Island of Bones(107)
Horton was standing over her. He looked frustrated, with the slow boil of anger reddening his neck.
Louis looked at the officer. “She got a lawyer?”
“Refused one.”
Louis looked back. Horton walked a circle around Ana, hands on his hips. “So, you’re telling me all those babies died naturally?”
Ana sat stiffly, her knotted hands in her lap. “I told you no such thing. You make assumptions.”
“Then what happened to them?” Horton asked.
Ana did not reply.
“Well, let me tell you something,” Horton said. “Emma Fielding told us the babies were killed as part of some ritual you people perform.”
“It’s Emma del Bosque, and you are lying.”
Horton leaned into her. “You’re all going down for this. Every last one of you. It won’t matter who actually murdered those babies —- you’re all guilty. And we’ll prove it when we dig them all up.”
“You’re digging up the graves?” she asked.
“Yeah, all of them.”
Ana’s eyes closed briefly.
“And then we’ll start on the other graveyard,” Horton said. “I wonder how many murdered people we’ll find there.”
“You’ll find —-” Ana stopped.
Horton waited. Louis knew Horton had poked a hole in Ana’s facade and now he was just waiting to see if it opened further.
Ana looked up at him slowly. “If I tell you the truth, will you leave my family in peace?”
“The live ones or the dead ones?” Horton asked.
“Both.”
Horton shook his head. “I can’t promise that.”
Ana took a breath, her small chest rising and falling under the orange material.
“I killed Mateo.”
“Who’s he?”
“My husband. I killed him in January of 1932. He is buried in the other cemetery, along with the rest of my family.”
Horton walked in front of her. “How’d you kill him?”
“I shot him.”
“What about the babies?”
Ana was speaking so softly, Louis had to lean closer to the intercom to hear her.
“I killed them, too,” she said. “All of them.”
“How?”
“I smothered them,” she said. “No one else was involved.”
Horton was speechless.
Ana looked at him. “Is that enough?”
“Why?” Horton asked. “Why just the girls?”
She looked away. "De illo loqui nequam —-”
“Don’t start that shit, lady.”
But Ana was finished talking. Louis knew it. She closed her eyes, crossed herself, and folded her hands.
Horton let out a breath. “Stand up, Mrs. del Bosque.” When Ana stood, she barely reached Horton’s shoulder. “You know by telling me this, you’ve confessed to the murder of six people?”
Ana gave him a small nod.
“And you’ll be going to prison? You know that, right?”
Her eyes moved to Horton’s face. “Not for long,” she said softly. “Not for very long at all.”
A few minutes later, Horton came out of the room. He stopped when he saw Louis.
“My office,” he said. He went briskly down the hall and Louis followed.
When they walked in, Louis was surprised to see Landeta sitting by the window, his elbow propped on the sill. There was a small television on the credenza behind Horton’s desk, filled with Heather Fox’s face. The sound was muted, and under her chin in red letters were the words AWAY SO FAR CULT?
“Did you hear that crock of bullshit?” Horton asked Louis. Then he looked at Landeta. “The old bag confessed to killing every one of them and her husband.”
Landeta looked at him slowly. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Oh, yeah,” Horton said. “I got a whole family full of murdering sonofabitches and the only one I can put in jail is an old woman who will probably die before the ink’s dry on her confession.”
Louis and Landeta were quiet.
“And if that’s not enough,” Horton went on, “I got a gun-toting daddy who wants to know why he can’t see his newborn daughter, and the rest of them are talking to me in Spanish.”
Louis looked away. He didn’t need this. Not today.
Horton took a breath. “Add in the three very strange women who keep asking me when can they go home, some guy who only looks like Frank Woods lying in the morgue, a graveyard full of baby bones that will take forensics a year to excavate, and two dead Mexicans, one of them shot by you, Kincaid, and we got a real mess here.”
“Spanish,” Louis said.
“What?”
“They’re Spanish, not Mexican.”