The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 1-3: Redemption Thriller Series 7-9 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “Uggh.”

  “Okay, sorry, but I can’t believe you didn’t call me.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s crazy…it’s blowing up social media. Hold up, it’s on the news right now. Turn on Channel 4.”

  I turned around so quickly that I rammed my big toe into the door frame. “Shit!” I said, hopping on one foot, which only made my head pound that much more.

  “Hurry up. It’s that reporter I met at that bar. Carlos.” I tuned out what she was saying as I tossed magazines, work files, and my throw blanket off of the living room couch to find the remote control.

  “There it is.” I pulled it from the crack of the cushions and clicked the power button.

  “Why is he standing in front of police headquarters?” I asked.

  “Shush, he’s talking. I want to see if he’s got the same story I found on Snapchat.”

  I didn’t respond, my eyes and ears focusing on the reporter.

  “We have breaking news on the double homicide at the home of Russell and Gwen Gideon,” he said, glancing down for some type of dramatic pause, it seemed. “In a press conference that just ended, Lead Detective Rick Huerta and Bexar County District Attorney Andrew Ballard announced the conclusion of their investigation. Miguel Garza, the little boy who was living with the Gideons—placed in the home by CPS—has been charged with voluntary manslaughter. Here is Detective Huerta from just moments ago.”

  “What the hell?” My pulse exploded.

  Zahera shushed me again. Huerta’s mug came to life on the screen.

  “This horrific crime that led to an innocent boy, Tommy Gideon, being gunned down deserved the full attention and resources of the San Antonio Police Department and the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office,” he said, grabbing each side of the lectern as if he owned the stage. “His parents, Russell and Gwen, asked only that justice be served. And we have taken the first step to give them what they want, what they need—justice.”

  He looked down at the lectern, shuffling some papers. I took note of his fancy suit, red and blue silk tie, and his pristine white dress shirt. It seemed to be auditioning for a role much higher than detective.

  “After an extensive investigation, including ballistics reports, eyewitness accounts, and a second-by-second evaluation of the timeline of events up to and during the final showdown at the Gideon home, we have come to the conclusion that Miguel Garza shot his foster brother, Tommy Gideon, once in the head. We believe it was intentional. He is being charged with voluntary manslaughter.”

  The crowd around Huerta erupted with jeers and cheers alike. It was difficult to determine which was louder, but it was obvious that many people in the community were emotionally invested in the case.

  A quick switch back to Zahera’s reporter buddy, Carlos, an attractive young man with a serious look on his face. He said, “As you could see and hear in that clip, this crime has created a swell of emotions across the city, even the state. I spoke with four people who had driven in from El Paso just to show their support for little Miguel, and then five minutes later, I overheard a couple from Dallas, who said they felt compelled to make the drive to San Antonio to lend their support and, if needed, pressure the police department and DA’s office. Apparently, they had a daughter who was killed by a teenage assailant, and he only received a sentence of probation. More on that topic from District Attorney Andrew Ballard, who spoke just after Detective Huerta.”

  The video didn’t immediately start, and Carlos just stood there, looking at a small notepad, and then he raised his head, gazing somewhere beyond his camera person.

  “Ivy, are you still breathing?”

  I had a hand on the back of the couch, my legs feeling like cooked spaghetti. “I’m here, but I still can’t believe they filed charges this quickly. Huerta’s investigation…I don’t think it was thorough enough.”

  “Wasn’t Stan a part of the investigation too?”

  “In name only, Z. Huerta kept him a part of it, but at arm’s length, just to show the brass he was being inclusive. It was all a show. Hell, this whole thing seems like nothing more than a circus. I wonder if that fucker, Huerta, has something riding on a conviction.”

  The TV came back to life. “Sorry about our technical difficulties,” Carlos said. “Here is the video from DA Andrew Ballard.”

  “We’ll have to see what this blowhard says now,” I snuck in.

  “Shush,” Zahera said.

  A barrel-chested man with bushy eyebrows who could have doubled as a Russian general, cleared his throat, then held up his hands to quiet the chatter from the crowd. “I appreciate all of the hard work that Detective Huerta and his colleagues at the San Antonio Police Department put in on this case. Investigating a murder is not easy, and when it’s the murder of a little child, it’s incredibly difficult…for all of us.” He pressed his lips together and repositioned the microphone a little higher.

  The whole scene was making my stomach spin.

  Ballard continued. “We had a lively internal discussion around the charges for ten-year-old Miguel Garza. With him technically being a minor, we knew right off this was not a standard case for anyone involved. We took this very seriously.”

  “Serious my ass,” I said.

  “They can’t hear you, Ivy. Only I can. Save the commentary for later, will ya?”

  “Okay,” I grudgingly said as Ballard opened his mouth again.

  “We have charged Miguel Garza with voluntary manslaughter because we believe this is the appropriate charge. It could have been argued that he be charged with murder, but because we believe this was an act of passion and emotion, we went with the lesser charge.”

  A few moans from the crowd, at least from those who thought Miguel should be hanged at high noon.

  “In addition to filing the voluntary manslaughter charges with Miguel as a minor, I will also petition the court to shift his status to that of an adult.”

  I glanced away from the TV as my mind replayed what I’d just heard. A ten-year-old boy would be tried as an adult? Shouting from all around the DA brought my attention back to the TV.

  “I’m aware that in our current laws, this is not standard practice. But as I mentioned earlier, we have given this case and the individuals involved considerable thought. I’m not going to share my entire brief here in the media, but I will say that Miguel Garza is a danger to society. In a juvenile trial, a judge has the power to grant a sentence as lenient as probation. That is not something we support, and that is not something we think is in the best interest of the safety of our city.”

  A bunch of reporters practically leaped at Ballard and the lectern, and then the screen cut to Carlos once again.

  “The scene has calmed down a great deal since the end of that press conference, just a few people milling about here in front of the police department,” he said, turning his head for a moment to look over his shoulder. “Now, in looking at the law in the state of Texas, for a felony offense, a youth fourteen years or older can be certified to stand trial in the adult criminal courts. For serious offenders who remain in the juvenile system, the Determinate Sentencing Law allows a juvenile to be confined up to forty years, first in a Texas Youth Commission facility, followed by an optional court transfer to an adult prison once he turns eighteen years of age. But as you heard DA Ballard say, they intend to make an exception with Miguel Garza. We’ll stay on top of the story as events unfold.”

  I stabbed the mute button, then tossed the remote on the couch, staring at the reporter who continued to talk. My mind was cluttered with an endless stream of images from the day of the incident, my meeting with Miguel at the juvenile center, and then my disturbing interaction with the Gideon family and their scumbag lawyer.

  “Now you have a chance to talk and you’re not saying anything,” Zahera said. “I know this must feel like a load of bricks just dropped on your head.”

  “Yep.” I swallowed a dry patch in my throat.

  “It sucks, I
vy. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “Maybe they’re right. Maybe Miguel did kill Tommy.”

  “Is this Ivy Nash I’m speaking to?” I could hear a repetitive thump on the phone. She must have been tapping the mic. “Hello, are you still you?”

  “Yes, I’m me,” I said with more calm than I felt. “Those bricks you mentioned actually landed on my chest. It’s difficult to breathe right now.”

  I inhaled a large breath, then slowly exhaled.

  “You sound like one of my patients practicing her Lamaze routine.”

  “Funny.”

  “Are you seriously thinking Miguel did it?”

  “I don’t know…maybe. Regardless, I still don’t like how the investigation was handled. And to try him as an adult when he’s just ten. Ten, dammit. I really don’t have words for the insanity.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “I guess I go take a shower and then go do my job. Hubbard should be happy that for now CPS isn’t the lead story. As she had hoped, the focus of the world is on a ten-year-old boy facing charges for killing his foster brother.”

  I could hear a sniffle on the other end.

  “It’s so sad to see people’s lives disintegrate like this.” She had let her emotion go, and I wasn’t far behind her.

  “I know, Z. All of these adults were either crazy or negligent in letting this happen. And frankly, we at CPS played a role in it.”

  “What? How?”

  “The odds were against Miguel for many reasons, and then we placed him in this home.”

  “But his own dad created this firestorm.”

  My mind was finally processing everything I’d heard, and I thought more about the comments the DA made about choosing the voluntary manslaughter charge. He and Huerta must have new evidence that showed Miguel was outwardly upset at the time he shot Tommy.

  “Huerta and Ballard…they’re hard-asses,” I said. “They’ve wanted Miguel to be guilty since the beginning. But the voluntary manslaughter charge means the crime was carried out as an act of passion. That tells me Miguel was under duress. And I’m going to find out why.”

  21

  With my hair still wet and a towel wrapped around my body, I rushed to my front door to answer the intercom buzzer from downstairs.

  “Yes?” I asked, rubbing a cotton ball under my eyes.

  “It’s Stan. We need to talk.”

  “I called you two times, and you never picked up. I figured you were caught up in another internal meeting. This whole thing is crazy, Stan. I’ve got to find out—”

  “Can you just buzz me in already?”

  He sounded beat-up and tired, but I was in a towel. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll meet you out front.”

  It took more like ten. I had to get in my fifty sit-ups—a daily routine of mine since some college punk at a bar told me that I “could stand a lose a few.” I knew he was drunk and stupid, but I was no different than any other girl. If you heard it, you started to think it, even if it was farfetched. I figured my sit-up regimen was the healthiest way to respond. And it just kind of stuck with me over the years.

  My hair was still damp when I stepped outside. The air was crisp, but warmer than it had been the last ten days. The sun peeked between clouds as I made my way to the curb and got in Stan’s car. He threw the car into drive and punched the gas of his city-issued, four-door Buick. Someone blasted a horn, and I whiplashed forward when Stan hit the brake.

  “Shit, I forgot to look. Sorry,” he said to the man who drove past mouthing obscenities at us.

  Stan waited a couple of seconds, glanced over his shoulder, then screeched rubber as he moved into traffic.

  “Are you okay, Stan?”

  “Hell no. Another night of no sleep. My wife is pissed at me for not coming home, and then there’s the whole mess that went down earlier this morning.”

  “That’s why I called you.”

  “I was expecting it.”

  He reached into the center console, opened a small box, and pulled out what looked like a strawberry donut with chocolate frosting. He took an enormous bite while he drove with his wrist hanging over the steering wheel.

  “Yum,” he said. “Best donuts in town, even if they are a day old. Want one?”

  I held up a hand. “Uh…I’ll pass.”

  “That’s cool. Just more for me.”

  I leaned over to look into the box. “You’ve got six more donuts in there.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “After the night I’ve had, I need a little sugar kick.”

  “This should kick you all the way to the moon. And then you’ll probably crash.”

  “Eh,” he said, munching into another bit of donut as he executed a left turn, hardly looking at the traffic, his tires squealing again.

  “Stan, did you know about all of these charges?”

  “Not until just a couple of hours ago.”

  My back hit the seat, trying to avoid the crumbs flying out of his mouth.

  “Sorry,” he said, picking up a coffee from his cup holder and slurping down a gulp. “Did you have your morning coffee yet? We can stop and get you a cup.”

  “That’s fine. The next drive-thru would be good.”

  “Hey, what happened to your elbow?” My coat was draped across my lap, and the sleeves of my blouse were pushed up; I’d forgotten to button them.

  “I’m kind of a mess, Stan,” I said, raking my fingers through my hair, “but in a different way than you.”

  We both chuckled a few seconds, knowing how accurate that statement really was.

  “How did this happen, Stan?”

  He glanced over at me, his eyes so bloodshot it was difficult to see any white. “If you were to believe Huerta, he just followed the evidence.”

  “But why so quickly? Do you think you guys—”

  “Don’t put me in that group. I would have gone about this investigation entirely differently. Would I have come to the same conclusion? Possibly, but there was no deadline, no reason to rush things. This could have easily gone a few more days or a week before filing any type of charge.”

  I nodded. “This voluntary-manslaughter charge. I realized there could be something we don’t know about. Some type of pressure Miguel was facing that caused him to respond so violently.”

  He raised his hand. “Believe it or not, it was me.”

  “Do what?”

  “Huerta insisted I meet with Miguel one more time, but with the explicit instructions that I ask him why he did it, not if he did it.”

  “Isn’t that coercion of a child? What the hell were you thinking, Stan?”

  He rubbed his face. The drooping bags under his eyes stretched as if they were made of Silly Putty. They took an extra moment to return back to their normal place. “I don’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t trying to coerce anyone; I was just following orders. I guess Huerta thought I could just be a little more gentle about it.”

  “And what did Miguel say?”

  Stan pointed at a coffee shop up on the right, then he cut the car into the parking lot, and we bounced for a few seconds. I wasn’t sure he had any shocks left in the heap.

  He took in a breath. “Miguel told me that Tommy said mean things to him,” he said, shifting his eyes to me at the wrong moment.

  “Look out, Stan!”

  He jabbed his foot on the brake, rocking us to a stop in front of a man whizzing across the lot in a wheelchair. He just shook his head and motored by us.

  “Got to pay better attention,” Stan said, smacking himself in the face.

  We pulled to a stop behind a purple muscle car in the drive-thru line, and Stan immediately reached into the console for another donut. This one was jelly-filled. One bite, and a dollop of jelly fell onto his shirt. It was like watching a two-year-old eat.

  “Crap,” he said, rubbing a napkin across his belly. Part of me wanted to jump in and help the poor guy, but I wasn’t about to get near that belly.

  “So these
mean things…what did Tommy say exactly?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I tried getting more out of him, but he clammed up.”

  I bit the side of my cheek. “Aren’t you curious what Tommy said to Miguel?”

  “Hell yes I am. You should have heard me talking to Huerta. I told him that given this new evidence, we needed to take our time and dig further, interview the family members again, and try to find out what had Miguel upset enough to kill another kid.”

  “And what did he say?”

  He pursed his lips. Jelly squeezed out, and I pointed at my own lips. “You missed something.”

  Using the messy napkin, he wiped at his lips but ended up smearing jelly into his mustache.

  “Huerta started laughing at me, saying I’d been spending too much time hanging out with…” He paused and looked my way.

  “With?”

  “As he put it, ‘That CPS leech, Ivy Nash.’”

  “Nice. I’m a leech.”

  “He’s an asshole. But I think that’s been well documented before that statement, before this investigation.”

  Stan inched the car forward, and I hollered my order through his window.

  “So you believe the cops should talk to Monique, Gwen, and Russell again?” I asked.

  He nodded. “And separately.”

  “Did that not happen in the first interview?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Monique was a mess, so they let—”

  “Don’t tell me—they let her father sit in on the interview.”

  Stan paused mid-bite and nodded. With food still in his mouth, he gulped down more coffee.

  “Is there anything we can do, Stan? This just isn’t right.”

  “I’ve been racking my brain all morning…as in, since three this morning when Huerta got out of a meeting with Ballard and told me what was going to happen. Going above him…I don’t think it will work. He’s former Internal Affairs. At best, I would be blacklisted, eventually fired for insubordination.”

  I rubbed my temples, my headache getting worse by the minute. We finally pulled up to the window, and Stan handed me my caffeine fix. Steam coiled out of the tiny hole, but that didn’t stop me from taking in a mouthful. I could feel it heat up my chest on the way down.