For Just Cause

by Kara Lennox

  “What about Father Benito?” she asked in the elevator on the way down.

  “I feel very uncomfortable investigating a priest,” he said. “Besides, what are the odds that an older guy like that is caught up in a mess like this? Stolen coins, fake death, assault…I don’t see it.”

  “We’re just going to have a friendly chat,” she reasoned. “It’s not like we’ll drag him to an interrogation room and break out the rubber hoses and cattle prods. If he can help us, fine. If not, what have we lost?”

  “Claudia. So what if we find the coins. How does it help us clear Mary-Francis?”

  “We know Eduardo is looking for the coins. If he finds them, he’s lost to us. He runs back to Mexico or wherever, sells the coins, creates a new identity, maybe gets plastic surgery…and Mary-Francis dies. But if we find them first, Eduardo is still close, still looking. Still catchable.”

  Damn. She had a good point. “All right. We talk to the priest. But let me do the talking. I grew up around priests. I understand how the system operates.”

  “Okay, but we should work out a signal I can give if I spot possible deception.”

  He grinned. “We don’t have to work out anything. When you spot a lie, you give this tiny shake of your head.”

  “I do?” She sounded genuinely surprised.

  “I noticed it that first day, when we were interviewing Mary-Francis. And again when we were talking to Angie.”

  “Huh.”

  He loved that he’d surprised her. “Now who’s the body language expert?”

  “If I’m doing that, I need to stop it. How about if I just touch my ear?”

  “You think that’s more subtle?” he asked dubiously.

  “Never mind. We’ll stick with what’s working.”

  * * *

  BY THE TIME THEY REACHED Claudia’s office parking garage, Beth was already there, dressed neck-to-foot in a baggy, white Tyvek jumpsuit. She even had a white shower-cap-type headgear covering her curly brown hair.

  A man who had just exited his car gave her a curious look as he walked past.

  “About time you two got here,” she said good-naturedly. “I was afraid someone would call the cops on the whack job hanging out in your garage. Claudia, how are you doing?” She raised a hand to her mouth. “Did you break your arm? Oh, and look at your poor black eye.”

  Claudia appreciated Beth’s concern. “I’m okay. I tore some ligaments. Not too bad, all things considered.”

  Billy looked nervous. He gave the parking garage a thorough going-over to make sure no one was lurking, waiting for a chance to attack, though logic told them her assailant wouldn’t be hanging around the scene of the crime.

  “So we’re looking for fingernails?” Beth snapped a pair of needle-nose tweezers in the air, obviously anxious to get to work. She had a big case at her feet, like a tackle box on steroids, in which she carried all the tools for evidence collection.

  “That’s it.” Billy said. “Claudia, where did it happen?”

  “I’m parked right over here.” She led them to the general area where she always parked. And there was her Roadster, right where she’d left it. She paused and closed her eyes as a wave of nausea washed over her.

  “Claudia?” Billy was at her side in an instant, his hand at her waist, ready to catch her if she should topple.

  “I’m sorry, I just need to…” She was shocked at the sudden onslaught of feelings, almost as if the assault were only now occurring. All of the terror and the fierce, violent anger she’d felt toward her attacker bloomed in her chest and tears sprang to her eyes.

  Was this what post-traumatic stress felt like? She’d seen it in her patients, read descriptions, but she’d had no idea it could happen to her.

  “I’ve got a bottle of water right here.” Beth sounded worried.

  Claudia held out her good hand in a halt gesture. “Just give me a minute.” Billy’s hand at her waist felt nice, reassuring. She took several slow, deep breaths, silently reminding herself that she was safe, she was with friends. Billy would protect her.

  The tears receded, her throat relaxed. She opened her eyes to find Billy and Beth staring at her as if they expected her to start screaming or foaming at the mouth.

  She managed a smile. “I’m okay now. Sorry. That was weird. I guess I haven’t fully processed—” She stopped herself. Billy and Beth didn’t want to hear her psychological justification for her minor freak-out. They just wanted her to be okay.

  Claudia deliberately stepped away from Billy’s light, protective embrace so he would know she was better now. She walked between her car and the one next to it, trying to remember if this was the right place. “I think it happened right here. The struggle, I mean.” She tried to recall exactly what she’d done when he grabbed her, when she’d scratched him, when she might have lost the fingernails, but she drew a blank.

  “He was probably hiding behind a parked car near yours,” Billy theorized.

  “Let’s start with this area, right around Claudia’s car,” Beth said. “If we don’t find anything, we’ll expand outward. In a struggle, sometimes evidence can get flung much farther than you’d guess.”

  Claudia felt superfluous, just watching Beth and Billy do all the hard work, but she was hardly in any shape to crawl around on concrete. She perched on the hood of her car—right where her attacker had banged her head, she realized grimly—and watched as the two of them shone their enormous flashlights over the ground inch by inch.

  Twenty minutes later, they’d found four pennies and a dime, an earring, a few minute drops of blood—probably Claudia’s—and a Kool cigarette butt, which Beth dutifully collected and bagged.

  No fingernails.

  “They probably ended up on the bottom of someone’s shoe,” Claudia said glumly. “Or wedged in someone’s tire.”

  Beth’s face brightened. “The tires. That’s one place we didn’t look.”

  They searched the treads of nearby cars, extracting every pebble hiding there in case it was a fingernail in disguise. Just when they were about to give up, Billy called out.

  “I think I found one!”

  Beth rushed over, across the aisle and into the next row, where Billy was stooped over the front tire of a Jeep Cherokee. Claudia followed at a more sedate pace, but she was no less excited. If she had Eduardo’s DNA under her nails, that annoying district attorney in Montgomery County couldn’t continue to pretend the man was dead. They would have to overturn Mary-Francis’s conviction.

  Beth first examined the object Billy had found with a magnifying glass, then took pictures of it as well as the Jeep, widening her field of vision until she took in the vehicle’s location within the garage. Only then did she use her trusty needle-nose tweezers to extract the foreign object.

  “This is definitely a fingernail. Claudia, let me see your hand.”

  Claudia held out her right hand, including the two fingers with their ragged, partial nails, which she purposely hadn’t filed down. Beth held up the specimen close to Claudia’s pinky finger, then grinned. “I think we have a match.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “GREAT.” CLAUDIA TURNED to Billy. “Please let me know when you find out anything.” She lowered her voice, glancing nervously at Beth, who seemed to be engrossed in properly storing and tagging the fingernail. “I really appreciate how you took care of me last night. You were very understanding. You’ll let me know when you go to see the priest? I’d really like to be in on that interview.” She’d figured out that it was useless to push Billy into questioning Father Benito. This was his investigation, and he would proceed in his own way.

  She also knew that sooner or later, he would reach the same conclusion she had—that the priest was up to something. She only hoped no one else figured out he might be involved.

  She leaned in to give Billy a chaste kiss on the cheek, though she longed to do more, and turned toward the door that led into her office building.

  “Wait a minute. Where ar
e you going?”

  “I have work to do. Patients to see?”

  “Claudia…”

  “What? My office is secure. Everyone who visits the building has to check in, you saw that. And I can have a security guard walk me to my car when I’m ready to go home.” The thought of retracing yesterday’s steps made her slightly queasy, but if she didn’t immediately face her fears, she risked developing a phobia about parking garages or walking anywhere alone. She’d treated enough patients with phobias to know that an irrational fear could spring from any traumatic event, even a minor one.

  Billy widened his stance and folded his arms. “Someone. Tried. To. Kill. You.”

  “Scare me,” she corrected. “If he’d meant to kill me, why would he have bothered to warn me away from the Torres family?”

  “Let me put it another way. If you stay here, I stay here. And if I stay here, I can’t do any more investigating.”

  She wouldn’t mind Billy hanging around, but not if he was going to watch her as though she was a five-year-old with a penchant for walking off cliffs. She folded her arms, mirroring him, and leaned against the cinder block wall of the parking structure. “What investigating do you have to do?”

  “First, I’m going to see what Angie and Jimmy are up to. We can’t legally tap their phones or plant listening devices, but Aaron Ziglar, one of the Project Justice techies, has a listening device that picks up voices through walls. Since the houses are so close, I’m going to see if a sympathetic neighbor will let me set up surveillance in their house, at a window that faces the Torres house.”

  “That’s brilliant. Is it legal?”

  Billy shrugged. “If it leads us to Eduardo, that won’t matter. Once we prove he’s alive, the prosecution can’t unprove it.”

  “Good luck, then.” She turned away again, intending to make a clean getaway this time. She needed some time away from Billy to get her head on straight. Spending the night half-naked in bed with him, even if they’d mostly just slept, had played havoc with her good judgment.

  “Wait.”

  She tried to hide her impatient sigh. “Yes?”

  “I want you to go back to my apartment and stay put. Rest. Recuperate. You’re injured. You’re traumatized.”

  “I’m fine. No one is trying to kill me. I will take necessary precautions.”

  Billy’s phone rang, interrupting their argument. He yanked it out of his jeans pocket and frowned at the screen. “Cantu.”

  She could have used the distraction to escape his eagle eye; he couldn’t force her to hide in his apartment. Not even Daniel could do that. He wasn’t her boss. But she was curious about the phone call. She couldn’t tell who was on the other end of the conversation because Billy did more listening than talking. But judging from the serious, intensely interested expression on his face, the caller had important news.

  When he ended the call, she looked at him expectantly. “Well?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe that was my mother.”

  “C’mon, Billy, don’t shut me out.”

  “Okay. It’s good news, for a change. That was Hudson Vale. Theresa has roused from her coma.”

  Beth, done with her evidence collecting, joined them, having overheard Billy’s announcement. “That’s great news! Is she okay? Talking? Does she have brain damage?”

  “Apparently she’s talking, but only a few words that don’t make a lot of sense. But her doctor is hopeful she’ll continue to improve. Hudson thought we’d like to know.”

  “We have to talk to her—before anyone taints her memories or plants ideas into her head. People with head injuries and possible memory loss have to be treated very gently if you want to get accurate information from them.”

  “Good to know.” Billy seemed uneasy all of a sudden.

  “Billy, you have to let me talk to her.”

  Billy looked away and blew out a frustrated breath. “This time, you’ll get your wish. Hudson specifically asked for you to interview Theresa. He’s read up on you and would be honored if you’d ‘help out.’”

  Claudia saw that the admission had cost Billy. He could have pretended that part of the conversation had never happened. He could have told Hudson that Claudia was unavailable. But he’d opted for the truth, even though it didn’t jibe with the way he wanted things to go.

  “Let me get my recorder from my office, and we can go.”

  * * *

  ST. CECELIA’S MEDICAL CENTER was the largest Catholic hospital in the city as well as one of the oldest and most prestigious teaching hospitals in the Southwest. It was situated in the medical corridor on Fannin Street, just south of the Southwest Freeway and only a few minutes from Claudia’s office building.

  Hudson Vale met them in the lobby, wearing a different Hawaiian shirt, this one featuring garish ukulele-playing hula dancers, along with a pair of faded jeans. Claudia wondered if the story about working undercover was legitimate; maybe he dressed like this every day. He certainly looked right at home attired like a beach bum, albeit a very good-looking one.

  “So glad you guys could make it.” He shook their hands enthusiastically. “Oh, man, I’m so jazzed she woke up and I’m terrified she’ll drop back into a coma. Her doctor said she wasn’t out of the woods yet, and it could be several days before he can give a reliable prognosis.”

  Claudia appreciated Hudson’s compassion, which obviously went beyond just concern over solving his case. He cared about his crime victim, too. He hadn’t been working at the job long enough to treat life-or-death situations with a blasé attitude.

  He might even care a little too much; cops who didn’t learn to detach emotionally from their work tended to burn out faster. But she was still charmed by his passion, though not in any way that should make Billy jealous.

  Billy seemed okay today around Hudson. Maybe her reassurances had actually convinced him. With some men, jealousy was a way of life; those were the kind to steer clear of.

  Raymond Bass hadn’t acted jealous. He’d been respectful of Claudia’s career aspirations, accepting of the fact that she had male friends and study partners. He’d passed himself off as enlightened, as if he’d viewed her as a true equal because he’d known, somehow, that was what she was looking for in a man.

  Raymond hadn’t been enlightened, of course. In reality he’d viewed women as playthings to be hunted and butchered like deer.

  She shivered and forced the memory out of her mind. Billy wasn’t a murderer or an abuser. But his experience as an undercover cop had taught him to reflect whatever persona or attitudes would get him what he wanted, and he sometimes used that ability in his work. She’d seen him do it with Theresa’s neighbor, Patty.

  He seemed more genuine with her, but she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could take him at face value.

  “Theresa is still in intensive care,” Hudson was explaining. “That means one visitor for ten minutes each hour.”

  “Does she have family members who also want to visit?” Claudia asked as they all stepped onto an elevator. She hated the idea of monopolizing Theresa’s limited visiting times she could be spending with loved ones.

  “The son from Arizona is on his way but not here yet. We have her to ourselves for now. I haven’t said very much to her, other than explaining she was involved in a crime I was investigating.”

  “That’s good,” Claudia said. “That you haven’t influenced her memories, I mean.”

  “Claudia,” Hudson said, “I want you to talk to Theresa first. She seems fearful, and I’m afraid if she opens her eyes and sees Billy straightaway, she’ll be so scared she’ll clamp her mouth shut and never open it again.”

  “Hey,” Billy objected. “Maybe I’m not a pretty boy like you, but I’ve never frightened animals or small children.”

  “He didn’t mean it that way,” Claudia said. “He means you can be pretty intimidating when you’re questioning someone.”

  “Me?” Billy said innocently.

  He probabl
y didn’t like giving over control to her. This was his case, his baby. He’d made the decision to pursue it, committed all kinds of resources to it—surveillance teams, equipment, his time. Successfully closing cases at Project Justice was the way employees there achieved status, position and pay raises.

  But in her heart she knew Hudson was right. Theresa would feel more comfortable with a woman than a man she didn’t know.

  “All right. But you get one crack at her. If she doesn’t spill, next hour it’s my turn.” Billy ran his fingers through his short hair, something he did when he was unsure of himself. It didn’t happen very often. “Is her doctor okay with this?”

  “Dr. Kim. He wants to catch the bastard, too. So long as we follow the rules and don’t upset her, he’s cool. He said she’s still emerging from the coma, but she’s started to speak purposefully—she hears and understands some, at least.”

  They had to cool their heels a few minutes in the ICU waiting room. A group of medical students were observing Theresa so they could learn about a patient emerging from a coma.

  Claudia spent her time formulating how she would approach Theresa, depending on her condition. And when she felt sufficiently prepared, she jotted some notes on her phone as to how she would question Father Benito.

  Whether Billy agreed or not, she intended to talk to the priest.

  After a few minutes, a nurse poked her head in the doorway and announced that Theresa was ready for her visitor. Claudia nodded, stood and smiled as Billy and Hudson gave her two encouraging thumbs-up.

  Theresa Esteve looked ghastly—there was no other word for it. She was hooked up to all kinds of machines—a heart monitor, a machine that analyzed the carbon dioxide content of her breath to see if she was getting enough oxygen into her lungs, another machine that measured the actual oxygen absorbed into her bloodstream. There were so many machines, tubes and wires that Theresa nearly disappeared.

  There was only one place to sit, the rolling stool used by the doctor. Claudia claimed it and sat down, reaching for Theresa’s emaciated hand.

  There but for the grace of God go I.