The Broken Saint: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  Seeing as Ryan and I are spending eight hours a day trying to do just that, this last line pissed me off as much as the crack about us planting evidence. I turned to the chief. “Can we get that search order now?”

  He looked at me, then shook his head.

  “Seriously,” I said, “everything that scumbag just said is a crock. You know it. Ryan and I know it. Are we supposed to not look at Cruz—who has no alibi, who was sleeping with Maricel, whose gang colors were found on her body—because he’s Hispanic?”

  “Are you done?” the Chief said.

  “For the moment,” I said, my voice louder than it should have been. The headache I’d brought to work this morning was thumping hard.

  “We’re not putting in for the search warrant—not because of Samosa but because we don’t have probable cause. When you get me probable cause, I’ll sign off on it.”

  “Are you going to issue a statement in response to Samosa?”

  “Yes, I’ll have it ready to go with the news tonight at five,” he said, standing up, “if that will do it for now.”

  “No, chief, that will not do it for now.”

  He looked at me hard. I hadn’t meant it to come out like that, but sometimes my brain doesn’t keep up with my mouth. Now was about the time for the chief to start lecturing me about insubordination.

  But all he said was, “Well, what do you want to say?”

  “He’s playing us, Chief.”

  “No, Karen, he’s trying to play us.”

  I shook my head. “Not sure I see the difference.”

  “The difference,” the chief said, shifting his weight, “is that he’s trying to get us to react to his taunts. But we’re not going to.”

  “Not how I see it,” I said. “I don’t give a shit that he insults us, saying we wanna plant evidence, crap like that. He’s playing us by saying he’s gonna put his own guys on Hector 24/7 and record everything. Because now we’re not gonna be on him. Samosa knows Hector is guilty, and he’s intimidating us into not looking hard at him. And Hector’s gonna walk because we don’t want Samosa to be posting videos on YouTube showing us harassing his client.”

  The chief scratched at his chin. “I hear what you’re saying, Karen. But this is what you need to understand about me. I don’t give a damn about how many press conferences Samosa holds. And I don’t give a damn about how many videos of the Rawlings Police Department he puts online. What I do give a damn about is what those videos show. If they show Rawlings police personnel carrying out their legitimate duties—by the book—I’m happy. If they show us messing up, I’m unhappy. Because I don’t want us to mess up.”

  “But don’t you see? He’s making it so we’re not gonna go after Hector.”

  “No, I don’t see that at all,” the chief said. “I understand what he’s doing. It’s part of the narrative. We profile Hector because he’s Hispanic. We’re cops, so we’re anti-immigrant, we’re anti-Hispanic, we’re anti-poor, whatever. So the next time we want to take down one of the Vice Lords, we’ll think twice about it because he’ll spin it as another instance of racial profiling. I worked most of my career in California. I understand how the gang lawyers spin. I understand Samosa’s profiling us. I also understand that a guy like Samosa can say whatever he wants, but he doesn’t get any traction unless it’s true. Here in Montana, in particular, most people start out on our side. We don’t have to persuade them we’re not persecuting Hector. We just have to deprive Samosa of the evidence that we are persecuting Hector. And if we don’t persecute Hector, there won’t be any evidence that we do.”

  I shook my head. “All due respect, Chief, that’s a nice sentiment, but the reality is he’s gonna win this one—and all the others—if he senses that it works.”

  “I agree. So your job—you and Ryan and everyone else in the department—is to make sure it doesn’t work.”

  “So, you going to okay a search warrant so we can find the evidence so we can arrest Hector—before Samosa and his boys get rid of it?”

  “I already answered that question. Get me probable cause.”

  Chapter 20

  “Did you hear that?” he said. “Sounded like gunfire.”

  I tried to pull myself out of my dream. “What?”

  “Just a moment ago,” he said. “Sounded like two shots.”

  And when he said that, I remembered hearing them. One sounded like it hit something metal; the other one I couldn’t identify what it hit. I got out of bed, pulled on my bathrobe, and grabbed my Smith & Wesson 9mm from the drawer in the bedside table. “Stay here. Be quiet.”

  I stood still, just inside the bedroom door, listening real hard. Nothing.

  I ejected the magazine, checked to be sure it was full, and slid it back in. I heard the reassuring click, then walked slowly down the hall toward the living room and the entry hall.

  The house was making all the sounds I never pay any attention to. The clock in the living room was ticking away with its two-tone rhythm. The refrigerator was cycling though its hums. The gas jet on the water heater in the utility closet turned off. I listened. No human sounds.

  As I was about to open the front door, I saw it: the blunt head of a bullet. It looked like a .45, knee-high, sticking halfway through my crappy pressed-wooden door. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

  I crouched and walked slowly into the living room. Then I raised my head to look out the corner of the picture window. The scraggly black limbs of my Japanese maple were silent and immobile in the chill night air. The lawn, dark gray in the moonless night, stretched out to the empty street. A few of the neighbors’ cars that didn’t fit in the garages and driveways sat silent along the curb. Across the street, the houses were lightless hulks.

  I couldn’t tell what time it was. I glanced at the big old wooden clock, but it didn’t light up so it told me nothing. I walked back to the front door and slowly opened it. The aluminum storm door showed the bullet hole, its edges flared like a flower just starting to open.

  I closed the door and walked carefully into the kitchen, leaving the light off, and grabbed a small flashlight from the first drawer beneath the counter. I checked to see it worked.

  I walked back out to the front door, opened it and the storm door, and walked outside, the AstroTurf mat cold and prickly against my bare feet. I walked out onto the concrete stoop, down the two steps to the walkway. I scanned the property. Whoever it was took the shots was long gone. I heard the high hoot of one of our resident owls.

  Turning back to face the house, I shined the flashlight on the area around the door. After a few seconds, I saw it: the second bullet. It was behind one of the laurel bushes, buried in the old asbestos shingle of my house. Seeing as it was quite a distance from the other bullet, I figured the shooter had simply slowed the car down, without stopping to try to hit anything in particular.

  I came back up my steps and wiped my bare feet on the entry mat. Mac was standing there in the dark, my leather slippers in his hand. He placed them down on the floor.

  “Thanks,” I said as I stepped into them and walked back toward the door and turned on the hallway light.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “They’re long gone,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Two fifteen.” He was tightening the belt on his bathrobe. “You’re not afraid they might come back?”

  “No, it’s all right. They’re not gonna come back. They already accomplished what they wanted.” I pointed to the door.

  He walked over. “Holy shit.” He touched the bent nose of the bullet sticking through the front door.

  “Would you mind making some coffee?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I went back into the bedroom, turned on the light, and grabbed my phone. I hit Headquarters and logged the incident with the officer on duty, Sergeant Bradish. He asked me if I wanted him to connect me with the night-shift detectives. I told him no, I’d contact my partner and decide what to do.

&nbs
p; The coffee pot started to gurgle. Really good thing about Mac was that he was willing to let me do my cop things without asking a lot of questions or getting in the way. I met him through my sponsor at AA. That’s probably not the best way to meet a guy, but when you’ve got my track record with liquor and men, the list of eligibles is fairly short, and none of them come without a couple of attics’ worth of their own baggage. My sponsor once told me a guy who hasn’t spent a good long time in hell probably wouldn’t understand me enough to make any kind of connection. He’d just be interested in saving me, but any guy who’s interested in getting a merit badge is way too young for me, if you know what I mean.

  I didn’t know where I was going with Mac, although Probably Nowhere would be the most likely sign on the front of the bus. He hadn’t been out of his personal hell that long, but he seemed like a kind man, and he readily admitted he had no idea which way was up. At my age, I found that attractive.

  I went into the living room and hit Ryan’s name on my speed dial.

  “Everything okay, Karen?” His voice was concerned.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. There was a drive-by. Someone fired two rounds at my house.”

  “Anyone hurt?” I think he knew about Mac, but since we hadn’t officially discussed him, Ryan was being his diplomatic self.

  “No. One bullet lodged in my front door, another ten feet away.” I walked into the living room. There weren’t any lights on in the houses I could see. No sense canvassing now. The unis would get it at the start of the day shift.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Wanna take a ride with me to see if Hector’s home?”

  He didn’t answer for a second. “Let me think this through.”

  “What’s to think?”

  “I don’t know. With Samosa doing the press conference this afternoon, and the chief telling us he needs probable cause, do you think it’s a good idea? I mean, the chief might think we’re poking Samosa because he pissed us off.”

  “No, Hector’s a legitimate person of interest. Remember Samosa said he’s gonna have people around Hector all the time, recording him so we can’t persecute him? Why not call his bluff?”

  “How about we drive over to the trailer park, take a quick look at his place. Decide what to do when we’re there.”

  “Yeah, good,” I said. “I’ll pick you up in a half hour.”

  “See you.”

  An hour later, we rolled slowly into the Lyric Mobile Park. One big difference between my neighborhood and this one: every block in the trailer park had one or two trailers with lights on. TVs were putting out eerie, shifting colored light. Some of these trailers had two or three cars clustered out front, like they were having a card game or selling drugs in the middle of the night.

  I turned off my headlights as we bumped our way toward Hector’s trailer. There were no lights on. I stopped my Honda about fifty yards away. We got out of the car and half-closed the doors to keep the noise down.

  We both had our pistols out as we walked slowly toward Cruz’s trailer. His Dodge Neon was out front. We walked over to it to check the hood. It was stone cold. We turned and walked back out to the street so we could talk.

  I whispered, “Want to knock on his door?”

  “I don’t know. The car’s cold,” Ryan said. “If it were warm, I think that would give us cause to knock on the door. But what are we going to learn? He’s there or he’s not there. Either way, he could have thrown the shots at your house—or not.”

  I wanted to knock on his door, just to wake him up. I have to be up at two in the morning, so should he. But Ryan was right.

  Before I could say anything, I saw a light come on near the left side of the trailer. “I think Hector solved our problem for us.”

  We walked over toward the door of the trailer, up the three steps, as more lights turned on inside. We were standing there as he opened the door. He looked at me, then at Ryan.

  “Good evening, Hector,” I said.

  He was wearing a scowl. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “I want to go back to sleep,” he said.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Somebody took two shots at my house, about an hour ago.”

  There was some noise coming from down the block, three trailers away, the thumping of a bass rhythm. If that happened in any other neighborhood, cops would be all over it.

  “You think I did it?”

  “The thought crossed my mind. You know, to pay me back for the racial profiling my partner and I been doing on you.”

  He looked at me, didn’t say anything. He rubbed at an eye. “I didn’t shoot at your house. I don’t even know where your house is.”

  “Now, that’s not the best answer, Hector, since my address is listed in the phone book and on the Web.”

  “What answer did you want?”

  “I’d have preferred, ‘I’m sorry someone shot at your house, but I didn’t do it.’ Or ‘Samosa’s an asshole. I know you aren’t guilty of racial profiling.’ Either one of them would be better than ‘I don’t know your address.’”

  “You going to arrest me now?”

  “Did you take a couple shots at my house an hour ago?”

  “No.”

  “Want to come to headquarters with us now, make a statement, do a gunshot-residue test? Let us rule you out?”

  He paused. “No. I’m not going to do anything without checking with my attorney.”

  “Shit, Hector,” I said. “I can see you’re so close to being straight with us. So close to making us want to help you. What’s the problem? You’re already awake. Come in with us now, I promise I’ll personally drive you home, you’re back in bed in under an hour. That way, my partner and I think, ‘That Cruz guy didn’t have anything to hide, he didn’t kill Maricel.’ You can make it happen, Hector. Right now.”

  “If you’re going to arrest me for shooting at your house—or for killing Maricel—do it. If not, we don’t have anything to talk about.”

  “Sorry to hear you say that, Hector. Just for the record, you have an alibi for the last two hours?”

  “I been here. Sleeping in my bed. Alone.”

  “Hector, we need to talk to you. There’s some stuff happening at headquarters that you need to know about,” I said. “Can we come in?”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “No, Hector, it’s fucking freezing out here. Just let us come in for a second, just to talk.”

  “No way I let you in.” He pointed at Ryan. “All of a sudden this guy finds a baggie full of rock sitting on the counter.” He shook his head. “No way. You got something to say, you say it right here.”

  “All right,” I said. “Let me tell you what’s going on. The chief, he’s new with us, comes from LA. There’s one thing he hates more than gang bangers. Gang lawyers. That stunt Samosa pulled this afternoon, saying how we were persecuting you, the racial profiling, how we were gonna plant evidence on you, all that shit—that really pissed him off. He told us we’re gonna look real hard at you. My partner and I told him we don’t like you for the murder. Everything you’ve told us checks out. Your boss thinks you’re being straight with him. We even believed you on not being in with the Latins.

  “But he comes back at us with, if Hector’s clean, why’d he get involved with a cocksucker like Samosa. And, I gotta level with you, my partner and I didn’t have a good answer to that. So he repeats to us the dead girl’s got Latin colors on her, you’ve got their ink on your chest, and you go call a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer who happens to work for the Latins.

  “So just let me give one more chance to get yourself out of this. It’s gonna take one hour of your life. You’ll be back at the university tomorrow morning. Come with us now, take the gunshot-residue test and you’re a free man.”

  He shook his head.

  “Why are you more afraid of Samosa th
an of the police? What the hell does he have on you?”

  “You want me to come in to headquarters now?”

  “That’s what I been asking you.”

  “Arrest me.”

  I sighed.

  “I guess that means you don’t have any evidence,” Cruz said.

  “Last chance, Hector. You understand I got two bullets in my house. I come back with a search warrant and find a gun, match it to the bullets, getting from there to you killing Maricel is like knocking over a domino.”

  He turned and walked back into his shitty trailer, pulling shut the door that didn’t quite seal against the frame.

  Chapter 21

  “Detective Seagate,” the chief said, “and Detective Miner, I believe you’ve met Mr. Raul Samosa, representing Hector Cruz.”

  We had just been called into the chief’s office to meet with the cocksucker attorney. I shook his hand, then Ryan did.

  The chief said, “Won’t you all sit down?” With the two soft chairs and the small couch, there was enough room for the four of us.

  “I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you, Chief Murtaugh, and your detectives.” Samosa had on a different thousand-dollar suit, but I recognized the gold watch and the gold chain on the vest. I caught some kind of cologne. Okay, he’s the guy in Montana who wears cologne.

  “Of course, Mr. Samosa. How can we help you?” I understood why the chief had to say things like that, but I just wanted to get up and slap the lawyer across his face.

  “You had a chance to listen to my press conference yesterday, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” the chief said, nodding his head. “The three of us did.”

  “So you know why I’m here this morning.”

  “Not really,” the chief said, wearing a confused expression. He was lying. I had told him about the drive-by when I got in this morning. That was when he told me Samosa would be stopping by for a chat. The chief’s “not really” made me feel a little better, like he was planning to leave a couple square inches of Samosa’s ass unkissed, at least for a while.