The Face of the Waters, page 21
Armando moved the flame to the other side and stepped back, taking in breath – for the flame had thrown into relief the lifelike image of a dark dog sketched out across the wall, its teeth bared, its red eyes glowing.
As he retreated further, he brushed up against something solid; he spun around, illuminating the hunched figure of the person behind him.
Her face was like nothing he had ever seen; in the soft light, the fissures of flesh, which ran tumorous over her cheeks and her forehead, made her look as though she had been filleted, as though he were looking at a piece of raw, marbled meat that happened to have a pair of eyes set into it. Those eyes were pale blue, almost milky white, and her face was still dripping with piss, yet her cracked, parched lips were curled in a deranged smile.
Armando made a gagging sound, not just because she looked so repulsive, but because the liniments and sinews of her insides showed through the thin film of withered skin of her face, and he couldn’t comprehend how someone could live in a condition of such suffering.
But when her voice came, it was light, and the way she spoke was almost girlish. She blinked twice, lids of pale skin crossing those pallid eyes.
‘Hello, mister. Would you … like a bit of fun? You can take me home …’ The girlish voice faded in the shadows.
He could see she was reverting to the type of patois she might have used decades ago but was struggling to remember her words.
She found her pitch again. ‘You could take me home, and I can make you feel good all night long!’
Forcing himself to look at her, Armando tried to soften his voice. ‘Kassandra?’
‘Kassandra, Kassandra,’ she trilled back. ‘That’s my name, but it’s not a battery, don’t wear it out!’
‘I’m looking for someone, Kassandra. Do you think you could help me?’
Armando reached into his pocket and took out the picture. He showed it to her under the glow of the flame.
She cocked her head, blinked a couple of times, and smiled again.
‘Little Meercciaaa,’ she said with a soft sigh. ‘Mercia … the girl!’
‘Did you know her?’ Armando asked.
‘Oh yes. But she’s not here anymore.’
‘Where is she? Where did she go?’
‘Mercia the girl.’
‘Yes, Mercia the girl. Where is she?’
Her eyes struggled to focus. ‘She’s in Mictlān. And she can’t come back?’
‘Mictlān? Is that a place? Can you tell me where it is?’
Those white eyes raised to look into his directly for the first time. She put her finger to her lips and then looked down at the ground.
She spoke in a whisper, her voice soft and inviting, as though she were revealing a secret. ‘It’s wet. And so very cold. You will know soon enough, though. You’ll be there soon. I can see his shadow on your face. He is coming for you!’
‘And Mercia. Did he come for her?’
‘Mercia. Mercia the girl!’
‘Yes, Mercia the girl.’
She looked at him again, and through her battered, shredded expression, he saw something underneath trying to achieve clarity.
‘Mercia the girl,’ she said again. She pointed to her face.
‘He … did … this. He … helped me. He helped me take off my mask – in Mictlān. He helped me take off my mask in the wet and the cold, so I could see. He gave me true sight for the first time.’
Her lips had cracked open, her eyes blinking as though she was trying to understand.
‘He took off my mask, so I could see. So I could see Mercia the girl …’ All the girlish softness in her voice was gone now, and there was a rasping sound that came from deep within her throat. ‘So I could see Mercia the girl. So I could see her. So I could see. I could see what he did to her. He made me watch. He made me watch as he …’
Her head was vibrating now, and she was drawing in breath faster and faster.
‘He took off the mask, so I could see. Mercia the girl. And how he … how he …’
The rest of the sentence fell away in a wailing sound as her head jerked up and down, her eyes focussed on some horrific point that Armando couldn’t see. The sound graduated into a scream, and now she was taking in breath only to scream again with such violence and such agony, over and over.
Armando staggered away from her, away from that devastated face, that shrieking sound, and back out of the tunnel and into the night. Outside, he saw that same turning funnel of darkness in the sky, and as he looked at it, he thought he saw a galaxy of stars swirling on the inside. He knew he was hallucinating. From somewhere, thunder rumbled, and he stumbled onward into the night.
He returned to his apartment in the early hours of the morning and ran a basin of soapy water to soak his raw, bruised knuckles in. Afterwards, he applied some antiseptic and felt the tingle as though it came from far away. He was exhausted.
Armando kicked off his shoes, laid down on his bed, and tried for sleep. But the feeling of sickness was working deep inside his belly, and when he closed his eyes, a jumble of images flashed across his mind. Kassandra screaming in the tunnel. Cynthia’s coffin being lowered into the ground. Mercia looking out from that photo with dark, haunted eyes. And finally, a legion of women rising up from the ground – black, crippled bodies the colour of the sludge they were mired in, only no longer at the bottom of a drained canal as he had seen them that day, but somewhere else. Somewhere infinitely dark, infinitely cold.
His eyes snapped open.
Whisky.
He stood up, turned on the light, and went and poured himself a glass of the amber liquor. Then, in the soft light, he made his way to the living room. On the walls were plastered all the information he had gathered up to this point – a map with marks indicating where bodies had been discovered, notes on the first body, information on the chemicals that had been found on it, sketches of the effigy. But Armando did not glance at these things. Instead, he took his whisky to the table, where her book was waiting for him. He opened the first page. It read:
‘The Life and Times of Mercia Sanchez: One Girl’s Super Struggle to Take Over the World!’
Next to the word ‘World’, she had drawn with coloured felts the image of a cartoon globe with a face and a big smile. Armando found himself smiling too. He turned the page. There were images of a younger Mercia, with a couple of friends squashed into a photo booth in a mall, sticking their tongues out and giggling insanely, and later, photos of the same girls splashing each other in a pool. Later still, the girls were snapped in a picture where they were each holding a piece of pizza to their mouths, grinning deliriously – only Mercia was taking a sudden, surreptitious bite out of her friend’s piece, much to her friend’s scandalised horror.
The photographer had captured this moment – Mercia’s naughty sneakiness, the friend’s delighted outrage, the laughter of the others.
Armando smiled all the more. He got the feeling that Mercia had been the ‘funny’ one of the group. They all looked so happy. They couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Mercia had written a title above this set of unfolding scenes: she had encapsulated it ‘My Perfect Day’, and each letter was written in a different bright colour. Around the pictures, she had drawn musical notes and cats.
The next pages were also colourful: images of friends, doodles, poems, and pictures of smiley cartoon-like figures – the soft, gentle and magical colours of the world a young teenage girl very much wants to see. Inevitably, however, the pictures of friends became fewer, the colours less bright. Mercia was older now.
Armando turned another page to a picture of her in her bra and panties on the bed in her room, trying to look alluring, but her babyish features and large eyes simply looked lonely.
As he turned more pages, it was as if her life turned with it, hurtling towards its denouement, for now, the poems had grown darker in tone; he recognised a growing preoccupation with loneliness, futility and death. Those brightly coloured musical notes and smiling cats were replaced with darker images of monstrous black creatures – bats, dogs, owls, and spiders running across the edges of the pages – while the writing became ever more disjointed.
Armando turned yet another page, and now the writing had morphed into strange hieroglyphics, lines and lines of them crunched together. There was a drawing of Mercia, a childlike representation of the young woman holding hands with another figure, a tall darker figure with claws for hands. Gathered around them were the bats, dogs, owls, and spiders.
Next to the image appeared the one word struck out in stabbing black letters:
‘MICTLĀN’
He looked at the dark figure in the drawing, and he touched his finger to it in the gloom.
I’m getting closer.
He took another sip of the whisky, rested his head in his arms, and blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the light in the room had changed; the gathering darkness had thinned, the first hues of early morning sun infiltrating the shadowy gloom.
Armando moved stiffly, his eyes focused on the image of the page still open.
Then a loud buzz cut across the quiet – his phone.
He went over to it and answered it, but on the other end, there was only static. And then, another sound. Like someone breathing heavily or the sound of rushing water.
Armando hung up. Perhaps it was Juan Carlos’s strange idea of a joke. But after a moment, he recalled Kassandra’s words, her strange, muted prophecy: ‘You’ll be there soon. I can see his shadow on your face. He is coming for you!’
He went to the small squat kitchen, opened the bottom kitchen cupboard, and flicked the electric switch to heat the water. As he did so, a spark leapt out and illuminated the scores of black beady bodies that were flat against the stone of the inside wall; the cockroaches nestled in the cupboard.
Armando went to the couch as he waited for the water to warm up. He poured a second glass of whisky and turned on the TV, hoping for a documentary, but this early in the morning, there was only a shipping forecast.
Eventually, he got in the shower, got dressed and wandered out of the flat.
Fourteen
At the housing office in the city centre – yet another modern building with a set of offices – it was enough for Armando to flash his badge to get the information he needed.
He gave the phone number of Mercia’s friend Veronica, and the woman behind the desk confirmed that the number had been discontinued but provided Armando with Veronica’s full name –Veronica Miranda Torrego – and her current whereabouts.
Armando was surprised to hear that ‘Veronica’ was no longer turning tricks on the streets but registered as living at the Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla campus, where she was enrolled as a mature student. He wrote down the address and headed to the city centre for an early lunch.
On the way, he hit traffic. As he waited for the lights to change, he heard a loud spluttering roar. On either side of him, several black motorcycles had pulled up. Their riders were kitted out in body armour, those black visors strapped across their faces. When the lights turned green, the group of federales screeched away, leaving a cloud of smoke in their wake.
Armando drove to the big commercial centre, the Angelópolis Mall. It was a massive shopping centre with several floors and various shops, restaurants, cinemas, and bars – somewhere he rarely visited. As he walked across its marble-coloured floors, Armando took in the large numbers of well-dressed, clean people, the pristine and organised window displays, the smooth, rolling escalators, and the clear crystal lights. He felt a sense of relief. Here, the dark underbelly of desperation and poverty – which he had walked through on the edges of the city the night before – seemed like little more than a dream.
He bought a cocktail and then went into a gadget shop. He found what he was looking for and shelled out more than three months’ salary on it. But it was something he needed to do. It gave him the feeling his life was ordinary and stable again, a feeling he very much required – if only for a few moments.
Back at the car, he put the newly purchased item in the boot.
Armando drove to the university campus, which was close by. Like the modern mall, it, too, had a well-organised feeling; large breezy campus greens arrayed with trim trees and blocks and blocks of white concrete dorms laid out in a hexagonal formation.
He found the first floor and door he was looking for. He went to knock but saw the door was slightly open.
He pushed it and called out, ‘Hello’.
A pretty woman in her mid-twenties, with strict dark eyes and a long ponytail, appeared. She was dressed in a black skirt and demure cream blouse. To Armando, she didn’t look like a student at all.
More like a young teacher, perhaps.
‘Veronica?’ he asked.
Her expression flinched. Then, her composure and poise returned. Her eyes flickered over him, penetrating and clear. She’d figured him for a cop straight away.
‘If this is about the marijuana, that was my room-mate’s and her friends, and they’ve already been called to the Dean’s office. All the first-year students smoke, but I’m not here to do that. It doesn’t interest me.’
‘It’s not about the marijuana, Miss Torrego.’
He saw something in her dark eyes then, a shimmering helplessness, a fear. But she was in control of herself again, almost instantaneously.
‘Well, if you want to talk to me, you had better walk with me. I’m late.’
She walked quickly, and Armando struggled to keep up.
‘What do you study here?’
‘I’m doing a PhD in cultural and gender studies.’
‘What does that … What do you do for that?’
‘You look at how the mistreatment and exploitation of women become normalised via certain cultural tropes and practices. Forms of cultural behaviour that render it invisible.’
Armando didn’t understand some of those words, but he knew Cynthia would have loved this kid.
They stepped out into the central campus square and into a stream of people. Most of them were young women in bright, colourful clothes and holding placards. Many had their faces painted white with black eyeliner and black lipstick – in the fashion of ‘La Catrina’, the skeleton character females dressed up as during the Day of the Dead ceremony. But that was still a couple of months away. It was then that Armando noticed some were also holding photos – images of other women with blurred and hazy features.
‘What are they doing?’ he asked.
‘They’re protesting femicide.’
‘Femicide?’
‘Yes, the number of murders of women in Mexico has become a phenomenon in its own right. We describe it by this term.’
Armando thought about those broken, black bodies rising out of the canal bed, their limbs reaching out almost in supplication.
‘We make noise, we shout, we march around,’ Veronica went on. ‘We dress provocatively. We do everything that, for years, Mexican women have been discouraged from doing. We will no longer be invisible.’
Veronica broke into a chant, her voice joining the others in a loud and chaotic formation.
‘What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!’
Armando put a hand on her arm gently.
She flinched ever so slightly.
‘I’m here to talk about—’
‘I know why you’re here, detective. But that part of my life was a long time ago. I was a different person then. I have no desire to revisit it.’
‘I understand. But it is important you answer my questions. They relate to the disappearance of someone you once knew.’
Veronica looked exhausted. She suddenly seemed much older than the other students marching.
She stepped away from the flow of marchers and led Armando down into a concrete corridor under the main dorms. The chugging of washing machines could be heard from the side as they turned their soapy contents.
She looked up at him from the shadows. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to ask you about Mercia Sanchez. I’m investigating her disappearance and murder.’
‘Why now?’
‘It’s possible that—’ Armando tried to choose his words carefully. ‘—what happened to her is connected to a series of other incidents.’
‘Incidents?’ Veronica asked with a flat voice. ‘Is that what the police are calling the murder of young women these days?’
Armando gave a light sigh. ‘I’m trying to … do something. You could be more helpful. After all, you made it out of there. She never did. What are all your protests worth if you don’t remember her?’
A look of anguish crossed the young woman’s face, and she turned away, biting her lip.
‘Ask your fucking questions,’ she whispered.
‘When did you see her last?’
‘I don’t remember exactly. We were both getting high on drugs, but the word “high” doesn’t come close. More like “out of it”. Something to numb life, to shut it out. I don’t remember the last time I saw her.’
‘You were her friend?’
‘Yes, in as much as I was anyone’s.’
‘What was she like?’
Veronica hesitated. Her voice became small, the words laboured. ‘She was … a sweet girl. I was a little older. I felt protective of her because she was so credulous, so kind. But I wasn’t capable of protecting anyone. And those men … they just ate her up.’
Armando spoke softly. ‘Was there anyone in particular? A regular client? A boyfriend? Someone who struck you as different? Someone who stood out from the rest?’
Veronica was trembling now. ‘Yes.’
‘Tell me about him.’
‘I never met him in person. In fact, I don’t even know if he was real. Towards the end, before she disappeared, Mercia was using a lot. Her behaviour was strange. One time, I came across her sitting outside on the pavement by the strip, her legs crossed, crying. I assumed the normal: she had been raped again, or a punter had gone off without paying, which amounts to the same thing. But it was a hot day. On the footpath, some cockroaches had got caught in the sun. They were turned on their backs, legs kicking, but they couldn’t escape, and every now and again, one of them would make this popping sound in the heat, and she was sitting there looking at them sobbing. Just … just sobbing her heart out.’
