The Broken Saint: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  He shook his head.

  “I am terminating the interview now. It is 10:41 am.” I pointed to the recorder, and Ryan stood up, walked over, and switched it off. “Ryan, would you give me a minute with Ms. Cunningham?” He nodded and left the interview room.

  Amber was sobbing, her head resting on the table, her arms out in front of her, like she was doing the dead man’s float. I got some tissues out of my big shoulder bag and walked over to her. I pulled out the plastic chair next to her and sat down, putting my arms around her shoulder and drawing her in toward me. She started crying more. I handed her the tissues.

  “I would have told you the truth,” she said through her tears. “Why did you do that to me?” She grabbed my sleeve.

  “Because I’m conducting a murder investigation.”

  “But you know I didn’t kill Maricel.”

  “Yes, I do know that. But I needed that information about Jared and Maricel.”

  “Didn’t Jared tell you already?”

  “No,” I was massaging her shoulder. “Jared lied to us. He’s sticking with the story about you tripping on the stairs.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you the truth?”

  “Because he’s a shithead, just like you said. He knows if he admits hitting you, he could be on the hook for assault. That’s a felony,” I said. “He would do jail time.”

  “He didn’t mean to hit me.” She looked at me, tears still streaming down her face.

  I didn’t say anything. “Amber, I’ve worked domestic violence. No abuser ever meant to hit the woman.”

  “Jared’s not like that. He loves me.”

  “Detective Miner and I interviewed Jared an hour ago. We asked him if the two of you were exclusive.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said his life’s crazy enough with one girl.”

  She looked confused, then she figured it out. “That son of a bitch.”

  “Amber, you need to do some thinking. Jared hits women. He might’ve hit you only once—so far. But I’ve never met a guy hits a woman only once. He hits you once, when he’s mad at you, he’ll hit you again, next time he gets mad. I’ve seen women with their jaw wired shut, drinking through a straw. I’ve seen women lose their eyesight in one eye. Amber,” I said, “I’ve seen women killed by men who didn’t mean to hurt them.”

  I handed her my card. “You have to get this guy out of your life. Today.” I wrote my cell number on the card. “Call me, day or night. I will personally pick Jared up and arrest him.”

  Amber sat with her head in her hands. She lifted one hand to tell me she heard me, to tell me to stop.

  “Sit here for five minutes. Pull yourself together. I’ll send an officer in here to bring you back to campus.” I paused. “Look at me, Amber.”

  She lifted her head.

  “I know what it’s like to be abused. I want you to think about what I said.”

  She nodded, and I left the interview room and made my way back to the detective’s bullpen, where Ryan was sitting at his desk.

  “That was pretty rough,” he said.

  “Twelve minutes, we got the truth.”

  “What did you talk to her about, just now?”

  “About how some guys beat up women.”

  Ryan nodded. “She want us to charge him?”

  “I told her I’d help her. But it usually takes a while for them to come around to it.”

  “Well, maybe she’ll tell him to take a walk.”

  “Yeah, I think she’ll do that. I told her Jared said he couldn’t handle two girlfriends at once. For some reason, she didn’t like that.”

  Chapter 26

  “Amber Cunningham—the girl who’s supposed to be Maricel’s friend but doesn’t like her?—caught her boyfriend, Jared, with his dick in Maricel’s mouth.”

  “Lovely,” the chief said. He looked up from his screen.

  “So Amber and her boyfriend get in this big fight and he pops her in the face.”

  “Does she want to press charges?”

  “Not sure. “I explained that she could. Told her I’d help her if she wanted.”

  “So connect this to the murder.”

  Ryan said, “We’re not sure it is connected. I guess it’s possible Jared blames Maricel—”

  “Because his penis ends up in her mouth?” The chief looked skeptical. “You seeing that as a possible motive?”

  “Yeah, Jared’s a total scumbag,” I said. “We got all this from Amber. Jared just lied to us, telling us she cut her face when she was drunk and fell, but maybe that was him not wanting an assault charge.”

  “Can Amber provide an alibi for Jared that night?”

  “Not a good one,” I said. “He spent the night there at her apartment, but she didn’t say he was there the whole time. She was asleep. He might’ve left without waking her.”

  “You have anything you can use on Jared?”

  I looked at Ryan, and we both shook our heads. “I don’t see probable cause for searching his place or his car,” I said. “I think the best thing is to see what happens when Jared has a chance to talk to Amber.”

  “How do you see that unfolding?”

  “Well, I’m not even sure it’s gonna happen,” I said. “Jared’s so egotistical he thinks he’s good with us, with his story of Amber cutting her face when she fell down. He might not even know we broke her down and got the real story. So he might be laying low for a while, thinking Amber’s too much trouble to screw anymore.”

  “But Amber might get in touch with Jared,” the chief said.

  “That’s a real possibility. She might want to officially break it off.”

  “And he might do something that gives us an opening.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “My money’s on him seeing a breakup as a good thing. Amber was just a reliable hard-on to him. If she wasn’t too high-maintenance before, she sure is now.”

  “But you made it clear she can get in touch with you if he threatens her?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Okay, let me know if you need some manpower to watch Jared.”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “In the meantime,” he said, “I’d look again at Hector. It was his girlfriend brought Jared into the bed.”

  “Absolutely, Chief.”

  When we got back to our desks, I said, “How about we talk to Hector on campus again, before he gets a chance to call the damn lawyer?”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “Worst he can do is tell us he’s not going to talk to …”

  I looked over at him when he stopped talking. He was focused on his screen. “What you got?”

  “An email from one of Maricel’s teachers.”

  “At the university?”

  “No, sorry,” he said. “One of her high-school English teachers. In the Philippines.”

  “Why’s she writing to you?”

  “I emailed a few principals in the public schools in Manila. To see if anyone there remembers Maricel.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.” He was reading the email.

  I sat down. He’d tell me what he had after he was done reading it.

  “Okay,” Ryan said, looking up from his monitor. “The email is from Angelica Flores, who teaches tenth-grade English in the Jose Abad Santos High School in Manila. She writes that she was very sad upon learning of the death of Maricel—”

  “You sure this person is referring to our Maricel?”

  “Yes, I used her Philippine ID number in my emails. It’s our Maricel.”

  “Okay, she’s sorry to hear Maricel is dead. What else?”

  “Let’s see. She says she knew Maricel was an orphan. Very good student. Shy. Not many friends. But she still remembers a short story Maricel wrote.”

  “From four years ago?”

  “Apparently.” Ryan raised his eyebrows. “It was a story about a young Filipino woman who fell in love with a white man who was visiting the Philippines.”

  “Is that so?” I
said. “How did the story end?”

  “She doesn’t say in the email. Just that she thought Maricel was a bright student who’d been through some rough times. If there’s anything she can do, et cetera.”

  I looked at Ryan. He looked back at me.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Don’t you think it’s obvious what’s going on here?”

  “So few things are obvious to me, Ryan. Spell it out.”

  “Maricel was Al Gerson’s daughter.”

  “He’s the white man in the story?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s no other white man could’ve been in that story?”

  “It’s Gerson. I know it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he hasn’t been straight with us, from the first thing he told us about her.”

  “Let’s say he was her father. You saying he killed her?”

  He sighed. “I’m not sure.”

  “This Mormon guy, he runs a ward, you think he’s capable of killing his own daughter?”

  Ryan was silent for a minute. “Maricel writes this story about a Filipino woman and a white man. You’re right,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t mean Al Gerson was the guy. Maybe he wasn’t her father, but she thought he was.”

  “And?”

  “And she comes here to shake him down.”

  “That’s kind of a stretch.”

  “Listen, she does her research, learns there’s this guy who served his mission in Manila. The time lines up with her birth. He’s got himself a good academic gig in the U.S., has a lot to lose. A scandal like that could cost him his career. A couple of thousand bucks makes her go away.”

  “I don’t like it.” I was shaking my head. “How does she know this academic was swinging his dick when he was supposed to be doing his mission? Aren’t you guys supposed to keep it in your pants?”

  “Yes, Karen.” He spoke slowly, trying to stay patient. “The Church really wants us to gain converts by talking to the natives, not by sleeping with them. But we don’t know anything about Maricel. And we don’t know much about Gerson. She could have family in Manila who caught Gerson sleeping with a Filipino. If that Filipino is willing to take a cut of the blackmail—or is dead and out of the picture—what’s to keep Maricel from doing a little entrepreneurship?”

  “She picks up and moves to the U.S., to the middle of Montana, because she sees Gerson as a mark?”

  “It’s possible. She knows Gerson did his mission there—which I found out in two minutes on the Web—she tells him a sad story, he greases the wheels for her. Which, by the way, he already admitted to doing by changing her residence on the application forms. She sets up in his house, for free. Then, she starts to go to work on him. He’s not sure whether she’s his daughter, but he can’t afford to take the chance. So he starts paying her off. Then she raises the price. He doesn’t want to pay anymore. You can’t tell me that’s impossible.”

  “Give me a little time to think about it. I’ll come up with some reason it’s impossible.”

  “We need to get a look at his financials. If she was blackmailing him, it’ll be clear.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  “Ask the chief for authorization.”

  “No,” I paused. “There’s not enough to go on. I’m not gonna put in for his financials because a high-school girl wrote a story about a white man.”

  “Come on, Karen. This could be the break we’ve been looking for.”

  “No, the chief wouldn’t authorize it. I wouldn’t, either, if I was him.”

  Ryan got out of his chair fast. “Well, I’m going to ask him.”

  I raised my palms, telling him to go ahead.

  Three minutes later, I got a call from the chief. I picked up and listened. “Sure.” I hung up.

  I walked into the chief’s office. Ryan was sitting in one soft chair, the chief in another. I kept standing. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Ryan says he wants to search Al Gerson’s financials.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “And that you don’t want to.”

  “That’s right.”

  The chief said to Ryan, “I agree with Karen. There isn’t justification. Get me something else and I’ll reconsider.”

  Ryan stood, a pissed-off look on his face.

  “Ryan, would you excuse us?” the chief said.

  Ryan left the office, opening and closing the door with a little more force than necessary.

  “What’s going on with Ryan?” the chief said.

  “You mean wanting to get Gerson’s financials?” The chief nodded. “I think he’s really angry that this hot-shit Mormon’s been lying to us about who Maricel was.”

  “So there’s a Mormon liar?”

  “I’ve already had that conversation with him. But I think Ryan’s all out of shape that it’s one Mormon lying to another. They’re kind of clannish, you know. I think maybe Ryan thinks lying to outsiders is one thing, but lying to other Mormons is a lot worse.”

  “Okay, but remember, you’re the lead on this case. I’m not going to do anything he asks me to do if you’re not on board.”

  “I understand that, Chief, and the only reason I let him come in to ask you is I didn’t want him to think I was shutting him down. I was thinking if both of us told him the same thing, it would sit better.”

  “Yeah, all right,” the chief said. “He working out okay otherwise?”

  “Absolutely. He’s excellent. Just a little hinky on the Mormon thing.”

  “Okay, but let me know if it turns out to be a problem. I can re-assign him. I don’t want to have to apologize to the provost or the president of the university.”

  “Understood. I think the episode a minute ago should take care of it.”

  He nodded, and I left.

  Chapter 27

  Hector didn’t hear us walk into the computer lab in the Life Sciences Building because he was vacuuming the tattered and stained green industrial carpet. The room had computers on desks arrayed around the perimeter, with round tables in the middle of the room and, up at the front, a wide instructor’s podium with a monitor and a bunch of other computer gear on it.

  He didn’t see us, either, with his back turned to the door. We waited a bit, but I got impatient and turned the room lights off and on. He jumped a little and turned around. I had apparently interrupted whatever Zen vacuuming trance he was into.

  “Hector, you got a minute?” Ryan and I were ten feet away from him, not trying to get in his face. Hector had turned the vacuum off and stood there, his hands at his sides, no expression on his face.

  “We want to give you an update on our investigation,” I said.

  His face took on a confused expression, like he wasn’t expecting that.

  “It’s about Amber Cunningham and Jared Higley.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you without my attorney.”

  “Okay, we don’t need you to say anything. We just want to tell you where we are. Don’t talk, just listen. That way, you can report what we said to Mr. Samosa but you can’t get yourself in any trouble.”

  He stood there silently. Ryan walked over to the classroom door and shut it.

  “Here’s what we’ve got. The night Maricel was murdered, Amber Cunningham and Jared Higley got into a big argument. He popped her in the face. Black eye, contusion. Emergency Room. We’re not sure what happened next, but Jared doesn’t have an alibi for the rest of the night.”

  I stopped talking to give him a chance to jump in. He didn’t. “So we’re liking this Jared Higley for Maricel.” I paused. “Him being the kind of guy would hit a woman.”

  Hector shifted his weight slightly. He looked like he wanted to talk but wouldn’t let himself.

  “We thought you’d like to know that’s what we’re thinking. Only problem, we’re not exactly sure why Jared would want to hurt Maricel. Can you give us anything on why Amber and Jared might have got
ten into it that night? Anything that could help us understand why she’d be pissed at him?” I paused. “Unless we can give him a motive, it’s a lot harder for us to go after him. The chief is big on ‘It’s the boyfriend’—you know, that’s what the statistics tell us—but we need to understand what was going on between Jared and Maricel.”

  “Forget it, Karen.” Ryan turned to me. “This guy’s too stupid to take the get-out-of-jail card you’re handing him.”

  Hector moved his shoulders a little, like he was working out a cramp, but he didn’t make a big move. I could see Ryan’s eyes fixed on him.

  “You’re right,” I said, finally understanding what Ryan was doing. “Let’s bring him in.”

  Ryan moved to within a couple feet of Hector. The two guys were locked in a testosterone stare, two boxers at a weigh-in. “Let me try one more question, okay?”

  I just waved my hand, telling him to go ahead.

  “Hector,” Ryan said, moving slowly toward him, “were you okay with Maricel giving head to any piece-of-shit guy?”

  Hector’s right hand shot up, aimed directly at Ryan’s face. Not a smart move. I pulled back and unholstered my pistol, clicked the safety. But I knew I wouldn’t need to use it.

  Ryan swiveled counter-clockwise on the balls of his feet. His left arm came up, the elbow at ninety degrees, sweeping to the left, deflecting Hector’s punch. Now Hector’s midsection was unprotected. Ryan’s right hand, a blur, shot out straight at Hector, the fist rotating as it landed on his sternum.

  Hector’s breath exploded out of his lungs, and he groaned. His arms flapped forward, his trunk went concave, and he fell back, collapsing on the carpet.

  I put the safety back on my revolver and holstered it. Ryan was down on one knee, checking to see if Hector was breathing. He shook his head.

  “Want me to call it in?”

  “Give me a second.” Ryan slapped Hector once on the cheek, then listened. He slapped him again. Still no breathing. “Damn,” he said, cradling Hector’s neck to make sure the airway was open. He leaned over and pinched Hector’s nose and started the CPR.

  It was five breaths before Hector’s body convulsed and he started coughing.

  “Okay.” Ryan breathed out slowly, relieved. “There we go.” Hector was shaking his head, his pupils going back and forth beneath his half-closed lids as he tried to get his bearings.