I Am Not a Monster Page 3
“And I let go of him.
“‘Goodbye, baby, goodbye.’”
Lucía couldn’t continue. All the pain she’d been holding in overflowed like the flash flood that had taken her son. Mixed in with the sobs were two words that she repeated in a loop: “Thirty seconds, thirty seconds.” The air in the room had become electric. Just breathing it in brought cramps. For the first time, I really understood the pain of a mother when one of her children dies.
And I couldn’t stand it.
I got out of there without looking back and without caring who saw or recognized me.
After that, I couldn’t wait. There was no putting it off till I got home. As soon as I was in the car, I searched on my phone for the rest of the story. And there it was, in an article from a local paper two years back. “After leaving the baby, the mother fought to bring her other two sons to safety. One of them, the oldest, grabbed a tree branch and saved his life. She and the middle one, two years old, were carried by the water but managed to escape the fierce current thirty meters downstream. ‘Edu, save Edu, please. He’s in a tree,’ the police said that the woman screamed before losing consciousness. A man who’d been able to stop his car just in time on the other side of the road and escape the torrent heard the screams and alerted the Guardia Civil. The three survivors are recovering from hypothermia in the hospital. They are receiving psychological treatment. The police have declared that the torrent formed in barely half a minute, that the huge flash flood came down uncontrollably like a tsunami, sweeping everything away. The baby’s body was found yesterday, Sunday, forty-eight hours after the tragedy, fifteen kilometers below the accident, caught among the remnants of trees the water had swept away. His funeral will be held tomorrow.”
Without giving me time to digest what I’d just read, the phone vibrated in my hands—an incoming call. I didn’t answer until the sixth or seventh ring, by which time the caller had hung up, but they tried a second time. It was my boss, Manuel, again. Such a pain in the butt.
“Inés. Another boy. Another boy just disappeared from the same shopping center as two years ago. Remember?”
Did I remember? Did I remember? My stomach lurched.
“Get over there right away. I’ll send you a backpack so you can plug right in to the evening news. We’ll lead with the story. Call me as soon as you get there.”
“Look, Manuel—”
“Look what?”
“You know that . . .” And what was I going to say? How could I explain to my boss that I didn’t want to go? “You know I don’t like stories about missing kids.”
“Will you listen to yourself? ‘You know I don’t like stories about missing kids,’” he mimicked, in the voice of a whiny child. “Get right over there, Inés. Call me for more details when you’re on your way. I’m waiting for them to confirm we’ve got an exclusive. If what my source says is true, this is going to be big. Very big.”
4
ANA
When Chief Inspector Ana Arén reached the mall, she wanted to hang whoever was in charge of security up by his balls. Not a single door was closed, and nobody was watching any of them. If someone had really just kidnapped a child—if it wasn’t a false alarm—the kid and the abductor would already be long gone. Not to mention any possible evidence they might have left on their way out, which by now could be stuck to the shoes of any of the hundreds of people who had swarmed in and out, now irretrievably lost in some housing development here in the suburbs surrounding Madrid. Hadn’t the mall security staff learned anything from what had happened two years before? Hadn’t that been enough of a lesson for Spanish society as a whole?
“Chief Inspector, Chief Inspector,” she heard someone call behind her. “Over here.”
With so many people wandering around, it was hard to know where the voice was coming from. Ana had always been astonished by the behavior of human beings in a mall. The living mass flowed along the passages in apparent disorder, wandered with no particular destination, one foot in front of the other—right, left, right, left—as if they were only there to kill time. The mall offered everything the visitors required: air-conditioning in summer, heat in winter, bathrooms, benches, water fountains, and a smooth surface to walk on without fear of stumbling.
“Here.”
Ana had expected a uniform, but a woman in civilian clothes was talking to her. Did that mean the technical team was already here? Only members of the detective squads went without uniforms, and this officer wasn’t wearing one. Normally in a crime scene—and God grant that this wasn’t one—the underling sent looking for her was some poor scholarship student fresh out of the Police Academy in Ávila.
“Chief Inspector, hi, welcome. Thanks for coming so quickly,” the woman continued. “Sorry for the bad manners. It must be my nerves. You’re an institution within the force, you know. Oh, sorry again. I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Sonia Calero, from the Madrid West station. We’ve been expecting you.”
“When did you get here?”
“A patrol car got here ten minutes after a call from a witness who said there was a woman screaming that someone had taken her kid. Right away, it was clear this wasn’t a false alarm, so they called us. They caught me off duty. I was shopping right next door, and I came.”
This was the same mall from which Nicolás had disappeared two years ago. It seemed like a bad dream.
“What can you tell me about the case?” Ana asked while the two of them hurried toward the spot where the boy had disappeared.
“We’re in the process of questioning the mother and trying to find the father. She’s hysterical, very flustered, can’t put two words together. We’ve called a doctor for her.”
“How long has the boy been gone?”
“Two hours. They called us right away, and we got here quickly, but so far, there’s no trace of him in the mall or its surroundings. He’s four years old, named Manuel. The mother was holding his hand. The boy stopped at the window of a toy store, charmed by some action figures from something called Paw Patrol.”
Sonia spoke very quickly, which made her hard to understand. She was stringing together words as she walked jerkily, almost without stopping for breath, like someone competing in a speed-walking race.
“What’s that? A cartoon show?” Ana asked.
“That’s it. I can tell you don’t have kids. Oh—sorry for getting personal. Forgive me, please. From what I can tell, they’re the hit of the season. My nephews love them. Police in the form of dogs.”
“Dog police? Just what we need. They’d never think of having a monkey judge, would they?” Ana’s tone was bitter, but Sonia laughed.
“Well, you know, our uniforms look good, even on a dog. Over there, in the store, is where we’ve set up emergency operations.”
It was the toy store that Sonia had already referred to, the one whose window the boy was looking in when he disappeared. Good place for business, bad place to disappear—right next to one of the doorways that led to a lobby with elevators and emergency stairs. If someone had snatched the kid, it would have been easy for them to grab him and get out of there in a few seconds.
Inside the store, the owner was patiently answering the questions of the police, but by now he must have been sorry to have offered up his shop for their base camp. Surely he’d done so not just out of good will but also feeling a bit guilty because the little one had disappeared right in front of his window.
Ana and Sonia went past the group questioning the store owner and headed for the back. Beyond a half-open door, in a small storeroom without windows or ventilation, the mother was sitting on some toy boxes with a blood pressure cuff on her arm. The doctor looked at Ana and held up a hand for her to wait.
“One hundred fifty-two over 91, pretty high.”
The mother didn’t answer. She had to be sweating pure adrenaline if her son had disappeared two hours ago. Ana needed to be in possession of her wits. Or at least, as much as possible under the circumstances.
/> “What’s the mother’s name?” she whispered to Sonia.
“Lola. And her son is Manuel.”
“Tell the doctor to give her something to relax her, but nothing very strong. I need her thinking clearly.”
“Okay.”
“But don’t let her hear you.”
“Sure, sure,” Sonia agreed. “I’ll tell him, but she won’t know.”
“Lola, hi, Lola, I’m Ana. Chief Inspector Arén.” Ana spoke gently while stroking the mother’s arm.
Ana liked to lightly touch the victims. The skin was the largest and most sensitive organ of the body, two square meters of pure receptivity, the best way to get in contact with the feelings of other people and let them know, I’m here, at your side, to help. Although sometimes you had to be careful. With some people, when the pain was too great, skin-to-skin contact produced a painful electric shock. When the suffering is extreme, victims fold into themselves, in the fetal position, to protect the vital organs. And any external contact is felt and understood as life-threatening aggression, stabbing to the center of physical and emotional pain.
“Lola, I’m here to find your son.”
The woman looked at Ana as if she didn’t know what those words were supposed to mean. Here? Find? Son? She gave the impression of searching for the meaning in some corner of her brain.
“You have to help me, Lola. Every minute that passes is vital. If we want to find Manuel, I need your help.”
“I . . . I . . . I’ve already told it all to the police,” she answered at last, stammering as if coming out of a dream. “I don’t know any more than that. Where’s my baby? Where?” Lola started to shake and cry. Her body rocked rhythmically in time with her sobs.
“Lola, Lola, honey,” Ana kept it up. “Look me in the eyes. We’re going to find Manuel.”
“He’s called Manu. If he’s lost and somebody calls out ‘Manuel,’ he won’t answer. Manu, that’s what you’ve got to call him, Manu.”
“Good, Lola. Good. Manu. So you and I are going to find Manu.”
Ana addressed her in the familiar way, as tú. She didn’t like usted in these situations, because she thought the polite form put up a kind of wall—me, the cop, over here, and you, the victim, over there. So she always used tú, though it sounded strange to some people.
“We’re going to find Manu, but I need you to focus. Okay? I need you to concentrate. We’re in this together, honey. Let’s start from the beginning. What happened?”
“I . . . I . . . we were walking. I’d promised that we’d go to the play space, here in the mall, if he didn’t cry when I dropped him at school. He changed schools this year, you know? I’m separated now, and we couldn’t pay for the private one anymore. Manu’s having a hard time adjusting to everything—the new house, the separation, the school. So I promised him we’d go to the playground, the play area in the mall, with the bounce house and all. So he wouldn’t cry.”
“What do you remember about the moment he disappeared?”
“Well, Manu . . .” She sighed and swallowed the mucus accumulating in her nose. “One of the few things that calms him down these days is Paw Patrol. Do you know it? That cartoon on TV with dogs who are firefighters and police. He loves it. We get to school late every day because he wants to see one episode, then the next. So when he saw the Paw Patrol figures in the window, we stopped. You should have seen his face, eyes as big as saucers. He let go of my hand to take a good look. He was right there, with his hands and face pressed up against the glass. If he could have reached right through, he would have. I . . . I . . . lost track. My phone buzzed. It was a WhatsApp message, and I answered it.”
“Who messaged you?”
“My husband. I mean, my ex-husband. He wanted to take Manu this weekend. It wasn’t on the schedule, though, and I got mad.”
“Could I see your phone, please?”
Sure enough, there it was. The ex-husband’s message. Ricardo, according to the screen. Ana turned around. “Is the ex-husband here yet? Have you located him?” she asked Sonia.
“No. Not that I’ve heard. I’ll go ask. Be right back, Chief Inspector.”
The message had come in at 5:15: Lola, I’ll take Manu tomorrow to spend the weekend together. Don’t pick him up at school on Friday. Pack his suitcase, and leave it in the secretary’s office. I’ll pick it up on our way out. Lola’s answer was a long paragraph in which she told Ricardo she was so fed up, and what was he thinking, because she had no intention of letting him take the boy. If she had to change the lock and call the police, that’s what she’d do. The husband had messaged her at 5:15 and she’d answered at 5:19.
“Lola, did you answer this message right way?”
“Yes. As soon as the WhatsApp beeped, I picked up and answered him.”
“But it says you waited four minutes to answer.”
“I . . . I . . . I answered right away, I swear.”
The husband’s message seemed to have been written purposefully to anger his wife. To provoke a reaction from her. Four minutes to write a five-line message was too long. But, who knows? Maybe she wrote and erased and wrote and erased more than once until she got it the way she wanted. If he often provoked her, it wouldn’t be unusual for her to take so long to compose the right response.
“Chief Inspector, can you come here a minute?” Sonia called from the doorway that connected the storeroom to the shop. “We can’t find the husband,” she whispered, leading her to a far corner of the store. “His phone is shut off or out of the coverage area. And, you know.”
“Yes, I know that in most disappearances of a minor, someone in the family or the inner circle is involved. But he could also be at the movies or in bed with the younger woman he left his wife for. Or in a meeting at work.”
“At his job, they say he left after lunch.”
“We can’t just assume it’s the husband, Sonia. Maybe so, maybe not. Right now, we can’t reject any possibility. If we want to save Manu, we have to keep our minds completely open.”
How many times had she repeated that same speech to every novice who joined her unit? Keep an open mind. Don’t reject anything. Sometimes we eliminate the first solution that comes to mind because we think it’s too easy. Or too impossible.
“We’ve requested a list of all the employees in the mall. Security and cleaning are subcontracted out. We have a group of officers going store to store, locating the owners to ask them for all the info on their workers. Also whether they’ve fired anyone recently.”
“Have you notified the TIU?”
“The internet guys?”
“Yes, please call them on my behalf. And call my unit, too, and ask them to connect you with Sub-Inspector Javier Nori. Tell Nori to check the list of known pedophile sex offenders to see whether there’s anything unusual going on with any of them.”
“Oh, and one other thing, Chief Inspector,” Sonia said.
“What’s that?”
“There’s been a leak. Someone has been talking, and the press are already outside. A TV crew, I mean. One of the police officers securing the perimeter saw a technician setting up a live feed.”
“Keep them out of the mall. Send a patrol car to watch them discreetly, and tamp down the panic among the people when they hear what happened. When that reporter goes live, phones will ring all over the building. I don’t want a panic. We’ve still got some time before the eight o’clock news. As soon as it’s on TV, social media will start to smoke, and this will turn into a living hell.”
“Right, Chief Inspector.”
Ana snorted. How had the media found out so fast? If it was Inés Grau out there, Ana was going to have problems. Shit. Inés.
She went back into the storeroom.
“Lola, do you have a photo of your son?”
“Yes, of course. Here.” She showed Ana the phone again. “I took it just minutes before he disappeared.”
Lola started shaking. Disappeared. Saying the word out loud had made it real, that he
r son was not with her anymore. That she’d lost him. Or that someone had taken him.