One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1)

by Tony Faggioli

  Esperanza had gone and left behind only one thing, it seemed: la desesperación. It was his now, and whenever it came over him, Napoleon had trained himself to think of one thing: his nephew, Efren.

  In Napoleon’s apartment there was a Batman night-light that Efren had given him “cause you’re a good guy, Tio, like Bruce Wayne.” Efren was all of ten and one of the few things in this world that Napoleon could say he truly loved.

  His older sister, Ana, became a hood rat after their mother was killed. Ana had become pregnant four years later, by some shit vato who had gotten “jumped” into Cuarto Flats, a local gang, and a year later, gotten himself jumped right into a coffin after taking two to the head behind a trash dumpster. Life was cheap.

  Life was desperate.

  Ana found a new thug soon after—this one a member of a different gang, White Fence—who knocked her up with two more kids, the youngest being little Efren. Welfare provided her a base income. Ana sold stolen jeans and blouses from Macy’s and Nordstrom’s to cover the rest. Not despite the fact that Napoleon was a cop, but in spite of it.

  When Napoleon graduated from the police academy, she showed up drunk to tell him what a sellout he was. This from a woman who had taken two lovers from two separate gangs, which was practically unheard of. They hadn’t spoken much since, save for Christmas and the kids’ birthdays. Whenever he did make a brief appearance, he ruined the whole party, filled as they were with gangsters, all of whom knew that he wasn’t just a cop but a real cop, one who would jack them up in an instant if given the chance. Ana had kept Napoleon away from her first two kids, but tolerated him now for Efren’s sake, because his father was in jail and he adored his uncle. The feeling was mutual.

  It was sad there was no love between Napoleon and his sister, but Efren? He would be fine. Napoleon wondered what Ana would think when the day came that Napoleon checked out, killed no doubt by one of the very thugs she partied with, and she found out that it was Efren’s name that was on Napoleon’s life insurance and pension funds.

  He took Efren out every other weekend, to the movies, to the park, to the station. Wherever. Each time it was the same message: get an education, be the smart one, stay away from the gangs. If Napoleon had a say, Efren would be different. Efren would never be desperate.

  He and Parker had transitioned from the 5 to the 2 Freeway a while back. The Fasano’s lived in La Canada, a nice suburb nestled in the upper foothills of the San Gabriel Valley, on a street called Haven Way, off Angeles Crest Highway. They would be there very soon, but not soon enough.

  He had to change the channels in his mind. That’s what his therapist used to tell him. When the thoughts got too heavy, you just had to reach into the clicker of your consciousness and change the damned channel.

  So he did.

  The hole in that hotel window was not man-made.

  The thought astonished him. A case was all hard facts, data and a touch of intuition, but above all else, it was always centered in some form of reason. That a pretty blond banged a married man and ended up dead was of little surprise. Love triangles almost always ended badly because one of the corners inevitably couldn’t bear the weight. Someone sometimes kills someone else to be with the one who’s left, usually to find that the one who’s left doesn’t want to be with them to begin with.

  In his twenty-three years on the force, Napoleon could count on two hands the number of love triangle cases he had dealt with where one of the three parties ended up dead, one way or another, with families, careers and futures left in ruin, all for a few steamy nights and whispered lies in the dark. He didn’t get it. Never would.

  Napoleon focused, reimagining the crime scene at the hotel. That hole in the window was all wrong. Get her drunk? Okay. Throw her out of the window? Maybe. But there was no balcony, no sliding glass door. The window was thick and the hole simply too high up to make any sense. She says, “I love you and I want you to leave her.” He says, “I can’t.” She says, “Then I’ll call your wife and tell her.” He throws her out a window? No. Okay. She says, “I will report you to HR for sexually harassing me.” He throws her out a window? No. Unless Mr. Fasano was a complete psycho, he doesn’t risk everything over a girl who just paid for the room on her own credit card. It showed mutual consent. There was a used condom in the room too, and assuming the autopsy came back with no semen in the body or obvious signs of forced entry, then that showed the event was pre-planned by one or both parties as well.

  But that credit card move was smart, wasn’t it, Mr. Fasano? Having her pay for the room was a smart move. What did you say, I wonder? “I left my wallet in the car?” You were covering your tracks before you made them, weren’t you? I haven’t met your wife yet, Mr. Fasano, but I bet she handles the finances in your house. You didn’t want that on the credit card statement, did you? “Honey, what’s this $275 charge to the Hilton for last month?”

  He coughed, this time onto the back of his hand.

  The 2 gave way to the 210 eastbound, where it would be a short jump to the Angeles Crest Highway exit.

  Parker finally spoke. “Hope you’re covering that damn cough.”

  “Screw you,” Napoleon replied while laying his head against the cool glass of the passenger window to belay his fever, his thoughts still troubled by that hotel window and another image, stubbornly clinging to the edges of his mind.

  Of Esperanza, walking down the sidewalk to her lover’s car, her gait hurried and determined.

  He’d been desperate.

  Desperate to stop her. To tell her that he still loved her, no matter what.

  Instead he’d let her go.

  Because she’d been desperate too.

  CHAPTER 7

  They arrived at the Fasano home at just after one in the morning. Napoleon was not surprised to see the lights were out. Perhaps Mrs. Fasano had waited for her husband to get home and then given up. Or maybe things in their marriage were such that Mr. Fasano stayed out late quite frequently. Either way, it was about to get interesting.

  As they parked in the driveway, a light came on and there was movement in the kitchen window. The backlit outline of a female with long hair appeared. Over twenty years of being a cop and you learned how to fill in the outline. Odds were that Mrs. Fasano was going to be attractive.

  She answered their knock only after making them hold their badges up to the small semi-circle window at the top of the front door, and she did not disappoint. She had dark hair, big eyes and a full chest. That was as far as Napoleon would let his eyes go, and even then only briefly. But the rookie didn’t seem to know any better; he was allowing himself a full-body scan, as if he worked at the airport or something. Napoleon cringed. They needed Mrs. Fasano to be receptive to their visit, and the last thing any woman wanted on top of two strange men on her doorstep in the middle of the night was to have one of them leering at her.

  As if reading his mind, Mrs. Fasano folded her arms across her chest instantly, and though he could hope that it was only to fend off the cool night air, Napoleon knew better. Parker had already put her on the defensive before their first word had even been uttered. Great.

  “Mrs. Fasano?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Villa with the Los Angeles Police Department, and this is my partner, Detective Parker.”

  The same look Napoleon had seen on hundreds of faces came over Mrs. Fasano now, a blend of concern, fear and disbelief. It was the Holy Trinity of denial. “Uh… yes? How can I help you?”

  “Do you mind if we come in?”

  “First, I want to know what this is about.”

  Her voice was firm and self-confident. She was evidently not going to allow an inch of cooperation until she established some sense of control over the situation. Not the usual response to the police. Napoleon was impressed and immediately aware of his cold again. This was not going to be easy. He had hoped, deep down, that it would be. Anything to get home to bed a little sooner would’ve been nice.

&nbs
p; “It’s about your husband,” Parker piped in, breaking protocol by not following Napoleon’s lead. He was going to have to teach the rookie from the ground up, it seemed.

  “Kyle?” she said, a little more concern in her voice. “He’s not here. What’s wrong?”

  Napoleon held his hand up slightly towards Parker, a silent signal to put him back in the passenger seat, before continuing, “Well, Mrs. Fasano… there’s been an incident.”

  She blinked. Twice. “My God, what happened?”

  “Please. May we come in?”

  The shock was now setting in a bit, and they hadn’t even begun. Stepping aside, she motioned for them to come in.

  It was cruel, but Napoleon let the dozens of horrible thoughts she might have going on inside her head do their work. Early onset panic was good for getting information. You had to stop it before it got too far though, or most people either got hysterical or started babbling like idiots.

  “We can sit in the dining room,” she said, almost in a whisper. “My children are asleep, so can we please keep this quiet?”

  “Sure thing,” Napoleon replied.

  Parker nodded and, to Napoleon astonishment, walked over to the table and sat down first. Idiot strikes again. All the “ladies first” stuff aside, Mrs. Fasano was supposed to be put at ease. It was the little things that mattered, and kicking back at her dining room table before she even pulled out her own chair was just plain stupid.

  She sat down slowly, her eyes a little wide. Her face said it clearly; she already thought her husband was dead.

  Napoleon immediately moved to counter that notion. “Have you heard from your husband tonight, Ma’am?”

  She sighed heavily. “No. Why?”

  “We’re trying to determine his whereabouts.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to discuss something with him.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means we think he may have information important to our investigation. Have you heard from him tonight?”

  She blinked some more. “No. I mean… yes. There was a message when I got home from work a little while ago.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That he was going to help a drunk friend get home,” she answered, looking from Napoleon to Parker and back again. “Why? What happened?”

  Again, Parker chimed in. “Are you and your husband separated?”

  Napoleon looked at the floor in frustration. All rookies were green, but this one? He was winter green. No. Worse. Green like deep-water moss. Now questioning her would be a mess.

  Mrs. Fasano’s back stiffened. “What? No! What kind of question is that?”

  Napoleon checked Parker with a glance that said “shut the hell up,” which Parker evidently understood because he immediately looked down at the table.

  The rookie’s eagerness hopefully squashed, Napoleon moved to damage control. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fasano, it’s been a long—”

  “Listen, what the hell is going on?” She had one hand on the table now, as if to assert authority in her own home, but Napoleon noticed that her other hand was shaking.

  “There’s been a fatality, and we think your husband may have some information as to what occurred.” The word fatality was intentionally used. The word “death” might’ve put her even more on the defensive.

  “A fatality? Who? Where?”

  Napoleon had been holding back a wicked cough since they’d come in the door. He couldn’t suppress it any longer, letting loose into the sleeve of his jacket and swallowing the phlegm. He would’ve killed for a glass of water, but now was obviously not the time to ask.

  Mrs. Fasano removed her hand from the table and crossed her arms again, a hard look in her eye. There was no use; her walls were up. He had to remove a few bricks.

  “A young lady. At the Hilton downtown.”

  Silence. Her eyes locked with Napoleon’s and they were like mirrors to her thoughts. Reflected in them one moment was indignation at what was being implied, and reflected the next was a very real fear that what was being implied might actually be true.

  “Who?”

  “Does the name Caitlyn Hall mean anything to you?”

  She pressed her lips together in a thin line. Before she even spoke, Napoleon could tell she knew who Caitlyn Hall was.

  “She works at my husband’s office. She’s new.” It was a short reply, but Mrs. Fasano’s face kept speaking; her eyes pinched slightly shut in a swift squint, and she was shaking her head ever so slightly. Nothing seemed to ring all the bells of human emotion more than betrayal.

  “Well, sadly, she’s dead.”

  “Oh my God.” Mrs. Fasano’s jaw dropping a bit before she recovered and asked, “That’s horrible. But what do you think my husband might know about this?”

  Napoleon had to hand it to her. She moved very swiftly back to the defensive. Maybe she was a good wife, or maybe she was just protecting her turf; but she seemed smart, which meant she most likely knew what was coming next.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mrs. Fasano, but your husband and Ms. Hall checked into the Hilton together.”

  She looked to the ceiling, locking her gaze there for a few seconds, and then the tears came, perching in the corners of her eyes before she wiped them with the back of her hand so quickly and defiantly that you would’ve never known they were there. Immediately Napoleon was able to surmise a little more about Kyle Fasano: he was most likely not a weak man, because he had married a strong woman.

  Napoleon watched the gears in Mrs. Fasano’s head turn before she replied, “So maybe she was the friend he was trying to get to a safe place.”

  In most instances, denial was a tad pitiful. Not so with Mrs. Fasano. Napoleon almost smiled. A brilliant observation, my dear Watson. A defense attorney would no doubt raise the same question. But too bad you’re the prime suspect’s wife, and most likely only half-believe what you’re saying to begin with. Still, it was a chance to chill things out a bit.

  “Perhaps, yes.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  Napoleon’s response was calculated. “She fell to her death.”

  “Fell? As in, what, off the balcony?”

  “There, uh, was no balcony.”

  “So how did she fall?”

  “That’s what we want to ask your husband about.”

  “How do you know he was there when it happened?”

  It was the wrong question to be asking, and Napoleon was glad.

  “We have reason to believe he was the last one to see her alive.”

  She paused for a moment, and then, impressing Napoleon even more, she smoothly redirected her attention to the weak link at the table, asking Parker this time, “What makes you think that?”

  “We have footage,” Parker replied, glancing nervously at Napoleon.

  “What type of footage?”

  “Surveillance footage from the hotel,” Napoleon cut back in, still relieved she was asking the wrong questions. “But we’d rather not get into all that right now.”

  “Well, with all due respect, maybe I do.”

  Napoleon exhaled slowly. Mrs. Fasano was taking control of the conversation, which he would’ve never let happen if he hadn’t been so damned sick, and if he hadn’t had the rookie’s fumbling to cover for.

  “Wait.” She paused and held up her hand. The light from the chandelier over the dining room table was bright and cast shadows across her face. She had a few wrinkles here or there. Napoleon had her pegged in her mid-thirties, or a little older.

  “You said she fell but…” Mrs. Fasano hesitated, looking confused for a moment before she composed herself and at last asked the right question. “But how is that, if there was no balcony? Did she fall out of the window?”

  Shit.

  “Ma’am, we really can’t get into any details of the investigation—”

  Mrs. Fasano pressed. “Did she kill herself?”

  If this lady gets an attorney, she�
�s going to be dangerous, Napoleon thought.

  “We really need to speak to Mr. Fasano.”

  “I told you, he only left the one message.”

  “Can we listen to it?”

  “No.”

  It was one word, and it ushered an awkward silence into the room. This was going nowhere. Napoleon didn’t want to do it, but it was time for another low blow.

  “Were you aware that your husband and Ms. Hall were having an affair?” Napoleon asked, faking his embarrassment at the question.

  Mrs. Fasano’s stare bore into Napoleon, and her self-confidence seemed to come back with a full head of steam as she replied, “I think you should leave now.”

  Beyond belief, Parker opened his mouth again. “We have footage of that as well, Mrs. Fasano.”

  Indignantly, she turned her head and glared at Parker. “I said I want you to leave.”

  Napoleon sneezed and then coughed again. This had all gone to hell, and quickly. He’d never handled an interview so badly before. His cold and fever were killing him, the numb-nuts rookie wouldn’t shut the hell up, and the captain would have their asses for this.

  He decided it was time to go and was rising from his chair to leave when the phone rang. Mrs. Fasano had a stunned look on her face.

  It rang a second time, and now Mrs. Fasano was obviously torn.

  She knew as well as they did that it could be her husband calling, and at the worst possible time as far as privacy was concerned. Napoleon guessed she had only three or four rings to pick up the call, so she didn’t have enough time to kick them out and answer the phone too.

  Sometimes you just got lucky.

  So what’s it going to be, Mrs. Fasano? Smarts say you hold your ground right now, with these two asshole cops in your home, but love? Love says you gotta answer that phone.

  The third ring did her in. She rose quickly and raced to the counter, leaned over it to the phone beyond and answered with an anxious hope coloring her voice. “Hello? Kyle?”

  Napoleon smiled, on the inside.

  Love won.

  She was a good wife.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hearing his wife’s voice, Kyle exhaled deeply. His heart went flat in his chest, as if it were being pinned down by his throat. This was it. Time to own up to the mess he’d made of things. And what a horrendous mess it was.