“You speak English?” Dennis asked.
No response.
“Hablas espanol?”
Juan Doe nodded.
“Inglés?” Valencia asked.
He shook his head.
Dennis stopped three steps short of the elevator. “He doesn’t understand English, right?”
“So he says.”
“So, what was he supposed to learn from watching KUSI?” Dennis shook his head in frustration. Isn’t he supposed to go into the cell scared shitless so he spills the beans? Dennis stared at Valencia, catching his attention. Something was wrong.
“Shit.” Valencia said, figuring out what Dennis meant. “Should I give him a rundown of what’s happening?”
Dennis nodded. “In the elevator.” He pressed the button.
“What should I say?” he whispered.
Dennis thought about the segment he watched twice with the prisoners and what he was told at the briefing. He looked at Juan Doe and chose his words carefully in case he understood English. “Tell him the guys in the cell are from Los Angeles, MS-13. They know Devil’s Bullet was making a move against them. They are here to kill all the San Diego MS-13 who tried to go against them. El Flaco—”
Dennis paused, noting Juan Doe flinched when he said the name. The elevator doors opened and the three went in. “Tell him that while I try to remember the rest.”
Valencia conveyed the message in Spanish.
Dennis watched Juan Doe, maybe a hundred thirty pounds, shrink down as Valencia spoke. “Where’s he from?” Dennis asked.
After a quick translation by Valencia, Juan Doe responded with his first words, “El Salvador.”
“Cuál es tu nombre?” Valencia followed up.
Juan Doe’s eyes opened wide and he shook his head. “No se, no se.”
He doesn’t know his own name. Dennis looked at Juan Doe with confusion, then nodded with clarity. Juan Doe was told to say “I don’t know” whenever the cops ask him anything. “Tell him if he talks to us, we can protect him from El Flaco.”
Dennis stepped back and watched Valencia speak slowly in Spanish. Juan Doe looked like someone was drowning his puppy, he was going to cry. Maybe we should bring Juan Doe to Browning now. He’ll crack.
“No se,” Juan Doe softly responded to Valencia.
“Hey,” Dennis asked softly, “should we just take him to Browning to talk? Think he’d talk?”
Valencia shrugged. “Maybe. Probably more leverage if he’s up there first.”
Dennis pressed the button to go up three floors. “I guess. We’ll drop him there and go talk to the detective.”
Valencia nodded and started speaking Spanish to Juan Doe again.
As Dennis felt the elevator slow, he stepped right in front of the door, back to the opening, and looked down at Juan Doe, who was nearly paralyzed with apprehension. When the doors opened, it looked like he was going to faint. Dennis grabbed his shoulders and steadied him for the shuffle to the first gate.
The gate buzzed, the sound rang through the eerily silent floor. Dennis pushed open the gate and shuffled Juan Doe ahead of Valencia.
Dennis focused on the four men in the cell, all silently sidling up to the bars. They stared hard at Juan Doe and Valencia, but paid little mind to Dennis and his red hair.
When Dennis put a key into their cell and jiggled it, the men’s eyes opened wide with hope that the door would be open without them being in chains. Dennis pulled the key out and laughed. He stepped back to the vacant cell next to theirs and opened the cell for Juan Doe.
Juan Doe shuffled in. Dennis locked him in and signaled for him to step up to the bars. Dennis unlocked his feet, then heard one of the four men say to Damian, “Ayuda nos.” He stepped back and watched Valencia laugh at them.
“You get his chains?” Dennis asked, a touch nervous by the commotion and the tiniest fear that his Hispanic friend could possibly be persuaded by these Hispanic men to turn on him.
“Sure,” Valencia responded and took the chains completely off Juan Doe. He looked at Juan Doe. “Buena suerte,” he said, loud enough for the four guys and Jose Oliva to hear.
Dennis whispered to Valencia as they cleared the locked gate, “Good luck?”
He nodded. “He’ll need it.”
Instead of going to the elevator, Dennis and Valencia went down a corridor to another locked room where another deputy, a short bald black man, sat watching the TV monitors and listening in on the microphones.
The heavy iron door closed behind them.
Dennis asked, “They say anything yet?”
“Not much I could understand. I speak some Spanish, but their shit’s real different, man,” the deputy answered.
Valencia nodded. “These guys are probably from El Salvador or Guatemala. Different accent. Different slang.” He pointed to the computer. “Can you turn it up a little?”
Dennis watched Valencia sit in the other rolling chair at the desk. He walked to the back of the little room and leaned against the wall, watching the monitor over the deputies’ shoulders.
One of the four men talked to Jose Oliva. Fuck Rose?
I don’t know, Oliva responded.
Fuck you. No. No. Talk to me, the man continued.
I don’t know, Oliva responded flatly.
No kill. Truth. Boss. New.
“Hey Valencia, you getting this?” Dennis asked, not sure how many words he was actually picking up.
“Yeah, shh.” Valencia waited for a pause. While staring at the monitor, he said, “He’s asking if Oliva killed Filthy Rose. Oliva said ‘I don’t know’ six or seven times. The guy’s asking who he’s supporting, who the new boss is down here. They want to know what happened.”
A new voice squeaked over the speakers. The monitor showed all the men turn towards Juan Doe.
“What did he say?” Dennis asked.
“He said Oliva killed Rose.”
The four men in the cell scurried to the other side of the cell. The same man spoke to Juan Doe.
Dennis tapped Valencia on the shoulder to make sure Valencia knew he was supposed to give a constant play-by-play.
“Did he tell the cops?”
“No. He said nothing.”
“Why’s he in jail?”
“He was with Devil’s Bullet when he went to kill Omar. Oliva wasn’t there because he killed Rose.”
Valencia was silent for a second.
“What?” Dennis asked.
“Shh.” Valencia waved off Dennis’ question.
A few seconds later, Valencia said, “He wants to know if Devil’s Bullet was going to kill Omar or hire Omar to kill El Flaco.”
“Juan Doe said he was just the driver. He thought the way they rolled up, it was a hit. But he wasn’t sure. He blames Oliva for killing Rose.”
On the screen, Juan Doe was hunched over, crying near the middle of the cell.
Valencia continued translating the voice coming over the speakers. “Hey, little brother, you did good. Didn’t tell the cops nothing. That’s good. Come here. Come here.” The monitor showed the man wave Juan Doe over.
“Shit,” Valencia said. “They might be making a move against Juan Doe. Let’s get ready to go.”
Juan Doe approached and the man reached between the bars and patted his head. He put his shoulder up to the bars and let Juan Doe lean his head against it.
Dennis watched two of the four men in the cell take off their shirts. “Shit!” Dennis yelled as he raced through the first iron door and down the hall. He paused for the door to buzz, slammed it open, and felt Valencia’s heavy bootsteps keeping pace.
As the cell came into sight, he could see three of the four men struggling to choke Juan Doe with a rolled up jail shirt. The fourth man was holding his shirt tight against the bars and the door to their cell, making entry into that cell more difficult.
Dennis watched Juan Doe clawing at six arms working with the singular purpose of ending his life. He jammed the key into the lock, opened t
he door, and with Valencia’s help, pulled on Juan Doe’s legs, trying to get him away. The violent tug of war against Juan Doe’s neck tightened the shirt even more, causing him to go limp.
The men kept hold of the shirt and Juan Doe. Dennis pulled against his legs. Valencia stopped pulling, stood, and started striking at their arms with his baton. It looked like a game of whack-a-mole. When Valencia would get a good strike, an arm would recede with pain; when he hit another arm, the first arm would be back.
Three more deputies rushed into the cell with Valencia and Dennis, hacking at the arms until they finally let go.
“Oh fuck!” Dennis called out, inspecting Juan Doe’s pale and battered face. His nose was smashed in from repeated strikes against the iron. Blood oozed from his nose, mouth, and one eye. Dennis didn’t feel a pulse, he started CPR. “No pulse. Cuff him.”
Valencia nodded, reached down, and put handcuffs on Juan Doe’s limp body as Dennis pressed rhythmically against his chest.
* * *
“Detective?” Jo asked into her cell phone.
“Not much surprises me these days, but I just saw the damndest thing in the whole damned world,” Browning’s voice echoed as if he was in a car.
“What’s that?” She grabbed the remote and turned off the television.
“I’m sitting in my car outside the station and saw an ambulance leave. Not two minutes later, I spot four suited-up lawyers get out of a limo that just pulled up. I hop out of my car to follow them into the jail and find out those four are there for professional visits with the four pissers. On a Sunday night, minutes after an ambulance leaves the jail?”
“That’s strange,” Jo admitted. “Who got hurt? Juan Doe?”
“Yeah. He’s not going to make it.”
Jo sighed. “They beat the information out of him? Now they’ve got lawyers to come get that information confidentially, subject to attorney-client privilege, to relay it to El Flaco.”
“Kinda. They got Juan Doe to say Oliva killed Rose and Devil’s Bullet was either there to kill Omar or hire Omar to kill El Flaco.”
They still don’t know. Jo smirked.
“That was pretty good,” Dzuy whispered.
“What?” Jo whispered back, holding the phone away.
“Your Omar smirk.”
Jo closed her eyes. Am I becoming Omar? She opened her eyes and swallowed hard. “I’ve got a plan.”
32
“The simplest plan is often the best,” Jo said, pacing around Dzuy’s locked bedroom in her t-shirt and shorts.
“Of course,” Omar’s voice came through her phone. “I’m twelve hours away. I’ll stop in Medford and figure everything out.”
“I got it.” Jo hung up the burner phone before Omar had a chance to respond. It was the first time she ever heard him sound the slightest bit frazzled.
She reached past the shotgun lying on the bed, swapped the burner for her own phone, and called Browning.
“What’s up?” Browning’s gravelly voice asked.
“Can you meet me for dinner?” Jo asked, glancing out the bedroom window at the late afternoon sun.
“No. Swamped with the fallout from the jail. What’s up?”
“I’ve got an idea for you.”
“What’s that?”
“A way to get El Flaco and his merry men off the San Diego streets.”
“You’ve got my attention.”
Jo sat next to the shotgun on the bed. “Off the record? Anonymous suggestion?”
“Okay.”
“We pretend Omar had a crew. The crew is holed up somewhere in a big house on a huge plot of land. We leak to El Flaco that his crew is there. Odds are that El Flaco will race over there if we sell it right.”
“Instead of the pretend crew, we’re waiting?”
“You. SWAT. Gang task force. Heck, call the SEALs in from Coronado.” Jo stood. “Arrest them for trespassing. Weapons violations. Conspiracy to commit murder. Get warrants and search the hell out of them to get more charges.”
“I wouldn’t be point on this. Not my call.” Browning cleared his throat. “How confident are you that you can get Flaco and his guys there?”
“I’m confident they would send someone. I’d put my own money on it that Flaco goes himself, these guys are so brazen.” Jo paced around the bed.
“I’m not using your name. So, who’s my source?”
“Omar’s mom.”
Browning laughed. “She’s part of his crew?”
“He didn’t have a crew.” Jo winced at lying to Browning. “But we’ll have his mom post on her Facebook account that she’s so proud of her son, his friends are taking care of her and protecting her after his death and her taco shop burning down. We have her take a few pictures of a big meal at a table, let enough details of the house come through so it’s known where she is.”
Browning grunted his approval. “Not bad. But not guaranteed to get movement.”
Jo exhaled in frustration. “If we don’t get movement from that, we go to a contingency plan. We have someone call Flaco’s crew, pretending to be scared and wanting to turn in Omar’s crew in exchange for their life and a shot to join MS-13.”
“You know how much overtime there is to get SWAT involved, on a Sunday night?”
Jo’s cadence quickened. “Ask them if they know how much a gang war in San Diego will cost. A gang war will cause tourism to dry up. That brings down tax revenue, big time. That costs elections. That could underfund pensions. Not to mention how many judges are going to turn against SDPD if they don’t protect the bench when a judge is threatened.”
“Slow down. I won’t be able to remember all that.”
She picked up a framed picture of Dzuy and her sharing ice cream at the beach. It needs to be over, for you. She set it back on the white dresser. “Look, I want my name out of this. But if you need me to make the case for you, just call me. I’ll go on record.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, but thanks.”
“You got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Bye.” Jo hung up. She looked at the end table, spied a hair tie, grabbed it, put her hair back in a pony tail, then dialed Dzuy.
“Hey, Honey, all good?”
“I think so.” Jo laid down on the bed next to the shotgun. “How’s it going out there?”
“Just got here a few minutes ago. I’ve got the drone almost set up, then going inside with Milk in a few minutes to get pictures ready for posting. Should be back home in an hour, maybe a little more.”
Jo heard a faint thudding sound down the hall. It sounded like someone knocked on Dzuy’s door. “Okay. I’ll call you later. Love you. Bye.” Jo hung up. Dzuy had asked her to stay locked in the bedroom when she was alone. But she was her own woman and wanted to see who was at the front door.
Jo paused at the bedroom door and looked at the shotgun. Safety never takes a vacation. She tossed the phone on the bed and picked up the all black Browing-A5 shotgun.
Jo felt the heft of its seven pounds. She tucked the stock tight against her right shoulder like Dzuy showed her, held the barrel steady with her left hand on the fore-end, put her right finger just outside the trigger guard, and shook her body pretending to feel the recoil from a shot. Seems easy enough.
Jo’s left hand let go of the fore-end so she could unlock the bedroom door; the weight and length of the shotgun caused it to point to the ground. After she unlocked and opened the bedroom door, she immediately went back to holding the shotgun with two hands like Dzuy had taught her.
She took small steps and shallow breaths as she moved down the hall. As she approached the kitchen, she didn’t hear anything but the hum of an A/C vent pumping cold air into the hallway. She passed the kitchen, swung the shotgun to the left, and looked at the short hallway to the glossy brown front door. She slowly shuffled towards it and put her eye to the peep hole.
Jo pulled her head back, blinking in confusion. She looked through it again. It was definitely being
blocked. She put her ear to the door. She could hear her own pulse on top of light scraping sounds.
Oh. My. God. Someone’s picking the lock. Jo backed away from the front door like it was a sleeping grizzly. She felt lightheaded. Breathe, she told herself. She exhaled and took her first breath in nearly a minute. She focused on her breath as her bare feet backed down the cool hardwood hallway. She turned and darted for the bedroom.
She locked the door behind her, set the shotgun on the bed, picked up her phone, and texted Browning. [They are at Dzuy’s. Picking the lock. I’m in bedroom. Calling 911.] Jo dialed 911. As the phone rang, her pulse thundered. The phone rang again. She felt three heartbeats between each ring of the phone. At the sixth ring, Jo gained the courage to put her ear against the bedroom door; she didn’t hear a thing.
“Please have good locks,” she whispered in prayer. She jumped when her phone squawked at her.
“911 – what’s your emergency?” a crisp female voice asked.
“This is Judge Joanna Channing,” Jo whispered and gave Dzuy’s address. “There are people trying to break in. I’m locked in a bedroom. Please hurry.”
“Okay. I’m sending officers to your location now, they will be there soon. Can you stay on the line?”
Jo shook her head. “I can’t hold onto the phone. I can’t hold it and the shotgun at the same time.”
“Put your phone on speaker. I’ll mute my end until the police arrive. Okay?”
“Okay.” Jo pressed the speaker button, then tossed the phone on the far side of the bed, away from the bedroom door. She picked up the shotgun and walked around the bed, getting on her knees behind the bed and tucking the shotgun against her shoulder. She liked the position, her left elbow propped on the bed made the shotgun easier to hold.
An eerie silence filled the room. “It’s silent in the house still,” Jo whispered, in case the emergency operator was still on the line. It made her feel a little less alone.
She leaned forward slightly, willing her ears to focus, at what she thought might be the sounds of the front door closing. Breathe. She forced herself to exhale. She paused mid-breath, thinking she heard footsteps.
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