Speak of the Devil (10 page)

“I’ll drive you,” he said. He told the men he’d be right back, then bundled her into his Volvo station wagon. Normally, she loved the walk through the pretty neighborhood, full of towering trees and cars with “World Peace” bumper stickers. The Takoma Metro stop was only half a mile away. The drive took less than two minutes.

She kissed him and opened the car door.

“Wait,” he said.

He handed her a little black canister on a key chain. She read the label.

“Pepper spray?”

“Spice up your burrito if Chipotle runs out of Tabasco sauce. Or shoot this at anyone who looks at you funny.”

She put the pepper spray on her key chain, kissed him again, and walked to the Metro station. As she rode the escalator up to the elevated platform, she saw Jack, still sitting in his car, watching to make sure she made it up there okay. She smiled and waved at him—and hoped
he
was going to be okay.

As she sat on the train, she took out her phone to check her messages. She saw a notice from Spotify, an app for playing music. She and Jody both subscribed to it, and the settings allowed them to see the songs the other one had listened to. Today, Jody’s account read:

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Jody is listening to “The Scientist” by Coldplay.

Anna shook her head and dialed her sister.

“Hey, Annie.” Jody’s voice was tired.

“Why are you listening to the world’s most depressing breakup song, over and over?”

“It’s a beautiful song.”

“True. But there are two kinds of breakup songs—the weepy, I’m-going-to-kill-myself-now kind, and the ass-kicking, empowering, dance-around-the-room-in-your-underwear kind. You need to be listening to the strong stuff while you’re getting ready for work. It’s gonna be in your head all day.” Anna scrolled through Spotify, selected “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child, and sent the link to her sister. “Okay, listen to this. Three times. That’s an order.”

“Okay.” Jody laughed. Her voice sounded a little better. “How’s your left hand? Tired from the weight of that rock yet?”

“Tired from the smackdown it wants to give Brent.”

Jody gave a little snort. “Love you. Have a good day, sis.”

“You, too. Remember, I can see what you’re listening to. ‘Survivor.’ ”

“Aye-aye, captain.”

Anna hung up, worried for Jody. Her sister’s job on the GM assembly line consisted of lots of repetitive movements—a perfect opportunity for her mind to circle through the post-breakup spiral of nostalgia, sorrow, and self-recrimination. The unpredictable nature of Anna’s job presented challenges, but she often appreciated the fact that she could lose herself in it.

By the next subway stop, she saw the Spotify notification:

Jody is listening to “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child.

She felt better, and hoped Jody did, too.

When Anna got to the office, she logged on to her computer and found in her in-box the artist’s sketches based on Tierra’s recollection. One looked like an average young Hispanic guy; he could be any one of a dozen guys Anna passed on the street every day. The other had black scaly skin and nostrils like Voldemort. He looked like a Halloween decoration or a caricature of the Devil. For what they were worth, these pictures would go in the morning crime report, e-mailed to all the police officers in the District.

She spent a good chunk of the morning trying to find a good place for Tierra to stay. She was hoping for a women’s shelter with job training and counseling—Tierra needed a support system, not only for the rape, but for the self-esteem and economic issues that had made her turn to prostitution in the first place. But all the shelters and programs were full. Several had recently shut down due to lack of funding. The remaining organizations were overwhelmed and underfunded, barely surviving day to day. Anna called and begged, but there simply wasn’t a bed available.

She fell back on the USAO Victim/Witness unit, which would put Tierra up in a motel, under a fake name, for the foreseeable future. It was not ideal. Tierra would get bored and lonely, isolated in a strange place. They would give her instructions for her safety: Stay away from her old neighborhoods, stay off the streets. But Anna knew that without friends, companionship, or daily purpose, witnesses often broke such rules.

Anna once had a case where a woman fleeing an abusive boyfriend was put up in a hotel. But she still longed for the sort of dark masculinity from which she was hiding. She met a stranger in a bar, took him back to her hotel, and was killed by him. Victims of sex offenses and domestic violence needed more than shelter if they were to escape the cycle of violence that shaped their lives.

Anna met with officers in MPD’s Latino Liaison and Gang units, seeking information on MS-13 and the strange-looking man who seemed to control it. She learned that Psycho and the dead man, Bufón, were tied to a clique called the Langley Park Salvatruchas, or LPS, based in the Maryland suburbs straddling D.C.’s northeast border. There was street chatter about a “devil” who periodically appeared to stir up violence among the local MS-13 cliques, then disappeared. The Gang unit had gathered all sorts of absurd rumors about him—he drank his victims’ blood, he commanded a pack of hellhounds—but Anna got precious few hard facts.

That afternoon, the brothel’s timekeeper came in to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for a witness conference. Victor Linares was a slight man who looked perpetually afraid. He glanced around her office continually, as if expecting gang members to pop up from behind furniture. He sat on the edge of the seat, next to his anemic-looking, court-appointed defense lawyer. Anna was prepared to talk about immunity—promising not to prosecute Victor for his involvement in the brothel—in return for his testimony against the invaders. But he didn’t want immunity.

“I slept through it.”

McGee snorted with derision.

“You slept through your hands and feet being duct-taped?” Anna asked.

“I just don’t remember what happened.”

Anna had him wait in the lobby while she spoke to his defense attorney. “If he says that in the grand jury, I’ll have to charge him with perjury.”

“He’s scared of the gang,” said the attorney. “Wouldn’t you be?”

Anna thought about the security system Jack was installing at that very moment and nodded.

“Work with him,” she said. She’d prefer to wait and have a truthful witness than go forward now, just to have him perjure himself. “Let’s talk again in two weeks. If he doesn’t cooperate, I will charge him.”

She called the witness back into her office. “I’m sending you home today, Mr. Linares. Speak to your lawyer about what’s in your best interest here. We’ll talk again.”

“I’m sorry,” the timekeeper said. “Press charges if you want, but I can’t testify. Those guys know who I am. You seem like a nice lady, so don’t take this the wrong way. Maybe you should think about what’s in your own best interest. You don’t want to cross the Devil.”

• • •

Alone again in her office, Anna sat at her computer and, feeling voyeuristic, double-clicked on RCIS, the U.S. Attorney’s Office database for investigations. She ran a search for all the cases Nina Flores had been working in the twelve months before she died. Anna had always been curious about Nina, but now she had an official reason to check out her fiancé’s first wife.

The search returned a hundred cases. Anna started reading them, one by one. The database contained only a brief summary of each case; if she wanted more information she’d have to track down the physical files.

Nina’s caseload reflected a sex-offense detective’s usual mix: college acquaintance rapes, prostitutes who’d been violently assaulted, middle-school girls molested by their mothers’ boyfriends. Every one of the defendants had a reason to hate Nina. She exposed the worst things they’d ever done, ruined their reputations, sent them to jail, broke up their families. But the police handled thousands of these cases a year. Anna herself had dozens of cases like these in various stages of investigation.

Three cases stood out because they involved known MS-13 members. The first was an MS-13 member who impregnated his twelve-year-old stepdaughter. The girl refused to testify, but DNA testing and birth certificates made the case. He was serving a ten-year sentence in a federal penitentiary in Kansas.

The second was a human-trafficking case: two men accused of transporting fourteen-year-old girls around the region and selling them for sex. The men took them to construction sites and offered them to the laborers. Anna couldn’t tell from the database what had ultimately come of the investigation, if anything.

The third was a gang-rape of a fifteen-year-old girl at a “skip party”—a party held by kids skipping school. The database reported that the girl had been lured to the party, where a bunch of MS-13 members had taken turns raping her. She was badly injured as a result. There were several “John Does” listed as defendants. The investigation had been transferred after Nina’s death, and eventually “declined” by the next detective, who wrote that the victim was uncooperative and recanting. Anna sighed. A good detective might’ve been able to get the girl on board again. But some detectives took the easy “decline,” and a detective who inherited a case from someone else didn’t have the same investment or incentive to put forth the often Herculean effort to keep witnesses cooperating.

She e-mailed the Closed Files unit and asked for all three of Nina’s MS-13 cases to be pulled from storage and sent to her. She also asked for the file on Nina’s death.

As she walked home that night, pepper spray in hand, she considered whether to tell Jack what Hector had said, and that she was looking at Nina’s old cases. He’d always been reluctant to talk about his wife’s death. She wasn’t sure anything would come of the old cases, and she didn’t want to upset Jack any further. She decided not to tell him.

When she got home, Jack showed her how to use the new security system. The only recognizable prints on the photo album had been his and Luisa’s. The background checks McGee ran turned up nothing concerning.

“Although a juvenile arrest wouldn’t necessarily show up,” Jack said.

“Are you thinking of Benicio?” she asked softly.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “My mind’s been conjuring all sorts of stupid ideas today. Suspecting everyone and everything. Hell, I almost fingerprinted your cat.”

She smiled and put her arms around him.

When Anna went to Olivia’s bedroom that night—with a new night-light—the girl cheerfully told her the house was now monster-proof. But she still asked Anna to look under her bed.

15

Gato held the cook’s face three inches from the grill. The old man stared in terror at the flat metal surface, where beads of oil popped and sizzled. Sweat streamed down the pupusa maker’s neck, making Gato’s hands slimy. But the man had stopped struggling. At this point, any movement, any slip of the hand, could end with the cook’s cheek being charred on the grill like a pork chop in a frying pan.

Gato glanced out the window of the food truck. There was no one in the gas station parking lot. On a typical evening, a constant stream of pedestrians crossed the busy road to get the warm thick pancakes of dough, stuffed with meat or cheese. But not today. The small crowd walked off when Gato and Rooster boarded the truck. No one wanted to mess with MS-13.

The cook’s wife whimpered and struggled with Rooster. He had her in a corner, and his hands were traveling up and down her clothes. The pudgy woman had gray hair bundled into a hairnet; her normally smiling face was contorted with fear. She was not the type of woman Rooster was attracted to. But this was not about attraction. It was about power and intimidation.

“I told you, old man,” Gato said in soft Spanish. “Rent’s gone up. Everybody must do their part.”

“We can’t,” the cook whimpered. “We don’t have the money. There just isn’t any money.”

Gato pushed the man’s head closer to the grill. His own hands were getting uncomfortably hot. The old man was shaking. But what almost rattled Gato was the terror in the cook’s eyes when he looked at his wife. Rooster had pulled up her T-shirt and was pinching her nipples through her sturdy white bra. She tried to slap his hands away, but this just made him laugh and press himself harder against her. Gato knew if this took much longer, Rooster would become too excited, and would take this woman right here in the truck, even with the side window open. Gato didn’t feel like watching that today.

Gato shook the man’s neck. His fingers skimmed the grill, burning a knuckle. “Fuck!” Gato screamed, and let go. The man yelped, too. A corner of the man’s forehead was seared from the grill. A little circle, like a bright red coin. The old man was trembling all over. Gato’s finger throbbed with pain. Inside, too, he was burning with rage and frustration.

“Do you want to see your wife get fucked right here?” Gato screamed.

“No! God, no! Open the cash register, take what you want!”

Gato tried to open the register, but couldn’t figure it out. He pushed the cook toward the machine. The pupusa maker punched in some buttons and the drawer sprang open. Inside were a bunch of crumpled bills. Gato pulled them out and counted: $252.

“That’s plenty,” he said. “Your rent is only two hundred a week.”

“Sir, please, you must understand. Everything in here costs money. The dough, napkins, forks, equipment, renting this space to park. We’re still paying off this truck. We missed the last two payments to cover your rent. The truck is all we have. If we can’t make the payments, we lose it.”

Gato grunted as he pocketed the money, keeping the extra fifty-two dollars for all the trouble these
pendejos
had given him. Everyone had a sad story. How hard life is, blah blah blah. He had his own problems to worry about.