A Killing in the Valley (29 page)

B
Y MIDMORNING, LUKE’S OFFICE
had leaked the story. The details were on the Internet before lunch, and he had to stop taking phone calls about it. By midafternoon, the parking lot at Cottage Hospital, where Al Destifano was recovering nicely, was jammed with remote television trucks and reporters from as far away as San Diego and San Francisco.

Both Al and Willa gave impassioned interviews about Steven’s generosity, selflessness, and nobility. Willa in particular, now cleaned up and made up (after the mud and fatigue of her ordeal was scrubbed off she turned out to be a strikingly attractive woman), was especially passionate about Steven’s heroism.

The only part of their narrative that wasn’t true was where they had been found (Luke made sure they got their stories straight about that). They admitted, very sheepishly, that they had trespassed onto the ranch to camp out, and that Steven had found them inside the property line. So not only was he a hero, he was a law-abiding one.

Alex Gordon tried to talk the press into staying away from the ranch, citing security issues. When that didn’t wash he went to court and asked for an emergency injunction, which was immediately and rudely rebuffed—the judge wasn’t going to get near that hot potato.

Luke orchestrated Steven’s interview process with the brio of a symphony conductor. Steven, standing in front of the barrage of cameras and reporters, his back to the sun-dappled hills of his grandmother’s ranch, hair washed, beard shaved, looked like a combination of dream boat surfer and choir boy. He answered all the questions with the proper mixture of self-effacement and bulldog resolve. Partway through the proceedings, Juanita, playing the part of the old-fashioned grande dame, joined him on camera. They were a striking couple—California’s rich history standing next to its bright future. That Steven was from Arizona, and that he was out on bail on a murder charge, was hardly mentioned.

Standing to the side as he watched his client perform with the cool but aw-shucks assurance of a movie star (Jimmy Stewart came to mind), Luke knew that in a few days this cloud of euphoria would pass. Steven would still be confined to the ranch, he would go to trial, and he would have an uphill battle. The trial was months away, unfortunately. It was going to be hard to sustain this positive energy. News has a short shelf life, he knew—he had been down this road before, with other clients in highly publicized situations. Today’s hero is tomorrow’s footnote.

But for this brief moment in time, he was going to milk Steven’s heroics for all they were worth. A lot of this bullshit, he thought, as he watched the reporters jockeying for position, was over-the-top hype, the media’s insatiable appetite for anything sensational. But the core of the story—a man putting his own life on the line to save that of others—was real. If there was any enduring value in this, it would be whether the state had the stomach and cold-blooded logic to convict such a man.

A blast of dry heat hit Kate as she walked out of the American West terminal in Tucson. Even though it was late October, the temperature was pushing ninety. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she pulled her rolling suitcase to the car-rental pickup stop and waited for the shuttle that would take her to the Hertz lot. She was going to be here for two days; three, max. Sophia could handle being on her own for a few days. If she got lonely or nervous, she could bunk with the Garrisons.

It had been two weeks since Steven McCoy’s dramatic rescue effort and the media frenzy that followed. Luke had squeezed a week’s worth of publicity out of it. Then it died down, and things were back to normal.

Kate was here to do basic detective work. She intended to interview any friend of Steven’s who would meet with her. Steven had given her some names, and she had gotten a list from Tyler as well.

Luke wasn’t going to call Tyler as a defense witness—there was nothing Tyler could testify to that would help Steven in the specific circumstances they were dealing with. But Tyler was going to be there, as a prosecution witness. He was on Alex Gordon’s list, and Elise Hobson had already interviewed him over the phone. Later on, when the trial date was closer, Elaine or Alex would meet with Tyler and give him a good working-over; that was a given.

Not putting Tyler on the defense list had been a calculated decision on Luke’s part. If he brought Tyler in as a defense witness, the prosecution’s cross-examination would be bare-knuckled; but as their witness, they had to treat him more gently. Luke would still get a good crack at him, and by following the prosecution, he would have a better chance of turning Tyler’s testimony to their advantage, or at least neutralizing it.

Kate threw her bag into the trunk of her rental car and drove into the city, where she had booked a room at a Marriott that was near the university. Most of the people on her list were students and lived in the neighborhood. She would see as many of them as she could today. Tomorrow morning after breakfast she would meet with Tyler and go over his story with him in detail, to make sure there were no new surprises. Then she would finish the rest of her interviews. She had set aside an additional day for follow-ups or appointments that had to be rescheduled.

Sophia danced around her living room, drinking from a glass of orange juice laced with vodka. Tina, a slice of Hawaiian-style pizza in one hand and a drink like Sophia’s in the other, laughed along with her. She was almost faint-headed with laughter. This was her second drink; the vodka was definitely taking its toll. But so what? Tomorrow was Saturday. She didn’t have to get up early for school. And she wouldn’t have to face her parents, with their stern, suffocating, scared-stiff protection. She felt as if a demon had taken over her brain and was turning her into someone else, someone happy and carefree. This is the most fun I’ve had since I moved here, she thought. This is really what it’s like to be an American.

Sophia flopped down on the couch next to her. “Is that a hoot or what?” she said, pointing to the television, where a DVD of
Legally Blonde
was playing. They had rented it from the nearby video store. It was a stupid movie, but Reese Witherspoon was so cute, and so pushy. And her clothes were cool, in a retro way that was almost new, it was so old.

“That’s what I want to do someday,” Tina said, looking at the screen.

“Be an actress?” Sophia laughed. “You’re scared to death of performing. That’s why you’re on the tech crew, instead of being in the play.”

Tina shook her head. “Not an actress. A lawyer.” She looked away, embarrassed. “A college graduate.”

“So why wouldn’t you? You can do the work. Have you taken the college boards yet?”

Tina shook her head. “No. I haven’t let myself think about it.”

“Well, you should,” Sophia said encouragingly. “You need to sign up soon, though. Latinos have an edge in getting into good schools,” she told Tina knowledgeably. “I’m taking them again next month—I need to bring my math scores up. We could study for them together,” she offered.

“I don’t know,” Tina balked. “I’m not that good with English.”

“You’re fine. You could handle AP work.” Sophia had been in the GATE program—Gifted and Talented Enrichment, the top academic rung in California—since elementary school. The kids in those classes were almost all Anglos and Asians. Hardly any Latino kids were in GATE classes. There was a glass ceiling that Latinos butted their heads against when it came to academics.

“Plenty of kids in my classes aren’t as smart as you,” she assured Tina. “You could try to test in next semester,” she suggested.

“It’s the last semester,” Tina replied with resignation. She had wanted to try to test in at the beginning of the year, but she had been too scared. She knew her place—it had been seared into her since she and her family had risked their lives to be smuggled into California from Mexico, seven years ago. They were working on getting their green cards, but they weren’t legal yet, and the future for that was murky, especially after 9/11 and the backlash against foreigners, especially illegal ones. Don’t rock the boat was her parents’ mantra. Along with be as invisible as you can.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sophia told her. “If you scored high enough, they’d have to let you in. And that would help on your college aps.”

“I’ll think about it,” Tina said, unconsciously falling into the soft voice she used when she was feeling insecure or threatened.

“I won’t bug you about that now,” Sophia promised her. “Tonight is our time, sister,” she said with a smile. “This is fun, isn’t it?”

Sitting in a nice home, drinking vodka and orange juice (she would have to be careful not to drink too much, she didn’t have much experience with drinking), eating delivery pizza, and watching a video with a friend—that was definitely fun, Tina thought. Sophia had invited her to spend the night, after play practice. She had confided that her mother was out of town, so they could party down. Moderately, of course. Since neither knew any boys they were comfortable enough with to ask over, they could have fun together.

Tina had called her mother and wheedled permission to stay over at her friend Sophia’s. She had to lie to get it, guaranteeing her mother that Sophia’s parents (she added a father) would be there, that they would go to bed at a reasonable hour, and that she’d come home in the morning to do her weekend chores.

“Want to get stoned?” Sophia asked her.

“Aren’t we already?” Tina giggled, holding up her glass.

“This is vodka. I mean pot.”

Tina bit her lip. She had never tried marijuana. She was probably the only girl in the high school who hadn’t, except for girls like her who came from overly strict families. “Do you have some?” she asked timorously.

Sophia laughed. “I’ve got a couple of joints stashed away. You do smoke, don’t you?”

“A couple of times,” Tina lied uneasily. “Not very often.”

“It’s just the two of us, and we’re not going anywhere,” Sophia cajoled. “There’s a quart of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked in the freezer and a package of Newman’s Oreos, for when we get the munchies. Come on,” she begged. “I don’t want to do it alone.”

Tina felt safe with Sophia. One more new experience to try.

“Okay.”

The girls were high. Not ripped—the grass wasn’t that good, but they had a fine buzz going.
Legally Blonde
was almost over. They lay on their stomachs in front of the couch and stared at the screen.

When the marijuana high initially hit her, Tina had a blast of first-timer’s paranoia. But she fought off the panic attack, and once that went away she found herself in a mellow space. The grass, the drinks (they switched to straight O.J.), the ice cream and cookies, and the overall feeling of friendship, was something she hadn’t experienced since she had moved here. For years, really. She had never had a real friend here, she had always kept people at arm’s length. Sophia was her first friend. She felt very lucky.

“My mom’s going to be a lawyer,” Sophia said, nodding in the direction of the screen. “She’s going to night law school. She’ll be done in a couple of years.”

Tina admired Sophia’s mother. She was tough, independent, and not scared of anything, it seemed—the opposite of her own mother. “What kind of work does she do now?” she asked as she ate some ice cream off the tip of her spoon.

“She’s a private detective.”

Tina knew there were women police officers, but detectives, like in the movies?
Chinatown,
with Jack Nicholson, was one of her favorite movies. He was her image of a private detective.

“She works with criminals?” she asked.

“Plenty of them,” Sophia answered. “She’s working on a big case now, that’s why she isn’t here. She’s out of town, interviewing witnesses.” She bit into a cookie. “You must have heard about it. The guy who’s accused of killing Maria Estrada.”

Tina shuddered. That was scary, knowing someone who was closely tied into that. She had been thinking about the killing almost every day since Maria’s body had been found. She had been one of the last people who had seen her alive. Her and the two boys she and Maria had been with after lunch that day.

The boy who had been arrested was named Steven McCoy. He was the one who had rescued the campers during the fire. She remembered that from television. His picture had been in the
News-Press,
too. She had cut it out and looked at it closely. He looked like the boy Maria had been with, but not really. Like they could be brothers, but not twins.

She knew she should have gone to the police and told them about what had happened with her and Maria. That’s what a good citizen would do. She wanted to be a citizen, and a good one. But she couldn’t; not then, and not now. Her family was in this country illegally. They could be deported, sent back to Guatemala. Her father had a job. She was going to graduate from high school. In her dreams, even go to college. She couldn’t jeopardize that.

Besides, according to the newspaper, the police had plenty of evidence against McCoy. So even if he wasn’t the one who had been with them, he could still have killed her. She didn’t want to see an innocent man get convicted of murder, but it wasn’t her decision. She was nobody. The police wouldn’t even listen to her.

One thing she knew for sure—you can’t trust the police. Her father had drilled that into her. After they were citizens, as good as anyone else in this country, then you could. Maybe. Her parents had a profound fear of the police. In their country, the police were as bad as the outlaws. The only difference was that one wore a badge and had authority, the other didn’t.

Still, the events of that day had been eating at her like a worm in her stomach. She was desperate to talk to someone about it. Sophia would be a good one to do it with. She could pretend she knew someone who knew something, and was asking on behalf of this imaginary friend.

“If your mother is working for this man, she must think he is innocent,” she ventured.

Sophia shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. Everyone deserves a good defense, guilty or innocent. That’s up to juries to decide.”

She was repeating what her mother had told her. She was her mother’s daughter, no matter how hard she tried not to be.