Lucky Town

by Peter Vonder Haar

  “Hello?”

  A pause. “Is this Mr. Johnson?”

  It took me a minute, and then I remembered. “It is indeed. Is this Mrs. Nguyen?”

  “He’s back,” she said.

  “Who’s back? Mr. Garcia?”

  Don and Charlie looked at each like I was losing my mind.

  “He must have gotten in last night,” she said. “Because when I came out to get my paper, his car was in the driveway.”

  I thought about telling Charlie I had a fellow paper reader but decided an elderly person wasn’t really helping my case.

  “Thank you very much, ma’am. I’ll be along directly.”

  She said, “Don’t forget my money.” And hung up.

  “Who was that?” Charlie asked.

  I stood up, looking for my keys. “Someone I owe a hundred bucks.”

  Chapter THIRTY

  It was while I was driving back to DHS agent Chester Garcia’s house Friday morning that the old feeling returned.

  In previous cases — not all, but some — you’d sometimes be overtaken by the sensation events were leading you along, not the other way around. Many investigations, be they murders or robberies or whatever, moved glacially. You could follow leads as diligently as possible, but many times the outcome hinged on a witness coming forward, or a piece of previously undiscovered evidence turning up.

  Mike’s case didn’t feel like that. It was the investigative equivalent of sensory overload, with information coming in almost faster than we could process it. Charlie’s decryption of Mike’s email confirmed some of what we’d thought, but other questions remained.

  Charlie talked to Mom about the news linking Mike to Ramirez’s murder before I left. She’d reacted about like the rest of us, which was surprising considering how rarely she used profanity.

  I’d convinced Don to let me take his Range Rover again, as he was staying with Charlie for the time being, and I didn’t fancy getting stranded in East Houston if/when the Corolla decided to give up the ghost again. For all his bluster, Don was still a good dude, though I tried not to consider what he’d demand from in me in payback as I once again entered Garcia’s neighborhood. I took stock of the scene as I pulled closer to his address and came to an abrupt stop three houses down.

  There was a truck in the driveway.

  I climbed out of the Range Rover and closed the door as silently as I could. The street was quiet, though you couldn’t get away from the sounds of the freeway, which was simply a reality if you lived inside or near the Loop. The faint roar provided a kind of white noise that in rural areas would be supplied by crickets or something.

  Or howler monkeys, for all I knew. I grew up in the city.

  There wasn’t much activity on the street. I heard lawnmowers in the distance, the sound of which might as well be the official anthem for the city, but it looked like most of Garcia’s neighbors were at work.

  I wanted to check out Garcia’s house before I completed my business transaction with Mrs. Nguyen, so I moved past her driveway and walked up the sidewalk to Chester Garcia’s place.

  My Smith & Wesson .40, which I’d elected not to bring onto Steranko’s boat, was back in its holster, snug against my hip. I didn’t know the extent of Garcia’s involvement with Mike’s disappearance, but DHS had him out of the country (and incommunicado) until the end of June. If he was here — and I had no way of knowing if this was his truck, if he was letting a buddy crash at his place, or if one of his neighbors was squatting in his driveway — then I had a few questions for him.

  I paused at his gate, remembering the dog. I didn’t want to hurt the animal, but I also couldn’t have him alerting the whole neighborhood to my presence. There was gravel at the end of Garcia’s driveway, so I picked up a rock about the size of my thumb and tossed it onto the porch.

  Nothing.

  Taking a deep breath, I opened the gate and entered the yard. Walking like I had a legitimate reason to be there, I crossed the lawn quickly and climbed the three steps to his porch.

  The house was quiet, and I peered inside house as I knocked. The big TV in the living room was off, and no movement inside caught my eye. I glanced at the closed blinds in the other windows, but if someone was watching me from behind them, they were keeping still.

  Satisfied I wasn’t about to be surprised by the dog, and uncomfortable standing in full view on the porch any longer, I hopped down and crept swiftly around the side of the house. Looking into a window was one thing; if I was going to break into the guy’s house, I needed to do it from the back.

  Garcia’s fence was chain link and only rose about three feet, which was suboptimal from a breaking and entering perspective. The backyard was a little better. He or someone else had half-assed a full wooden fence, and that gave me a little cover as I put on a pair of gloves and started working on the back door.

  It took me all of 30 seconds to jimmy the door, which looked like original 1950s issue. Garcia either didn’t have anything anyone would want to steal, or he really didn’t care about security. Kind of weird for a DHS agent.

  Looking around one more time to make sure I wasn’t being watched, I drew my .40, opened the door slowly, and entered Garcia’s house.

  Two steps in and I found out what happened to his dog as I almost tripped over its inert form on the kitchen floor.

  In the dark, I couldn’t see exactly what caused it to shuffle off its mortal coil, but the blood pooled around the dog’s body pointed to shooting or stabbing. Given its previous aggression, I doubted anyone would get close to it on purpose, so the former seemed likely.

  The interior of the house was dim, so I pulled out the small Maglite I carried and shone it around the dog. I didn’t have the means or motive to try and more accurately determine time of death, but the blood was congealed enough to make me believe the perpetrator had already hit the road.

  I turned the light off and moved to the kitchen doorway, careful not to track through the dog’s blood.

  The house was small, and moving through it took little time. Garcia was apparently the unsentimental type, as there were no family photos or real personal touches. A few bookshelves held typical bestsellers of the John Grisham and Chicken Soup for the Bureaucratic Automaton's Soul variety. If Charlie hadn’t confirmed the address via property databases, you’d never know this was Chester Garcia’s home.

  I cleared rooms as I went through — old habits and all that — which didn’t take long. Finally, I reached a closed door. Judging by the room I’d already seen, this would be the second bedroom of a 2–1. There were few options for what lay beyond, and given the dead guard dog in the kitchen, none of them were good.

  I grasped the doorknob and turned. It wasn’t locked. Slowly, keeping low, I pushed the door open.

  My eyes flickered across, attempting to pick up any movement in the darkness. Gradually, what little light there was filtering through the drawn blinds and coming in through the opened door started revealing details, but by then I was already pretty sure what was in the room.

  My tenure as a detective was, by most accounts, brief but mostly distinguished. I cleared a fair share of cases, but by no means all of them.

  Even allowing that, there were some things that would never leave me: the sight of a dead child, the thrill — not wholly fear and not wholly anticipation — one felt before kicking down a door, and the smell of blood. It was metallic and earthy and even in Houston’s often musty atmosphere, it was something you recognized as soon as you scented it.

  There was blood in this room. A lot of it.

  Closing the door behind me to minimize visibility, I chanced the Maglite again. I was indeed standing in a bedroom, or at least a room with all the requisite associated furniture. A dresser stood in a corner, topped with pictures and an assortment of personal items, while a full-sized bed occupied the center of the room. It was made, while the source of all the blood lay slumped next to it.

  Holstering my weapon, I knelt beside the bod
y. It was a male of what appeared to be average height and weight. He was dressed in street clothes, and a quick pat down produced a wallet. No drivers license or credit cards, curiously enough, but a handful of membership cards (pharmacy, Smoothie King, Bloickbuster Video) all bore the name Chester Arthur Garcia.

  Wait a minute: Blockbuster? The last one of those closed in Houston years ago.

  The lack of photo ID wasn't a huge obstacle, because the close-cropped hair on the corpse's head was the only thing recognizable from his DHS photo. The exit wound had completely obliterated his face, and the forensic techs would likely be picking up teeth for hours. I checked the entry wound at the back of the skull, and noted he’d been shot from enough of a distance there were no powder burns.

  Somebody lying in wait? I flashed the Maglite back on and swept the room, confirming I was alone. Since Garcia looked like he’d been greased the same time as his dog, the killer was most likely long gone.

  He had come home, and judging by the monster-ish truck in the driveway, he didn’t really care who knew it. Had he come home early from Brussels? Did Hammond know he was back? Had he ever been in Brussels?

  I had to call the police. Anonymously. The better to avoid creating an official connection between Mike’s disappearance and his snoop little brother. First, I’d check out Garcia’s truck and see if that yielded anything.

  Garcia’s keys weren’t in his pocket, but a quick check of the front hallway turned them up. I figured now that I could do it without knocking it down or picking the lock, I’d go ahead and leave through the front door.

  I’d just had enough time to step across the threshold onto the porch when my legs were kicked out from under me. I went down hard, and thought about reaching for my weapon when I noticed the lights. Red and blue was strobing everywhere and I could hear bellows of “Hold him!” and “Watch him! Watch him!” My arms were wrenched behind my back and I felt high-tensile steel bite into my wrists and the cuffs were slapped on. Someone removed my .40 from its holster, possibly the same person who had their knee in my back, driving the side of my face into the wood floor of the porch.

  Several hands hoisted me from the ground. There were four squad cars I could see, as well as a van I initially took for SWAT issue, except for the “Homeland Security” stenciled on its side. As if I needed any more proof this was a setup.

  A guy in a Kevlar vest and a black baseball cap stood before me. “Cy Clarke?”

  “Like you didn’t know.”

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Chester Garcia.”

  Looks like Mrs. Nguyen wasn’t getting her money after all.

  Chapter THIRTY-ONE

  None of the dudes who bundled me into the van read me my Miranda rights, which either meant this whole thing was headed for a mistrial, or these particular gentlemen weren’t overly concerned with due process.

  The interrogation room was familiar enough: a long table made of wood substitute with a ring bolted into it (the same ring my right hand was currently handcuffed to), molded plastic chairs, and a two-way mirror running the length of one wall. I had no idea who was observing me from the other side, and didn’t feel like giving them the satisfaction of seeing me react, so I sat relatively motionless.

  There are a couple schools of thought regarding how one should act when accused of a crime. Some psychological studies believe the truly innocent will loudly — even violently — protest their arrest, while no less an authority on incarceration than The Usual Suspects presented the hypothesis that only the guilty sleep their first night in jail.

  Anyone who’s spent the night in jail knows how difficult sleep is. We’d usually check on the ones who appeared to be snoozing to make sure they were still breathing.

  By those metrics, I should’ve been yelling my head off. Maybe banging on the table to boot. Truth was, I didn’t have the energy. After too little sleep, the previous day’s events were taking their toll, but as tempting as the proposition of putting my head down and catching a few Zs might have been, the specter of Chazz Palminteri’s words kept me from doing so.

  Basic furnishings aside, Homeland Security’s interrogation room was pretty nice and new. It clearly hadn’t been used all that often, or at least not enough to acquire the usual wear and tear such chambers eventually suffered, such as cigarette burns, nicks from handcuffs, or bloodstains.

  Hopefully my being here wouldn’t result in any changes to the decor.

  I heard a bolt slide back and the only door in the place opened and a man entered. He was in his mid-40s, balding, carrying a manila folder, and looking about as tired as I felt. He might even have been the guy who arrested me at Garcia’s, though it was hard to tell without the flak jacket and cap. Those had been replaced with a button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, necktie, and slacks.

  He sat down without saying anything and started going through the contents of the folder. I watched him with what I hoped was a bored expression.

  “Your name’s Cy Clarke, is it not?” He asked this without looking up.

  “Lawyer.”

  He didn’t say anything, just kept turning pages. I was mildly curious as to the contents of his dossier but didn’t want to look overeager.

  After another half minute or so of riffling through the pages, he produced an 8x10 black-and-white photo and slid it in front of me. I already knew what it was and so didn’t look down.

  “This is the man back in the house in Denver Harbor. Or rather, what’s left of him after somebody shot him in the back of his head,” my unnamed interrogator said.

  I glanced down. It was indeed a better lit shot of the dead man I’d found in the bedroom. I was more interested in the way he’d said ‘somebody’ instead of implicating me directly.

  Figuring I had nothing to lose, I feigned surprise at the photo. “Heavens! What a shocking turn of events!” I raised my un-handcuffed hand to my forehead in mock consternation. Hell, if I’d had a forelock I would’ve tugged it.

  “Clarke …”

  “Lawyer,” I said again, glancing at the mirror, “or don’t y’all hear so good?”

  He leaned back, regarding me with all the curiosity he might’ve spared for a cicada on his screen door. “You don’t appear to appreciate the seriousness of this situation,” he began.

  I leaned forward. “I appreciate that I’m an American citizen and the Department of Homeland Security has no jurisdiction over murders committed in the city of Houston. You don’t want to Mirandize me, fine, but slapping a crime scene photo down in front of me and expecting me to collapse in tormented guilt is shit that would’ve gotten you laughed off the set of Perry Mason.” I sat back again. “Lawyer.”

  He pulled the folder toward himself, opened it, and withdrew a single sheet of paper. Smiling slightly, he slid it over to me so that it half obscured the photo of Garcia.

  “What’s this?” I didn’t look down.

  “You might want to read it,” he said. “It’s an executive order from the President of the United States, cosigned by the governor of the State of Texas, giving Homeland Security full jurisdiction over crimes committed against their agents.” His smile widened. “Whether those crimes were committed on federal property or not.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  He shrugged. “Read it, I’ve got all night.”

  I looked at the paper, which had the Presidential seal and was printed on heavy bond paper. Hell, the signatures looked authentic enough. That still didn’t mean I was trusting baldy’s word on the matter.

  “So what?” I said, sliding the paper back to him. “You can find this paper at any Staples store. And while I’m not the most technical person around, I know there are graphics programs out there that can produce passable copies of birth certificates and passports,” I nodded at his so-called executive order, “much less mock-ups featuring the official letterhead of POTUS.”

  I was pretty sure I still had the mock Presidential citation Charlie had whipped up to show to one prospect
ive client, come to think of it.

  “Not going to talk, eh Clarke?”

  “And another thing, you could at least tell me your name,” I said. “I mean, you’ve got all the cool paperwork and I’m the one in handcuffs.”

  He smiled again. “Name’s Chester Garcia.”

  That got me. “Say again?”

  “Come on, I know you’ve heard the name before.”

  He was trying to draw me in, and I had to admit it was tempting. “How was Brussels?” Was the best I could come up with.

  He laughed. “Oh, Dot. You know, you really should’ve given her more credit. She went straight to Hammond when you told her you were supposed to be kept in the loop.”

  “I figured,” I said, knowing my charms were strictly hit or miss and I’d whiffed early on with the secretary. “Still doesn’t explain the dead guy in your house. That was your house, wasn’t it?”

  “Registered in my name, but I never lived there,” the agent currently known as Garcia said. “Not my kind of neighborhood.”

  Why was I not surprised? "That explains why his wallet didn't have any ID in it. Or credit cards." I sat back. "But Blockbuster Video? You need to clean your wallet out more often."

  He chuckled. I was gratified he was having a good time.

  “What is this about, Garcia? Why the full court press back there?” I raised my shackled arm. “And why am I cuffed to this table like a common perp?”

  “Are you waiving your right to a lawyer?”

  “Are you saying I have a right to one now?”

  He grinned. “No, just hoping to get it on the record.”

  I sat back. “I don’t get you Feds, I really don’t. HPD would kill for a tenth of the budget you’ve got, and you can’t keep from screwing up.”

  “How have we screwed up?”

  “Where’s my brother?”

  Garcia frowned and I was dismayed to see a flicker of sincerity on his face. “We don’t know.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You covered up the fact that you were never out of the country and now you’re trying to frame my brother for the murder of another agent.”