Beau nodded. “Absolutely. How soon?”
Ernhart looked at his watch, drummed his fingers on the desk. “It’s Sunday. That’s going to make it a little trickier to get enough people on the job of decoding the book.”
“Look, I’ve spent a little time with this,” Sam said. “Even though it would take awhile to decode the entire book, word for word, I noticed that Tito created special symbols for most of the names of people. That’s how I spotted Wells and Espinosa on those final pages. So, what if you looked only for those names at first? Wouldn’t that be reasonable enough suspicion to bring them in?”
Ernhart nodded again, and Beau seemed eager. “Worth a little of our time, I’d say.”
They tossed ideas around and amid the legal jargon, with talk of warrants and probable cause, Sam felt her eyelids growing heavy. The three hours sleep weren’t holding her very well.
When Jonathan took the letters out to the squad room to make copies, she turned to Beau.
“Looks like you boys don’t need me for this part. I think I’ll go on home and try for some rest.”
Nestled into her bed, Sam was soon dead to the world, but when she awoke it was suddenly and completely. Faint sounds came from the living room, the drone of the TV. She gathered some fresh clothing and took a long, hot shower. Fluffing her hair, she padded into the kitchen to find her daughter staring into the refrigerator.
“Just thinking about dinner,” Kelly said.
“Geez, what time is it anyway?” Sam looked at the clock. After five. She’d slept away eight hours in dreamless oblivion.
“Is it okay if I just make mac and cheese?” Kelly asked.
She smiled at her daughter, the kid who would never quite grow up. In fact, it actually sounded good, some old-fashioned comfort food. “Do enough for two.”
“Mommy?” Kelly said as they sat on the sofa with bowls in hand. The reversion to childhood might as well be complete. “You know what I’d really love to have with this?”
Sam stared over the top of her spoon.
“Some of your brownies . . . the ones with chocolate buttercream and nuts . . .”
Sam looked at her, trying to convey If you think I’m starting to bake at this point on Sunday evening, think again. But what came out was, “Dark ganache frosting, no nuts, and you’ve got it.” She’d remembered that there was an extra half-pan of them in the fridge at the bakery.
“I’ll do dishes . . .”
“Okay, I’ll go get the dessert.” Sam gathered their bowls and set them in the kitchen sink on the way out.
She pulled her Silverado pickup into the alley. The street light was still out and she located her key by the bakery’s porch light, which she’d begun leaving on.. The brownies were in the fridge, protected from drying out by a foil cover and she picked up the entire pan.
When she locked the back door and turned around, a man stood beside her truck.
Chapter 34
Sam let out a small yelp and nearly dropped the pan.
“Hello, Ms Sweet.”
“Deputy Waters? What are you doing here?” Did Beau send him over?
He wore black jeans and T-shirt and a black jacket with the sleeves pushed up. The porch light showed that his normally neat hair hung limply across his forehead and he held a nightstick, rhythmically slapping it against the palm of his left hand. A circular tattoo on his forearm flexed with each swing of the stick.
“I saw your truck. Thought the sheriff might be here with you,” he said. He seemed agitated. His eyes darted up and down the alley. Sam’s gaze followed. She didn’t see another vehicle.
“No, I haven’t seen him since this morning,” Sam said. She’d locked the door already, and her mind zipped through the possibilities. Her keys were in her coat pocket, her cell phone at home. All help was out of reach. “Did you try calling him?”
“He’s not at the office.” Waters stepped forward. “I heard that a bunch of arrests went down this afternoon.”
Sam kept her expression neutral. “He’s probably busy with that, then.” She walked down the two steps to the surface of the alley. “You could call his cell phone.”
His face screwed up in a scowl. “I’m not gonna handle this on the phone,” he said. “He’s got a friend of mine. I can’t ignore that.”
What? You’re an officer of the law. Why would you side against your boss?
But what she said was, “Really? Who’s your friend?” As she talked she moved subtly, keeping her distance from the crazy deputy and his nightstick, trying to get closer to her truck without being obvious about it. Beau and Jonathan must have worked all afternoon, setting up the arrests in Taos and Albuquerque quickly.
“Javier. We go way back, to school.”
For the first time, Sam saw the hard edge to the deputy, the tough punk he might have been, or wanted to be.
“Why did you choose law enforcement, Denny?”
“What do you mean?”
“With friends like Javier it just doesn’t seem like something you’d be interested in, you know.”
“I always wanted to do this!” he shouted. “Tito and Jimmy and those guys. I wanted them to be my friends.”
Sam froze in place. His outburst startled her. Go carefully here. This guy is unbalanced. “You all knew each other in school?”
“Yeah. Me and Jimmy and Tito. Javier, even. He was in the group for awhile.”
She saw the history of these guys unfolding. Young kids, elementary school, all buddies. By high school there’d been some rifts, a little fighting. Javier and some of the others would start getting caught up in gangs and drugs. Tito and Jimmy went the straight path—did their military service, stayed on the right side of the law. And there was Denny Waters, stuck in the middle, not really fitting with either group. And instead of leaving his small hometown for an education and a new start somewhere else he hung around, resenting the others’ successes. Never quite a bad guy, but never really reaching the echelons of the good guys either.
“So, I’m curious about your tattoo,” Sam said, tilting her head toward his arm.
He lowered the nightstick and held out the arm with the emblem. The second his attention went to the inked piece of art, Sam swung the baking pan toward his head. The edge of it caught him squarely in the temple and he staggered back a few steps, dropping the nightstick. She ran for her truck, fumbling in her pocket for the keyfob opener.
She pressed the button and reached for the door handle at the same time. Waters had recovered and was circling the back of the pickup. She yanked the door open, dove inside and groped for the lock, finding it just as he got his hand on the handle. She scrambled across the center console and thrust the key into the ignition. His nightstick came up, ready to bash her window. Sam landed in her seat, cranked the key and the truck roared to life. She jammed it in gear and screeched away, leaving the deputy staggering.
Her heartbeat had slowed a little by the time she got home. She blew out a shaky breath and dashed inside. She had to let Beau know about this.
“About time,” Kelly called out from the living room. “I’m dying for those brownies.”
“Well, there’s been a little problem with that.” Sam heard the tremor in her own voice as she picked up the phone to call Beau.
“Mom? You okay?” Kelly peeked around the edge of the wall.
Sam nodded. “Beau. I’m glad I found you. Denny Waters just threatened me.”
“What?” Kelly and Beau said it at the same time, a stereo moment in Sam’s ears.
“At the bakery. Five minutes ago. I don’t know where he is now, but you need to get him off the streets. The guy is unbalanced.” She knew that she sounded like a shrew, demanding of him that way, but the words came anyway.
“Darlin’, where are you now?” When she told him, he said, “Calm down. I have to wind down something here but I can be there in fifteen minutes. Lock yourselves in and I’ll deal with this.”
Kelly was staring at her from the living
room doorway, but Sam shook her head. “I’ll have to repeat it all for Beau anyway. You can hear the story then.” She turned on the tap and filled a glass with water.
An hour later she’d recounted the incident, along with everything Waters had told her about his ties with both Tito and Espinosa. Beau made some calls, got his other deputies who’d been called in along with a group of State Police officers to make the earlier arrests, and told them to find Waters and bring him in.
“I’ll need for you to make a statement at the office,” he told Sam. “Either tonight or in the morning.”
“I’ll come now,” she said. “It will be fresher in my mind, plus I doubt I’ll sleep. Repetition will help get it out of my system.”
She turned to Kelly. “Keep the doors locked, in case he comes here looking for me.”
Kelly’s eyes went wide.
“Maybe you better go somewhere else. Zoë’s house maybe? Or Jen’s?”
But Beau’s radio squawked just then and one of the deputies said he had Waters in custody.
“I’ll be fine here,” Kelly said. She looked comfy in her flannel pajamas, unwilling to get dressed and go elsewhere.
“Keep the doors locked,” Beau said. “We’re pretty sure we just caught everyone involved in this thing, but just in case.”
You didn’t know Waters was involved, Sam thought. “I’d rather you went to Jen’s,” she told Kelly.
With a little huff but no argument, Kelly called her friend and changed clothes. They left the house in a little procession, with Beau tailing in his cruiser to be sure they got to their destinations.
*
Sam’s statement went quickly—she’d run through every harrowing second in her mind at least a dozen times already. While she talked in Beau’s office with deputy Joe Gonzales, Beau was in the squad room with Denny Waters cuffed to a bench.
“I need to see if you can pick out the man who threatened you outside your shop,” Joe said. “I’ve got a lineup ready in the interrogation room.”
“I’m ready,” she said. Anything to get this wrapped up. Four men stood side-by-side and she stared at them through the two-way glass. “Three of them were at the cemetery after Tito’s funeral. The first one, on the left, he’s the guy from the alley. Can they turn sideways?”
When they did, she recognized the row of tattoos up his neck, the profile which had flashed past her in the red low-rider on that other occasion. “Is that Espinosa?”
Joe nodded. “Thanks, Sam. You’re free to go.”
“I’d like to wait for Beau, if that’s okay.” Joe ushered her back into Beau’s office where she found herself impatiently wanting to talk to him, to find out all that had happened during the afternoon.
Two hours dragged by, during which Javier Espinosa was taken away by the State Police, and when Beau came in Sam thought he looked tired.
“I can’t believe Denny’s connections with Espinosa didn’t come up on his background check,” Beau said.
He’d dismissed Joe Gonzales, and Waters was sitting in a holding cell now. Beau sat at his desk where Sam had occupied herself by doodling sketches of the symbols she remembered from Tito’s code book.
“Espinosa’s unsavory past has been known to us for a long time, but it was all petty stuff,” he said. “He’d do a little time, get out, start over. One of those guys who’s always going to be in the system. At least now, with Tito’s evidence, I think we have a strong enough connection now to put him away forever. The more we question these guys, plus with the evidence from Tito, we think Rick Wells actually pulled the trigger. He knew Tito was on to him. He was beginning to panic, knew he would lose his job. Figured a random shooting in a DC park would just be chalked up as normal and would get lost in the mountains of such cases they have out there.”
“It nearly did,” Sam pointed out.
“Of course, Wells will lawyer up and we may never know the whole truth, although Tito’s book is already revealing the depth of Wells’s involvement—bribes, corruption, private deals with the cartel. Plenty of motive for him to kill Tito.”
“Denny Waters told me that the local guys were all friends when they were kids—he and Javier and Tito and Jimmy McMichael. I got the feeling he was jealous that all the others formed solid friendships and left him on the outside.”
“It’s true. We found that they were all within a year or two of each other in school. We know that Waters was the one who tipped Espinosa that Tito was in town the weekend he disappeared. Of course, Rick Wells knew that Tito had made a lot of connections between the cartels in Mexico and the gangs in northern New Mexico. Once Tito had confirmed Espinosa and the Taos connection, Rick Wells knew it was a matter of time before his own involvement with kickbacks and bribes would come to light. That activity went way back, from the years when Wells started with the Border Patrol and then went into DEA in Arizona. He’d long ago figured out that taking money to pave the way for these guys was a lot more profitable and less dangerous than actually touching the drugs or cash shipments himself.”
Beau tapped a pencil against the desk blotter, his brows pulled together hard in the middle.
“Don’t beat yourself up over this, Beau,” Sam said. “A background check will reveal a lot, but not everything. Denny’s connections to his childhood friends could have gotten by anyone.”
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “It’s just that sometimes I feel so new at this. Like I’m really out of the whole loop of connections and political savvy in this town.”
“You are new at it. But look at what your predecessor’s record was like. He had all the connections and political savvy in the world. And it corrupted him.” She met his gaze. “Stay new and fresh and open to all the possibilities. It’s better than falling into the system and becoming hardened to it.”
“I guess.”
She stood up and walked around to his side of the desk. “It’s late and I’m fading fast. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”
She kissed him on top of the head and walked out to her truck. The parking area around the county offices was well lit, but Sam didn’t entirely relax until she’d made it home and locked everything up tight.
Chapter 35
Sam rushed through Monday morning’s baking, getting everything started so Becky could take over when she came in at eight. Last night’s session at Beau’s office had gone on too late to call Marla, and she didn’t dare wake her early this morning, but Sam was anxious about her friend and worried that she’d not touched base as promised on Sunday.
Once she had the first batch of breakfast items out in the displays, Sam sat at her desk and dialed Marla’s number. When there was no answer, Sam looked up Diane Milton’s number.
“Marla is back in the hospital,” the neighbor said. “I’m afraid it doesn’t look good.”
Sam’s heart sank.
“The past week was a lot for her to handle,” Diane went on. “She collapsed shortly after everyone left on Saturday afternoon. We called the ambulance. I’m so sorry that I didn’t think to call you right then.”
It didn’t matter. What was done, was done. “I’ll go by to see her now,” Sam said.
Something told her not to wait. She gave Jen and Becky some quick assignments and left her baker’s jacket on its hook.
Marla looked more ghostlike than ever, her hair lying lank and wispy against her skull, her skin showing the pallor of death. Sam gulped and pasted on a smile.
“Hey, Marla,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner.”
“Sam. I’m so happy to see you.” Her voice came out thin, reedy. “I have news.”
Sam sat in the visitor’s chair and took Marla’s chilly hand. She had the fleeting thought that she should have tried, one more time, to bring some of the box’s magic with her.
“Those young people, the ones with the daughter Jolie’s age?”
Sam nodded.
“They’ve asked if Jolie might come live with them. They would raise her
and even adopt her if I agree. I didn’t know what to think.”
Sam pictured Jimmy and Callie McMichael, who seemed so stable and happy. “Tito thought a lot of Jimmy. He trusted Jimmy with some very important things.” She started on the story, telling Marla about Tito’s bank accounts and giving the gist of his DEA work. “Tito wanted to get some really bad people put away. He was a real patriot.”
Marla’s gaze traveled past Sam, to the doorway of the room. “Hi, baby,” she said.
Sam turned to see that Jolie was standing in the doorway with Jimmy and Callie McMichael. They greeted Sam. Jolie walked to her grandmother’s bedside and ran her hand down the length of the blanket, tucking it closer to Marla’s emaciated legs.
“Jolie spent the night with Taylor,” Jimmy said. “We’ve been talking about the idea of—”
“Marla told me. What does Jolie think of it?”
“I’m standing right here,” the girl said.
“I’m sorry. That was rude of me not to ask you directly. So, what do you think?”
“I never really knew Taylor all that much. But I think we could get along.”
Jolie looked at her grandmother, seeing far more, Sam realized, than any of the rest of them did. She’d lived with this woman nearly her entire life. She surely remembered Marla as a vibrant, healthy woman who’d seen her through the loss of both parents, had taken her to her first day of school, who’d watched her grow from toddler to adolescent. Who would not be there for her teen years, her college days or to witness her marriage and children. Sam swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Jolie said.
Marla’s smile was sad to see—the combination of wistfulness, relief and pain. “I do too,” she said.
Jimmy and Callie wore warm smiles. Suddenly, to Sam, this seemed like exactly the right answer.
Jimmy cleared his throat. “We brought papers. I hope you don’t mind that we asked our attorney to write them up— It just seemed like maybe we should . . . do this soon.”
Sweet Hearts Page 22
