by Chaz McGee
‘Aldo Flores has a record in Mexico,’ Gonzales informed them. ‘He spent two years in jail there for drug running. He is, in fact, a wanted man down there. It took me one phone call to uncover that fact.’
Calvano decided to take one for Maggie. ‘Sir, with all respect, we have no way of knowing if that is true or not. I would no more believe what an official of the Mexican police told me than if . . .’ He failed at finding a metaphor and plowed onward. ‘People down there don’t have much choice. It’s either do what the drug gangs tell you or die. It’s not like up here. You can’t possibly know what it is like. He may simply have been trying to stay alive.’
‘And you do know what it’s like?’ Gonzales asked sarcastically.
The old Calvano would have taken the bait. He would have insulted the commander and been busted back down to his usual ignoble status. But he had learned a lot from Maggie and, this time, he kept his temper under control.
‘We would like permission to keep looking into the Delmonte House connection and to pursue Danny Gallagher as a suspect again,’ he told Gonzales instead. ‘I also think Aldo Flores is a dead end. I think we should follow Danny around, it’s been a few days now and he may tip his hand if he’s involved.’
‘You really think that’s worth our time?’ Maggie asked Calvano.
‘Well, I’d rather talk to Enrique Romero again,’ Calvano said. ‘But since he’s in California, that’s a little out of our range.’
‘He’s not out of my range,’ Gonzales said smugly.
‘What’s that mean?’ Maggie looked alarmed.
‘It means, leave Romero to me,’ the commander told her. ‘Go on.’
‘For now, the Delmonte House is a dead end,’ Calvano explained. ‘I don’t think it’s that poor bastard locked up downstairs, either. So if you take a look at everyone else, the only one who might have known both missing women is Danny Gallagher. He might have known her through his wife.’
‘Or Father Sojak,’ Maggie pointed out.
A silence fell over the room.
‘Follow Danny Gallagher if it makes you happy,’ Gonzales finally decided. ‘Keep an eye on the priest, too. Tread lightly there. I don’t need a diocese on my ass. And remember, I’ll take care of Enrique Romero.’
‘What’s that mean?’ Maggie asked again.
‘It means I’ll take care of Enrique Romero.’
Maggie and Calvano rose to go. They were almost out the door when Maggie turned back to the commander and said, ‘Sir, it’s pretty insane out there with the media.’
Gonzales would not meet her eyes. He knew that she knew he had been one of the people to bring the media to their town, no matter how much he tried to lay the blame off on others. But he wasn’t about to take the heat for it, nor would he pretend he could control them. ‘The genie is out of the bottle, Gunn. You’ll just have to deal with it.’
Downstairs in the lobby, waiting alone in a corner of the area where victims came to wait their turn to report a robbery or assault, Rodrigo Flores sat with his head in his hands as he contemplated the fate of his brother-in-law imprisoned a floor above him. The desk sergeant nodded toward Rodrigo when he saw Maggie and Calvano, and the two detectives joined him in the waiting room. They sat on either side of Rodrigo and, though they did not say it exactly, made it clear that their sympathies were with him.
‘My brother did not do anything,’ Rodrigo said miserably. ‘He just wanted help finding his wife.’
‘We know,’ Maggie said. ‘We talked to the butler this morning and he said that Aldo was a really great worker and that he would never have hurt his wife. But it turns out that your brother has a record.’
Rodrigo’s eyes were dark and angry. ‘You don’t know what it’s like in my village. You don’t have a choice. Either you help them or they slit your mother’s throat or, worse, they kill your children and drop them on your doorstep.’
Maggie looked shocked. ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ she promised Rodrigo. ‘We’ll get your brother out of here.’
‘But can you help us out with it?’ Calvano asked the gardener. ‘That place where you work is one weird house. Do you think anyone out there had anything to do with the disappearance of the women? I don’t mean the staff, but Mr Romero or his friends?’
Rodrigo considered the question. ‘I don’t know. They all walk around and act like they’re too important to bother with us. What would they want with a Mexican woman? But you never know. Mr Romero has a temper and he doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his way. But that one man, the one who is Mr Romero’s agent, he would do anything to keep his job and his status. And then you have the man who tells Ms Wylie what to do all the time.’
‘Her manager?’ Maggie asked.
Rodrigo nodded. ‘He is an angry man who wants power but does not really have it. He is always coming outside and telling me and Aldo what to do, even though he has no power over us. Who knows what he would do? And there is bad blood between the short man and Mr Romero and his agent. They hate the little man and tell him to go away all the time. I have heard them make fun of him when he is not around. But I would expect them to hurt one another, not those women.’ He looked up at Maggie and Calvano, disgusted. ‘They have all the money in the world and still they are unhappy people. Mr Jarvis, the old butler, he says it is the house. He says the house gives you unhappiness.’
‘Mr Jarvis needs help with the house,’ Maggie told Rodrigo. ‘You know that he is trying to take care of his wife and is hiding her condition?’
Rodrigo nodded. ‘I know. She has been very bad for more than a year now.’
‘Can you find someone to help him out?’ Maggie asked. ‘Someone to replace the maid?’
Calvano made a strange sound, something that was halfway between a grunt and a victory cry. ‘I know someone,’ he said, his voice rising in excitement. ‘Rodrigo, I am going to send a woman out to you who will help Mr Jarvis until you can find someone permanent. Will you see that she gets hired?’
Rodrigo shrugged. ‘I will try. No one wants to work out there. All my people say the house is cursed. If you send me someone, and they can speak English and take care of Ms Wylie, I am sure she will be hired. At least for a little while.’
Calvano nodded, looking satisfied. He patted the gardener on the back. ‘Tell your brother to hang in there, man. We won’t forget about him.’
Rodrigo nodded miserably and stared after them as Maggie and Calvano left the station, taking a side door to avoid the crush of reporters.
‘What was that all about?’ Maggie asked as they circled around to their car.
‘Alice Hernandez,’ Calvano said. ‘The hot Hispanic chick in vice.’
‘What about Alice Hernandez?’ Maggie asked, irritated at his comment in too many ways to count.
‘We can put her in the house undercover,’ Calvano explained. ‘They’ll see her as just another Mexican maid, and she’s fluent in both Spanish and English, so she can keep an eye on everyone there while we look into the husband and the priest.’
‘How do you know so much about Alice Hernandez?’ Maggie asked. ‘Which is not to say that this isn’t a good idea.’
Calvano smiled. ‘A gentleman never tells.’
‘I know that, but you are not a gentleman.’ Maggie studied him for a moment. ‘Wait a minute. You really like her, don’t you?’
Calvano acted like he had not heard her.
‘Seriously, Adrian?’ Maggie said. ‘You do know that Alice Hernandez could kick your ass in the dark, right? And that she really has it together? You would not be able to just go out with her and then move on, like you do with everyone else.’
Calvano looked miserable. ‘It doesn’t matter. She won’t go out with me.’
Maggie laughed. ‘Of course she won’t go out with you. Who wants to be just like the four thousand other women you’ve gone out with?’
‘It’s not that many,’ Calvano protested.
‘But it’s enough for Alice to steer
clear,’ Maggie pointed out. When she saw her partner’s expression, she softened. ‘Really, Adrian – I’ll back you in whatever you want to do. But I’m just saying, Alice Hernandez is not someone you mess around with lightly. Don’t start something with her that you are not prepared to finish.’
‘Maybe I finally want to finish something?’ Calvano said. He sounded more than a little defensive.
Maggie patted him on the back. ‘Good for you, my friend. Good for you.’
TWENTY
I had never given much thought to the families of victims I’d had to deal with when I was alive. God help me, I think I looked at them as an annoyance, secretly irritated at their panic and steeling myself for the inevitable criticisms that would come when I failed to find out who had killed their loved one. It is painful now to think what it must have been like for them to look at the disheveled, reeking cop that I had been and know that I was their only hope. Staring at Danny Gallagher now, huddled on the edge of a rocking chair in the nursery he and his missing wife had decorated for their child, I could not help but wonder how many people like him I had let down in the past. How had I overlooked their misery? How had I been able to ignore it? Most of all, I wondered what I could do to atone for it.
Fortunately, Maggie and Calvano were better at handling the grieving than I had ever been. One of the beat cops guarding Danny’s house had led them into the nursery with the explanation that Danny had been huddled there all morning, which was pretty much what he had done the entire day before. When he left them alone with Danny, he was shaking his head in disapproval. In his world, men did not lock themselves up in a room sobbing. They manned up and tried to solve their problems.
Maybe Danny Gallagher needed to do just that. But his fear and his sorrow were real. He looked destroyed. Deep circles rimmed his eyes, which were swollen from tears, and the wound from where he had been punched was spectacular. He had not yet changed his clothes from the day before. His head was bandaged, apparently from where a bottle has been bounced off it by some indignant citizen, who was convinced he had killed his wife and so took aim at Danny when he was trying to put gas in his truck early the day before. I wondered if Danny had fallen asleep in the rocking chair, clutching the teddy bear he now held tightly for comfort. I wondered if this nursery was the only place he felt safe.
Calvano and Maggie both knelt in front of him so that they would be at his eye level. Maggie placed a hand on one of his knees and her voice was soft. ‘Danny, you need to get some sleep. You need to be strong. When we find her, she’s going to need you.’
Danny stared at them hollow-eyed. I’m not even sure he’d heard her.
Calvano had less patience. ‘Snap out of it, man,’ he told Danny, prying the teddy bear from his hands and placing it in the crib against one wall. ‘We need your help. Huddling up here isn’t going to help your wife or convince anyone you’re innocent. Can you hear me?’ He waved his hands in front of Danny’s face until he had his attention. ‘Snap out of it, man.’ His voice rose. ‘We need your help. We need to ask you some questions.’
Danny Gallagher shook his head as if he were trying to fling his worst fears from his mind. He sat up straighter, running his hands through his hair. ‘I want to help,’ he said in a rusty voice. ‘I’ll answer any questions you have.’
‘Let’s get you some coffee first,’ Maggie suggested.
They led the guy into the kitchen, where the beat cops guarding his house had a pot of coffee ready at all times. Maggie made Danny sit at the kitchen table and brought him a cup, while Calvano found bread and made the poor guy some toast. I’m pretty sure it was the first thing he had eaten in over a day. He didn’t look like he was enjoying it.
‘We painted the nursery yellow because we weren’t sure if it was going to be a boy or a girl. We wanted to be surprised.’
‘Quit talking in the past tense,’ Calvano told him. ‘Your wife’s not dead and we’re going to find her.’
Danny nodded miserably.
‘Did she ever talk to you about going out to the Delmonte House?’ Maggie asked.
Danny stared at her, trying to remember. ‘I think she said something about one of the workers out there thought the house was haunted, or something. It had bad spirits. The nuns wouldn’t let Father Sojak get involved, so Arcelia brought him out holy water and a bunch of other superstitious remedies her grandmother taught her about when she was little. She came back and said the staff had calmed down about it and that was good enough for her.’ He looked up. ‘Why did you ask me that? What does it have to do with her disappearance?’
‘We don’t know,’ Maggie said. ‘Did she have any other connection to the Delmonte House?’
Danny Gallagher looked confused. ‘No. I don’t see what that house has to do with Arcelia. What are you getting at?’
‘We’re just trying to figure out where your wife may have been right before she disappeared, especially if it was out of her normal routine,’ Calvano explained.
‘Arcelia didn’t really go anywhere that wasn’t part of her routine,’ Danny said. ‘Work kept her really busy. She was always volunteering to help with the school fund-raisers and things like that. After that, just about every other moment she had free, if she wasn’t helping me, she was at St Raphael’s with Father Sojak and the nuns. She helped new immigrants assimilate into the community.’
From the way he said it, I knew he had no idea that his wife had been involved with helping illegal immigrants. He had no clue that underneath the marble floors of St Raphael’s, there was a whole world of hidden refugees who slipped out at daybreak to work in the fields or houses of our town and then slipped back in to stay the night.
‘How close was her relationship to Father Sojak?’ Maggie asked. Her voice was neutral.
Danny Gallagher was not offended. ‘They weren’t having an affair, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ He looked up at Maggie, confident in his belief. ‘Father Sojak is one hundred percent married to his faith. I am certain of that. He is the real deal. And my wife would never, ever have cheated on me. I never had any suspicions about them and I never would.’
Maggie took him at his word and moved on. ‘Did she ever talk about a man named Aldo Flores?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think so. Was he the man who wanted her help out at the Delmonte House with the evil spirits? I think his name was Flores.’
‘He’s that man’s brother,’ Calvano explained. ‘They both worked as gardeners at the Delmonte House.’
Danny shook his head. ‘I don’t think she ever mentioned him. We didn’t have a lot of time to sit and talk in the days right before she . . .’ His voice faltered. ‘She was starting to get really tired because of the pregnancy and needed to nap a lot. And I was tired from working the fields. This time of year is critical. The fields need a lot of irrigation. I’d come in from the fields to find her asleep and, more often than not, fall asleep next to her. We’d end up having a midnight supper and then go right back to bed.’ His voice trailed off as he thought of those simple evenings with his wife and I knew he was wondering if they were gone forever.
‘Can you think of anyone who didn’t like your wife?’ Maggie asked him. ‘Did she have an argument with anyone? Did anyone complain about her at the school?’
Danny shook his head. ‘Everyone loved her,’ he insisted. ‘Everyone. The only time I’ve ever seen anyone get angry at her was my father.’ He hesitated. ‘He wanted Arcelia to campaign for him when he ran for re-election, but she wouldn’t to it. She thought he was just using her because he wanted the Hispanic vote. She was afraid of the publicity, that her picture might end up in the paper and some of the men who had held her down in Mexico might see it somehow. My father was really angry, but that was over a year ago. And he would never do anything to hurt her.’
‘You sure about that?’ Calvano asked. He knew, as we all did, with the apparent exception of Danny, that his father had not been repeatedly re-elected mayor because he was a nice guy. He had
probably hurt many people on his way up the ladder.
Maggie shot a warning glance at Calvano, but it was too late. The comment had rocked Danny’s confidence. He stood up abruptly. ‘I’ve got to take a shower,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some things I need to do.’ He walked from the room, leaving them in the kitchen.
Maggie looked at Calvano for his reaction.
‘Ten to one, he’s going to go talk to his father,’ Calvano predicted.
‘Let’s make sure we’re there when he does,’ she said.
TWENTY-ONE
I never gave a crap about politics when I was alive. Maybe if they had started talking about taxing my beer I might have, but all I really remembered about local politics was a blur of images on the television set above the bar, offering what seemed like the same old parade each year of beefy men surrounded by other beefy men, all looking exactly the same. Sometimes the mayor was Irish, sometimes the mayor was Italian. One day, if Gonzales got his way, the mayor would be Hispanic – and on his way to being a US Senator.
Danny Gallagher’s father, Terrence Gallagher, was just the latest in a series of mayors chosen by the handful of men who really control our town. I didn’t know if he was a good guy. I didn’t know if he was a bad guy. I did know he lived in a house big enough for four families, even though it was just him and his obscenely young wife. She must’ve been his third try. She was a tiny little brunette with a college coed hairdo, wearing skin tight black pants and a tight sweater. No wonder he was sitting at his kitchen table watching her bend and stretch as she prepared him dinner.
What Terrence Gallagher didn’t know, was that I was sitting at the table with him, waiting for his son to arrive. Maybe Maggie and Calvano could not get close to their discussion, but I could and I intended to.
‘It’s just terrible,’ his wife was telling him. ‘Can’t you do something about it? We can’t have people running around snatching women off the street.’
