HORATIO PARKED on the street in front of the Castaneda house, and he and Eric walked briskly to the front door. Horatio knocked, and a few seconds passed before Silvio’s little sister, Faustina, opened it. She had on baggy black pants, a black T-shirt, and fuzzy socks—her standard uniform, it seemed.
“My papa’s asleep,” she said. “He been working nights, so you got to come back some other time.”
“Actually, Faustina,” Horatio said, “we came to see you.”
“I got nothing to say to you,” she said. “So looks like you wasted a trip.”
“I don’t think so.”
She started to close the door. Horatio put his foot, salesmanlike, in its path. From behind her, Joe Castaneda’s sleepy voice sounded. “Who is it, Faustina?”
“It’s nothing,” she answered.
“It’s Horatio Caine from the crime lab, sir,” Horatio called. Faustina shot him a glare that could have killed.
“Let ’em in, baby,” Joe said. “I’ll be right there, Officer, soon as I get some pants on.”
“All right,” Horatio said. He met Faustina’s gaze with an inquiring expression. She relented and let go of the door. She turned and walked away, and Horatio had to catch her arm before she disappeared down the hallway to the back of the house.
“Not yet,” he said. “I still need to talk to you.”
“I already told you,” she said, trying on an abused pout. “Let me go.”
“I’m sorry, Faustina, but I’m trying to find out who killed your brother. I would think you’d want to help with that.”
“I don’t know jack,” she said. “If I did know, I’d deal with it myself. Or Los Danger Boys would.”
“I know you believe that,” Horatio said. “But in this case, it’s much better to let the police handle it than your friends.”
“They ain’t my friends, they’re my family. Silvio’s too.”
“Silvio is your family. So’s your father. If you want to do right by them, you’ll come into the living room for a minute.”
Joe emerged from a bedroom. He had put on a clean white undershirt and a pair of khaki shorts, but he was barefoot and his hair was mussed and his eyes were thick with sleep. “What’s going on?”
“I need some information from Faustina,” Horatio explained.
“Help him out, baby.”
“I don’t trust no freakin’ cops,” Faustina protested.
Joe shot her an angry frown. “I said give him what he wants. For Silvio.”
She spun out of Horatio’s grip and plopped down into a chair, arms folded angrily over her chest. She stared at the far wall of the room.
“What are you looking for?” Joe asked.
“Actually, I’d like to know how tall Faustina is.”
“What are you, about five feet?” Joe asked his daughter.
“Not even,” she replied glumly. “Four ten.”
“Four feet, ten inches.” Horatio made a mental note of it. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to look in Faustina’s room for a minute. And perhaps in Silvio’s too.”
“No!” Faustina barked. “See do they got a warrant, Papa!”
“I don’t have a warrant, sir. I can get one, but I’d rather get this done quickly and quietly.”
“This will help find out what happened to Silvio?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that it would,” Horatio assured him.
“Then you can look in her room all you want. We got nothing to hide.”
“Papa—”
“Do you, Faustina? You have anything in there you don’t want me to know about?”
“No, Papa. It’s just—”
“I’m sorry to invade your privacy, Faustina,” Horatio said. “It’ll only take a few minutes, and then I think we’ll have some answers.”
“What do you mean?” Joe asked. “You don’t think she had anything to do with it.”
“I’ll tell you after I’ve looked around a bit,” Horatio said. “Mister Delko, please wait here with the family.”
“I’ll be right here, H.”
Horatio didn’t really think Faustina would run, but it didn’t pay to take chances. With Eric hovering over her, she wouldn’t get far if she tried.
He went into her room and opened her closet, ignoring a twin bed, a dresser with a mirror half-obscured by photos of her and her friends, hip-hop band stickers, and tattoo designs, and white-painted walls covered with more of the same.
The closet was shallow, and mostly full of black. Black shirts and jeans hung from a rod. He supposed the dresser would be the same—lots of black, with a few splashes of color that were probably gifts rather than items she had purchased herself. On the floor were a couple of pairs of shoes, including a pair of black sneakers, heavy Doc Martens boots, and one pair of dressier flats. Beside them was a white plastic laundry hamper. Horatio flipped up the lid and glanced inside to find what looked like several days’ worth of dirty clothes.
Shutting it again, he left her room and crossed the hall to Silvio’s.
Faustina’s big brother had painted his walls midnight blue. Like the girl, he had some band posters tacked to the wall, but also a poster of the Miami Heat and a certificate showing that he had passed his high school equivalency test. His room, slightly larger, contained a desk (a glance showed that library books were overdue; Horatio decided to remind Joe Castaneda before he was hit with some annoying fines) and a dresser on which a wrestling trophy reared up over assorted bling and pocket change.
Silvio’s closet looked much like Faustina’s too, with more football jerseys and light-colored shirts than she had, but still a lot of black. He had a hamper that matched hers, probably bought at the same time at some discount store.
Something was missing, though. Horatio returned to the living room. “Faustina,” he said, “you had a different pair of shoes when I was here before. Yellow and black checks, I believe.”
Faustina didn’t respond, just glared at her father when he spoke. “Oh, those are out on the back step,” Joe said. “She got them muddy.”
“Thank you, Mister Castaneda,” Horatio said.
“I’ll take a look.”
He went out through the kitchen and found the sneakers just where the man had said they’d be. A dirty butter knife sat on the step beside them. When he turned them over, he saw that she, or someone, had begun to scrape mud from the tread of the right shoe, but had only made it about halfway, from the heel up. The left one hadn’t been touched yet. He wondered if she’d been working on them when he and Eric came to the door.
Horatio carried them back into the living room. Faustina still sat where he had left her, hands tucked under her arms, defiance written all over her face. Joe lazed in another chair, clearly wishing he had been allowed to sleep. Eric stood between Faustina and the door with his kit in his hand.
“Eric, would you get out an evidence envelope, please?”
“You find something?” Eric asked. He put the kit down on the floor, opened it up, and withdrew a paper envelope.
“And a pair of tweezers,” Horatio said.
Eric handed a pair over with the envelope. Horatio handed Eric the shoe, and Eric glanced at the sole.
“These are your shoes, aren’t they?”
“Might be,” Faustina said.
“Those are hers,” Joe Castaneda said. “I got them for her on her last birthday.”
“Papa!”
“Well, it’s true. What about it?”
Horatio pointed to a blob stuck in the treads. “This,” he said, “is a butterfly larva.” He plucked it out with the tweezers and held it up for the others to see. “I’ll have to confirm it at the lab, but I believe we’ll find that it’s the larval stage of a viceroy butterfly.”
“So I stepped on a damn butterfly,” Faustina said. “So?”
“Not a butterfly, but its larva,” Horatio corrected.
“Not very different, except that butterflies can travel a lot farther than their larvae do.”
“Still, it’s just a freakin’ bug, right? It against the law to kill one?”
“Not at all,” Horatio said. “But the only native larval host plant for the viceroy butterfly is the Coastal Plain Willow tree. And we know there were some of those at the scene where your brother was shot.”
“Are they rare trees?” Joe asked.
“Not terribly, no.”
“So that don’t prove nothing,” Faustina said. “I might have stepped on it anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” Horatio said. “They’re not truly rare, but they’re not everywhere, either. But you’re right, by itself it doesn’t prove anything.”
“What you mean, by itself?”
“I notice you haven’t washed your clothes in a few days,” Horatio said. “I’m going to have to collect the clothes in your hamper, in addition to these shoes. My guess is that some of the clothes, and maybe the shoes, will test positive for gunshot residue. That, in addition to the larva in your tread, will put you at the scene of Silvio’s shooting.”
“I didn’t kill my brother!” Faustina shouted. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and her petulance turned to grief.
“I know you didn’t,” Horatio said. “We know that the nonfatal bullet was fired by someone very small in stature, or else crouching at a very awkward, unlikely height. Someone who is four feet, ten inches tall would have been shooting from a natural stance. You didn’t kill him, Faustina, but you did shoot him.”
The tears broke free, began to flow. Joe Castaneda stared at his daughter, eyes agape with disbelief. “Faustina—did you?”
“That bastard Little Willy from the Kuban Kings dissed me,” she said, fighting back sobs. “He tried to freakin’ hit on me and then he blamed me when I didn’t want to be with him. And Silvio didn’t do shit about it. He’s my big brother, he should have had my back, but he just stood there and let Little Willy talk that shit about me.”
“I understand he threatened Little Willy,” Horatio said.
“That was just talk. He didn’t do nothing.”
“That’s no excuse to shoot him,” Joe said.
“He got no excuse to stand there like an idiot while someone from another gang shows his sister disrespect! What kind of man does that? He don’t stand up for his family, he ain’t gonna stand up for anyone! I never meant to kill him, I just wanted to teach him a lesson. He can’t step up when it’s time, he’ll never be a real gangster, that’s all I wanted to show him.”
“By shooting at him,” Horatio said. “With what gun?”
“One of his nine-mils,” Faustina said. “I threw it in the bay.”
“That settles it,” Horatio said. “The fatal bullet was the forty-five, not a nine. You hit him, but you didn’t kill him.”
She spun around to face her father. “See? I didn’t kill Silvio!”
“But you were there when he died,” Horatio added.
“Yeah.” Her voice softened, and the sobs threatened to start up again. She swallowed one back.
“I was. I was just aiming at him when he heard or saw someone else. He drew down on the other person. I freaked and my finger accidentally squeezed on the trigger and I saw him, like, jump, and then he fired a shot and the other person fired at him all at the same time.”
“What did you do then, Faustina?”
“I ran like hell, what else?”
“And before you ran, did you see the other person? The one who did kill Silvio?”
“I got a glimpse of him when he fired, that’s all. He was standing in some trees.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“He was a white guy. Older, like you.”
“Did you notice his hair color? What he was wearing?”
“Short hair, I think. Dark, like brown or black.”
“And his clothes?”
“Like a suit, I think. I can’t remember for sure. I don’t think a necktie, but maybe a white shirt and a dark jacket.”
“Anything else you remember about him?”
“Nothing really. Just a regular white guy, bigger than you, maybe your same age.”
“That’s good, Faustina. Thank you.”
“Will she go to jail?” Joe asked.
“That’s not up to me,” Horatio said. “But it’s possible that she’ll spend some time in a juvenile facility, yes.”
“But she—”
“She shot her brother, Mister Castaneda,” he said. “Not fatally, but it could have been fatal. The fact that someone else killed him, instead of her, was purely an accident. Then she tried to cover up the crime. I’m sorry, but a judge is going to have to decide what happens to Faustina.”