Blood Daughters: A Romilia Chacon Novel

Chapter 11

47 Chapter 11 Nancy and I drove into Los Angeles just as the sun was coming up. We hadn’t talked much in the past half hour, each of us in our own worlds. I had no idea what Nancy thought about. I was thinking about the To-Do list Karen had given me. I had done one of the three requests, checking out the crime scene of the dead girl. Next on the list: the little web virus of desertwomentruth.com and an apartment building in Santa Monica. I was tired, and wanted to go home. I chose the web virus. But not through a computer. Randall and Shrieber had handed me a half-inchthickfileofmulticoloredhardcopyprints,alldownloaded.Instead of infecting my own computer at home, I could flip through pages. I could study, on paper, the group’s purpose, its mission. They used hacker tactics to send the world these horrific pictures, ones that Karen had taken. Were they radicals? Was this some type of cyber guerrilla warfare? Showing us all of the horrors of the Mexican-American border? To what purpose? It was eight o’clock Saturday morning when we drove around Long Beach. Bright sun now, so I picked up that New Yorker sitting on her brake lever. “You got a subscription?” I asked. “Uh, yeah. I do.” That big poem didn’t interest me, until I saw its title and read it out loud. “‘A Venom Beneath the Skin.’ Catchy.” I read the first two lines to myself, There is a venom beneath the skin/that cries at night. I turned to the poet’s name. Latin dude, Mauricio Rafielo. Didn’t know him. And since I could never read in a car, I let the magazine plop back over the hand brake. 48 ~ Blood Daughters “You all right?” I asked her, looking at her. “What? Yeah. Why?” “Nothing. Just looks like you’re worried about something.” “Nah. Just, tired.” Half an hour later Nancy pulled up in front of my house. “You got plans for today?” I said as she parked her car in front of my house. “A hard-core date with my bed.” She grinned. “Ah but for the single woman’s life.” “You?” “Coffee with my mother. A date with my son. That new sci-fi pirate movie.” “Not too bad.” I opened the door. “You’re right. Not bad at all. Thanks for doing this.” “What are ex-partners for?” She grinned at me. “Right.” I grinned back. My partner the Mole. Mamá was awake. Sergio was not. Like a good nine year old, he had learned the patterns of school, and after a week of getting up early, he slept in on weekends. “Everything all right?” said Mamá. “Karen,” I said. “Ay. What trouble is she stirring up now?” “I’m not sure.” I placed the file on the table, thanked Mamá as she handed me a cup of coffee, which, I thought, was a good sign. Maybe she wouldn’t start preaching to me again. Ilayonthecouch,putthecoffeeonthetableandopenedthefile.Iignored the photos and went for the text. From the style of the writing, I could tell Karen had written most of these essays. I got about three paragraphs in, learning a general history of what some had named “The Desert Women,” a catch-all title for all the women who had died in the desert that stretched between California and Texas in the past ten years. Were Karen and her group trying to solve the crimes of over three hundred murdered women? Four hundred, and growing, according to her report. That, in my mind, wasn’t the work of one man; that was a killing field, with many killers to blame. A tragedy born out of the drug trade and the lawlessness of border towns. But as god-awful as this information was, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. After staying up all night, the sleep was thick, and I welcomed it. I only woke to welcome my boy. Sergio stumbled into the living room, his pajamas on. He had his hand down his pants and was picking at his butt. Marcos M. Villatoro ~ 49 “Stop that,” I said. He bent over and kissed me. Then he lifted the closed file off my chest, dropped it with a dramatic flair on the coffee table, and jumped on me. He buried his head into my neck, grabbed the blanket...