The Dead Women of Juarez by Sam Hawken Read Free Book Online Page A

with the other parishioners. They shook hands with the priests and emerged into the bright morning. Only now that they had said their prayers and received blessings did the women speak to one another. Paloma stayed with them.
    The first question each woman asked was always the same – “Have you heard anything?” – because they had all lost someone. In Juárez the bodies of dead women were often found, but other times they vanished and never reappeared. To Paloma, these were the worst, because the women and girls could not be dead if they couldn’t be buried, so they existed forever out of reach in Limbo. When the old women in black held onto each other during the Remembrance of the Dead, they held onto their hope, too.
    Paloma had no news for any of them this week. She let her eyes wander the half-dirt street, past a line of battered old cars, and settle on a pick-up parked along a broken curb.
    New trucks weren’t unusual in Juárez; even when a family couldn’t afford a proper home and squatted in the
colonias
, sometimes and somehow they could still pull together enough money for a shiny truck. This one was black and had tinted windows and a long cab with double doors for a back seat. Four men lounged against it, the rims of their sunglasses glinting. One man pointed a little camera at the women in black and the ugly church. He was too far away for Paloma to hear the click of a shutter. He lowered the camera again.
    Paloma stepped away from the women. The women were talking and would talk for a long time before walking to a late breakfast. The street was littered with yellow-slate rocks. She stooped to grab one. When she straightened again, the man with the camera took another picture.
    She hurled the stone. The men scattered and the rock smacked the side of the truck, bounced and hit the ground. One of the men started toward her, but another held him back. Behind Paloma, the women in black fell silent.
    “Go home!” Paloma yelled at the men.
    One of the women in black made a hissing noise. “Paloma,
¿qué tú está haciendo?
”
    The men by the truck lingered. One of them, the angry one, made an obscene gesture at Paloma. She stood in place, ready to pick up another rock, ready to yell or fight or even flee to the church. The men got into the truck. The taillights flashed, big tires in the back crushed gravel and then the truck was gone.
    Paloma turned back to the women in black. They stared and suddenly Paloma felt embarrassed. At the door of the church, other parishioners were frozen in place and watching.
    “
Vamos
,” Paloma said.
    She went to the women and they left together, away from the ugly church and the empty space on the curb the truck abandoned. They would have a light meal together and talk some more and pray and hope before parting ways until the next week.
    On Sundays that was the way it was.

ELEVEN
    K ELLY WOKE LATE AND LAY IN THE slanted rays of sun casting from the bedroom window. For a while he just stayed there, but in the end he forced himself to rise and visit the bathroom for a piss and a shower. He wrapped a towel around his waist. Maybe he was a little thinner lately; he wasn’t sure.
    He opened a front window and the door to the balcony to let some air flow through the place. Breakfast was light because he hadn’t had time to shop, but with money from the night before he could afford to splurge at the
grocería
come Monday. Some Sundays he had a beer to wash it all down, but not today.
    Sunday was a day for dressing up, or at least putting on a shirt with buttons and better shoes than his ratty high-tops. He shaved his neck but left his beard-growth alone. He wore a leather belt with a silver-and-turquoise buckle that was a Christmas gift from Paloma.
    It was close to noon before Sevilla knocked on Kelly’s door. Kelly saw him through the open window first, leaning against the iron railing outside with his jacket open against the burgeoning heat, a holstered automatic against