Victims (23 page)

“Right,” Miranda said.

She took Maria’s arm and led her back along the darkened corridor.

“I made a mistake,” she said, holding tightly to the girl. “We have to go to Manhattan.”

Maria made the identification quickly, quietly, calmly. Yes. It was her sister, Arabella Vidales. The dull eyes glinting through the swollen lids, the strange expressionless face, distorted by death, the beautiful hair, flattened and matted to the texture of rotting vegetation—none of these things could hide the fact. This was Arabella Vidales, her sister.

Miranda led her to a waiting room, pointed to a contoured plastic chair. The room was filled with groupings of plastic furniture for grieving relatives. Maria’s eyes were tremendous, black, glistening, vacant. The girl was traveling, and Miranda did not want her to go too far away.

“Do you know,” she said, “that the girl, Anna Grace, looked very much like that when she was in the morgue?
Look at me, I am telling you something.”

Maria stared through her.

Miranda leaned close, cupped Maria’s chin in her hand.

“Listen to me. It would have been
you
in there, in a box, with your mouth hanging open and your eyes looking at nothing. Seeing nothing, feeling nothing, not ever again. He thought he was killing you, didn’t he?”

Maria tried to pull away, but Miranda tightened her grip.

“No. Let’s talk about it now. Here. While you can still talk to me. I don’t want to stand over your body and look at your corpse.”

The girl began to moan. “Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Oh, please don’t say that.”

“But it is true, yes? Mera thought he hit you and he was wrong. Then Arabella and Christine got hit. Why? Tell me, Maria, who did this? It wasn’t Mera. He was in custody in Florida when this happened. You know what that means, don’t you? Someone is still out there. I think you are in a very bad position, and I think you know it and I think you need help.”

The girl blinked, pulled back and finally confronted Miranda. “Oh, and
you
can help me?
You
can keep me safe, huh?”

“Only partially. You’ll have to help yourself. I’ll do my job. I’ll do the best I can, but I can’t do
anything
without your help. Maria, for God’s sake, tell me what happened.”

“You are so smart, lady policeman. You are so smart. You tell me. You know everything.”

Miranda lowered her voice so that Maria had to listen closely.

“All right. Arabella and Christine were carriers. Cocaine, maybe heroin. They were carrying, for Mera. Mera, I think, is a nobody—an intermediary, in some way. That was why he was going to hit you. To teach
them
a lesson. But he made a mistake. He hit the wrong girl. And then...”

“Yes? Oh, and then? And then you don’t know. Not anything because you are wrong about everything. My sister...my sister...Arabella met up with some wrong men. Sometimes I worried about that. Arabella...my sister...was so trusting, you’d think she’d know better...but I was worried. She said something about some guys they met, somewhere, I don’t know. And this happened to them because she didn’t have good sense. There. So much for your stories, lady policeman. Did you sit up all night and make up any more stories to tell people?”

“Maria, I worked narcotics for many years. I know a setup. I know carriers learn to skim. And to deal a little on the side.”

She read Maria carefully. The girl clenched her teeth together, winced as though she was biting on a nerve.

Miranda continued, taking her cues from Maria’s reactions. “So, sometimes, they skim a little too much and get caught at it. Sometimes, it’s just a little bit, at first, a little bit to maybe help out. A sister, maybe, who can pick up a few extra dollars at school. A little pushing, cocaine, to keep the brain going, to get through the hard nights before an exam.” She shook her head. “No big deal. Maria, I went to night school for my degree, I know the hours. I know what a help it can be. Just a little, carefully used, not abused. My God, there are times you’d pay anything you had, for just a little help, for something so nice to make all the hard work a little easier. I know, Maria. I was there. You don’t think I’m totally out of your world, do you? I’m a few years older than you are. I’ve been deep in the middle of it. A little is okay, is good, helps. A little dealing, with friends, my God, they love you for it, it’s not for the money, it’s to help them. You don’t hold them up, you’re not looking to get rich, just expenses and a little extra. What kind of sister would Arabella be if she didn’t cut you in for a little small piece of it for you and your friends? She took care of you, I’m sure she did. Why not? There’s no harm in small amounts.”

“Then why are you making such a big deal out of it?”

“Because of the
others,
Maria. The bigger people. The ones who make all the nice times, the cool times, the helping times, turn bad. The big guys who don’t want young women like Arabella and Christine to have any action at all, not a nickel’s worth for themselves. I think, maybe, Mera was doing some skimming himself, and found out they were skimming, too, and wanted to blame them for the whole thing. I think that’s how it happened. He put the whole blame on them. He’d say to ‘the others,’ see, I took out the young sister, to teach them. But then he found out his mistake and got frightened and ran. Down to Miami. And the others—the big deals—they decided to kill Arabella and Christine just to be on the safe side. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

Maria stared at her blankly.

“But there is just one loose end still remaining, Maria. Mera took out the wrong girl. That was just her hard luck. Anna Grace died for no reason at all except that she looked like you and that Mera made a mistake. So that leaves you, still walking around. You don’t think they’re going to let you walk around much longer, do you?”

Maria Vidales took in a long, slow breath. She sat up straight, her spine rigid, her chin high. Her voice was scratchy, as though the words were being forced over a raggedly sore throat.

“I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about, lady policeman.” She made a sharp, derisive click with her tongue. “It is terrible to see what happens to one of
us
when she becomes one of
them.”
Her final words were a harsh, hissing sound, “You are worse than all of them put together. You turn on your own.”

She looked away, her mouth twisted contemptuously. She did not see the sudden, passing pain on Miranda Torres’ face.

B
ECAUSE SHE FELT SHE
had nothing to lose, Miranda decided to take a chance with the girl.

“I must stop first at my apartment, then I will take you home,” she told Maria. “There is something I must check out.”

When Miranda pulled up in front of her building, she studied the girl beside her. She had gone stone cold; frozen; expressionless. She heard without seeming to hear. When Miranda told her to come with her for a moment, unquestioningly Maria Vidales went along up to Miranda’s apartment.

Miranda wasn’t sure it was the
right
thing to do, but she was sure it was the
only
thing to do. If she was to lose Maria now, she would lose her completely without hope of reaching her again.

She watched the girl’s blank face, looked for some sign of what had to be going on within. Maria had gone so far into herself that she seemed to have disappeared.

“This will take only a few minutes,” Miranda said. “There is something I want you to look at.”

She still had Mike’s video machine to play the duplicate of the murder tape that he had given her. “You might as well have a copy,” he had said. “Jesus, there are people who would pay a fortune for a copy of this. A real, honest-to-God, genuine snuff tape. The real thing.”

At first Maria glanced at the TV screen blankly, and then, hearing the scream, she leaned forward, narrowed her eyes, then turned away.

Miranda stopped the machine, afraid she might be erasing something. She did not like machines. And she did not like what she was doing.

Maria stood up, but Miranda came to her, hands on her shoulders.

“No. You sit here and you watch. If it takes all night, Maria, you will sit here and watch the whole thing. Beginning to end. Watch Mera and this girl. You know and I know what
he
did not know. He was killing the wrong girl.
He thought Anna Grace was you.”

Maria shrugged, whirled around, her face coming alive, her eyes filled with tears which spilled down her suddenly flushed cheeks.

“No. This is a trick. I do not want to see this, this filthy thing. It is a trick.”

Miranda was stronger, far more in control of the situation.

“Sit down. Here. Drink this.” She had prepared some iced tea. She was afraid to give the girl anything stronger. She didn’t know what drugs Maria had in her system.

Maria drank without stopping, gulping, seeking something from the cold liquid that wasn’t there. She grabbed Miranda’s hand.

“What is this tape, this movie? What kind of trick is it?”

“No trick. It is real. Some film student on Barclay Street shot it. From the moment Mera stabbed her to the end. Exactly as it happened.
Maria, it is you he is stabbing.
You know that. You know it.”

Maria folded herself back onto the chair, legs under her body, arms hugging herself, holding herself. Her mouth fell open and she gasped with each terrible flash of the knife, she moaned with each scream. She pulled her hands over her eyes. Miranda stopped the machine.

“No. Do not cover your eyes because it is so terrible. It continued. He did not stop because it became unbearable. He wanted you to die and you kept fighting back and he kept slashing and stabbing. Look at it, Maria, damn it, you look at it and you listen and don’t you forget this for the rest of your life.
You
were stabbed and slashed that night.
You
were left to bleed to death while your neighbors looked out of the windows and watched you die. Now you watch this, beginning to end, you watch it as it happened. It was happening to you. As far as Mera was concerned—the girl was you.”

Miranda reversed to the beginning, then pushed a button and the murder began again. Maria watched, scarcely breathing. She stared until the screen went gray, still watching, still watching.

“All right. There,” Miranda said. “You’ve done what no one has ever done before. You’ve sat and witnessed your
own
murder on videotape. Every stab, every wound, every hurt was on your body.
Maria!”

The girl seemed in a trance, beyond feeling, hypnotized by the blank TV screen. Miranda grabbed at the girl’s pocketbook, dumped the contents onto her desk. There was a makeup case filled with capsules, pills, substances of different kinds for different feelings. There was a vial of cocaine. Miranda prepared two thin lines on the back of an envelope, carefully, professionally.

“Maria. Come here. Just this once, Maria. The rest of all this goes down the toilet, but you come over here now. Do this.”

It took effect immediately: it brought the girl sharply, starkly into the experience of what she had just seen. She began to shake, her teeth began to click together, not from the drug, but from the realization of what she had just seen and what it meant.

“Tell me about Carlos Galvez, your cousin. Where does he fit in?”

Maria clutched at Miranda, caught at her sleeves and pulled herself closer.

“Not him,” she whispered. “He doesn’t exist. I don’t know who you mean.
Please.
Detective Torres, for God’s sake,
please.”

“All right, then. Maria, all right. For now. No Carlos. No cousin. Tell me about Mera. Paul Mera—where does he fit in? Why would he want to kill you?”

“What you said before. What you guessed. What you said.”

Miranda thought quickly: remembering, trying to get the girl to fill in facts for guesses.

Slowly, reluctantly, Maria told a somewhat disconnected story, whispered, shuddered, cried. And then begged for more cocaine. Miranda ignored her and put together the sequence of events.

On certain trips, both Arabella and Christine carried fairly large amounts of cocaine which was picked up by Mera. Lately, he had begun skimming. He had shown the stewardesses how easy it was, but it had to be done quickly. He was on a tight, well-monitored schedule. He needed their help and he paid them a nice bonus for it.

It really was so easy. It seemed so silly to let Mera give them just a small extra amount of money when they were taking most of the risks, so they skimmed a little for themselves a few times. Claimed they’d been delayed at Kennedy, some minor problems, some briefing of the crew. Mera had caught on very quickly.

“When Arabella called me, she said Mera had asked about me. He said he’d been thinking, Why shouldn’t your little sister have a piece of the action? She’s a college girl. Plenty of customers there. He told Ara to have me come over to the apartment, and he’d set something up.”

And so her sister warned Maria to stay away; that something bad was happening. That she would take care of it, but Maria was just to stay away.

“Then she called me again. Wednesday night. When he was out there, on the street. Killing...that girl. Killing...me. Ara called, she said something terrible was going on. I should stay away until I heard from her. That she would take care of it.”

“What did she mean by that, that she would take care of it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Maria said, her voice beginning to falter, the words coming slower. She sniffed, and coughed and looked up at Miranda. “Look, I need...”

“And did you hear from Arabella again? After that last phone call?”

Maria shook her head.

“And you were afraid for her and Christine. What did you think would happen?”

Maria looked up, angry now, drawing on her anger to overcome her fear. “What do you mean, what did I think would happen? Look what happened! Look where my sister is.”

“Who put her there? Carlos? Is he the next in line, Carlos? Did Mera work for him?”

“For who?”

It was to be that way: no further information. No Carlos. A pulling back and withdrawing. The beginnings of denials.