Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “Be right back,” Lewis said. “I need a computer.”

  Aragon replayed the videos, this time concentrating on Star Salazar and Abel Silva, Jr. They came in together and stood by a chain-link fence. There, they talked to each other. Junior had Star’s arm in his hand, pulling her away.

  Lewis returned and said, “Abel Silva is a director of E. Benny Silva Enterprises.”

  “The dumpster people,” McRae said. “And the porta johns. They had a contract during construction on the school’s new wing. Now that I think on it, Junior was coming to school in the trucks.”

  “We tackle Star Salazar first,” Aragon said.

  “Like I said, she’s been truant for a week.”

  “But she came back for this.” Aragon hit play and watched Star Salazar moving into and out of the shot.

  “We should have video of Cassandra and Star meeting with Montclaire,” Aragon said after McRae left. “Why’s it taking so long?”

  She called Rivera and caught him on his way to Breskin’s home with follow-up questions for Sun-Hi.

  “Where’s Tucker on the Pizza Hut video?” she asked. “That’s fallen through the cracks while he’s looking at porn.”

  “I’ll see him later.”

  “He’s not with you?”

  “I was near the Breskin place and thought I’d get this done. I’m here at the gate. Later.”

  That was rushed. And he was alone. She thought FBI agents always had to go out with someone else, either another agent or another cop, like when she and Rivera had talked to Mrs. Breskin the first time. She asked Lewis about that.

  “Maybe it’s new,” he said. “The FBI is recording interviews now. Used to be they needed two agents to confirm the written account.”

  But why did Rivera seem rushed? No, not rushed. Anxious, wanting to get through the gate and up the hill to the gleaming white house looking down on mud-brown Santa Fe.

  On I-25 heading to Glorieta Pass she looked for Breskin’s house, a white cube against the purple and green of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

  “You think there’s anything to the Breskin angle?”

  Lewis, at the wheel, shrugged his shoulders. “If your instinct about the roses is right, yes. If not, it’s just face-time with some of Santa Fe’s elite, the ones we only meet when we stop their Maseratis racing down St. Francis.”

  “I keep thinking about Daniel Breskin bringing the future of porn here. We’re always talking how there’s no jobs for our kids. When the politicians threw millions at the movies, funded film courses at the community college, they missed seeing this coming. How’s it work, as long as they hire local talent they get taxpayer subsidies?”

  “Local talent,” Lewis said. “Is that what Cassandra Baca was?”

  Lily Montclaire stood by the corral, red and black cowgirl boots on her feet, an orange hunting vest hanging off her shoulders, holding a seven-by-seven elk rack. Aragon looked closer and saw the heavy set of antlers was propped on a tripod masked as sagebrush. Serena was moving around snapping photographs with Javier’s big camera. Aragon and Lewis drew close enough they couldn’t miss the scoped rifle against the corral behind Montclaire.

  Montclaire tried on different hats: ten-gallon, Aussie bush, a plaid ear-flap cap, a baseball cap saying Loco Lobo Outfitters. She was wearing a western-style denim shirt, the top pearl snaps undone, showing breastbone under skin. A Leatherman that Aragon knew wasn’t hers hung off her belt.

  “Look through the antlers,” Serena said. “Put your face in there and give us a big smile.”

  “I have to ask … ” Aragon stood behind Serena now, seeing what she was seeing, Montclaire’s long fingers wrapped around the antlers, pulling her head into the space between the points. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re working.” Click. Serena dropped to a knee. Click. “There, give us a delirious smile, you’ve just bagged the biggest bull in the Rocky Mountains, you’re giddy. Make sure you’re not blocking the rifle. One step to your left.” Click. “For the catalog. You know how many women are calling us?” Click. “I’ve been telling Javier we need more than beefy guys with bloodstained camos. The gun mags have the T&A girls looking sexy with an AR-15. That’s not our market. But a very good-looking middle-aged woman who reminds you of someone in underwear ads you stared at growing up, maybe kept you company in the bathroom with Mom banging on the door, someone you’d see now in a Filson’s or L.L. Bean—she’s perfect. Lily, get the rifle for these next ones.”

  “No, don’t get the rifle,” Aragon said. “I don’t want her handling any weapons. If she were on bail, it would be prohibited. She’s only here because we’re holding off charging her.”

  Montclaire backed out of the antlers and came around, looking good in tight jeans, her long hair loose under the Loco Lobo cap. She had a walk Aragon hadn’t seen before. A slow, sexy strut.

  “Where’d she get the boots?”

  “They’re mine,” Serena said. “We are on better terms since Javier went out scouting. She’s been working hard, and we got talking about her career. It was her suggestion. I think it’s brilliant.”

  Montclaire was with them now. It was the first time Aragon had seen her without a load of makeup. Lines in the corners of her eyes and mouth, skin a little too soft under the chin, a better idea of her age up close.

  “Brilliant,” Aragon said, “unless she’s in witness protection. The idea is to, you know, to hide. Lily, wait for us in your bunkhouse. We have some things to discuss.” She watched Montclaire walk away, Lewis close behind her, eyes on her rolling hips. In a softer voice, “That thing I asked, a glass, silverware she used?”

  “Bagged in the house.”

  “Would you put it in the car while we’re talking? I don’t want Lily to see.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is she did?” Serena removed the zoom lens from the camera. “She’s nice, but different. Wanna tell me how different?”

  “She was working for someone, doing their bidding. On her own, she’s what you see, a washed-up fashion model with not much upstairs, someone used to other people telling her how to act.”

  “We talked about that. She said she’s been groomed by everyone she’s ever known.”

  “I wouldn’t have parked her here if she was any danger to you.”

  “She’s a danger to herself. You should have seen her on the wood splitter.”

  “Why is it we can’t find Andrea’s Backpage ad? Tell us again what it said.”

  Aragon on a sagging bed in what was called the Upper Pecos bunkhouse, the one farthest from the family home. Lily’s hairbrush and ear rings on the dresser under framed photos of men with dead animals: a mountain lion, blood on snow under the body, bull elk so big men sat on them, a mule-tail deer cradled in a happy hunter’s arms, its neck limp, the antlers down against his hip.

  “‘Your dreams now,’” Montclaire said, facing her from the other bed, their knees almost touching. “‘Here come your dreams.’ Get it? Something like that.”

  “Before you said, ‘Dreams al instante.’” That’s how you knew she was going to be Hispanic.”

  “There wasn’t a picture of a face, just like the side of legs, the top of her chest. No cleavage. She didn’t have much there. Maybe I was looking around before I found hers and I’m thinking of other ads I saw.”

  “Great,” Lewis said. He stood at the foot of the bed, a shoulder against the wall, his size blocking off the rest of the room. “You’re not helping us narrow it down.”

  Aragon said, “Tell us about this girl that was with Andrea at Pizza Hut. First, let me ask, did you ever hear the name Cassandra Baca?”

  Montclaire pushed her lips off her teeth, her way of showing she was thinking. “No.”

  “Okay.” Aragon thinking, we’ll stick with Andrea. No reason yet to let Montclaire know the girl’s real name. “Andrea
’s friend. Describe her. What was she wearing? Tattoos, what did she say? Was she older than Andrea?”

  “She was older, like a senior in high school. I focused on the nose ring. I hate those things. I don’t remember tattoos. Wait, she had some writing on her hands but I don’t remember what it said. Clothes were nothing to brag about, a sweatshirt pulled up on bony arms. Greasy hair, brown eyes. Hard eyes, that struck me, a young woman with eyes I’d see in Marcy’s clients.”

  “You hear a name?”

  “Sorry.”

  “She was there when you arrived?”

  “Sitting in a booth across from Andrea. I squeezed in next to Andrea.”

  “Did she leave before you?”

  “We left together. She paid, I remember. Or put down some change for a tip.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  “Just nodded when Andrea introduced me.”

  “But didn’t introduce her?”

  “She would have, wouldn’t she? I guess I didn’t catch the name. I just wanted to get Andrea and get going.”

  “Detective Lewis and I are going to step outside for a second.”

  Under the trees away from the bunkhouse, Lewis said, “She’s lying.”

  Aragon picked at the bark on a ponderosa. A piece broke loose and fell to the pine needles at her feet. “She slipped into that same tone of voice when she started telling us about the parties. Her voice is light when she’s talking about easy things. It sort of goes back in her mouth on dark stuff, like two people in there debating which one’s coming out to play.”

  “She’s made it almost impossible for us to track down the ad that connected her with Cassandra Baca. We’d have to run through all of them, take out the elegant ebonies, thick cuties, the foxy forties … ”

  “You’re spending too much time with this.”

  “Damn, I want to say Andrea when talking about this stuff. Cassandra Baca is the pretty girl in the school photos, not the one placing escort ads.”

  “Me too. That was someone else in the dumpster.” Aragon picked at another edge of loose bark. “We’re going to ID the friend once Tucker gets video. I know its Star Salazar. I don’t want to come back to Montclaire on this until we can nail it down. Meantime, let’s check Star’s juvie file. It should describe the writing on her hand, unless that’s very recent.”

  “The Juvenile Detention Center does a full-body inspection when admitting kids. So that’s it for Lily today?”

  Aragon looked around the homestead under the trees. “I want to get her out of here. But unless I lie to Rivera that Lily’s being completely forthcoming, witness protection is a ways off. Do you think it’s safe to send her home?”

  “Where’s Dolores Baca? That’s my answer.”

  At the autopsy, Nate Moss took a guess that the little lead slugs recovered inside Cassandra Baca’s skull were .25 caliber. He was right. A quick ballistics analysis at the State Crime Lab confirmed it. They were now working on identifying the weapon that fired two bullets through hair and skull.

  Aragon had her own guess.

  “Beretta Bobcat,” she said. “It’s the only .25 I’ve ever seen. For the same size and weight you can go up to a .32 or .380. I haven’t seen a new .25 on sale anywhere in a long time.”

  “I never liked those guns,” Lewis said. “That weird tip-up barrel, it bothers me. That small round, even if you shot someone center of mass, they could still go for your gun. Grab it so the barrel can’t pop up, you won’t get another round in the chamber.”

  “But a shot behind the ear does the trick. Two, for sure. Good for sneak attacks.”

  They asked Salas to catalog other shootings with a .25 caliber handgun just to have the information on hand. Salas couldn’t recall one off the top of her head but she’d look into it. They hadn’t heard from Rivera about his follow-up interview with Sun-Hi Breskin. But Tucker finally had something other than screen shots of Daniel Breskin and porn stars.

  He set two chairs before a monitor. The image had been paused. When it rolled they saw the inside of a Pizza Hut like every other in the country. The camera was pointed at the front, to the door next to the cash register.

  “This doesn’t help,” Aragon said. “They were in a booth in the back.”

  “Hold on,” Tucker said. “They came through this door.”

  And there was Lily Montclaire.

  “When was this taken?”

  “This is this past Monday, before the last party. Now I’m backing it up. I believe this will be Cassandra Baca.”

  The images dissolved, stabilized, then moved forward in time, people using the door, families, delivery men gathering orders. Then Cassandra Baca, someone holding the door from the outside. Then came the person connected to the hand on the door. A thin young Hispanic woman with a nose ring and matted hair.

  “Back that up,” Aragon said, “to where the door’s held open. There. Can you move us closer, focus on that hand?”

  Tucker pressed the remote, the shot tightened. He was too low. He moved the focus up. There was the hand on the door.

  Letters across the knuckles said Star.

  Fifteen

  Star Salazar’s mother told them get off her property, a stucco house at the back of a fenced acre lot that had sprouted additional homes and trailers through generations of the family. Lewis said housing inspectors must have overlooked this place. Aragon said, let’s get out of here before those dogs climb that fence. We shoot a pit bull coming for our knees, it will be worse than Ferguson.

  Using McRae’s list, they ran down two of Cassandra Baca’s friends. They were both pretty girls, Hispanic, dark curly hair, unblemished skin, budding figures. They got a repeat of what other kids said in front of the cameras outside Camino High. Aragon wanted to know about the fuzzy tattoo of a sports car on one girl’s hip that appeared from under her shirt when she crossed her arms. She said it was nothing. Aragon made a point of asking the second girl if she had any tattoos. She said maybe, she wasn’t going to show them. Can you at least tell us what it is? A Jag.

  Aragon felt electricity across her shoulder blades. They were getting close to something though both denied knowing Star Salazar. Aragon called McRae. He knew the girls and knew they hung with Star Salazar. Two more she’d saved from getting beat up behind the auditorium. They’d been back-to-back in a closing circle when Star Salazar stepped in and it was over.

  Lewis and Aragon returned to the Salazar compound for another try. The gate was closed, three pit bulls and a Rotty running loose behind the chain-link, no one answering Lewis leaning on the horn.

  “I need to look away from this for a while,” Aragon said, “My Krav Maga class starts in an hour. I’ll get with you later.”

  He took her to her car. She had her gym bag and protective gear in the trunk: shin and forearm guards, a face mask/helmet combo, and a groin protector she learned once never to forget. It wasn’t only men who doubled over from a kick between the legs and still felt it a week later.

  They hadn’t taught Krav Maga at the Academy. She’d first heard of it from female officers in Albuquerque looking for alternatives to tasing or shooting large male assailants. Now Krav Maga was helping cops handle the growing number of criminals using mixed martial arts they saw in televised fights.

  She was surprised how naturally moves illegal inside any boxing ring came to her. That’s what she liked about Krav Maga, more than jiu jitsu, karate, kung fu. The moves were already inside her, in tune with her natural reflexes, including running away when that was the smart thing to do. “The Nike defense,” her group of fighters called it.

  She didn’t need to be bowing to any sensei. She wasn’t after elegance of movement. Forget the “art” in martial arts. This wasn’t sport. What she needed was learning how to stay on her feet in a street fight where there were no rules, no limits, no umpires—no elegance—and any we
apon could and would be used.

  At five-two, even with more muscle than many male officers, Aragon needed help. With a larger, stronger man going for a chokehold or a straight arm bar, she’d be in trouble no matter how much she could bench press. But an eye gouge would stop anyone. If he was too powerful, crushed her in a grip where she was seconds from passing out, she’d bite off his face.

  Teeth were a weapon she’d always have.

  Teeth marks.

  Cassandra Baca’s inner thigh.

  Buccal cells.

  Pain.

  She staggered from a roundhouse kick she hadn’t seen coming. An advancing side kick drove her back. A front kick to the gut had her on her toes. He did that again, she’d be against the wall. She forced everything out of her mind except the man in front, his eyes above a pink slash, the color of his mouth guard. He cocked his foot. She reached out with her right hand past the rising kick, avoiding giving him an angle to strike and stun her forearm. The kick came. She plucked it, pulling herself forward, bursting in with foot strikes. A fist to the side of his neck. He wavered backwards on a stiff leg. She angled a slap kick straight into his knee and stopped with the instep of her foot touching the locked joint.

  He said, “You always make me think what it would be like not to walk. I need to put you down with the first strike.”

  “Not gonna happen. Unless you shoot me.”

  Looking away for just those seconds made her see something she’d missed.

  She showered, changed back into street clothes, and drove to the dirt alley where the dumpster had been parked. She saw lights in some of the condemned trailers, people using lanterns instead of electricity. In the distance, the fire in the mountains had grown during the hot day. Flames had moved down slopes and were creating their own winds. Walls of smoke larger than the mountains themselves blocked the light of lower stars. Right now, Albuquerque was getting it. Air quality alerts had been issued, soccer matches and baseball games cancelled, school recess was being held indoors.