Ahead

2001, May, 22. Havana. 03:58 h.

That is it.

There it is.

Ivan Walsh does not know whether the phrase was written before or has just appeared, but he finally understands what has been unsettling him since he opened the notebook.

It is not that someone kills according to a mythology.

That would be almost banal.

It is the other way around.

Someone uses crimes to manufacture a mythology.

Amatlán does not matter because Quetzalcóatl was born there. It matters because someone managed to persuade enough people for a geography to become a revelation. The Virgin does not matter because she is miraculous. She matters because her name changes and each name reorganizes what happened before. Pilgrims. Tribulation. Maroons. The God Gek does not exist, and that is precisely why he is useful: he has no history until someone begins to give him one.

And they do the rest.

Casey finds patterns.

Liliana paints.

He writes.

The newspapers tell.

The police classify.

The relatives remember.

Everyone collaborates.

Without knowing it.

That may be the true series.

Not the dead.

The narratives built on top.

He looks at the last page.

Beneath And behind every story another crime, someone has written a single line:

False.

He waits.

Another word appears.

The ink is born on the paper as he watches it.

Ahead.

He reads the two together:

And ahead of every story, another crime.

The phone line is still open.

—Casey.

—I’m here.

—I think we’re reading it backwards.

—What?

He looks at the Virgin.

Then the notebook.

Then the window, where Havana is beginning to acquire that minimal brightness that precedes dawn.

—Everything.

—Explain yourself.

He does not know how.

Then the first bell of a church he cannot identify rings somewhere in the city.

He thinks of Rome.

He thinks of Riverside Drive.

He thinks of Amatlán before dawn, when Venus is still above the mountains and someone begins to walk with a torch because he has decided that a god was born in that very place.

—They aren’t leaving clues after the murders —he says.

Casey remains silent.

—They’re leaving stories before.

—What for?

He looks at the word that has just appeared.

AHEAD.

—So that when someone dies —he says— it looks as though they always had to die.

This time Casey takes a while.

—That’s madness.

—Yes.

—Ivan Walsh.

—What.

—Bernardo has just found his painting.

He cannot speak.

—What does that mean?

—It has his name.

—Is he alive in the image?

Casey does not answer.

—Casey.

—Yes.

—Is he alive?

He listens to him breathing.

—Still.

Dawn begins to break in the studio.