Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  The phone brushed her cheek. She winched. Serena had missed some of the cactus spines. She tried pulling them out and cursed her short fingernails. They’d stay in her face until she got home.

  Twenty-seven

  “I don’t know what buccal cells are,” Montclaire said. “I won’t argue.”

  “That’s it?” Aragon drummed fingers on the table in the interrogation room, the cot Montclaire had been using pushed to the wall, a sheet and blanket clumped over a pillow.

  “Mr. Fager said things would turn up I couldn’t foresee and to be ready for bad news.”

  “Fager?” Aragon felt Lewis’s tension, seated next to her, as he crushed an empty Styrofoam cup. Rivera was against the wall, letting them wrestle with Montclaire. “You think he’s in this to help you?”

  Montclaire had her hands pulled inside the sleeves of a fuzzy sweater. She wore long pants and socks. She wasn’t going to freeze while being questioned again. Aragon got a different sense from her, as though Montclaire knew this moment had been coming.

  Keeping his shoulder against the wall, Rivera said, “Ms. Montclaire, I previously informed you that if you were less than completely truthful, you would be excluded from the witness protection program. Your life could depend on telling the truth. First, Cassandra Baca is found dead just as you’re revealing how Thornton used her with Judge Diaz.”

  “That was her real name?” Montclaire’s hands emerged from the sweater’s sleeves. She laced her fingers together, rested her chin on her knuckles.

  Aragon heard that as, Now you’re the ones telling me things.

  “And tonight,” Rivera went on, “an attempt was made on your life.”

  “I heard the party boys screaming when they were shoved into cells. And some guy going on about getting his wife when he makes bail. Nobody else has bothered me.”

  “The attack occurred where you’d been staying recently. Men looking for you exchanged fire with detectives Aragon and Lewis. They’d tried getting to you before, but a police blockade stopped them. They returned with automatic weapons tonight.”

  “How did they know to look for me there?”

  “Marcy Thornton forced Detective Aragon to disclose that information in a deposition presided over by Judge Diaz. Draw your own conclusions, Ms. Montclaire.”

  “So that’s why you moved me.” Montclaire’s big eyes took in Aragon and Lewis, hands back inside the sleeves of her fuzzy sweater. “You know, I never said I didn’t bite Andrea. Cassandra. Listen to your tape. I didn’t lie to you.”

  “But you’ve been less than completely truthful.” Rivera moved from the wall and stood over Montclaire. “It is very hard to believe anything you’ve told us, an impossible story about a prominent lawyer bribing a judge through the sexual exploitation of a teenage girl. Where I’m at now, I’d need to see film to believe you. It could have been you enjoying Cassandra Baca on your own. When we caught you destroying evidence, burning down a neighborhood, you put it on Marcy Thornton and Judge Diaz, thinking we’d fall over ourselves rushing to get them in jail. You’re still the last person who we know was with Cassandra Baca.”

  “You want a movie,” Montclaire said.

  “I’d buy front row tickets.”

  “They don’t sell reserved seating for movies.”

  “You’re sounding confident, Lily.” Aragon took it from Rivera. The smart comeback, they hadn’t heard that before. “You told us you learned from Thornton to always keep something in the bank when you’re dealing with police. Are you about to make a late withdrawal?”

  Montclaire hunched her shoulders to her ears, a trim, long body inside a bulky sweater three sizes too big. It was a pose, something from a fashion magazine from years ago. She held it while they waited for an answer.

  Damn, Aragon thought. She’s in control right now.

  “Call Mr. Fager,” Montclaire said. “He has something for you. You’ll be surprised.”

  “Tell us first. Why the surprise?”

  “Mr. Rivera said he needs a movie. Mr. Fager will show it to you. Do you know you’ve got prickly things in your cheek? Your skin’s turning black.”

  Four thirty in the morning. Aragon didn’t care as she pressed the buzzer on Fager’s front door, then banged with her fist. A light went on inside, a deadbolt slid back. Fager stood there in boxer shorts and a T-shirt that said Army Rangers.

  Aragon put two fingers into his chest and pushed him into the house. Lewis and Rivera came after her. They formed a semicircle around Fager, his butt against a wall.

  “Turn over the video Montclaire gave you,” Aragon said.

  “You could have called.” Fager adjusted his boxers to close the fly. “I would have brought it to your office.”

  “We saved you the trip. Where is it?”

  “In my office. You may watch it on my computer.”

  “Put something on,” Aragon said, and Fager stopped first at a bedroom for a robe.

  He was living in his home office. A blanket and pillow on the leather couch, law books on the floor serving as tables for cups and empty plates. The waste baskets overflowed with balls of crumpled paper. The clothes Fager had been wearing before sleep were in a pile on the floor, what looked like a good suit mixed in with sweat pants and jeans.

  He pushed away dishes and brought a laptop close to the edge of his desk. From the top drawer, he withdrew a postage-stamp-sized card and plugged it into a port. In a second they were watching a close-up of women’s feet, then a room, what looked like diplomas and certificates on a wall, Cassandra Baca’s face close to the lens, her nose unnaturally big, then backing away and looking normal. Marcy Thornton and Judith Diaz behind her, Thornton handing Diaz a pair of handcuffs, Lily Montclaire coming into the shot with a bottle and glasses. Cassandra facing the camera, opening her shirt. Then the four went at it until Lewis said, “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Where did Lily get this?” Aragon asked.

  “This is where I send you back to her.” Fager ejected the card and handed it over.

  The sun was just rising over the mountains outside when Aragon waved the video card inside a baggie in front of Montclaire’s face.

  “How did you get this?”

  Montclaire had made up the cot since they’d left. Her small roll-on suitcase was packed.

  “I found it in Cassandra—Andrea’s—I don’t know what to call her. I’m sticking with Andrea. I found it in her overnight bag. After the first time, she always brought it. She said she needed to clean up before going home. She always set it in the same spot. Not in the bathroom, but there in the living room. Once I put a bottle in front of it. She got up to pour when we didn’t need refills and put the bottle in a different place. When we moved around, she’d dive onto the couch and call us back. The last time, she moved the bag for no reason I could see except it followed us to Judy’s bedroom. I caught her in the bathroom when Marcy and Judy were snoring. She was checking a camera.”

  “But you didn’t tell your boss?”

  “Things were falling apart. I’m not going to lie to you.”

  “What, starting now?”

  “Look, I held it back as insurance. Something told me Marcy would throw me overboard when the shit hit. Remember how she wouldn’t let me see what evidence you had against me, right before I fired her? You know your cheek’s looking worse?”

  “Where’s the camera?”

  “I let Andrea keep it. I didn’t want it, just the video card.”

  Aragon made her describe the camera. Montclaire couldn’t remember the brand, but said it seemed expensive. Too expensive for a teenage hooker? I did wonder where she got it, Montclaire said.

  Aragon looked to Rivera to see if he had questions. He stepped forward and pulled a chair across from Montclaire. Standing, he put a foot on the seat, his arms folded across his chest. Montclaire had her poses. He had his
.

  “You’ve played your cards well, Ms. Montclaire. I am prepared to move forward with formally placing you into the Federal Witness Protection Program. We’ll be talking a lot more. And I remind you to be always truthful with us. So I’m going to ask a very important question right now. Where are the other videos, of the other times?”

  “I can’t say for sure.”

  “Did you ask Cassandra Baca about them?”

  “When I was taking her back to the Pizza Hut, I kept thinking she had to be working with someone. The expensive camera. There was that case in Albuquerque, the little judge.”

  “The little judge?”

  “I know what she’s talking about,” Aragon said. “He was a polio victim, his legs were sticks. He’d been bringing a whore to his house, and she started videotaping him, a camera in her purse. She and her pimp tried blackmailing him. She later said he’d threatened her, raped her. The case got him off the bench but he ducked jail.”

  “That one,” Montclaire said. “I asked who Andrea was working with. It was Star. She got the videos after each night.”

  “How was Star going to use them?”

  “She didn’t know. She told me she was going to get in a lot of trouble because I took the last video and she didn’t want to ever see me or Marcy or Judy again.”

  Aragon called Rivera and Lewis into the hall. Lewis anticipated what she was going to say.

  “The money under the car, the twenty grand even. That was what Cassandra Baca got for videotaping the parties. No way that came from turning tricks. Are you seeing this, Tomas?” Aragon asked. Years of working with Lewis, she knew he did.

  “You’re going to tell me,” Rivera said.

  “Benny Silva was blackmailing Diaz. Through his nephew’s son, Junior, he had a connection with Star Salazar. His brother, Rigo, knew Dolores Baca had tricked, maybe also knew Cassandra was doing it. Remember Lily said the first time she handed Star money in an envelope from Judge Diaz’s chambers? Benny Silva learned about it and opened the door to opportunity knocking.”

  “So Silva’s been extorting Judge Diaz?”

  “With that video,” Lewis said, “we can get warrants. The ten minutes we saw will get us into Diaz’s house. Lily can identify the location. She used Thornton’s car to taxi Cassandra, we get a warrant for that. She said the cuffs are in Thornton’s office, throw that in, too.”

  “Can we get into Silva’s place?” Aragon asked.

  “I don’t see it. We’re short of anything solid on him,” Rivera said. “But I’m with you, we search every place owned or controlled by Diaz and Thornton. We’ll work with Lily to fine-tune the probable cause. By the way, no shot-up van has yet appeared at Silva’s place.”

  “We’ll find something through Thornton or Diaz to get to him.” Aragon opened the door to re-enter the interrogation room. “I want to be on the search of Thornton’s office, okay?”

  Montclaire was waiting for them, holding the extension for the roll-on suitcase, ready to go.

  Fager had watched the detectives in his driveway after he turned over Montclaire’s video, busy on their phones, a high-five between Aragon and Lewis. Next they’d be getting warrants, giving Marcy and Judy visits they would never forget. Nothing they owned would escape fingers inside blue latex. He hoped they went for cheek swabs. He’d like to see Marcy being told to open her mouth and don’t bite.

  But they were fuck-ups, these cops. They’d botched his wife’s case. If he hadn’t played along with Aragon, sanitizing her illegal search of Geronimo’s ranch by playing the private citizen who just happened upon fourteen graves upriver from the compound—just chanced upon depressions in sand at the head of a canyon on the edge of nowhere—the case would have been blown out of the water on the first motion to suppress.

  No way he’d trust them to get this right.

  He took a sleeping pill. He needed to appear rested and calm tomorrow, not the crazy man stalking the lawyer who had defended his wife’s killer, a disbarred shylock bent on revenge. He didn’t want to come across like some strung-out pornographer when he played the video for, in order, starting at eleven down in Albuquerque: the investigative reporter from KRQE-TV; then across the street to the other station, a reporter he knew there who used to cover the courthouse; heading back north, the station on Carlisle just off the interstate; mid-afternoon, the criminal reporter for the Albuquerque Journal and last, around six, the AP stringer who covered Santa Fe.

  The TV people wanted to photograph him here in his house, have him point to things left behind by his wife, connect the audience with his sorrow. The files from her case, the autopsy, crime scene photos, were still there on the dining table from the first day he’d gotten them. That cup, the one from their trip to Alaska, where he’d sat reading the initial reports on the investigation of the man who’d murdered Linda.

  They could do that later as the story grew and he had time to straighten things up.

  In the hallway to his office, the detectives had stepped around clothes and shoes. Dishes were piled in the kitchen sink. He needed to take out the trash.

  The house probably smelled. He hadn’t opened a window in months.

  He’d wear the somber gray suit, not the navy blue blazer with brass buttons. A plain white button-down shirt, no stripes. Skip the French cuffs and links. Go with wingtips, not the loafers. Make sure he shaved right, put something on his hair to keep it in place. Get it cut, this week for sure.

  He’d be sorrowful, distraught at the discovery of disheartening evidence showing the depths to which Santa Fe’s legal system had sunk. He’d ask the reporters if they wanted copies of the video, passed onto him by a concerned citizen. He just happened to have an extra with him.

  He wanted something done about a judicial system no longer meeting the pledge made to citizens. He wanted reform, improvement, a return to the high standard of ethics justice requires.

  What he really wanted to know was how to get the video on YouTube, or that other thing he’d heard about, Tumblr, whatever that was. The television stations would never show all the action. They’d say, The following report may offend some people. Parental discretion is advised. Then they’d soften the edges so much, use bland words to describe what you weren’t going to see, you’d wonder what the warning had been for.

  On the Internet, the world could see Marcy and Judy in all their glory, forever, nothing they could do about it.

  Maybe he should pay some kid to set up a website just for the video. MarcyThornton.com.

  Yago and the boys in Pod B wouldn’t have to use their imagination any more. Somebody could smuggle in screen shots. They’d be taped to walls above beds until the next contraband sweep. Pictures of Judy Diaz would turn up in the men’s rooms at the courthouse, be passed around by staff, fellow judges looking differently at her in meetings.

  He took another sleeping pill. His mind was taking off and he needed to shut it down for a few hours.

  Twenty-eight

  “Put in”—Rivera pacing in his office, dictating in a robotic monotone to Aragon—“the confidential informant, who has established his/her credibility on numerous instances as corroborated by subsequent investigation, states the deceased was transported recently in two vehicles owned by subject, a 2010 Aston Martin and a 2015 Dodge Durango. We can add the license numbers. I’ll get them from DMV.”

  Aragon at Rivera’s desktop, in his office with its view of fire in the mountains, black clouds lit from inside, a wall of flame below, orange and bright even in full sun. She asked, “Do we need to include what Lily told us that we couldn’t corroborate? She’s credible on some things, not on others?”

  What she wanted to ask was, how did I get the job being your secretary? More important, she wanted the warrants approved and executed today. It was still early morning after another sleepless night. Rivera said a judge was waiting to meet him over breakfast in
chambers in the federal courthouse. He was to bring the warrant application and burritos.

  She wanted to get home to get the cactus needles out of her face. Montclaire was right. The skin was turning black, pimples of dead flesh around the places where she still had cactus in her skin.

  But she wanted this more.

  So she was taking dictation for the first time since riding shotgun, the junior officer in the car, back when Santa Fe police patrolled in pairs, before computers and radios and cameras ate up the passenger seat.

  “We show the judge the video,” Rivera said. “It will be a tactical nuke and blow away all doubts and questions. Lily is credible for what matters.”

  “You’re the FBI Special Agent, Albuquerque Division, assigned to the Santa Fe Resident Agency, with an MA from Georgetown University, employed as a special agent for twelve years, who has attended numerous seminars on investigative techniques and criminal procedure and has earned the equivalent of one year toward a law degree.” She’d written that down in paragraph one.

  “The scope of the alleged conspiracy”—the monotone again—“includes bribery, obstruction of justice, and murder. The criminal acts described herein occurred at numerous locations in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, and utilized subject’s personal vehicles and law office premises. You paint it broadly like that”—talking now to her, some feeling in his voice—“you can include a wish list for whatever and wherever you want to search. I’ve never searched a lawyer’s office. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Separate warrants for Diaz and Thornton?”

  “We just cut and paste, but yes, each subject is served with a warrant particular to them. It’s their privacy right being invaded.”

  “I’ve done warrants.”

  “This is federal. The rules are different.”

  Yes, sir.

  “I’ll summarize our interviews with Montclaire,” she said. “More than stating a general belief in the informant’s credibility, we can lay out specifically where she’s been on the money. The video showing her arriving in Thornton’s car, for instance, what I saw standing outside Diaz’s house the first time, before we understood what was going on. Me being a fellow law enforcement officer, graduate of Northern New Mexico Community College who has attended the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy and exactly two seminars at the UNM Law School, qualified in over twenty trials to testify as an expert on various investigative techniques, you may rely on my observations and conclusions reasonably drawn therefrom.”