by Mike Markel
“The reformed sinner?”
“Yeah. I think it’s true.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, so I let it drop. We parked the cruiser in the lot behind headquarters. I swiped my card, and he held the door for me. “About parables, Ryan.”
“Yeah?”
We walked in, down the hall, toward the detectives’ bullpen. We hung up our coats. “Don’t they become parables because they tell the truth? People screw up just like Gerson did. Probably happens to a lot of people, right? Maybe some Mormons?”
Ryan held my gaze for a moment. “I’m going to check my email.”
Chapter 29
I’d set the alarm for 5:30, a time of day I really don’t like. It woke up Mac, who then woke me up. I’d been staying at his place since the drive-by at my house. I didn’t like Mac’s apartment, a cheapo one-bedroom he rented a few months ago, when his marriage fell apart for about the eighth or ninth time. But now that he was out of a motel and officially into his own place, I think maybe he’d made his decision.
But I never left any of my things at his apartment. That would have been a lot easier, but I wanted to live at my own house. Period. Better for Mac and better for me. As a result, I wasted time and gas couple times a week going from his place to mine, even when it didn’t make any sense. But nothing about me and men has ever made much sense.
William Saffert, the head of Buildings and Grounds at Central Montana, had told me and Ryan that Hector Cruz started his shift at seven this morning. We’d planned to be there when he showed up. I got there a few minutes early. Ryan was already there. He had told William Saffert not to tell Hector we were waiting for him.
There were two sets of lockers, with a wooden bench in between, and a small shower that looked like it didn’t get used much. When Hector arrived, carrying a gym bag over his shoulder, I was sitting on the wooden bench. Ryan was leaning against one of the lockers. Hector was almost at his locker when he noticed Ryan standing there. “Jesus,” Hector said. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” Ryan said.
“What do you want?”
“We want to search your stuff,” I said.
He took the gym bag off his shoulder. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but we want to look at a couple of other things, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We want to look in your locker. And your trailer and your car.”
He shook his head. “Come on, man.”
“Open your locker. And give me your keys—your trailer, your car.” He didn’t move. I turned to Ryan. “Cuff him.” To Hector, “Hector Cruz, you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer. You have the right—”
“Okay, okay.” He pulled back, his hands up, palms out. “Give me a second to think.”
“There’s nothing to think about, Hector. Open the locker, give us two keys, or we take you in.”
“I want to talk to my attorney.”
“Hector Cruz, you’re under arrest—”
“That’s not fair.” His voice was way too loud for a closed room full of flat metal surfaces. “You set me up.”
“Grow up, Hector. You took a swing at a cop. We’re giving you a chance to make that go away. You should be thanking us.”
“I want to talk to Samosa.”
“Last chance. Take a minute to think about it. Hand us the keys or you’re looking at your second felony conviction.”
Disgusted, he shook his head and walked over to the locker and spun the dial back and forth a few times on the lock. He opened the locker and stood back. I nodded to Ryan to stick his head in there. He looked inside.
Ten seconds later, Ryan turned to me. “A few Styrofoam cups of microwave soup, a couple of clean t-shirts and pairs of socks, an MP3 player and headphones. That’s it.”
“You see, Hector? That wasn’t that hard. Unzip the gym bag for me, would you?”
He did it.
I rummaged through it. Gym clothes and shoes, a towel. “Okay, now the keys to your trailer and your car.” I held out my hand.
He made me stand there a while, then he pulled a key ring out of his pocket and put it in my hand. It had only the two keys on it. “Detective Miner and I are gonna go look at your place now. And we’re gonna impound your car. We might need it two or three days.”
“How’m I supposed to get home?”
“You could take a bus. Goes within a few blocks of your trailer park. Or call Mr. Samosa. You two could talk about suing me and Detective Miner for being mean to you. Or phone one of your buddies in the Latins. He could come pick you up, then you two could swing by my place, shoot out a few windows.”
“Shit.”
“Where’s your car parked?”
“Near Entrance 2 to the Pavilion.”
“Okay, Hector, you make it a great day, all right? We’ll be in touch.”
Ryan and I walked out of the locker room. I called out “Thanks” to William Saffert as we passed the open door of his tiny office.
“Wanna take a walk over to his car?” I said. We were leaving the one-story Buildings and Grounds.
“Sure,” Ryan said.
The sun was coming up, blue bands of light stretching across the top of the Pavilion. We walked over to Entrance 2.
“There it is,” I said, when I spotted the dark blue Dodge Neon shitcan. We put on our latex gloves, and I unlocked the driver’s door. I handed him the key and he walked around to the trunk. Hector kept his car cleaner than I did. There were black aftermarket cloth covers on the two front seats. A short-napped industrial carpet, the same navy blue as the exterior paint, covered the floors, with beige rubber floor mats. I glanced in the back. No garbage, no fast-food wrappers. A handful of videos from the library, mostly old Bruce Willis action shit, sitting on the passenger seat. I checked the pockets in the front doors. A few Montana maps, and a chrome tire-pressure gauge. I walked around to the other side, opened up the glove box, which contained the beat-up owner’s manual, his insurance card, and an envelope from the tire store containing a warranty for two tires he bought last year.
“Bingo,” Ryan said. I walked back to the trunk. He was running his hand over the black polyester mat that covered the trunk.
“Think that’s what we got off Maricel’s clothes?”
“Looks like it to me,” Ryan said. “Anything interesting inside?”
“Would you consider it interesting that he keeps his car as neat as you do?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Want to stop by headquarters, drop off the key for them to bring it in?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
We drove back to headquarters and asked Robin to arrange to grab the car. Then we drove out to Hector’s trailer park.
It looked as depressing as it had the last time we had stopped by. Maybe more depressing, since most other neighborhoods would be showing some activity as kids were headed off to school or adults to work. But the whole park was lifeless.
We parked in front of Hector’s trailer. Up the three black metal steps to the front door, which was hung so crooked either me or Ryan probably would’ve been able to pull it open with our bare hands.
We unlocked it and walked into the living room. Having seen his car, I wasn’t surprised that it was neat but rundown. To the right was the small kitchen, to the left a bedroom and a bath. That was it. The whole place was covered in dark paneling made to look like mahogany. With only a few sets of small windows, and no lights on, the place was dark and depressing.
I flicked the only light switch inside the front door, which lit up a couple of cheap lamps flanking the futon in the living room. The living room had a glass and wood coffee table in front of the futon, and an old CRT television on a pressed-wood stand. A battered upholstered chair, with a floor light next to it, sat near the TV. The wall-to-wall carpet was shag, maroon with plenty of stains. Off in the corner, the carpet was pulled back. I walked over to look
at it. It was damp, with a trail of rust-colored stains snaking up the wall and onto the ceiling tile.
“What’ve you got?” I said to Ryan, who was poking around in the kitchen.
“Nothing interesting. Generic kitchen stuff.”
I walked into the kitchen. Ryan opened the portable microwave on the Formica counter. It was empty. He rummaged through the drawers and the cabinets. “He’s not much of a cook, but I don’t see anything illegal.”
“Let’s try the bedroom.”
It was maybe eight by ten, with a single bed with a nightstand and a reading light, a wooden chair, and a hand-painted dresser with a mirror over it. There was a shiny metal clothes rack, with a half-dozen pairs of pants, three or four dress shirts, and a sport jacket. Under the clothes rack sat two pairs of leather shoes, down at the heels, and a pair of sneakers.
Ryan went over to the dresser to check it out.
I walked over to the bed, which was made. Not with hospital corners, but it had real sheets and two blankets, pulled up, touching the single pillow. I lifted the thin mattress to see if he kept a stash underneath. Nope. Then the nightstand, with its single drawer.
“Here we are,” I said, holding up the baggie with maybe a couple ounces of weed. I put it in a large paper evidence bag I’d brought with me. “Let’s see what else.” I pulled out another baggie with about twenty pills. “Do you recognize these?”
Ryan came over and looked carefully. “No. They look handmade. No markings on them.”
I held open the evidence bag, and Ryan dropped the baggie in. “Let me check the bathroom,” he said.
I went over to the dresser and checked it, looking for false bottoms on the drawers or a pistol wrapped up in a pair of jeans. Just like Ryan, I didn’t find anything.
“Bathroom’s clean,” he said.
I walked the five steps, stuck my head in. A section of the floor tile under the sink was pulled up, exposing the plywood sub-floor, which was stained by a leak. The toilet-paper holder was missing, the TP roll sitting on top of the toilet tank. I pulled back the shower curtain. The tub was full of rust stains, but clean. All in all, Hector was Poor but Neat.
“I’m gonna ask Robin to come out,” I said, “but I don’t see anything. You?”
No,” Ryan said. “The fact that he left the dope out suggests that he wasn’t expecting us, so if he had a gun, I doubt he’d hidden it anywhere in here.”
“Probably not,” I said. “If he’s keeping a gun, it’s more likely stashed wherever the Latins keep theirs.”
Chapter 30
“Do we know if anyone from the Philippines is coming?”
“No,” I said. “The only one there is Grace, the aunt, and she couldn’t afford it. She wanted Maricel’s remains sent back to her.”
Ryan and I were driving over to the campus for the memorial service, which was going to be in the Special Events Center. The auditorium held three hundred. I had no idea how many people would be there.
A kid at the entrance to the parking lot stopped us to tell us there was restricted parking because of the service.
I showed him my shield and he let us through.
Flurries were coming down as we got out of the cruiser and headed into the building. There was an empty ticket window off to the left, with posters of upcoming events. Some Chinese acrobats, a piano player, and a lecturer talking about “the idea of nature,” whatever the hell that was. Your car dies at midnight out on State Road 61 in February, you know nature’s not an idea.
The floor of the lobby, covered in a bright-colored red, yellow, and blue carpet, sloped upward toward three sets of heavy-looking metal double doors opening up the back of the auditorium. On an easel propped near the entrance was a large portrait photo of Maricel, bordered in black.
We walked into the auditorium. I was surprised to see only about forty people, scattered in the first three or four rows, in the seats between the two aisles. A small wooden podium stood on a dais on the stage. Four people sat on folding chairs off to the side of the dais. As I got closer to the stage, I recognized them: the CMSU president, a guy named Billingham; the provost, Al Gerson; the dean of students, Mary Dawson; and the international programs woman, Christine Hardtke. All of them were wearing black. Next to the podium was another, larger version of the same photo of Maricel Salizar.
As we got halfway down the center aisle, I said to Ryan, “You know, I think it’d be better if we could get backstage so we could watch the people in the audience. You mind going back out and seeing if we can do that?”
Ryan nodded and headed back uphill toward the lobby. I took a seat just off the aisle. A minute later, Ryan returned. “Follow me.”
Ryan led me back out to the lobby and around to a side hallway that led downhill toward the stage entrance. “I got a guy to open it up for us,” he said as we walked through a couple of metal doors to the dressing rooms and the area behind the stage.
We followed a sign on the wall to a hallway that led toward the stage and set ourselves up on a couple of folding chairs behind the curtain where we could see out.
Andrea Gerson was in the first row. She was dressed in a black dress with a single row of pearls. I was surprised that Mark wasn’t there. Farther down the row was Hector Cruz, sitting next to his attorney, Raul Samosa. In the second row I saw Amber Cunningham.
Jared Higley wasn’t there, which I considered a victory for Amber.
The university president got up and walked slowly to the podium. He was about sixty, gray hair, a little chunky but distinguished. The kind of guy you’d trust to orchestrate this kind of event. He started by asking us to bow our heads for a moment of silent meditation in honor of the memory of Maricel Salizar. I could hear a few people crying in the auditorium. Then he spoke for about a minute, saying how it was a terrible thing when a young student died. How it gives us an opportunity to consider that life is fragile, that we need to remember that the many people we interact with every day, as we rush from one thing to another, are God’s children, and that we need to treat them with respect, consideration, and love.
He was real smooth. I could tell he’d done this sort of thing before, that he knew what to wear, what to say, how to act. It was also clear that he didn’t know Maricel Salizar from Eve.
Al Gerson came up next. He looked like he had aged some years over the weekend. His shoulders were stooped, his tall frame bent over in sadness. He stood behind the podium that read Central Montana State University, briefly looked at the audience, and pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket.
“As some of you may know, Maricel Salizar was an exchange student from Manila, in the Philippines, and she lived with me, my wife, Andrea, and our son, Mark, here in Rawlings. Our family has had the wonderful opportunity, over the years, to host a number of international students …” Suddenly, he stopped talking. His head bowed, and his hands came up to grip the sides of the podium. He reached down and picked up the paper he was reading from, folded it, and placed it back in his jacket pocket. Silence hung in the room. The people in the audience began to look at each other and started whispering.
Finally, he lifted his head and looked at the audience. “Some of you may know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like many Mormon young men, I served a mission. In Manila, in the Philippines. There I met and fell in love with a young woman named Esperanza Salizar. We had a daughter, whom Esperanza named Maricel.” There was a gasp from the audience. I looked at Andrea, who closed her eyes. She was a little too far away for me to be sure, but I think she was shaking.
“At that time, I did not acknowledge Maricel. I turned my back on her and her mother. I did not inform my Church, and I did not inform my fiancée, Andrea, who is now my wife of twenty-two years. I betrayed everyone in my life. I betrayed my Church. And I betrayed Heavenly Father. Because of my actions—and my failure to take responsibility for them—I contributed significantly to the sorrow, the poverty, and the degradation that Maricel’s mothe
r endured for the rest of her brief life. And I consigned Maricel to a life without a mother and a father. Maricel was on the verge of becoming a wonderful young woman—despite my failures—but her formative years were lonely, and she battled insecurity and a lack of self-confidence. That is my shame, a shame I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
“What I hope you can learn from my words this morning, however, is not that I am a sinner, although that is certainly true. What I hope you hear is that, although I betrayed everyone in my life, every ideal to which I aspired, and every promise I had made, the one I hurt most … was myself. I lacked the courage to ask Heavenly Father and the people I loved to forgive me, to give me a chance to become the person they thought I was, the person who the Lord knows I can be.
“I never took the opportunity to ask Maricel for her forgiveness, for the sins I committed against her and her mother. And I did not ask my dear wife, Andrea, and my beloved son, Mark, and my beautiful daughter, Judy—not until yesterday afternoon—to forgive me.
“Now I cannot ask Maricel or Esperanza for their forgiveness. They are in the next life, with Christ, in a world far better than this one. They are spirit now. I will continue to pray that the Almighty ease the pain and the suffering that my actions have caused them.
“I will continue to ask my family to help me become a better person. And I will continue to pray to the Almighty that, through His infinite grace, they will someday forgive me.
“I ask you today not to make the mistakes I have made. I ask that you not turn away from the people you love, from the God you love, because of fear and cowardice. No matter what you have done, no matter how far you have fallen, they will love you, and God will love you, if you have the strength to open yourself to their love. I believe that with all my heart. And I ask that you pray, not for me, but for my daughter, Maricel Salizar, who is now alive in Christ.”
After the service ended, a large crowd of students formed around Al Gerson. Flashbulbs went off, and reporters from the university newspaper and the Rawlings paper clustered close around the provost.
