Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

“What’re you doing?” My heart pounded so loudly, I could feel palpitations through my chest. “We’re not near your wife’s grave!”

“Shut up, bitch,” he muttered. He closed his fist and punched my right cheek.

My face tingled, but despite the pain, I registered that Luis’s hands were covered with latex gloves. I called out with as loud a voice as I could muster, “We’re close to the children’s grave site! Why’d you bring me here?”

He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, causing my teeth to chatter.

“You should’ve gone back to where you came from! Too late now, bitch.” His voice was a hiss. Pressing his knees into my stomach, he wrenched my body to pull off my sweatshirt.

I thrashed my legs and tried to call for help, but Luis pushed his knees harder into my gut and slapped my cheek. I fell back, and he returned to twisting my hoodie to make a rope.

Just as he leaned forward to wind the fabric around my throat, I saw Luis shiver. Cold metal touched the back of his neck. He turned to see six plainclothes police officers surrounding us, one pressing a .45 caliber pistol into his back.

“Why didn’t you tell me you suspected Luis, and that you were talking to the police? You could be dead!” Sanjay’s lower lip protruded, making him look ten years old.

I leaned back on my sofa and pressed an ice pack against my cheek, now padded with a bandage. “You were out of town. Remember I told you that Luis was being creepy? I had to do something.”

“I don’t understand why he went after you.” Sanjay removed his baseball hat and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Maybe Luis thought I was talking too much? I had a weird feeling when he asked me to meet at a bar. So I went to HPD’s homicide department and talked to Henrietta Jones. Remember, I saw her at the railway track? Even though I had no evidence — just a gut feeling — she listened to me. Maybe because she’s a woman too. Or maybe because we’re each working in terrains where we’re outsiders. Anyway, she said the story was going cold. No one wanted to talk to cops, especially not Asian immigrants. My fear made sense to her, so she agreed to have me shadowed.

“Her team set up a wire on my phone so they could tap into my conversation with Luis, both live and on the phone, while also tracking our movement.” I sucked the lemon wedge in my glass of water. “We were supposed to meet at Stephanie’s Ice House, but he changed the plan at the last moment. When they heard him mention his wife’s grave, the cops went to her tomb. I kept talking, trying to give them clues. Still, it took them time to find us. If they’d arrived a few minutes later, I wouldn’t be here!”

There was a knock on my front door, and I paused. Sanjay answered, returning with Henrietta Jones.

“Thank you, Mona Naeem! You led us to a mass murderer,” she said, perching at the edge of an armchair. Henrietta frowned, which made her look older than her fifty years. “Luis wasn’t on our list because he had an alibi for each murder. But now we know his alibis were army veterans like him. They covered for him.”

Sanjay and I listened, keeping our eyes fixed on her.

Henrietta continued: “His real name is Charles Wilson, a veteran from upstate New York. He used stolen identities. If he’s who we suspect him to be, he might have killed more than six women in different cities. He’s a bragger. Hates immigrants, especially women. They shouldn’t procreate , he told us. He married Alicia so he could maintain a front, but he always intended to kill her and leave Houston. Maybe he killed her sooner than planned because she found out about a girlfriend... He had four flip phones on him. Different numbers. All messages deleted, and a different name for each phone.” She paused. “He’d studied Spanish. Liked to pretend to be an immigrant himself. Helped him gain trust with the women he victimized.”

I took a gulp of water while digesting her news.

“And you? Maybe he thought you were getting too close. We’ll find out.” Henrietta stood up, her shoulders sloping. “Thank you for leading us to Charles. This will be a long night.”

After letting Henrietta out, Sanjay crept close to me. We fell asleep curled against each other’s bodies.

I poured myself a glass of ice water and stepped into the steamy night to sit on my front steps. Inside, my belongings were packed in boxes. The semester had ended without me completing even one class. I was going to move into Sylvia’s house for a month, finish my papers, and then spend the rest of the summer in Karachi.

As always, Jefferson Street was quiet. Rivulets streamed from my walkway to the street, reminders of the afternoon rain, and the warm air felt like a clammy towel wrapped around my body. Grackles croaked from a nearby tree, and when Raincoat Hombre appeared below the silver streetlight, I nearly choked on the lemon in my mouth.

“Howdy,” he called.

“Howdy,” I responded, using a word I had never before dared.

He moved closer. I saw that he had a furrowed forehead, shaggy white eyebrows, and long silver hair.

“I’ve seen you before,” he said.

“I’ve seen you too.”

“You shouldn’t be out alone,” he said.

“The killer was caught.” My black eyes met his brown.

“I know — I saw your photo in the news.”

I blushed. Over the last month, I had been featured in more television interviews than I would be for the rest of my life.

“Why’d you stop walking?” I had more questions I didn’t ask: why Thursday nights, why after the train went by, why the raincoat even when temperatures soared? But I decided to swig water instead. After all, I had solved the bigger mystery.

Everyone in Houston now knew Luis’s — aka Charles’s — story. He had served two terms in Iraq and Afghanistan and been diagnosed with PTSD. Upon completing his Afghanistan assignment, he returned to New York, where he inherited family money. He was an only child. After his mother passed away, he moved across the country without leaving a trail. The Lawndale house — like previous homes in which he had lived — was owned by a fellow veteran who vouched for him whenever needed. When Charles applied for jobs, he used fake identities and never registered at veteran centers. Before Houston, he had lived in Miami, Mobile, and New Orleans, where he dated and killed at least eight women from countries including Mexico, India, Panama, Indonesia, and Guatemala.

“I don’t discriminate,” he had bragged in court, choosing to defend himself without a lawyer. “I hate all immigrants — especially women, ’cause they breed like rats. Sex I had to have, but I cut my juices off. Couldn’t mix with those women.”

Raincoat Hombre stood a few feet away from me. “I live in Montrose, but I explore at night. That’s what insomniacs do. I walk different neighborhoods: East End, Second Ward, Fifth Ward, Third Ward, Freedmen’s Town. I stopped coming here when I noticed a car following me.” He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “And after the murders, I decided to give the East End a break.” He turned to glance at the curve of the new moon. “See you next week?”

I nodded, not bothering to tell him that the following week I would be in a different East End house, on the other side of the railroad track. If he walked as much as he said he did, I would encounter him again. Probably while sitting on Sylvia’s steps, brooding over whether to proceed with my doctorate, accept the job offer from the Houston police, or return to Pakistan for good.

Coat swirling around him, Raincoat Hombre navigated my walkway, turned right, and headed toward the railway track.