Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  “We’ll find the police sniper’s name. They have to report these things. That woman you saw cleaning the bunkhouse? Probably Mrs. Javier Aragon.”

  “Anybody had anything to do with this, they’re on the list.”

  “She has kids, I think.”

  “I didn’t see any kids when we checked it out.”

  “They might be there when we go back to finish this.”

  “I lost my son and grandson.”

  “I hear you.”

  Benny had no idea how Rigo found the van. They left the interstate at Glorieta and wound around dirt roads for forty-five minutes. Then even worse roads, the truck lurching from side to side and Benny wondering how Rigo got his Olds in here.

  “This is it,” Rigo said when a pile of brush and rocks blocked what little was left of any kind of road.

  They cleared the way, then drove for another half mile. The van was there, nose in. When Benny came around the front he saw the blown-out windshield and bullet holes in the front. There was blood on the seats and floor mats. Flies were having a field day.

  Rigo found a way to turn the flatbed around, then backed to the van. He pushed out a metal gangplank that fell with a heavy thud. With Rigo driving and Benny shouting if the wheels were going the right way or the wrong, they got the van on the flatbed. They stowed the gangplank and covered the van with tarps held down by chains.

  Back on the gravel road and picking up speed Benny looked behind to make sure the tarp was staying put. They stopped twice to tie down flaps the wind pulled loose.

  On the interstate, Rigo kept his speed down, but not so they’d get pulled over.

  “The only thing keeping that lawyer alive,” he said, watching a State Police cruiser pass them, “is nine million dollars. When are we going to see that?”

  “It could be some time. I’m letting Judge Diaz know we’re done waiting for her part to get done.”

  “We kill the lawyer now, what difference does it make?”

  “There’s the appeal. She said she can fix it.”

  “Why can’t we fix it ourselves? Those appeals judges, they have families. We send them pictures of their kids at school, the wife shopping, getting her hair done. We find out they like whores, or boys, they do drugs, gamble too much. All the time it’s going to take, we can find something.”

  “There’s no guarantee.”

  “So we put a gun in their face, tell them we’ll be back they don’t rule the right way. How would you like to find your kid in a dumpster?”

  “We get Diaz’s ruling,” Benny said, “we can go for a settlement, avoid an appeal. But it won’t be the full verdict.”

  Santa Fe was coming up, they’d be taking the next exit, heading to the plant.

  “What are we going to do with all that money?” Rigo asked. “There’s no one to pass the business to. Your daughter in California don’t want no part of it.”

  “She’d take nine million dollars.”

  “You haven’t seen her in how long? Your Millie and my Barbara, they’ll be set, between what the plant is worth, all the properties. There’s enough for Abel’s wife, too.”

  “You’re in a hurry.”

  “We do the lawyer—it’s telling the judge she’s the one needs to hurry.”

  Now they were in town, moving through traffic, not far to go. Benny called ahead to have someone at the gate.

  “These streets,” he said, “the conquistadors laid them out. Where the interstate is, that was how they got to the Great Plains. All the way to Nebraska. That was Don Juan de Oñate, the last conquistador.”

  “You and the conquistadors.”

  “I’m thinking he wasn’t the last. That’s you and me. Five hundred years ago the first Silva men came into this country. They never stopped conquering shit. We’re the end of the line. My daughter in California, she married a gringo, goes by Smith now. Doesn’t even speak Spanish.”

  “Schmidt. Her name is Schmidt.”

  “Anglo names, I can’t keep them straight.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Don Juan, he didn’t do it right, how he went out. Hauled back to Spain, people pissing on him for doing what none of them had the guts to do themselves. Put on trial. Disgraced. Wasting away his last years.”

  “Maybe he went back to pig farming.”

  “That was Pizarro. The pig farmer who conquered the Incas. That was the way to go. Pizarro dying with his sword in his hand. He got fat at the end. Look how far he’d come, he had a right. But he never stopped being a warrior.”

  “That time comes, it won’t be a sword I’m holding.” Rigo being Rigo. Benny knew where this was going no matter what he said.

  “Let’s get this van in the crusher. Then we’re done.”

  “No, we’re not,” Rigo said.

  “Right. The lawyer.”

  Twenty-nine

  The black fingerprint dust would get into every vent and hand-sewn seam in Thornton’s Aston. The techs had used a ton. Elaine Salas, just eyeballing it, was confident they had recovered three distinct sets of latents.

  Something interesting in the Durango, she said. At the back, the tailgate down, Salas plucked tiny splinters from the carpet.

  “And look at the edge of the tailgate. The vinyl. Something rough was dragged across it.”

  Aragon leaned in close with Salas’s magnifying glass. The scratches were clear, all running in the same direction, almost at right angles to the tailgate. “Like a wooden board that gives off splinters?”

  “Like a wooden board that gives off splinters. I’ll get this under a microscope, see what we’ve got. Look here.”

  They closed the tailgate. No scratches in the paint. But at the window, rubber looked like it had been torn.

  “Could that board we found by the dumpster fit in the back?” Aragon asked.

  “Sure could. Keep the magnifying glass. Come around the side.” Salas had her lean over the seat and shone a light on the carpet. Soil, blades of grass and fine, tangled pale roots were matted into the fabric. “Something heavy ground that dirt into the carpet,” she said.

  “What did you get in latents?”

  “One set on the passenger side up front, two on the driver’s. I can’t say yet if they match any from the Aston Martin, but I’d bet on it.”

  Aragon snapped on a double set of blue latex gloves and began with the compartment for the spare. She removed the tire and felt around in areas she could not see. She worked her way forward, shoving hands between the rear seats of the Durango and reaching up and underneath. She checked door sashes, then the glove box. Registration in Thornton’s name, insurance papers, maintenance records, owner’s manual, road maps for the Navajo reservation and northern New Mexico.

  She reached under the front passenger seat into the springs, then moved to the driver’s side. In the door sash were pens, a hairbrush—“You want this, Elaine”—and loose change. The seat was all the way forward and she thought of Thornton’s short legs. She reached under to probe the springs and couldn’t get her hand high enough in there. She pushed the seat back and tried again. Something that did not belong to a car seat came out with her hand. She didn’t need to see it to know what it was. She was just glad she hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  It was a Beretta Tomcat, .25 caliber. She ejected the magazine. The numbers by the holes told her it could take eight rounds and currently held five bullets. This kind of gun, you could carry one chambered. The barrel popped loose and tilted forward. There was a bullet ready to go.

  Two short of maximum capacity.

  Thornton was watching from her doorstep, arms crossed, looking twitchy. The fingers of one hand drummed the other forearm, rolling from pinkie to thumb.

  Aragon held the gun for Thornton to see. Thornton’s fingers went still.

  Lewis saw the gun and came
, almost running. She extracted the cartridge in the barrel and handed everything to Salas, who dropped it in a bag.

  Lewis said, “All we’re missing are Thornton’s prints on the trigger.”

  Aragon sat in the driver’s seat and tried to reach under to the spot where she’d found the gun. She couldn’t do it. “You can’t reach it if you need it in a hurry.”

  “Why didn’t Thornton dump it?”

  “Maybe she thought we had surveillance. It’s not a bad hiding place. I almost missed it.”

  “So why not get rid of it immediately after she shot Cassandra Baca, if she was the one?”

  “Nerves. The mind skips. The heart’s going like crazy. Things you planned ahead of time get lost in the rush. Good thing, or we wouldn’t catch a lot of killers. And people like Marcy Thornton would have a lot less to do.”

  “Marcy Thornton and nerves,” Lewis said, squatting to look more closely at the floor of the Durango. “Do they go in the same sentence?”

  The first three attorneys Thornton called wanted a hundred grand up front. Two quoted a flat fee of half a million bucks. The third would work hourly and bill monthly. But he wanted an additional hundred grand now toward expenses. She asked if he’d take jewelry and guns. She had a safe deposit box with necklaces, rings, loose gems, rare coins from cash-poor clients, an arsenal in a storage unit.

  He said he’d take a real estate contract on her office property. He’d always liked her space across from the Roundhouse.

  Aragon and her marauders were all over the office. They let her have the conference room after a brief sweep, nothing in here but two empty flower vases and a station for coffee and water.

  She locked the door and tried calling Judy’s personal number on a prepaid cell she’d used to talk with Lily about things she didn’t want on her business lines. A man answered and identified himself as Special Agent Tomas Rivera. She hung up fast.

  Accepting property from clients who didn’t have cash had been smart business. She’d sold dozens of mobile homes and beat-up cars over the years, sometimes selling them back on contract at double-digit interest rates. Real estate contracts she loved. The client could pay for all but the last month’s installments. They’d default, start over at zero, all that interest and principal turning into rent.

  Now she was in their shoes. She’d have to liquidate to come up with half a million. She had some Cody Geronimos in the office. They’d shot up in price right after his death. She would look at them and feel rich. But when buyers realized he really had killed fourteen women, and what he’d done with the body parts, the market for his work tanked.

  She got to thinking about the guns. They were in a storage space, some in steel cabinets that had come with the weapons. Most just in boxes or wrapped in oil cloth. Some had come as evidence in a case. The client would tell her, the gun’s buried behind the shed, or in the freezer in my Mom’s house. Lily would get it. It would go into the safe or the storage unit. One or two she kept around the office, loaded, within reach when she gave clients bad news.

  A knock on the door to the conference room. Aragon stood there with a woman in a white bunny suit, one of the people who’d been making a mess of her office and cars.

  Aragon had the little Beretta in a plastic bag.

  “We were wondering if you’d care to tell us anything about this number we found under the driver’s seat in your Dodge. Or the handcuffs recovered from your office. Take your pick.”

  “I’m invoking my right to speak with an attorney. End of conversation.”

  She closed the door in Aragon’s face and returned to making calls.

  Somebody out there must be willing to take her case for under half a million.

  Maybe she could interest them in a mint condition Aston Martin, low mileage, just a little fingerprint dust in the seats.

  Millie asked why the gate was locked when she arrived with her enchilada casserole and had to be brought to the office by a Mexican. Benny told her it was the copper thieves. They were in the neighborhood.

  She asked, is that copper thieves or police over there in the brown car?

  Police, Benny said. We’re working together on this.

  Maybe I should take them some enchiladas. I made extra.

  That’s okay. I saw them with bags of Lotaburgers.

  When she was gone, he and Rigo sat in the security room and turned on the television that showed real programs. Dr. Oz was talking to women about their butts. How could he get away with that? Then the news came on, teasers of the top stories before the show started.

  “That’s the judge,” Rigo said, pointing a fork dripping red chile and melted cheese.

  A quick black-and-white photo, Judge Diaz’s face, naked shoulders, the rest of her body under a black square. The setting looked familiar. They’d seen it in the videos.

  There was Marcy Thornton, a black square over her body, too.

  The anchor, a white guy with a horse face who’d been on air since Reagan was president, the whole state watching him get old, said police are investigating the sexual abuse of a teenage girl, recently found murdered, who appears in videos with the judge and lawyer. Then a school photo of Cassandra Baca.

  They weren’t hearing anything they didn’t know until a man who could have played Don Quixote, pointy white beard and eyebrows, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, said the justices had suspended Judge Judith S. Diaz from acting in any official capacity.

  Millie’s enchilada casserole got cold while they turned to the other stations. Judge Diaz was on all of them, and the Supreme Court Don Quixote delivering the announcement that her days as a judge were about over.

  Benny was thinking, there goes nine million dollars.

  But Rigo said, “What are we waiting for?” and Benny knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “You committed a felony,” Aragon said as soon as Fager picked up.

  She’d been at home, waking up on the sofa, groggy and stiff, the TV on while she’d slept. She’d readied the Mr. Coffee and headed for the shower, three days now just changing her shirt. She could smell herself. She was stepping into the spray when she heard Diaz’s name on the news. Back to the living room, leaving the water running. She stood there naked watching until the anchorman’s last words: “Police representatives declined comment, citing an ongoing investigation.”

  She’d checked her phone to see if reporters had called while she slept. They’d done that to her before. Call right before broadcast when they knew they wouldn’t reach her, then report she’d clammed up.

  Lewis had tried to reach her, and Sergeant Perez, a heads-up to expect her case on the news tonight. And Rivera and Tucker.

  She’d thought about the report while she stood under the shower. The hot water ran out and she toweled suds off her legs. Then she called Fager, standing in underwear by the little Formica dinette.

  His voice said, “How have I become a felon?”

  “You said you didn’t have any copies of the video.”

  “When you posed the question about copies, I responded, ‘who’s asking?’ You answered, ‘Me, Detective Denise Aragon of the Santa Fe Police Department.’ Remember that?”

  She did, but let him talk.

  “Now, if FBI Special Agent Tomas Rivera had said it was him asking, I would have unequivocally stated that I had copies. Intentionally providing false information to a federal law enforcement official is in fact a federal felony. But there is no law against snowing a Santa Fe cop.”

  “You’re having a good time, aren’t you?”

  “Marcy Thornton and Judy Diaz are having a very rough time. That’s all that matters.”

  “Agent Rivera will call and ask if you have any copies left, and any other evidence Lily Montclaire gave you.”

  “You’re upset the story’s out there.”

  “It’s making things h
appen, huh? Faster than the criminal justice system. Diaz off the bench, Thornton on the run. I can’t say that pisses me off. But don’t expect to hear ‘good job’ from me. This game you’re running with Montclaire, it’s not getting us closer to whoever killed a teenage girl.”

  “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” Fager said.

  She opened the voicemails from Rivera and Tucker and learned a lot once they got past venting about Fager leaking the video to media. With the chance of nailing a chief judge and a lawyer that everybody on the blue side of the line hated, the scientists had pushed other work aside. They now knew:

  •The bullets inside Cassandra Baca’s brain were fired from the Beretta .25 recovered from Thornton’s Durango.

  •Cassandra Baca’s fingerprints were found in the Aston, the Durango, and Diaz’s house. Around the passenger seat in both vehicles. In the house, on the leather sofa, the glass coffee table, the bathroom closest to the living room.

  •Cassandra Baca’s DNA was recovered from the handcuffs seized from Thornton’s dressing table.

  •The wood particles in the back of the Durango were pine and aspen, same as the splinters in Cassandra Baca’s back. Same as the plywood board found at the scene. Better yet, traces of a binding compound used in a particular type of plywood manufactured by a specific wood products company were detected in all samples.

  •Diaz’s office computer had e-mails with video files of the Gang of Three, as Tucker was calling them, and Cassandra Baca. The setting was Diaz’s living room. Five videos, all different from the one Montclaire had turned over.

  She tried Lewis, got voicemail, and said, “Tag, you’re it.” She dressed, foraged from the refrigerator, and poured coffee into a travel cup Javier had brought her from the Las Vegas SHOT show.

  Lewis called back before she reached her car. She wanted to know when he was going to grab some sleep. He said he couldn’t sleep, thanks to the boys and girls in the Crime Lab pulling an all-nighter. The test bullets fired from Thornton’s Beretta scored a hit on the ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network.