The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (18 page)

The guard dragged Sanchez out of the room, the
felon's mouth a bloody, smiling piece of wreckage.

DeLeon sighed wearily as the door clicked closed. She
rubbed the side of her face. "Thanks."

"Thanks?"

"That was more than they got out of him in
twelve hours yesterday. He needed an audience, someone to show off
for. For him, that interview was a major success."

I looked at the back of my hand, where Zeta's saliva
was still wet, matting my hair to the skin in dark slick triangles
that smelled of peanuts and blood. My skin crawled. I felt as if I'd
just gotten a big sloppy lick from a mastiff who could just as easily
have ripped my throat out.

"Happy to help," I told DeLeon.
 

NINETEEN

"You got evidence," Assistant D.A. Canright
said. "Solid witness, ballistics, prints. You got a suspect any
jury in their right minds would convict. You did great, Ana, okay? Be
happy."

DeLeon did not look happy.

I was sitting at a desk about fifteen feet away,
pretending I wasn't paying attention and still needed to be there
with the ice pack on my hand. Lieutenant Hernandez had met my eyes
several times, but I think he was already so disgusted with me he'd
stopped caring.

DeLeon said, "I want to follow up."

Canright ran skinny white fingers through his red
hair, shot a look at Hernandez. "Am I not being clear? Ana,
honey, am I not being clear?"

"My last name is DeLeon."

Canright made a cup with his hands. "This guy
shot an innocent man in his home, Ana. A college professor, husband,
father. Then he shot a cop. I don't need a 'why' to nail his ass in
court. You took him down. Your first homicide case — you did great.
Now it's mine."

"Let me explain it another way, sir."
DeLeon took her notepad and pen from her overcoat. She wrote as she
said, "I'm. Not. Done. Honey."

She underlined the words, tore off the sheet, and
tried to tuck it into Canright's coat.

The ADA stepped back, brushing her hand away. "All
right, Ana. That's it. That's it."

"Mr. Canright—"

"Detective," Hernandez intervened. "You're
up for cold-case duty. Starting Monday we rotate you in for three
months. Between now and then you should get some rest."

"Lieutenant—"

Hernandez turned toward Kelsey, who was leaning
against a nearby partition. "Take care of what Mr. Canright
needs for court. Follow up."

Kelsey smiled. "My pleasure." He drifted
back toward his cubicle. Canright nodded with dry approval. He turned
to say something else to DeLeon, probably something appeasing.

Lieutenant Hernandez said, "Good-bye, Mr.
Canright. We'll keep you apprised."

Canright closed his mouth, nodded. When he got to the
doorway he couldn't stand it. He turned and called, "You did an
excellent job, Ana, honey. I mean that."

The homicide office sucked up the sound of his voice.
Everything returned to quiet neutral gray as soon as the door swung
closed.

DeLeon crumpled her note and dropped it at
Hernandez's feet.

"Ana," Hernandez said, "they want a
quick resolution. They smell blood. You're a district attorney, you
don't see a two-plus-two case like this and beat your head against a
wall trying to figure out how you can make it come up five."

"God damn it, Lieutenant—"

"You don't wait for the media to tear you apart
for inaction. You prosecute."

"It's incomplete. Canright knows it. You know
it."

"It's open-and-shut. Even if it wasn't — you
really want to fight for a douche bag like Sanchez?"

She turned to go.

Hernandez said, "Wait."

DeLeon looked back at him icily.

"Between now and Monday, you get no new cases. I
stand by what I said — Monday it's the cold squad, before then it's
some rest. That doesn't preclude wrapping up your present caseload.
As long as it's low-key and quick. Not too taxing on you. I want you
fresh for Monday. You understand me?"

The intensity in DeLeon's eyes eased up a bit. "Yes,
sir."

"Discreet. Low-key. Nothing that might give Mr.
Canright apoplexy."

DeLeon allowed herself a tired smile. "I
understand, Lieutenant."

As DeLeon walked away, Hernandez looked around to see
who was watching. He met my eyes again, pretended he hadn't, then
returned to his office.

I found DeLeon's cubicle at the end of the room, next
to one of the sergeants' offices. The sergeant was apparently on
vacation. His glass door was closed, the lights off, a woodcut GONE
FISHIN' sign hung over the shade.

DeLeon was sitting in her task chair, the Lands' End
trench coat shed over it like melted Swiss, her pumps kicked onto the
carpet. She stared momentarily at something taped to her computer
screen, then bent forward and buried her face in her forearms.

I leaned against the side of her cubicle.

The back of DeLeon's red dress had unzipped itself
about an inch at the collar. Three tiny lines of soft hair ran down
her neck from the sharp wedge-cut, like jet trails.

"Buy you some dinner?" I asked.

She opened the top eye and peered at me wearily.
"Don't you ever go away?"

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, then refocused on the
thing taped to her monitor. It was a Polaroid of a stuffed longhorn
doll — Bevo, the UT mascot. An anonymous white male hand was
holding the muzzle of a .38 against its head. A little handwritten
sign under the longhorn's chin said please MOMMY BRING THEM DOUGHNUTS
OR THEY'LL VENTILATE ME!! The writing was intentionally childlike and
the bull's goofy cartoon grin didn't fit his predicament. On top of
DeLeon's monitor, a circle of dust-free space marked the spot where
the longhorn had probably sat.

DeLeon yanked the Polaroid off the computer screen.
"Bastards."

"Locker-room humor."

"Oh, yeah. Me and the boys — we're tight. We
snap each other's butts with towels all the time."

I tried not to picture that. "Be a lot worse if
they just ignored you."

"You're just the expert on everything, aren't
you, Navarre? You and your friend Mr. Air-Force-Special-Police."

"About last night—"

"Save it."

She began shuffling papers with a vengeance, clearing
her in box, taking down little stickie notes and division memos that
adorned the fabric walls. As the first layer of paper came down,
personal stuff was unearthed — a photo of DeLeon getting awarded
her detective's shield, a framed B.S. in criminal justice from UT, a
picture of her as an air force cadet.

Two things surprised me. One was a photocopy of a
Pablo Neruda love poem, "Te Recuerdo Como Eras." The other
was a tiny framed picture of a female police officer who looked like
a heavier, lighter-skinned version of Ana DeLeon. By the color of the
photo and the style of the woman's hair and uniform, I placed the
photo circa 1975.

"Your mom?"

DeLeon glanced at it, then shoved another folder
across her desk. "Yes."

She kept sorting papers, her eyes glassy.

"You okay?"

She glared at me, then pulled a color photo out of a
case file and flicked it up at me with two fingers. "This is how
okay I am."

All I saw in the photograph at first were glaring
browns and reds. Then my mind made sense of the shapes and I pulled
back, repulsed. It was a young child, African American, murdered and
displayed in a way my mind comprehended but refused to process into
complete thoughts.

"Jesus."

She slid the picture back into the file. "Good
thing I was called away from our wonderful evening. Between the
Brandon case and a couple of other things the Night CID couldn't
handle I got that lovely call. Girl was three."

I swallowed, closed my eyes. The image wouldn't go
away.

"No mystery," DeLeon said. "What was
it the lieutenant said, a two plus two? Stepdad was a crack addict.
Started yelling at the mom because she was stealing his money. It
went downhill from there. Young victims. That's why I got out of sex
crimes. Now here I am again — otra vez."

DeLeon focused on her blank computer screen. "So
what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to get things in order and
take a couple of days off. Simple."

"Hernandez is in a tough spot. Sure you don't
want to catch some dinner?"

"Hernandez does what he can. And yes, I'm sure."

"If you needed a little help on the Sanchez
follow-up—"

"I'd what? Share information with you? And every
damn private investigator in town would be knocking on my door
anytime he needed help. The newspapers would be screaming about how
we couldn't handle our own cases. No thanks."

"We want the same answers."

"Great. You find out something on your own, come
in and make another statement. That's all you are, Navarre: another
witness with a statement."

"That why you brought me into the interrogation
room?"

She paused. "It was a gamble."

"Gamble again. I have a friend who might help.
People don't like talking to cops, they might talk to my friend."

"I don't like your friend."

"I don't mean George Berton."

"Neither do I. I know about Ralph Arguello."

I'd heard police officers speak Ralph's name many
times, never lovingly, but DeLeon's tone held a lot more poison than
I would've expected.

"You've had the pleasure of Ralph's
acquaintance?"

She shot me another cold look, but underneath
something was crumbling, eroding. "Will you get out of here,
please?"

"Here's an idea. I'll ask if you're giving me a
firm 'no' on poking around about the Brandon murder. You don't
respond. I'll take that as a silent, completely off-the-record
consent and we'll go from there. I'll keep you posted. So how about
it — can I look around on the Brandon murder?"

"No."

"You're not getting the subtle innuendo routine,
here."

She raised her voice a half octave. "Just go."

"Get some sleep one of these days, okay?"

"Leave."

I left her at her desk, shuffling through files and
photos with what looked like aimlessness. A shudder went through my
nervous system, the aftershock from the photo of the murdered child.
I found myself reviewing lines from the Neruda love poem on DeLeon's
cubicle wall, wondering how it had made its way there amid the
paperwork of violence — "I Remember You As You Were."

I made a beeline out of the neutral gray and the
fluorescents of SAPD homicide, heading toward the outside — toward
smells and color and moving time. I wanted to see if it was nighttime
yet. I had a feeling it might be.
 

TWENTY

Drifting along the sidewalk in front of police
headquarters was the usual parade of undesirables — cons, thugs,
derelicts, undercovers pretending to be derelicts, derelicts
pretending to be undercovers pretending to be derelicts.

They collected here each evening for many reasons but
hung around for only one. They knew as surely as those little white
birds hopping around on the crocodile's back that their very
proximity to the mouth of the beast made them safe.

Patrol cars were parked along West Nueva. Inside the
barbed wire of the parking lot, in a circle of floodlight, five
detectives in crisp white shirts and ties and side arms were having a
smoke. Outside the fence a couple of cut-loose dealers were trading
plea-bargain stories.

I walked across Nueva to the Dolorosa parking lot,
got in the VW, and pulled onto Santa Rosa, heading north. I made the
turn onto Commerce by El Mercado, then passed underneath I-10 —
over the Commerce Street Bridge, into the gloomy asphalt and stucco
and railroad track wasteland of the West Side. Ahead of me, the
sunset faded to an afterglow behind palm trees and Spanish
billboards. Turquoise and pink walls of icehouses and bail bond
offices lost their color. On the broken sidewalks, men in tattered
jeans and checkered shirts milled around, their faces drawn from an
unsuccessful day of waiting, their eyes examining each car in the
fading hope that someone might slow down and offer them work.

I turned north on Zarzamora and found the place where
Jeremiah Brandon had died a mile and a half up, squatting between two
muddy vacant lots just past Waverly. Patches of blue stucco had
flaked off its walls, but the name was still visible in a single red
floodlight — POCO MAS — stenciled between two air-conditioner
units that hung precariously from the front windows.

The building was tall in front, short in back, with
side walls that dropped in sections like a ziggurat. Tejano music
seeped through the hammered tin doorway.

Two pickup trucks, a white Chevy van, and an old Ford
Galaxie were parked in the gravel front lot. I pulled the VW around
the side, into the mud between a Camry with flat tires and a LeBaron
with a busted windshield, and hoped I hadn't just discovered the La
Brea tar pit of automobiles.