White Tombs

by Christopher Valen

  “RAISE THE BODY A LITTLE SO THE cord slackens,” Reiko Tanabe said to a couple of uniformed officers. “And then cut the cord near the top. Leave the noose on the neck and be careful.”

  She was peering at Hidalgo’s body hanging from the second floor landing like she would a slide under a microscope.

  The officers did as they were told and then laid Hidalgo’s body gently on the hardwood floor.

  “Make sure you cordon off the area outside,” Santana said to the two officers. “Nobody in or out unless they’re with the department.”

  “You okay, John?” Tanabe asked, looking at Santana.

  “I’m fine.”

  “First hanging?”

  Santana shook his head. “Not my first.”

  Tanabe kept her eyes on Santana for a time. Then she crouched down next to the body.

  The electrical cord had cut off drainage through Hidalgo’s jugular and other veins, forcing deoxygenated blood back up into the tissues of his face. Small capillaries had ruptured from the pressure on his neck and formed tiny rivers of blood in the sclera of his eyes, which protruded like a frog’s from his blue face.

  “There’s a half-knot in the electrical cord,” Tanabe said. “You have anything that suggests this was a homicide?”

  Santana’s gaze was focused on a stain on the wall, though in his mind’s eye he could see his mother hanging from a beam in his boyhood home in Manizales, her once beautiful face a contorted death mask exactly like the one now worn by Hidalgo.

  “John. Did you hear me?”

  Santana gazed down at Tanabe.

  “You have any evidence that this was a homicide?”

  “No,” Santana said. “Hidalgo committed suicide.”

  “You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

  As Santana was about to explain, James Kehoe came in the front door behind a blast of cold air, stomping snow off the soles of his shoes as he stood in the entryway. His electric tan had turned red compliments of the falling temperatures and increasing wind chill.

  Santana said, “I was here just before it happened, Reiko.”

  Tanabe rose to her feet and arched her back, as if easing a muscle cramp. “You were here?”

  “Not in the house. I was outside in my car.”

  “Doing what?” Kehoe asked.

  Seeing Kehoe standing on the opposite side of Hidalgo’s body drew Santana’s thoughts away from the past and back to the present.

  “Counting the crystals in a snowflake,” he said.

  “Look, Santana, that smart ass attitude may play well around the water cooler, but it gets you shit upstairs where it counts. The Pérez-Mendoza investigation is history.”

  “What makes you think I was here about the Pérez-Mendoza investigation?”

  Kehoe hesitated before responding, his eyes betraying his momentary confusion. “What else would you be doing here?”

  “Maybe I just wanted to talk to a priest.”

  “Yeah. And maybe I’m Mother Theresa.”

  He glanced down at the young priest’s body on the floor and crossed himself quickly.

  Santana said, “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”

  Kehoe gave him a dismissive look. “It’s apparent you don’t know a lot of things, Santana. Like you shouldn’t have been talking to Hidalgo when this case is already closed. What did you say to him anyway?”

  Santana kept silent.

  “Well, since you’re in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, let me refresh your memory. Ashford put me in charge of this investigation. Not you.”

  Kehoe glared at Tanabe. “You let me know the results of the autopsy, Reiko, and no one else. ASAP.”

  The ME looked at Kehoe and then at Santana.

  “You hear me, Tanabe?” Kehoe said.

  She glared back. “I heard you.”

  Kehoe looked like he was about to say something else to her and then thought better of it. Instead, he turned back to Santana.

  “I know you’re counting on Gamboni to protect your ass because she made a mistake and let you inside her pants, but that ain’t going to happen.”

  Santana could see his own reflection and his blue eyes in the mirror on the wall behind Kehoe. They were as cold and flat as a frozen lake. His eyes locked on Kehoe’s. “How long has it been?”

  Kehoe cocked his head, as if he had just heard a strange sound.

  “John,” Tanabe said, clearing her throat. “Why don’t we wrap it up here?”

  Santana ignored her. “Come on, Kehoe. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Kehoe gave a little shake of his head.

  “How long has it been since you’ve been laid?”

  Kehoe’s complexion went from red to crimson. “All right, Santana,” he said, pointing a thick index finger. “You don’t want to talk to me about what you were doing here, fine. Let’s see if Ashford can change your mind.”

  He turned and barged out of the room, letting the storm door slam shut behind him. The air that blew in the room felt like it had been chilled in a freezer.

  “Kehoe always wound that tight?” Tanabe asked.

  “Seems to be.”

  “He married?”

  “Was.”

  She nodded, as if it all made sense. “You think Hidalgo’s death has something to do with the Pérez-Mendoza murders, John?”

  “I do.”

  “Want me to call you with the autopsy results?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You got it,” she said.

  Daniel McCutcheon was seated on the living room couch across from the fireplace with his face in his hands where Thomas Hidalgo had sat just an hour ago. He still wore his purple St. Thomas letter jacket with the white sleeves.

  Santana stood in front of the couch with McCutcheon’s driver’s license in his hand.

  Twenty year-old Daniel McCutcheon had blond hair, hazel eyes, and the narrow shoulders and hips of a long distance runner.

  Santana said, “You have another place you can go for a while?”

  “Yes,” McCutcheon said, without looking up.

  “If you need someone to drive you somewhere, I can arrange that.”

  McCutcheon lifted his head out of his hands and gazed up at Santana with eyes that were dark with frustration and confusion. “I don’t understand this,” he said, gesturing toward the dining room. “I don’t understand this at all.”

  He had an innocent face that Santana rarely saw in the young men he often had dealings with.

  “Father Hidalgo must’ve been murdered,” McCutcheon continued in a voice that was leaden with doubt. “He would never commit suicide. It’s against the teachings of the church.”

  “I’ll get an officer,” Santana said.

  “No. It’s all right.”

  McCutcheon stood up slowly and shook his head, as if coming out of a trance. “I’ll drive myself.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said, and took a step toward the front door. Santana put a hand on the young man’s shoulder and said, “Why don’t you go out the back door.”

  McCutcheon hesitated.

  “You’ll need this.” Santana held out the driver’s license.

  McCutcheon’s glazed eyes focused on the license and then on Santana.

  “Nothing you can do now,” Santana said.

  McCutcheon took the license and gave Santana a rueful, little smile. His hands shook as he put the license back in his wallet.

  Santana handed him a business card. “Put this in your wallet, too. If you have any questions, call me. Also, let me know where you’re staying in case I need to get in touch with you.”

  The young man slid the card in his wallet and walked away. His steps were short and tentative, like someone trying to cross a lake just after the ice formed.

  Before he left the room, Santana took the photo of Scanlon and Hidalgo out of the frame on the end table. Slipped it in his pocket and put the frame in a drawer.

  “
It’s not like you killed Hidalgo, John,” Nick Baker said. “He took his own life.”

  “Maybe,” Santana said. “But if Hidalgo was standing on the edge of a cliff, I was the one who suggested he jump.”

  Santana was sitting in a booth across the table from Baker in the non-smoking section of the St. Clair Broiler on Snelling Avenue near Macalester College, eating a cheeseburger with french-fries and washing it down with a large glass of Coke. Baker was eating a mid-day breakfast of eggs over easy, pancakes, bacon and heavy doses of black coffee.

  A low hanging lamp on a chain nearly blocked Santana’s view of Baker. Small, framed glass pictures of St. Paul at the turn of the 20th century dotted the walls. Through the windows that faced Snelling, Santana could see newspaper boxes along the sidewalk that held the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and hear the wind that hummed like a stiff wire suddenly pulled taut.

  “Look,” Baker said. “Hidalgo was a priest. He was also gay. Given what’s happened in the Catholic Church, that scenario doesn’t play real well with the traditional values crowd. He knew it was only a matter of time before someone found out. The internal conflict was probably driving him crazy. He was a tormented man.”

  Baker held an unlit cigarette between his fingers like a child unable to let go of a security blanket.

  “Aren’t we all tormented in one way or another, Nick? We just choose different paths leading to the same destination.”

  “Lots of ways of dealing with our demons,” Baker said. “Sex, drugs … suicide.”

  “And religion,” Santana said.

  Baker gave a knowing nod and glanced at the cigarette in his hand. “Seems to me if you want to survive, you’ve got to figure out your own opiate. Find something that lessens the pain and gets you through the day. Otherwise, you can drown in your own shit.”

  “Hard to be a homicide detective and an optimist.”

  “A real oxymoron,” Baker said, chewing on his last strip of bacon.

  Outside, clouds dark as body bags floated across the sky. Tiny ice crystals rattled against the windowpane.

  “So, Nick, why the phone call to meet?”

  “A couple of reasons,” Baker said. “First, Ashford’s not real happy you’re still poking around in the garbage of this case. He’s got Kacie and me looking at cold cases. See if we can close a couple. I’m guessing he’s got the same thing planned for you.”

  “I imagine Kehoe’s been giving Ashford an earful. He showed up at Hidalgo’s place just after the Code 3 went out.”

  “You’ve got to give Ashford something, John. Tell him what we know about Mendoza. If he decides to bring the Feds in, at least you’ve covered your ass. Kehoe is looking out for himself. It’s time you did the same.”

  “What about Córdova and Angelina Torres?”

  “Córdova’s dead. Nothing you do is gonna bring him back. And the case against Torres is weak. Vega will get her off if the Grand Jury indicts. Which I doubt they will, given the lack of evidence.”

  “I’m not so sure, Nick. And speaking of evidence, did you know Mendoza represented Greatland Industries, a company that makes pesticides?”

  Baker shook his head slowly. “I didn’t. Is it important?”

  “It was. Some of the families of farm workers who died from pesticide poisoning while working in the grape fields in California brought a lawsuit against the company. Córdova and Angelina Torres were part of the lawsuit. Mendoza helped defend Greatland. Ashford believes that was their motive for murdering Mendoza. You should’ve caught that when you did the background check on Mendoza, Nick.”

  “Shit, John, I must be slipping in my old age.”

  “It’s too late now. There’s a murderer still out there. And I think I have an idea who it might be.”

  “So let’s hear it.”

  While they ate, Santana told Baker what he had discovered about Julio Pérez and Rafael Mendoza in Valladolid, Mexico.

  Baker gave a slow shake of his head when Santana had finished. “Well that’s damn interesting, John. ‘Cause that’s the second reason I wanted to talk to you.”

  Baker wiped his fingers with a napkin, reached into the side pocket of his sport coat and took out a folded sheet of paper. “You asked me to check the hospitals in town for appendectomy operations within the last year.” He opened the paper on the table and smoothed it out with his cigarette stained fingers.

  Santana looked at the name Baker was pointing to on the paper and then at the skin wrinkling at the corner of Baker’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Makes you wonder what his opiate is, doesn’t it, John?”

  Tony Novak looked up from the microscope he was peering into as Santana entered the crime lab.

  Santana said, “I need to look at Córdova’s appointment book again. And any trace evidence you found on Mendoza.”

  “Well, I was beginning to wonder if anyone was interested. Kehoe sure as hell isn’t. I heard Ashford put him in charge of the investigation.”

  “I’m still working the case.”

  Novak gave a knowing smile, as though he had expected Santana’s response. He pushed himself off his stool, retrieved the evidence envelope containing Córdova’s appointment book from a small locker, and Mendoza’s file, containing the crime scene evidence inventory, from a metal cabinet.

  Opening the file on the laminate counter next to Santana, Novak said, “We found strands of hair under Mendoza’s fingernails. Microscopic examination of the hair root indicated the presence of sheath cells. Sheath cells are present only when hair is pulled out, not if it falls out naturally.”

  “So there was a struggle,” Santana said.

  “I’d bet on it. I can also tell the gender by the sheath cells. They came from a male. But we need exemplars from the suspect to make a positive ID.”

  “I’ve got a suspect,” Santana said. “But I’ll need a court order unless he gives them up voluntarily.”

  “Either way, make sure he pulls them out, John. Don’t cut them. And get at least a dozen or more from the head and body.”

  Anything else I should know?”

  “I found something else under Mendoza’s fingernails that I couldn’t identify at first, so I ran it through the GC-mass-spec.” Novak pulled a printed readout from the file. “The material was a combination of resin, which is a mixture of boswellic acid and alibanoresin, water-soluble gum, bassorin, some volatile oil and plant residue. In otherwords, your basic olibanum.”

  “Olibanum?” Santana said. “Never heard of it.”

  “Sure you have. The common name is Frankincense.”

  “You mean incense. Like you’d find in a Catholic Church.”

  “Exactly. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the primary ingredient the church uses in their incense. Now, Mendoza could’ve been handling incense in his condo.”

  “Or it could’ve come from the hair samples or the perp’s clothing,” Santana said.

  “More than likely. You find any incense in Mendoza’s place?”

  “Not that I recall. But we weren’t really looking for it.”

  “Better if there wasn’t any there. A good defense attorney could make a case that the incense didn’t come from the perp.”

  “I’ll check it out. Thanks, Tony.”

  Santana sat down on a stool, opened the evidence envelope and removed Córdova’s appointment book. His first read of the book in the offices of El Día had been cursory. He had been looking for information that would connect Córdova to Mendoza and he had found it. Córdova had planned to meet Mendoza at 7:30 p.m., the same time Mendoza died. But there had been something else in the appointment book that Santana had copied in his own notebook, and he wanted to take another look at it now.

  He turned to the last day of Córdova’s life and looked at what the journalist had scribbled below his 7:30 p.m. appointment with Mendoza. His handwriting was nearly illegible, but it appeared that he had written learn more about scandal. Santana looked at the last word closely. scandal. Maybe it was
scandal but maybe not. It was hard to tell.

  Santana turned to the previous page and then the one before that, working backward through the last days of Córdova’s life. He went back two weeks and three days and there it was. Córdova had an appointment with scandal on December 29th. Only it wasn’t scandal. It was scanlon. The name had meant nothing to him when he began the investigation. But it meant everything to Santana now.

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  SLEET HAD FALLEN IN THE LAST HOUR, coating everything with a thin layer of ice. The plastic scraper Santana used to try and clear the windshield was about as helpful as a match in a gale. He left the defrost switch on high for ten minutes before the blowing heat melted the sleet so he could see to drive.

  The offices of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis were located on Summit Avenue next to the St. Paul Cathedral. The archbishop’s secretary stood up behind her desk as Santana walked in the office. She wore a white blouse and dark skirt that hugged her narrow hips. Most people probably thought she was in her thirties, but her gray eyes were older and more experienced.

  Santana showed her his badge and asked to see the archbishop.

  “He’s not in his office. He may be out walking, or he may have stopped at the Cathedral. If you’ll leave me a number where you can be reached, I’ll have him call you as soon as he returns.”

  “I’ll see if I can catch him at the Cathedral. If I can’t, have him call me on my cell. And one other thing.” Santana opened his briefcase; picked up the photo he had taken from Córdova’s house and showed it to her. “Recognize this man?”

  In the photo Rubén Córdova was standing in front of the Church of the Guardian Angels with Julio Pérez and his family.

  She took her time looking at it. “I believe I do.”

  “Can you check the archbishop’s calendar for December twenty-ninth? I believe that’s the day Córdova was here.”

  She turned a page of the appointment calendar on her desk. “Why, yes. He had an appointment with the archbishop at two o’clock that afternoon. Is there a problem concerning Mr. Córdova?”

  “You read the papers or watch the local news?”

  She shook her head forcefully, as if he had asked her if she watched pornography. “No, Detective. There’s way too much crime, too much violence for my tastes. I prefer to read good literature. And the lives of the saints.”