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He shook his head again, apparently very disappointed in my sudden raging psychosis, and disappeared into the service door, carrying the pink suitcase in his arms like it was fragile cargo. For all his bravado, Guillermo was one of the good guys. Well, one of the better guys, at least. I felt guilt at the way I’d just treated him, but I’d been desperate.
Then again, once upon a time I’d believed that Dornan was one of the good guys, and look where we were now. He was a baby trafficker and a fucking murderer.
I waited beside the car, staring at the fire escape door where Guillermo had disappeared. Just when I thought he’d been lying to me, that he’d taken the boy’s body and gone on with the plan without me, the door opened a crack.
‘Hurry up,’ he murmured.
I entered, jumping a little as the thick steel door closed behind me. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim inside, as I followed Guillermo blindly through a series of scuffed linoleum hallways. I started to catch the signs as we walked past. There was a viewing room. Then another. A records room full of boxes and files. The further we got into the belly of this place, the more uneasy I became. The staff stared openly, and I guess I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t belong there. I was dressed for a day on the sofa, watching re-runs on TV, my hair in a messy bun and flip-flops on my feet. I wasn’t exactly dressed for a funeral.
‘In here,’ Guillermo said tersely, ushering me through a door. The smell hit me right away. The stench of scorched bones settled into my nostrils and I wanted to gag, but it hardly seemed appropriate. There was a guy, probably in his early twenties, wearing a white plastic apron and white plastic boots that belonged in mud and dirt, not in a place like this. I studied the boots for a moment. It looked like somebody had tried to scrub blood flecks off them and failed. The apron was the same. Dull brown patches that told a harrowing tale.
I looked from the apron to the boy’s eyes and was shocked to realise he was younger than I’d first thought. His light browneyes looked dulled by life – no wonder, when he was spending his living hours with the dead.
‘Hey.’ I turned my head to Guillermo’s voice, having forgotten him for a moment there. He stared down at something in front of him, pointedly, and my eyes followed his path.
Baby Doe was on a small metal table, lying on his side, just as he’d been in the suitcase. His eyes were closed – a small mercy – and Guillermo was arranging a blanket over him.
I crossed myself, thinking that it had been years since I’d been inside the walls of a church, let alone made the sign of the cross upon myself.
I try to believe that the next part didn’t happen, but it did.
I looked away as his bones burned.
I waited while those bones were ground into dust.
It was soloud. I hadn’t imagined it would be so loud.
***
I carried him away with me in a box.
It was so small. Too small to house the remains of what had once been a living, breathing, innocent human being.
I threw up in the parking lot, feeling the grit of bone dust on my skin, in my hair, and realising that Guillermo had been right – I should never have gone inside.
But nobody, least of all a child, should have to burn alone, forgotten, in a place called BudgetfuckingFunerals.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and got back into the car, staring straight ahead.
‘You still with me?’ Guillermo asked, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I nodded. The sorrow inside me splintered, became two halves of something that birthed something new.
Rage. The sort of quiet rage that turns men into monsters. I felt it crack apart the grief in my chest and travel like vine tendrils, down my veins, until my fingertips and my toes and my cheeks hummed with a hot fury that felt like a fever.
I vowed to kill Emilio Ross if it was the last thing I ever did.
CHAPTER FIVE
MARIANA
‘Where are we going?’ I asked Guillermo as we drove.
‘Home,’ he replied firmly.
Home. I’d had a home, once upon a time.
The small cardboard box on my lap weighed barely a pound, but its weight on my existence was unbearable. This child would never have a home, unless you counted the ground where I would finally bury his remains.
