Night Is the Hunter

by Steven Gore

  “My guess is he fled to Salinas to hide out both from the warrants and from the Heredia case,” Donnally said.

  “Heredia probably worried him the most,” Navarro said. “The worst that happens on the others is that he would’ve done a couple of years.”

  “Heredia was a murder conspiracy,” Donnally said. “Twenty-five to life. And since nobody gets paroled on murder anymore, it would be life.”

  “There were only three people in the house,” Navarro said, “Chico, Junior, and Benaga. Talking about which Sureño to kill to get even for the death of the Norteño on Mission Street. Then Benaga left to do it.”

  “Benaga runs in to collect a reward by telling Chen that Chico killed Heredia,” Donnally said. “Chico gets hauled in. He’s wondering why. He didn’t do it, so nobody could’ve IDed him.”

  “Exactly,” Navarro said, “and the fact that he was a suspect at all meant that either Benaga or Junior had snitched him off.”

  “Nobody else knew about it.”

  “Then Chico ran off to Salinas to buy some time to figure things out.”

  “And he knew that even if he didn’t pull the trigger himself,” Donnally said, “he could still be convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Donnally realized that he and Navarro were volleying their analysis back and forth. There was something visceral about it, giving him a sense of movement. It made him miss working with Navarro and regret not fighting his forced retirement from the department.

  “So that means he was hiding not only from Benaga and Junior,” Judge McMullin said, “but also from Dominguez.”

  Navarro leaned in toward the judge. “Dominguez? Why Dominguez?”

  McMullin’s face flushed and he swallowed. Donnally realized the judge had confused the Rojo and Heredia murders.

  McMullin looked over at Donnally. “I meant . . .”

  But the judge didn’t know what he’d meant, or more panicking for him, couldn’t think of what he should have meant.

  Donnally again felt the hurt deep in his chest. At the minimum the judge had made the kind of mistake people involved in thinking through complex facts and relationships always make. At the maximum, he’d just done a self-diagnosis.

  “I think you meant to say that Chico had a lot of people to hide from,” Donnally said, trying to ease the judge’s embarrassment. “Chico was afraid not only of Benaga and Junior, the Norteños, but also the Sureños. The Sureños would’ve assumed that it was the Norteños who killed Heredia and Benaga would’ve put word out on the street that Chico was the particular Norteño who did it. So the Sureños would be on the hunt for Chico, too.”

  “With Chico running away to Salinas and hiding from everybody,” Navarro said, “Benaga told La Mesa that Chico was trying to get out of the Norteños and got permission to have him killed.”

  Donnally thought of Rosa, Chico’s mother, and the power her brother-in-law had over her. “And that means Chico’s own uncle, Juan Gallegos, had to have been part of the decision.”

  McMullin’s gaze fell for a moment on his undrunk coffee, his lips compressed. He shook his head. “Unbelievable that someone could do that to his own brother’s son.”

  “The rule going in is gang first,” Navarro said, “and everyone and everything else second.”

  “It’s even worse,” Donnally said. “Chico’s father is also housed in Pelican Bay. Not in Ad Seg with La Mesa, but close by. Since he worked in the kitchen and was a link in the Norteños communication network, he might even have passed on the coded order himself without realizing it.”

  Then Donnally had a thought almost too horrific to think. That Chico’s father had realized it and that Chico’s leaving the Norteños truly would have been blood out.

  “Our guess is that Chico recognized it was Norteños who’d shot him,” Navarro said, “not Sureños, and told his mother when she ran outside the house after he was shot. She called the ambulance and when they got to the hospital they decided it would be better if he played dead.”

  “That way he’d never have to worry about Benaga or Junior, or the Norteños or the Sureños.”

  “But if you’re hooked up to monitors, you can’t play dead.” Navarro snapped his fingers. “His mother must’ve paid off a doctor—”

  “Or maybe just begged a doctor who understood the Salinas gang world, had seen enough gunshot victims—”

  “To unplug him and pronounce him and later sign a death certificate. She then sent it to the public defender’s office and they used it to get his cases dismissed.”

  “What we need now is for you to reissue the bench warrants for Chico,” Donnally said, as Navarro slid a file folder across the desk to the judge. “And make them no bail. We can’t take a chance he’ll disappear again.”

  As McMullin looked over the forms, a thought struck Donnally.

  Why hadn’t someone ever wondered why Rosa had bothered to get the cases dismissed? Why not just let them age and get purged on their own?

  It wasn’t like a dead Chico would be arrested on the bench warrants or he’d apply for a top-secret security clearance in the afterlife.

  The only point of doing it was to keep him from being arrested on them and brought back to San Francisco. Even if the police ran his prints, the warrants would be out of the system.

  Maybe no one thought of it because there was something disquieting about leaving warrants outstanding for a dead person.

  Or maybe it was simply that the dead are forgiven.

  “There’s also an arrest warrant for Oscar Benaga in the Heredia case in there.”

  McMullin looked up.

  “Should I be the one to do this?” McMullin asked. “Isn’t there a conflict of interest? Aren’t I the beneficiary?”

  Beneficiary?

  The inapt word seemed to vibrate in the air. From the look on his face, Donnally guessed Navarro felt it also.

  Maybe Grassner was right all along. What had been driving McMullin all along wasn’t the illegitimacy of the conviction, but that he was just a judge starting to panic when the needle starts aiming for the vein.

  McMullin’s rulings in the case might be vindicated, but only Dominguez could be the beneficiary. But then Donnally realized that this couldn’t be right. McMullin didn’t want to be vindicated, wasn’t driven by a hope of vindication, but by conscience.

  Donnally heard the front door open and close, and then the soft footfalls coming along the carpet behind him. The housekeeper walked around the desk again, this time handing Judge McMullin the morning Chronicle. He glanced at the front-page headline and turned the paper toward Donnally and Navarro.

  GOVERNOR REJECTS DOMINGUEZ PETITION,

  EXECUTION SET FOR MIDNIGHT

  “I guess we don’t have time for a philosophical discussion about who’s the beneficiary,” Donnally said, and then pointed at the warrants. “We need your signature.”

  The judge signed both and handed them to Navarro, who headed toward the door. Donnally turned to follow him, then turned back.

  “I know you’re probably thinking it,” Donnally said, “but I need to say it out loud.”

  In truth, Donnally didn’t know whether the judge had figured out what Donnally had, but he needed to make sure McMullin understood where their conversation that had begun on the Smith River had now taken them.

  “The jury might’ve gotten it right, even though they might not have understood the logic of it. It could be that Benaga decided not just to scare Rojo, but to have him killed and try to step into his place. And the best way to cover his tracks and conceal what he was doing was to set things up so a Sureño pulls the trigger. Benaga moves up in his organization and the Sureño moves up in his.”

  The judge took in a long breath and exhaled. “And by Sureño, you mean Dominguez.”

  Donnally nodded. “I mean Dominguez.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Looking out the rear side windows of an SFPD surveillance van parked on Senter Road in San Jose’s Little Saigon,
Donnally and Navarro watched a man in a small pickup truck pull into the shadow next to Flaco Ortega Auto Repair. As he walked into the glow of the overhead street lights and headed toward the still dark office, Donnally saw the face in the photo in the Salinas homicide file of Chico Gallegos.

  Sunrise was still an hour away and the curbs were lined with delivery trucks and service vehicles waiting for their work day to begin. The Laundromat on the far side of property was still closed, as was the Vietnamese noodle café on the near side.

  The intermittent growl and whoosh of the sparse commuter traffic was the only sound on the street and the headlights approaching and the taillights receding the only motion.

  Having confirmed Chico’s arrival, Navarro called San Jose PD and asked the dispatcher to set up a perimeter to box him in if he tried to make a run when they made their move. They hadn’t wanted to use a SWAT team for fear a display of guns and raid gear would get Chico screaming for a lawyer. Since his old cases had been dismissed, he was no longer represented.

  A car turned onto the property and came to a stop.

  They watched the office lights come on, followed by the bay doors rolling up. Chico then walked from the office carrying a clipboard. He spoke to the driver for a moment, then moved around to the front and raised the hood. A middle-aged woman dressed in a nurse’s flowered scrubs joined him in looking at the engine. Donnally heard her making a clicking sound with her tongue and then Chico laughing.

  Donnally caught the motion of a head peeking around the far corner of the Laundromat. In the shadow he looked Asian or Hispanic.

  Donnally pointed toward the corner. “Somebody else is watching Chico. We better move up front in case something jumps off.”

  Staying low, Navarro climbed forward into the driver’s seat and Donnally into the passenger seat.

  Another laugh from Chico and the ripping sound of him tearing the estimate from his pad.

  The head ducked back. The woman took the page, then turned and walked toward a car waiting on the street in front of the Laundromat.

  The head reappeared, attached to the body of a homeless man pushing a grocery cart filled with boxes of oil and filters.

  “Looks like the guy burglarized an auto parts store,” Navarro said.

  He rolled the cart up to where Chico still stood by the woman’s car.

  “You Flaco?”

  Chico nodded.

  “My compadre told me you might want some of this stuff.”

  Chico pawed through the boxes. “Fifty for all of it.”

  “Once a crook, always a crook,” Navarro said. “You want to grab both of them?”

  Donnally shook his head. “We better let the homeless guy go and wait for SJPD to finish getting set up. We don’t want to risk a fight and take a chance Chico might get away.”

  Chico pointed toward the interior of the bay and led the man inside where they piled everything on the workbench along the wall closest to the Laundromat. Chico pulled some bills out of his pocket, counted some out, and handed them over. The man shoved the cash into his jacket.

  Donnally’s body tensed when the man’s hand stayed inside and began to move around, fearing he’d come out with a gun. Donnally reached for his holster with one hand and the door handle with the other, poised to jump out.

  The man’s hand came up. Donnally leaned toward the door.

  Then he saw it was a fist, not a gun. It opened and the man displayed a handful of coins and appeared to ask if he could trade them for bills. Chico nodded and the man set the change on the workbench.

  Donnally settled back.

  Navarro chuckled. “Yeah, I was thinking the same—”

  Shots exploded, coming from a Mustang stopped in the street. Pulling his gun, Donnally spotted the homeless man fall into Chico. More shots and they both dropped.

  Donnally jumped down and using the front of the van for cover rapid-fired into the interior shadows of the Mustang, just behind the extended arms holding an AK-47. He heard Navarro firing from the driver’s side.

  The arms went limp and the rifle fell and rattled on the pavement.

  The back of the Mustang jerked down, then lunged forward, the wheels throwing back a cloud of burning rubber. Donnally spotted cars coming into his line of sight and held his fire. It drove on for another thirty yards and slowed. The passenger door swung open and a body flopped into the street. The car accelerated again, swinging the door closed.

  Navarro was now running toward the garage, yelling a description of the Mustang into his cell phone and a request for an ambulance.

  Donnally ran to the body, blood pooling on the pavement. One look at the N-O-R-T-E on the back of the shooter’s head told him it was Oscar Benaga, dumped by his crime partners as a delay and a diversion. He kneeled down and reached for his neck, and for the second time in eight hours, Donnally failed to find a pulse.

  CHAPTER 50

  Your whole life is about to pass before your eyes,” Donnally told Chico in the garage office.

  Chico’s shirt was wet and splotched with the dead homeless man’s blood. He sat in a chair, back against the wall. Donnally was propped against the desk.

  Navarro waited near the street to delay the San Jose police detectives in order to give Donnally a shot at Chico unhindered by the need to Mirandize him.

  “It’s all in your hands how it ends.”

  “I didn’t kill Heredia, man. I’ve never killed nobody.”

  “That’s not what I want to know about.”

  “You ain’t no cop. You can’t do nothing to me.”

  “It won’t be me.” Donnally pointed at him. “You know what the penalties for perjury are?”

  “Who cares. A year, two years. I can do the time.”

  “In the Dominguez case it’s death.” Donnally glanced at his watch. “The moment he gets the needle, your perjury becomes a capital crime.”

  Chico’s fists clenched. He leaned forward to rise. Donnally pushed him back.

  “I get death row and the prosecutor gets a promotion?”

  “That prosecutor has gotten his last promotion, but the worst that happens to him is a little obstruction of justice charge. A hand slap. Maybe not even that. All he has to say is that he believed you when you first claimed it was Dominguez and he didn’t believe you when you changed your story.”

  Chico looked down. “This is fucked up, man. I didn’t ask to get put in the middle of all this. Twenty years ducking and hiding.”

  “Tell me the truth about the death of Edgar Rojo Senior.”

  Chico’s faced turned pained and pleading. “Don’t make me do this, man. Ask Chen. He knows everything I do, and a lot more.”

  “Chen’s dead. Last night. A kind of a suicide.”

  “Then Madding, ask Madding.” Chico threw up his hands. “Ask anybody. Everybody knows.”

  Donnally recognized that by everybody Chico really meant the limited group relevant to him. Benaga, his father, his uncle—and his mother. Donnally remembered her bringing him a letter when Donnally had surveilled their meeting and had tried to follow them.

  “What was in the letter?”

  “What letter?”

  “The one your mother showed you a couple of days ago.”

  “How—”

  Donnally waved off the question. “It doesn’t make a difference how I know.”

  Chico reddened. “I know it don’t make no difference. What I want to know is how you’re gonna protect us from my uncle Juan?”

  Now all the pieces gravitated together in Donnally’s mind. The prowling gangsters across the street from Rosa Gallegos’s house had been watching and the letter wasn’t a message she was carrying from La Mesa to the street, but a warning from her brother-in-law to keep her mouth shut. Maybe they started tailing her to make sure she did, and she led them to her son.

  And now Donnally understood for certain what it had all been about.

  “You mean the killing of Edgar Rojo was part of a Norteño power struggle between
your uncle’s faction and Rojo’s faction?”

  Chico glanced around his office, his business, one that helped support his mother. His eyes focused on a photo on the desk—a woman, two small children, and him—then on another, his mother.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Chico said.

  “Tell the truth and you’ll be protected, and your wife and kids and mother. Lie, and nobody can protect you.”

  Chico’s eyes moved on, toward a certificate of graduation from an automotive school, his state license, his desk, his file cabinet, a calendar showing a photo of Puerto Vallarta and Banderas Bay, his face taking on an expression of a man leaving his home for the last time or gazing back at a receding shoreline.

  “It had nothing to do with the Sureños,” Chico said, still staring at the picture, “and the Sureños had nothing to do with killing Rojo. Not Dominguez.” He shook his head. “Dominguez never shot nobody. They weren’t no threat back then. Benaga made up that whole Sureño takeover story and the Sureños played along because it made them look bigger than they were.”

  “You tell Madding?”

  “Yeah. I told him. Everything. I went to see him the day before he made me testify.” He finally looked up at Donnally. “How you think my uncle made it from a street captain up to La Mesa?”

  CHAPTER 51

  Edgar Rojo Jr. stood in the doorway glaring into the San Francisco jail interview room. A jailor was standing behind him.

  “They said my attorney was here. Not the chingaso who got me locked up.”

  As Donnally had threatened to do if Junior lost control of himself, he’d called Junior’s parole agent after driving him from the hospital to his grandmother’s apartment and told him Junior had made a threat to kill a government informant. The parole agent arrested him an hour later.

  Donnally rose from the chair. “It was for your own good.”

  Junior’s arm was still in a sling.

  “Who’s he?” Junior jutted his head toward Navarro.

  “A homicide detective.”