Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “No, they can’t. I guarantee it. That computer was crushed inside a car now the size of a mattress.”

  “She’ll tell them about your case, the blackmail, they’ll be setting up cots in your office. They’ll dig into why all the defense witnesses disappeared. The insurance company’s investigators will now have a grand jury doing their work. You’ll never see a dime, even if they don’t nail you.”

  “You want this taco?”

  “You understand, any good I can do you will end if that video surfaces, or Judy talks, or anyone else who knows what happened in her house.”

  “That lady with the long legs, the number three in your triple team on Cassandra.” The taco shell crunching, ground beef spilling on Silva’s plate. “The Audrey Hepburn neck. You know, I said that to someone today, they said, ‘who’?”

  “My friends on the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, they’ll forget they ever knew me.”

  Silva got the waitress’s attention, held up his cup.

  “You’ll have some houseguests, too,” he said. “Cassandra was younger than you thought. Maybe you knew and it made it better. You watch the movies, Cassandra with you and your friends, you can see how young she is. Can’t miss it. A little half and half, hon,” he said as the waitress refilled his cup. “And more honey for my sopapillas.”

  Thornton waited until the waitress walked out of earshot. What was Silva thinking, talking like that in front of her? Then she got it: he was showing he had nothing to worry about.

  “That birthmark you got down there,” Silva said as he tore open a sopapilla and poured honey inside. “You know it’s the state symbol?”

  “Here’s what I propose,” she said. “You retain me as appellate counsel. My fee … hold on.” She saw he was about to object. “My fee is five percent, to come out of your trial lawyer’s cut, which leaves him at twenty. I’m certain you can persuade him 1.8 mil is still adequate compensation. You have your scary counterpart outside pay him a visit if he gets prickly. Your twin brother, what happened to his face?”

  Silva chewed, brown eyes looking happy as he pushed the fried bread soaked with honey into his mouth.

  “Now you got me worried about your friend, the judge.” Silva talking with cheeks full, pushing the tips of his white mustache forward. “She’s how close to going to the police?”

  “I keep her from falling off that cliff for a while. She denies retrial, gives you rock-solid findings of fact. You get all she can give, then take it from there. I can’t keep her on that cliff edge forever. Her drinking, it’s out of control. She comes to one morning, hung over, feeling scared and guilty, blaming herself for a girl in a dumpster, it may not be me she calls for help. Is it your business practice to trust everything you have to drunks? It’s not mine.”

  “You want to explain what you mean by that?”

  “I don’t think I have to.” She held Silva’s eyes while he licked honey from his fingers.

  “These are good. They say when you break a sopapilla open a fairy comes out. How they got in there, they never say. I got something to ask you.”

  He poured more honey into another fried bread pocket and took a bite. Golden drops clung to the tips of his mustache.

  “That other lady in the movie, with the legs. And the teeth. Jesus. Who is she?”

  Thornton reached into her purse and took out a folded sheet of paper. She dropped it next to Silva’s plate.

  He waited until he finished eating, then tried to wipe honey from his fingers with a paper napkin. It came apart and stuck to his skin. He dipped his fingers in his water glass, then dried with a fresh napkin. He unfolded Thornton’s piece of paper. “Lily Montclaire, Loco Lobo Outfitters, County Road 24, Pecos.”

  “That’s where she is,” Thornton said, “when she’s not with the police.”

  Silva refolded the note and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He used the last sopapilla to mop chile from his plate. “We got routes out there. Private contracts for what the county won’t handle. We’re always looking for new accounts. I could have a service rep drop by.”

  Nineteen

  The fire was eating the mountains. A wall of flames twenty miles across now, towns evacuated, every hotel in Santa Fe booked, people filling RV parks and campgrounds at the city’s edge. Today the wind had died. The black smoke was churning straight into the blue sky. The view from Rivera’s window, up on the top floor of the FBI offices, showed wet clouds loitering to the south, but not coming closer.

  What looked like orange and red mosquitoes spun around columns of smoke, old 747s blitzing the fire, getting in close to drop their lakes of slurry.

  “Good day to bomb the beast,” Aragon said. “They can get smoke jumpers in with this break in the wind.”

  “It looks like Desert Storm,” Rivera said, “when the oil fields were burning.”

  She didn’t keep photographs in her office. She didn’t want the critters she brought in learning anything about her life. Rivera probably never brought murderers and rapists here. He had a photograph of himself in desert camos, lean and tanned, his name on a patch on his chest, pants tucked in the tops of boots. Pancake-flat sand stretched behind him, the only other thing in the frame the barrel of a tank poking in from off-camera. On a bookshelf, framed photographs of a large family, three boys, two girls surrounding a smiling man and woman. The man had the same widow’s peak she’d noticed right away the first time Tomas Rivera looked down at her.

  “My brother and his family. They’re in Maryland.”

  Rivera pulled out a chair from his desk and took a seat. The desktop was cleared of anything but a pen holder and calendar. So different from her work space, coffee stains on a blotter, cigarette burns left from previous occupants, yellowed bits of tape where she’d held articles about crimes so she’d see them every day, stacks of office memos she hadn’t read, an empty box for .40 caliber slugs in which she kept a toothbrush and a small tube of paste.

  “Breskin,” she said.

  Rivera tented his hands, elbows on the desk. This was different, sitting with office furniture separating them. Different than the team around a conference table, kicking a case back and forth, digging fries out of bags. Different than the back seat of Javier’s truck.

  “It’s a dead end. I found the roses Daniel Breskin purchased. Those in the dumpster with Cassandra Baca weren’t his.”

  “When were you going to let us know?” Was he talking down to her? What was under the words?

  “It took some time with Sunny Breskin,” Rivera said, chin on the steeple of his fingers. “I made a judgment call. It played out.”

  Rivera pushed his chair back. She was expecting his feet on the desk, showing her the soles of his shoes. Not knowing why, but feeling that it was coming. Instead, he rested a foot on one knee and folded his arms.

  First looking at her over his hands. Now folded arms. She was missing something.

  “Five dozen roses in a garbage can outside that guest house he uses as an office.” Rivera scratched his cheek. “Sunny thinks Daniel used them for a photo session. She saw him come to the house with a group of people, and later flashes going off. She didn’t go out. She doesn’t want to know more. They stayed until early morning, then everybody left. She saw the flowers scattered on a bed when she went in after we talked to her. She didn’t tell me until today.”

  “You were there yesterday.”

  “Yesterday I told her the truth of why we were asking about the flowers. I know we haven’t released that information, but I thought it important. Today Sunny called, after talking to her lawyer who said it was best she cooperated. She doesn’t like her husband’s business but she likes him being under suspicion for murder even less.”

  “You got the flowers?”

  “On their way to Quantico to eliminate any possibility they have something to do with those around Cassandra Baca. I retri
eved the plastic wrappers as well, with the bar code on the price stickers. The Whole Foods manager confirms they correspond to the bunches purchased on Breskin’s credit card.”

  Anything she was picking up from Rivera was replaced with questioning herself. Maybe her instincts about the roses had been wrong. Maybe they should have used that time on Silva, or Thornton and Diaz. Or Star Salazar.

  “So Tucker can redirect his attention from the glamorous world of adult entertainment?” she asked.

  “Not completely. He’s working the Backpage angle, the dregs of that world. We need that ad. A subpoena came back negative for any payments received from a Cassandra or Dolores Baca.”

  “The mother?”

  “We gave it a shot. The daughter was using her trade name.”

  “Dolores is still missing.” A thought hit her. “Ask him to try payments from a Star Salazar.”

  She spent the next twenty minutes bringing Rivera up to date with the information on how Star Salazar saved, then used, Cassandra Baca. The ankle-over-the-knee, arms folded pose was gone. He leaned across his desk, getting pulled in. Then he stood and paced, thinking aloud.

  “We see something like this in prison populations. A newbie shielded by a stronger, more-feared inmate, only to find themselves exploited by their protector for sex. You’re thinking Star Salazar was pimping Cassandra Baca?”

  “I’m feeling certain Star Salazar at least knew what was going on and helped Cassandra Baca somehow. Maybe she drove her to the Pizza Hut and waited until Montclaire arrived. I’m pretty certain Cassandra walked to Star’s house after, got a ride home from there.”

  “Maybe Star Salazar had the Backpage ad. Montclaire said Cassandra Baca once suggested involving her, but Montclaire found her repulsive. Maybe the initial contact came through Salazar.”

  “She’s missing, too. Everybody we want to talk to takes off. Can I use that?” Aragon pointed at a white erasable board on the wall to the side of the desk. “I was doing this last night, trying to get a handle on this mess. It’s simpler now Breskin’s out of the picture.”

  Last night she’d put CB for Cassandra Baca in the middle. Now she wrote those letters to the side. In the middle she wrote initials for Thornton, with initials for Diaz and Montclaire next to that. At the top she wrote Benny Silva.

  “I was getting lost putting Cassandra Baca at the center of everything. She’s just a girl. She’s not the center of anything. Now look.” She drew a line from Thornton to Silva. “We know from Fager that Thornton’s very interested in E. Benny.” Now a line from Silva to Diaz. “And he has this big freaking case in front of Diaz.” Now she wrote in Star Salazar’s initials, with a line back to Silva where she added Abel Jr.

  “There’s a circle closing here. Breskin was messing it up for me. I couldn’t see where he fit in.”

  “I don’t see the circle,” Rivera said.

  “You will now.”

  She drew a line from CB to Salazar. “That closes the circle. I may have some of this wrong, but look, we can now see that all these people are connected, with Thornton at the very center. With her in that position, we see everything line up.”

  “May I?” Rivera took the marker from her and switched Silva for Thornton. “It works this way, too. Silva at the center ties it as neatly.”

  “Crap.” Aragon dumped her ass in a chair. She thought she’d had it. Maybe she only had what she wanted to see. “Do you at least agree we’re starting to see the outlines of something that fits together?”

  Rivera studied the diagram on the board, then switched out Silva for Diaz. Then he put Montclaire in the center. Then Cassandra Baca, back where they started.

  “It’s here. I agree it doesn’t feel right with Cassandra Baca at the center. We can make connections off her, but ‘at the center’ implies she is the driving force of all this.”

  “She’s dead and I feel things are still happening.”

  “It could be something random, people crossing paths by chance.”

  “I don’t buy that.” Aragon popped out of her chair and touched a name on the board. “We can’t find Star Salazar. Let’s talk to her connection to Benny, Abel Jr.”

  Going down the stairs to her car, she realized Rivera hadn’t touched her. Not his hand brushing her arm, his hip against hers, the little things he did to make contact that looked innocent to other people. She’d taken the touches for granted, sometimes resented him pressing it, risking someone truly seeing what was passing between them.

  Like sitting across his desk, something had gotten between them.

  The heat was brutal, rising off the sidewalk, cooking the branches of ornamental trees dying without rain. It was worse in the parking lot. She opened all the doors of her car to let out the superheated air and shielded her eyes as she looked into the sky, urging forward the distant clouds she’d seen from up in Rivera’s office.

  Not a chance.

  Clear blue. Perfectly, brilliantly, blazingly … sunny.

  Twenty

  Serena agreed to move Montclaire to the closest bunkhouse, where she’d be easier to protect. It stood in the open, the approaches cleared of underbrush and the pines limbed up. The gravel off the county road ran for miles with no other ranches along the way. That was the only way in here unless someone crossed the mountain behind the house. Javier said that looked easier than it was. You couldn’t see the deep canyon at the foot of the mountain until you were right on it. Even in daylight that was killer country to cross.

  “We’ll set up after dark,” Aragon said, Lewis with her on the porch, deciding how they would do this. “With Thornton knowing where Lily is, she’s not safe. We need to be out here every night. You’ll sleep when you’re dead, remember?”

  “Daytime?”

  “We have to figure something out.”

  “Let’s use the top of that rise down the road. We’ll see headlights coming before they’re close.”

  “Thanks for helping, Rick.” He didn’t like going twenty-four hours without seeing his family. He’d arrived after swinging home with groceries and a promise to be back to cook breakfast. Aragon was glad to have him. It would be a long night in the woods.

  He said, “I got an update from Rivera. Tucker came through again.”

  She saw Lily Montclaire moving behind a window inside the bunkhouse. It was hot out here on the porch with the western sun cranking up the temperature in the tinder-dry woods. The bunkhouse was probably an oven. All the windows were open but one, the bathroom with three shower stalls. Serena had caught Montclaire standing in the window, naked, taking her time drying herself, watching Javier as he groomed the mules. She’d nailed boards over the window so that wouldn’t happen again.

  Lewis said, “Backpage is now cooperating without needing subpoenas. Tucker just had to mention the grand jury the Feds always have working in Albuquerque.”

  “We could use something like that.” Aragon put her feet on the railing, an iced tea by her feet. Lewis had his tea resting on his thigh, leaving a ring on his jeans.

  “There was an ad placed by an Andrea in Espanola. She’d meet up in Santa Fe, but she was over forty years old. Somehow Tucker learned she was that teacher, the one who nodded off in her car during lunch hour at the high school with the needle on the seat next to her.”

  “With her head on the steering wheel. I remember that. Kids found her, thought she was dead.”

  Montclaire came out of the bunkhouse with wet towels in her arms. She crossed to the clothesline Serena used for the family and draped them over the cord.

  “But he also got ads paid by Star Salazar. They were for different girls. None for herself except the oldest, which ran only once. She showed her face in that one, the metal ring in the nose for those who like that. It ran under ‘Freaky Latina.’ The ones for the other girls, there’s no faces, just hips, tight shirts over boobs, and thighs. A coup
le with sports car tats. One might be Cassandra Baca but Tucker couldn’t be certain.”

  Montclaire was watching them, a towel obscuring her face as she raised it over the line, then her eyes again looking their way when the line sagged under the weight of wet cotton.

  “Tucker says the numbers from the ads matches the number found on Montclaire’s phone. She was texting Star Salazar.”

  Montclaire had finished with the towels and was coming their way.

  “That woman,” Aragon said. “She said she only met Star Salazar once in the Pizza Hut.” Aragon dropped her feet and sat forward, her forearm on the top railing. “Lily, get up here.”

  Serena grilled elk burgers topped with her red chile, loaded with oregano and cumin. Aragon and Lewis waved off beers. Serena talked about where Javier should be right now, camped inside the boundary of the Pecos Wilderness along a stream without a name. The other guiding services were steering customers to peaks and mesas. He’d found a valley that years ago had been cleaned out of elk and deer and written off by local hunters. The animals were responding to pressure in the famous high country by returning to the old range.

  “Denise, you should come with us.” Serena dished posole onto plates. “Help with camp. Get yourself a cow elk. You can keep the meat in our freezer. We’ll get to see you whenever you’re hungry.”

  Lewis should come, too, bring his girls. They ever been on a mule?

  Aragon’s mind was on what Montclaire had told them before Serena called dinner: she’d never seen the girl she thought was Andrea with a phone.

  The time you called about the Backpage ad, she’d asked Montclaire, who answered? You got to know Andrea’s voice. Was it her? How about the other times?

  Montclaire had shrugged. I did most of the talking, asking about dates, can you do tonight, how much? It was yes or no on the other end, and a number. We always texted after that.