by Mike Markel
“Is he home now?”
“No,” he said. “I left him a voice mail about Maricel. He didn’t pick up.”
“Where does he spend his time?”
“He’s friends with a few other D&D fans. Dungeons and Dragons?” He looked at me to see if I understood. I nodded. “Any given night, he’s as likely to be couch surfing at one of their houses as he is to be here. If there’s any one place he’s likely to be, it’s at that gaming store downtown.”
Ryan said, “Game World, on Second?”
Gerson nodded.
“So,” I said, “let me get back to Maricel, Provost Gerson. How was she doing here?”
“She was having some challenges academically. Her grades were weak last semester.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I’ve seen it a thousand times. Some kids, you take them out of a structured environment, they go through a period …” His arms were out, palms up, a parent’s universal hand signal that said, “You can’t explain it. You might as well accept it.”
“But living here with your family,” I said, “you’d think that would give her some structure. And my gosh, you couldn’t ask for a better role model of how to succeed in an academic environment …” I gestured toward him, laying it on thick.
“Well, yes, I guess so. But one thing I’ve learned: everyone is different in how they adjust to new situations.”
“Was she distracted by things outside school?”
He looked weary, resigned. “I think there might have been something to that. She was involved with a boy.”
“You know who it was?”
“Yes. It was a young man named Hector Cruz.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ryan taking notes in his skinny notebook.
“He a student?”
“No, he isn’t. I don’t really know much about him. I ran into the two of them once or twice and we shook hands. But he didn’t come to the house to pick her up. Once, from upstairs, I saw him park a block down, then Maricel shouted that she was going out. We invited him to dinner a number of times, made it clear to Maricel that he’s welcome.”
“You have contact information on him?”
He walked over to a battered old walnut roll-top desk, retrieved an address book, and jotted down some information on a slip of paper. Ryan walked over to him and took the paper.
“We haven’t found Maricel’s phone,” I said. “Do you know if she had one?”
“Yes, of course. Let me just take a quick look in her room. Excuse me. I’ll just be a minute.” He walked toward the entryway. I heard his heavy steps going up the stairs.
Ryan and I were silent. The heater cycled on, and I heard the air whooshing through the floor registers. I gazed out the living room window at the gray sky, the bare branches of an oak in the front yard. The window was ringed with condensation. My house had it, too. The Gersons and I had that in common: we didn’t have the cash to put in modern windows. As for the other shit he’s got going, I think my ex-husband with his juvenile live-in girlfriend, plus my slacker sixteen-year-old, whose attitude toward me alternates between passive and active aggressive—well, by comparison with the Gersons I’m living in Ozzie and Harrietville.
Al Gerson came back into room. He shrugged his shoulders. “Can’t find it.”
“Do you know which company she used?”
“We’re all on Verizon. I put her on our family plan. It was very inexpensive.”
“Would you mind if we take a quick look in her room?” I said.
“Not at all.” He pointed up to the second floor. “Third door on the left.”
“We’ll just be a couple minutes.” Ryan and I stood and walked up to Maricel’s room.
I was surprised at how neat it was. Then, as I looked around, I realized that it wasn’t neat so much as unoccupied. There was a bed, which was made, an end table with a cheap metal lamp, a pine student desk and chair set, a small bookcase, and a closet. On the desk were a closed laptop and a few textbooks. No photos on the desk or on the walls. No pictures or bulletin board or anything like that.
I walked into the closet and pulled the light cord. There were maybe a dozen tops, two skirts, a dress, a few pairs of jeans on hangers. I turned off the light and scanned the bare walls of the room. While Ryan went through the desk, I looked through her night table.
Ryan looked up and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Looks more like she’s staying at a motel than living here.”
When we got back down to the living room, Al Gerson was gazing out the window, his hands in his pockets. When he heard us, he turned slowly.
“We couldn’t find a phone, either.” I paused a moment. “Do you know anyone who was fighting with her, wanted to hurt her?”
“No.” His voice was soft. “She was a nice girl.”
I nodded. “We’ll want to come back to talk with your son later. And we’ll keep you informed. Please thank Ms. Gerson for talking with us.”
He looked at me, his eyes hollow, then turned and thumped his way toward the door to see us out.
It was good to get out of that house.
“Pretty chilly in there,” Ryan said. “Losing a kid like that …”
“Sounds to me like they might have lost two kids.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Want to try to track down Hector?” He held up the slip of paper with the boyfriend’s address.
I nodded.
Chapter 6
Ryan was pulling up a map on the computer in the cruiser to help us get to Hector’s address. “It’s 1700 Clayborne, number 35.”
“Where’s that?”
He twisted the computer so it was out of the light. “It’s in a place called Lyric Mobile Park.”
“Ah, shit.”
“What is it?”
“You ever been there?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re lucky,” I said. “It’s a sewer. It’s one of those trailer parks just outside the city limits.”
“So we can’t officially police it?”
“That’s it. It’s County’s problem. The guys that build these places, they figure out which is the weaker police department. I was talking to an officer in County, says they logged over 300 code violations last year in that place.”
The snow had stopped. Driving was okay. Enough people have studded tires in Montana that there were a couple of clean tracks for my tires. The trick was to aim straight and avoid the strip of ice running down the middle of each lane.
“But they’ve got a manager on site, right?”
“Yeah, probably. We’ll see.”
“Turn left here,” Ryan said. “On Linder Lane.”
Linder Lane sounds better than Shit Street. A hundred yards in, Clayborne branched off to the left, where a battered tin sign announced Lyric Mobile Park. A second sign, underneath, said “Please Drive Slow.” When our cruiser hit the first pothole, a harmless-looking little dip beneath an inch of snow, the chassis clunked pretty hard against the drive train or something, despite our heavy-duty shocks. Which would explain why the sign said drive slow. It wasn’t about not hitting pedestrians. There wasn’t anyone walking around.
I brought the speed down under five as we bumped along, rocking into and out of the little canyons on the dirt road. Even with the fresh layer of snow, the place was disgusting. Every third trailer had an abandoned car out front, rusty water staining the cinder blocks, the occasional hood or trunk open, God knows why. Engines sitting off to the side. Lots of tires without wheels, wheels without tires. Black plastic garbage bags, torn open by raccoons or rats, sitting on the lawns. Busted plastic tricycles without wheels, busted couches with ripped-up cushions darkened by seasons of rain, busted swing sets missing the swings, busted shopping carts. Busted, busted, busted. Everything was busted.
“Think they’ve got enough people growing weed?” Ryan said. Every row of trailers had one or two with aluminum foil on some of the windows, to keep the high-intensity light
s from blinding the neighbors.
“Hey, small business is the backbone of our economy,” I said. “See the sneakers?” I pointed to a couple sets of shoes hanging from the utility wires. “Means they sell it here, too.”
We crawled forward, rocking and swaying in our big cruiser.
“Hector should be in the next row of trailers,” Ryan said.
“Here we go,” I said.
We pulled up outside Hector’s trailer and I shut the engine down. I got out of the cruiser. The whole place looked and smelled like it was already dead. I couldn’t see any people, but there were plenty of feral cats, crouching warily or running under a trailer where the lattice-wood skirting or the corrugated tin was missing. They were here for the mice and the rats.
“Someone burning garbage?” Ryan said as we walked up to the metal steps outside Hector’s door.
“Someone cooking meth,” I said. “Come take a look at this one.” We walked over to the trailer next to Hector’s. Half of it was burned out, the black flame marks streaked across the gray aluminum. The shell was peeled away, showing the paper-thin wallboard, the wispy cotton-candy insulation, the one-inch studs, and the aluminum wiring.
“I’m surprised anyone survives these trailer fires,” Ryan said.
“Usually they don’t,” I said. “Let’s see if Mr. Cruz is home.” We walked back to his trailer, up the three black metal steps. There was no vehicle in the spot worn into the scrubby grass in front of the trailer. I knocked. We waited fifteen seconds.
Ryan walked down the steps and over to the side of the trailer. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he peered in the window. “Doesn’t look like anyone other than Hector lives here,” he said. “No flower pots or anything.”
“Let’s try next door.” We walked over to a red and yellow fiberglass trailer, slightly newer and better looking than Hector’s, except that the door had a big crack running the length of it. Near the top, where the door was bent and didn’t touch the door frame, a half-inch sliver of dim light shone out. We walked up the steps, and I knocked on the door frame.
I could hear someone walking slowly toward the door, the rocking of the trailer transmitted to the metal steps, which were touching it. “Just a second,” a thin voice said. I heard her messing with whatever it was that was holding the door shut against the frame.
A short, round woman in her sixties, in a housecoat with a hoody sweatshirt over it, opened the door, releasing a putrid smell of garbage, mildew, and cat shit. She had an elastic bungee cord in her hand, the kind you get at Wal-Mart. She stood there, her face blank. “What do you want?”
I showed her my shield. “We’re detectives from Rawlings Police Department, ma’am. We wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Hector Cruz.”
“Who?”
“Hector Cruz? Next door?”
“The Spanish kid?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” I said. “He a good neighbor?”
“He leaves me alone,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “So yeah.”
“He doesn’t cause any disturbances? Loud parties?”
“No, none of that.”
“Does he ever have anyone over?”
“I seen a Spanish girl sometimes.”
“Okay, thanks, ma’am. Sorry to disturb you.”
The woman turned and pulled the door up against the frame. I heard her wrapping the bungee cord around the knob inside to keep it shut.
“Real friendly woman,” Ryan said. We headed back toward the cruiser.
“Me in fifteen years.” I got in the cruiser and closed the door. “Might as well stop and see if the manager has anything on Hector.”
Ryan nodded, and I drove us back out to the entrance, where the manager’s office was.
The office had those cheap Christmas lights hanging from the roof, the ones that were supposed to look like icicles. A section off to the side had come detached from the roof and hung across one of the windows. The trailer, with a neon “Office” sign in the front window, looked as old as most of the others in the park, but it was in better repair, with new metal skirting around it. We knocked on the door.
A scrubby guy opened it. He was about fifty-five, maybe five-ten with narrow shoulders and a beer gut. His nose and cheeks were full of busted capillaries.
I introduced us and showed him my shield.
“You wanna come in?”
The air was a gray haze of cigarette smoke, but I said yes.
He had a cig going. The fingers of his right hand were stained yellow. He eased into the chair behind his small wooden desk, which had an old desktop computer with a CRT monitor. The ashtray next to the keyboard was full.
“Only have one chair,” he said, pointing to a stained cloth side chair. Ryan chivalrously gestured for me to take it. Now I’d definitely have to get my coat cleaned.
“We wanted to ask you a few questions about one of your tenants: Hector Cruz.”
“What’d he do?” His patchy hair and his two or three days’ beard were white. He wore a short-sleeve poly shirt, a yellow print, with black suspenders. His right forearm had a faded USMC tattoo.
“Now why would you ask that?”
He smiled, showing a row of stained teeth. “I’m guessing you’re not here to give him some kind of medal.”
“Just a couple of routine questions, that’s all.”
“Well, then, go right ahead and ask, young lady,” the manager said. “Would you like a cigarette?” He held up the pack of Marlboros.
“No, thanks, that’s very kind. I’ll pass.” He held up the pack to Ryan, who shook his head. “About Hector Cruz, trailer 35—”
“Let me just pull him up here. Gimme a second.” He hit some keys. “All right, Hector Cruz.” He expelled a twin stream of smoke from his nostrils. “How can I be of assistance regarding Mr. Cruz, Miss?” He smiled his yellow-green smile, like he’d just said something clever.
“How long has Mr. Cruz lived here?”
The manager stared at the screen, his brow furrowed. “Five years and two months.”
“Does he pay his rent on time?”
Back to the screen. “Six times he was late. One of those times, two months late. Otherwise, on time,” he said. “Which makes him one of my best tenants.” He looked up and gave me a small smile.
“You get complaints from your other tenants about him? You know, parties? Noise? Garbage?”
“Mr. Cruz keeps to himself.” He looked again at the screen. “Says here he is employed at the university.” He looked up at me. “Personally, I do enjoy having Mr. Cruz as one of my tenants.”
“Any record of County Sheriff’s office having to come out here about anything related to Mr. Cruz?”
“Tell you the truth, Miss, I don’t keep records of such things. Else I wouldn’t have much time to maintain the common property. I imagine you could inquire of the County Sheriff’s office yourself. I’m sure they’d be happy to have a chat with an attractive policewoman like yourself.” He showed me a few of his stained teeth.
I smiled. “Do you think you might have some time for me this afternoon, Mr. …” I looked at his business card in a little holder on the desk. “Mr. Warren?”
“It depends,” he said, sitting up a little in his chair and putting on a little leer. “What did you have in mind?”
I leaned in toward him. “I was thinking maybe I’d call some of my buddies at County, have them send a team over. See if there’s any code violations in this shithole.”
The leer slid off his face.
“You’re a disgusting little man. You look like a troll, you smell like a catbox, and when you call me attractive—well, I just don’t know whether to shoot you because you’re so hideous or shoot myself because you think maybe I’d let you put your yellow fingers on me.
“So, please, I ask you, as a personal favor: make one more inappropriate comment. Let me come back this afternoon. Let me make it my mission to see that you do thirty days in lockup. Let me make sure the lights
are kept way low in your cell at night. Let me arrange it so you bunk with a big guy who also likes to make sweet romance. Will you let me do those things, Mr. Warren?” I was standing now. “Will you please call me ‘sweet cakes,’ just this once, Mr. Warren?”
He was looking down at his desk now. There wasn’t any embarrassment or shame on his face, just the blank look that told me he’d been reamed out by authority figures a few times and knew when to play possum.
“Thanks for your time,” I said, as Ryan and I left the smoky little trailer. Outside, I took my coat off, opened the trunk, and tossed it in.
Once we were both in the cruiser, Ryan said, “It’s about fifteen degrees.”
“I’d rather be cold than have his smell on me.”
He got out of the car, took off his coat, threw it in the trunk, and got back in.
“Aren’t you just the sweetest thing?” I said.
“Whatever you say, Detective,” Ryan said, his hands up in a gesture of submission.
I started the cruiser and pointed it away from the trailer park.
Ryan said, “Let me see if I can track down Hector on campus.” He swung the computer around and looked up the main university number as I drove us back toward town.
“Yes,” Ryan said into his cell. “Detective Ryan Miner, Rawlings Police Department. One of your employees, Hector Cruz—C-R-U-Z—where can I find him on campus?” He listened. “Thanks very much.” He ended the call.
“Yeah?”
“Hector works in Buildings and Grounds. It’s in the Operations Building, on Thompson Street.”
I drove us there and parked.
We walked into the ugly seventies one-story building, made of what looked like tan cinder blocks. I showed the receptionist my shield and asked if we could speak to whoever was in charge.
“That’s William Saffert. I’ll bring you back. Go around to that door, okay?” She pointed.
She led us back to a small office. “Bill, these are police officers.”
I introduced us, and he invited us to sit in the two small plastic chairs in front of his desk. A little light came in from a shallow window up near the ceiling.
“We want to talk to one of your employees, Hector Cruz.”
