wants someone to tell her what she should do. She goes over to Juana’s office. She’ll tell Juana all that is happening. Juana has always been the newspaper’s biggest advocate for the Desaparecidas. That’s the real Juana, not the one she’s seen the past two days. It’s the real Juana who Sara needs right now.

  But Juana’s office is empty. Sara stands in front of it for a few moments, not knowing where to go next.

  “She’s in the conference room with Felipe working on the budget,” Lupita says behind her.

  Sara starts to walk away and then remembers she gave away her emergency taxi money. Today is one day when she doesn’t want to take public transportation home.

  “Lupita, you think I could have a taxi voucher? I’m going home early today. I don’t feel well.”

  “I don’t get to give them out anymore. Queen Juana thought I wasn’t mean enough when it came to giving out vouchers. Her Majesty is the only one who can give them out.”

  “I think you’re a lot meaner than Juana,” Sara says, only half joking.

  “I know, right? Juana’s a pussycat and I’m a tiger.” Lupita roars.

  Sara pretends to laugh. For a moment, she considers borrowing taxi money from Lupita but then thinks better of it. Maybe she can wait for Ernesto in the IT room and borrow it from him when he returns.

  “She keeps them in the bottom right-hand drawer,” Lupita says, her fingers already flying over her keyboard.

  “What?”

  “The vouchers. Go ahead and get one. The drawer’s locked but you can find the key under the lamp. Don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  “Thank you,” Sara says. “I really needed someone to be nice to me today.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it. Hurry, before someone sees you.”

  Sara walks into Juana’s office and sits in her chair. There under the lamp is the key to the drawer, just as Lupita said. Sara smiles when she sees Juana’s old Rolodex full of contact cards. She can’t help checking, and Ernesto is right: Filed under P is a series of passwords. The last one is Micifus#25. Micifus is the name of one of Juana’s cats. Clearly, Juana does what Sara does and just keeps increasing the number every time Ernesto’s harsh security system forces them to change passwords. Elias would have had no trouble coming into her office, logging on to her computer, and deleting the hotline e-mails.