CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ictoria was
finally back on semi-good terms with her editor. He still wasn’t satisfied
with her current progress on her investigations, however. He was pressuring
her to make her stories in the next few days or cut them loose.
After all the time and effort that she had put into
her investigations, dropping her stories really wasn’t much of an option. If
she did, her career would be taking at least three steps back. Besides, she
felt that there was something there.
Today, Victoria had an interview with Kevin
Frasier—a friend of Antonio Ortiz. Victoria had managed to speak briefly with
Lou Kinley after getting his work number from Ms. Ortiz. The call had been a
wash. The young man had denied having had contact with his former friend in
the weeks leading up to Antonio’s murder. He had also denied having any
information about who could have wanted his friend dead. Victoria didn’t
believe him. Despite his words, he had sounded stressed and nervous. It was
investigatory reporting 101: sometimes the way a person said words were more
important that the actual words themselves. Lou Kinley was lying to her.
Victoria had decided to move on to Antonio’s other childhood
friend, Kevin. Kevin had only agreed to speak with her on the condition that
she would not record their conversation or mention his name in any of her
future reporting. She had requested to meet Kevin at a neutral,
non-threatening location—a local coffee shop in downtown San Diego called LION
Coffee. Whenever Victoria visited the city, it was one of her favorite
hangouts. As typical of many indie coffee shops, the patrons were generally an
eclectic bunch.
When Victoria got to the coffee shop, she saw that Kevin
was already sitting outside on the patio. He was smoking a cigarette. Since
the shooting, Kevin had graduated from high school and moved to San Diego to
attend a small, junior college. His long, blonde hair was done up in
dreadlocks. He had a jagged scar on his right forearm and a generally disorganized
appearance. He looked like an interesting mix of a 1960s hippie and a 1990s
surfer boy. She didn’t know if he would throw her the “peace” sign or say
“hella” every other word.
“Kevin Frasier?” she asked as she approached him,
reaching her right hand out in greeting.
“You’re the reporter?” he asked hesitantly, before
shaking her hand.
“Yes, Victoria Sanchez. Thank you for meeting me
here
.” Victoria sat down in the
seat opposite of Kevin at the small, round metal table. It was a hot day
outside, so Victoria was grateful that Kevin had chosen the table that was
situated under an outdoor umbrella. Since recording the interview wasn’t an option,
Victoria took out a pad of paper and pen to take notes.
“So, this is about Tony?”
“Yes. I’m investigating the events surrounding Antonio
Ortiz’s murder. Antonio’s mother mentioned that you were one of her son’s best
friends. That you all had known each other since grade school?”
“Yeah. We grew up together around the way.”
“Did you speak with or have any interaction with Antonio
in the days prior to his death?”
“No, at least not in the few days right before. The
last time I saw him in person was a couple of weeks before he died.”
“Did he have any enemies that you know of that would
have wanted to do him harm?”
“Antonio was a good guy. I don’t remember him ever getting
into a fight with anyone. He never caused any trouble.”
“His mother mentioned that Antonio had started a new
job a few months prior to his death. Do you know anything about that? Like the
name of the company where he was working and what type of work he did?”
Kevin looked across the table, past Victoria and
over at the sidewalk. He took a long drag on his cigarette and squinted his
eyes as if he had been staring directly into the sun for too long. Tapping the
end of his cigarette on the patio table, he looked down, watching the
charcoaled ashes fall to the ground.
“Antonio was a good guy,” he said, his blue eyes gazing
back into Victoria’s eyes.
“Yes, you mentioned that.”
“He just wanted to help his mom out, you know? He
saw how hard she worked. She wanted to help him pay for college. But she
worked as a waitress at some run down ass café near the projects. She could
barely afford to keep the lights on in their apartment and the two of them
fed.”
“So, that’s why Antonio got a new job? To help out
his mother?” Victoria asked, breaking the silence that had ensued when Kevin
stopped talking for a moment.
“Yeah. He figured that he could earn enough to help
his mom out and save a little bit for college. He was real smart, you know.
Way smarter than me. I’m just going to a junior college, but Antonio had close
to a 4.0 grade point average senior year. His SAT scores were ridiculous. He
could have gone anywhere he wanted—Cal Tech even.”
“Where was he working at, Kevin?”
Victoria watched as the young man blew out a long
breath, and then took another long drag of his cigarette. Victoria found that
she was holding her breath. Waiting. She wasn’t sure of
what
exactly
she was waiting for. She had no idea what Kevin Frasier was about to say, but
she had a feeling that it just might be the lead that she had been looking for
to blow this case wide open.
“He was working for a shipping company.”
“A shipping company,” Victoria frowned, scribbling
the information down onto her notepad. “Did he ever tell you the name of the
company? You mean a shipping company like UPS?”
“Yeah. He said he was working for the Henning
Shipping Company.”
“What?” This tidbit of information was so shocking
the Victoria actually blinked. She had to be hearing him wrong. “You mean
the
Henning Cooper Company?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?” Kevin Frasier definitely now had
her total undivided attention.
“Yeah, I’m positive. He was real excited about it
when he landed that job.”
“Do you know how he found out about the position?
Was it a part of some sort of internship for school?” It was possible that the
Henning Cooper Company had set up some sort of internship program for local schoolchildren.
Large companies were always setting up those types of programs for the good
publicity that they provided. And given the financial situation of Antonio’s
family, he probably wouldn’t have been too picky about what the internship position
was.
“No, it wasn’t part of any type of formal program. He
said that he heard about the opening from one of his cousins. I didn’t think
too much of it. His cousins were a bunch of losers—half of them were selling
dope and what not.”
“How did his dope-dealing cousins find out about a
job at the Henning Cooper Company? Why would they even want to hire a
seventeen-year-old boy?”
“You got me, lady. I remember asking him one time
why he was even taking advice from his cousins. He had never seemed all that
close to them before. I mean, he was real close to his Uncle Romero, but not
so much to his cousins. His uncle was like a father figure to him after his
own father died.”
“Did he tell you what type of job he was doing for
them, specifically? His mother mentioned that he may have been a driver.”
“He helped moved some packages for them. On some weekends,
he would drive down to the coast, to Galveston. He used his Uncle Romero’s car
to go on some runs. It wasn’t like something he devoted a lot of time to or
anything. After he first started working there, he didn’t say too much at all
about it.”
What the heck?
This didn’t make any sense, at all. Why would the Henning Cooper
Company need to hire someone like Antonio Ortiz to deliver items for them?
“Do you know what type of packages?” she asked, her
eyes focused on Kevin’s face, looking for any ‘tells’ that maybe he wasn’t
being completely honest with her.
“Yeah,” he cleared his throat before saying, “Look
you cannot mention that I told you this. I don’t want my name in the paper. I
don’t want to be questioned by the police. I’m trying to start my life over, a
new start.”
“You have my word that I’ll keep you as an anonymous
source, Kevin. If the police find out about you, it won’t be from me.”
“Okay. He didn’t know what he was transporting at
first. He thought that maybe it was just extra items that weren’t accounted
for during the first transports from the containers. It wasn’t a big deal. He
would just do a few runs for them on the weekends. He would go down to their
port in Galveston, load up his Uncle Romero’s truck and then drop off the
packages to wherever they told him to. They were paying him some serious
cash. I’m not talking about a $7.50 per hour job like at McDonald’s. They
would pay for his driving expenses—so gas mileage—and at least a few hundred
dollars cash.”
“Just for a delivery?”
“Yeah, just for delivering the packages. Crazy,
right? So one weekend, I went with him. Galveston was like a four-hour drive
from Dallas, and he was tired of making the trips by himself. I thought what
the hell. Driving down to the coast for a weekend isn’t a bad way to kill some
time.”
“Did you just go with him this one time? When did
you make this trip with Antonio?
“Yeah. It was just one time. Really, it was just a
few weeks before he was shot.”
“So it was just you and Antonio on that trip?”
Kevin hesitated several seconds before saying, “No.
Our friend Lou Kinley went with us too. It was just supposed to be a fun
weekend trip. To be honest, Lou and I were a little bit jealous of Antonio. I
mean, he had this great new job and they were paying him mad cash just to
transport some boxes around.”
Now the pieces were starting to come together about
Antonio Ortiz’s mystery job. And Victoria always loved it when her hunches
panned out—Lou Kinley
had
been lying to her about not seeing Antonio in
the weeks leading up to his murder.
“So what happened during the trip?”
“The drive down there was great. We left early that
morning, so we got there around noon. Lou and I helped Antonio load up the
truck, and then we made six different stops that afternoon.”
“Did you look into any of the packages?”
Victoria peered closely at Kevin. He brought his
hand that wasn’t holding the cigarette up to his face, pinching the bridge of
his nose, and lowering his head. “Yeah. We looked. Antonio didn’t want to.
It was my idea. I started joking with him about how no one gets paid that much
money to transport legal stuff. I convinced him to open up one of the packages
. . .”
“And?” Victoria prodded him as he trailed off.
Kevin looked back up at Victoria, a sorrowful look
on his face. “Drugs. I think either cocaine or heroin. It was a white
powder. I mean, we had delivered at least fifty of those 18”x12” boxes.
That’s a crazy amount of product.”
“Where did you deliver the packages to?”
“We drop the boxes off at two warehouses and four
office buildings.”
“Do you remember the addresses?”
“I’m not sure. I sort of remember what one of the
warehouse buildings looks like. It’s been such a long time though. I don’t
think I could be sure.”
Kevin’s revelations had completely rocked Victoria
to her core. She hadn’t seriously considered the possibility that the two
murders that she was investigating had in any way been connected. Who would
think that a rich, powerful, former U.S. Congressman would have this type of
connection to a poor, Latino kid from West Dallas. Normally, those two worlds
just didn’t cross. Victoria knew that personally.
Still, even though there was this connection between
Henning and Antonio Ortiz, there was no real indication that Henning had
anything to do with the boy’s death.
Unless
. . .
“Did you all take any of the drugs, maybe? You said
that you delivered fifty boxes, maybe you all thought that if you took a little
bit it wouldn’t be missed?”
“Not Tony. He wouldn’t do anything like that.”
“You said ‘Not Tony.’ Does that mean that you or
Lou took some of the product?”
“There were still a few more boxes left when we made
the discovery. We had one more drop off site to go. Tony was freaking out.
He had really thought that there wouldn’t be anything illegal in the boxes. He
couldn’t believe that he had been transporting heroin all this time. Who would
think that a big-time shipping company like that would be in the illegal drug
trade, you know?” Kevin took a long shaky breath before continuing. “Well,
anyway, Lou got the bright idea to take some of the drugs. He figured that he
could do some easy sells on the side and make some extra cash. So when Tony
was in the front of the truck, Lou put some in a bag. He didn’t think anyone
would notice.”
