In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries)

by Wendy Hornsby

  "He used to scare you?" I said.

  She nodded vigorously. "He was always watching me, for a long time before all that stuff happened. I think he knew what I was doing besides selling tacos."

  "He knew about you and Nelda?"

  "He knew something. One time, long time ago, he came to ask me about her. This drug dealer got shot and he wanted to know what I knew. He asked me if I was still getting supplied by Nelda. After that, he used to walk over from the police station at lunchtime sometimes for my tacos. He told me I made the best tacos."

  "Do you believe he was there for the tacos?"

  "Yes, I made the best tacos." A shy smile. "And I think he was checking on me."

  "Did you know anything about that shooting?"

  "What people on the street said, that's all." She raised her chin. "I was never in the gangs. I was working all the time."

  "The dealer was Rogelio Higgins?" I asked.

  "Yes, it was."

  "You knew him?"

  "I knew who he was, big car, gold teeth. He was macho, big trouble. I stayed away from him."

  "He was friends with Nelda?"

  "Friends, I don't know." Mayra furrowed her brow. "I told Nelda when Officer Flint started asking about her, and she got pretty scared. She stopped getting me drugs for a while after that because that man wouldn't get them for her. She must have said something to him."

  "But you started selling for Nelda again at some point."

  She nodded. "But I don't remember when exactly, but it was after Rogelio was dead."

  "Did you know Officer Erquiaga, Boni Erquiaga?" I asked. "I heard he was a friend of Nelda's."

  "I knew who he was. We went to the same parish school, but he was older than me. I know he and Nelda hooked up. I never knew if he was trying to save her or if he was getting her in trouble."

  Julia interjected, "Some of the boys from the neighborhood, when they go in the police, they act like the priests, like that little altar boy, Lewis Banks. Want to save everybody. But some of them are devils."

  "Like Boni?" I said.

  "Si," she said. "Like that one."

  Guido shifted his weight. His face looked tired; he'd had a long day. There was one more question I had for Mayra.

  "When was the last time you saw Nelda Ruiz?" I asked Mayra.

  "After she got out of prison." Too late she realized that she had misspoken. Mayra shot her sister a quick, guilty glance.

  "That woman was in my house?" Julia demanded, quietly seething. "Mayra, when?"

  "A few weeks ago," Mayra said, hanging her head. "She didn't look so good."

  Chapter 10

  I stopped at a gas station and bought a tall, cold bottle of chocolate milk to put out the chile-pepper fires, and a roll of Tums in case it didn't. Before I got back on the road, sitting in the station lot, gulping milk, I checked in with Guido and worked out a schedule for the following day, then I called my voice mail to see whether something needed attending to.

  Harry called to report he had nothing new on Nelda Ruiz but was working on it, and Nick Pietro, who had left several messages since the funeral, called again. Kenny called.

  Ever since Eldon Washington let me know that my conversation with Boni was taped, and that Kenny had set it up, set me up, I had some mixed feelings about Kenny. I needed to talk through some issues with him. And I had a lot of questions for him. So I called his mobile number and caught him at home.

  "Hey Kenny," I said. "I had a long conversation with Jesus Ramon's mother and aunt tonight. I thought you might be interested."

  "The junkie aunt?" he said.

  "Mayra," I answered, a hint of reprimand in my tone, I'm sure. "Mayra had a special visitor a couple of weeks ago."

  "Yeah?" He was being a hard ass.

  "Nelda Ruiz."

  "Tell me. She wanted money and a place to hide, right?"

  "Actually, no. Mayra said Nelda was feeling pretty low. She had been looking for work, but all the job referrals the Parole Department gave her took one look at her resume and her past and didn't call her back. She has no high school diploma, she has an impressive criminal record, and drug customers don't write reference letters," I said. "The only interview she got was for minimum wage working with an overnight office cleaning business, but she failed to get bonded."

  "No surprise there, not with her record."

  "Nelda told Mayra she was going back to her old profession," I said. "Wanted to bring Mayra back in. Offered to finance a restaurant for her if she would move drugs for her on the side, as she did before when Mayra had her taco cart."

  "Where would Nelda get money to back a restaurant?"

  "Good question," I said. "Maybe it was just bluster."

  "Mayra thought she was serious?"

  "She did."

  I waited a while for Kenny to say something. Finally, he asked, "How long had Nelda been out of the slam when she went calling?"

  "Maybe two weeks."

  "People think that when someone is convicted he goes into an abyss," Kenny said, "into a place full of strangers. White collar criminals are often isolates, but when gangbangers go into prison they go home, into the bosom of their brethren. When they come out again, all their contacts are intact, if not stronger."

  Kenny sniffed. "Department of Corrections? Correct your criminal tendencies or make you a better criminal? Which are we doing?"

  "Mike wouldn't have asked that question. He would have had the answer. Not an answer, but the answer," I said. "And he would have known absolutely how things should be made right. The world according to Mike Flint was a world without a lot of room for gray areas."

  "Lot of cops are like that," Kenny said, a bit of a chuckle in his voice.

  "I used to tell Mike, life's too short," I said. "You fix what you can, don't get your shorts in a twist about the stuff you can't, and hope you can know the difference."

  Kenny laughed aloud. "Mike didn't buy that philosophy, did he?"

  "Nope. Mike always thought he could control any situation."

  "Yeah, well..." He did not say, though he might as well have, that that explained the last decision Mike made.

  I said, "Guido videoed the interview with Mayra. We'll be reviewing it at the studio tomorrow. I wondered if you'd like to come over to see it."

  "I would. Thanks. I have a meeting first thing, but I can be there by about eleven. How's that?"

  "Good," I said. "We'll do lunch."

  "Uh, Maggie." He hesitated, stuttered over his next couple of words. "Can we have lunch in the commissary?"

  It was my turn to laugh. "If you want, lunch in the studio commissary it is."

  Years ago Johnny Carson joked on "The Tonight Show" about his studio's employee commissary. Old-timers like Kenny expect that the institutional cafeteria must teem with movie and TV stars. The talent does drop by, in and out of makeup, looking for drinks and meals like the rest of us. The fare ranges from fast food to decent, but the commissary is never a place to expect fine dining. And I have it on good authority that Johnny Carson would carry a brown bag with him to work from time to time.

  "See you tomorrow," he said.

  I put my phone away, declaring a long day finished. But I was still abuzz. The expectation and rush of the first more-or-less public airing of the project promo, discovering Mayra, Mike, life, death all swirled together. I knew that it was going to be damned hard to come down enough to fall asleep when I finally found my bed.

  I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu and took the turnoff to my canyon road with the CD blasting Miles Davis's interpretation of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; one of Mike's favorites.

  I slowed sharply for the turn onto Mulholland Highway, and kept my speed down, watched for the deer and coyotes who share that road at night, who sometimes stand in the very center of the road and wait to see whose lights approach around the mountain curves, sometimes waiting until it is too late for all involved.

  The night was clear and dark, no moon. Th
e edge of the road was defined on the right by the rise of a steep mountain sheer, on the left by the black abyss of the canyon below. The road between was a silver ribbon exactly as long as the reach of my headlights. It is always a beautiful drive, by day a wild mountainscape, by night a star-filled wonder. I opened the moon roof, glanced up to see the stars, and breathed in the aroma of dusty sage. As I drove, the cacophony of the day, all the stresses and the highs, were pushed aside by the concentration needed to keep the car on that treacherous stretch of mountain road. The inner noise was replaced by a spreading quiet.

  I drove around the back way and parked on the backside of the peak behind my house to take a quick look around. If the burglar had come over that steep, overgrown scarp to break into my house, and it was the investigators' best guess that he had, then the man was in damn fine shape. I didn't see any indication that someone had scrambled through the brush recently, but, as I said, it was very dark. I continued home.

  The last curve in the road before my driveway is a sharp, nearly impossible hairpin curve. I shifted to low, braked on the way in, and as I accelerated out of the curve, snapped off my headlights so that the lights wouldn't send Duke and his friends into a noisy snit and wake the neighbors.

  I passed Early's drive and gave my car a little juice to get up my own steep drive. At the top I coasted to a stop, waited for Miles Davis to finish his riff on Rodrigo's last strains. I decided not to bother parking in the garage, and to leave my day's accumulation of notes, discs, empty water bottles, and the ubiquitous bundle of sympathy cards and notes in the car when I got out. Standing on the driveway, enveloped by a soft, warm breeze, I paused to look up at the black, black sky, at the stars that seemed like a glittery umbrella that, on the horizon, merged into the rising glow of distant city lights. Not for the first time I thought that, maybe, I had found my place.

  I took in another deep breath, locked the car, and turned toward the front walk.

  "Hey, neighbor." I looked across to Early's house and saw him out on his front deck, glass of wine in one hand, binoculars in the other. Behind him, coming from inside his lighted house, I could hear Barber's Adagio for Strings, a choral version. It is a moving piece, but it sounded funereal as it wafted through the night; too sad.

  I took one more step and tripped the motion sensor for the front lights.

  "Good night, Early," I said, squinting past the sudden glare of the lights to see him.

  "You know, I was thinking," he said. "If it's okay with you, I'd like to move the light sensor further down so you won't be getting out of the car in a dark spot anymore."

  "Take it up with Duke," I said. "Mike set it where it is so we wouldn't upset the dear boy. Anyway, he always wanted me to park in the garage, but I'm finding the garage a little spooky right now, too many dark corners."

  "Understandable," he said. "Duke will get used to the light. If not, I can set up a screen for him."

  I looked over my shoulder at the dark stretch between the car and the outer ring of the lights.

  "It's a really good idea, Early. But that's too big a favor to ask."

  "What's the price of peace of mind?" he said, good-naturedly. "Glad you're home safe. Good night, now. I'll wait right here until you're inside."

  "Good night."

  I felt oddly buoyant. I had made a decision that would change the domestic status quo instead of preserving everything exactly as Mike had left it. A tiny decision, certainly, but a decision nonetheless. Decision two, I was going to go upstairs and reclaim my bedroom, my bed.

  I went to sleep listening to the breeze ruffling through the trees outside, coyotes howling in the canyons, an owl or two in the distance, and Duke, Rover, and Red snuffling at each other and clomping around their corral together. I fell into a deep, black sleep.

  When my phone began to ring I was still asleep, dreaming that an alarm clock was going off and I couldn't find it. Eventually, I stirred enough to realize the ringing was my cell phone. By the time I had turned on a light and found the phone, still in the pocket of my jeans, the ringing had stopped. The bedside clock said it was midnight.

  I pulled up the caller's number, didn't recognize either the number or the area code, but because I don't give out my cell number to many people, I pushed the call-back button.

  According to the woman who answered, the call came from the veterans' facility up in Sonoma where Mike's father, Oscar, was staying. When I identified myself, she put me through to the evening supervisor, a man named John Pendergast.

  "Mr. Flint is having a bad night. My instructions are to inform you." Pendergast sounded cross, scolding even, as if there were something I should have done, and hadn't. "Mr. Flint went out for a walk again tonight. Highway Patrol picked him off the highway median. Mr. Flint wasn't sure of his name or where he belonged, but he knew he was a sergeant with the Third Corps Army Engineers. He got upset when he couldn't find his weekend pass. Of course, his johnny gown doesn't have any pockets to hold a pass. CHiPs knew to bring him here. It's not the first time he's gone AWOL to find a drink."

  "Oscar stayed with us for a while," I said. "I know he can be determined when he wants a drink."

  "I can attest to that," Pendergast said, sounding exasperated. "He may not always know who he is or where he is, but he always knows he wants a drink. The men in here are adults. Sometimes visitors bring them in a bottle or they bribe a staff member to get them something. Doesn't matter how well they hide it, Oscar can always find it."

  "So," I said. "Oscar's okay. He wasn't hurt?"

  "We had to put him in restraints and sedate him, so he's going to sleep for a while," Pendergast said. "But it'll happen again. The point is, he needs to be moved to a facility with a higher level of care than we can offer him. Most of the men here don't suffer from much more than being old and alone. Mr. Flint needs a more secure facility. We have orders to move him out by the end of the week."

  "I didn't know. Where will you send him?"

  "That's the thing. See, miss, you need to make those arrangements yourself."

  "Oh" was all I could think to say at first. "Any suggestions?"

  "We have a list of places. But the shortest waiting list is six months."

  "If I get him on a waiting list can he stay with you until his name comes up?"

  "No, ma'am." This was an adamant no. "And with his history, you might have some trouble getting him in anywhere."

  "What would happen if he had no family around to make arrangements?" I asked. "You wouldn't put him out on the street."

  "In that case the VA would get him right in somewhere. But he has a legal guardian, you. He's your legal responsibility."

  I found a pencil and a notepad and wrote down the contact names and phone numbers Pendergast gave me, as well as a website for locating Alzheimer's care facilities. The search for a decent place for Oscar would be a good project for my assistant, Fergie, who was due back at work in the morning. And make a good theme for a horror movie.

  Pendergast cleared his throat. "I told all this to Mister Flint's son, Mike Flint, a couple weeks ago. He said he'd take care of it. Then, well, because of what happened, we let it ride for a little while."

  "You spoke with his son?"

  "Yes, ma'am, several times," he said. "Didn't he tell you?"

  "No," I said. "He didn't tell me anything."

  Chapter 11

  My assistant, Fergie, back from her trip to Cabo, sunburned to a crisp, her head still on manana time, came into my office, notebook in hand, to take notes on the day's list of tasks to accomplish. I was happy she was back, I had missed her and her efficiency and her happy face. She didn't seem to share my enthusiasm about her return. As she sat down on the sofa she sighed heavily, kicked off her flip-flops and folded her legs under her.

  "Sorry I'm so useless today," she said.

  "Happy you're back safe," I said. "Good trip?"

  "What I remember of it." Her heavily freckled forehead was already beginning to peel. Redheaded Kathleen
Ferguson does not have the complexion for a beach vacation. "Damn. I'm getting too old to party, Maggie. I should start taking those old-lady walking tours of gardens or something."

  "Whatever you do, you should get some sunscreen and a big hat before you do it."

  "And sensible shoes and a one-piece swimsuit. You should see this." She pulled up her T-shirt and showed me her blistered belly. Her abdomen looked like a pizza.

  "Oh, Fergie, have you seen a doctor?"

  "That bad?"

  "Yes. Get yourself to a dermatologist, right now."

  She brightened. "Are you sending me home?"

  "I'm sending you to make an appointment," I said. "And while you're on the phone, would you please call the coroner's office?"

  "The coroner?" She pulled up her shirt again and looked down at her belly. "Is it that bad?"

  "I've seen better-looking skin on a cadaver. But, I want you to make arrangements to set up a shoot there. Do you have the number for the county film office for permits, because they'll probably be necessary?" I said.

  I waited for her to finish writing. "Get in touch with a man named Phil Rascon. He'll connect you with the people who process John Does. Tell them we want to see how unidentified bodies are registered, handled, and disposed of."

  "Gross," she said emphatically.

  I smiled at her. "You want to go on the shoot?"

  She thought about that for a second, brightening a bit at the idea. "Maybe."

  "And, before you go off to be chastised by the medical profession, would you please call Security and tell them I need to have something locked up?"

  "The files you left for me to copy? Mike's files?" Fergie was beginning to get back into her groove. I would say her cheeks colored, the usual sign of her engagement with an issue, but in her present circumstance that would just be redundant. "Locked up where?"

  "Somewhere secure. There must be a vault somewhere on the premises."