by Baxter Clare
Jesus, Frank thought. She hadn’t meant for him to keep the family out. It was her fault. Bobby had taken her literally when she said everyone. He was thorough like that.
“Is it okay with the doctor?”
“I guess,” he shrugged vaguely. “They were in there earlier.”
Frank put herself between Bobby and Gloria, telling her she could see Tonio, but only if she calmed down.
“Fuck that shit!” she screamed, spit flying. “I’ll calm down when that jodido maricon’s in his fucking grave!”
Claudia half-heartedly tried to calm her daughter but Gloria repeated, “Fuck that! What we gonna do? Let him come after us one at a time? Fuck that! We goin’ after him. I’ll do it myself if I have to! Uh-uh. I ain’t playing no more.”
“Hey,” Frank soothed. “You stay away from him. Let me take care of this. That’s my job.”
“Yeah, like you been taking care of us so far?” she shouted. “We just gonna sit and wait for you useless jodida police to come and help us. This shit’s gone too far. That maricon ain’t comin’ near my babies. I’ma get him myself.”
Nook came up behind Gloria and asked, “Which maricon?”
Gloria told him to fuck himself. He made a helpless gesture at Frank.
“I want to see Tonio,” she said, trying to push past Frank, who stopped her.
“You want to see your brother?” Frank asked.
“Yes! I want to see him.”
“Then you gotta calm down,” Frank soothed. “You can see him. You just gotta be calm. For his sake.”
Gloria shot her hands through her hair and moaned, “Just let me in.”
“He needs you to be calm. You gonna be calm for him?”
“I’m calm,” she whimpered, “I’m calm.”
Frank nodded her head and Gloria rushed past Bobby. Frank followed her through the ward, baring her ID as two nurses glared from the desk. Tonio was in a cubicle with barely enough room for his bed and the machines he was attached to. Gloria squeezed in beside him, smoothing his hair, cooing, “Ninito.”
Claudia stepped quietly around Frank, taking a place on the other side of the bed. She found a way around the tubes and held her son’s hand. Frank tried to shut the door but a nurse called out to keep it open. Frank cursed under her breath. She knew who the maricon was but wanted to hear one of the women say it. She let them have a moment with Tonio then stood next to Claudia.
“Did he do this?”
There was no response, as if Frank wasn’t even in the room. She put her hand on Claudia’s shoulder, asking again. She startled Frank by spinning around. She hit a tray with her elbow and sent it clattering to the floor.
“Leave us alone!” she said savagely. “You hurt us enough! Now just leave us be!”
Bobby loomed in the doorway and a nurse scurried in, hissing, “That’s it! Everybody out!”
Gloria started crying but Claudia whirled past Frank. She followed her out to the noisy waiting room, motioning Nook over.
“Who have you talked to about this case?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean who have you talked to about Placa’s case since I pulled you ?”
“I don’t know. I guess Johnnie, Ike, No. You know.”
“I don’t know. Think!”
“What’s the big-“
Bobby had joined his partner.
“Just who have you talked to about this?”
“Well, Hunt and Waddell. They responded to that stabbing the other night. We were talking for a while. Munoz and Lewis were there too,” he added.
“Did you talk about specifics?”
Bobby and Nook exchanged a glance that said they had. Frank wrestled with her composure, furious where this was going.
“You were bitching about being pulled,” Frank stated.
“Yeah,” Bobby squirmed. “The case isn’t even cold yet. There are still a lot of leads we can work.”
“And you mentioned those leads specifically?”
Bobby pawed his Florsheim at the ground. Now he saw where this was going too.
“Kind of.”
Frank nodded.
“To everyone?”
He looked up at the ceiling and Frank strangled the grip on her temper.
Nook said, “I don’t believe it. You’re serious. You really think one of us is involved?”
“Bartlett and some other deputy was there too,” Bobby added glumly.
Frank’s jaw muscles bounced and she couldn’t resist asking, “Why didn’t you just take out a full-page ad in the Times?”
“You do,” Nook continued. “You really think it’s one of those guys. And that’s why you pulled us.”
“It doesn’t have to be one of them,” Bobby answered, gamely holding Frank’s angry stare. “They could have talked to anybody.”
“I’ll be damned,” Nook shook his head. “You’ve gone over to the other side.”
If looks could kill it would have been too late for Nook even though he was standing in the middle of the ICU. Frank walked away from her men, over to Claudia who sat as rigid as the plastic chair she was in. Kneeling in front of her, Frank beseeched, “Talk to me, Claudia. Help me.”
The retort was a stinging slap. Frank’s eyes watered, but she didn’t flinch.
“Help you,” Claudia hissed.
“I deserved that,” Frank said quietly. Locking onto the livid brown face, she begged, “Please, Claudia. Te promete I’ll end this right now. Just give me the last bullet.”
Frank stood and held her hand out. Claudia stared at it a long time but Frank wouldn’t retract it. Finally she stood, following Frank toward the elevator. Slumped in a corner, barely audible, Claudia told Frank what had happened. It was a simple, ugly story and it didn’t take long. Frank wanted to touch Claudia, to comfort her, but she didn’t. She said only, “Okay. We’ve got him now.”
Frank was almost in three fender-benders on the short ride between the hospital and the station. Having made sure the Estrella’s were relatively safe, her next goal was to kick Langley’s ass into gear. Frank had already decided to move on this bastard and his actions over the last twenty-four hours only fortified her resolve; with or without the department’s sanction, she was taking him down. But Frank wasn’t a hero. She had seventeen years toward her pension and didn’t fancy starting a new career at age forty. She was willing to take the risk but preferred Langley’s backing. She had to figure how to get it without threatening or alienating him, no easy task when going against a DC.
Almost rear-ending an old Nova, Frank remembered to call Noah and Johnnie. They were next in line to catch but she couldn’t get hold of either one. She left messages and paged them both. Noah returned her call just as she was pulling into the station lot.
“Dudess, word up?”
“Hey. You’re on call. I pulled —”
“— I can’t be! We’re on our way to La Jolla, Les’ playoff game.”
“Sorry. I need you available.”
“I’ll call Ike or —”
“No! Do you know where Johnnie is?”
“Probably passed out in an alley,” Noah whined, “I don’t know! What’s going on anyway? Why can’t Bobby or Nook handle it?”
“They’re out of rotation. Gloria Estrella got raped last night. Guy did it right in front of Tonio, in front of her kids, and Tonio went ape-shit on him. Then this bastard went even worse on Tonio. He’s just a scrawny little kid. He’s at King/Drew. They took his spleen out and his livers lacerated. Bobby and Nook are posted at the hospital until I find this cocksucker.”
“You know who it is?” Noah asked.
“Look, I can’t talk. I’m on the cell.”
“Aw, come on, Frank.”
“Just know you’re on. I’ll talk to you later,” she said, hanging up. She hoped he’d have sense enough to go to the game anyway, and that nothing happened in the meantime. If I could just get hold of Johnnie, she thought taking the stairs two at a time, he could cove
r. Frank offered a silent thanks when she walked into the squad room and there he was, hunkered over late reports.
“Hey. Tried to page you.”
Johnnie fiddled at his belt. His shirt was wrinkled and he hadn’t shaved.
“It wasn’t on,” he grinned sheepishly.
“Work better when they are. I called No, too. You guys are up.”
She raised her palm at his expected remonstrance, continuing, “You need to page him. He’s at a game down south, let him know you’ll cover ‘til he can get his ass up here. Go downstairs and shave. You look like shit in a sack.”
His initial protest silenced, he just slumped in his chair. He sullenly asked the same thing Noah did and Frank explained without detail. Johnnie blew his lips at the ceiling and she closed her door on him. A few minutes later she heard a phone ring, and Johnnie’s dejected rumble.
Frank gutted Placa’s murder book, laying out the autopsy protocol, the tox results, lab reports, Placa’s pictures, sketches, Bobby’s reports — everything, all neatly arrayed in front of her. Hunched in her old chair she sifted through the papers like a fortune-teller reading the cards. She weighed options and deliberated. She sighed occasionally, shifted a piece of paper, but mostly she just thought. After a while she picked up the phone.
Foubarelle’s wife curtly said her husband was busy. Equally curt, Frank told her, “Tell him another Estrella’s in the hospital. He might want to know.”
He called back in less than a minute.
“What’s the problem?” he greeted shortly.
She told him. Then added, “I’m charging him, John.”
“Now wait a minute.”
She heard the panic in his voice and would have been amused any other time.
“Langley clearly said you’re not to do anything with this, and I won’t have you going against him, Frank.”
“I have to. Even if this goes nowhere and the DA throws it back in my lap, he’s at least got to know we’re on to him, that I’m on to him. He can’t keep getting away with this. I don’t know how many people he has to kill before the department has the balls to move against him, but I’m not going to wait around and see. I’m charging him, John, with or without Langley’s blessing.”
“You can’t do that,” the captain protested, the whine and the fear higher in his voice. He seemed to get it under control, because his next words were more authoritative.
“I’m ordering you not to do this, Frank.”
“Sorry, John.”
She wasn’t.
“You realize the ramifications of openly defying your supervisor.”
What should have been his boldest statement yet was couched with fear, and Frank played him as she so often did. It was like fishing, set the hook and reel him in. No wonder Joe liked it so much.
“Yes, I do. Do you want to call Langley or should I?” she asked needlessly.
She waited almost an hour for the phone to ring. Fubar nervously told her the DC was out of town. Frank was to meet him at Chief Nelson’s house ASAP. Frank pulled her case together and started the long drive to Brentwood. She was shown into his study, where Nelson greeted her without cheer.
“Notoriety seems to be plaguing you personally as much as it is the department.”
“Yes, sir.”
Frank stood stiffly in front of his well-polished desk. A liaison from IAD and a department lawyer sat in leather wing chairs with brass studs. Foubarelle fidgeted behind them.
“Tell me, Lieutenant, do you actively seek out problems or do they just happen to find you?”
The big man wasn’t happy and Frank responded, “I don’t seek them anymore than the rest of the department, sir.”
That seemed to placate him a bit and he said, “Well, show us what the furor’s about.”
Because she had so little to go with on the Estrella massacre, Frank focused entirely on Placa’s case. She carefully outlined his motive, explaining how the business with Barracas had evolved and the subsequent showdown. She described Placa and her refusal to do the work, the confession from Tonio, and this latest turn of events wherein he’d found out the net was closing in. She acknowledged that her case for murder was weak but told them about the equine-related samples found on Placa, the sperm, and the fact that she hoped to obtain supporting DNA and fiber samples from the suspect. If the samples matched as she thought they would, they’d have a much stronger case.
The lawyer questioned and probed, finally opining that they could foreseeably prosecute various allegations, but not murder. Not yet. He cleared his throat and amended smoothly, “Of course should this matter go any further, we’d have to consult with the District Attorney directly.”
Nelson nodded, boring coldy through Frank.
“The department has more than it’s share of troubles right now, Lieutenant. I know you. I know your record. I’m still not convinced that the incident last winter wasn’t an overreaction on your part.”
Frank burned at the indictment but her exterior remained at zero centigrade. “Before we go any farther with this, there are a few things I need to know.”
Nelson abruptly dismissed Foubarelle and his counsel, waving Frank into a wing chair. She sat in it, slightly repulsed by the leftover warmth. The chief took the other chair, pulling it close to her. Only inches from her face, he ordered sternly, but kindly, “Level with me, Franco. Tell me about this man.”
An incredulous smile almost got away from Frank as she realized what the chief was up to. He was looking for something personal, a vendetta or agenda that would explain Frank’s accusations, something he could twist to discredit her suspicions. She found herself in the paradoxical position of defending the bastard, wanting to laugh at the surrealism of the situation. Over the next half hour, Frank grudgingly admired the Chiefs interrogation skills and was relieved when he told her to call the others back in.
“I’ve decided to give the lieutenant twenty-four hours to come up with something more than this,” he said tapping Placa’s murder book. “That means,” he said, casting Frank a piercing glare, “that what we have discussed today does not leave this room until further notice from me. Is that clear?”
It wasn’t as good as Frank had hoped for, but not as bad as she’d feared.
“Yes, sir.”
“These are serious charges against a fine officer and I won’t have this department needlessly dragged through the mud. Is that clear, also?
“Yes, sir.”
Nelson turned to the lawyer, asking if he wanted to add anything. He threw in a few standard caveats then Nelson adjourned their meeting.
“Sir?” Frank asked, reclaiming the chief’s attention, sensing Fubar tensing next to her.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Sir, should these charges be justified, this man poses an immediate threat to the surviving family members. I’d like to request their residence be under twenty-four hour guard surveillance by one of my teams and a radio car.”
Nelson thought about it.
“One radio car.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See she gets it,” he said with a nod to Foubarelle.
The red light on Frank’s phone machine blinked maniacally. She stared at it, foggy-brained, wondering if she needed to know who’d called. She punched the rewind button, drowsing as she stood. Christ, she was tired.
Somebody wanting to know if she wished to renew her subscription to the L.A. Times. The second call was Bobby, telling her to call him ASAP That had been while she was having dinner with Gail. Another call from Nook, Romanowski, then Bobby again. Fubar in full panic was the fifth call. She fast-forwarded to the next call.
“Hi. It’s Gail. It’s not too often I get to call people this late, so I thought I’d take advantage of it.”
It sounded like she was chewing as she continued, “I just wanted to thank you again for dinner. It was sweet of you to call me. And thanks for sharing your bad day with me and letting me share mine. It makes them more bearable, d
on’t you think? At any rate, I hope the rest of your night went well. Hope you get some sleep. Call me if you want. I’ll be up until about midnight. I have a ton of e-mail to catch up on. Bye. Oh! I almost forgot. Do you like opera? Don Giovanni’s at the Pavilion. It could be fun. Let me know. Bye.”
Frank checked her watch, knowing it was well beyond midnight, but hoping she was wrong. Stripping her clothes off, she rewound the last message and played it again, falling naked into bed, almost asleep before she could get the covers up under her chin.
Chapter Twenty-nine
She left home again as the sky was graying to the east. The young day retained a hint of coolness and Frank sped down the highway with the windows open, the wind slapping her hair dry. Before the sun had crossed the horizon, she was walking up three flights of stairs, smelling dirty diapers, urine, and old grease. She knocked at Ocho Ruiz’s apartment and an old woman opened the door, eyes snapping to attention when Frank flashed her badge. She protested, trying to close the door, but Frank held it open.
“Calmate,” she soothed. Her accent was awful but it seemed to help and the woman quieted. In broken Spanish Frank told her she only wanted to talk to Ruiz. She wasn’t here to arrest him. Sweeping her hand behind her she indicated she was alone, “No hay mas policia. Solo quiero hablar.” Just talk.
The woman backed up, still frightened, and Frank spoke in English, telling her to get Ruiz. She must have understood because she went into a room down a narrow hall. After some muttering, Ruiz appeared, equally fuzzy-eyed and disheveled.
Frank showed her ID again and told Ruiz she needed to talk to him. He asked what about and she told him Placa’s murder. Exasperated, he pawed on a low coffee table for a pack of cigarettes.
“Why you people comin’ aroun’ with that shit again? I don’t know nothin’ about that bitch.”
“I believe you,” Frank said. Ruiz lit up, cocking a curious eye at the lieutenant. Frank didn’t think he recognized her from the Dolly Parton interrogation, but she didn’t give him time to dwell on it.
“Look. You are not a suspect in Placa’s shooting. I have a suspect. But unless you can give me a really good alibi, you look like the better suspect and the district attorney isn’t gonna believe it’s this other person.”
