The Knife Before Christmas

by Jamie Lee Scott

  No, it wasn’t just as good. It’s no wonder his generation had no social or communication skills. I needed to get my hands on the phone records for both Zhen and Hector, but I didn’t know how just yet.

  “Where’s your phone?” I asked.

  “Last I knew, the cops had it. For evidence or something.”

  “That night, the night Zhen was killed, did you text her from the bar?”

  He shrugged.

  “Yeah, that’s right, the bartender said you were smashed. I’m not surprised you don’t remember. Drunk texting is not smart.”

  “A poco,” he said, meaning “no kidding.”

  “When you finally got into your house, did you see Zhen’s phone in the bedroom?”

  Hector’s face wrinkled into a prune as he thought. “I don’t remember. But she always had that damn thing on the nightstand. She played that estupido candy game all the time, and it was her alarm clock. But I can’t say. I wasn’t looking for her phone. I was trying to see if she was still alive.”

  “Was she?”

  “Yeah, dude, I thought I felt a pulse, but I know now that I didn’t. It was my imagination, because now that my head is on right, she was cold.”

  “Cold?”

  “Yeah, like cold to the touch.” He shivered.

  Again, the timeline. When had she been killed? If she was cold to the touch, that meant she had been dead more than a few hours. If she’d been killed while Hector was at the bar, there was a possibility of rigor, but that ruled out Mario.

  “Was she stiff?” I asked.

  He looked green around the gills. “No, when I moved her, she moved like she was sleeping. You know, dead weight.” He cringed when he said the last words, as if he realized how insensitive it sounded.

  Not a fresh kill if her temperature was low, and already out of rigor. Fresh kill? Too crass?

  “I’ll talk to your attorney and see what we can do about getting crime scene photos and other evidence to see what the police have that they think is so concrete, as evidence goes, that they arrested you and are keeping you behind bars. What I don’t understand is why you went back to your house that night. If you were staying at your mom’s, why didn’t you just go back there?”

  “I don’t know, man. I guess I just wanted to see her. Maybe I had texted her and she wanted to see me. I don’t really remember. And then I passed out in the yard. And you know what happened next. I still think they were hooking up, but I needed to sit and talk with Zhen face-to-face when she told me her lies.”

  “You just told me you wanted to make up with Zhen. You said you wanted to go over there and make amends. So now you’re telling me you wanted to sit down and see her face when she told you more lies. Which is it? Did you love her and want to stay with her? Or did you actually talk to her, and when she went to bed, you stabbed her to death because you couldn’t accept she was hooking up with your brother?”

  I thought about DNA tests that might be done. Vaginal swabs, too. Was she raped? This guy’s story wouldn’t sound good on a witness stand.

  Hector gripped the counter in front of him with both hands, and the phone fell away from his shoulder. He picked it back up and his knuckles were white from gripping the phone so hard. “I loved her, man. I wanted to work things out. I never even got a chance to talk to her about it. I have nothing now, I don’t even have her. I’m telling you, Mario killed her. If they didn’t hook up, it’s because she said no, and he said, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can.’” He was almost yelling.

  “Have the cops looked at the video?” I asked.

  He was still holding the phone to his ear with his hand. “I don’t know.”

  “I just want to get this straight: you had a fight over your fiancée and brother possibly hooking up on Monday, because you saw him on the video three days in a row, then you left and went to your mom’s for a few days. After a day or so, which would make it Wednesday, you called her because you were over your little rampage, but the calls went to voicemail and she didn’t call you back. Then on Thursday, the day she died, you still hadn’t talked to her, but you were texting.”

  Hector nodded slowly as I continued.

  “And then Thursday night, you went out and got drunk. When you got home, you found your fiancée dead, screamed at the top of your lungs, and that’s when your neighbors called the police? Which would have actually been Friday morning.”

  Hector continued to nod.

  “Anything else you want to tell me?” I felt like I was beating a dead horse.

  “I’m telling you, check out my brother. Mario knew I was staying with Mamá and he never once came by the house. Doesn’t that tell you he’s guilty?”

  “Why does that make him guilty? I don’t see my mom every day.”

  “My family is different. Mamá expects to see us daily.”

  “What about your sister? Did she stop by?”

  “She’s married and has a couple of kids, but she stops by daily. We’re close. It’s that kind of family. That’s why I don’t understand what’s going on with Mario. And the fact he knew I was there and never stopped by...it’s because he’s guilty and he couldn’t face me.”

  “Guilty of what? Guilty of still being in love with his old girlfriend, who you were engaged to? Because at that time, she was still alive.”

  “Guilt is guilt, man. You can see it in their eyes. And he didn’t want me to see his eyes. My mamá, she did everything for me. She took my side and said I needed to think long and hard about whether I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the girl who was spending time alone in mi casa with my brother.”

  “Your mom talked to you about your brother and Zhen? Did she want you to leave her?”

  Hector grimaced. “No, it wasn’t like that. She just wants me to be happy. And if I was staying at her house, I wasn’t happy.”

  I thought I had all I needed for the time being. It felt like a rehash of what I already knew, except that I now realized there was video available somewhere. I couldn’t wait to get back to the office, look up the website, and see what exactly was on that video. I didn’t think Hector was telling me everything. And I didn’t think that somehow, twenty-four to forty-eight hours before his fiancée’s death, they just decided to turn off the camera. It didn’t make sense. Then again, just like having one of those voice activated devices in your house, the ones who listen to your every word and turn your TV and lights on and off, they could pick up things you didn’t necessarily want seen or heard. How do you think Siri knows you’re calling her when you say, “Hey, Siri?” She knows because she’s listening in the background. She’s quietly stalking you. It was the same thing with video cameras. You forget they’re there because they sit quietly in a window, and yet they hear and see things you may not want heard and seen, along with those you do. I really wanted to see what this camera witnessed.

  Ten

  MIMI

  Before I knew it, Charles had taken over my office once again. He was seated behind my desk and had just fired up the computer to look at the website Hector gave him. While he keyed in the username and password, I pulled up a chair to sit beside him. He didn’t like anyone looking over his shoulder, which was what I had been doing, but he would just have to deal with me sitting next to him. It was my office after all.

  Charles scrolled through about a dozen video clips without actually watching them. “He had to delete some of these videos. There can’t be only a dozen times the camera was triggered. I have friends who tell me theirs are triggered when the sky goes from sunny to cloudy. False alarms, but still it takes about a one minute video of the clouds going over the sun.”

  Charles scrolled back through the screen up to the top. He stopped at the latest video. He clicked on the play button, and we watched with no volume.

  “If it was my service, I’d delete the ones that weren’t relevant. Especially if they were on my phone taking up valuable space,” I said.

  Charles stopped the video and turned to look a
t me. “You know there’s this thing called the cloud? You can just upload them to the cloud and get them off your phone, therefore saving space on your phone.”

  I tried not to let his condescending tone get under my skin. “Just as easy to delete them. If they aren’t significant, why keep them?”

  Ignoring my legitimate question, Charles continued through the videos one at a time, until the video showing Mario walking up to the house. Once he got to the front door, he was no longer within the view of the camera. At this point, I assumed he either walked in the house or knocked on the door, but according to the stamp on the video, it was taken four days before Zhen was found dead. He’d left about fifteen minutes later. There were two more videos showing Mario coming up to the door and only one video showing him leaving.

  “Where is the video of Mario leaving the house the last time?” I asked.

  Charles turned around in the chair to face me. “That’s what caused the fight to begin with. Hector said he saw Mario go in the house, but there’s no a video of him leaving. This was what made him think something was going on with Mario and Zhen. But there’s always the chance he could’ve left using the garage door or a side door. I’m not sure why he would do that, but maybe we can talk to him and find out.”

  “And if it was about doing something special for the holidays, couldn’t Mario have just called Zhen?” Made sense to me. They didn’t have to talk face to face.

  “Maybe they were working on a project together,” Charles suggested.

  “For fifteen minutes at a time?” I doubted it.

  There were a couple of videos showing the UPS man coming and going, and the mailman delivering the mail, which were both insignificant. This little tidbit of information didn’t give us much other than to tell us Mario had indeed visited the house. It didn’t tell us what he was doing there.

  “I wonder how much information Cortnie’s gotten on Mario.” I reached across my desk and picked up the phone and dialed her extension. “Hey, sorry to bother you, but how much information do you have on Mario Varga?”

  There was a bit of wrestling on the line as it sounded like Cortnie was looking through paperwork. Then I could hear keys tapping on the keyboard. This meant she had me on speakerphone. “What do you want to know?”

  “Phone number would be good and where he works.”

  “He works at Ortega’s Body Shop on Front Street,” she said. “His work history is solid. He’s been there five years, six months, and twelve days. From what I can gather, he hangs with his buddies and doesn’t have a steady girlfriend. As for hobbies, shooting and boxing look like his deal. He has a membership at Manny’s Gym, which is strictly for boxers, and he’s a regular at the Salinas Shooters shooting range. Are we going to look at phone records?”

  “Eventually. We have to get them first,” I said.

  “What else is going on with the case?”

  “Not a whole lot, that’s the problem. So far, we don’t have anything that helps Hector’s case. We’re thinking about going to have a talk with Mario in person.”

  I expected Cortnie to be interested in going to interview Mario with me, but she didn’t even offer. She must’ve still been feeling nauseous. “Let me know what you find out.” She disconnected.

  We decided not to call Mario in advance to let him know we were stopping by. Why give him the chance to run? And if his work record was stable, his boss would hopefully be cool with him talking to us.

  * * *

  Charles parallel parked right in front of the shop, which had no cars in the parking lot or along the street. It made me wonder what Mario did for the business.

  “Do you think this is a chop shop?” I asked. “Weird they don’t have wrecked cars waiting for service in their lot.”

  Charles and I both got out of the car at the same time. He shut his door and then double checked to make sure both doors were locked. “It depends on if it’s a gang business, I guess. But any body shop can be a chop shop and anyone who has seen Gone in 60 Seconds knows exactly what that is.”

  I was sure it was a legitimate body shop, so having no cars parked outside made me wonder if it was the neighborhood. Or maybe there were various stolen cars inside the business being refurbished.

  The chop shop business was a crazy thing. A high demand car would be stolen, let’s say it’s a newer BMW. They’d store the car out of sight, then check the junkyards for that exact make, model and year of BMW. When they found one, they bought it from the junkyard. They’d relieve the junked car of its VIN and other registration numbers, and switch them with the stolen car. Then they’d take the stolen car to the Department of Motor Vehicles to show it was fixed and restored to driving condition, with a few minor changes. Now, the wrecked BMW has a salvage title based on the VIN numbers from the junkyard BMW. And unless things changed in recent years, there was only one number they couldn’t get to, but it was rarely checked because it was hard to find. Stolen cars were not our problem at the moment, though. We just needed to talk to Mario.

  The interior of the body shop was clean and bright and looked extremely well organized. The smell of paint fumes assaulted me the moment we opened the door, even though it looked as if they had an enclosed painting bay. But painting wasn’t the only thing done in a body shop. There was a lot of body work done, and it looked like seven or eight people were hard at work.

  A short man in his late sixties, wearing an Ortega’s Body Shop cap, walked up to us. I’m sure we looked lost.

  “Can I help you with something?” he said with a heavy Hispanic accent.

  Charles flashed his wallet, which had what looked like a police badge. “We’re here to talk to Mario Varga.”

  The man pulled a blue grease rag from his pocket and wiped his forehead as if he’d been sweating. “Again? How many times are you guys going to question him? And can’t you talk to him when he’s not working?” He turned and yelled over his shoulder. “Hey, Mario, you got company.”

  “It’s easier to find him at work. When he’s not working, he’s almost like a ghost,” Charles said.

  Mario was working near the back bumper of a 1970-something totally tricked out Monte Carlo. From the looks of the undercarriage, the car had hydraulics. He stood and stretched out his legs, then twisted his back to both sides as if working out some kinks. With his head cocked and a questioning look on his face, he approached us.

  I stepped forward and introduced myself.

  “What you want with me?” Mario asked. Full gangster mode.

  I wondered if he was always like this or just for show.

  As he pushed his hand up under the short sleeve of his white cotton work shirt to scratch his shoulder, I could see part of a tattoo. I couldn’t quite make it out, and I didn’t want to stare.

  “We’re here to talk to you about your brother,” Charles said, not introducing himself.

  A ghostly look came over Mario’s face. “Hector?”

  Neither Charles or I acknowledged his question. We both just stood and looked at him.

  When he said nothing, I finally said, “You got another brother?”

  “Man, I already talked to the cops. What do you want?” He shoved his hands deep in the front pockets of his Dickies work pants.

  “Well, you’ll probably see us again and again until the trial is over,” I said.

  Mario rolled his eyes. “Hector be in jail. If you need to talk to him, you can find him at county. You know where that be? Natividad Road?”

  “We’ve already talked to Hector. Now we want to talk to you. Can we go outside?” Charles’ voice had a quiver that said his patience was already wearing thin.

  Mario looked at the man who was probably his boss, and the man nodded. Mario walked past us and opened the door, walking outside. Charles and I followed close behind, in case he bolted, which would only make him look guilty, but he might do it anyway.

  Damn, the wind had picked up and it was chilly. Mario was wearing only his work uniform; he must be freezing.
At least I had on a North Face jacket with a liner.

  Once out on the street, Mario looked around as if he was expecting someone. Then he moved to the side wall of the building and stood against it. The entire time he spoke with us, his eyes wandered.

  “Hector says you were having an affair with his fiancée.” Charles didn’t beat around the bush.

  Mario smirked. “Pinche cabrón,” he said under his breath, then added, “I was doing his novia before they were dating. But I ain’t got nothin’ to do wit her now.”

  I was going to have to look in a Spanish English dictionary. I knew pinche cabrón was a swear word, and I thought novia was girlfriend or something like it, maybe fiancée.

  “Were you ever jealous of your brother for taking your old girlfriend?” I asked.

  Mario bent his leg and rested his foot against the building. “Sure, I was jealous. I was furious. When she first dated Hector, I was an asshole to them. But Zhen and Hector be friends for years, I never ‘spected him to start screwing her. But that was years ago. I be over it.”

  “So what was going on between you and Zhen that Hector would think you would kill her?”

  I’d like to say Mario was shaking his head, but it was more like he was rolling it around on his neck. “Hector be loco. I never liked Zhen enough to kill her. I heard someone be sayin’ Hector think I killed Zhen because if I couldn’t have her no one could, but I be tellin’ you, I didn’t want her no more. I ain’t got no time for a girlfriend.”

  “Maybe you wanted Zhen just for kicks, not a girlfriend. You could hook up with her on the side, while she was still with your brother. No strings,” Charles said, trying to put words in his mouth and making it sound enticing.

  “I don’t got time for that shit. I only got time for hooking up, but not with trouble attached. I got me some big plans, and a girl jus’ be getting’ in the way.” His body stiffened, he puffed out his chest, showing us how tough he was.

  “What are your new plans, Mario? To take over your brother’s spot in the gang?”