Missing Read online

  SAM HAWKEN lives near Washington, DC, with his wife and son. This is his third novel set on the US/Mexican border. Tequila Sunset and The Dead Women of Juárez were nominated for CWA Dagger awards.

  Praise for Tequila Sunset

  ‘Hawken trades in gritty realism’ Irish Times

  ‘This brilliantly written, dramatic but vicious novel will keep you on tenterhooks all the way to the end … Tequila Sunset is realistically composed, deftly put together and drenched with violence and aggression that would make any sane person run for their life … Hopefully a book that will become a classic and will be read for years to come. Well worth losing sleep over’ Ayo Onatade, Shots

  ‘The novel is a thrilling ride, but it also makes you appreciate the seriousness behind it’ David Hebblethwaite, We Love This Book

  ‘Raw and gritty’ Shortlist

  ‘Interesting, refreshing and engrossing’ Francesca Peak, Latino Life

  ‘A grim tale of foreboding … explosive’ Alastair Mabbott, Herald

  ‘A fast moving and well plotted story … Hawken continues to deliver’ Robin Leggett, Bookbag

  ‘Haunting … recalls the best of James M. Cain’ Christopher Fowler, FT

  ‘A fascinating, tense and engaging read that draws you into the lives of the characters with consummate ease until you reluctantly turn that final page’ Crimesquad

  Praise for The Dead Women of Juárez

  ‘A heartfelt book’ Guardian

  ‘A tense, gripping read and a plea for justice’ Sunday Times

  ‘His debut novel is a hard-boiled plunge into damaged lives that grippingly evokes the dust, decay and pervading sense of death in Juárez, leaving you with a lingering sense of sweaty unease’ Metro

  ‘A powerful and shocking novel’ Dreda Say Mitchell

  ‘A beautifully written and deeply affecting crime novel dealing with the wasted life of an American boxer in the city of Juárez, Mexico, the missing women of that city and ultimately a small amount of justice that is awarded them. Hawken writes with a maturity that is rare for a first novel, and achieves both a great crime novel and a work that transcends the genre. This is the real deal: tragic, dark, heartfelt. The Dead Women of Juárez deserves to be massive’ Dave Zeltserman

  ‘Sam Hawken’s novel, The Dead Women of Juárez is the most stunning piece of work I’ve read in a long time. Based on the horrific true murders of those women, it is an instant classic. The main character, Kelly, is one of the most utterly compelling characters I’ve ever read. A beautiful compassionate gruelling novel, as ferocious to read as it is soul wrenching. Think The Wrestler meets Under the Volcano with the awful truth of the main events being true. The depiction of the underbelly of Mexico is Dante’s vision of hell, fuelled on drugs. A wondrous love affair between the washed-up ex-boxer and the Mexican lady Paloma is epic and beautiful in its terrible foreboding. This book will haunt you for a long long time and the dignity given to the mothers of the lost women is writing of a whole other dimension’ Ken Bruen

  ‘The book roars into gear as a bluntly forceful hard-boiled thriller that also manages to address, movingly and respectfully, its troubling subject matter’ Publishers Weekly

  SAM HAWKEN

  Missing

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request

  The right of Sam Hawken to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Copyright © 2014 Sam Hawken

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in 2014 by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London EC1R 0JH

  www.serpentstail.com

  eISBN 978 1 84765 961 3

  For the missing of Los Dos Laredos

  PART ONE

  JACK

  ONE

  JACK SEARLE ROSE JUST AS THE FIRST pink shades of morning colored the sky over Laredo, Texas. He did not shower, but brushed his teeth and checked his stubble. He wore a goatee that was starting to grow a little shaggy and there were gray hairs in it that sometimes he dyed. Tonight he would shave things back into shape.

  Breakfast was cornflakes and milk, buttered toast and orange juice. A few strips of bacon would have been welcome, or a couple links of sausage, but the doctor said beware of nitrites. The cholesterol was no good, either. Jack was fifty-seven years old.

  He took a moment to check in on the girls in their rooms. They were both asleep and would probably stay that way until ten. Even on days when he wasn’t working, Jack woke early and could not sleep in even if he wanted to. Maybe once when he was a teenager he might have slept an extra hour or two, but he could not remember anymore.

  It was still cool outside when he closed and locked the front door. Jack took a moment to pull up a few sprouting dandelions on the lawn and tossed them onto the driveway. Like his goatee, the grass was looking unkempt. That was something to look into on the weekend.

  Jack went to his truck. It was a Ford F-250 that started out white but had picked up dirt and scrapes and dings over time so that it was shabbier than anything else. It dwarfed the little Galant that shared the driveway. Jack noticed that the Marine Corps sticker on the cab’s back window was starting to peel.

  He was out early enough that the neighborhood had barely begun to stir. Jack put down the window and let the breeze play in the cab, the radio tuned in to something soulful and homey.

  Twenty minutes later he saw the big orange sign of the Home Depot. The sun was rising to his back but the street-lights were still on. Even so, he knew he would find men there; they got up earlier than he did and sometimes they would stay all day.

  They were scattered all around the big parking lot of the Home Depot, some close to the roadside and others nearer to the doors. In groups or alone they waited, attentive to every vehicle that passed: whether it slowed down, whether it was the cops in unmarked cars. Jack could see the stir pass through them when he right-handed into the parking lot and there was the sudden sensation of everyone moving in at once, closing a gauntlet around the truck.

  Jack had no particular men in mind for the day. He did not come to a stop because then he would be swamped; instead he slowly cruised along the assembled line of men watching for a face that held a certain something. Not hunger or desperation, but assurance that a good day’s pay followed a good day of work.

  It took a minute or two to find that face. He pulled up in front of two men together. One of them had a cup of coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts that he rolled between his hands as if he were trying to keep them warm. Jack put down the passenger-side window. ‘¿Busca trabajo?’ he asked. He caught sight out of the corner of his eye other men closing in behind the truck. Soon they would be packed in so closely he wouldn’t be able to move.

  ‘We can work,’ said the man with the coffee cup. He was razor thin, as they all were, his face lined so much that he could have been weathered or old. His dirty cap had the Texaco logo on it. ‘Both of us together?’

  ‘I just need one. We’re going to tear down a bathroom. I’ll pay eight dollars an hour and you get lunch from McDonald’s. ¿Suena bien?’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the man.

  ‘Get in.’

  Another man appeared at Jack’s window. ‘I can work,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got what I need.’


  ‘I can work cheap,’ the man insisted.

  ‘No, gracias. I have what I need.’

  The man reached out as if he wanted to put his hand on Jack’s arm, but he pulled back when he saw Jack’s face. Others pushed their way up behind him and the murmurs of I can work surged louder.

  ‘No more,’ Jack told the assembly. ‘I just needed one.’

  The man with the coffee cup opened the back door of the king cab and climbed in. Jack put up the windows to cut off any more talk and revved the engine to tell the others to step back. They fell away all at once and Jack pulled out.

  ‘Thank you,’ the man with the coffee cup told Jack.

  ‘No need. You want work, I got work. Everybody’s happy.’

  ‘I am Eugenio,’ the man said.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  He left the parking lot behind and merged with the thin morning traffic. There was a good song playing on the radio so he put it up a notch. If the man in the back seat minded, he didn’t say so.

  TWO

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD THEY DROVE TO was made up of newly built houses stomped down on too-small lots that were etched with near-identical walks and broad driveways to two-car garages. Despite the summer the lawns were all green and perfectly kept, unlike Jack’s. He was willing to bet that not a single one of these homeowners looked after their own grass.

  He parked the truck by the curb in front of a sandy-bricked house with a big window in the front. A small sitting porch had a swing on it, but this was the kind of neighborhood that had no sidewalks. Porches were for watching people passing by on foot. There was none of that here.

  A junk hauler was stationed in the driveway: a big, blue steel box about fifteen feet long. Right now it was empty.

  Jack got out and told Eugenio to wait by the truck. He went up to the front door and rang the bell. A Latina woman in a short-sleeved blue shirt answered. The housekeeper. Jack introduced himself to her and she left the door open for him.

  Jack went to the truck and opened the tool bin behind the cab. He passed a heavy toolbox to Eugenio and took a long metal pry bar for himself. He pointed Eugenio to a bunch of rolled plastic in the bed. When they had it all, they went back to the house.

  The house had a big foyer with a chandelier and a curved staircase leading to the second floor. The carpet underfoot was white and easily stained. The bathroom was up the stairs and down a hall all the way.

  ‘I want you to put plastic down behind me,’ Jack told Eugenio. ‘Understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Okay, follow me.’

  They went up the stairs, Eugenio spooling out the plastic behind them. At the top Jack took out his folding knife and cut the sheet to start a new one in the hall. They had a good thirty feet rolled into the master bedroom and then into the bathroom itself, where Jack cut the plastic again.

  ‘I put this back in the truck,’ Eugenio said.

  ‘Good idea. There’s a tarp. Bring that, but put that toolbox down over there.’

  Jack surveyed the bathroom. Like the rest of the house it was too large, with a shower stall and a deep tub. Half of it still looked sparkling and new and the other half was torn down to the drywall. Tile was missing from the floor. A thin film of dust sprinkled the broad mirror above double sinks.

  Mr Leek, the client, was a lawyer. Jack didn’t know why the man had ripped up the bathroom when it looked perfectly fine, but the lawyer had started a job he was not prepared to finish. Everything still worked—the toilets flushed and the faucets ran—but it looked as though a bomb had blasted the room. It would look worse before it would look better.

  Leek wanted a new tub and a new shower stall and new sinks and a new toilet. Just about the only thing that would remain the same was that dusty mirror. Jack spent two days with the lawyer looking through catalogues, picking out the fixtures, the tile for the walls, the new lights. Leek had very specific ideas and Jack did not argue with them. His job was to make it happen, not offer opinions.

  ‘What we do first?’ Eugenio asked when he returned. His light jacket was off, his cap in his back pocket and his eyes alert. Yes, he had been the right one to pick.

  ‘We’ll start by chipping all the rest of the tile off the walls,’ Jack said. ‘When we’re done with that, we’ll get the tub out.’

  The canvas tarp went down and Jack passed out the tools. Jack started by the window, Eugenio near the sinks.

  ‘Don’t worry about the drywall. We’re gonna tear all that out and put in cement board,’ Jack told him. ‘Just toss everything in the tub.’

  They returned to what they were doing and except for the crack and clank of the work the men made no noise. Clean, white tile fractured and came away in chunks, exposing flat gray underneath. Jack threw the pieces into the tub, where they shattered again. Tearing down a bathroom was easy, mechanical. Destroying things was always simpler. They’d be finished with this part by lunch.

  The smell of dust rose to their nostrils. They breathed it in and went on.

  THREE

  REMOVING THE TILE WENT MORE QUICKLY than Jack expected and so they took an early lunch. Jack found the housekeeper in the kitchen scrubbing down counters and told her they’d be gone for a while. In the truck the two of them smelled like work.

  Jack took Eugenio to McDonald’s and each man got a Big Mac meal with fries and a Coke. He parked in the corner of the lot under the eye of the sun, put the windows down and ate. It was good to beat the rush and Jack watched cars stack up in the drive-through. If the rest of the day went so smoothly, he might cut out a little bit early, though he’d pay Eugenio for eight hours of work. This was a long job and it didn’t make any sense to kill himself on the first day.

  He saw Eugenio looking out the window at a lonesome tree planted in a narrow strip of grass at the edge of the parking lot. The tree looked pathetic, hemmed in, and wilted from the heat. Somehow it survived. ‘Eugenio,’ Jack said, ‘where you from?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah. If you don’t mind my asking.’

  ‘Anáhuac,’ Eugenio said.

  Jack nodded. ‘I know it. West of Nuevo Laredo, right?’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘That’s not far. You ever get back there?’

  ‘Not too much, señor.’

  ‘No need to call me “señor.” Just Jack will do.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jack thought about inquiring further, but he could feel the tension coming off Eugenio now. He sat stiffly in the back seat. Jack put his empty Big Mac box in the bag and balled everything up. The trash went into a little plastic bag dangling from a hook on the driver’s-side door. He worked his truck hard, but he kept it clean inside. ‘I’m not asking for any reason,’ he told the man. ‘We’re just talkin’.’

  ‘Está bien,’ Eugenio said.

  Jack checked his watch. Time.

  They worked the rest of the day and then he drove Eugenio back to the Home Depot. All the men from the morning were gone, replaced with customers’ cars. A man rolled a steel cart with about a hundred pounds of lumber on it out to his truck.

  Jack parked by the entrance. He dug into his pocket and came up with a roll of bills. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That’s eight hours at eight bucks an hour. I’m going to bump you up to seventy bucks because you did good work. Here you go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Eugenio.

  ‘If you’re back here tomorrow, we’ll do some more work, okay?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Eugenio said.

  He climbed out of the cab and Jack left him behind. When he glanced up into the mirror, he saw Eugenio was already headed away.

  FOUR

  THE LITTLE GALANT WAS MISSING FROM the driveway when Jack reached home.

  He parked to leave plenty of space for the car and clambered out of the truck. Down the street a bunch of kids were playing basketball around a portable hoop set up on the curb. The noise of their shouting carried to him.

  He wasn’t sore now, but he m
ight be tomorrow. Jack could feel the stiffness threatening in his back and arms from all that chipping and bending and lifting. Once he would have been able to do days like that end to end for a week without feeling a thing.

  His keys went in a glass bowl by the front door when he came in. The television was on in the family room, playing some game show. Jack stopped in and saw Lidia stretched out on the couch with her phone in her ear, half-watching while she talked to someone on the other end. She was thirteen years old and talking on the phone and texting were all she wanted to do with her free time.

  ‘Hey,’ Jack said to her.

  ‘Hi, Jack.’ Lidia put her hand over the phone. ‘You’re home early.’

  ‘No, I’m right on time. Where’s your sister?’

  ‘At Ginny’s. She said she’d be back in time for dinner.’

  ‘All right. I’m gonna take a shower.’

  He walked away and heard Lidia say, ‘It’s okay. Just my stepdad.’

  In his bedroom he stripped off his clothes and put them in the hamper, then went to the small attached bathroom to wash. He did not have all the room the Leeks had. He had no tub, just a frosted-glass shower stall with metal fittings that had begun to corrode. Maybe he should have replaced the whole thing a year or two ago, but he never got around to it. At least it didn’t leak.

  Jack stayed in a little longer than usual just to enjoy the heat. When he got out he put a towel around his waist and went to the sink. He put shaving cream on his face and took care of his stray whiskers. A small pair of scissors did for trimming his goatee into something neat. Aftershave stung his skin.

  He put on shorts and a T-shirt with a few holes in it and went to the kitchen. It was a little too soon to start making dinner, so he dipped into the refrigerator and got out a beer. Jack sat at the table looking out through the sliding glass into the back yard, at the chain-link fence, the plain square of a concrete patio. Once years ago he thought about putting a swing set out there for Lidia, but she was already too old for that kind of thing when he met her and Marina was older still. He would have liked to have known them both when they were younger.