Seven Spanish Angels by Stephen Graham Jones

Author:Stephen Graham Jones [Jones, Stephen Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2005-01-14T08:00:00+00:00

Because they had to—because Trevana couldn’t pronounce her, as he’d been peripherally involved in her death, might be the subject of an inquisition instead of just a witness—the medics loaded Tina Ortiz onto a stretcher, eased their ambulance out of the yard. To keep the cameras away, the fireman had laid the fence down, let the medics back over it, right up to Tina Ortiz.

“How long can this go on?” Davidson said, beside me.

“If it’s him,” I said—Lote Bravo, “then…” and didn’t have to finish: Las Hijas de Juarez had been dying for ten years already.

We were sitting on Tina Ortiz’s back porch by then. The smoker tech standing above us. When he lowered his cigarette to me I took it, coughed until my eyes watered, until Davidson took it from me, ground it beneath his foot. My shoulder was already sore from shooting Richard’s heavy gun.

“Mitch wants me to follow her,” Davidson said, nodding to the ambulance, crawling away. “Chain of evidence or some shit.”

“We almost had her,” I said.

“She was dead already,” Davidson said. “She just didn’t know it.”

I nodded, suddenly focused.

“Wait here,” I said, then stepped up onto the porch, walked through the kitchen before my eyes were adjusted, so that all the patrolmen and firemen and leftover medics were just shadows, watching me.

I was going to the bathroom. The sink with all the pill bottles. Because Davidson was right: she should have been dead. Hours ago, probably.

I slid in like I belonged, scooped the bottles into my shirt and backed back out, keeping my head down again as I crossed the living room, stepped out onto the porch, into a sea of flashbulbs I hadn’t been expecting. My hand came up to shield my eyes, the pill bottles I’d had in my shirt scattering on the concrete.

I picked up the two I could without making an issue of it then kept a hand up, got stalled for too long at the barrier. Davidson followed seconds later. Ghosting behind him, Liz P. She held the microphone up to my mouth, so that when I stood from ducking under the barrier, I was rising to the foam head. I took it under the palm of my hand, guided it down.

“No comment,” I said.

We were moving towards my car. The sun so close.

“It’s not—” she started, then did it again: “Off the record.”

I lifted my eyes to her hulking cameraman. Said, “He’s making one.”

“He’s not.” Liz P. looked too, pointed. “There’s a red light—”

“A bulb,” I said, “yeah,” not having to say anything obvious.

Liz P. nodded, thinking. We were outside the main ring of spectators now, to the outer rim, the other reporters trailing away because I’d been claimed already.

“Okay then,” she said, producing a tube of lipstick from some pocket or sleeve. It was maroon, demure but confident. A hint of brown. “You think he’s recording,” she said, unscrewing the lid.

“I have to.”

She nodded, kept nodding, and lowered her mouth to the lipstick, came up agonizing moments later with clown lips.

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