22. VI. （SPLIT）
VI. (SPLIT)
It was raining. It slicked the ground below, hissed against the flames, and pooled around my shoes as I stood at the edge of Montechata Street.
Two houses were in flames. Carlos’s place and Maria’s were nothing but skeletal frames, collapsing in on themselves. And inside the ruins were two shapes curled and blackened beyond flesh. Paco and Maria.
Sirens lit the streets and each window. Firefighters shouted orders as they were helping rain to put out the fire. Someone had sent them an anonymous tip: Carmen Garcia had evidence hidden in the house next door.
When they pried their way in, the truth spilled out. Carmen was no victim, no terrified woman caught. She had been El Trece all along, carving her way through girls with no explanation. The evidence painted her hands in blood so clearly that no one could wash them clean.
Closure never came. Not the kind the town wanted. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes evil is only that evil, smiling in daylight while the world mistakes it for kindness.
They found Isabella, too. Her eyes were gone blind, her mind shattered into pieces.
She screamed at ghosts no one else could see, holding onto the empty air.
The officers did what they always do when something doesn’t fit.
They shoved her into the back of a car and shut the door on her cries, sending her on the way to an Asylum.
Lucia waited outside Carmen’s house in her wheelchair, her body hunched, eyes shining, crying. I walked to her, and when her eyes caught mine, she finally spoke.
“I know you,” she whispered. “You came for me.”
I smiled at her. “Not yet, abuelita.”
I wheeled her away, the rubber tires screaming against the wet street, until we reached the apartment she still called home.
“My son Carlos bought a circus, you know?” she said suddenly. “He laughed when I called it the House of Clowns.” She smiled, “He collects people, people who are different, people who saw things.”
I nodded. I already knew.
“He is a good man,” she said, almost tenderly.
But he wasn’t.
He was a man who did good things just to mask the fact that he was a bad man. He was a bad man who knew how to do good things.