Mission Road

Page 6

“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Hernandez said. “Do you want some water?”
“No . . . thank you.”
In Ana DeLeon’s office, the big Anglo detective was still sitting behind the desk, poring through paperwork. He had a buzz of rust brown hair, a rumpled dress shirt, a brutish face. Queasily, Maia tried to remember where she’d met him before.
“Kelsey,” Hernandez offered. “Lead investigator on the shooting.”
Maia willed herself to stay upright. “Ana’s old partner.”
“Yes.” Hernandez said it without enthusiasm. “He’s a good cop.”
“He hates Tres.”
Hernandez held her eyes, trying to send a message she couldn’t decipher. “As I said, Miss Lee, the help I can offer in this situation is limited.”
“You run the department.”
“For three more weeks. I retire at the end of December. In the meantime, the brass want this case resolved decisively. An officer has been shot. It’s a miracle she lived the night and not at all certain she’ll survive. Ralph Arguello is our prime suspect. Your friend Mr. Navarre just threw himself into our line of fire.”
“You’re telling me not to expect justice?”
“I’m telling you nothing of the sort, Miss Lee. Just listen to Kelsey. Take his warning seriously. And realize that whatever breathing room I can give you, I already have.”
Hernandez turned and made his way through the rows of cubicles.
The rabid elf, now on the ground with a cop foot against his neck, spat at the lieutenant’s polished black shoes as he passed.
EXCEPT FOR THE MAJOR EYESORE NAMED Detective Kelsey, Sergeant Ana DeLeon’s office was a nice workspace. Mahogany desk. Two cushy chairs. Walls painted a cool shade of avocado. Her corkboard was pleasantly cluttered with family photos, department memos and silver milagro prayer charms.
Definitely a woman’s office.
Maia was impressed it could maintain that aura considering the amount of testosterone that must burn through here every day.
Kelsey sat behind DeLeon’s desk with his feet propped up. He had files stacked high all around him, desk drawers overturned on the carpet nearby. He was reading through a homicide casebook. The fingers on both his hands were laced with faded white scars, as if he’d long ago lost a fight with a wildcat. “Sit down, Miss Lee.”
“Making yourself at home?”
Kelsey raised an eyebrow. “I’m doing my job.”
Maia nodded toward the stacks of files. “What were you searching for?”
“Just being thorough.”
“Very thorough, it looks like.”
Kelsey flipped a page in the homicide book. He chose a photo and slid it across the desk. “Franklin Muriel White. Nineteen eighty-seven. Twenty-one years old when he got turned into that.”
The photo was a black-and-white autopsy head shot. The face, badly mutilated, had once belonged to a blond Anglo. Beyond that, Maia couldn’t tell much. Savage blows had destroyed the features. Maia had seen worse, but not many times.
“A tire iron,” Kelsey told her. “First hit laid him out cold. Back of the head, just above the left ear. Probably would’ve been enough to kill him. The other six to the face—those were just dessert.”
Kelsey watched her for a reaction. His eyes reminded Maia of a rich man’s son she’d once defended in court—a boy who liked to set sleeping derelicts on fire.
“Eighteen years ago,” she said. “What were the leads?”
“Forensics got a DNA sample—blood under the victim’s fingernails. Probably the killer’s. Unfortunately all they had in ’87 was RFLP testing. You needed a big sample to work with. There wasn’t enough blood.”
“And now you’ve got PCR,” Maia said. “So as time permits, you rotate your detectives through the cold case squad looking for old evidence in storage that you can retest.”
“Hernandez tell you that?”
“It’s standard practice, Detective. Every department in the country is doing the same thing. Why this case, and why did it get DeLeon shot?”
Kelsey studied her impassively, then tossed her another piece of paper from the murder book—an old-fashioned carbon copy of a patrol officer’s report.
A brief handwritten paragraph described the first response to a motorist’s 911 about a body on the side of a rural South Side road, just after 10:00 P.M., July 14, 1987.
At the bottom, the signatures of the first two officers at the scene: Herberto Hernandez, Lucia DeLeon.
Maia looked up. “Ana’s mother?”
“First female class of cadets,” Kelsey said. “Twenty-seven years on the force. There’s a plaque with her name in the main hallway.”
“Hernandez was her partner. That’s why he’s distancing himself from the case?”
Kelsey seemed to think about that. He looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind.
“Ten days ago,” he told her, “Ana was rotated to cold case duty. She could’ve picked any file she wanted, but she saw her mom’s name on that report . . . sentimental bullshit. She decided to poke around in it. Hernandez and I both warned her she’d get more than she bargained for.”
“Meaning?”
Kelsey creaked back in the chair. “Ana started asking around, found out Franklin White had been arguing with a young . . . ah, business associate right before he got whacked. Wasn’t common knowledge, but the two guys had acquired some pawnshops together. This friend was the front man, Franklin was the money. The friend stood to gain if he could get Franklin out of the picture. Franklin got whacked. Within six months, his former business associate was the number one owner of pawnshops in San Antonio.”
“Ralph Arguello.”
“Jackpot.”
Maia felt her dizziness getting worse. She’d be damned if she’d give Kelsey the satisfaction of seeing her pass out. “If that’s true—”
“If?”
“Why didn’t anybody put Arguello and the victim together sooner?”
“He and White were real careful not to advertise their business relationship. Still, Arguello was one bold SOB, starting his career by whacking Franklin White. Dangerous game, considering Franklin’s dad.”
“Who’s his dad?”
Kelsey stared at her. “I forgot you’re an out-of-towner. Maybe this doesn’t mean anything to you. Franklin’s dad is Guy White.”
Maia’s heart fluttered. She had a flashback to several years ago—Tres taking her on a case to a mansion where even the butler carried a gun.
“Guy White,” she said, “the most powerful mobster in South Texas.”
“Please, Miss Lee. Private businessman. Mr. White donates to orphanages and shit. Just because his enemies for the last thirty years have all turned up in the river—”
“Guy White’s son was beaten to death in 1987 . . . his only child?”
“Only son. Got a younger daughter, but Frankie was the golden boy.”
“And the case was never solved.”
Kelsey smiled. “Well, see, you got a mob boss with lots of enemies. Somebody whacks his son. You think the detectives at the time were going to bend over backward trying to figure out what happened? Best guess, White’s big rival in town, Johnny Zapata, ordered the hit. Zapata controlled most of the Latino side of town. White was muscling in. Anyway, White blamed Zapata for the hit. After Frankie died, San Antonio saw its biggest gang war ever. The homicide rate spiked by thirty-five percent. If you’re the police, you’re not going to go out of your way to find another scapegoat for Frankie’s murder. Unless, of course, you’re Ana DeLeon, and you can’t stand loose ends . . .”
“The DNA under the victim’s fingernails?”
“Results came back two days ago. Positive on Ralph Arguello. Ninety-nine point nine percent.”
Maia looked around the room for something to concentrate on besides Kelsey’s smirk.
She hated hopeless cases.
For years, she’d known that Ralph Arguello was bad news. She had never understood how a woman like Ana DeLeon could get involved with him. And she’d been secretly relieved when Tres and he had started to drift apart.
She focused on DeLeon’s corkboard—a picture of Ralph and Ana with their baby girl standing in front of a bronze elephant at the zoo.
She felt horrible for that poor child. Her mother dying in the hospital. Her father a fugitive.
But she couldn’t get drawn into that.
She didn’t care why Ralph Arguello had bludgeoned a mobster’s son eighteen years ago.
The question was how to extract Tres—how to get him untangled when the fool kept throwing himself into the most dangerous situations he could find, to help a friend who shouldn’t have been his friend in the first place.
“Miss Lee?” Kelsey asked.
On the corkboard just above Kelsey’s head was another photo, circa the Seventies, of a woman in patrol uniform, obviously DeLeon’s mother, Lucia. She was standing next to another patrolman—a much younger Lieutenant Hernandez.
Maia hated this town. Everything was connected. Everybody was somebody’s cousin or childhood friend. A city of a million-plus people, and they still operated like a little country town.
There was a sticky note attached to the photo—the name White, then Timing is wrong, and a few more words Maia couldn’t read from where she sat.
Why hadn’t Kelsey taken that note down?
“Miss Lee?” he asked again. “Are you going to help us out?”
The back of Maia’s neck tingled. She suddenly doubted Kelsey had even seen the note. He wouldn’t bother looking at DeLeon’s family pictures. It would not occur to him that anything of value could be there. Sentimental bullshit.
She forced her eyes back to him. “How is it that you expect me to help?”
“Obvious, isn’t it? Convince your boyfriend to bring in Arguello.”
“Assuming I know how to reach him.”
“Navarre called you. He got you here.”
“He called from a pay phone.”
“And you made arrangements to talk again. Let’s not play games. We’ve known about the DNA for two days. Lieutenant Hernandez ordered us not to act on it until Ana had time to do the right thing, turn over her case notes to me so I could make an arrest on her husband. Obviously, Ana didn’t cooperate. She must’ve told Arguello, and Arguello shot her. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t be doing him or Navarre any more favors, but Hernandez has told me to offer you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
Before he could respond, a detective with a bleeding cut over his eye came to the door. “Yo, Kelsey, a little help, man.”
Kelsey scowled. “What, still the elf?”
The other detective turned pink around the ears. He was mid-twenties—young for homicide detail. He was the one Maia had noticed with the loose holster. It was still loose. “Hey, man. We figured we had him secure.”
Kelsey sneered. “A roomful of cops, and you can’t lock down a damn elf?”