The bodies of a man and woman were slumped, facedown, on the living room carpet. Their blood had soaked through and dried on the carpet, and flies buzzed and circled the corpses.
Pablo turned white and threw up into the cat dish. “I’ll stand guard out here. You get what you need.”
“We have to find out who did this,” Axe said. “Are the police going to help?”
“They won’t do anything but mop up. If you want to find the perps, you’ll have to do your own investigating.”
“I can’t do anything for them,” Axe said. “But if I find the perps, I might find Carmelita.”
“Sure. I need fresh air. I’ll stay outside.” Pablo backed from the entrance.
Axe held his shirtsleeve over his nose and took a cursory look at the couple. They’d been shot in the back of the head, execution style. Their hands were tied in back, and they’d fallen forward. He removed the SIM card from Pablo’s phone and took pictures.
He stepped around the bodies into the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink and food left out on the counter. The couple had been surprised. He scanned the pictures on the refrigerator, but they were all of the cat. No Carmelita anywhere.
The den had been searched and anything of value stolen. No computer. No printers, scanners, or cameras were left. Definitely none of Eduardo’s fake ID equipment.
Axe sifted through the debris and found several notes written in Spanish. They had large numbers on them, presumably extortion payment amounts.
The bedroom was relatively untouched. Someone had gone through the closets and opened boxes. Axe sorted through paperwork until he found what he was looking for. A birth certificate for Carmelita Bandera. It listed Ana and Eduardo as her parents. But then, if there was an adoption, new certificates would have been issued. Unfortunately, all the pictures had been ripped out of the album.
He put Carmelita’s paperwork into his backpack and crossed the hallway into the girl’s room. Her walls were decorated with posters of boy bands, and she had a huge collection of nail polish on her dresser. Her clothes were mostly gone, and the ones left in her closet were cute dresses too small for her. From the pictures Leanna showed him, she’d definitely left childhood behind.
Axe flipped through her bathroom drawers and found birth control pills. Damn. Or maybe, it was good that she wouldn’t become pregnant. He shuddered at the thought of the rape trees near the border, where coyotes hung the bras and panties of their victims.
He picked up her hairbrush and toothbrush and put it in a plastic bag for DNA. Underneath her makeup bag, he found a receipt from Western Union. It was for ten grand from Leanna, written to Ana Bandera. Someone signed for it with a barely legible scrawl. Axe put the receipt in his bag.
After rifling through Carmelita’s stuff, he found a school photo ID for Gabriel Espinosa, the kid with the broken bicycle walking with Leanna. A paper heart had a note on it from Gabriel, promising his sweetie hugs and kisses.
What the heck?
Leanna had told Axe that Gabriel said Carmelita didn’t like him and that they weren’t friends. Why would he lie?
Axe pocketed the Valentine and the boy’s ID card and strode toward the front door. The stench of the bodies slammed him full force, sticking like a mixture of garbage and manure in his nostrils. He shut the front door tightly, but didn’t lock it.
Pablo was on the sidewalk, petting the cat. “Did you get the cat food?”
Axe doubted anyone could think of food with the noxious odor wafting from the house.
“You go in there and get it,” Axe said. “And call the police, for God’s sake. They need a proper burial.”
“Belinda has a bag at her place. I’ll call from there.” Pablo shrugged. “What are you going to do?”
“Break that kid’s head,” Axe said. “He effing lied to Leanna about not being friends with Carmelita. I found proof he’s her boyfriend. I want to know where he was when Carmelita left with those traffickers.”
“I’ve nothing to do with that,” Pablo said, skittering across the dried and patchy lawn and into Belinda’s yard. The cat followed him expectantly.
Axe narrowed his eyes at the houses across the street. Even though they were all identical, each was painted a different shade of earth tone ranging from chalky-white, to beige, to dark-tan, to reddish-brown. A bicycle which was missing a tire was chained to the entrance gate of one of them. That had to be where the punk lived.
He marched across the street and pounded on the door.
No one answered, but he had the feeling someone was on the other side.
Axe crossed the small patch of lawn and stripped one of the wheels off the bicycle. He shouted through the door. “Gabriel, I know you’re in there. If you don’t open the door, I’ll break each spoke one by one.”
“Go away,” a young man said. “I didn’t see anything.”
“If you’re Carmelita’s friend, you’d want her to be safe. You’d open the door and tell me where I can find her.”
