The Broken Saint: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  Since Ryan has about a dozen siblings, it’s technically possible he has a schizo sister. But I wasn’t buying it. Anytime we’re interviewing someone who’s screwed up, Ryan has a sister with the same thing. Just off the top of my head, I remember sisters with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Asperger’s, bipolar disorder, anorexia, seasonal affective disorder, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, and bulimia. Plus, one sister’s a meth head and another has four personalities.

  Once, I mentioned to an autistic suspect that my sister was autistic, which happens to be true. She disappeared when I was in high school. We haven’t seen her since. The autistic guy said to me, “You’re full of shit. Fuck you,” then turned away like I didn’t exist.

  Ryan said, “We want to talk with you about Maricel.”

  Mark Gerson was sitting on his bed, hunched over, his elbows on his thighs. “Go ahead,” he said, without looking up to make eye contact.

  “When we spoke with you before,” Ryan said, “at the gaming store, you told us she was brought up in an LDS orphanage, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was good information. We checked it out. You were right. We want to thank you for that.”

  Mark Gerson raised his head to look at Ryan, then shrugged his shoulders. I think he was a pretty smart kid. He looked a little annoyed at getting complimented for telling the truth, but he nodded to acknowledge it. He must’ve been so tired of getting reamed out for all the lies he’s told, he’d take any praise that someone would toss him.

  Ryan said, “Were you two close?”

  “Last few months, I’ve been crashing with friends a lot, so I wasn’t home all that much. Before that, yeah, I guess we were close.” He was silent a moment. I could see the wheels turning. “‘Close’ being a kind of relative word.”

  “Tell us about her.”

  “She was quiet. Didn’t have a lot of friends, you know, growing up the way she did. She’d hold back, let you show yourself first. Sometimes it came across as obnoxious or bitchy, but that was just on the outside. She was more afraid. Underneath everything, I mean.”

  “How did Maricel get along with your father?”

  “Dad didn’t try to interfere much with her. He’s real big on listening.” Mark made a set of air quotes around that last word. “You know, ‘I’m always here for you,’” Mark said, in a pompous, dorky voice, the kind the black comedians use when they rip white guys. “But he treated her like an adult. Guess that’s the role he plays at the university. Treat the students like they’re adults. He says really lame shit like, ‘The kids are on a wonderful journey of discovery.’ But he really believes it, even though he knows some of them are just fuck-ups. I mean, he has to know that, right? He can see their transcripts on the fuckin’ screen.”

  Mark looked like he was getting agitated. I could see how, even when he was on his meds, he had to struggle to stay on top of it.

  “And how did Maricel respond to him?” Ryan said.

  “She was okay with him. Because he didn’t get in her face. I think she appreciated that. Like I said, she was scared. Anyone who’d try to get close to her, she’d pull back.”

  “Did you see any special bond between her and your father?”

  Mark Gerson shook his head. “Nothing like that. Least that I could see.”

  “How did your dad react when she started going out with Hector Cruz?”

  “I heard him and my mom talking about it. A little bit tense. You know, through the walls.”

  “They didn’t agree on what to do about it?”

  “My mom was more worried about it. Her voice kind of goes up when she’s stressed, which is, like, most of the time. I could tell it was a big thing when Maricel started staying out nights. Dad was all, ‘I understand how it’s a major step, but the boy seems polite and well brought up, and we’re living in a different world today.’ I wouldn’t say he was for it, but he understood that you can’t tell a college girl not to get laid. He’s always, ‘Our role is to model the kind of behavior we think is best for her.’ Which I guess would mean Maricel’s supposed to be crying most of the time and running out of the room, while he stares at the floor, not knowing what the fuck just hit him.” Mark’s eyes drifted off over Ryan’s shoulder.

  Then he looked at Ryan and started talking again. “It’s not like Maricel was his daughter. He was a lot stricter with my sister before she went off to college.”

  “He wasn’t concerned that Hector wasn’t a college guy?” Ryan said.

  “‘Work is a blessing from God,’” Mark said in his dorky white-guy voice.

  “How do you think her relationship with Hector was going?”

  “Not really sure. I wasn’t, like, her confidante. Especially the last month or so.”

  “Did the two of them spend much time at your house?”

  “No. If he got trapped when he came to the door, he’d have to do the handshake thing. Hector’s face looked like he was grabbing a snake. Maricel would always have an excuse for getting the fuck out of there as soon as possible.”

  Ryan nodded. “Mark, did you ever see yourself as maybe becoming Maricel’s boyfriend?”

  Mark Gerson looked down at the floor, silent for a few moments. I leaned my head down a little bit to get a better look. He was blushing. “Hector is, like, ten years older than me. And he’s got his own place. And you’ve seen him, right? He looks like a man.”

  “Do you think your schizophrenia put her off?”

  “I don’t think so. Everyone has something, she said to me once. I think she saw me like a little brother. Harmless. My disease was … I don’t know. She saw me as broken, like her, so I didn’t scare her, but I didn’t appeal to her in that way, that was real clear. I never said anything to her about, you know, anything like that.”

  Ryan nodded his head and stood up. “You know how long you’re going to be here?”

  “They don’t tell me shit, but I think it’s day-to-day. Maybe till the end of the week.”

  “Have you been here before?”

  He nodded. “They know me.”

  “Your parents stop by?”

  “My mom’s here a lot during the day. Dad stops by for a little while at night.”

  “They have you do counseling here?”

  “Some, but not much. It’s mostly about making sure I don’t cheek the meds.”

  “All right, Mark,” Ryan said. “Thanks for the information.”

  Mark Gerson nodded and we left.

  The place was busy, with nurses and attendants walking quietly through the halls. As we walked down the hall toward the main entrance, I could see patients in their rooms. They weren’t scary looking. No zombies. They weren’t in straitjackets or those horrible gowns with their asses hanging out. They were wearing normal clothes. But a lot of them looked like they were deep in thought, just staring straight at the wall, or maybe they weren’t thinking at all. Most of them were young, under thirty, which was kind of depressing: young people fucking themselves up, even when they don’t have a real disease, which Mark Gerson did.

  As we drove back to headquarters, I said to Ryan, “You didn’t tell me you had a sister with schizophrenia.”

  Ryan smiled. “I don’t.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding. “So, it’s just like I said, right? You’re alive, you lie.”

  “I like to see it more as a technique I use during interviews.” He turned to me. “You know: empathizing to put the person at ease.”

  The sun was up high, and the sky was taking a break from its usual steel gray. I looked at the thermometer on the dash: thirty-three. When I used to live in LA, I’d bundle myself in a coat when it dipped below fifty. Now, if I can feel my toes, I’m good.

  “So what did you get from the calm, medicated Mark Gerson?”

  “Well,” Ryan said, “not sure how calm he was, but I’d start with he didn’t sin with our Heavenly Mother.”

  I laughed. “Agree. But he wanted to sin with Maricel, right?”

  “
Oh, yeah. But he never did.”

  “So how’d he get from Maricel blew him off to he killed God’s wife?”

  “The way I see it,” Ryan said, “he was real upset when Maricel started going out with Hector—”

  “Especially when she didn’t come home at night,” I said.

  Ryan smiled. “Yeah, I think Mark would consider that an important aspect.”

  “Okay, that makes Maricel a fallen woman. That’s how your religion would see that?”

  “That’s right. We’re big on pre-marital chastity. Although, to be perfectly honest with you—”

  “Guy like you, lies about his sisters, I’m supposed to believe anything you say?”

  “To be perfectly honest with you, we’re better at not drinking liquor and caffeine than we are at chastity.”

  “Well, goodness gracious, Brother Miner. I’m shocked—”

  “Which means that an emotionally immature kid like Mark can’t process Maricel as a sinner, so he takes it on himself. He’s the sinner.”

  “It’s not like he wants to kill anyone,” I said. “He just wants to screw her. Why not just see himself as a fornicator?”

  “A romantic kid like Mark can’t look at himself rationally. He has to up the emotional ante. He can’t be just a fornicator. He has to be the ultimate sinner. He’s a murderer.”

  “And his victim is the most important woman: the wife of God.”

  “That’s how I see it,” Ryan said. “The kid’s not only a schizophrenic, he’s also a horny, delusional eighteen-year old.”

  “A horny delusional eighteen-year old carrying around a couple tons of religious repression and guilt.”

  “Absolutely,” Ryan said, giving me one of his big grins. “I never had that problem, of course, because I am the master of all my desires. But I’ve heard that some weaker mortals have those problems.”

  “So, you can’t get laid, right?”

  “Can’t get laid.”

  “And you can’t jerk off?”

  “Can’t jerk off.”

  “So what the hell are you supposed to do?”

  Ryan laughed. “I told you, Karen. You’re supposed to repress your desires. Like I did.”

  “You’re completely full of shit, you know?”

  “I’ve got a sister completely full of shit.”

  From what I could figure out about Ryan, he was serious about his religion, but he didn’t have a stick up his ass, if you get the distinction. Which is good, because I don’t think I could work with him if he did. I don’t care what kind of voodoo he’s into, as long as he understands how a normal person might be into some other kind of voodoo.

  I pulled into the entrance at headquarters, followed the driveway along the side of the building, and parked near the rear entrance.

  Getting out of the cruiser, I said, “You notice Mark said Maricel was not Dad’s daughter?”

  “Which means either Maricel was not Dad’s daughter—”

  “Or Maricel didn’t know she was Dad’s daughter—” I said.

  “Or she knew it and didn’t tell Mark—”

  “Or she told him and he couldn’t process it.”

  Ryan gave me a big smile. “This is fun, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s a fucking blast.”

  Chapter 19

  “Want to go outside and watch the show?” Ryan said.

  “I’d rather not. If he sees us there, he could try to bait us.” Since we hadn’t even bent any regs so far with Hector Cruz, I wasn’t afraid his lawyer would box us in, but it was pretty clear he was all about publicity, and I wanted to do what I could to block him.

  “Let me see if it’s going to be on TV live.” Ryan was on his computer, looking at the four network sites.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “He set it up for four so that it’d be ready for the five o’clock news, but I don’t see any station breaking into their regular schedule to air it.”

  “I got an idea: we can watch it from here on the CCTV security camera. We might be able to get an audio feed off a radio station.”

  “All right, good,” I said. “I’ll tell the chief.”

  Ryan, the chief, and I gathered in his office and sat in the upholstered chairs facing the desk. He swiveled his big screen around so we could see the CCTV feed. Ryan gave him a station for a radio feed.

  Because of the camera angle, we weren’t going to be able to see Samosa’s face. He was already there, carrying a clipboard and talking real close with another guy, a beefier Hispanic guy, also in a suit. Even without the hundred pounds’ weight difference, it would be easy to tell the two apart. Samosa was Armani; the big guy, J.C. Penney.

  The four network satellite uplink trucks were parked out front of headquarters, adjusting their big dish antennas. I recognized the four sets of network Barbies and Kens, with their camera crews. But there were only about a half-dozen spectators. Four were geezers with leashed dogs who seemed to be attracted to the satellite trucks rather than the miscarriage of justice that Raul Samosa was going to expose.

  A minute after four o’clock, Samosa began talking into a small cluster of mikes set up on a portable podium provided by one of the news teams. “Ladies and gentleman, my name is Raul Samosa. I am the president of the Montana Hispanic Alliance, and I want to thank you all for coming out on this beautiful sunny winter afternoon. My message to you today, however, is not beautiful and sunny. It is anything but beautiful and sunny.”

  The spectators were shuffling around, not paying Samosa all that much attention. Part of that might have been that they didn’t know who the hell he was, or what the hell the Montana Hispanic Alliance was. If he’d wanted to get their attention, he should’ve introduced himself as the lawyer for the Latin Vice Lords.

  “As you know, late Sunday night, a twenty-two-year-old student named Maricel Salizar was brutally murdered here in Rawlings. And I’d like to begin by asking you to join me in a moment of silence in Ms. Salizar’s memory.”

  “He’s a pious son of a bitch, isn’t he?” I didn’t feel the need to join him in the moment of silence. Ryan and the chief didn’t say anything. They don’t know how to watch TV.

  “As we might have expected, the Rawlings Police Department has spent the last three days harassing a single suspect—”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said. “We’ve been harassing three or four suspects.”

  “Quiet,” the chief said. It was like watching TV with my ex-husband.

  “Is that because they have solid evidence leading them to that suspect? No. Is it because they have any evidence at all? No. Why have they been harassing this suspect? When I tell you his name, you will know the answer. His name,” he said, pausing for effect, “is Hector Cruz. The Rawlings Police Department has been hounding Cruz because he fits the racial profile for this crime. Hector Cruz is Hispanic. And Hector Cruz is uneducated. And Hector Cruz is poor.

  “Hector Cruz works as a janitor at Central Montana State University. And that is why the police can dare to persecute him. Hector Cruz does not have a PhD and a cushy nine-month teaching job. No, Hector Cruz is in charge of the toilets. That’s right. He is in charge of making sure the toilets are clean.

  “And because of the police harassment, he won’t be able to bring home his full pay of eight dollars and fifty-two cents an hour. Because the police department has interrupted his work repeatedly this week. Why? Because he knew Maricel Salizar, the student who was murdered Sunday night.”

  “Come on,” I said. “‘Because he knew Maricel Salizar’?” I turned to Ryan. “Write this shit down,” I said to him, but he already was doing it.

  “Have they charged Hector Cruz with any crime? Of course not. Because they know—they know—that he had nothing to do with the death of that student. But he is Hispanic. And because he cleans toilets for a living, he must have done it.

  “So they insist on searching his trailer—the trailer that he rents for one-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars a month, the trailer with holes in the floor, w
here the door doesn’t even shut tight—they want to search that trailer, so they can find some evidence, so they can make sure they find some evidence, to link Hector Cruz to a crime he did not commit. And they want to search his car—his 1994 Dodge Neon, which he bought for twelve-hundred dollars—for evidence linking him to a crime he did not commit.”

  I was standing up at this point. I’m not as cool as Ryan and the chief, who can sit there, all calm, thinking about what this shithead was saying. A guy accuses me of planting evidence, I get pissed.

  “But they are not going to do it. No, they are not going to succeed. Because this is not Arizona, where you can be pulled over and interrogated by the police for the crime of Driving While Hispanic. No, this is not Alabama, or Indiana, or Georgia, or Utah, all states that have passed racial profiling laws that made it legal—legal—to search and seize property of Hispanics, in clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

  Then Samosa started going national, doing a minute or two on the bad shit that was happening in Alabama, where cops can pull over Hispanics if they suspect they don’t have papers or are a terror threat. About how you couldn’t find a cop in Alabama who doesn’t suspect every Hispanic of being illegal, et cetera.

  “Hey, asshole, you’re in Montana, remember?” I said.

  The chief turned to me and shushed me. He actually shushed me.

  Then Samosa went on about how he’s going to prevent us from racially profiling his guy by putting a posse on him 24/7—he didn’t say it was going to be the Latin Vice Lords—so if a cop tries to do something wrong it’ll all be on video.

  He went on about some case in Rochester, New York, where the cops arrested a woman who’d used her camera phone to record them doing a beatdown on a black man on the street in front of her house. They told her to stop recording. She said she had every right to record what goes on in the street. They told her to go inside. She refused. They arrested her.

  I guess the link to Hector Cruz was the bit about the video. We’re going to use video to record the truth, and the truth shall set us free. Then Samosa paused before his big finish, a few lines about how we’re going to stick real close to Hector, “until the Rawlings Police Department decides that it might be a better idea to try to find whoever killed Maricel Salizar—and leave Hector Cruz alone.”