by Mike Markel
Saffert hit a couple of keys on his keyboard. He frowned. Then he picked up a phone and tapped in a few numbers. “Helen, did Hector Cruz check in today?” He waited. “Okay, thanks.” He hung up and turned to me. “Sorry, he didn’t show up today.”
I nodded. “What kind of employee is he?”
“Quiet, dependable, does his job.” Saffert was a big man. He looked like he’d done his time in Building and Grounds.
“Does he have a problem missing his shifts?”
Saffert looked at screen. “No,” he said. “Only three or four a year. His sick days are piling up.”
“Did he call in today?”
“No, he didn’t,” Saffert said. “That’s not like him.”
“What’s your procedure when you hire guys? You do a background check?”
“Human Resources does. It’s a state reg if the employee is going to be involved in any duties related to safety, or if he has access to a master key. Since Mr. Cruz does some custodial work in labs, he falls in that category.”
“What did you find on him?”
Saffert walked over to a large filing cabinet in the corner, slid open a drawer, fingered through it, and pulled out a folder. “State does a Montana-Wyoming-Idaho criminal background check for felonies and misdemeanors, a Social Security trace, and a National Sexual Offender Registry check.” He flipped through some pages in the folder. “Let’s see. Social Security was fine: he’s documented. Sexual Offender, also fine. A couple of misdemeanors: some traffic violations, a misdemeanor drug possession—and a felony, a battery that he copped to from California that we didn’t catch.”
“Did you talk to him about the battery?”
“I remember that.” Saffert nodded. “He said it happened about eight years ago. Said he was drinking, got into a fight. No big deal. He’s been clean since then.”
“So his profile is pretty typical?”
He nodded. “We look at the number of offenses, the circumstances of each, the relationship between the offenses and the job responsibilities, the length of time between them. And I put a lot of weight on how the applicant has tried to rehabilitate himself and stay out of trouble. I really liked that he was upfront about the battery the background check hadn’t uncovered. He said that was in the past, and I believed him. I’m glad I hired him. He’s worked out good. But the bottom line is, if I couldn’t hire anyone with a felony, I couldn’t staff Buildings and Grounds.”
Chapter 7
It was close to four o’clock when we finished interviewing Hector Cruz’s boss from Building and Grounds and made our way back to headquarters. Enough time for maybe one more interview before quitting time.
We were looking at Maricel’s phone records for the past three months.
“You seeing this Amber Cunningham, calling back and forth to Maricel every day until about a week ago? That’s her Big Sister, from the university, right?” I said.
“Yup,” he said. “Want to see what happened about a week ago?”
I nodded. “Maybe one of those two women from the university can help us with that.”
“I’d try Christine Hardtke.”
“Which one is she, the dean?”
“No, she’s the international students person, the one with the German accent.”
Oh, yeah, the crimson pants-suit and the pendant. “You got a number?”
Ryan punched it in for me. “Line 1.”
I picked up and hit Speaker. “Is she a doctor?” He looked at her business card and nodded.
“Dr. Hardtke, this is Detective Karen Seagate. The Maricel Salizar case? Got a second?”
“Of course, Detective. How can I help you?”
“You told us this morning that Amber Cunningham was Maricel’s Big Sister. How does a student become a Big Sister or Big Brother?”
“If they’re a student in good standing and want to do it, they just sign up and we do a brief orientation. Then we assign them when we’ve got an international student who we think would be a good fit.”
“What can you tell me about Amber Cunningham?”
“Give me a second. Let me pull up her records.” She paused for ten seconds. “Okay, Amber Cunningham, junior in General Business, says she’s pre-law. She has a 3.5 GPA.”
“That’s pretty good, right?”
“Median GPA for our graduating seniors is 3.2. So 3.5 is very good. If she does well on the LSATs, she’ll get into an excellent law school.”
“And you’ve got her listed at 3501 Hamilton, Apartment 26?”
“Yes.”
“All right, Dr. Hardtke, thanks a lot.” I hung up.
Ryan said, “Want to take a drive?”
“You bet.” I looked at my watch. “We might be able to get to her before she hears about Maricel on the news.”
Apartment 26 was on the second floor of a pale green stucco building that straddled the border between the student slums and the lower-middle-class neighborhood near campus. Nice thing about the building was that the staircase was inside, and there was a central hall, which made the residents feel more like adults. Most of the other off-campus rentals built for students had the stairs and the hall outside, which encourages male morons to drag the keg outside, shout at the girls passing by and, Thursdays through Sundays, piss over the railing onto the parking lot.
I knocked on the door. I didn’t think I’d been out on a call to this building when I was a uniform. Maybe it wasn’t built back then, or maybe there just weren’t any guys beating up their girlfriends there when I was on duty. Third possibility: I lived right here in Apartment 26 for two or three years during the Jack Daniel’s Era.
“Who is it?”
“Rawlings Police Department.”
“I didn’t call for the police.”
Amber had a pleasantly Amber-centric view of the world: I don’t need you, so go away.
“Ms. Cunningham, it’s the Rawlings Police Department. Open the door, please.”
I retrieved my shield from my bag and hung it around my neck as the deadbolt turned.
She opened the door halfway and tightened the belt on her green terrycloth bathrobe, looking like she’d just gotten out of bed. Four in the afternoon. It brought back so many memories of my college days.
Amber Cunningham was a small woman, a bit thick in the middle. Her face, with no makeup and no earrings, looked puffy and indistinct. She had long, dark hair, wavy, parted down the middle, a little mussed up from nap time. She was the kind of girl who looked okay at twenty but would morph into a potato by the time she hit forty. But now, her eyes were open way wide.
“Ms. Cunningham, I’m Detective Karen Seagate. This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner. We’d like to talk to you.”
“What is it? Did something happen to my parents?”
“No, nothing like that,” I said. “We just want to talk to you about your friend, Maricel Salizar.”
Amber sighed a big breath, obviously relieved that it wasn’t anything important. She shook her head. “She’s not exactly my friend.”
“Do you mind if we come in?”
She stepped back, pulling the door open all the way. It was a standard cheapo apartment, one bedroom off to the left, a living room with a kitchenette. There was a half-size refrigerator and small four-burner electric stove, a tiny round breakfast table and two folding metal chairs. A dark brown corduroy-covered futon, with a glass coffee table in front of it. A metal TV stand supported a big flat screen, with a DVD thing next to it. On the far wall was a screw-it-together bookcase with some books, some DVDs, CDs, and an iPad docking station on top of it. The one big window had vinyl vertical blinds, no curtains. A few framed photos and posters hung on the walls.
“You want to sit down?” She pointed to the futon. Ryan and I sat down on it, and she took an imitation bentwood rocker with thin blue cushions.
“Is Maricel saying I did something to her?” She was wearing a smirk.
“No. We just want to understand your relationship with her a li
ttle better.”
“Why? What is it?” she said, with a little more curiosity behind it.
“It’s in relation to a case we’re working on.”
“Okay,” she said, impatient that we were taking her time. “What do you want to know?”
“All right, you’re Maricel’s Big Sister, is that right?”
She laughed a little. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Officially.”
“You two don’t get along?”
“We used to,” she said, shaking her head.
“Something happen?”
“Nothing in particular. We didn’t have much in common.”
“It wasn’t something she did?”
“More like something she was.”
“What was that?”
“Kind of a bitch.”
“How so?”
“Hard to point to any one thing. Just that she was so into herself. Didn’t really care about anyone else.” She shifted in the rocker, like she didn’t see any need to fill in the details. That would have to do for me.
Ryan said, “Is that why you haven’t talked to her on the phone for the last week or so?”
She turned to him. Now that she was done being scared, she could concentrate on me and Ryan. The way she leaned forward, I could tell she decided it would be more fun to focus on Ryan. “Yeah, that’s right. I just decided I didn’t want her in my life anymore.” She said it with a little pride, like she’d recently realized she was an adult and therefore got to decide who she let into her life. It wasn’t my place to take her aside and tell her you don’t always get to choose.
I heard some noise from the bedroom. “Is there anyone else here in the apartment?”
“Yeah,” she said, her chin up. “That’s my boyfriend, Jared.”
“Do you mind if we speak to him for a minute?”
She called into the bedroom. “Jared, can you come out here a sec?”
Jared came out, not in any hurry. He was a tall guy, thin. His medium brown hair was cut in a fauxhawk, short on the sides and combed so that it stuck up straight on the top of his head. He wore a goatee and a soul patch. His left earlobe had a broad black plug stretching it out. The plug was hollow in the middle, like a tire on a toy truck. The kind of thing my son, Tommy, would think is cool, but anyone with an 80 IQ or better would think is just stupid. Jared’s right earlobe was covered in a bandage. Wearing only plaid boxers, he leaned against the TV stand and began to scratch his stomach.
Ryan and I stood up. “Jared, I’m Detective Seagate, my partner, Detective Miner.”
He nodded, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“What’s your last name, Jared?” Ryan said.
“Higley,” Jared said.
“You at the university?”
Jared nodded again.
“Do you know Maricel Salizar?” I said.
“Think I met her once or twice.” He yawned. “Don’t really know anything about her.”
I looked over at Amber, who was gazing down at her hands. She couldn’t see my look, which was just as well. It was obvious I wasn’t the first adult who was curious about why she would fuck this idiot. “Amber, when was the last time you saw Maricel?”
She put on a face like she was thinking. “I don’t know, maybe ten days, a week. Saw her in a class.”
“And Jared? How about you?”
“Maybe last month. Don’t remember.” I’d call his expression defiant, but defiance requires a little more energy than Jared was putting out. Call it “assertive indifference.”
Amber said, “Can you tell us what this is about?”
“Maricel was found dead this morning.”
Amber pulled back. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
“Not sure yet. She was attacked.” I glanced over at Jared, but his head was turned and I couldn’t get a read.
“I can’t believe that,” Amber said. Her hand was up to her mouth.
“Can you help us with anyone who’d want to hurt her?”
She began to cry. “No, I really can’t.” She wiped at her nose. “Oh, my God.”
“Anyone else you know thinks she was a bitch?”
“Listen, when I said that,” she said, crying more now, “I just meant she wasn’t really my friend. I didn’t hate her or anything. She just wasn’t a friend anymore.” She wiped at her eyes with the end of the belt on her bathrobe. “You don’t think I killed her, do you?”
“We’re just beginning our investigation, Amber,” I said. “We don’t think anything yet.”
I looked over at Jared. He was gazing at the kitchen, scratching his stomach, like he wanted to get something to eat. “All this murder talk boring you, Jared?”
He looked at me. “What?” Then he figured out what I’d said. “Just hungry, that’s all.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Go get yourself something to eat.”
He walked over to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, bent down and looked in. He started shoving things aside to see what there was.
“Amber, can you tell us about that shiner?” Her left eye was bruised, a neon green, which was about a week old. Plus she had a faint white line on her cheek about an inch long, from some kind of cut.
She started to blush. “This?” Her hand came up to her cheek, touching it gently. “I had a little too much to drink one night last week, stumbled on the steps up to the apartment.”
I nodded.
Ryan said to Jared, “Having a problem with the earring in that ear?”
“Yeah,” he said. He had a slice of cheese in his hand. “Got infected. I tried to stretch it out a little too fast, broke the skin.”
Apparently, Ryan had hit on a topic Jared considered worthy of his participation.
“Okay, Amber, Jared.” I stood. “Let me give you both my card. You think of anything that can help us in this investigation, you give me a call?”
Amber nodded. I looked over at Jared, who was chewing on the cheese.
Ryan and I left the apartment. “You buy Amber’s story about that shiner?” he said as we made our way to the cruiser.
“Tripping and falling? I’ve done that once or twice. Maybe ten times, tops. What about Jared and his earring?”
“He could be telling the truth.”
“What’s with those earrings?” I looked at Ryan’s left ear to see if there was a closed-up hole in his lobe. Him being a well-behaved Mormon, I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t see one. “Is the guy so stupid he assumes he’s never gonna grow up and wanna get a job?”
Ryan laughed. “Really can’t say. I saw on TV how you have to get plastic surgery to get those big holes filled in. But I think you’re right. Being stupid might have a lot to do with that decision.”
“You believe Amber not knowing about Maricel getting killed?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have called her a bitch.”
“And Jared? He hears she’s dead, doesn’t say a thing. And he doesn’t even go over to Amber to comfort her? He just stands there, scratching his stomach.”
“I didn’t see much on his face,” Ryan said. “But like you said, he doesn’t look like the most evolved primate, anyway.”
“Yeah, what’s Amber doing with a moron like that? She gonna bring him along to law school?”
“One of my sisters went through a phase with a knuckle-dragger like that.”
“How’d that turn out?”
“When she decided she’d punished my parents enough, she moved on.”
“So there’s hope for Amber after all.”
“There’s hope for us all, Karen.”
We got in the cruiser. “For most of us, maybe,” I said. “Not for Maricel.”
Ryan buckled his seatbelt. “No, not for Maricel.”
I looked at my watch: 4:43. “Let’s call it a day, huh?”
Chapter 8
“Wanna head over to the hospital to see if they’ve got a record of Amber coming in with her shiner?” It was 8:01 am, and
I’d had a bad night. That happens sometimes. Last night, I’d felt shitty about missing my AA meeting and opened the emergency bottle of JD I keep just in case. I don’t remember going to bed.
“Can’t we phone them?” Ryan said.
“No, they won’t talk to us unless they see our shields. It’s policy.”
We drove over to the hospital. I hate hospitals, this one in particular. It’s where I lied to an old man that we were going to get the two guys who killed his wife with a length of chain when the home invasion went bad. Where I spent a few days last year after I’d been beaten up and gang raped out at the neo-Nazi compound. Where I visited this little girl I almost killed when I’d been drinking and T-boned a minivan.
The big automatic doors opened for me and Ryan. The unmistakable hospital smell hit me as we walked over to the reception desk and I asked the ancient volunteer woman how to find Medical Records. She had a nametag that said Betty and Volunteer on it. I had my shield around my neck. She pointed down the main corridor and told us room 1170 was on the right. She smiled sweetly at me. “Make it a great day,” she told me. I nodded.
“What’s with her?” I said as we headed down the hall.
Ryan looked at me, confused.
“I mean, we’re cops. We’re in a hospital. We need to talk to someone in Medical Records. Is there any way, under any circumstances, this could possibly turn out to be a great day?”
We walked up to the counter at Medical Records. Ryan said to me, “You want me to bite this woman’s head off, or you got it?”
I gave him a look and turned to the middle-aged dumpling on duty. “I’m Detective Seagate. This is Detective Miner.”
Arlene from Medical Records nodded and said, “What do you need?” Apparently we weren’t her first cops.
“Have you got a patient, Amber Cunningham, in the system? We’re thinking she came to the ER five or six days ago?”
She hit some keys and watched the system churn. “I’ve got two Amber Cunninghams. One’s about twenty, the other’s around twelve.”
“Twenty. Could you print me a copy of that record?” She hit a button and out it came. She handed it to me. “Thanks.”
I looked at the form. Five days ago, at 2:15 am, Amber Cunningham came in to the ER. She was seen at 3:47 by a Dr. David Tristan, who bandaged a laceration on her cheek and performed a visual examination of her eye. She told him her vision was a little blurry. He said that should clear up within a day. If it doesn’t, she should go see an optometrist. She left at 3:52 am.
