Back on Murder

by Mark J. Bertrand

  “If God, the judge of everything, does what is right, then will he expect anything less from you? Or you?” He points his finger into the audience, then turns it on himself. “Or me? We look out for ourselves, but it’s not enough. We look out for our friends, but that isn’t enough, either. Justice for all, that’s our calling. We can talk about mercy for the undeserving – and we’re all undeserving – but here in the fallen world, living life under the sun, we have to talk about justice for the undeserving, too. And at the end of the day, it has to be more than just talk.”

  As I listen, our conversation in the church van comes to mind, the conflict in his head between the safe and the good. If it’s still there, he’s not sharing it with his disciples. If he blames himself for Hannah Mayhew’s fate, or Evangeline Dyer’s, he hasn’t tempered his message as a result.

  He ends suddenly, dropping his head, clenching his eyes tight in prayer. Next to me, Cavallo does the same. I shift in my chair, looking around. At the back table, a woman in an apron and baggy jeans starts taking foil off a tray of brownies, cringing at each metallic ripple.

  The gravity of the moment ends as soon as the prayer does, with the teens rushing back to the table for dessert, casting a curious glance or two our way. Three or four gather around Robb, who tries to edge toward us while some more wander onstage to pack up instruments. These kids would have known Hannah. They would have known Evey Dyer. Of all people they’d have a right to be shocked by what happened to the girls, to be traumatized. If they are, I see no sign. The resiliency of youth? Maybe. Or it could be that some wounds go too deep to be casually observed. I know something about that, too.

  “I’ll be with you in just a second,” Robb says, slipping past us to confer with the brownie lady.

  “Hard to believe he’s the same guy from the other day.”

  Cavallo shrugs. “Life goes on.”

  He rejoins us, holding on to the last remnants of the stage persona until we get to the hallway, where he sighs and hunches his shoulders, taking up his burden again.

  “We can talk back in my office,” he says.

  “Just so you know, you were right about the photograph. The mother’s dna was a match. Which means it really was Evey Dyer in that house. The question is, how’d she get there? And what does it have to do with Hannah’s death?”

  He runs his hand over his head, raising a jagged clump of hair. “It’s all I think about.”

  Pausing near the stairway, he points out one of the framed pictures on the wall. Unlike the smiling ancients, this one is abstract, random primary-colored dots swirling on a white background. He walks over, telling us to look.

  “Seems like nothing at first,” he says, “but if you stare long enough, you can see the face.”

  Cavallo cocks her head. “It’s Jesus.”

  “Yeah.” He gives an embarrassed grin. “It’s corny, I know. Not my kind of thing, believe me. But that’s how I feel all the sudden, ever since I saw that picture in your office. Like I’ve been staring at something that doesn’t make sense, and suddenly I recognize the pattern. There turns out to be a design in it all.”

  She nods and we descend the stairs. It must come easily to him by now, turning everyday things into object lessons.

  “So what’s the pattern here?” I ask, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  “Have you talked to Murray? The guy I introduced you to the other day?”

  “The resident dreamer?”

  He pushes through the ground floor doorway, taking us back to the office wing. “I guess he’s a little corny, too, but a great guy. Not very many people would leave their high-powered corporate jobs to go to seminary and then do the kind of mission work he does.”

  “So why should we be talking to him?”

  “When I took the youth group there that first time, Hannah and Evey were really good about going out into the community and talking to people, inviting them to the center, that kind of thing. Hannah was being altruistic, but unfortunately Evey had other ideas.” He reaches his office door, then pauses. “No, I shouldn’t say that. It’s not fair. I don’t know what was in her mind, but afterward I found out she’d met a boy. The other kids were talking about it. After that week, she saw a lot of him. I didn’t worry too much – girls that age want boyfriends, right? But then Murray told me this guy was older, and maybe even a little bit dangerous.”

  “When you’re sixteen, that’s the appeal,” Cavallo says.

  In the office, Robb perches on his desk, motioning us to the couch. I gaze up at the sagging bookcases all around, hoping they don’t choose this moment to collapse.

  “When I say dangerous, though, I really mean it. Like, drugs dangerous. And Mrs. Dyer got concerned, too, because of Evey’s past. She’d run away before, been on the streets awhile, and everybody was afraid of some kind of relapse, only you couldn’t say that to Evey because she was sensitive. Touchy about being judged.”

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “Her mom put an end to it. There was a big fight. I remember Hannah coming to me, because she felt like she was in the middle. Anyway, after a week or two, everything seemed fine. Evey was back to normal, as normal as she ever was. But ever since I saw that picture, I’ve been thinking. Remember those youth-group girls who said Evey and James Fontaine were going to run away together? Well, I always thought there could’ve been a kernel of truth to that. Maybe it wasn’t Fontaine, though. Maybe it was this other guy, the one she’d met before.”

  “Does this guy have a name?”

  He shrugs. “I’m drawing a blank. That’s why you should talk to Murray. He talked to the guy a few times when he’d come into the center. Some deep conversations supposedly.”

  “Why don’t we call your friend Murray now?”

  Robb lights up as if the possibility never occurred to him. He goes around the desk, punching the number into the phone.

  “I’ll put him on speaker.”

  Murray Abernathy answers, but asks if he can call back later. “I’m with somebody.”

  “I’ve got the police here, Murray. It’s really important.”

  “Oh.” He pauses. “Give me a sec.” When he comes back, Murray settles into some kind of stuffed chair, the air hissing out as he applies weight. “All righty then. What’s up?”

  Robb explains, then asks for the mysterious boyfriend’s name.

  “His name? It was Frank.”

  “Frank what?” I ask.

  “Hold on,” he says. “It’ll come to me.” Another pause. “Frank was a Latino guy, in his early twenties I think, handsome and well-spoken. I was excited when he first showed up, because he was interested in all the big questions – life, the universe, the whole shebang. But I could see right off I wasn’t gonna make a convert. For him, it was like a test of wits. He always wanted to prove he knew more than I did. Frank was an autodidact, one of those guys who acts like he knows everything – and then surprises you with how much he really does know.”

  “His last name?” I ask again.

  “I’m trying to think of it. He had a cousin doing construction work around here. Somebody would drop him off, and he’d hang out at the center while he waited for the cousin to get off work.”

  “The cousin worked construction?” Cavallo and I exchange a glance. The site across the street from where Hannah’s body was found is just one of many in the neighborhood. “Did you ever get the cousin’s name?”

  “Wait a second.” He starts humming over the line, drowning out all distractions. “I got it. Frank was short for Francisco – ” He pronounces it Frahn-see-sco, reproducing the sound from memory. “Francisco . . . Rio? Rios? Something like that.”

  “Francisco Rios?” The name is familiar. I quiz Cavallo with a raised eyebrow, but she just shrugs. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”

  “I have no idea what the cousin’s name was,” Murray says. “But he’d pull his van out front and blow the horn, and Frank would drop everything and go.”
r />   Cavallo leans forward. “You told Carter this guy was dangerous. Why was that?”

  “He talked a lot of nonsense, but I started thinking maybe it wasn’t nonsense after all. Because he presented himself so well, I kind of assumed he was . . . normal. Like everybody else, you know? A little stuck up, but basically a decent guy. But some people in the neighborhood told me he’d offered to sell them drugs, and once he got in a fight out on the street and pulled a knife on somebody. Said he was gonna come back that night and shoot the guy. Around here, you’ve got yuppies living next door to dealers, you’ve got people walking designer dogs past muggers. Frank kind of fit the vibe, I guess, but when I heard one of those girls was running around with him, well . . .”

  I lean over to Cavallo. “I know that name.”

  She keeps asking questions and Murray keeps talking, but I tune it all out, focusing on those syllables, picturing the letters in my mind. I write them out in my notebook, underlining the words. Why is Francisco Rios so familiar?

  And then it comes to me.

  “Where are you going?” Cavallo asks.

  But I’m off the couch and halfway through the door, leaving her to make apologies to Robb and come running after me. She catches up in the atrium – I make a point of not glancing toward the auditorium doors, where the coffin of Hannah Mayhew so recently stood – grabbing at my arm to slow me down.

  “Come on,” I say.

  “What’s the rush?”

  “That guy, Francisco Rios? I know him. We scooped him up at the George R. Brown, and he handed me Salazar’s business card. He’s a confidential informant. I called to check, then cut him loose.”

  “If he was Salazar’s snitch – ”

  “It’s him. He’s the one we want.”

  “So maybe Salazar will give him up.”

  Out in the parking lot, the sun blazing overhead, I stop in my tracks, one hand on my hip, the other pressed to my forehead, trying to pull the memories free. “There was somebody with him. A guy named Coleman who had a warrant out. When we let Rios go, he blew up. He kept yelling he was going to tell everybody, that Rios was going to be dead.”

  “Tell them he was an informant?”

  I nod. “We need to talk to Coleman. I got the feeling they knew each other pretty well.”

  Robb wasn’t wrong, not about the pattern. You stare long enough and nothing’s random anymore. The pieces fit.

  Sometimes all too well.

  I’d had him. Zip-tied and all to myself, alone in the restroom at the end of the corridor, Saturday morning on Labor Day weekend, within forty-eight hours of Hannah’s disappearance and Evey Dyer’s death. I’d had him and I let him go, not realizing who it was I was letting walk out into the sunlight. All I wanted was to get out of there, to bag the assignment and move on to real police work, to get my teetering career back on two feet. His fear comes back to me, how desperate he was not to be locked up, to the point he’d even out himself as an informant in front of Coleman. I’d even given him advice, telling him to play it cool next time, never wondering why he panicked in the first place.

  And Salazar, when I’d offered to take the kid downtown, had suddenly changed his tune about wanting to see him. Neither one of them wanted Rios in custody. Now it made sense. Rios knew he had blood on his hands. Salazar didn’t want his informant, who’d been tipping him to the location of stash houses, to spend a moment inside, either, afraid he’d start talking.

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “See what?” Cavallo asks.

  But I don’t answer. All the mistakes of the past couple of weeks come back to me. Getting kicked out of Homicide for ditching Lorenz. Spooking Thomson’s wife to the point that she outed him to his killers. Cutting Tommy slack when I should have come down on him, when for all I knew Charlotte was right and something bad had happened to Marta, the girl who spent the night in the garage apartment. It all pales in comparison to letting Frank Rios walk. The trouble is, in a case like mine, mistakes are irreversible. You can’t always work your way back. You can’t bring the dead back to life. And the man you let go might never be caught again.

  There’s nothing left but the guilty knowledge of what you might have done, how brave or selfless or good you could have been, if only you’d known then what you do now.

  Salazar’s willing to talk, but not with me in the room, the guy who put him in the hospital. His attorney does the complaining, and before Wilcox can lodge a halfhearted protest I throw my hands up and head for the door. Glancing back, I take little comfort in Salazar’s condition, the wheezing pumps and dripping tubes, the oxygen feed, the inert lump of flesh beneath the sheets. Partial paralysis, the doctors told us, the loss of control on his right side. In spite of the successful surgery, Salazar is anything but okay. I reached out and touched him all right, with a hand that’s never going to let up.

  I wait in the hallway awhile, until Cavallo comes out to report.

  “He’s putting it all on Keller,” she says. “He dragged the others into the business, he orchestrated the raids. It was him who killed Thomson and forced Salazar to cover it up.”

  “And Evangeline Dyer?”

  “He had no idea she’d be there. When they looked through the window and saw her, Keller wanted to abort, but Thomson insisted on going in. He says it was Keller who shot her, accidentally, firing blind through the door. They were taking her to the emergency room, he says, and then she died.”

  “What was she doing there in the first place?”

  “Says he doesn’t know. Rios told him it was another stash house, and afterward the informant disappeared, so he never got a chance to ask.”

  “What about Rafael Ortiz, the gangbanger who shot me?”

  “Says he’s never heard of the guy.” She shakes her head. “He’s not going to cop to that, March.”

  I take off down the corridor in a rage. “So basically, he’s not giving us anything we don’t already have?”

  “He’ll testify against Keller.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, we don’t have Keller. At this rate, there’s not going to be a trial for Salazar to testify at.”

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “Not by much.” My frustration is the sort that only grows when it gets an airing. A host of dead-end possibilities flood my mind. “Think about it: he’s been trying to find Rios since day one. When I let the kid go, he was already gunning for him. Why? Because he wanted to put a bullet in him. Believe me, he wasn’t going to ask what went wrong, why the informant suddenly sent them to the wrong house. If he’d have been able to find Rios, somebody like Ortiz would have finished the kid off, like he almost did me. Or maybe Salazar would have done it himself and dumped the body alongside the Dyer girl’s.” I slap the wall, drawing a glare from a passing nurse. “You know what? Maybe he did. That would be perfect. The Rios kid might already be at the bottom of the Gulf. We’ll never find him because there’s nothing left to find.”

  “Calm down, March,” she says. “It’s not your fault you didn’t arrest Rios when you had him. You had no way of knowing . . .”

  “I’m not stupid. I realize that.”

  “Then stop beating yourself up and get on with the job.”

  That’s good advice, and I decide to take it. Leaving Cavallo to hold Wilcox’s hand for the remainder of the interview, I bug out, heading back to Montrose with my list of construction workers in hand. Nobody by the name of Rios, but that doesn’t mean the cousin isn’t on the list. I park in front of the site, where some damaged framing is being slowly repaired by a skeleton crew of helmeted workers, stripping my jacket off and leaving it in the car, not a concession to the heat but a psychological tactic. I want these men to notice that the approaching hombre wears a gleaming shield, and more than that, a dull black, well-worn gun.

  “Francisco Rios,” I say, motioning them over. “Which one of you knows the guy? He’s got a cousin here, right?”

  The workers shrug and exchange glances, one of
them asking me to repeat the name. I do better, whipping out the driver’s license photo off the system, along with the picture Salazar took when he registered Rios as a confidential informant. They gather round, squinting and shaking their heads. One of them leans forward, though, tapping a hard brown finger on the page, his eyes drifting upward in recollection.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I seen him. You know who this is?” He turns to one of the others. “That’s Tito’s cousin, the one with the big attitude.”

  The man next to him looks again, then nods. “I think you right.”

  “Who’s this Tito?” I ask.

  “Tito the Painter.” He brushes his hand back and forth in the air, like I might not be familiar with the term. “He don’t work here. We got nothing to paint yet. But he’s always around, you know, at the various sites, ’cause he’s working so cheap.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  He scratches his chin, then murmurs something in Spanish to the other man, who shrugs. “Everybody just call him Tito the Painter. But I can tell you where he stays.” He rattles off an address over on the West side, an apartment complex off Hammerly.

  I thank him, then turn to go. Instead of heading straight to the address, I drive around the area looking for other sites, asking workers and foremen alike whether they’ve seen Tito the Painter around, or know his full name. Everybody seems to be familiar with the guy, some even recognize the photo of Rios, but no one can add to what I already know.

  Passing by the outreach center, I see Abernathy out on the front steps talking to two slender white guys in retro sunglasses and snap-front shirts. He comes out to the curb for a quick chat, but he’s already told me everything he knows about Rios.

  “What about the van?” I ask. “You said his cousin would pick him up in a van.”