Denny's Law

by Elizabeth Gunn

  ‘She likes knowing stuff other kids her age don’t know,’ Will said.

  ‘That’s true,’ Aggie said. ‘I enjoy teaching Denny too. I guess because she’s a fast learner. I rarely have to say anything twice.’

  ‘And when I teach her something new, she says, “Oh, cool,”’ Will said. ‘You know how seldom cops get to hear that?’

  So the impromptu meeting ended on a pleasant note, but in bed later Will said quietly, ‘Send me an email at work tomorrow – everything you can find about this swim teacher. I’ll do some digging and see what I can learn before Friday.’

  Digging was his passion now. After he went to work for the county attorney, Will had told Sarah, ‘It’s wonderful how much information you can get on the punishment end after the crime’s been committed and it’s too late to prevent it.’

  ‘Oh, whoa,’ she’d said that day. ‘Am I hearing the new, more cynical Will Dietz?’

  ‘Better believe it. The legal end of law enforcement is colder than a witch’s tit. Better come over here and warm me up.’

  Tonight, when he declared himself ready to start investigating the swim coach, she turned toward him in the dark and said, ‘Oh, you mean – oh.’ She hadn’t given any thought to twisted coaches. ‘I wasn’t thinking … I mostly just thought she looked tired, Will.’

  ‘Which I agree she does. But Denny’s usually a pretty cheerful kid and now that you mention it I think she’s been looking worried about something. So let’s find out what it is and get it fixed.’

  Will Dietz, my own personal Mr Fixit, who knows as well as I do that we can’t fix everything. She listened to his breathing in the warm bed, thinking as she drifted toward sleep, but hang on, Denny, we’ll make this better if we can.

  ‘Let’s not spend any more time on these records,’ Delaney said Thursday morning, ’till we get the woman from ICE here to help. In the meantime, I’d like to get back to where we were before we got buried in all this paper.’

  ‘Where was that?’ said Leo. He had been in cold cases when they found the boxes and had been hoping to be so helpful with them that Delaney would not send him back.

  ‘Looking at all the rest of the forensic evidence. Let’s not forget that our basic task is to find out who killed Calvin Springer.’

  ‘I never forgot that,’ Ollie said. ‘But I thought we decided he must have been murdered over this funny business with the money.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable but we haven’t proved it yet. I think you should talk to some of the people in that parade that was passing while the murder took place.’

  ‘How would we ever find them now?’ Sarah said. ‘I could talk to those day-care women again but they never said they knew anybody in the parade, did they, Jason?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Ah, but I talked to Tucson Parks and Recreation,’ Delaney said, ‘and got them to send me the names of people who signed up for each float. This list,’ he handed it to Sarah, ‘has even got the order of the march. Start here’ – he’d marked an entry with a red Sharpie – ‘with the mariachi players, see? Here’s the headman of the band, address and three phone numbers. Find him and get him to give you the same info on his players. Ask every one of them what they saw that day. Bring me back everything they say, even if it isn’t much.’

  ‘Even if it’s nothing?’

  ‘Come on. A murder, yelling, blood on a broken window – somebody must have seen something. If you don’t get anything from the mariachi players you’ll have to go on to the llama day-trippers behind them and the … what was it? Cowboys, I think. Yes, here it is, trail riders on paint horses – they were in front of the mariachis.’

  The detectives held a strategy huddle before they went out. ‘Let’s each take our own car,’ Sarah said. ‘That way we can spread out and find them fast when we get the names.’ Looking for the leader of the band, they turned on University Avenue and drove in caravan behind Old Main. As usual, they found no place to park, so they turned on their light strips and stopped at the curb outside the CESL building.

  ‘I feel like putting a sack over my head,’ Ollie said, getting out of his car. ‘We just changed campus traffic from tight to gridlocked.’

  ‘We won’t be here long,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Pepe Montoya said, looking up from the desk in his tiny, crowded office, ‘what have I done?’ Six detectives stood in his doorway, holding up badges.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Leo Tobin said, oozing kindly-old-flatfoot reassurance, ‘we just need to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about Islamic terrorists.’

  ‘We don’t either,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re here to talk about the Fourth of July parade in Menlo Park. You were in it, weren’t you? You and your mariachi band?’

  ‘It’s not my band,’ he said. ‘I belong to a group and we just … play together sometimes. I did sign the form that got us a spot in the Fourth of July parade, but— Is that a crime now, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Sarah said. ‘We’re hoping you can answer a few questions about what happened on Alameda Avenue on Sunday.’

  ‘On the day of the parade? I’d probably be the last to know. When you’re in a parade that’s all you see – your own little part.’ He glanced around his tiny, crowded space where piles of paper occupied the spare chair seat and every other surface. ‘Well, we can’t sit in here; let’s go in the lounge.’

  Fortyish, thin, balding, a tense and overworked teacher of English as a second language to freshmen students, he was not the dashing trumpeter with the sexy suit today. He had just conducted a round of pop-up quizzes, he explained as he led them out to the lounge, and this morning his teaching assistant had called in sick.

  ‘So all those piles of paper are going to sit there giving me guilt till I correct them myself. By the time I get that done it’ll be time for another test.’

  ‘Whatever happened to that paperless society the softwear designers used to promise us?’ Leo said.

  ‘Forget about it. Testing is where the rubber hits the road in my end of the teaching profession,’ Montoya said. ‘Most of my students are on scholarships and they need to show constant progress to keep the cash flowing.’

  Montoya brightened when the conversation turned to his music. ‘I love to play,’ he said. ‘Such crazy music – we all get high and silly and laugh all the time. But leading a mariachi band is like herding cats. I really need to get rid of that part of the job. We’re all moonlighters, you know. We all have day jobs.’

  One or two bands play regularly in bars in Tucson, he explained, ‘But otherwise we mostly get a quinceanera or a wedding here and there, and then pop-up chances to show-off, like this parade. So the membership of the bands is quite fluid; whoever can get time off when the gig comes along.

  ‘Let’s see, there were five of us marching on the Fourth, as I remember. I played the trumpet, Luis was on guitarron, Miguel on vihuela, and two violins – that’d be Felix and Fred.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a singer? Martina said—’

  ‘We all sing. Usually Miguel does the solos – he has the best voice. Are you going to try to find all these people? Hold on, I’ll go get my address book.’

  Ray Menendez typed addresses and phone numbers into Sarah’s tablet while she asked the professor what he could tell her about the murder that took place during the march.

  ‘Murder? My God, I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Are you saying you never heard that big fight?’

  ‘I certainly did not. I was in the middle of five musicians pouring their hearts out in Mexican folk music. All singing, sometimes. A dozen half-drunk faux cowboys were up ahead of me, yelling insults at each other while they twirled their lariats. And somewhere to the back of us, I remember, was another band with tubas. Parades are a free-for-all to see who can make the most noise.’

  ‘And I suppose the clown created noise too? Kids yelling?’

  ‘What clown?’<
br />
  ‘The one with the limp marching with your band.’

  ‘We don’t have a clown. Mariachis never have clowns. Red noses? They would clash with our outfits.’

  ‘Really? He wasn’t with you? But you must have noticed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sure didn’t.’ He threw his hands up, palms outward. ‘We were busy, OK?’

  ‘Well … I guess he must have been with the group behind you. Was that llamas?’

  ‘There was a hiking guide with llamas, yes – the animals carry the luggage for the hikers, they told me. Awful animals, angry, spitting … I don’t know why people think they’re so cute. I never saw a clown. We formed up in the parking lot of the El Rio health center and marched west on Congress. Our group was near the front so I saw most of the floats, but then people mill around so much. Are we about done? I have a class in a few minutes.’

  ‘Just about. You’ve given me home addresses and phone numbers, but you say you all have day jobs. So can you tell us where I’d be likely to find these people now?’

  ‘Oh, God … well, let’s see …’ So they started over. ‘Felix is a house painter; you’d have to call his store to find out where he’s working.’ He cudgeled his brain until the store name popped out. They went on down the list: Luis was a kindergarten teacher, Miguel a pastor at a tiny Christian church in a strip mall and Fred a retired fireman who sometimes volunteered at homeless shelters for men. When she had all he could tell her in her tablet, Sarah thanked Montoya and they hurried out to their cars.

  The row of flashing lights had already drawn several spectators. The detectives waved away their questions and divided the list. Sarah took the kindergarten teacher, Luis Calvo. She found him right away, because Pepe Montoya had guessed correctly that his kindergarten was the one on Magee Road. Luis was opening cardboard boxes in a chaotic classroom filled with many more cardboard boxes.

  ‘The kids aren’t here yet,’ he said, ‘but school starts in two weeks so we’re getting the rooms ready and holding training courses. We have a lot of new teachers and many changes in policy, so we have to re-train.’ He rolled his eyes up. ‘Some year we’re going to stop training and actually teach. Just kidding – I love my job, and all-day kindergarten, whatever else you can say about it, is a godsend for working mothers.’

  He was even more modest about his career as a mariachi. ‘I just do it because my wife gets turned on when she sees me in those pants. Actually, we kind of have a nerve even claiming to be a band. It’s really whoever shows up out of a group of ten or so players. You know mariachi is mostly an oral tradition? Hardly anything written down – it’s all passed along from one group to the next. That’s why we often look so joyous; we’re so glad when we all hit the right chord at the same time.’ He laughed out loud after that zinger, his white teeth gleaming beneath his extravagant mustache.

  ‘It’s wonderful music,’ Sarah said. ‘I was hoping you could tell me what you saw in that house and yard where the murder took place. It seems to have happened just as you marched past it.’

  ‘It did? Really? My God. I read about it in the paper the next day but I didn’t know. Jeez, it must have been a nice quiet murder – I never heard a thing. And I don’t believe I looked at any of the houses – there were people all around us and these days you kind of keep an eye on them, you know. Any crowd is likely to draw a crazy with a gun.’ He stared at Sarah, appalled. ‘Where did that murder take place, exactly?’

  ‘On Alameda, between Grande and Melwood.’

  ‘Just before we made the turn. We went south on Melwood and marched back to Congress, then east and back into the parking lot in front of the El Rio health center where the parade started and ended. We were all dying of thirst by then; we went across the street to the Mercado San Agostin and got huge icy drinks. Drank them right down and hopped on the streetcar to go back to our cars on campus. We’d no idea we had just strutted right past a murder – oy vey. That’s not Spanish, by the way – my wife is Jewish and I pick up the Yiddish from her. They have all the best – what?’

  ‘I was just going to remark that except for names your group does not seem very Hispanic; at least, the ones I’ve met. Your accents – you could be from anywhere.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re all second or third generation – the lucky ones who got the degrees and didn’t have to do the stoop labor. And then there’s Fred – his last name is Jorgenson. His dad worked in Mexico for a couple of years while Fred was in high school and he picked up his music then.’ A big shrug. ‘He just likes to play. We’re all like that really – it’s a labor of love. The money is,’ he rocked his hand, ‘not so much.’

  Her phone rang. Ray Menendez said, ‘Hey, Sarah, how you doing at that kindergarten?’

  ‘Just finishing up.’

  ‘OK, we found the pastor and the house painter. When Hector and Jason went after the retired fireman they got a long list of homeless shelters and so far they’ve tried two with no luck. We thought we’d triple-team it, see if we could find them all. You want to join up?’

  ‘Sure. Give me an address and I’ll start.’

  She was pulling in to an ancient motel on Oracle when Ray called again and said, ‘Leo finally got Fred’s wife on the phone; she says Fred took a day off and went golfing. And she’s sure he doesn’t know anything about that murder because now that he’s retired, she says, Fred tells her everything. It’s the first thing he does when he comes in the house; as soon as he’s gone to the bathroom he finds her and tells her everything he’s done since she saw him last. Are you glad to know all that about Fred Jorgenson?’

  ‘Enchanted,’ Sarah said. ‘Where shall we go for coffee?’

  ‘We’re mostly in the south end. How about the Dunkin Donuts on Broadway?’

  ‘Deal.’

  They persuaded the counterman to make a fresh pot and each drank two cups and ate big frosted apple Danishes before they called Delaney. ‘Because you know what he’ll do when we bring in this big nada,’ Ollie said.

  ‘Of course we know that,’ Leo said. ‘He’ll send us out in search of llama keepers and that noisy pack of dentists that ride the paint ponies.’

  ‘And he can keep on sending us out till hell freezes over and we’ll never come back with anything,’ Jason said, ‘because like we already reminded him ten times, everybody was watching the parade, and then the storm. Why does he find that so hard to accept? He was there himself; he knows it’s true.’

  ‘He’s the head of the section,’ Sarah said. ‘He wants to be sure we can show we did our due diligence.’

  ‘Well, I think we’ve duly drunk enough of this diligent coffee so we can go in now,’ Ray said. ‘By the time we’ve detailed this waste of a morning it’ll be time for lunch.’

  But Delaney wasn’t buying delay. He twitched through three versions of ‘my guy didn’t see anything.’ Then he threw up his hands and said, ‘Why are you dragging this out? None of the mariachis noticed anything in that yard, is that it?’

  All the detectives’ heads bobbed sadly.

  ‘Time for the next pivot, then. Banjo called; he wants to tell us what he’s learned about the Smith and Wesson. So why don’t you all take an early lunch and get back here by twelve-thirty. Banjo’s got a full afternoon but he’ll squeeze us in, he said, if we can make it early.’

  Still full of sugared pastry and coffee, the crew hurried out, trying to think of a place to buy thin soup or a no-calorie salad. Unable to think of anything she could eat right now without gagging, Sarah took a paperback to the main library, enjoyed a cool read for half an hour and drank a bottle of water on the way back to her desk.

  SIX

  ‘Smith and Wesson called this gun the K-22 Masterpiece because they honestly felt they had made the best revolver in existence,’ Banjo said, talking fast, glancing at his watch. ‘And marksmen ever since have endorsed that opinion. There’s a history on their website of its iterations over the years since they introduced it in 1939, with comments from shooters so detaile
d and respectful that sometimes you think, “In a minute, I’ll hear organ music.”

  ‘Here’s an example. “In 1955, the four-screw side plate was eliminated and replaced by one using only three screws, with the earlier top screw replaced by a tongue on the plate that fit into the frame.”’ Banjo pushed his wire-rims onto his forehead and pursed his whole face into a pained squint. ‘The gospel according to Saint Wesson. I sent you several pages of this stuff, Sarah – you should read it to get a feel for why your otherwise plain-living victim hung onto this weapon.

  ‘So when Smith and Wesson tell me that our gun was shipped in 1990 to a gun dealer in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, I believe them. They have the serial number, they know its various features, they don’t mess around. Grosse Pointe is a classy suburb of Detroit, the gun shop they sold it to is still in business and the owner keeps records almost as extensive as S and W. My man at the store wouldn’t give me a phone number till he checked with the buyer. But the buyer, on the other hand, was so eager to talk about this gun that he called me.

  ‘Norman Wasserman, that’s his name. He’s still a hobby shooter but he doesn’t have a Masterpiece any more – the one you found was stolen from him on New Year’s Day, 1995, while he and his family were skiing in Vermont. The thieves took many other items of value but what he remembers with the most regret was the loss of his best guns out of locked cases in his study. He calls it his study but the way he describes it I think it’s more like the coolest hobby room ever. Kind of a man cave with two toy train sets and a big pool table. He says he’s got a steel door and frame on it now and a deadbolt lock; nobody’s ever getting in there again till he lets them in.’

  All the men in the room, Sarah could see, were leaning toward Banjo with shining eyes. Any minute now they’re all going to drool, she thought.

  ‘Naturally, what Norman wants is his gun back. I told him to be patient. “All investigations end eventually, Norman,” I said.’