People had to get themselves murdered on Saturday. Never Tuesday or Wednesday, when Ana Aguirre was off duty. Always Saturday. She shouldn’t be on duty on the weekends. As a matter of fact, Ana should have been working a pleasant desk job supervising junior officers. But Castillo had blocked that move yet again. The twat. If Ana Aguirre had ever held dreams of a real career in law enforcement, they had long been dashed under the persistent hammer of the outdated Mexican police system.
Worst of all, when she arrived at the crime scene, knelt down, and lifted the blanket, she saw it was a kid. A young girl in a tight miniskirt, her top drenched in blood.
Ana looked at the girl and couldn’t help thinking of her own daughter, Marisol, who was seventeen. Ana kept working this shit job for her daughter. But she worried. She wasn’t home nearly enough and the city had a hungry maw, one ready to swallow the young and the innocent.
Ana aimed her flashlight at the girl’s face. The neck had been torn, savaged.
“Hey, you’ve got anything for me?” she asked, turning toward a policeman who was lounging against the wall, smoking a cigarette.
“What you see’s what you’ve got. It looks strange as fuck. Vampire, no?”
Ana tilted her head. Great. She’d left Zacatecas to avoid the vampire gangs. It seemed they were all over the country. All over except for Mexico City. Not because it was a city-state, autonomous in many respects. That was just a geographical demarcation. No. Mexico City had held tight because it was territory of the human gangs, and the gangs, usually unwilling to cooperate, had managed to come together against the single enemy that mattered to them: the bloodsuckers.
But violence lurked at the edges of the city, in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl and other areas. There, in the slums, the vampires sometimes made their incursions, trying to expand their fiefdoms. They failed. For now.
“I phoned and they told me you’d know what to do,” the policeman said.
Like hell, Ana thought, but she knew why they’d placed her on this case. Because none of the others wanted to touch it. Because she was from Zacatecas and it didn’t matter if you’d lived in Mexico City for six years, you were still an outsider. Because she came from the gang lands. Because Castillo hated her. Because the shit jobs always wound up dripping her way. Because she had put forth a sexual harassment complaint against another officer one time, and everyone had laughed it off, saying no one would want to smack the ass of such an ugly woman.
“When did you find her?”
“I called it in half an hour ago. Took you long enough to get here.”
Ana wanted to backhand the punk. He looked shy of twenty. Probably thought he was God’s gift to the Secretariat of Public Safety simply because they’d issued him a baton.
“Well, anyone see anything?”
“Nobody saw nothing,” he said.
“You sure or you just guessing?”
The young man gave her a blank look. They’d already set the yellow tape across both ends of the alley and onlookers were peering curiously at the cops. A couple were even raising their cell phones and trying to take photos.
For souvenirs, she thought bitterly. She thought of lodging a complaint about this cop’s performance, then decided the paperwork wasn’t worth it. Her note would end up at the bottom of a file, anyway.
“She had the blanket on top of her when you found her?” Ana asked.
“Yeah.”
The vampire had covered her. She didn’t think it was modesty. Although he’d done a shoddy job of it, he’d probably been trying to delay the finding of the corpse. Had he simply dragged the body to the next alley he would have found a pothole so large it could probably fit half the girl’s body. It wouldn’t have taken too much effort.
Stupid, she thought.
“Go talk to your friends over there and see if they have any witnesses for me, will you?” she said, pointing toward a couple of cops who were talking animatedly with some of the onlookers.
The young man huffed, but obeyed her. Ana leaned down and took out her camera. In theory, forensics would come over and photograph the crime scene, but that was in theory. Many times they just wouldn’t show up, because there was too much shit going on, there weren’t enough of them, or they didn’t want to get up and drag their sorry asses out of bed. Mexican police work didn’t play out like in the movies. Traditionally, there was almost no investigative work. They relied heavily on confessions and wouldn’t even blink if they contaminated a crime scene. Physical evidence was used in about 10 percent of convictions and the rest were signed affidavits. Things were changing, supposedly. Ana was one of the shiny new breed of detectives, a real investigator, but that was a bunch of PR mixed with only a little substance.
She was tired of this game.
Ana snapped photos and took notes, wondering if she should even bother but doing it anyway. She was up and about already, so she might as well work. No reason to give Castillo more fuel for his fire.
“There’s a chick who says she saw the dead girl with a guy inside the nightclub,” the young policeman said as he returned, pointing at a teenager with spiky hair and tremendously tall high heels who was standing nearby.
“All right,” Ana said. “Call forensics and see if they’ll get their ass here before someone from the morgue hauls the body away, will ya?”
The boy looked terribly annoyed, but he had the good sense to comply. Ana went toward the young girl in the heels, quickly pulling out her notepad and her pen. They were supposed to have standard-issue mini-tablets, but hers had broken and nobody had bothered to give her a replacement. Ana preferred the feel of a pen between her fingers, anyway. Old school but reliable. Just like a knife. Electric zappers were also good for vampires. But knives had their appeal. She still carried the good old silver knife with her.
Cut off their heads and burn the bodies. No other way.
“They’re telling me you saw the girl inside,” Ana said, and the teenager gave her a vehement nod of the head.
“Uh-huh. Sure did. She was with this majorly hot guy.”
“What did he look like?”
“Platinum blond hair, pale. He was wearing nice clothes,” the girl said.
“Age?” she asked, her short hand neat against the yellow pages of the notepad. She’d taken typing classes in high school. Technical high school. She had been trained to be a secretary and picked an application for the local police department instead.
“About my age. I dunno. Nineteen? Twenty, maybe. Hard to say.”
“Anything special about him? Any marks, tattoos, piercings?”
The girl seemed to think it over. She rubbed her arms and finally spoke. “He didn’t have piercings. But, yes, I remember a tattoo.”
“What did it look like?” Ana asked.
“He took off his shirt to dance,” the girl said, mimicking the motion of a man lifting his arms. “He was wearing a wife beater and I could see, kinda, part of the back of his neck. It was a shark.”
“Anything else you saw?”
“No. I was inside ’til someone came running in and said the cops were here and someone had killed a girl. I just wanted to see.”
I hope it was amusing, Ana thought.
* * *
Ana got home around 6 a.m., nearly time for Marisol to wake up for school. She peeked into her daughter’s room. The girl was peacefully asleep. Ana recalled the spectacle of the dead girl in the alley and shook her head.
God, a vampire kill. She hadn’t looked into one of those since Zacatecas. You took statements, nodded, maybe caught one, and then a couple more bodies popped up in another part of the city, like mushrooms after the rain. It never ended. It was a fact of life. That was what brought her to Mexico City. It was safer, and they were starting the new investigating units. Reforming the police system. She was going to have a chance to be a “real” detective.
Not that I’m anything “realer” now, she thought as she walked into her bedroom and peeled off her uniform. It was a dark blue, form-fitting suit woven with a nano-fiber worn under a standard-issue raincoat in the same color. It itched, and she often found herself scratching her neck.
Ana carefully folded her clothes and lay down on her bed. She lay on top of the covers and wondered if the examiner was going to get to the girl’s corpse that evening. Probably not. The girl was nobody of importance and Ana didn’t have much pull around the office. If the coroner looked at the girl and if he deigned to produce a report, it might be weeks later.
She didn’t think Castillo really expected this crime to be solved and the vampire, in all likelihood, was already out of the city.
She felt bad for the mother of the girl, who was probably hearing about her daughter’s murder right about now—she’d told the young, surly officer to see about that.
Ana wondered what she would do if Marisol did not show up one morning.
Don’t think that, she scolded herself.
Ana turned and looked at the corner where she kept a table with a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe on top of it, along with a plastic image of San Judas Tadeo and her mother’s rosary.
Mexico was going to hell. It was hell. If she’d had any money she’d have left the country. Somewhere nice and quiet, without vampires and drug dealers. But she didn’t.
Ana pressed a hand against her forehead and wondered what gang the vampire belonged to. The shark didn’t sound familiar. But the bite marks did. She could bet this was the work of a Necros. She’d seen bites like that in Zacatecas and had learned to recognize the telltale signs of several vampire species.
The Necros, with its strong mandibles and big, sharp teeth, was easy to identify. The Tlāhuihpochtli left fewer, smaller marks—smudges blooming on the neck and wrists. Only once had she come upon a Revenant and it had scared the hell out of her. The thing … it had … it was … And the victim. Like a mummy, the flesh shrunken and the body twisted. The devil’s work.
She rolled away from the shrine to the Virgin and closed her eyes, hoping for a restful sleep, but the image of the dead girl flickered behind her eyelids, superimposed like a negative.
* * *
Ana woke up far too tired. Vampires drained you one way or another. She rose from bed and found Marisol in the kitchen, frying an egg.
“Hey, are you back from school early?” she asked.
“No,” Marisol said. “You’re up late. You were supposed to cook dinner.”
“I’ll make dinner now.”
Ana extended her arm to open the refrigerator, but Marisol shook her head. Her mouth was doing that thing where she wasn’t quite smirking but it was damn close.
“There’s no vegetables. There’s nothing. You haven’t gone to the supermarket.”
“No, we went.”
Ana opened the refrigerator and stared at a solitary avocado, a bit of parsley, the wedge of cheese with a dab of mold on it.
“Told you,” Marisol said. A full smirk now.
Ana grabbed a can of diet soda and did not bother pouring it in a glass. It would only mean one more glass to clean. There was already a pile of dishes waiting in the sink. “I need to buy a new school uniform,” Marisol said as she flipped her egg with the plastic spatula.
“What’s wrong with your current uniform?” Ana asked.
“It’s not the official uniform.”
Ana sipped her soda, shaking her head. “It’s got green and blue squares on the skirt and a blue sweater. How is that not official?”
“You know very well the nuns want me to wear the one they sell at the school shop. Not a cheap copy,” Marisol said, sounding like Ana had sent her to school dressed in a paper bag instead of real clothes.
Ana put the soda can down on the kitchen counter. “Well, the nuns can go piss themselves, Marisol, the school manual doesn’t say it’s mandatory that we buy it there.”
“The other kids can tell it’s a knockoff.”
Once again Ana regretted having enrolled Marisol in a private Catholic school. The school fees were outrageous. But public school was no good, with the teachers always on strike and the lousy facilities. Marisol needed a private school so she could have the best teachers, a chance to learn a second language, to make something of herself. Employers advertised jobs in Mexico by specifying the age and even goddamn school a kid had to have graduated from. No students from the UNAM, no one over thirty-four, no married people, no kids, send a photograph, and indicate religion. Under those fucking circumstances you had to try to give your child an edge or they were going to be trampled upon by the richer kids from the Tec or the Anahuac; kids who had lighter skin, heavier wallets, and the right last names. No, Marisol needed this high school. If only Ana could afford it. Money was tight.
“I bet you’re not going to let me go on the class trip to Acapulco, either,” Marisol said as she tossed the egg on a plate and handed it to Ana. Then the girl cracked another egg and began frying it.
Ana leaned against the refrigerator and held the plate in one hand. “I don’t have the money.”
“You could ask Dad.”
As if that would help. Ana was supposed to receive alimony, but any cash from her ex-husband was sporadic and unpredictable. He had remarried and he had a new family; he didn’t trouble himself with the old one. Ana was grateful for this, since it meant he had stopped nagging her about moving back to Zacatecas so he could see his daughter. If she started complaining about the alimony he might start talking about that again, a topic Ana felt no desire to revisit.
“Your father won’t be able to help. This is not a field trip. It’s a glorified party, and I’m not paying so you can go get drunk on a beach. Plus, it’s the state with the highest concentration of vampire cartels. There are half a dozen different families disputing territory there. No damn way you are headed into that Necros nest.”
“Really, Mother? It’s the same everywhere.”
“No.” Ana shook her head again. “It’s not the same everywhere. There’s no vampire cartels chilling in Mexico City.”
“You yourself have told me that the gangs—”
“The human gangs are not going to leave you in an alley with your throat torn out,” she replied, slamming her plate against the kitchen counter.
Marisol looked at her. Ana recognized the same defiant stare she saw each morning in the mirror, the same hooded eyes and thin mouth. Marisol was a younger version of Ana, and this troubled her. She didn’t want her daughter to be like her, to make the same stupid mistakes.
“Look, Marisol, we just can’t afford it. All right?”
Marisol nodded. She had finished cooking her egg and turned off the stove. “Eat up. It’s getting cold,” her daughter muttered.