Garza agreed. “I ask myself, if this is the face they want to show publicly . . . what then is their private face?”

MacClesh nodded. “Uglier still.” His face hardened, as though he had let more of his emotions show than he wanted to. “Well, I better get to work.”

“Thank you, Major,” Garza said.

MacClesh turned and looked at her with curious expectancy. “For what?”

“For reminding me why we do this.”

He looked at her without expression for a moment, then nodded bitterly. “Animals belong in cages. I don’t see why people find this so hard to understand.”

He walked away from her then, barking at his men as he moved toward the other side of the plaza.

Garza took a deep breath, tugging a pair of blue latex gloves from her belt and pulling them on her hands. Now came the hard work. She had a theory about this crime scene. The divots out of the pavement: that was something she had seen many times before. But there was one thing she hadn’t found yet . . .

She began walking up and down the row of bodies. She had been comandante of Unit 9 for about a year, but she knew that many of the men still didn’t quite believe in her. Not only had she been promoted from outside the unit, but she was the only female member in the history of Unit 9. Any sign of weakness and they would pounce. This she carried with her everywhere. So she had to be tough all the time, even when toughness was not needed.

She knew what they said about her, that she was a bitch, that she was cold and unfeeling, that she only cared about her career, that she was ruthless. . . . They called her the “Ice Queen.” The list of her supposed character failings was a long one. But she knew, too, that they respected her. These men, most of them, were like MacClesh: men with a simple and instinctive sense of morality, men who respected strength and courage.

But to keep that respect, she could never show weakness. Never.

She waved her blue-gloved hand at the two nearest PF officers. “Roll them over,” she said.

“Pardon, Comandante?”

“On their stomachs, cabrones!” She made her tone as cold and impatient as she could muster. “Roll these corpses over on their stomachs. Don’t make me say it again.”

She was perhaps overcompensating for letting down her guard a bit with MacClesh. She was imprisoned in her role, not unlike a telenovela character actor doomed to repeat the same leer, the same squint, the same grimace in performance after performance. But there was no going back. Not now. Too many bridges had been burned.

This character Garza had forged out of necessity had become who she was now.

The men were halfway down the row of bodies when she saw what she’d been looking for. It was the body of the man MacClesh had fingered as a Sinaloa lieutenant from Monterrey.

Carved into his upper back was a small design, beginning just below his heavily tattooed neck.

The design so brutally carved into the fleshy canvas of this dead man was a hummingbird. To Garza’s experienced eye, this little collection of lines was a signature, carved by a confident hand.

Garza would never have admitted it to anyone in Unit 9, but she had studied art once and had even considered becoming a painter before taking up law at her father’s insistence—and before the kidnapping of her mother and sister. The man who carved this little design had what artists call a “good fist”—confidence, joie de vivre, purity of line. Something that could not be taught, something you were born with, a certain ruthless clarity of mind.

Garza felt a stab of envy. She had come to the realization that while she had an eye and a light touch for portraits, she simply had no talent to be a true artist. And so going into law seemed like a reasonable change of course.

But this son of a bitch . . . the animal who did this . . . he was an artist. A natural.

Why would God throw away such talent on a thug? It made no sense to her.

And for that, she hated this man even more.

She had been on the trail of this animal for a long time. And she was getting closer. She reached down and laid her hand on the decapitated man’s back. She could feel his presence. She felt certain it would be a long time before she got this close again. For the moment, at least, she had a living witness.

“I’m done with this one,” Garza said to the men who were still supporting the headless, handless corpse.

There must have been something cold in her eyes, something frightening or even monstrous. Because out of the corner of her eye, Garza saw one of the officers exchange a glance with the other officer, then make the sign of the cross.

She shouted across the square to her driver, Sergeant Chavez, who stood silently by her big black Suburban.

“Start the car, Chavez,” she shouted.

Ninety seconds later, they were barreling down Avenue Vicente Guerrero, heading toward the hospital.

CHAPTER 7

When she arrived at the hospital, Cecilia Garza found a number of local police milling around in the lobby. There were more of them up in the wing where the injured witness was situated.

She had sent two PF officers with the witness, for protection, and was glad she did when, as she was approaching the nursing station, she spotted the chief of the Nuevo Laredo police, Juan Ramos. He was a neatly dressed man who could have passed for an American businessman: light skinned, clean-shaven, with sandy razor-cut hair. Unlike most Mexican police commanders, who favored starched uniforms with lots of gold braid, Chief Ramos wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and a necktie. The only sign he was a cop was the bulge under his coat where he kept his pistol. She had seen it earlier in his holster, a .45-caliber 1911 auto, all black, no pearl handle, nothing showy about it. A businesslike weapon.

“Comandante,” he said, “I am afraid we got off on the wrong foot.”

She glared at him. For a moment she considered ignoring him altogether. “We might have gotten along better if I hadn’t gotten there in time to find you contemplating executing a wounded prisoner.”

Ramos frowned thoughtfully. “I hear what you are saying,” he said. “I understand what you think you saw. But I can assure you, we have strict protocols when securing and arresting narcotraficantes. I could show you our training manual. It is very specific.”

Garza studied his face. Ramos looked most sincere. She suspected that by this point he might well have convinced himself that what he was saying was true. The worst kind of liars, she had found, were the ones who could convince themselves of their own falsehoods.

“I do not have time to argue the point,” she said.

He sighed, playing the Mr. Sincerity thing to the hilt. “Look, you and I both know what a difficult situation we are in here. Everyone in this town feels it, myself especially. I’m sure you breeze in from Mexico City with your team of incorruptibles and you look at me and think, ‘Well, there’s another scumbag in the Zetas’ front pocket.’ Am I right?”

She stared stonily at him and didn’t reply.

“But I do my best. We all do. I take no money from them, ever, and do my best to offer security to the people of Nuevo Laredo. Sometimes I get up in the morning and hate myself for not being able to do more. But my best is all I have to offer here.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “I want to help you. God knows these monsters are a plague on this city. Nothing would relieve me more than to be rid of them.”

“Come right to the point, Chief. I have very little time.”

“The witness is still alive. I know you’re here to interview him. Just let me sit in with you. Perhaps I can add something to his information. Or, if you like, I won’t speak.” He took off his coat, folded it neatly on the counter of the admissions desk, then took off his gun and handed it butt first toward Sergeant Chavez, who stood next to Garza. Then the chief held up his hands. “Harmless as a baby, see?”