She studies the picture. Erica is standing in front of some kind of monument made of white marble. She has a white blouse buttoned all the way to her neck and a pleated black skirt. Her shoes are old but clean. And white socks? What teenager wears white socks these days? It looks almost like she’s wearing a school uniform, or dressed for a very conservative church. Her smile is the opposite of her clothing, though—open, generous, excited. Her expression reminds Sara of Linda, so much so that she has to close her eyes. If she finds Erica, she’ll find Linda. The next step: talking to Erica’s family.
As Sara walks up the flight of stairs from the file room to her cubicle, she suddenly feels very tired. She can look in the phone book for the Renterías, but most poor people don’t own landlines. Even if they do, there must be hundreds of Renterías in Juárez. She’ll have to call them one by one. And when she finds the family, they won’t know where Erica is. In the meantime, God only knows what is happening to the girls.
It’s after five. All of this will have to wait until tomorrow. Tonight is the quinceañera.
Back at her cubicle, Sara is getting ready to leave when the phone rings. It’s Ernesto.
“We’re still trying to find out who [email protected] belongs to, but I think we got our man anyway. That ring on his finger and the bald head? His name is Leopoldo Hinojosa. He’s the head of the Public Security and Crime Prevention Unit of the State Police.”
“Oh, God.” A sense of powerlessness comes over Sara. How many times has she gone to the State Police to ask about Linda?
“Have you told anyone? About the deleted e-mails? About the picture?” Ernesto demands.
“No.”
“Well, don’t tell anyone. I mean anyone, Sara. Not Juana. Not Felipe. Don’t even tell your family. We’re safe now because people think the e-mail with the picture was deleted before anyone saw it. But this is big, Sara. Big. This guy will kill to protect his identity. It’s not just him, it’s the organization he’s associated with.”
Ernesto is saying out loud what she knew immediately. She forces herself to speak. “Okay.”
“Go home. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Guillermo’s quinceañera …”
Sara has never heard Ernesto swear until that moment. “I’ll see you there. Might as well act normal in case someone is watching us.”
“Like who?”
“Like whoever deleted the e-mails from Juana’s computer.”
Sara goes out the back door to the building and walks four blocks so she can catch her bus at a different stop. She finds a seat in the way back, squashed between two men, and ignores their thighs pressing against her. There are only so many battles she can fight.
She takes out her notepad and tries to write down everything that happened that day. Usually, writing helps her think, calms and consoles her. Today, it doesn’t work. She pushes away the head of one of the men pretending to “accidentally” fall asleep on her shoulder and closes her eyes. Felipe ordering her to stop writing about the Desaparecidas seems a million years ago.
That e-mail threat about Linda. So much about it was strange. Most of the threats reporters and editors receive at El Sol come by regular mail. Why send an e-mail, which can possibly be traced? Sara remembers what Ernesto said: The threat came via e-mail because whoever sent it wanted them to know about his power. That much is clear.
But why mention Linda specifically? Hinojosa and his people had to know that the e-mail with the picture had been deleted from the El Sol hotline, so there was no need to threaten Sara. She’s received death threats before, and they typically start after she talks to family members or the missing person’s friends, or she’s known to be digging around in the public records. People who are afraid of publicity find out quickly when El Sol is on the scent. But no one at the paper has done anything on Linda since Sara wrote about her. The last time she went to see Mrs. Fuentes was over two weeks ago, and it was just a friendly visit; they didn’t go see the State Police. Why the need for a further threat?
Unless … Sara opens her eyes. Unless there was something else that they thought Sara had, or was about to get. Something incriminating that they were afraid she’d see—so incriminating that they had to threaten her family. But what? She needs to dig into that possibility tomorrow.
Should she tell Linda’s mother and father that Linda might be alive? It’s such a hard thing to decide, whether to give someone a hope that may turn out to be false. Is the hurt worse for having hoped? But this hope is real. Puchi: Linda wrote that a little more than a day ago. One more day, Sara decides. She’ll wait one more day, doing all the research she can, before she speaks to Mrs. Fuentes. Maybe by the end of the day tomorrow she can give Linda’s family something a little more solid. There has to be something out there, anything that will connect Hinojosa to the place where Linda is being kept.
I’m going to find you, Linda. I promise.
Emiliano drives the car down the Esmeraldas’ long driveway. The boy who will take the car and park it in an empty lot down the street is only a year or two older than he is. “I’ll take good care of it for you,” he says, but Emiliano still hesitates a moment before handing him the keys. He will have to give the boy a tip on the way out, and all he has are the five hundred-peso bills that Armando gave him. One hundred pesos is too big a tip. Maybe he can get change from Perla Rubi. No, that’s ridiculous. He can’t ask Perla Rubi if she has change for a hundred pesos. He’ll work it out inside.
He walks to the front door of the Esmeralda residence, holding the platter with his mother’s cake in both hands. A man in a shiny brown suit and skinny black tie opens the door for him. “I can take that for you, sir,” he says, gesturing to the cake.
Sir? “Thanks,” Emiliano says. “I can do it.”
“Certainly, sir. Your name, please?”
“Emiliano Zapata.”
The man shines a thin flashlight on a sheet of paper. When he lifts the paper closer to his eyes, Emiliano sees the holster on the man’s hip. After he finally finds Emiliano’s name, at the very end of the list, the security guard opens the door.
The foyer inside sparkles in the light of a chandelier with hundreds of prisms in the shape of frozen tears. The trumpets from a mariachi band blare from somewhere in the back of the house. To the right of the foyer is a dining room with a table covered with wrapped presents and vases full of roses. Two women stand in front of the table holding champagne glasses. Their necks, wrists, and fingers glitter with jewels. To the left, a step below the foyer, Emiliano sees a room with a blue-felt pool table, brown leather chairs, and lamps that glow with soft yellow light. Encyclopedia-looking books line one of the walls, while the other is covered with colorful paintings of Mexican villages and bustling marketplaces. In this room, men in dark blue and gray suits stand with thick tumblers in their hands. Despite Paco’s loafers, Emiliano feels shabbily dressed. He’s glad he opted for socks.
He stands paralyzed, dazed by the opulence. Everything looks luxurious but also comfortable. He could easily imagine himself in one of those brown chairs or playing pool. Which way does he go? Should he put the cake on the table next to the silver-wrapped boxes with silky red ribbons? Sooner or later he has to do something, take a step in one direction or another. No one has noticed him standing there like a scared rabbit, but that could change any second.