“We got another one,” her partner—Maru Villanueva—sighed tiredly. “and this time the fucking eyes are gone.”
“And the heart?”
“Get down here Garcia, yeah?”
Sol snapped the phone shut, pursing her lips into a thin line. The bags of her eyes were bruised, a side effect of her unstable sleep. She shook her head, hand on her hip as she turned on her heels with the murder in mind. The eyes are gone.
“Duty calls?”
“I’ll be back.” Retracing her steps, she was back on the train, heading South and keeping the sleep at bay. With Celestine’s smile etched in her mind she arrived, sweaty, disillusioned, and ready to go home. The last thing she wanted to do was inspect a dead body especially after her nightmare. Her deep brown freckles painted the tops of her cheeks, reaching the edge of her face. The back of her hand wiped off a sheet of sweat, and she brushed over the scar on her face. It was a product of a life she didn’t remember. The scar was lighter than her russet pigmentation, her damaged skin a stranger to the complexion passed down by her mother.
Sol ducked behind the police tape effortlessly, her corkscrew curls bouncing with each step. Maru Villanueva’s aphotic shades sat atop her neat head of hair, not a strand out of place.
“Fuck me, the smell.” Sol didn’t need to announce her arrival—over the course of their time spent together they had synched up, and could feel one another when they crossed into each other’s presence. Maru Villanueva was the only other person besides Sol’s therapist and her aunts who knew where Sol really came from.
“Nice to see you too Maru.”
“What a fucking shame. I’m gettin’ real tired of this sonuvabitch.” Maru hiked off her squat position, looking at Sol with mirrored eyes. Tired eyes were about all they had in common, they couldn’t be more opposites. Sol was short, with wide hips, and a dark complexion. Whereas Maru was tall, fair, and thin as a bone; her human emotions took over every so often and she could sympathize with perps. Sol didn’t give one shit. She liked to tell Maru we all have our fucked-up desires, we all mistakes, but when’s the last time I’ve hacked up my neighbor? Maru liked identifying the problem, Sol liked pounding it. She could act tough with the last name inherited by her Father one of Guadalajara’s Federales but Sol, she really was tough.
Sol pulled a latex glove out of her coat pocket. “He was face down when you got here?”
“Flipped over after he died.” Maru’s sweat stained the front of her white button-down. Her high cheek bones smeared with a bright red from standing directly beneath the sun far too long.
“How can you—”
“Liver mortis.” The young policía jotted down some notes on their M. Sol narrowed her eyes at the young man; he couldn’t be more than nineteen. She stole a breath and wished only for a moment, that Guadalajara had coroners or trained officers. Not young men with a ruthless vendetta and a dream to be the next Emiliano Zapata. It was different here. To be a policía all you did was note down your name on a slip of paper and you were called onto the force. The young men who joined had ambition that was always greater than their duty. They usually died first. “Lift his shirt up. There you go, that discoloration tells it all. You see how it’s all along his back? He was in a supine position meaning, he was prone before. This man didn’t die facing the ground otherwise his front would look like his back. He was placed here, in other words he was moved.” He didn’t know that because he was a policía, he was familiar with bodies. Disposing of them wasn’t limited to this job.
“No, Investigadora Garcia, joined straight out of la prepa.” She could hear a hint of irritability; like many young men before him, they were bothered to report and take commands from a woman.
sangre nativa