What Luca does notice is the walls that line his abuela’s street. He’s seen them countless times before, but today he perceives a difference: each house here is fronted by a small courtyard like Abuela’s, hidden from the street by a wall like Abuela’s, topped with razor wire or chicken wire or spiked fence posts like Abuela’s, and accessible only through a locked gate like Abuela’s. Acapulco is a dangerous city. The people take precautions here, even in nice neighborhoods like this one, especially in nice neighborhoods like this one. But what good are those protections when the men come? Luca leans his head against his mother’s shoulder, and she puts an arm around him. She doesn’t ask if he’s okay, because from now on that question will carry a weight of painful absurdity. Lydia tries her best not to consider the many words that will never come out of her mouth now, the sudden monster void of words she will never get to say.
When they arrive, the police pull yellow escena del crimen tape across both ends of the block to discourage traffic and make room for the macabre motorcade of emergency vehicles. There are a lot of officers, a whole army of them, who move around and past Luca and Lydia with choreographed reverence. When the senior detective approaches and begins asking questions, Lydia hesitates for a moment, considering where to send Luca. He’s too young to hear everything she needs to say. She should dispatch him to someone else for a few minutes, so she can give forthright answers to these dreadful questions. She should send him to his father. Her mother. Her sister, Yemi. But they are all dead in the backyard, their bodies as close as toppled dominoes. It’s all meaningless anyway. The police aren’t here to help. Lydia begins to sob. Luca stands and places the cold curve of his hand across the back of his mother’s neck.
‘Give her a minute,’ he says, like a grown man.
When the detective returns, there’s a woman with him, the medical examiner, who addresses Luca directly. She puts a hand on his shoulder and asks if he’d like to sit in her truck. It says SEMEFO on the side, and the back doors are standing open. Mami nods at him, so Luca goes with the woman and sits inside, dangling his feet over the back bumper. She offers him a sweating can, a cold refresco.
Lydia’s brain, which had been temporarily suspended by shock, begins working again, but it creeps like sludge. She’s still sitting on the curb, and the detective stands between her and her son.
‘Did you see the shooter?’ he asks.
‘Shooters, plural. I think there were three of them.’ She wishes the detective would step aside so she can keep Luca in her line of sight. He’s only a dozen steps away.
‘You saw them?’
‘No, we heard them. We were hiding in the shower. One came in and took a piss while we were in there. Maybe you can get fingerprints from the faucet. He washed his hands. Can you believe that?’ Lydia claps her hands loudly, as if to scare off the memory. ‘There were at least two more voices outside.’
‘Did they say or do anything that might help identify them?’
She shakes her head. ‘One ate the chicken.’
The detective writes pollo in his notebook.
‘One asked if he was here.’
‘A specific target? Did they say who he was? A name?’
‘They didn’t have to. It was my husband.’
The detective stops writing and looks at her expectantly. ‘Your husband is?’
‘Sebastián Pérez Delgado.’
‘The reporter?’
Lydia nods, and the detective whistles through his teeth.
‘He’s here?’
She nods again. ‘On the patio. With the spatula. With the sign.’
‘I’m sorry, señora. Your husband received many threats, yes?’
‘Yes, but not recently.’
‘And what exactly was the nature of those threats?’
‘They told him to stop writing about the cartels.’
‘Or?’
‘Or they would kill his whole family.’ Her voice is flat.
The detective takes a deep breath and looks at Lydia with what might be interpreted as sympathy. ‘When was the last time he was threatened?’
Lydia shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. A long time ago. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to happen.’
The detective folds his lips into a thin line and remains silent.
‘They’re going to kill me, too,’ she says, understanding only as these words emerge that they might be true.
The detective does not move to contradict her. Unlike many of his colleagues – he’s not sure which ones, but it doesn’t matter – he happens not to be on the cartel payroll. He trusts no one. In fact, of the more than two dozen law enforcement and medical personnel moving around Abuela’s home and patio this very moment, marking the locations of shell casings, examining footprints, analyzing blood splatter, taking pictures, checking for pulses, making the sign of the cross over the corpses of Lydia’s family, seven receive regular money from the local cartel. The illicit payment is three times more than what they earn from the government. In fact, one has already texted el jefe to report Lydia’s and Luca’s survival. The others do nothing, because that’s precisely what the cartel pays them to do, to populate uniforms and perform the appearance of governance. Some of the personnel feel morally conflicted about this; others do not. None of them have a choice anyway, so their feelings are largely immaterial. The unsolved-crime rate in Mexico is well north of 90 percent. The costumed existence of la policía provides the necessary counterillusion to the fact of the cartel’s actual impunity. Lydia knows this. Everyone knows this. She decides presently that she must get out of here. She stands up from her position on the curb and is surprised by the strength of her legs beneath her. The detective steps back to give her space.
‘When he realizes I’ve survived they will return.’ And then the memory comes back to her like a throb: one of the voices in the yard asking, What about the kid? Lydia’s joints feel like water. ‘He’s going to murder my son.’
‘He?’ the detective says. ‘You know specifically who did this?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ she asks. There’s only one possible perpetrator for a bloodbath of this magnitude in Acapulco, and everyone knows who that man is. Javier Crespo Fuentes. Her friend. Why should she say his name out loud? The detective’s question is either a stage play or a test. He writes more words in his notebook. He writes, La Lechuza? He writes, Los Jardineros? And then shows the notebook to Lydia. ‘I can’t do this right now.’ She pushes past him.
‘Please, just a few more questions.’
‘No. No more questions. Zero more questions.’