She shook her head as if she could not conceive of it ever happening. “I don’t understand Rubén’s or Mr. Mendoza’s death. But the last time I spoke with Rubén, he seemed afraid.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you speak to him last?”
“About a week ago.”
Santana paused before he asked Angelina Torres if she knew Julio Pérez. Her answer might help him establish a connection between Mendoza and Pérez. But it might also lead her to believe that there was a connection between the two murders. And Santana had no credible evidence to draw that conclusion. He had his suspicions, but all he knew for certain was that the last call Pérez made was to Mendoza. Still, he thought it was worth the risk, especially if it helped him solve one or both murders.
“How about Julio Pérez? Did you know him?”
“We went to the same church. I only knew Mr. Pérez through Rubén. He seemed to be a very humble, very private man.”
Santana wrote down the information.
“It’s quite a coincidence that Mendoza and Pérez’s deaths occurred on the same evening?” Hidalgo said.
Santana looked up from his notebook. He had not considered what conclusions Hidalgo might draw from his questions.
“Do you think their deaths are connected, Detective Santana?”
There was a time when Santana would never have lied to a priest. That time had long since past.
“There’s no indication of that,” he said.
Hidalgo looked for a moment as though he wanted to pursue the possible murder connection in more detail, but then he nodded his head slowly in apparent agreement.
Rather than give the priest more time to think about it, Santana jumped in quickly with another question.
“Pérez and Córdova were members of your parish.”
“That’s right.”
“How about Mendoza? Did you know him?”
Hidalgo set his jaw and tightened his lips. Had Santana not been watching the priest carefully, he would have certainly missed the nearly imperceptible movement. Maybe the whole ordeal surrounding Pérez’s death provoked such a strong emotional reaction that Hidalgo chose to keep the full extent of his feelings private, particularly in front of Angelina Torres — or maybe he was actually hiding something.
“I didn’t know him well,” the priest said.
“Tell me, Father, does your church help immigrants?”
“Of course.”
“Illegal immigrants?”
“If someone needs assistance, we provide it. It is not up to us to judge others, Detective. Only God has that power.”
Santana got the distinct impression that the pointed statement was directed at him. Apparently felons were not the only ones who had a book of favorite phrases.
“So, Mendoza wasn’t a member of your parish?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
Hidalgo got up suddenly, signaling the end of the conversation.
Angelina Torres hesitated and then stood up as well.
“Please let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Hidalgo said.
Santana pushed himself out of his chair and handed each of them a business card.
Angelina Torres looked as if she wanted to say something more. But she turned instead and followed Hidalgo out of the cubicle.
Chapter 5
* * *
SANTANA AND PETE CANFIELD, from the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, stood beside Reiko Tanabe in the morgue at the medical examiner’s office, a one story building just off University Avenue next to Region’s Hospital. They were dressed in green scrubs and booties. The ME wore large latex gloves and a disposable plastic apron over the scrubs. Stiff, white masks covered their mouths and noses. Santana and Canfield had rubbed wintergreen oil on the inside of their masks to cut the smell.
Tanabe had removed the black body bag and clean white sheet around Julio Pérez before fingerprinting and photographing his body with and without clothes. The tag that had been attached to his left big toe at the crime scene listed a case number, date, name and location of the body. Tanabe had attached a second tag to Pérez’s right ankle when he arrived at the morgue. The tags maintained the chain of evidence and a record of who touched the body intact.
The perforated metal sheet underneath Pérez kept the stainless steel autopsy table in the center of the room clean by allowing running water and body fluids to seep through to a metal catch basin below and down into the drains in the tile floor. A scale used for weighing organs hung over the table. The scale looked like a larger and more precise version of those found at a supermarket. A dissecting block, scalpels, ruler, pruning clippers and an electric vibrating bone saw lay on a smaller steel table opposite the scale. A wide stainless steel refrigerator door covered most of one wall. Jars of preservative on the counter held tissue samples and excised body parts. The temperature hovered just above freezing, and the room reeked of astringent cleaner, tissue preservative and bodies on the verge of decomposition.
“Hey, Doc,” Canfield said. “You know the difference between a surgeon, an internist and a pathologist?” He winked at Santana.
“I’m afraid to ask.”
A surgeon knows nothing but does everything. An internist knows everything, but does nothing. And a pathologist knows everything and does everything, but it’s too late.”
Canfield laughed uproariously at his own joke.
“Blow yourself,” Tanabe said, but Santana could tell she was smiling behind her mask.
Santana knew that Canfield told jokes to relieve his uneasiness. Prosecutors, cops, medical examiners, anyone who had to watch a body being eviscerated, had coping mechanisms. Santana remembered how he had vomited the first time. Viewing another autopsy now elicited no more of a response than if he were at the market watching butchers prepare a good cut of steak. He had learned early on that it was important to remain as detached as possible. Each body told a story of how the victim lived and how he died. Emotions often impaired objectivity. Only the body of an innocent child lying on the cold metal table still lit a fire inside him. Whether it was the result of neglect, abuse or homicide, a child’s death smoldered within him until the perp was either behind bars or dead.
Tanabe had nearly completed her external evaluation of Pérez’s body. She had started with the neck and worked her way downward to the chest, abdomen, pelvis and genitalia, as she spoke into a microphone connected to a digital recorder. This sequence allowed the blood to drain from Pérez’s head. Santana knew she would examine it last.
He went over to a second stainless steel table and looked at Rafael Mendoza’s naked body. Santana could see immediately that Mendoza had no appendectomy scar. He was not one of the men in the photo Gamboni had found in the loft.
Rubén Córdova’s naked body lay on a table next to Mendoza. Córdova had balloon-like paper bags around his hands and feet to entrap any trace evidence. The entry opening in his chest where Anderson’s bullet had struck him had drawn together after the bullet passed through the skin. Santana could see the distinct contusion ring around the entrance caused by the bullet scraping off the external layer of epithelial cells. The contusion ring was round; indicating Anderson’s bullet had struck Córdova squarely, though no smudge ring was evident because the bullet had first passed through clothing.
Santana walked to the counter and took Córdova’s clothing out of the paper bags. Before undressing Córdova, Santana knew Tanabe had carefully examined his clothes for trace evidence. She had then placed his bloody clothing onto clean wrapping paper to let it air-dry before putting it into paper bags. Each item of clothing had been packaged separately and had not been cut. He could see the .40 caliber hole Anderson’s bullet had made in Córdova’s flannel shirt before it penetrated his body.
“John, can you help me out here?” Tanabe pointed at a clipboard on the counter.
Santana picked it up and returned to the autopsy table.
Having finis
hed her external examination, she used a scalpel to make a U-shaped incision that began at Pérez’s left shoulder and continued under his nipples over to the right shoulder. The cut opened Pérez’s skin as if the ME were unzipping a coat. She then turned the U into a Y by cutting downward below the sternum to the abdomen. With no heart beating, there was no pressure and very little blood. She called out the weight and measurement of each organ to Santana who wrote them down on a sheet attached to the clipboard. She worked methodically, talking into the microphone as she removed each organ.
When she began work on Pérez’s skull, Canfield looked at Santana and said, “You want a cup of coffee?”
“Hot chocolate if you can find some.”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “You’re the one Colombian in the world who doesn’t like coffee. I’ll see what I can do.” He turned, slid his mask to the top of his head and hurried out of the room.
Tanabe made a deep incision starting just in front of one of Pérez’s ear, over the top of his skull, to the other ear. This allowed her to pull the scalp down over the front of Pérez’s face. Specks of white dust flew from the circular saw she then used to cut around Pérez’s head.
Santana watched calmly as she put down the saw and used a twisting device that looked like a screwdriver to pop open Pérez’s skull, as if she were removing a cap from a bottle of beer.
It took awhile before she finally found the .22 caliber bullet. Often it was so misshapen that it could not be used for ballistic comparisons, but this time the wait was worth it.
Santana went back to the counter and discarded his mask. He placed the bullet in an evidence envelope and initialed it. The envelope had to be labeled with the initials of the individual collecting the evidence and each person who subsequently had custody of it, along with the date the item was collected and transferred, the case number, type of crime, victim or suspect’s name, and a brief description of the item. If someone was ever brought to trial for Pérez’s murder, Santana didn’t want the evidence thrown out on a technicality.
When Canfield returned with a cup of coffee and no hot chocolate, Santana said, “Any idea when you’ll complete the preliminary investigation on Rick Anderson?”
Canfield took a sip of coffee and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “You know I can’t discuss the investigation with you, John. But I don’t want it to drag on any longer than you do. If the shooting was justified, that’s what the report will say.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know if ballistics matches the bullet Reiko took out of Pérez with the gun we found on Córdova.”
“If Córdova is guilty of a double homicide, I sure as hell won’t object.”
“I won’t cut corners, Pete.”
Canfield’s face darkened, and he stared at Santana with his clear, unwavering hazel eyes. “We’ve worked a number of cases together before, John. I consider us friends. So I know you’d never suggest that I would. I’m also aware that the mayor is looking for a new running mate and I’m first in line. So before you stick your foot in your mouth again and imply that I’m concerned about the direction the political winds are blowing in this town, I want to be clear that I’ll file the same time you do.”
Canfield was the Ramsey County Attorney. Minnesota didn’t use the term district attorney. He had worked in the Prosecution Division of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, and had eventually become assistant Ramsey County attorney before being elected to his present position. Attorneys in the Charging and Trial Section of the Prosecution Division handled most of the adult level prosecutions for child abuse, sexual assault, theft, robbery, burglary and murder.
Canfield had been asked several times to run for higher office. He had all the necessary qualifications. He dressed well, wore his dark brown hair just long enough to be fashionable, and could give a terrific speech without offending anyone or saying anything of substance. But he had never expressed a desire to run for higher office. Santana admired him for it.
“I appreciate your candor, Pete. But I’m getting a lot of heat.”
“Since when did that start bothering you?”
Santana held up the evidence envelope. “The lab will match this bullet with Córdova’s gun.”
“If you’ve got a problem with that and want me to run interference for you, just so say. I’m not going to pin the murders on Córdova unless you can prove he’s guilty.” Canfield took another sip of coffee. “God, this is awful.” He headed toward one of the sinks on the counter. “I hate to admit it, but I may have to switch to hot chocolate.”
Large flakes of snow fell as Santana drove back to headquarters. He took the elevator up to the evidence room on the second floor where he filled out a property-booking sheet on the .22 caliber bullet removed from Pérez’s brain. He placed the envelope with the bullet in a temporary storage locker where all evidence was stored until the property clerk could log it into the evidence room. The lockers had a self-locking system that could not be reopened from the outside once the door was closed. Each locker had a second door on the property room side that the property officer could open to remove the evidence. The officer could then reach through and release the door latch so the locker could be used again.
Santana asked to see the sexually explicit photo Gamboni had found in Mendoza’s loft and the items found on Córdova the night he was shot. The property officer brought him the photo and Córdova’s wallet, notebook, and keys. Santana found Córdova’s address in the wallet. Then he signed a release for the notebook and the photo and went over to the crime lab adjacent to the evidence room. He pressed the speakerphone button on the wall outside the lab and identified himself.
When the door buzzed open, he entered and found Tony Novak sitting on a metal stool under a bank of fluorescent lights near a large L-shaped metal desk and a couple of four drawer metal filing cabinets. The room smelled of chemicals and looked like a chemistry classroom minus the student desks. The gray laminate counters were cluttered with microscopes, beakers, volumetric and Erlenmeyer flasks for mixing and boiling substances, graduated cylinders, test tubes, small, concave dishes called watch glasses for dissolving powders and viewing materials under a microscope, a vacuum kit for picking up trace evidence, a television monitor and two VCRs, and a large gas chromatograph linked to a mass spectrometer, often called a GC-mass-spec, for separating and identifying organic substances.
Santana had worked with Novak before and respected his intelligence. A former Golden Glove champion in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Novak’s once chiseled frame had softened and expanded. He had a computer and printer on the desk along with a framed photograph of his wife and two teenage sons and two books held up with metal bookends. One was entitled the Manual of Fingerprint Development Techniques and the other Scene of Crime Handbook of Fingerprint Development Techniques. On the wall above the desk was a framed certificate from the International Association for Identification and a framed black and white photo of a handsome young Novak as a middleweight, before he had gotten his nose broken a few times and put on the extra pounds.
“Hey, John,” Novak called when he saw Santana.
I SEE DUMB PEOPLE was stitched in large white letters across the front of a black T-shirt Novak wore underneath his open, white lab coat. He got off his stool and came toward Santana, moving lightly on his feet, as though he were still bouncing around the ring.
“I’d like you to take a look at the photo Gamboni found in Mendoza’s loft, Tony.”
Santana took the photo out of the evidence envelope and showed it to Novak. “I want to know if there is anything we can use to identify the guy on his knees.”
“What about the guy standing?”
“Look closely. He’s got what appears to be an appendectomy scar.”
Novak’s mustache and short curly hair were both gray, and as he tilted his head forward to look down at the photo, Santana could see the small, round bald spot on the crown of his head.
“That’s what it looks like to me. Fairly rec
ent, I’d say. Although this isn’t a real clear photo,” Novak said, pushing his heavy black frame glasses back up to the bridge of his wide nose. “Let me guess. You need to know soon.”
“Very. Along with the results of the ballistics test on the .22 Córdova had on him the night he was killed. I just put the bullet Tanabe removed from Julio Pérez in a temporary locker.”
“You think they’ll match?”
“I’d bet on it.”
“We still on for the Chandler fight on the twenty-seventh?”
“Maybe.”
“Well,” Novak said with a shrug, “I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to this, John. I’m really backed up here.”
“So you’re not going to help me out if I don’t go to the fight with you?”
“Did I say that?”
Santana let out a sigh. “Okay. You’re on.”
“Great,” Novak said with a big grin. He headed back to the microscope he had been looking through when Santana entered the lab. “We’ll stop at Mancini’s for dinner first. You can buy.”
“Eat a big lunch,” Santana said.
He found another stool at the counter. He spent the next twenty minutes paging through the spiral notebook Córdova used for his interviews until he reached the last page dated two days ago. If Córdova had talked with Mendoza, he had not taken any notes.
Snow was still falling. The flakes were smaller than before, but more numerous. Santana brushed off the windows of his Crown Vic before driving to the offices of El Día, which were located in a small, one level brick building on the West Side of St. Paul. The chairs in the reception area were vinyl-padded and had aluminum legs, as did the Formica topped coffee table. On the table were two copies of the latest edition of the paper and on the walls were framed certificates recognizing it as a member of the National Federation of Hispanic Newspapers and the Minnesota Newspaper Association.
Santana spent two hours interviewing the staff that consisted of a receptionist, a marketing and sales manager, an art director, a photographer and two contributing writers. Everyone appeared upset by Julio Pérez’s murder and seemed to have concrete alibis for the day and approximate time of his death. Santana made a note to check out each alibi. Then he moved on to Pérez’s office where he went through the dead man’s desk, date book and papers. Nothing he looked at seemed important or offered clues to Pérez’s murder, so he walked down the hall to Rubén Córdova’s office.
White Tombs Page 6
