Mission Road

by Rick Riordan

Page 11

 

  He’d never noticed the amber color of her eyes before, the way her short black hair curled behind her ears. She wore no makeup, but she had nice lips, the color of plums. He found himself wondering what she would look like in civilian clothes—a dress, perhaps.

  Thirty years later, he could still remember the way she looked that night.

  He opened his eyes. He thought again about what Miss Lee had told him.

  He’d never trusted any cop the way he trusted Lucia. He sure as hell didn’t trust Kelsey to do things right.

  He dialed the private number of a detective who owed him a favor—a narcotics guy who would’ve lost his job in an IA investigation if Etch hadn’t withheld some damaging information.

  “This is Hernandez,” Etch told him. “I need you to do some surveillance for me. Starting now. ”

  MAIA WATCHED RETIRED M. E. JAIME SANTOS play golf for ten minutes before she decided he hated the game.

  “You ever try driving with a nine-iron, Miss Lee?” he asked. “Horrible technique. ”

  The old man eyed the golf ball like it had offended him. He tapped it tentatively, holding his club in vein-gnarled hands. He swung. With a crack, the ball sailed toward the tenth hole. It rolled to a stop at the edge of the green.

  If the swing gave him any pleasure, Santos didn’t show it. He pulled the pin out of the turf like a pest control expert extracting vermin.

  Maia said, “Dr. Santos—”

  “Call me Jaime. ”

  “—if I could ask you about the case. ”

  Santos’ eyes were watery brown.

  Despite his sour expression, Maia thought she detected kindness there—deeply submerged, diluted from years of autopsying every type of atrocity man can do to man—but still present.

  He glanced at the two caddies—his own, and the one who’d brought Maia out to the course. “Why don’t y’all run and get some drinks or something? The young lady and I will walk from here. ”

  “But, sir, your bag—”

  “I got a nine-iron,” the doctor snapped. “What else do I need?”

  He handed them each a twenty. The caddies got in their golf carts and drove away.

  Maia and Santos began walking.

  A cold drizzle fell.

  In the distance, Highway 281 was shrouded with mist. Christmas lights blinked on the smokestacks of the Quarry shopping center.

  “So you’re Tres Navarre’s friend,” Santos mused. “Met him a few times. Dark hair? Pain in the ass?”

  “That’s him. ”

  “He did some work for a friend of mine who was down on his luck. Got the loan sharks off his back. He wouldn’t accept any payment. ”

  “That’s him, too. ”

  The old man found his golf ball, gazed across the green toward the tenth hole flag. “Thirty years of autopsies, Miss Lee, they all tend to run together. But the Franklin White case . . . like I told the lady cop, that’s one you remember. ”

  “You spoke with Sergeant DeLeon?”

  Santos studied his putting angle, didn’t seem to like it. He nudged the ball a little closer to the hole with his foot. “Seven blows to the head. Six of those to the face. Don’t see pure rage like that very often. Mind you, plenty of people were mad at him. That young man made his father look like a gentleman. ”

  “How do you mean?”

  Santos gave her a raised eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. ”

  Santos gripped his club, faced the ball. “I hate golf. Blood pressure. Had to do something. ”

  “Jaime, about Franklin White?”

  Santos sighed. “Back in ’87 there was a string of rape-murders on the South Side. Half a dozen young women picked up in bars, driven to secluded spots, raped and strangled. These women, all nineteen, twenty years old. All of them bright college girls, sweet kids. The kind of young women families pin their hopes on. You look at their photos . . . ” The old man shook his head sadly, as if he could still see the victims’ faces. “Nobody was ever arrested, but they got a sketch of a man seen talking to one of the victims shortly before she disappeared. Young Anglo guy, blond and stocky, looked a lot like Guy White’s son. ”

  Maia felt her nausea coming back.

  “You all right, Miss Lee?”

  “I’m fine. ”

  Santos studied her more carefully. “Let me see your hands. ”

  “Why?”

  “Come on now. ”

  Reluctantly, she extended her hands. The old man pressed at her fingers, felt her pulse.

  “I’m fine,” she said again, pulling away. “Sergeant DeLeon thought you knew something about the Franklin White case. Something important, maybe about the blood under Franklin’s fingernails?”

  For another moment, the old man stared at her. Then he turned his attention back to the golf ball. “Guy White isn’t what he used to be, Miss Lee, but he’s still vicious. Maybe more so now that he doesn’t have much time. ”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “You can’t be evil as long as Guy White’s been evil without it catching up with you. Rots you from the inside. That’s my medical opinion. ” He tapped the ball. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stir up the Whites. I see a lot of directions this might go. I don’t like any of them, after what happened to the sergeant. ”

  “DeLeon wrote something about the timing being wrong. ”

  “I don’t know about that. The timing . . . I told Ana she should ask Mike Flume out at the Pig Stand. He could probably tell you about that, if the old bastard is still alive. Mike vouched for Lucia and Etch Hernandez that night. They had to have a clean alibi, see. All the cops involved did. ”

  “Why?”

  Santos pulled back his nine-iron. He hit the ball much too hard and watched it roll past the hole.

  “Hell with it,” he murmured. “Seemed so important at the time. That’s the problem with getting old—you stop caring about secrets. The weapon marks—”

  “Detective Kelsey said the murder weapon was a tire iron. ”

  Santos’ mouth twitched. “Kelsey knows better. But, yeah. That’s the story we decided to go with. ”

  “You lied in the report?”

  “I was . . . vague. Had to be, or we would’ve had a war on our hands. Those marks were consistent with a very specific type of bludgeoning device. Murder weapon was never recovered, mind you, but the match was pretty damn exact. Police nightstick. The type most patrolmen carried back then. ”

  Maia felt as if the rain and the cold were soaking into her bones, turning her to ice water. “Did Kelsey work the scene, too?”

  Santos shook his head. “As I recall, he was still on medical leave, but you better believe he scrambled to get an alibi. ”

  “Medical leave. ”

  “Few months before the murder, Kelsey had had a run-in with Frankie White. Frankie was brandishing a knife in a bar on the Riverwalk. Kelsey was a rookie, straight out of the academy. He made the mistake of trying to take Frankie’s knife away. ”

  “The scars on Kelsey’s hands. ”

  “Almost lost several fingers. Afterward, Guy White took Kelsey apart in front of his superiors. White’s lawyers turned the whole incident upside down, claimed Kelsey was responsible for using excessive force. Nearly got Kelsey kicked out of the department. ” Santos sighed. “There weren’t many cops back then who hadn’t had run-ins with the White family, Miss Lee, but I’d appreciate it if you’re more careful with this information than Ana DeLeon was. I don’t like young ladies getting shot. ”

  Maia watched the cold rain drifting across the hills. She imagined Frankie White, the blond preppie from 1987, as a rapist-murderer, not so different from the elf who’d attacked her that morning. She imagined the same wild light in Frankie’s eyes, the same foul breath. She could easily put herself in the place of those women Frankie had murdered, his hands closing around her throat.

  “Thanks, Ja
ime,” she said. “I’ll tell Tres you said hello. ”

  “You sure you’re feeling all right?”

  “I’m fine. Probably just something I ate. ”

  He smiled in a sad way, like he’d just come across a tender love note in the pocket of an autopsy subject. “One more question, Miss Lee, just because you can’t fool an old doctor. Does Tres Navarre know you’re pregnant?”

  Chapter 6

  REMEMBERING RALPH’S SECOND COUSIN was a stroke of inspiration, if I do say so myself.

  Like many San Antonians, Guy White ordered large quantities of tamales for his Christmas celebrations, and Ralph’s cousin from Mama’s Cocina delivered to all of the biggest accounts. The rich Anglos loved this. It gave them the flavor of a Tejano Christmas without the trouble of actually going to the West Side and mixing with Hispanics.

  At any rate, hiding in the back of the cousin’s delivery van was the only thing that got us past police surveillance—a black Chevrolet sitting across the street from Guy White’s mansion. It had tinted windows and a slapdash stenciling job that read Lou’s Electronics.

  “SAPD?” I murmured to Ralph.

  “Nah, they’d blend in better. I’d say federal. Not for us. ”

  He tried to sound confident about it—or as confident as you can be, crammed in between forty-pound canisters of hot tamales.

  “FBI,” I speculated. “That execution White ordered in Louisiana. ”

  “I’m guessing Secret Service. The counterfeit twenties. ”

  “Ten bucks says FBI. ”

  “You’re on. ”

  From the front seat, Ralph’s second cousin said nervously, “I’m telling you guys, if you cost me this job—”

  “No worries,” I told him. “If we get caught, you can say we’re tamale-jackers. ”

  I’m not sure that made him feel any better, but he pulled up to the gates of the mansion.

  In one of San Antonio’s weirder architectural fantasies, the house had been built to resemble a miniature White House. I’d never been clear whether Guy White constructed the place to reflect his name, or bought it that way because it did. Either way, it was a pathetic attempt at grandeur—like a Taj Mahal model on a putt-putt course.

  As we waited to be buzzed in, I tried to figure out why the grounds looked so gloomy. Maybe it was the winter fog, or the bare pecan trees. Even the Christmas tree in the windows seemed to glitter halfheartedly.

  Then I realized the gardens were dying.

  The few times I’d been here before, whatever the season, Guy White had taken meticulous personal pride in his gardens. Now there were no plants to speak of. No winter blooms. Just weeds and yellow grass.

  A woman’s curt voice came over the intercom. Ralph’s cousin nervously announced himself.

  The iron gates rolled open.

  The back of the van was like a grease sauna. On either side of me, metal canisters cooked their way through my coat sleeves.

  “You got a plan what to say, vato?” Ralph dabbed the sweat off his forehead.

  “Let’s play it organic,” I said.