Eight

Welcome to the Jungle.

The banner greeted them at the entrance to Camino High School. Aragon and Lewis identified themselves to the armed school resource officer and were escorted around the metal detectors down a hallway to the principal’s office. They entered during classes, the hallways quiet except for a few students filming others climbing in and out of lockers.

“For the school movie,” the resource officer said. “Portals to the future where everyone gets along, there’s no poverty, no crime, no bullies, and nobody gets sick. I wish the kids could find that here.”

“Weren’t you Albuquerque PD?” Lewis asked. His tag said Mr. McRae.

“Twenty-seven years, finished as a sergeant. Moved up here to retire, escape the mean streets. Found the streets were just more expensive. So I’m back wearing a firearm. I like this job. Kids need one place they know they’re safe, and it’s not always home.” They reached the principal’s office. McRae held the door. “We’re keeping the Sureños under control, turning the corner some weeks. We lose ground the next. But it’s not getting worse. You need anything, here’s my card. I knew Cassandra. Knew some of her friends.”

“You know why we’re here?” Aragon asked.

“The memo with Cassandra’s photos didn’t say she was dead. But you’re homicide cops. I checked you out. I want to know who’s on my campus.” Shouting echoed down the hallway and McRae turned his head to the sound. “Gotta get back. Barbarians at the gate.”

Lewis took the door from him and they stepped into the principal’s office.

“‘Welcome to the Jungle.’ How’s that square with creating a safe place for kids?” he asked. They had to wait for a Fed Ex guy in shorts to get a signature from the receptionist.

“Comes from the school mascot, the jaguar,” Aragon said. “The gym is called The Jungle. You don’t know that? Where do your kids go?”

“Arts and Sciences. Outside the jungle.”

“Private, nice. The other side of Jaguar Road. And very white. I went to Santa Fe High. Home of the Demons. ‘Welcome to Hell,’ we fired back when this school first sent over its teams. There didn’t used to be anything out here.”

The Fed Ex guy left. They stepped up, showed badges, and said they had an appointment with the principal, Ruth Mead. The receptionist spoke into a telephone, then pointed at an open door deeper into the suite.

Inside, a short, wide woman with salt-and-pepper hair came from behind a desk and shook their hands. She did not greet them with a smile. She introduced a lanky man, half her age, as Phil Ulibarri, the assistant principal. She directed everyone to sit at a small round table.

“Thank you for your time,” Aragon said. “Cassandra Baca was found murdered. We need to contact her parents and see everything you have on her. Possible gang contacts, disciplinary problems, behavioral issues, all that. We need to learn who she was.”

Ulibarri opened a file and withdrew the top sheet. It had a photograph of Cassandra Baca stapled to a lined sheet of paper.

“This is what we can give you until you obtain parental consent for more information.”

The sheet of paper was handwritten, providing a DOB, home address, and the name of a Dolores Baca as “responsible adult.”

“Legal has advised us,” Mead said, “to wait until we receive written consent from the responsible adult. I’d like to help, but my hands are tied. It’s terrible what happened to her. I was afraid that’s what you’d come to tell us. When you return with this signed”—she pushed across a typed sheet of paper—“we can have a longer conversation.”

“Notification of Parental Consent for Release of Student Information,” ran across the top of the page.

“Time is critical,” Aragon said. “We have so little to work with. Anything, please. When was the last time she came to school? Did teachers observe injuries? Was she using drugs?”

“Here’s a photo of her in the school paper. A rally for the Jaguars before the game with the SFHS Demons. That’s her in the front row.” Ulibarri gave them sheets of folded printer paper.

“I’ll have to prepare the students,” Mead said. “When will this become public?”

Aragon folded the consent form. “Please don’t release news of her death until we speak with her mother.”

“Of course,” Mead said. “We’re happy to cooperate.

“Sure. You’ve been a big help.”

“At least we’ve got a home address,” Lewis said as a secretary from Mead’s staff escorted them to the front door. The halls were crowded now, students between classes, a roar building in corridors of steel lockers and linoleum floors.

They saw McRae talking to a group of boys and stood to the side until he was done. He noticed them and came over. They moved away from the river of teenagers to talk.

“Get what you needed?’ McRae asked.

“Brick wall,” Lewis said. “School lawyers in the way. You said you knew Cassandra, some of her friends.”

“I didn’t get the memo about not talking to police. What do you want to know?”

“Did she run with a gang, for starters?”

“Not that I saw. She had some trouble with bullying, the receiving end, but that stopped. I don’t think she was a bookworm, I never saw her reading during free time. But she seemed to have it together, like she knew where she was going. No truancy problems. She was always dressed nicely, unlike some kids, the boys showing their asses from the top, the girls from below.”

“Was she on the lunch program?” Aragon asked.

“Few of these kids aren’t. This is a poor school. Pushing ninety percent Hispanic, same percent in poverty. She brought food. Sometimes she’d go off campus for fast food if a friend had a car. So I guess her family has a little more money than most.”

“Drugs?” Lewis asked.

“Those boys I was talking to—I wanted to get close, see their eyes, smell their breath. I hate to be suspicious of every kid, but it’s for their own good. They’re clean. Cassandra was, too, far as I knew. She was very pretty, I want to say, but I don’t remember her with anyone I’d call a boyfriend. We’ve got girls kissing, holding hands. The Straight-Gay Student Alliance. How things have changed, huh? But she wasn’t part of that. She walked her own path here.”

Aragon thought of the indistinct tattoo on Baca’s hip. “Do any of these kids drive what you’d call an expensive sports car?”

“There’s chopped Beemers in the parking lot.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen parents dropping kids off in an expensive convertible, very sharp and fast-looking?”

“Convertibles don’t last in this area of town. Knifing a soft top is too much fun. I’ll keep an eye, but I don’t think so.”

“These kids all have lockers, right?”

“I’m ahead of you.” He pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket. “Here’s her locker number. I checked. It’s locked. I’ll keep an eye, make sure administration doesn’t reassign it until you get your warrant.”

Aragon gave him a card. “Shoot me a list of friends, anything else comes to mind. Use the e-mail at the bottom.”

“On its way as soon as I reach downtime.”

Cassandra Baca had lived in a low-slung frame stucco house on a cul-de-sac off Agua Fria. A cell tower behind the house soared above the roofline. The landscaping was dirt and weeds. The little windows above the garage door had been replaced with plywood. Three cars squeezed into the concrete driveway. Dust and cottonwood fluff lay deep on two Chevy Impalas, old models with V-8s, covered in bird droppings, gashes in the bodies like wounds, tires flat. The faded Nissan Sentra showed hand prints in the dust on the doors. It was parked closest to the street.

The screen on the top half of the storm door was pushed in. The glass on the bottom was cracked. The doorbell hung on one screw. No answer came when Aragon pressed. She reached through the torn screen and knocked. A television played inside.

Aragon knocked again while Lewis leaned over a dead hedge and looked through the open front window. No screen, the drapes hanging outside.

He pulled his phone off his hip and spoke their address. “Send an ambulance. We’ve got a woman down, condition unknown. We’re going inside.”

“What is it?” Aragon came to the window. A woman was sprawled half on, half off a battered sofa, face-down on the cushions. The room around her was a mess, plastic cups and plates scattered across the floor, fast-food bags and pizza boxes on the sofa, empty beer bottles, dirty clothes in corners and under a table.

Lewis moved to the door. The handle was locked.

“Take it,” Aragon said, and the cheap frame split under his heel, the door jamb tearing away from cracked stucco.

The woman had slid off the sofa, her shirt caught on the cushions, pulled up to show a black bra. Aragon and Lewis turned her over. Pinprick pupils looked at them from under lidded eyes. She took air in shallow breaths. They straightened her legs and eased her to the floor with her back against the sofa.

Lewis held up her arm. A drop of dried blood sat on skin laced with purple veins and healing puncture wounds.

“She’s OD’ing.

“I don’t think so. Her lips aren’t blue. Hey, you.” Aragon snapped her fingers in front of the woman’s face. “She’s just on a long, sleepy cruise.”

Lewis called in the additional information on the woman’s condition and gave her description: thirty to forty years of age, five four, one hundred ten pounds, Hispanic.

“They say keep her warm. EMTs are five minutes out.”

“She doesn’t need to be hotter,” Aragon said. There was no air conditioning. No shade trees above the house. The sun bounced off the concrete drive through the open window. She now noticed the sink, flies on dirty plates. A yellow jacket buzzed against a peeling ceiling.

Lewis found an EBT card on an end table.

“I’d guess that’s Dolores Baca.”

“Let’s look around.”

They moved down the hall. Aragon glanced in a filthy bathroom and decided to leave that for last. The next door opened to a bare mattress on the floor, clothes draped over chairs, milk crates with sweat pants, shoes, an unplugged television. Nothing on the walls except a calendar two years out of date.

The second room had a television on a low table, two vinyl chairs, more trash, more loose clothes.

The door to the room at the end of the hall had a double-hasp hinge lock installed on the outside. One plate of the hasp was unscrewed from the frame and the door was partially open. Aragon pushed it the rest of way with her toe. The room beyond was almost immaculate. A dresser supported a mirror, with photographs of teenagers wedged in the frame. The windows were clean, with curtains pulled back to let in sun. Aragon ran a finger along a sill. No dust. The bed was made, a sheet turned neatly back at the top over a thin blanket. She pulled open a dresser drawer. Underwear, bras, and socks in tidy piles. Below that, jeans folded perfectly. Sweaters and T-shirts in the bottom drawer.

But the closet had been tossed, clothes ripped off hangers, shoes pulled onto the floor. A gym bag had been unzipped, its contents—sneakers, shorts, tights, a towel, hair brush, hair dryer, soap dish, shampoo bottles—spilled onto the floor.

“Cassandra’s room,” Aragon said. “But look at the posters.”

“My girls have horses, heart throbs on their walls.”

Cassandra had sports cars. Several could match the blurred tattoo on her hip.

They heard voices and footsteps in the hallway. The EMTs had arrived. Aragon and Lewis went out to meet them. They checked vitals and reached the same conclusion as Aragon. No overdose. A hit of naloxone would do. An EMT applied it through the woman’s nose, a syringe attached to an atomizer inserted sequentially into each nostril. As she awoke they stretched her out on the filthy sofa. The EMTs needed to take off for a more serious call, a dog attacking a child, and Aragon and Lewis agreed to stay until she came to. They had a valid reason to be inside the house with no one watching. They weren’t going to waste it.

This time Aragon forced herself to enter the bathroom while Lewis entered the first bedroom, which they guessed was Dolores’s. She opened the grimy medicine cabinet with a square of toilet tissue for a glove. She found empty prescription bottles in the name of Dolores Baca, mostly pain killers and a few antibiotics. Nothing with Cassandra’s name.

“Needles, a tiny bag of dope,” Lewis said when they met in the hall. “There’s an empty magazine for a nine millimeter by the bed, but no gun. A couple loose twenty-two rounds in a plate with pennies and nickels. I’ll check the other bedroom and meet you in Cassandra’s.”

Back in Cassandra’s room, she looked through every drawer, finding nothing but clean, folded clothes. She was glad to see a plastic pink hamper in a corner, full with other clothes waiting to be washed. They’d show them to Lily to see if she recognized anything Cassandra had worn at the parties with Diaz and Thornton. With luck, they’d have a shirt with saliva in the threads. She’d ask Dolores Baca for consent to take the clothes when she came to.

Under the bed, shoes were arranged in straight rows. Aragon stripped the mattress and turned it over. Nothing underneath, but she found a tiny slit in the fabric encasing the box spring, and, barely visible, what looked like a prong of a safety pin. She reached inside the slit and undid the pin. A scrap of plastic was speared on the tip. It had held a plastic bag containing something Cassandra wanted to hide.

Lewis came in, palms turned up and empty.

“I’d say Mom tossed the closet.” Aragon dropped the mattress back on the frame. “Everything else but that gym bag is in order. She found what she was looking for.”

“Money for a fix?”

“Let’s ask her.”

Dolores Baca was still on her back on the sofa, coming awake, rubbing her face with her hands.

“Who you?”

Aragon showed her badge. “Where’s Cassandra?”

“School.”

“No. When was the last time you saw her?”

“I’m thirsty.”

Lewis brought water. Together they sat Dolores Baca up and propped pillows between her and the arm rest to keep her from falling over.

“When did you last see Cassandra?” Aragon repeated.

Baca looked between them, drank more water. “I don’t know. Last week? What’s she done now?”

Baca nodded off again. Aragon unfolded the parental consent from her back pocket and used a pen found among the debris on the little dining table.

“She has terrible handwriting,” Aragon said. “Obviously not a Catholic school product.”

She showed Lewis the parental consent form, signed, an illegible scrawl in the signature block. “Did you want to wait for her to straighten up?”

“I’m good with it. Let’s talk to neighbors. We can tell her later her daughter’s dead.”

“I won’t want to leave her alone with that. Let’s get someone from the DA’s Victim Assistance for when she gets the news.”

Aragon went down the hall and returned with the pink plastic hamper.

“Mom said we could take her daughter’s dirty clothes,” she said. “You were in the other room.”

A frail Hispanic woman in a housecoat and slippers answered the door at the house to the right of the Baca residence. Cat hairs clung to the black fabric around her neck. She’d been watching them as they walked to the door.

They opened badge cases and asked if she’d seen Cassandra recently. Had there been any trouble next door? Loud noises? Did she ever speak with Cassandra, her mother? What could she tell them about her neighbors?

Her name was Perla Gallegos. She lived alone, her husband gone. She’d lived here all her life, raised three sons, two daughters, right here. Yes, she did speak with Cassandra when she went out to water her flowers and move the sprinkler, it was so hard keeping grass alive in this drought. Cassandra was nice. She couldn’t say that for her mother. No, she’d heard nothing unusual next door. It was always quiet over there, the mother hardly ever came out the door.

Did anyone come for her in a car, to pick her up? Did she ever see Cassandra getting dropped off?

No, she walked all the time, coming back with groceries from the Safeway even when it was a hundred degrees.

Boyfriends?

That girl was so pretty. But no, Perla Gallegos said, she never seemed to have boyfriends. Maybe she wasn’t missing anything, look at these boys today. I wouldn’t want them taking my daughter out, she lives in Albuquerque, a dental assistant. She got out of here. Cassandra was going places, too, learning a skill.

Aragon said, “This skill,” wondering if the woman had any idea how Cassandra Baca was making money.

“Working on cars,” Perla Gallegos said. “She was always under those heaps of her mother’s trying to get them running.”

Nobody answered at the other houses on the cul-de-sac.

Lewis got a response to his request for a records check on Dolores Baca as they headed back to their desks and some time with air conditioning. She had prior convictions for possession, shoplifting, fraud, and prostitution ten, eleven years ago. She’d spent part of that decade in the county jail, on a sentence one day short of the full year that would have bumped her up to a state correctional facility.

She used three a.k.a.’s with different last names. But the first name was always the same.

Andrea.