“I had to take the chance, Linda,” Gwen said. “This is for Gabriela. Will you come with me?” she asked softly.
I could hardly let her go down alone. For one thing, I had to make sure that Gwen didn’t jeopardize the police investigation in some way. She seemed too hotheaded right now to be concerned about the potential backlash for Gore, but I could keep a cooler head.
“All right,” I said.
“I’ll be right over,” she said eagerly.
I didn’t leave a message for Kurt. That would only incriminate us. I felt shaky and a little nauseated as I waited for Gwen to pick me up.
She drove us to a Rose Park address that turned out to be a mobile home park. I didn’t know Salt Lake City very well, but this was clearly not the nicest part of town. The houses were too close together, there was graffiti on most of the walls, and the trees and bushes I saw looked pretty badly cared for.
Gwen made sure to lock her car doors after we got out, and we looked around cautiously before moving toward the numbered mobile home that matched what she had written.
It was the middle of the day, I told myself. What could possibly happen?
There was a crash nearby, and Gwen and I both jumped two feet in the air and looked at each other.
“I’m sure it was nothing,” I said out loud.
“Yeah, nothing,” Gwen said.
She knocked on the door of the mobile home, and we waited for a couple of seconds before it opened and a Hispanic man who looked to be in his late forties answered the door. He had graying hair and a bit of a stoop.
“I’m Gwen Ferris. We spoke on the phone earlier,” Gwen said too quickly for me to intervene and try to protect her. “We’re here to talk to you about Gabriela’s death.” Her tone was clipped and businesslike.
Was that how she thought police officers talked? After a moment, I realized it was an uncanny imitation of Detective Gore and struggled not to smile at the thought. Did Gwen know she was doing it, or was it unconscious? Probably the latter, given her opinion of Detective Gore.
“I’m Linda Wallheim,” I said earnestly when Luis looked at me. Would it matter at all if I could say I hadn’t lied about being part of law enforcement?
“You want to come in?” he asked. His English was nearly unaccented.
“Yes,” Gwen said, pushing against the door.
Luis stepped back, and we were soon in a living room that looked like it was mostly boxes, with no furniture other than folding chairs around a card table near the kitchen.
“I already told the other officers everything I know. Gabriela and I weren’t living together anymore. I hardly saw the children,” Luis put in. He didn’t look upset, despite the loss of his wife just days before. His eyes weren’t red or swollen. I admitted the possibility that he was someone who wouldn’t let himself break down with emotion because he was trying to be strong, but he looked so coldly neutral it was hard not to be suspicious.
“Why wouldn’t she let you see the children?” Gwen asked. “What had you done?”
He put up his hands defensively. “Nothing. I did nothing to the children or to her. I already told the other police officers that.”
This conversation was a bit awkward, since Luis assumed we already knew what he’d told Gore or whoever it was who had come to interview him before. Somehow Gwen was trying to make sure he didn’t guess how ignorant we were, since then he’d know we weren’t the police and send us away.
“You know we could report you to INS again and you’d be deported a second time. Or incarcerated. Is that what you want?” Gwen demanded.
I flinched at this. After Gwen’s complaints about the police treating immigrants unfairly, it seemed like she was being deliberately cruel to this man. Did she think he deserved it simply because he was male? Maybe so. I wasn’t sure she saw her own prejudice there, though.
“No, of course not,” Luis muttered, cowed.
“Then tell us the truth. Why weren’t you and Gabriela back together?”
“We were having problems,” he said. “In our marriage. She was unhappy with me. I worked too much and she said I didn’t bring home all the money I earned. She said I owed it to the children.” His chin had lifted a bit in defiance at this.
I’d seen how poor Gabriela and her children were, how desperate for food. It was hard for me to feel sympathy for Luis if he’d been standing in the way of more security. No wonder Gabriela had thought of him as a bad husband.
“We know you’re lying,” Gwen said, her voice low and threatening. “You might as well tell us the truth so we can consider you a cooperating witness.”
The official-sounding language seemed to work on Luis. He glanced away, ashamed. “I’ve been back in the country since September, not two weeks like I said before.”
“And?” Gwen said, pressing him for more. “What else?” She was automatically treating everything he as he suspect. Again, I wondered if this was simply how she thought the police acted.
Luis hesitated, then said, “I wasn’t out of state driving the truck, like I said before. When Gabriela was killed.”
“I know that already,” Gwen said shortly in a tone would have made me believe her if I hadn’t known it was all fake. “So where were you?”
“I was here, looking for a better job. But I swear to you, I never went anywhere near Gabriela or the children.” He was clenching and unclenching his fists and shifting back and forth, a bundle of nervous energy.
“And how can you prove that?” Gwen asked.
He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I was alone! I’m by myself most of the time. How was I supposed to know anything was going to happen to her?”
I felt sorry for him, but I was also trying to understand what kind of man he was and what his relationship with Gabriela had really been like.
“Did you call her that day?” Gwen demanded.
He thought for a long moment, and I could see a small tremor on one side of his face. He was genuinely frightened of us, and I felt terribly guilty for this whole charade. Had Gore seen through him? Was she still investigating him? If so, were we ruining things for her? That was a real possibility, not to mention her finding out we’d been here, impersonating police officers. We needed to leave sooner rather than later.
“I don’t remember,” he said finally. “I might have, but if I did, it was about the children. I was trying to get her to let me take them for the weekend. They’re my children, too.” His tone was just short of whining.
My pity for the man ended. Gabriela had been a good mother, of that one thing I was sure. She’d also been struggling to keep her children fed. If she thought Luis was bad for them, there was a reason for that.
“I thought you said the only problem was you not earning enough money. If that’s the case, there’s no reason for Gabriela to keep you from the children,” Gwen said.
At this, Luis simply looked away and refused to answer.
I looked at Gwen, trying to communicate to her that it was time to go.
“Were you angry with Gabriela?” she went on.
“I was angry with her, but I loved her. Why would I kill her?” he insisted.
“Maybe you had a fight and you did something in the moment that you regretted later?” Gwen suggested.
He shook his head firmly, but I had no idea if I believed anything he said anymore.
“All right, why don’t you tell me about Carlos?” Gwen said.
The other name we’d seen on Gabriela’s phone. It was just another guess on her part, but apparently it hit the mark.
Luis’s face suffused with red, and he turned to the wall and slammed a fist into it. The loud thump was enough to make me flinch. When he turned back to us, his hand was bruised and bloody, and he held it close to his chest, so it must have hurt, but the expression on his face was still anger, not pain.
> It seemed this was the real reason Gabriela had kept him from the children and had thought him a bad husband. He was clearly violent.
“You knew about Carlos and Gabriela, then,” Gwen said. How had she put together that there was something going on between Gabriela and Carlos? I hadn’t thought of that. Then again, Gwen had seen Gabriela a lot more than I had. Maybe there was something in their interaction that had just clicked in her head.
“She told me that there was someone new in her life,” Luis said, his voice low and rough. “When I came back and wanted to live with her and the children again. He ruined everything.”
“And you were angry. You went up to her apartment to talk to her about it, but she insisted you go to the Pro-Stop gas station nearby so the children didn’t hear you yelling.” Again, this was all Gwen’s guesswork. But it didn’t make sense of the message Gabriela had left for Gwen, did it? Why wouldn’t she have just said her ex-husband was back in town and was threatening her physically if that was what had happened? Why be so mysterious and vague?
“No, I never went to talk to her in person. I told you, I was here all that day. I spoke to her in the morning, and she told me she would talk to me next week about visiting with the children more regularly.”
That sounded extremely suspicious to me.
Gwen said, “I don’t think so. You argued about her relationship with Carlos, didn’t you? She’s your wife, married to you in the temple. She’s sealed to you. She belongs to you, and so do the children.”
Gwen seemed to be goading him, which I thought was an extremely bad idea, considering what he’d done to the wall. I’d wanted to get out of here for some time now, but she wasn’t paying attention. Luis was distracting her.
His fists and jaw clenched, he said desperately, “She said she wanted a divorce. I didn’t want a divorce, but she said she could get one because I’d abandoned her and the children. Even if I didn’t want to leave them, even if I was back in the country.”
I had no idea what the legalities of divorce in such a situation would be, but if Gabriela had wanted one, she could probably have gotten one. Her Mormon temple sealing wouldn’t have made much difference in a legal matter.
Finally, Gwen looked at me and I motioned to the door urgently. She sighed. “Did you kill your wife, Mr. Suarez?”
“I didn’t kill her. I loved her,” he insisted.
What else could we do? It wasn’t like we had the power to arrest him or hold him in interrogation. We’d have to leave that to the real police officers.
“We’ll be back to talk to you again,” Gwen said, pointing at him.
Luis looked away and said nothing.
We let ourselves out of the mobile home.
We sat in the car for a few minutes before Gwen started it.
“That was dangerous,” I said.
“I know. I was terrified the whole time,” Gwen said. She put her head down and took a few big breaths, then settled a shaking hand on the steering wheel. “I felt like I had to do it for Gabriela.”
“Well, I don’t think you have to keep putting yourself in danger like that,” I said. And yes, I could hear the echoes of what Kurt had said the night before. But Greg Hope was not Luis Suarez. And as soon as I thought it, I knew that I was making unfair assumptions myself. That Greg Hope was a white-collar criminal, so he wouldn’t hurt me, but Luis, a Mexican immigrant, would.
Gwen shook herself from left to right, then took a couple of deep breaths and moved forward.
“What did you think of his story?” she asked in a cool, professional tone. “Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe at this point,” I said, watching to see if there was more emotion beneath the surface than she cared to show. With her history of trauma, I couldn’t imagine that witnessing violence like that was easy for her.
Gwen absently jingled her car keys in her hand. “Well, I guess we should head home,” she said.
Chapter 23
We were headed back to the main road when Gwen said, “I can’t believe Gabriela was having an affair. Do you think we should go talk to Carlos Santos now that we know about him and Gabriela?”
I sighed, not at all sure we should trust Luis on this. But of course Gwen wasn’t going to give up that easily. “Do you even know where he lives?” I asked.
“Yes, since he’s in the Spanish ward.” She glanced through the LDS app on her phone and said, “He lives in the same building as Gabriela. Which would have been very convenient for them.”
It seemed like a snide thing to say, and made me think again about Gwen’s own implicit racial biases.
“Let’s not pretend to be police officers this time,” I said, since I clearly wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of this.
“You think if we just tell him we’re nosy friends of Gabriela’s, that will make him want to open up about an affair?” she said sarcastically.
“I just think we can ask questions without lying.” We could let him draw his own conclusions about who we were, as long as we didn’t do anything illegal.
“All right, fine, we’ll try it your way this time,” she said with heavy skepticism and kept driving.
After Gwen parked, we climbed up to Carlos’s apartment on the second floor. She knocked on the door.
It was immediately answered by a very handsome man in a white shirt and tie who could have passed as a Mormon missionary, except for the fact that he didn’t have the traditional white-on-black nametag. Instead, his nametag was black on white and read celestial security instead of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints.
“Hi, do you remember me?” Gwen said cheerfully.
He gave her a blank look, which I guess meant she hadn’t made an impression on him at the Spanish ward.
“Well, I’m Hermana Gwen Ferris from the ward. This is Linda Wallheim. We need to ask you some questions about Gabriela Suarez,” she said. Her manner made it sound official, but at least she’d taken my advice about not impersonating the police.
Carlos hesitated. “I have a few minutes before I have to get to work,” he said.
Tall with muscular shoulders, he had a large Roman nose and a strong jaw, piercing eyes and long, framing eyelashes. He seemed male-model-perfect. I could see why a lonely young woman might’ve been tempted into an affair with him.
We sat down on his living room couch, which was made of brown leather and seemed new. Though this had the same floor plan and square footage as Gabriela’s apartment, his seemed in much better shape. The carpet was less worn, as were the kitchen flooring and appliances.
“You work for Celestial Security?” Gwen asked.
“I do. I’m a sales consultant.”
And he was just heading off to work now—I guess it made sense that he kept evening hours, since there would be no point in knocking on doors during the day when everyone was out. On the coffee table, I could also see a tablet like the one Serena Matthews had used on me. I repressed a faint shudder at the thought of the fake temple décor of the headquarters.
“How long have you been working for them?” Gwen asked, still sounding quite official.
“Three years now.”
“And are you happy with your position in the business?”
“I’ve been promoted twice and I’m making a very good living now, so yes, I’m quite happy,” Carlos said.
“Was Gabriela also in sales?” Gwen asked.
I hadn’t thought there was another way to find out this information, but obviously, there was.
“No,” Carlos said.
“What did she do at Celestial Security, then?” Gwen pressed.
“Well, she wasn’t in sales,” he said again.
I could see Gwen looking away, too embarrassed to ask directly about the affair, so I jumped in with, “Did you know that Gabriela was afraid of being a
ccused of embezzlement by the bishop?” I said. This was a part of the case that still didn’t make any sense to me.
Carlos went rigid in response. “What?”
“She called us a few days before her murder and said that Bishop Hope was threatening to call the authorities about money the ward had given her,” I explained. I still didn’t know who she’d been talking to when I overheard her at the church talking about “Obispo Hope,” but it could have been Carlos.
Gwen was giving me an impatient look. She didn’t seem to think that this part mattered, apparently.
“I think she must have misunderstood,” Carlos said. “The bishop would never have done that to her.”
“Oh?” I was skeptical. This was the second time someone had suggested that. But Gabriela’s English had been good. “He was paying her a regular amount each month, not just reimbursing her for expenses. Why would he do that? That’s not standard procedure for the Mormon church at all.”
“Well, she needed a lot of financial assistance for her children, with her husband being gone. Bishop Hope knew that,” Carlos said. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“I suspect most of the members in the Spanish ward need a lot of assistance, but Bishop Hope couldn’t possibly have given them all that amount of money each month,” I pointed out.
Now Carlos just stared. “I’m not a member of the bishopric. I only work for the man. I wouldn’t know why he does what he does in church matters.”
It was true, and frustrating. I couldn’t press him any further on that.
I nodded to Gwen to indicate it was her turn and hoped she’d be gentle.
“What can you tell us about Gabriela? How did you two meet?” Gwen began.
With a look of confusion, Carlos said, “We met last year when she moved in. She was a single mother with three children and we both worked at Celestial Security. We were friends.”
“You were more than friends, though, weren’t you?” Gwen said in a low voice, as if guaranteeing confidentiality for whatever he told her.
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