“Could be pay outs,” Santana said. “One, maybe two people.”
“Someone who wanted all the action,” Hawkins said.
Baker closed the notebook, slipped it back into an inside pocket.
“So what’s the next move? Besides another round?”
“What about you Kacie?” Santana asked. “Find anything in Pérez’s financial records that connects him to the visa scam?”
Hawkins lifted a purse the size of a suitcase off the cushion beside her and placed it on the table.
“I got copies of everything Gamboni asked for here. Nothing I see in his financial statements connects Pérez with Mendoza and the visa scam. Pérez made a decent living running the newspaper, but nothing out of the ordinary. But,” she said, digging into the purse, “I did find something interesting in his phone records.”
The paper she pulled out of her purse and set on the table in front of Santana was a copy of the phone calls Julio Pérez made from his home phone in the month of December through mid-January.
“Not only did Pérez call Mendoza the day he was murdered,” she said, “but he called him three previous times. Once on January seven, and twice the last week in December.”
She had circled the dates in red.
“You check the previous months?” Santana asked.
“I checked back through last year. No calls to Mendoza either from home or his newspaper office. And Pérez didn’t have a cell.”
“What about Mendoza?” Santana said to Baker.
He shook his head. “No record of him calling Pérez from his home phone or his cell over the last year.”
“So why does Pérez suddenly decide to contact Mendoza?” Hawkins said.
“Something must have triggered it,” Santana said.
Hawkins spread her hands. “But what?”
“We know they were both born in Valladolid, Mexico. That’s the only connection we have.”
“What about Mrs. Pérez or the daughter? Maybe they can help?”
“I spoke with Gabriela Pérez right before the incident with the snowplow. She insisted that her father didn’t know Mendoza. She didn’t want me talking with her mother before the funeral, but now that it’s over, I’ll give her a call, see what I can find out.”
“I don’t know anything about Valladolid,” Baker said, “but if it’s a good sized city, then maybe Pérez and Mendoza didn’t know each other as children.”
“Only one way to find out,” Santana said.
“If you think Gamboni’s going to approve a trip to Mexico, you’re dumber than Kehoe,” Baker said.
“I can take a couple of vacation days. See what I can dig up.”
Hawkins said, “Know anyone down there, John?”
“Not in Mexico. But remember a couple of years ago when I had to fly down to Houston to bring back Joey Moore?”
“The sick little fuck who murdered his wealthy parents?”
“That’s the one. Took his parent’s credit cards and was on his way to Mexico when the Houston P.D. caught up with him. Anyway, a detective I met in Houston, Ricardo Vasquez, used to be a cop in Mexico. Thought I’d give him a call, see if he can put me in touch with someone in Cancún or Valladolid.”
Baker said, “What the hell are you looking for, John?”
“I don’t know for sure. But Pérez and Mendoza were born in the same city. They both ended up here in St. Paul. And the last call Pérez made on the day he was murdered was to Mendoza.”
“And Mendoza took a swan dive off his balcony the same day,” Hawkins said.
“Lot of coincidences,” Baker said.
“Too many to ignore.”
“What if Vasquez can’t help you?”
“I’ll go it alone, Nick. After all, I do have one advantage.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m a spic,” Santana said with a smile.
Chapter 12
* * *
SANTANA HAD ONE MORE ROUND OF DRINKS at O’Leary’s. Then he decided to see if Angelina Torres could tell him anything more about Rubén Córdova — or anything else. He knew that she could be held no more than forty-eight hours without being charged or released. The Adult Detention Center was near O’Leary’s, but rather than park in the underground garage at the ADC and take the elevator up to the jail’s sixth floor visitor’s center, he called ahead, knowing even a cop needed to get her permission to see her. A Ramsey County deputy answered the phone and told him that Canfield had declined to prosecute her at this time. Santana decided to try Angelina Torres at home instead.
He took Kellogg to West Seventh and then drove up Grand Hill past the University Club and west along Summit Avenue, past the turn of the century Victorian, Romanesque and Tudor stone mansions once owned by prominent lumber and railroad barons like John Irvine, Lyman Dayton and James J. Hill.
As residents moved to the suburbs in the 1950s and ’60s, some of the large homes had been designated as historical sites; others had been broken up into rental units for college students going to the University of St. Thomas and law students enrolled at William Mitchell. Hmong families migrated to the area after the Vietnam War, and the black community that had been living along Selby and Dale retreated north across University Avenue. Yuppie white families began purchasing the old homes again in the eighties and nineties and restoring them. Restaurants and businesses that catered to their trendy tastes soon sprang up along Selby and Grand Avenues.
Santana drove by the home where F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote Tender Is The Night, turned south on Dale and then west again on Grand.
It was 4:52 p.m. when he parked the Crown Vic on the street in front of Angelina Torres’ apartment near Victoria Crossing in the Ramsey Hill neighborhood.
Dusk was fading swiftly into darkness as he walked up the sidewalk to the three-story brick building, like lights in a movie theater just before the feature presentation. A maple tree to the right of the steps that led up to the doorway was still lit with a couple of strings of Christmas lights. Someone’s attempt to give the bare branches some color.
Inside the visitor’s foyer were banks of mailboxes with nameplates to the left and right. Santana used a phone to dial the three-digit number that was listed under Angelina Torres’ name on her mailbox.
“Yes?”
“It’s Detective Santana, Miss Torres. Sorry to bother you, but I wonder if I could come up and ask you a few questions?”
There was a long pause.
“Miss Torres?”
“I am on the second floor, Detective,” she replied, and the door buzzed.
Santana opened it and walked up two flights of stairs to a hallway with a carpet runner down the center. The air was filled with the heavy smells of people cooking dinner, and it reminded him that pretzels and beer were all he had eaten since breakfast.
As he walked down the hallway toward the back of the building, he heard muffled voices and the sound of canned laughter from television sitcoms behind the doors.
He knocked on Angelina Torres’ door. A moment later he heard a safety chain removed and a lock turned before the door swung open.
“Buenas noches,” she said with a genuine smile.
“Buenas noches.”
She invited him in and closed the door behind him.
There was nothing remarkable about her place — it appeared to be a standard one-bedroom apartment with a bathroom, kitchen, small dining room with a table and two chairs, and a living room with a couch and television — except that it had the makings of an arboretum. There were plants in pots on small tables, hanging from brackets around the windows that overlooked an alley behind the building, and in larger pots on the floor.
The scent of freshly cut eucalyptus in a vase on the dining room table carried Santana back in time to Los Termales del Ruíz, the little hotel in the Andes near the El Nevado del Ruíz volcano where his parents would take him and his sister every year. During the day they swam in the pool filled with the warm sulfur waters from the volcano,
and at night they burned eucalyptus leaves in a bonfire close to the pool to stay warm. He saw it all so clearly in his mind’s eye now. Felt the warm water rippling against his skin.
“Could I get you some coffee, Detective Santana?”
“Huh?”
“Coffee?”
“Oh, no thank you.”
He stood in front of the couch, gazing into her honey-colored eyes, trying to release the cord that had held him momentarily in the past.
“You wouldn’t happen to have some hot chocolate?” he asked.
“I don’t. But I am making mole con pollo. Would you join me?”
He was about to decline the offer when the thought of a hot meal of chicken with chocolate sauce caused his stomach to emit a loud growl.
Angelina Torres smiled. “I will take that as a yes.”
“Really. I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I normally don’t have dinner with a …”
“Suspect?”
Santana doubted that Angelina Torres had committed one or both murders. He thought she had been swept along in the wave of the investigation simply because of her connection with Córdova. Yet, he never drew his final conclusions until he had all the evidence. He didn’t want her drawing any conclusions either.
He was still searching for an appropriate response when she said, “You have to eat.”
He hesitated.
“You can still ask me questions later, Detective Santana. But only if you say you like my dinner.”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s a deal.”
Angelina Torres poured Santana a glass of Sauvignon Blanc as he sat down at the kitchen table. She had taken the wine bottle from the refrigerator and then searched a long time for a wine opener, which he used to remove the cork. Given the rather modest furnishings in the apartment, he figured she could not afford to spend her salary on expensive wine. He wondered if this was the only bottle she had and if she had saved it for a special occasion. Then again, it would not be the first time he had engaged in wishful thinking when it came to an attractive woman.
“So tell me,” she said, sitting down in a chair at the other end of the small, rectangular table, “do you live in the area?”
He shook his head. “Along the river in St. Croix Beach.”
“It sounds like a nice setting.”
“A chef in St. Paul who had to sell the house after a divorce once owned it. It has a lot of amenities, which I like. I’m not much of a cook, but it’s secluded and private.”
“How long have you been a homicide detective?”
“Five years.”
“And before that?”
He put a forkful of chicken smothered with chocolate in his mouth. The chicken had been boiled for a long time, and it was so tender and tasty that it nearly dissolved in his mouth before he chewed it.
“I worked Narcotics for two years.”
“Why Narcotics?”
“I wanted Homicide. And before you can work Homicide, the department wants you to have experience writing search warrants and investigating long-term cases. You get that experience with either the Sex and Domestic Crime Unit or Narcotics.”
“How long were you a police officer before you became a detective?”
“Seven years. I worked out of the west side station on University and Dale.”
“Did you always want to be a police officer?”
He preferred to concentrate on the meal instead of the conversation, but when he realized that he was devouring the chicken breast like a ravenous dog while she had barely started, he decided conversation might slow him down some.
“I wanted to be a doctor once.”
“What changed your mind?”
Santana took one more bite of chicken. Washed it down with a swallow of wine. “My mother died. Soon after that, I left Colombia.”
Her eyes told him that she knew there was more to it. That telling her now about what had happened to his mother would be like tearing a bandage off a wound that still had not healed.
“What about your father?”
“We have a saying in Colombia. Dios cuida de sus borrachos.”
“God takes care of the drunks? Was your father a drunk?”
“He was killed by one. Car accident. The drunk lived.”
“I am sorry. Were they your only family?
“I have a sister in Colombia somewhere.”
“You do not know where?”
He gave her a practiced look that warned her she was getting a little too close.
“Well,” she said, “whether you are a doctor or a police officer, you save lives.”
“I look at it more like preventing death. When I get involved in a case, someone has already died. If I can find out who committed the murder, maybe I can prevent another death.”
“So you believe in justice.”
“Justice is a fine idea. But good lawyers get guilty people off all the time.”
“Then why do it?”
Santana knew the simple answer to her question. It was all about the demon that had nearly eaten him alive twenty years ago. Each case that he solved satisfied its insatiable cravings for a while, kept it at bay. The demon was what got his juices flowing in the morning, was his reason for living. It haunted his dreams and often kept him awake at night wondering what would happen to him if he quit. “I do it for revenge,” he wanted to say. Revenge was his demon. Plain and simple.
But instead he said, “I’m good at my job. It gives me a purpose in life. A mission.”
It sounded noble as hell. And maybe there was actually some truth to it.
After they finished dinner and the dishes were cleared away, Santana took a glass of wine into the living room and sat down on a couch that was as stiff as his back. Probably a hide-a-bed. On a bookshelf there was a collection of coffee cups from different places that maybe she had visited, as well as framed photos of her family. Like all good Latinas, she treasured her family photos.
A statue of St. Anthony, the saint of lost things, stood on an end table. Santana wondered if she had always had the statue in her apartment, or if she had purchased it after her breakup with Córdova. Maybe hoping for some divine intervention to salvage the relationship.
A beaded rosary was draped over the statue. The strong scent of rose petals crushed and formed into beads carried him back to when he was twelve years old and had seen a similar Spanish Rosary entwined in his father’s lifeless hands.
Santana had gone with his mother and younger sister, Natalia, to a private room at Aparicio’s Funeral Home, the most elegant in Manizales, Colombia. There, his mother had opened the window of the casket to say her final, tearful goodbye to her husband. Time had dulled the sharp pain of that moment but not the memory of it. Ever since that day in the mortuary Santana had never appreciated the beauty of a rose, for he always associated its fragrance with sadness and death.
The wine and the meal had relaxed him, and the tension of the day began melting away. He took out his notebook and a pen, figuring that taking notes would give him something to do besides fall asleep.
Angelina Torres came into the living room carrying her wine glass and the half-empty bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. She struck a match and lit a thick white candle resting in a three-legged metal stand on the coffee table in front of the couch. A burst of phosphorus filled Santana’s nostrils followed shortly by the pleasant scent of vanilla.
As she sat down in an armchair across from him, he said, “I’d like to talk to you further about your relationship with Córdova.”
She looked at him for a time, as if deciding something, before she said, “You can call me Angelina. Por favor.”
She said it softly but with feeling. He could have sworn there was something more in her request.
Santana knew that getting too close to a suspect could cloud his judgment, but again a feeling of déja vu came over him, that he had known her before. This time the feeling was stronger, floating closer to the surface o
f his memory like a familiar name he could not quite recall.
“All right … Angelina.”
Her eyes remained fixed on his.
Then she said, “I knew Rubén for a long time. We were … close once. I can assure you that he did not kill anyone.”
“If that’s true, then I still have to prove someone else did. You could help by answering a few more questions.”
Santana assumed the dinner and wine and lack of sleep would have dulled his senses rather than heightening them, yet the short distance between the two of them suddenly felt as charged as the air before a thunderstorm.
She brushed a strand of her thick hair away from her face and gave him a hesitant smile. He knew then that she felt something, too.
“So tell me,” he said, clearing his throat, “how did you end up in Minnesota?”
He detected a split second of disappointment as her eyes held his gaze for a moment longer before it was replaced by confusion.
“I thought you wanted to know more about Rubén?”
“I think knowing more about you will help me learn more about him.”
“I see. How much do you want to know about me, Detective Santana?”
“Anything that will help me better understand this case. What happened in the past might have contributed to Córdova’s death.”
Santana knew from his own experiences that revisiting memories, particularly if they were traumatic, was like asking her to strip naked in front of strangers. Still, he could never erase the past any more than she could. A part of him would always be the tall, skinny Colombian kid who was born Juan Carlos Gutiérrez Arángo. The sixteen-year old who had changed his name because he naïvely believed it would protect him.
His adoptive parents were the only people he had trusted enough to reveal the dark secrets of his past. Both of the O’Tooles had provided a safe, loving environment. But it was Phil who had charted a clear course for him and given him a renewed sense of purpose.
Phil had taken him to headquarters on many occasions, introduced him to his fellow detectives and convinced him to become a homicide detective. Every murderer Santana put behind bars — or happened to kill in the line of duty — would be one less scumbag terrorizing society. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.
White Tombs Page 12
