Dead Heat (19 page)

CHAPTER 14

Ryan tossed a file at Lucy while he slid into the driver’s seat. They were heading to Michael Rodriguez’s old neighborhood. “That’s from Zach,” he said. “You asked him to run a list of foster kids who went missing in the last two years, or something.”

“Kids in Michael’s demographic,” she said.

“Gotta love Zach. He always comes through.”

She flipped through the information. Not only had Zach pulled all the missing foster kids, but he’d highlighted several who had been in the same foster homes as Michael, though not all at the same time. “There are a dozen kids who went missing over the last two years who had been in at least one of the same foster homes as Michael.”

“Together?”

“No—except for one. Richard Diaz. He went missing six months ago. The first home they were in together for three months.” Richard Diaz. The same name that Father Flannigan had mentioned.

Lucy’s phone rang. It was Sean.

“Am I interrupting something?” Sean asked.

“No. Ryan and I are driving, following up on a lead.”

“I talked to Kane. It was very one-sided.”

“One-sided?”

“Kane’s like Jack.”

“Ah.” Jack wasn’t a talker.

“I told him about the scar, sent him the photo. All he said was that I didn’t need to call him; kids were recruited by the cartels all the time, it’s nothing new. But I think he’s interested. He’ll call you if he learns something. Just don’t expect much from him.”

“I appreciate it, whether or not he finds something. How’s the job in Dallas going?”

“I know who it is. I just need to set the trap.”

“That was fast.”

“It took me three hours. I’m getting rusty.”

She laughed. “I love you.”

“Back at ya, princess.” He hung up.

“You share everything with your boyfriend?” Ryan said.

“Yes. His brother Kane knows a lot about the drug cartels. I wanted him to see the mark on Michael’s arm. The DEA is stumped. I thought Kane might know what it means.”

Ryan winced.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m just following a line of investigation.”

“Yeah, but, isn’t Sean’s brother a mercenary?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well,
not exactly
isn’t going to cut it when Donnelly finds out you’re talking about his case behind his back.”

“Sean didn’t tell him about Sanchez.” Though Lucy wasn’t certain of that. “We thought that Kane might know something about the mark that would help us track down Michael.”

“You don’t have to sell me. But you need to at least cover your ass with Casilla.”

“You’re right.” She bit her lip. She’d meant to tell Casilla about being followed from St. Catherine’s, but it had honestly slipped her mind. “Ryan, I may have been followed today.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I didn’t have anything to share except a feeling. I went through evasive driving maneuvers and no one tipped their hand. It was more a feeling I had of being watched. I get them sometimes.”

“Hey, I get it. I worked undercover for three years in Houston. One of the reasons my first marriage failed. You get that sixth sense. Saved my ass more than once.”

She was relieved he understood. “I think someone followed me from Saint Catherine’s. I lost them in a neighborhood near Starbucks. Meaning, I turned into the neighborhood and whoever was following me didn’t. There were two cars that caught my attention. A dark-blue, new-model Honda without plates driven by a white female and a white panel van driven by a middle-aged Hispanic male. There was a plumbing logo on the side; I’d recognize it if I saw it again. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t someone else that I missed.”

“Watch your back, Kincaid. And tell Casilla.” He pulled over on a street crowded with beat-up cars and a few shiny rides. “It’s that place, across the street.”

The apartment structure was brown and sagging behind an equally sagging chain-link fence. Kids played in the front; men and women of all different ages, mostly Hispanic, sat on stoops and watched as the two feds approached.

“Do you have a plan?” Ryan asked. “This isn’t a neighborhood we want to stay in.”

“Michael came here the week before he disappeared. There has to be a reason.”

“Over a year ago,” Ryan said flatly. He obviously didn’t think they’d find anything after this long, but Lucy was more optimistic.

“Let’s start with the old Rodriguez apartment.”

Michael and his father had lived in apartment 110, in the back corner. The old woman who lived there now refused to open the door. She spoke in rapid Spanish, and Lucy responded in kind. The woman still didn’t open the door, said she’d been here for three years and didn’t know anyone who lived here before.

Lucy tried several of the neighbors. No one answered their doors. Whether they were home or not was uncertain.

“Why would he come here?” Lucy asked almost to herself. “Wait—”

She walked back to the front office, which was one unsecured room with mailboxes. The manager, a scrawny Hispanic man of fifty with sleeve tattoos and a telltale prison tat on his wrist, was behind a filthy glass window in a tiny, cramped office littered with tools and food wrappers. A loud fan blew air but did nothing to rid the room of the foul stench of sweat and cheap cologne.

He glared at them. Lucy showed her badge and said in Spanish, “How long have you worked here?”

“I don’t have to answer no questions.”

“I can bring you to FBI headquarters and ask them.”

“Bullshit,
chica
.”

“There are two missing children.”

“No one’s missing. I’da heard.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Two years,” he said.

She showed him Michael’s photograph. “Have you seen this boy?”

He didn’t even look at the picture. “No.”

“Look at it.”

“I ain’t seen him.”

“What about this man?” She showed him Sanchez’s picture. Right in front of his face, plastered against the glass.

“No.”

But there was a flicker. Lucy was certain he knew both Michael and Sanchez.

“It would benefit you if you cooperated.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Lucy,” Ryan said under his breath. He was standing by the mailboxes. Most had last names, some scratched out, some barely legible. A partial name at apartment 210 read:

D Z

At first she didn’t see it; then she nodded.

She turned to the manager. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Don’t harass my tenants, if you know what’s good for you!”

Ryan stepped up to the glass, all six feet of solid cop muscle. “Is that a threat? Because I haven’t reached my quota today for arresting assholes.”

The manager gave Ryan the finger. Ryan stared for a long minute. The manager glanced away first.

They left the building. “I hate pricks.”

“He recognized both Michael and Sanchez.”

“He won’t say anything. He’s more scared of Sanchez than us.”

Ryan looked up the address and any information on Richard Diaz’s mother. “Teresa Diaz. Never been married. Several arrests for drug possession, public intoxication, prostitution. Five children between the ages of four and sixteen, four different fathers, all in foster care.”

“That’s awful.”

“That’s reality. When I was in patrol in Houston, I wasn’t just a cop. I was a fucking family counselor dealing with people just like her. I swear, if I had one wish it wouldn’t be for world peace, it would be to make drugs disappear. Poof. Solve half the damn problems in this country. Stealing, murder, abuse. My prediction? Four of her five kids will be dead or in prison by the time they’re twenty-one.”

She glanced at Ryan. A darkness had spread across his face. “That’s pessimistic.”

“No, optimistic. I’m holding out for the youngest kid. Maybe he or she will make it out of the cycle, now that the mother is out of the picture.”

Unlike the other neighbors, Teresa Diaz opened the door almost immediately. She was an impossibly skinny woman who looked fifty, but her file said she was thirty-three. Her stringy brown hair hung limp around her once pretty face that now had several open sores. Her eyes were red, from lack of sleep or drugs or both.

The apartment was a pit, worse than most Lucy had seen, but Ryan barely noticed it. Rotting food coupled with stale beer and the fresher scent of marijuana. That’s when Lucy noticed the joint between her stained fingers.

Ryan showed his badge and said, “Put that out.”

“Fucking cops,” she said and staggered into the living room. She took a long drag on the joint before putting it in an overflowing ashtray.

“What are you on?” Ryan said, walking into the dark room.

Lucy followed but left the door open. There were three mismatched couches crammed into the room, and a three-legged coffee table propped up by telephone books. It was littered with drug paraphernalia including used needles and one impressively large bong. A flat-screen television was mounted on the wall. There were no real decorations, except along the hall leading to what Lucy presumed was the bedroom or bedrooms. Pictures of kids, some in cracked frames, some tacked up.

“What’s it to you? Go ahead, arrest me. At least I’ll get a decent meal.”

“We’re not going to arrest you,” Ryan said. “We’re here to talk about your son, Richard.”

“My Richie? He do something? Not my fault. He was a good kid till you people took him away. All my kids were good kids, they did nothing wrong.”

“When was the last time you saw your son?”

“My son? Richie?” She blinked, confused. She was definitely high on more than marijuana. “Tommy? You arresting babies now?”

“Richie,” Ryan said. “When was the last time you saw Richie?”

She waved her hand. “Dunno. I used to get visitation, you know? But the pigs stopped that. Fucking assholes. I was a good mama. Better than my mama. I never hit my kids. Not once. Never.” She pulled up her sleeve. “See this?”

“The needle marks?” Ryan said calmly.

She poked a long jagged scar that went from her elbow halfway to her shoulder. “My mama did that when I was eleven. Blood everywhere. I don’t do that to my kids, but you assholes took them anyway. So arrest me, whatever.” She stuck her chin out defiantly.

Ryan retained an eerie calm when he spoke, though his body was tense. He held out Michael’s picture. “Is this a friend of Richie’s?”

She grabbed the photo and stared. “Michael. His asshole father is in prison with Richie’s asshole father.”

Definitely not a coincidence. Lucy prompted, “They visited last year, together.”

“Richie used to visit me every week, even though I was only allowed to visit him and my other babies once a month. He used to bring me food and money, sometimes. He’s a good boy. I haven’t seen him in months. They said he ran away. That’s not my fault, it’s theirs. They were supposed to protect him, right? Protect him from
me
?” She barked out a laugh. “I protected
him
, now he’s run away. Is that why you’re here? Because you found him? No one cares, you know. No one cares about my babies but me.”

“He brought Michael here.”

She shrugged. “Once or twice. Not in a long time.” She suddenly sat heavily on the couch. “You think you can get me to see my kids? They said no more visitation, which is just bullshit. They’re my kids, and they lost one. I should get them back, the rest, because they’ll just lose them, too.”

“Thank you for your time,” Ryan said through clenched teeth. He turned to leave.

Lucy had one more question. “Ms. Diaz, who’s the CPS caseworker for your family?”

She shrugged. “Hell if I know. They’re all assholes.”

Lucy and Ryan walked out. Ryan was walking fast to the car. Lucy had to jog to keep up. Ryan had the car running by the time she slid into the passenger seat. As soon as she closed the door, he sped off.

He didn’t talk driving back to FBI headquarters. Lucy let him stew. She sent Zach all the information they’d learned, and asked him to find out who Richard Diaz’s CPS caseworker was as well as the caseworkers for all the runaways who fit the profile.

Why had Michael still associated with kids from his old neighborhood? Had he been seeing Richie Diaz all along, or was it recent, right before he ran away?

She also asked Zach for the files related to Richard Diaz’s disappearance. It couldn’t be a coincidence that both Michael and Richie, from the same old neighborhood, both in foster care, both with incarcerated fathers, had been listed as runaways. But Michael had been gone more than a year, and Richie only six months.

“It seems that Michael kept at least one of his friendships from his old neighborhood, a relationship that even the Popes didn’t know about,” Lucy said.

“You saw that woman. Kids who grow up in places like that don’t turn out well.”

“They can.”

“Rarely.”

“I know you’re angry—”

“Angry? Yes.
Furious.
And depressed. It’s because of people like Teresa Diaz that I quit the force. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t stand back and let shit happen.” His hands were tight on the steering wheel. “At least here, in the FBI, I thought I was making a difference.”

“You are.”

“Not when I have to go through this shit again.”

She suspected there was more than just Teresa Diaz and her five children bothering Ryan. But he wasn’t talking, and she didn’t want to pry even more. She would, though, when the time was right.

“The question is,” she asked several minutes later, “why did Michael return to his old neighborhood fourteen months ago? What were he and Richie doing? Were they working together?”

“And the missing kids keep piling up,” Ryan said. In the parking lot of FBI headquarters, he said, “Can I have a minute? I’m going to call my boys. They should be out of school by now.”

“Of course.” And that was the crux of the problem. Ryan wanted to be with his kids and he couldn’t.

*   *   *

Being forced to work for Jaime Sanchez for so long, Michael had learned many survival skills. He could hot-wire a car, pickpocket tourists, and hide in plain sight, among other things.