Unmerciful Good Fortune
by Edwin Sánchez

Arrogant young Puerto Rican Fatima, who works as a counter girl at a fast-food restaurant, has been arrested for the murder of 14 people, poisoned at her workplace.

Young attorney Jeremy has been assigned to defend her and asks a Latina colleague, Maritza, to be his translator.

But Fatima refuses to talk to anyone but Maritza, and she's enough of a manipulator to get her way.

Fatima claims she has been blessed — or cursed — with psychic powers.

By merely clasping the hand of an individual, she says, she can immediately grasp everything about him/her including past, future, and innermost secrets.

She tells Maritza that her murders were mercy killings: She "read" each of her victims and killed them because they wanted to die.

Maritza is first incredulous, then indignant at Fatima's playing God.

She firmly resists letting Fatima clasp her hand, but Fatima is persuasive, constantly shifting from pugnacious, foul-mouthed street girl to wise and wily seductress to gentle, compassionate young woman.

Maritza finally offers up her hand, yielding her secrets and placing her fate in Fatima's grasp.