Red Man Down (7 page)

‘Cecelia said how proud you all were when he joined the department.’

‘Oh, sure. And you can ask anybody, he was a nice man and a damn good cop for years and years. But then …’ He studied the ocotillo fence along the street side of his yard for a while. When he turned back to Oscar his face was sad. ‘He kind of lost it there at the end, didn’t he?’

‘Seems like it,’ Oscar said. ‘It’s funny, but I never knew him, really. He was too much older when I was a kid down here, and in the department he was always working someplace I wasn’t. What was so nice about him, especially?’

‘He was always helping people. Learned that from his uncle, of course. Frank spent years driving for Meals on Wheels, dishing up Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless.
Señor
Do-Good, working his way into Heaven, I used to think. After Eddie grew up, the two of them for years were the go-to boys when anybody needed a timekeeper for a charity bike ride, or somebody to help out at the wounded bird shelter.’

‘So what do you think happened to change them?’

‘What happened to Eddie, I
think
, is he felt so bad about what happened to Frank he couldn’t stand it, so he started using drugs and alcohol to kill the pain, and before long he was a dead man walking. Long before those bullets found him, the Eddie I knew was gone. What happened to Frank, though … I can’t explain that and I don’t know anybody who can.’

‘Except Cecelia seemed to think she had an idea. I got the impression she had shared her thoughts with you and you didn’t disagree.’

He lifted both hands in a helpless gesture. ‘What’s the use? Might as well stand in front of an avalanche as disagree with Cecelia.’

Sarah and Oscar kept their eyes on him and waited.

He did a funny little flouncing maneuver that Sarah would not have thought possible in a hammock. ‘But she’s partly right.’

The two detectives waited again while Chico poured the last of his beer down his throat, took one more fierce drag from his cigarette and dropped it sizzling into the can. ‘For different reasons we both think the one who got the money was his wife.’

Oscar said, ‘Eddie’s wife?’

‘Yes, of course Eddie’s. Frank’s wife died years ago, don’t you remember that?’

‘Yes, yes … why does Cecelia think Angela’s got it?’

‘Angela was working in the credit union – she had access. She could have forged Frank’s signature on the receipts.’

Sarah said, ‘Mr García—’

‘Chico. Everybody calls me Chico.’

‘OK, Chico. But where’s the evidence? Has Angela taken nice trips, or bought a new car?’

‘No.’

‘Has she paid off the house?’

‘No, apparently not.’

‘Then why does she think Angela got the money?’

‘Cecelia thinks she’s hiding it somewhere. Partly it’s just anger. Cecelia says she never fit in, and she always spoiled everything for Eddie. She was jealous of his family – she wanted Eddie all to herself.’

‘What did she spoil?’

‘Well … we’re a big family, we share birthdays and holidays, help each other out when there’s an emergency. Till Angela came along, Eddie and Frank could always be counted on when somebody moved house or had a baby.’

‘Or needed a loan?’

‘That too. But Angela seemed to resent our closeness – she wanted Eddie to herself. She would always say they were too busy to move the furniture, they couldn’t afford potlucks right now, they had no money to spare.’

‘I can see why that would hurt. But what has it got to do with the missing money?’

‘Cecelia says Angela got Eddie to rescue her from her stupid job in the used clothing store and help her get a job with Frank at the credit union. Then, when the going got rough and Eddie wrecked his car and got fired, she divorced him and kept the house they bought together.’

‘I don’t see how that shows she got the bank money.’

He suddenly laughed. ‘Now that I say it out loud, you’re right, it sounds ridiculous. I told you, Cecelia has no proof, just a strong feeling.’

‘What do
you
think?’

‘About the marriage part, I think nobody understands anybody else’s marriage and we should just accept the fact that Eddie was crazy about Angela and quit trying to figure it out.’

‘Fair enough. But you have different reasons for suspecting her? Tell me about that.’

‘She left the bank soon after Frank killed himself. And she went back to that used clothing store Eddie rescued her from. Do you realize what a steep drop in living standards that caused her? Much harder work, lower salary, no benefits? Why would she do that? Unless she has money we don’t know about, she must be very hard up. I think the management at the credit union must have suspected her too, forced her out somehow and refused to give her a reference.’

‘But you don’t know.’

‘No, but you could find out, couldn’t you?’

‘Yes. Anything else?’

Darkness was falling, the streetlights coming on. In Chico’s yard, one tiny bulb burned above his patio entrance, but didn’t produce enough light to brighten the space under the ramada. In deep shadow, Chico fished in the cooler and came out with another can. ‘I guess if I’m honest,’ he said as he wiped it off on his blanket, ‘I’d have to admit I want her to be the guilty party because I just don’t like her. She can’t be trusted.’

‘That’s refreshingly candid,’ Sarah said. ‘Any reasons you want to share?’

Chico waved his drink vaguely. ‘Have you talked to her yet?’

‘Tomorrow.’

He smiled. ‘You’ll see what I mean,’ he said.

A
t the station on Tuesday morning Ollie Greenaway had everybody’s attention – for a while. He’d attended yesterday’s autopsy, and while the written report was not ready yet, he felt certain he already knew what would be in it. Unlike some detectives who had to keep a stern watch on themselves to get through an autopsy without hurling, Ollie got rosy and cheerful at his. He enjoyed the precision of the work the doctors did, and was always glad to draw that assignment.

‘The Animal went through all the protocols but he assured me several times that he was probably wasting his time,’ he told his teammates. ‘He kept saying’ – Ollie drew himself up and looked superior, doing his best imitation of Dr Greenberg – ‘“this body shows exactly the process I predicted at the crime scene. You see this bullet track through the spinal cord?”’ At the words ‘spinal cord’ Ollie lapsed into broad caricature. ‘“You do see, don’t you, my poor ignorant little police person, that this explains the small amount of blood loss?”’ Seeing Delaney getting ready to put his foot down, Ollie got serious. ‘What the doc is saying is that this guy was almost certainly dead after the first shot. We won’t have the written report till all the lab reports are back, and he’ll be even more cautious than usual since this is officer-involved. But I don’t think Spurlock has anything to fear from the autopsy report. And since there weren’t any witnesses, the autopsy settles everything, doesn’t it?’

‘Unless the neighborhood canvass turned up any watchers – did it?’

‘No,’ Ray said. ‘We had trouble finding anybody who’d even admit to being on that block on Saturday. That area’s about due to get torn down and rebuilt, I think – even during the week it’s mostly storage space for stuff that’s being sold somewhere else. All that’s open is the bar where the call originated. Even that looks about ready to close.’

‘Except don’t hold your breath, because it’s looked that way for five years that I know of,’ Jason said.

‘I wondered that day how that bar could stay in business,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s so dilapidated, and half the buildings around it are padlocked shut.’

‘Oh, come on, you know the answer to that,’ Jason said. ‘It’s your friendly neighborhood head shop.’

‘And rumor has it,’ Ray said, ‘that those rascals might also be doing a little trade in copper wire.’

‘How about it, Jason?’ Delaney said. ‘You got any skinny on that yet?’

‘Plenty of these rumors like Ray’s hearing.’ Jason looked condescending; too cool a cat to chase every little rustle in the wall. ‘Nobody local’s doing time for it yet, way I heard it.’

‘This doesn’t make sense though,’ Delaney said. ‘If they’re fencing wire why would they want to sic the cops on Ed Lacey?’

‘I managed to ask the bartender that question,’ Leo said, ‘while being, you know, extremely discreet so as not to risk offense.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Delaney looked amused. He tolerated more irony from Leo than any of the other detectives, Sarah thought. Probably because Leo was quite suave, actually – a canny old cop who could walk through a room full of half-drunk ranting people and come out the other side unscratched with the information he went in after. ‘What did the bartender say?’

‘Seems to have been a couple of new customers, out-of-towners just driving by looking for a beer and some chips. One of them whipped out a smartphone and called nine-one-one while the bartender and his regulars were busy minding their own business.’

‘Bet they hate when that happens.’

‘Sure didn’t do the bar any good,’ he said. ‘Emptied the place out in two minutes.’

‘OK, Leo, be serious now. That bartender must have been watching this whole thing go down.’

‘Maybe you can get him to cop to that, boss, but I couldn’t. He swears that soon as the place cleared out he decided to open the storeroom and re-stock the long-necks. Said he heard some funny popping noises while he was in there putting supplies on the two-wheeler, thought somebody must be playing with firecrackers. By the time he got back out by the window transferring beer into the cooler there, he looked outside and saw the lot across the street getting taped off and a row of official vehicles parked at the curb in front.’

‘Well,’ Delaney said, ‘you got his numbers, in case we have to try to get him into court later? Good. How do you think Internal Affairs sees this, Sarah?’

‘The way I read him, Jeffries wants to keep his nose clean and his briefcase neat. He’s always walking that fine line, one of us but not quite. If we can furnish him with a pat answer, I don’t see him going out of his way to cause trouble.’

Back at her desk, she opened her cell and found a text message from Oscar: ‘Don’t forget we have a lunch date with Angela and we have to have food waiting.’ The unwritten subtext was that Oscar wanted to get them both out of the building without Delaney finding out Sarah was helping him with this interview. Feeling like a high-school senior on skip day, she finished a report, grabbed her purse and jacket, and pussy-footed off the floor.

Oscar said he was afraid his presence might cause Angela to stamp off in anger, claiming she had been duped into an encounter that was distasteful to her. Sarah offered to do the interview alone if he thought it was safer, but he said he did not dare to risk lying to Delaney.

‘He can see through my head into my brain, I think,’ he said.

‘Oh, come on. Delaney’s shrewd but he doesn’t have magical powers. How about this – we can both be there, but I’ll do most of the talking. I’ll just tell her we’re partners and I brought you along to run the recorder and fetch the drinks, OK?’

Cifuentes had to do some deep breathing to agree to that; he had a profound need to be the Alpha Dog. But in the end he decided it was the safest way. They went over the checklist, making sure they had the right food waiting for her, plenty of condiments and extra straws for the big icy drink. They checked their questions again, and Oscar trotted back and forth fetching more salt and pepper and extra napkins. He brought salads and water for himself and Sarah, also, and insisted on paying for everything – keeping busy, being in charge of the food, eased his anxieties.

At 12:08 p.m. he nudged Sarah’s elbow and nodded toward the woman coming through the door. Sarah’s first thought was,
She must get a price break on the clothes at the store
. She wore a garishly printed smock made of some limp synthetic over too-long black pants of the same fabric. Her hair was mousey but neat, held in a ponytail by a purple scrunchy. She probably carried about the same amount of superfluous flesh as Cecelia Lopez, but arranged differently – the eye did not want to linger on Angela’s extras.

She looked surprised when she saw Oscar, but not angry – more like she was trying to remember his name. Sarah said Oscar was her partner today and was going to facilitate the interview by operating the recorder, ‘Because I hate taking notes. Do you mind?’

‘No, of course not,’ Angela said, with a little shrug that somehow ridiculed both the recorder and Sarah’s concern about it.

‘I wish I’d known you were going to be here, though,’ she said, directly to Oscar. He looked at Sarah in alarm, but Angela went on serenely, ‘You left your gloves on my couch the last time I saw you … Nice driving gloves – leather. I called you a couple of times to remind you to come get them. You never called back so in the end I think I threw them in a drawer and forgot about them. I probably still have them somewhere.’

‘How careless of me,’ Oscar said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t offer to come get them, though.

‘No problem.’ Her stoical expression put the whole thing in the rear-view mirror as she tore into the food.

‘Wrestling old clothes all day,’ she said, ‘is like baling hay. Sure gives you an appetite.’ She downed the salty mouthfuls of chicken and greens and sucked up a bucket-sized soft drink while bopping back very short answers to Sarah’s first questions. They started with the easy stuff – last name (it was still Lacey), address, home phone and email.

She was refreshingly direct about her marriage to Ed Lacey. It had lasted seven years and was good as long as Eddie was good, she said. But he started drinking after Frank Martin got arrested. When he drank he got unreliable, and when he added marijuana to the mix he became ‘just impossible.’

‘Impossible how? Did he beat you?’

‘Oh, good heavens no, Ed would never do that. No, I mean he became incompetent, he failed at his job. And at home he was – like an empty suit.’

‘You’re sure it was Martin’s arrest that started his drinking?’

‘Yes. It was part of his whole effort at denial. He could not accept the truth about his uncle; he was determined to make everybody see that Frank could not have been guilty of stealing the money. Like it was somebody else’s fault and his uncle shouldn’t be punished. “Look at all the nice things he’s done for people over the years,” he kept saying. “Where’s the gratitude now when he needs it?”