Father Crisanto lowers himself down into one of the pews with a heavy sigh. He stares up toward the front of the church at the large crucifix hanging on the wall. He takes his glasses off, rubs his eyes, replaces the glasses, and then looks at me.
“What do you want to know?”
“Who is he?”
Father Crisanto laughs.
“That’s a long story.”
I gesture at the empty cathedral.
“We have time.”
Father Crisanto shakes his head and says, “Who are you, anyway? You were the one who found the bodies, yes? But you are no tourist. You or your boyfriend.”
“For starters, he’s not my boyfriend. And as to whether or not I’m actually a tourist, what does it matter?”
Father Crisanto squints at me, studying my face.
“Why were you there?”
“I just happened to be driving past.”
He shakes his head again.
“No, you were there for another reason. Why?”
“It doesn’t matter why, Father. What matters is the Devil killed that woman and the children. He—”
Father Crisanto cuts me off.
“He didn’t.”
“What?”
“He didn’t kill the woman and children.”
“How do you know?”
Looking uncomfortable again, Father Crisanto only shrugs.
I decide to try a different approach.
“Gabriela put in her story that the murders were done by the Devil. But then you took it out. You told her that there was no solid evidence that the Devil actually committed the murders, and until there was, you weren’t going to speculate.”
Father Crisanto takes his glasses off to rub his eyes again.
“Is that your question?”
“No, my question is why?”
Father Crisanto is silent for several long seconds. I think maybe he won’t answer me at all, but then he issues another heavy sigh.
“He didn’t do it because they weren’t on the list.”
“What list?”
“The list that—”
But Father Crisanto cuts himself off, shakes his head.
I lean forward and say as quietly and calmly as I can, “We’re not here to hurt you, Father. We’re just trying to get some answers. We want to know what’s going on. If the Devil didn’t kill the woman and children, then I want to know who did. But first I need to understand who the Devil is and why he’s doing what he’s doing. Tell me about this list.”
Again, Father Crisanto doesn’t look like he’s going to answer me. He just sits there, his shoulders slumped forward, staring at the front of the church.
I glance at Nova, who’s standing several paces away, keeping an eye on the entrance in case somebody enters. He looks at me and shrugs. I shrug back, and I’m about to try another approach when the priest speaks.
“Are you familiar with President Cortez?”
“No.”
“He was elected just over a year now. The campaign against him was very nasty. President Cortez ran on a platform to do whatever it took to stop the cartels. As you can imagine, the cartels did not like this. They issued many death threats. One time they even tried to kill him, but the bullet only grazed his arm. After that, his popularity soared. It was clear then he would be elected the next president. So the cartels attempted one final pushback against Cortez. Something that they were certain would break the man and cause him to drop out of the race.”
Father Crisanto pauses again.
“Cortez had a son named Alejandro. He was a lieutenant in the Mexican Army. Some believed he would one day lead the army. He was Cortez’s only son, his pride and joy. Alejandro had a wife and two children of his own, a young boy and girl. Cortez loved his grandchildren very much. Anybody who knew the man knew that. Anybody who met the man would probably guess—”
Father Crisanto breaks off midsentence, shaking his head.
I say, “The cartels went after his grandchildren, didn’t they?”
Father Crisanto nods.
“Yes, but not just his grandchildren. They went after the entire family.”
“What did the cartels do?”
This was what cartels did, Father Crisanto says:
They sent sicarios, or hired killers, to take out Cortez’s son and his family. They raided Alejandro’s house one night. They stormed inside and put a gun to Alejandro’s wife’s head to force Alejandro to do as they said. But still Alejandro tried to fight them. For his trouble, one of the sicarios took out a knife and cut off Alejandro’s wife’s little finger. Her strangled cries echoed throughout the house. After that, Alejandro agreed to surrender.
They tied him to a chair. They brought his wife in and stood her in front of him, completely naked. And then they proceeded to rape her. The men took turns. After that, they brought in Alejandro’s daughter, who was no older than ten years old. They raped her too. Finally, they brought in Alejandro’s young son and raped him as well.
After the men were done, they tied Alejandro’s wife and children to chairs and doused them with gasoline. They doused Alejandro, too.
The gasoline had dripped from each person, making a trail, so when one of the sicarios lit a match and threw it at Alejandro’s wife, the fire began to fan out toward Alejandro and the children.
Father Crisanto pauses, shaking his head again. He’s told the story so far in a stunted, toneless voice. Merely relaying events. Doing everything he could not to think too much about those events.
To nudge the priest along, I ask, “When did Cortez learn that everyone died?”
Father Crisanto takes a deep breath.
“The next morning word finally got to Cortez about what happened. He rushed to his son’s house to see for himself. They were still in the room, their charred bodies still propped up on those chairs. The two children, the two adults. To Cortez and anybody else, it looked as if his son and his family had burned to death.”
I glance at Nova and frown before I turn back to Father Crisanto.
“What do you mean, it looked as if his son and his family had burned to death?”
“Because”—Father Crisanto looks at me as if for the first time—“Alejandro survived.”