THEY ARRIVED AT DUSK ON a Wednesday. The Mexican gentleman introduced himself as Officer Pedro Guerrero. He was short and slight, and he spoke English with a soft barrio accent. With him was an older white detective named Douglas Jolley, whom Lorena assumed to be the one in charge.
This was true. Jolley worked Homicide and had spent the previous week looking into Marcus Stallworth’s disappearance. Guerrero was technically a patrolman and had been put on the case only a day before.
Guerrero had grown up in Fruitridge, just a few blocks from Lorena and Antonio Saenz. His grandfather had come to the United States from Morelia, Mexico, joining his siblings in the fields of the Central Valley. He eventually wound up in trouble with the law and returned to Mexico, leaving his wife to join relatives in Sacramento.
Guerrero had a quick mind and a nervous temper. He had always been small, and he learned to use impulsiveness to compensate. He might have wound up on the other side of the law but for his cousin Fernando, who crashed his eighteenth birthday party in a sharkskin suit, with a tooled leather holster strapped under his arm.
Nando Reyes sat his little primo down and explained, somewhat drunkenly, that, with a bit of cunning, Guerrero could attend the police academy and earn himself a real salary and a pension and get his ass out of Fruitridge before he turned into a gamberro himself.
The year before, Guerrero had gotten a girl pregnant and agreed to take a job in the orchard where her father worked. Then the girl announced that she had lost the baby. He’d been hanging around the neighborhood ever since, running errands for men he knew better than to trust, restless for calamity.
“I heard what you been up to.” Nando smacked his nephew in the back of the head—hard. “The streets got ears, P. Listen to me. God gave you one chance, and that girl gave you a second one. Don’t waste it.”
Guerrero didn’t much like the academy—too many dumb jocks—but he took to police work. He started out in traffic. It took him three years to get bumped up to community policing; that’s how it was if you were Mexican. Eventually, the brass figured out that they needed patrol officers who could speak Spanish and thereby convey the rules and customs of American law enforcement to the immigrants populating Sacramento’s south side.
Guerrero reveled in the power of his new position; the badge and the gun put muscle behind his moods. He earned a reputation as a hard-ass on this beat and a hothead around the station. But his sergeant, Maurice Hooks, recognized Guerrero’s knack for investigation. He understood the rhythms of criminal logic, with its nimble dance between guile and disguise. He knew how to read perps, the subtle ways they gave themselves up. Guerrero enjoyed shooting the shit with the sweet dumb crooks and schemers who intuited, as he did, that the world was a fallen place in which men were obliged to find their advantages.
When Hooks finally made captain—the first Black man to do so in department history—he put Guerrero in plainclothes, as part of the Street Crimes Unit. That had been three years ago. Guerrero had passed the exam for detective but was still awaiting promotion. In the meantime, Hooks had been kicked over to Homicide and taken Guerrero with him, unofficially, to serve as a translator for his detectives, none of whom spoke Spanish.
Guerrero had started going bald just after high school. Although he was thirty-one, the wrinkles around his eyes and the dark patches under them made him appear a decade older. His teeth were small and sharp and he had a habit of dipping his chin in apology before he spoke.
Now he stood in the doorway of the Seanz apartment, dwarfed by Jolley’s pasty bulk. “Is this the residence of Graciela Seanz?” he asked in Spanish.
The girl looked at Guerrero, then at Jolley. She was plainly terrified.
“We’re police officers,” Guerrero said in English.
“Is something wrong?” Lo said.
“Not at all,” Guerrero said. “We just have a few questions for Lorena Saenz.” He dipped his chin. “Is that you? Are you Lorena Saenz?”
GUERRERO HAD BEEN put on the Stallworth case owing to an unlikely series of phone calls. The first had been placed a day earlier by the office of the First Lady of the United States. Mrs. Reagan had just finished a formal luncheon at the White House, where she entertained the First Lady of Indonesia. She sat, stiffly smiling, for the photo session that followed the meal. Denise, her chief of staff, used the minutes before her next event to call an old friend, Shelby Rhodes, a realtor in Sacramento. The Reagans would be visiting California for Christmas and she wanted advice about luxury dude ranches.
Rhodes sounded flustered. He had just learned that the husband of a former employee, Rosemary Stallworth, had been abducted. Denise remembered Rosemary Stallworth for her elegance and for her peculiar habit of bowing slightly before the First Lady. She suspected Mrs. Reagan would appreciate this morsel of gossip, which she shared on the way back to the residence upstairs. “They found his car in the desert,” Denise reported. “There was blood all over the place.”
The First Lady’s large beautiful face looked stricken. She peered through the peach curtains of her sitting room, at the eerie tufts of fog that lay upon the East Lawn. “Who would have done such a thing?”
“The police have no clue.”
“A family man,” the First Lady said. “A brilliant scientist. Snatched from his car in broad daylight.” She sounded like a news anchor sharing the lurid details from behind an empty console. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “What sort of country are we becoming?” As her fists clenched, she realized that she was still holding the gift she had received at the luncheon and held proudly for the official photos, a tiny compass that glowed in the dark. In a moment of uncharacteristic pique, she considered hurling the device against the wall.
She was the First Lady of the United States. She had a schedule to abide. But the story stuck with her: the ransacked Jeep, spattered with the blood of an innocent. Her husband had run for governor to restore law and order to the great state of California. The violence of those years—the Manson murders, the uprisings in Berkeley and Watts—had registered as evidence of a moral decadence that threatened to rend the nation.
She recalled the somber baritone of the Secret Service agent who told her about the attempted assassination of her own husband, the depraved calm he hoped to impart. The name of the hospital, the droning reassurances of her staff, the sirens and handkerchiefs. Ronnie grinning gamely from his gurney, a scimitar of crimson seeping through the gauze dressing on his ribs. They had come to the White House to heal America. Hadn’t that been the whole point? Of all the rallies and speeches and glad-handing? And then some madman had gunned him down in broad daylight. The phrase gnawed at her. In broad daylight.
“Mrs. Reagan?” Denise said. “Are you okay?”
Within the hour, a called had been placed by a staffer in the Office of the President to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where an assistant to the director reached out to the Office of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, who dispatched his chief deputy to inquire about the status of the Marcus Stallworth case. These sorts of communiques were not uncommon, the ghostly currents of political power run through the grid of law enforcement. But the prosecutor now made an uncommon request: that the sheriff in Barstow allow the investigation to be handled by the police in Sacramento, where the case had originated. The First Lady was of the opinion that a larger department would be better equipped to make sure justice was done.
INSIDE JENNY STALLWORTH, an insidious notion had taken shape: that Lorena Saenz had something to do with her father’s disappearance. She knew it didn’t make much sense, but seeing Lorena again, even for a moment, had filled her with a senseless rage, Lorena who was forever kissing up to her parents, the innocent ghetto girl who bragged about her thug brother. She phoned the police on her own and, because there was now official heat on the case, the call was routed to Captain Hooks.
“Would you like me to send an officer out?”
“It’s probably nothing,” Jenny said nervously.
“Okay,” he said. “No officer. What’s up?”
Jenny issued a thin sigh, then began speaking quickly. She mentioned Lorena and the science project they’d worked on and the fact that she, this girl Lorena, had an older brother in the Latin Kings. The guy, Tony, had a record. He’d come over to their house and been “really aggressive.”
“How so?”
“Just, like, he was checking out my dad’s Jeep and saying what a great car it was and saying stuff to me, too, like trying to flirt or whatever. The thing that made me think of it is … he had a gun.”
“A gun?”
“Like, tucked into his waist.”
“Did Tony meet your father?”
“No. He burned rubber when my dad showed up. You can still see the skid marks on our street.”
Hooks waited for Jenny to continue.
“I’m not saying it’s anything. It’s probably nothing. I never even told my mom because I knew she’d freak out. Especially about the gun.”
“You did the right thing,” Hooks said. “If you think of anything else—anything—just call.” It took him no time at all to run a check on Antonio Saenz. That was why he put Guerrero on the case.
FOR AN INVESTIGATOR like Guerrero, it was difficult to read over Antonio Saenz’s file and not regard him as a suspect. This was how police work shaped the mind. There was evidence, which was often incomplete and therefore ambiguous. And there were the broader mechanisms of crime, most of which ran contrary the prevailing cultural myths, which attempted to divide the population into villains and victims.
Guerrero knew that vile intentions lurked within everyone, muffled under layers of moral training, fear, and vanity. Most crimes were merely the revelation of this secret self, abruptly activated and turned on the world. It was the guys like him, Pedro Guerrero, who had to make decisions about who might do what, about history and character and violent possibility. Which leads to pursue and which to abandon. Hooks had put him on the case with an implicit mandate: figure out if Antonio Saenz had anything to do with the disappearance of Marcus Stallworth.
Saenz was nineteen years old, undocumented, unemployed, a high school dropout. He had come to the States from Honduras at age four, crossing illegally with his father. His mother had joined them later, though the couple soon split. Mom worked custodial at Mercy, the swing shift. By the time he was a junior, Saenz had missed enough classes to get himself tossed and was running with known delinquents. He was careful when it came to cops, more so because of his mom. There was no telling how many times Saenz had fed an officer a fake name, or flashed a phony Social Security card. Guerrero recognized the pattern from his own youth. There were different rules for kids without papers, you covered for them.
Records did show that Saenz had been party to at least two crimes as a seventeen-year-old: an assault and an alleged vehicular theft. No charges filed in either case, but the kid clearly got spooked. Within five months, he had earned his GED and weaseled his way into the navy. Eleven months later, he got booted for drug use.
Seanz had become more reckless of late, whether because of his drug use or because he’d figured out that police this far north didn’t always coordinate with INS. He’d been cited for possession of pot, then disorderly, after getting into a hassle with a local cocaine dealer. Two weeks before the Stallworth disappearance, Saenz had moved to Fresno, where he had been pulled over for speeding. A search of his vehicle uncovered two unlicensed firearms and a knife. Guerrero spoke to the uniformed officer who arrested him. The consensus view was that Saenz was one lucky punk. The coke dealer echoed this verdict, in more profane terms.
Jolley wanted to drive to Fresno immediately, but Guerrero argued that they needed to interview the sister first. Best to work in concentric circles.
“If she knows anything, she warns her brother. Then we’re fucked.”
“If he runs, that tells us what we need to know.”
Jolley scowled. He wasn’t going to argue. It was bad enough he’d been paired with Guerrero, the section’s little spic translator.
And so they showed up on Lorena’s doorstep together. Guerrero knew she would be scared and would probably allow them in and answer their questions if it meant keeping her mother out of it. He also knew that she would be more inclined to speak candidly if he portrayed himself as her protector in this initial interview.
THEY SAT AT the small table just outside the kitchen. Guerrero recognized the salted chemical smell of fried hot dogs. A stack of text books sat before Lorena, a sheet with equations behind them.
“I guess you’re wondering why we’re here,” Jolley said.
Lorena nodded.
“Do you have any idea?”
The girl shrugged miserably. “Is it about my mom?” she said softly.
“Your mom?” Jolley said.
“No,” Guerrero said quickly. “You don’t have to worry about that, Lorena. This is something else.”
Jolley glared at Guerrero. It was all part of the script. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the disappearance of Marcus Stallworth by now,” Jolley said.
Lorena sat back. Her eyes grew cloudy. Some part of her had been waiting for the police to arrive. “Did they find—”
“No, no,” Guerrero said gently. He noticed the base of her throat pulsing.
“It’s an ongoing investigation.” This was Jolley. “We just need you to answer a few questions. Then we’ll be done. Can you do that? How well did you know the Stallworths?”
“I mean, not like—Jenny and me did a project for school. In spring. I went over there a few times. And she came over once or twice.”
“What’s a few times?” Jolley said.
“Six? I just, I had dinner there a couple of times. Mrs. Stallworth was, she would invite me, and we talked to Mr. Stallworth, for, like, to get help on our project. We didn’t hang out in school or anything.”
“What did you think of the Stallworths?”
“Think of them?”
Jolley looked up from his notepad. “Yes,” he said slowly. “You were a frequent guest in their home, were you not? I’m asking what you observed. What can you tell us about how they interacted? A man has disappeared.”
Lorena took a gulp of air. “They seemed happy. They had, you know, they spent time together. As a family.” She looked at Guerrero. “I didn’t really know them that well.”
“Okay,” Guerrero said. “Okay.”
Lorena was almost crying now. “It’s so sad. I tried to tell Jenny how sorry I was. She wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Why wouldn’t she look at you?” Jolley said.
“I don’t know.” Her cheeks were wet now. “We weren’t that good friends, I guess.”
Guerrero handed her a tissue. “Let’s give her a few seconds here, Doug. Okay? This has come as a big shock to everyone. We didn’t come here to upset you, Lorena. It’s just our job to figure out what happened. You understand you’re not in any trouble, right?”
Lorena nodded. She glanced down at the worksheet and Guerrero followed her eyes. He noticed a little paperweight near her elbow, a lump of amber with some kind of insect suspended inside it.
“Did your families ever spend time together?”
“It wasn’t really like that.” Lorena glanced at Guerrero. “It’s pretty far between our houses.” There was an awkward moment, so familiar in American life, when the unspoken fact of class rudely presents itself.
“Just one more question.” Guerrero seemed to be asking Jolley for permission. “Did you spend time with Mr. Stallworth himself?”
Again, Guerrero saw the pulsing in her smooth neck.
“A few times. To get help with our project. For the science fair. He was gone most of the time.”
“Gone?”
“At work.”
“Wait a sec,” Jolley said. “You just said the family spent all this time together. Now you’re saying dad was gone all the time. Which is it?”
Guerrero held up his hand. “I think she meant—”
“No,” Jolley snapped. “I’d like Miss Saenz to explain this.”
“He just worked, you know, like a lot of dads. So when I came over, after school, he usually wasn’t around. Or, you know, he went on these trips. To collect scorpions. That’s what he studied. He took us with him one time.”
“He took you on a work trip?” Jolley said.
“No. Like a family trip. Camping. He took us out and showed us the scorpions. He lit them up with a special lamp.”
“Us?”
“Me and Jenny and Glen. Jenny’s brother.”
“And where was this expedition?” Jolley said.
“Down south. I don’t know where we were exactly. It was kind of in the middle of nowhere.”
“Could it have been Death Valley?” Guerrero said.
“I guess.”
Jolley shook his head. “I don’t get it. All of sudden he’s taking you on camping trips. Sounds like you did know Mr. Stallworth.”
Lorena saw the stars overhead, pressing down. Mr. Stallworth stood behind her in black silence. She thought about the map in his office, the numbers written on the slip of paper tucked into her old science notebook. Then she heard her mother’s voice: Nos puede destruir. Talking to a cop, any cop, can destroy us.
“He was being a good dad.” Lorena’s voice caught on the word dad.
Jolley started to speak, but Guerrero touched his arm.
“Okay,” Jolley said. “That’s enough. We’re all done here. We’re just trying to cover our bases. Thank you for bearing with us, Miss Saenz. I know it’s a difficult subject.” He got up and yawned elaborately.
Lorena seemed uncertain whether she should get up, too. Guerrero saw her eyes dart to the paperweight. He realized what it was: a scorpion.
“Did Mr. Stallworth give you that?” he asked suddenly.
Lorena couldn’t quite meet his eyes. She nodded.
“Was he in the habit of giving you gifts?”
“No. It was just something, like, from a gift shop.”
Jolley reached over and snatched the object, like the oaf he was. He held it up to the light and made a noise of disgust. “These things don’t creep you out?”
“Kind of,” the girl said.
“This little sucker looks pretty unhappy. It’s like he’s screaming, Get me outta here!” Jolley was trying to joke around; Lorena looked stricken.
“We’ll get out of your hair,” Guerrero said.
Jolley set the paperweight down and smiled formally.
Lorena glanced at Guerrero. “Do you have any idea, I mean—”
“We’re trying,” he said. “If you can think of anything that might help.” He placed one of his cards atop her stack of books.
EVERY MURDER INVESTIGATION was a kind of story. You had a dead body, or a missing one, and you had to reconstruct the life of that body as it traveled through its final days and hours. In most cases, this wasn’t that hard. There was a corpse, a crime scene, a weapon, blood, prints, fibers, witnesses, motive, and means. A dispute, a plan executed or gone wrong. The event created its own small family of misfortune.
The case of Marcus Stallworth offered almost no guidance. The facts as Guerrero had inherited them were as follows:
On Friday, October 23, Stallworth left home for the university, where he spent the morning in his office. Around noon, he got into his Jeep and drove south, intending to camp in the Mojave National Preserve for the night, to observe scorpions and collect samples. On Sunday, October 25, at 9:23 p.m., Rosemary Stallworth placed a call to the Sacramento Police to report that her husband had not returned home. It wasn’t like him to show up late without calling, though she allowed that he might have gotten tired on the drive back and stopped at a motel. When her husband failed to appear the next morning, Mrs. Stallworth filed a missing person report.
A uniformed officer headed out to take an initial statement. It was immediately apparent—from the size and location of the Stallworth home, from the very manner of Rosemary herself—that this matter would be treated with the utmost gravity. The officer who met with Rosemary certainly understood. He spoke to his supervisor, and within the hour the case was reassigned to Jolley, a seasoned homicide detective. This was merely an abundance of caution, the phrase Jolley used with Mrs. Stallworth. She seemed relieved to be dealing with a professional, however ill-fitting his suit.
Jolley compiled a basic profile of the missing man. Stallworth had grown up in Elkhart, Indiana, in a strict, religious home. Both his parents were deceased. He had studied biology at a small college outside Philadelphia, where he and Rosemary Upton met and married. They spent a short time in Tucson, his graduate years, then moved to Sacramento. He received a doctorate in zoology from CSU-Sacramento and later accepted a position as a researcher. He was in exceptional health according to his physician and had no known history of mental illness or substance abuse.
In contrast to his wife, who was involved in numerous civic organizations, Stallworth had few social obligations. He played bridge occasionally and took part in a discussion group on science and skepticism. Once a month, sometimes twice, he drove down to the Mojave to do fieldwork. On occasion, he picked up hitchhikers, a practice of which his wife vehemently disapproved.
His salary at the university was modest. Rosemary had supplemented their income by working as a realtor for a few years, but the family’s underlying wealth derived from her family, a subject she was reluctant to discuss. Marcus Stallworth had purchased a term life-insurance policy six years earlier, on the advice of his accountant.
In the absence of any physical evidence, Jolley was left to consider the unspoken possibility: Stallworth had disappeared himself. A man hits forty, the marriage goes stale, kids mostly grown, maybe he finds a new flame. Figures he can duck a nasty divorce, nab his wife an insurance payout, and start a new story. It happened more than people realized. Jolley even called his old pal Ricky Stark, who handled missing persons down in Yuma and served as a liaison to the Border Patrol. Gringo runaways loved Mexico.
But the interviews argued against this. Marcus Stallworth was a quiet man, an introvert dedicated to his work and family. Mrs. Stallworth had been so distraught it was difficult to ask her much. She had described them as very much in love, particularly in the preceding months, an assessment confirmed by her children.
A DAY LATER, on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27, a hydraulic engineer dispatched to check the water level at an agricultural reservoir outside the small community of Calico spotted an abandoned Jeep at the end of a dirt road off the Mojave Freeway. The next morning, a pair of deputies from the Barstow Sheriff’s office found the alleged victim’s Laredo, ransacked, the blood stains, an empty wallet. They ran the license plate and up popped Marcus Stallworth, missing person.
The crime scene report sent up from Barstow was seven pages in its entirety. The photos showed skid marks indicating that Stallworth’s Jeep had swerved before coming to rest, at an angle, near the terminus of a dirt road. Both doors hung open. Blood had dripped onto the front passenger seat and the sandy soil outside that door. Clothes and dehydrated food packets were strewn about the back of the Jeep, along with several dozen small clear plastic canisters, which the deputies characterized as “possible drug paraphernalia.” (It was later determined that Stallworth used these to collect scorpion samples.) Outside the vehicle, the empty wallet lay near the rear right wheel. The blood tested as O-positive, Stallworth’s type. The only fingerprints on the wallet belonged to Stallworth. Curiously, none of his three credit cards had been used.
It was unclear how the alleged assailant, or assailants, had returned to the main road; there were no clear tracks to work from. Deputies canvassed the nearby gas stations, a couple of farm stands, a truck stop with a restaurant and shower facilities. No one remembered having seen a man matching Marcus Stallworth’s description.
Rosemary Stallworth had buckled at the news that her husband’s abandoned vehicle had been located, and crumpled at the sight of the wallet. She cursed him, quietly, for his habit of picking up hitchhikers. She expressed concern about what to tell her teenage children.
With the indications of foul play came a new consideration, one Hooks was careful to impress upon Guerrero: the Stallworths were “a prominent family.” That was the phrase he used. This meant the investigation, if not conducted with discretion (“the utmost motherfucking discretion” was how he put it) could trigger a media frenzy. Americans were acutely attuned to sagas of abduction and captivity, thanks to the Iran hostage crisis. Sixty-six diplomats had been held by militants for more than a year and released into US custody only upon the inauguration of Ronald Reagan—who was himself, three months later, shot in broad daylight.
THE MORNING AFTER his interview with Lorena, Guerrero drove six hours down to Barstow. A deputy named Fuentes led him to the impound lot, where they found Stallworth’s Jeep amid the dusty beaters abandoned by the freeway. “Please don’t tell me they left my central piece of evidence exposed to the elements,” Guerrero said.
Fuentes shrugged. “It’s an impound lot, not a valet service.”
“Has it rained down here?”
“Not since 1974.”
Guerrero pulled on his gloves and inspected the interior of the Jeep. He tweezed hairs and stray fibers, shined a penlight under the seats, fingered the tires for irregularities in the tread. He took out his portable print kit and spent two hours dusting. Guerrero found a new print on the roll bar, two in fact, smudged and partial but there, right next to each other. They probably belonged to Stallworth, but he could check them against the FBI database just in case.
“You take this shit serious,” Fuentes said, on the drive out to site where the Jeep had been found. “Nando said you’d be like that.”
“How you know Nando?”
“Used to work in Fresno. He’s big shit up there.”
“You got that half right,” Guerrero said.
They turned north onto a dirt road.
“Who uses this?”
“Agricultural hydrologists. It’s a federal access route, officially.”
“There a reservoir around here?”
“More like a well. It’s called an on-site gauge. Basically, a hole in the ground that allows these guys to measure the level of the aquifer.” Up ahead, yellow crime tape had been wound around a scattering of plastic poles.
Guerrero could see at once that the Barstow deputies had made a mess of the site, tromped all around the vehicle, driven over the tread marks. He had a photo of the squiggled tread on the hiking boot Stallworth was thought to have been wearing, but there was no sign of any such tread in the fine soil of the road. No visible sole, he jotted in his notebook. Guerrero stared out at the pointless scrub. He kicked a stone in frustration and leaped back when a creature scuttled from beneath it.
“Woke the little fucker up,” Fuentes said.
Guerrero watched the scorpion scrabble across the sand and into a little dip a few yards from where the vehicle had been found. Guerrero cocked his head. He scanned the photos in the original report. He could see the same little trench leading from the rear of the vehicle into the desert. Actually, it wasn’t quite a trench, more like a shallow declivity, as if an object had been dragged through the sand.
He pointed it out to Fuentes.
“Yeah, okay. I see it.”
“It’s like someone tried to erase their footsteps.”
“Maybe.” Fuentes didn’t sound convinced. “Or maybe our photog didn’t realize his bag was dragging on the ground.”
Guerrero followed the path for a few yards. It dissolved into nothing, another dead end. He trudged back to the car. Fuentes was leaning against the driver’s side door, smoking.
“What do you make of all this?”
Fuentes shrugged. “He picked up the wrong drifter. Or messed with some lot rat and got dusted by her pimp. Then the perps panicked, drove out here, left the vehicle.”
“And they left no prints on the car, no blood, no tread? Because, what, they wore gloves and used their helicopter to get back to town?”
“Maybe. If you just killed some guy, yeah, you put on gloves. This is happening at night probably, at some truck stop off I-5. Maybe there’s a hacksaw involved in the proceedings. Or a bonfire. Or maybe they just dump the body in the desert. It’s a pile of bones within a week. Mean land down here. The Mojave don’t forgive.”
“Sounds like you got it all figured out,” Guerrero said softly.
“You’re missing the point.” Fuentes flicked his cigarette and spit. “Nobody knows shit. The guy is gone. The rest is guessing.”
Guerrero saw another lazy Mexican waiting for some rich white asshole to draw a sombrero on his head. “I don’t like guessing.”
BACK IN SACRAMENTO, Guerrero drove to the university to meet with the man described as Marcus Stallworth’s closest friend, a fastidious and aged herpetologist named Joseph Tennyson. They sat in an overheated office that smelled of menthol rub and wood shavings. Tennyson spoke of Stallworth as a dedicated researcher who admired the animals he worked with for their stark beauty and resilience. “I stress this because those of us who work with the reptilian and arachnidous phyla are sometimes viewed as sinister.” Tennyson had clipped on a tie for the interview, at which he now tugged. Behind him, in a terrarium whose ancient lightbulb faintly buzzed, a serpent the color of corn silk lay coiled like rope.
Guerrero asked if Stallworth had ever talked to him about professional or personal conflicts.
“Heavens no. That’s not the sort of man he was.”
“He got along with everyone?”
“‘Get along’ isn’t quite right.” Tennyson frowned dryly. “Marcus enjoyed—or rather, let us hope, enjoys—the solitary aspects of his work. When pressed to do so, he taught an introductory section of animal biology. But he staunchly avoided the sorts of feuds that animate academia.”
“Was he well-regarded in his field?”
Tennyson stared at Guerrero, his eyes milky with glaucoma. “I must tell you, young man, that the dominant motive for investigating the natural world today involves what are called commercial applications. Extracting venom to brew a cure for arthritis. Grinding blossoms into perfume. This sort of thing. Marcus was something of an anachronism. He was most interested in the creatures themselves. Sociobiology is the fancy term, the idea that we might learn something about human nature from observing the social customs and discourse of the animal kingdom—in his case, an order of arachnids that have inhabited the earth for 450 million years.”
“Does he have tenure?”
Tennyson shook his head. “Nor did he seek it. Such an ambition would have required him to attend departmental meetings and serve on thesis committees, duties that did not suit his temperament. He is officially a research fellow with a contract renewed annually. His family had the means to allow him to do this work, as I understand it.”
“Is that something he ever talked about? His finances?”
Tennyson frowned again. “I’m merely making a deduction.”
“Do you have any reason to believe Marcus was unhappy at home?”
“Again, we didn’t—that isn’t the sort of thing we talked about. Marcus is a private person. The only time he mentioned his family was some years ago. On a camping trip. He loved to camp, you know.”
“What did he say?”
“Not very much. His parents passed away when he was quite young. He mentioned that. I got the feeling his childhood was difficult. He said how happy he was to have escaped into a normal family.”
“What did he mean by ‘a normal family’?”
“I don’t know exactly. As I say, he wasn’t someone …” The old man trailed off. “One thing. I don’t know that I should say this either. But I had the feeling that there was some part of him that was, was—I guess the phrase I would use is out of reach. I just had that feeling. And that it was mixed up with his life as a boy. Some agitation there. You’re going to ask me why I say that. But I can’t tell you.” The old man peered at the badge clipped to Guerrero’s belt, to remind himself that he was duty-bound to share such intimate impressions.
“Did you sense that he was struggling recently?”
“Quite the contrary. Marcus seemed energized. For some years, he’s been researching the phenomenon of parasitic mating habits. He took on a second project this summer. Something a bit unusual for him.”
“About?”
Tennyson cast a wry smile at his guest. “It has to do with the mechanisms and utility of fluorescence in the exoskeleton of scorpions. I can’t imagine this subject has kept you up at night. Nor how it might be relevant to your investigation. But it is of considerable interest among scorpiologists.”
“When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“We were supposed to meet on Monday, that Monday—” Tennyson turned abruptly and discharged a cough into a ragged handkerchief. It took a few seconds to discern that the old man was upset.
“Professor?”
Tennyson gathered himself and turned to face Guerrero. The scalp beneath his wispy hair was pink as a blister. “Marcus has a calling. It is hard for those outside of this calling to understand. Go among the animals and learn their ways and you shall know yourself.”
“Who said that?”
“I did, young man.”
GUERRERO DECIDED TO swing by the Stallworth home on his way back to the office. Jolley had visited earlier in the week to introduce himself to Rosemary Stallworth. But something in the old man’s words convinced Guerrero that he should meet the wife in person. The Stallworth home was the only mint- green mansion he had ever seen.
Rosemary answered the door and took a half step back. Her expression was one of solicitude tinged with suspicion, an old and familiar mask donned by the rich for the benefit of strangers.
“Officer Pedro Guerrero, ma’am.” He held up his badge. “I work with Detective Jolley.”
Rosemary raised a hand to her mouth. “Is it—do you know anything new?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“What happened to Detective Jolley?”
The tone of this question affirmed something they both understood: Rosemary Stallworth expected to deal with a white officer.
“He’s working on something else right now.”
“Something else?”
“Another aspect of the case. I’m sorry to drop by unannounced. I had a few more questions.”
Despite the careful burnishing of makeup, Mrs. Stallworth looked drawn. “I must say, and I mean no offense, but I don’t understand why they keep sending new people. I spoke to the one in uniform, then a sheriff, and then Detective Jolley at some length. It’s been a week now.” Rosemary Stallworth struggled to control her voice. “I have children—I have to tell them something.” She had refused to move out of the doorway.
“I’m very sorry, ma’am. I know it’s confusing. We all have different roles.”
Mrs. Stallworth led him into a living room bright with lace and throw pillows. She ripped a Kleenex from a pewter box and pinched her nose silently, then seated herself on a crushed velvet couch.
“I’ve been trying to piece together the details of your husband’s biography,” Guerrero said tentatively. “Part of what we have to consider involves family history, relatives with whom he might have had issues—”
Mrs. Stallworth issued violent little shakes of her head. “My husband has no contact with his family. None. He was practically an orphan when we met. There was an aunt whom he mentioned once or twice. She didn’t even come to our wedding. I never met anyone else. Once he left Indiana, that was it.”
“Where does she live now? The aunt?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“What about your family?”
“My family? What have they got to do with anything?”
“These are questions we have to ask, ma’am.”
“My husband has been abducted, Officer. Do you think my family is responsible for that in some way? Is that what you’re insinuating?”
“Not at all.”
The polite smile remained pasted to Rosemary Stallworth’s face, but any trace of good will drained from her eyes. “I’ll thank you to leave my family out of it. Both my parents and my children.”
Guerrero stared down at his notepad. He was unaccustomed to dealing with witnesses this self-possessed.
Had she chosen to speak candidly, Rosemary Stallworth would have conceded that her parents had disapproved of Marcus, rather forcefully. They represented the merger of two Main Line families with considerable fortunes. Their daughter’s decision to marry Stallworth had been a crushing disappointment. He was from a troubled family, and they believed that character was inherited as well as instilled. They also continued to provide an allowance to Rosemary, which subsidized the pittance Marcus earned as an academic.
“I realize this is a trying time—”
“Do you?”
“You told Detective Jolley that you and your husband had been happy in recent months,” Guerrero continued quietly. “Have there been periods of unhappiness in the marriage?”
Mrs. Stallworth was glaring at him now. “It seems to me you came here to discuss my marriage. Is that right?”
“It’s hard to find a man unless we know as much about him as we can.”
Mrs. Stallworth’s mouth curled, as if at some private joke. “Are you married, Officer? No, I didn’t imagine so. No one who is would ask such a thing. Of course, we’ve struggled. Marcus and I have been together for nearly twenty years. We are, as you may have already deduced, distinct in our temperaments. Marcus is a quiet man, a scientist. I am more outgoing. But we love each other very much. And if the next question in your little notebook is whether we ever cheated on one another, or rather, whether he ever cheated on me, I can only tell you that Marcus is an orderly man. He likes things neat, not messy. You can ask around about that.”
“I understand—”
“I’m not sure you do.” Her cheeks flared. “Marcus and I are not some couple from a dime-store mystery. We are pillars of this community. We have two children.” She spoke haltingly, in brittle syllables. “There was blood all over the seats of my husband’s Jeep, Mr. Gonzales. Blood on the sand. I am not a stupid woman. Someone shed my husband’s blood. I suggest you focus your investigative efforts on finding that person, or people. Along with my husband.”
Guerrero dipped his chin.
Before he could say anything more, a man stepped into the room and stood at the end of the sofa where Guerrero sat. He wore a waxed moustache and a tailored suit with comically large shoulder pads. His cheeks and forehead showed the orange tinge of a tanning bed.
“This is Mr. Van Dyke,” Rosemary Stallworth announced.
Royce Van Dyke produced a business card from his breast pocket, pungent with cologne.
“I wasn’t aware that you had retained a private detective,” Guerrero said.
“I wasn’t aware I needed your permission.”
“Hold up, let’s just—” Van Dyke smoothed his absurd mustache. “My client wants to find her husband. Our job is to work together, amigo. We’re on the same team.”
That wasn’t true. Private detectives got paid to prolong investigations, not shorten them. They tapped phones and witness-tampered and choreographed stakeouts, all so they could generate invoices.
“How long have you been under contract?” Guerrero asked Van Dyke.
“Do you have other questions for Mrs. Stallworth, Officer Guerrero?”
“So you’re her lawyer now, too?”
Van Dyke kept his face impassive.
Guerrero had to figure out whether this dipshit had spoken to Antonio Saenz, to Lorena, whether he’d visited the scene of the disappearance. He had to tell Captain Hooks they had company, which would infuriate him.
Guerrero turned to Mrs. Stallworth. “If it’s alright with you, ma’am, I’d like to take a quick look at your husband’s office.”
Rosemary turned to Mr. Van Dyke, who shrugged his assent.
“Be quick about it, please.”
Van Dyke led him down the stairs.
“I assume you’ve already looked through his personal effects,” Guerrero said.
“As did your partner. You read his report. There’s nothing to see. The guy folded his underwear into perfect squares. A real Boy Scout.”
Guerrero glanced around the office: a topographical map of California tacked to the wall behind his desk, an Ansel Adams print. The low bookshelf behind his desk was filled with scientific texts, a few volumes about bridge, Futureshock. On the desktop, a mechanical pencil nestled in the middle of a book.
“Mechanisms of Fluorescence,” Van Dyke said. “A real barn burner.”
His desk drawers contained two decks of cards, a bridge scoring pad, his children’s annual school photos in two tidy stacks. The file cabinet contained scores of field reports. Behind these, in a hidden compartment, were tax documents, the deed to the house, and titles to the family’s two vehicles. The only sign of habitation was a small bowl beneath the desk lamp half-filled with Good & Plenty.
“What do you think?” Guerrero said.
Van Dyke seated himself on the corner of the desk and canted his head theatrically. “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Homicide. No clue how they kept the Jeep so clean. But I don’t see a Mr. Hyde in this guy. I’m guessing, obviously.”
“How do you know what the Jeep looks like?”
Van Dyke let Guerrero do the math. Who had he bribed down in Barstow?
“You gone visiting anywhere else?”
Van Dyke thumbed a bit of lint from his lapel. He was the sort of man who would eventually sport a gold-tipped cane.
“Don’t make me put you under oath.”
“I thought we were going to be friends.”
“You been down to Fresno?”
“Should I put it on my dance card?”
Guerrero took a quick step toward Van Dyke, just to watch him flinch. “This is an open investigation. My captain won’t hesitate to sign off on an obstruction warrant.”
“Hooks? Don’t be so sure.”
“Stay away from my witnesses,” Guerrero said.
Van Dyke saluted lazily. “I wasn’t aware you had witnesses. I thought that was the whole problem.”
GUERRERO NEEDED TO get to Antonio Saenz ASAP, so he called Nando down in Fresno. “If you can find the kid, please keep eyes on him. I’m heading down this afternoon.”
“You cleared this with your captain?”
“Just about to,” Guerrero said.
Hooks was out to lunch, so Guerrero checked his phone messages. One was from a reporter at the Sacramento Bee. Two days in, the investigation was getting away from him. He walked over to Jolley’s desk and jingled his car keys irritably. “Let’s go to Fresno.”
Jolley poked at his carton of lo mein. “I’m off at five.”
“We gotta get down there tonight,” Guerrero said.
“Enjoy the scenery.”
“No. We have to do it the same way as with the sister.”
A couple of the other homicide detectives were watching them now. Jolley leaned back in his chair, savoring the moment. “I told you we should interview that punk two days ago. But, Officer Guerrero, in his boundless wisdom, drawing upon his many years of experience, advised against such a course of action. Does any of that ring a bell, little man?” Jolley discharged a snort. “So don’t march your ass over here and start issuing orders.”
Guerrero held up his hands. “You’re right, Doug. I should have listened to you. I apologize.”
Jolley tore open a packet of soy sauce with his teeth and dripped its entirety onto his noodles. “You might want to hear what the good widow Janet Shartle had to say this morning.”
“The who?”
“Sweet old bird. Lives next to the Stallworths. Grows prize roses. Takes in shelter dogs. You know the type. She called while you were out at the university, talking to the snake man. Says she witnessed the incident the daughter disclosed to Hooks: a ‘young gang-type individual’ on the premises. It was her impression the cholo in question said something inappropriate to Jenny, who was dressed in a bikini that hardly covered her rear end. Then dad showed up and chased him off.”
“Did she see whether Saenz had a gun?”
“Nope.” Jolley chewed at his noodles with a leisurely and sullen pleasure. “But she did report getting ‘a bad feeling’ about the suspect. His car was so loud it made her dog upset. Woof woof. So she took down his license plate.” He gestured with a chopstick to the report on his desk: a stolen vehicle report.
“Holy shit. Why’d she wait so long to call?”
“Said some snoopy reporter from the Bee jogged her memory. We’ll get a lot less bullshit if we bring that along, don’t you think?”
Guerrero smiled.
“I’m driving,” Jolley said. “Your car smells like refried beans.”
THEY FOUND ANTONIO Saenz at his place of employment, a dim storefront in an area of Fresno known as El Barrio Fortunata. No awning or signage, only a spider of duct tape that held the front window intact.
The shop offered an odd variety of goods and services. There was a barber’s chair against the back wall, in which a viejito peacefully slept, the instruments of his trade floating in jars of luminous blue water. Next to this was a counter that advertised Western Union telegrams and passport photos. The rest of the room was filled with racks of candy, soda, chips, beer coolers, candles in glass cylinders decorated with saints. An old woman sat regarding them from behind a tray with homemade empanadas. The place smelled of sandalwood and garlic.
“Nice,” Jolley said. “The local five and crime.”
Guerrero had grown up with a mercado like this at the end of his block. The old couple held all the licenses. The real action was in the back, or downstairs. A sports book, some fencing, a little loansharking maybe—the other financial services industry.
“You gentlemen need a haircut?” the old man called out in Spanish.
“I wish.” Guerrero touched at his thinning hair. He picked up an empanada and took a bite. “Did you make these, Grandma?” He laid a five down in front of her.
She looked at him without kindness. “Who you looking for, joven?”
Guerrero dipped his chin. “Antonio. Saenz.”
The old woman picked up the five and shuffled over to an ancient register.
“Mind if we look around in back?”
The old woman didn’t respond. Men in suits did what they were going to do.
Guerrero led Jolley through the door in back, down a narrow staircase, into a basement room with an empty desk and a jittery fluorescent light. In a display case, an array of knives, nunchucks, and three battered pistols lay atop crushed velvet. After a minute, two men entered. Both wore plaid flannel shirts buttoned just at the top, wife beaters tucked into Ben Davis jeans, and military flip belts.
“Cholo one and cholo two,” Jolley muttered.
“Is one of you Antonio Saenz?” Guerrero said in Spanish.
“Who wants to know?” the older one asked. He sneered at the half-eaten empanada in Guerrero’s hand. “You don’t got to buy shit. Everybody knows you police, man.”
Jolley pulled out his badge. “Let’s speak English, okay? Detective Douglas Jolley, Sacramento Police Department. This is my colleague, Pedro Guerrero. Which one of you is Antonio Saenz?”
The younger man started to speak, then hesitated. He looked about sixteen: a wispy mustache, a smooth chin sprayed with zits.
“You ain’t gotta say shit to them,” the older man said.
“Shut up,” Jolley said. “Nobody’s talking to you. Beat it or I’ll run a check on every pistol in this dump.”
“Those guns ain’t for sale,” said the older man.
“Careful,” Guerrero murmured in Spanish. “My friend’s got a temper.”
“He ain’t the only one.”
“How about if we speak fucking English, okay?” Jolley growled. “Like, pretend we’re in the United States of America instead of some Tijuana whorehouse. And don’t fucking glare at me.”
“You still don’t got to say shit,” the older man muttered. He was already on his way out of the room.
“I know my rights,” Antonio said. “I’m a veteran.”
“Let’s calm down and do this the nice way,” Guerrero said. “We just have a few questions.”
“About what?” Tony said.
“The Stallworth family.”
Tony sneered. “Again?”
“What does that mean?” Jolley snapped.
“Your partner up there. Pike. He already came sniffing around.”
The officers glanced at each other.
“Van Dyke?” Guerrero said suddenly.
“Whatever his name was.”
“He told you he was a cop?” Guerrero said.
“He didn’t have to tell me. I know cops.”
“That man was a private detective,” Guerrero said.
“Same difference. I’ll tell you what I told him: I don’t know shit about any Stallworths.”
“You never met any of them?” Jolley said.
“My sister was friends with the girl. I met her for like three seconds.”
“You never met her father, Marcus Stallworth?”
“Hell no. The girl was my sister’s rich bitch friend.”
“How do you know they were wealthy?”
“I seen their house.”
“So you’ve been to their home?”
“I dropped my sister off. The girl invited me inside, but I said no.”
“You’re aware that Mr. Stallworth has disappeared?” Guerrero said.
“I don’t know nothing about that. I told the other guy. I don’t know how I can help you officers.”
Jolley took three quick steps toward Tony. “You could start by telling us the fucking truth,” he snarled. “Remember, we’ve been out there gathering evidence. We know whether you been naughty or nice, whether you’ve been driving stolen cars, ingesting illegal drugs, stuff like that. So try not to mess this next question up, Mr. Seanz: Have you ever met Mr. Marcus Stallworth? Answer carefully. It’s never a good idea to lie to officers of the law.”
Antonio exhaled through his nose. “I told you everything I know.”
“That’s a no? You never touched him or his vehicle?”
“What? No. What the hell are you accusing me of?”
“What should I be accusing you of?” Jolley was seething.
“I’m not saying nothing else, man. You’re crazy.”
Guerrero stepped between the two of them and eased his partner back a few steps. “Let’s take a time-out. Come on, Doug. Grab a smoke.”
Jolley glared at Antonio. “I’ll be back. Don’t think this is over.”
They listened to Jolley pound up the stairs. “I told you he’s got a temper.”
“So what, you’re the good guy?” Antonio cast a dubious glance at Guerrero. “I got nothing to do with any of this. You’re making a big fucking mistake.”
“Okay. Let’s just calm down.”
“I don’t have to tell you shit.”
“No, you don’t. At least for now. But you know how it works, Mr. Saenz. It doesn’t look good if you’re afraid to talk with us. Looks incriminating. We know about the stolen car you were driving, and why you left Fruitbridge. We can haul you into the station. Or call our pals at INS.”
Tony stiffened.
“We’re just trying to get background,” Guerrero said tiredly. “If you got nothing to hide, what’s the harm?”
“What more do you want me to say, man?”
“I want you to tell me, one more time, whether you’ve ever had any contact with Mr. Marcus Stallworth?”
Tony cast his eyes around the room, trying to decide what to say, or how much. “There was something fucked about that family,” he murmured.
“What do you mean?”
Tony ground his fist into his temple.
Guerrero, who regarded Saenz as a suspect, interpreted this gesture as an act of calculated hesitation. But Tony himself was thinking of the Stallworth family, of the bad news they had absorbed. His impulse to elide the truth was, oddly, an act of mercy, carried out by a young man who knew what it was like to be abandoned, left fatherless.
“We can do this the hard way, if we have to,” Guerrero said. “I’ll come back down with a warrant. But that only makes more trouble. And not just for you, Antonio. Your mom—she certainly doesn’t need that.” Guerrero let the implication linger for a beat.
“Alright. Look. I didn’t want to get into this because the guy, like you said, if something happened to him, I’m sorry for his family and everything. But when I picked up my little sister—she called me in the middle of the night, all freaked out—and when I pulled up I saw the guy, Stallworth, he was on his knees, like kneeling, and he had his arms around my little sister’s waist.”
“He was hugging her?”
“That’s what it looked like to me.”
“What did you do?”
“Got her the fuck out of there.”
“You were upset?”
“Fuck yeah, I was upset.”
“Did you have an altercation with Mr. Stallworth?”
“No no no. It wasn’t like that. I just—that’s my fucking little sister, man. She’s fourteen. I wanted to get her out of there.”
“I thought you were dropping off.”
“No. Yeah. I did. That was another day.”
“I’m sorry. I’m confused. You visited another time?”
“Yeah. Like, a month earlier or something. I dropped her off.”
Guerrero waited for Antonio to go on, but he was done.
“What did your sister say? On the night Mr. Stallworth was hugging her?”
“She made up some bullshit about they were looking for the keys he dropped. I could tell something fucked-up had gone down.”
“How?”
“She’s my sister, okay?”
“He messed with her?”
“The world’s a dark place.”
“There you go.” Guerrero sighed. He looked at Saenz for a long moment, not in the sly way of a cop who wants his suspect to keep talking, but with a genuine and reluctant sympathy. Antonio Saenz was saying too much, stumbling into the crosshairs, becoming a target.
“Why didn’t you mention any of this before?”
“You don’t speak ill of the dead. It ain’t right.”
Guerrero dipped his chin. How did the kid know that Marcus Stallworth was dead?
“Besides.” Tony glowered. “That’s my sister, okay? You got a sister? It’s private shit. You say something to a cop, it becomes public.”
“Some conversations are off the record.”
“No such thing, bro. Come on. I was in the navy.” He glanced at Guerrero’s notebook. “She’s just a kid. Smart as fuck, too. That little bitch is going somewhere. She doesn’t need to get dragged into all this.”
“What’s this? Dragged into what?”
“Your investigation, man. This whole mess with the Stallings.”
“Stallworths.”
“Never mind my mother. She’s evangelical.”
“Do you think your sister had some sort of relationship with Mr. Stallworth?”
“I didn’t say that. I just know what I saw. Sometimes guys like that get themselves into trouble.”
“Trouble,” Guerrero said. His chest was tingling. He waited for Antonio to make his next statement. But the kid, the suspect, was done talking.
THEY DROVE TO the substation where Nando was the lieutenant. It was a mile away, tucked among the brown neighborhoods that hugged the highway, with their strip malls and shitty prefabs. Jolley stayed in the car. He’d heard enough Spanish for one day. Guerrero was there to update his cousin and seek his counsel.
Nando swept Guerrero into his cramped office. EL GRAN QUESO read the sign over his desk. “You like?” he said. “Beats the shit out of busting into double-wides and hauling borrachos down to county.” A few years ago, Nando had taken a bullet in the calf at a quinceañera he was working for off-duty cash—some drunk who’d clicked off his safety.
He was still Nando: loud, mocking, his big nose beaded with nic sweat. He walked now with a fat man’s limp, pitched forward as if chasing a rolling coin. “I’m gonna get one of those golf carts and see if anybody can tell I’m Mexican.” He laughed like anybody who didn’t was missing out.
Young deputies kept sticking their heads in the door. Nando told them to fuck off. They talked family shit for a few minutes. Then Guerrero came to the point.
“I need you to shade the Saenz kid for a few days.”
“You worried he’s headed down to Acapulco?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. He had some kind of altercation with the alleged victim. Told me the guy messed with his little sister. Like pervert stuff. Says he was protecting her honor.”
“You think he’s telling the truth?”
“If he is, there’s your motive.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“He knows the family. Knows they have money. He’s seen their house. Maybe he gets a big idea. Based on his priors, he was headed that way.”
“Why not just rob the house?”
“He doesn’t strike me as a brilliant criminal mind.”
“So how does he get that Jeep so clean?”
“Maybe he gets help from his new business associate. I was hoping you could also send me whatever you’ve got on him.”
Nando sat back and licked the tip of his pencil, like he was making a list.
“You want me to run this through the proper channels?” Guerrero said.
“I’m just giving you shit.”
“I’ll make sure everyone knows you’re helping out.”
Nando laughed. “You gonna take care of old Nando, primo? Funnel me some pesos from your big-city slush fund? Maybe I’ll get that golf cart after all.”
“This is serious,” Guerrero said.
“Course it’s serious. Some rich preppy got popped. That’s a top-shelf life right there. Just remember your little punk-ass beaner has a life, too. How many detectives you figure would drive down from Sacramento if he disappeared?”
“I’m following the evidence.”
“Okay. Hey. It’s a big case, primo. Don’t listen to me. I’m just thinking out loud. I been listening to Cesar Chavez tapes before bed.”
Guerrero wanted to push back, but Nando didn’t give you anything to push against. He laughed his big laugh, like when they were kids, packed six to a couch, sucking at popsicles and goofing on each other.
“Wait. Shit. Beaner’s a racist term, isn’t it?”
HOOKS CALLED GUERRERO into his office the next morning.
“Should we wait for Jolley?” Guerrero said.
The captain was former military. Words offended him. “Talk.”
Guerrero launched into his investigative summary.
Hooks rapped the dossier at the center of his desk. It was, Guerrero realized, his own case file. “Not what you know. What you think.”
Guerrero said he didn’t know what to think yet, there wasn’t enough to go on.
Hooks grunted. “Guess.”
“Saenz. There’s history with Stallworth. He tells a buddy down in Fresno. They hatch a plan. Armed robbery. Kidnapping, maybe. But it goes south.”
Hooks listened impassively. The gray ash on his cigarette crept toward his knuckles. He dropped the butt into his coffee cup and handed a manila folder to Guerrero. Inside was a report from an analyst with the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. It stated that the two partials lifted from the roll bar of Marcus Stallworth’s Jeep, having undergone “computer enhancement,” indicated a “definitive match” with Antonio Saenz.
There were two additional reports. The first was from a hematologist who had examined the Stallworth Jeep. Among his findings: a considerable volume of blood (“undetected by previous investigators”) had soaked into the dark carpeting under the passenger seat. FBI serologists had then analyzed this blood and compared it to a sample taken from Antonio Saenz, which agents obtained, by subpoena, from the firm that conducted drug tests for the navy. An analysis of blood serum proteins indicated a “significant statistical likelihood” of a match.
Guerrero sat stunned. “Wait, who the hell invited the feds in on this?”
Hooks held a finger to his lips.
“I did,” a voice behind him said.
Chief Ellis stood in the doorway, his face sharp and shaven, like a pink hatchet. “It’s a bit more complicated than it seems, Officer.” He shut the door and glanced down at Hooks, who handed Guerrero an oversized sheet of slick, camera-ready paper.
“You read the Bee?” Ellis said.
Guerrero nodded unconvincingly.
“That’s going to run Sunday. Front page of the local section.”
The headline read WITHOUT A TRACE, with a little tagline underneath: POLICE FIND NO SIGN OF MISSING PROF – OR AN ASSAILANT. The story was blotter and bio stuff until the quotes at the end. One was from Janet Shartle, the elderly neighbor who recalled an altercation involving Mr. Stallworth and “a young Latino thug.” The second was from Van Dyke, the private detective. “It’s been two weeks. The family still knows nothing. They want Marcus back. If that’s not possible, they deserve to know what happened to him. To live without closure is a kind of slow torture.”
Hooks cleared his throat. “Any errors of fact?”
“How’d you get this?” Guerrero said.
Ellis checked his watch. “TV folks read the Bee. They’ll pounce on this. Then, trust me, the feds will happily step in to save the day. You understand?”
“We’re doing everything—”
The chief stared him into silence. “I’m asking for results, Guerrero. Hooks believes in you. I’ll defer to him. But some people very high up want this matter resolved. Higher than any of us can see. You’ve got forty-eight hours before this goes to a federal task force, seventy-two at the outside.”
The chief departed. Guerrero sat clenching his fists. “Your pal Van Dyke tampered with my suspect,” he muttered finally.
“Why are you still here, Guerrero?”
“He portrayed himself as an officer of the law.”
Hooks looked up slowly. “Quit whining. You guessed right. Go make the case.”
GUERRERO EXPECTED THE girl, Jenny Stallworth, to be fragile. She’d looked that way as her mother led her into the family den and went over the “rules” of the interview. Jolley stood there nodding, producing gentle noises, smiling his white cop smile. But the moment her mother left the room, Jenny’s mouth became a little purse of insolence.
“We’re here to ask you a few more questions,” Jolley said. “If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just let us know.”
“I tried to tell her about Lorena’s brother,” she said quickly. “I told her, like, even before you guys showed up. She said I was being ridiculous, which is what she always says when she can’t handle the truth.”
“What did you tell her exactly?”
“That he’d driven over to our house in this, like, low-rider.” Her eyes shifted to Guerrero. “And that he had a gun. That’s the thing I remember.”
“He showed it to you?”
“It was tucked in his belt. He was standing in a way you were supposed to see he had a gun. That was the whole point. He was this big weapons expert in the navy.”
“Did you tell your mother or father about the gun?”
Jenny stared into her lap. “I didn’t want them to freak out.”
“Did you talk to Lorena?”
“Of course. I was, like, ‘What’s up with your brother carrying a gun?’ She said it was just a knife. But that was bullshit.” The girl looked up defiantly, to affirm her use of profanity. “Because she was the one who first told me about his gun. She said he was a member of the Latin Kings. I thought she was just bragging. But I guess she was telling the truth.”
“Did Mr. Saenz ever threaten you?”
“No.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Just dumb stuff, like, trying to flirt. Checking out my dad’s Jeep.”
“Did he interact with your father?”
“I wouldn’t call it interaction. My dad came out and saw this kind of delinquent-looking sp—” Jenny caught herself. “This guy messing with his Jeep.”
“What does ‘messing’ mean?” Guerrero said.
“Just, you know, gawking at it.”
“Did he touch the vehicle?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did your father speak to Mr. Saenz?”
Jenny nibbled at her thumbnail. “I’ve been trying to remember. He may have said something as he was coming down the stairs. He was pissed.”
“That’s why Mr. Saenz left in such a hurry?”
She nodded. “With the gun and the way he was dressed and everything. It was pretty obvious he didn’t belong in the neighborhood. No offense.”
“Is there anything else you remember about the incident? Anything else we should know?”
Jenny leaned forward. “I don’t want this to sound mean. But Lorena had certain problems.” She aimed what she believed to be a furtive glance at Guerrero.
He reached down and pressed a button on his beeper, causing it to shrill. “It’s the captain,” he whispered to Jolley. “What should I do, Doug?”
“Take it.”
Guerrero hurried from the den.
“Sorry about that,” Jolley said. “You were saying, about Lorena Saenz?”
“Yeah, you know, in terms of us being friends, it was more like something my mom pushed. She got the idea that Lorena had this rough life and it would help her to spend some time over here, like with her confidence. My mom is big into service work.”
“So you two weren’t really friends?”
“I mean, I liked her at first.” Jenny’s voice seemed to catch. Jolley watched as her pretty face twisted. “But she wasn’t who she said she was.”
“How so?”
“She acted all shy and meek. But she was always trying to find excuses to come over, eat dinner over here, whatever. It was like she had some idea that our family would adopt her or something. She kissed up to my mom constantly. But she was different in private.” The girl’s eyes darted about, searching for a place to land. “Like, if we were going swimming, she would undress in front of me. It was like her family didn’t have any boundaries.” Her voice had grown faint, almost wistful.
Guerrero, who was listening from the hallway, could barely hear her. There was a long pause. Jolley cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. Yeah. I just got a creepy vibe from that family. Like, the minute Lo showed up in our life, something bad was going to happen.”
“That’s why you stopped being friends with her?”
“She was never really a friend to begin with.”
The words stung Guerrero unexpectedly. He reminded himself that Jenny Stallworth was a terrified young girl. Her father was missing, almost certainly dead. She was using contempt to keep the pain at bay.
“Like I said, it was just something my mom wanted.”
GUERRERO DROVE STRAIGHT from the Stallworths’ to Lorena’s workplace. Safe Harbor was one of those Medicaid facilities where working families stashed their dying, a converted elementary school with kid rooms and kid ceilings. Guerrero found the kitchen manager, who wrung his fat hands. His employees were underage or undocumented or both, which allowed him to pay in cash and skim the difference from the state subsidies. Guerrero’s mom and aunts had been a part of the same scheme. The pine-scented industrial soap, the rubber aprons and veils of rancid steam—he remembered it all.
Lorena worked the loader, pulling dishes from the conveyor belt, slotting them into sickly green racks. The jefe whistled over the roar of the machines. Lorena looked up and spotted Guerrero. The plate she was holding began to shake, dripping pink strings onto the floor mats. He knew, then and there, that the girl was hiding something.
This was true, of course, given all that had transpired between herself and Mr. Stallworth. He had made her party to a secret history. (Or maybe she had forced her way into that history?) But cops meant danger, especially for her mother. She couldn’t get dragged into it. She had spent the past week telling herself the police would figure out what happened without her. It was their job. What did she really know, after all?
The jefe curled his finger at Lorena. She set down the spray nozzle. In her periphery, she could see sunlight slanting though the rear screen door. For a second, she imagined running. Then she returned to herself and walked calmly toward Guerrero.
The jefe led them through the dining hall. It was three in the afternoon, snack time. A scattering of residents sat gazing at bowls of gray pudding. They wound up in the art room, with its paper roses and watery landscapes, which fluttered against their thumbtacks.
“Did you find him?” Lorena said. “Mr. Stallworth.”
“We’re still working on it, Lorena. To be honest—can I be honest? I don’t think we’re going to figure this one out. I shouldn’t tell you that. It’s not very professional. We’re kind of grasping for straws.” Guerrero pulled out his notebook and flipped through it a bit distractedly. “Hey, first thing’s first. Your boss won’t give you a hard time about this. We had a little talk. And you don’t have to worry about your mother, either. Okay? Okay. We’re just doing this thing called due diligence. You know what that is, right? It’s like dotting your I’s or crossing your T’s. We’re trying to help this family, the Stallworths. You know that, right?”
“Of course,” Lorena said softly. Her hairnet itched.
“I need you to tell me if there’s anything else you forgot to mention the last time we talked?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Anything about your relationship to Mr. Stallworth?”
Her head shook.
“Did you like him?”
“Did I like him?” Lo was taking little sips of air, trying to settle her eyes on some object that wasn’t his notebook.
“It’s a pretty simple question.”
“I didn’t think about him that much.”
The spot at the base of her throat pulsed.
“I know this is upsetting to think about.”
“May I use the bathroom?” Lo whispered.
“Of course,” Guerrero said.
Lorena hurried to the bathroom, where she threw up. She washed her mouth out and tried to calm herself by staring hard into the mirror. It was kid level. All she could see was her neck and chest. Was there any way she could make him stop? Did she have the right to a lawyer? She couldn’t stop thinking about her mother, who had come to America for her and Tony, to give them a future—the phrase had become an incantation chanted over the minutes of her life. Tony had messed that up. But she wouldn’t. She would become a nurse. Or even a scientist. She took a deep breath and decided she was being silly. Acting like a kid. She had nothing to do with any of this, really. She just had to answer a few questions and it would be over.
When she returned to the art room, Guerrero stood, like a gentleman.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. No. I’m okay.”
“It’s weird talking to a cop. I get it. I wasn’t always a cop, you know.” He watched Lorena attempt a smile. “We’re almost done.”
“I’m so sorry all this happened,” Lorena said. “But I barely knew Mr. Stallworth. Me and Jenny were friends. That’s all.”
“I hear you. Just a few more quick questions. Okay? Did your family ever meet the Stallworths?”
“No. Like I said, I was just friends with Jenny.”
“Right. I got that. But I figured, if you went camping with the Stallworths, maybe your mom wanted to meet them?”
“You’re not going to talk to my mom, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” Guerrero said. “I’m just trying to tie up the loose ends, remember? If we can get through these questions, I’ll be on my way.”
“My mom met Mrs. Stallworth one time at my school, for about five seconds. At parent-teacher conference night.”
“How about your brother?”
“He’s in the navy.”
Guerrero looked puzzled. “Are you sure about that, Lorena? The navy says Tony was discharged—” He flipped through his notebook. “Yeah. Discharged in August. Did Tony ever meet the Stallworths? Maybe dropping you off or something?”
“What does Tony have to do with this?”
“Like I said: loose ends. Can you just answer the question?” He sounded bored, a little impatient.
“I don’t think so. I can’t really remember.”
Guerrero tilted his head to one side and fixed his eyes on Lorena. “I’m starting to get the feeling that maybe you’re not taking this real seriously.”
“I am. I swear.”
“So your brother never met Jenny Stallworth or her father? That’s what you’re telling me?” Guerrero’s voice dipped abruptly, as if someone might overhear them. “I’m trying to keep you out of this, Lorena. You and your mom.”
“Out of what?”
“Can I give you a little advice?” Guerrero said, this time in Spanish. “Just please relax and answer the question. Then I can cross you off my little list and we’ll be done. But don’t lie. Because if you do that, then I have to ask you more questions and it looks like you have something to hide and it gets more complicated. But you don’t have anything to hide. Not that I can see.” He smiled in the way that was both official and a little more than that.
“He met Jenny one time,” Lorena said. “He was back on leave and he dropped me off at their house.”
“He came inside?”
“No.”
“He met Mr. Stallworth?”
“No. He just dropped me off.”
“Did he pick you up, too?”
“No.”
“He never picked you up from the Stallworth home? Think, Lorena. Late one night. He didn’t come and pick you up?”
Lorena felt a cold thump. Tony, all coked up, his stupid gun. Tony who had caught Mr. Stallworth embracing her. “You think Tony had something to do with this,” she said suddenly. “You’re asking all this because you think—oh my God.” She began hyperventilating.
“Calm down, Lorena. We don’t think anything. That’s not how it works. We’re trying to figure out what happened to Marcus Stallworth. A man has disappeared, a husband and a father. Do you understand? He may have been murdered.”
“No,” she said. Then again, more loudly: “No. He wasn’t murdered,” Lorena said defiantly. “He left. He ran away.”
Guerrero sat back in astonishment. And waited.
SHE HAD DAMMED the truth within her for two weeks. Now that dam gave way. She recounted how Mr. Stallworth had behaved toward her, how he had waited outside the tent and led her away from the camp, how he had spoken to her and later touched her. His maps. The secret compartment in the file cabinet. The forensics manual. The night she had found him bleeding. How he tried to keep her from leaving.
From time to time, Lorena would seize up. But Guerrero wasn’t afraid of the silences. He treated them as ellipses, a rest period, a chance for the witness to be summoned further toward the truth. He went to get them some water and when he sat down again, it was next to her, so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Did you tell anyone else about this relationship?”
Lorena shook her head. “It wasn’t a relationship.”
“Tony?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
Lorena started to say something about his temper, then stopped herself. “It’s not something—we’re not that close.”
“He would have been angry, no? An older man messing with his little sister.”
“He didn’t know anything about it.”
“Did he or did he not come to pick you up at the Stallworths’? On the night you were just describing?”
Lorena fell silent.
“We can get phone records, Lorena.”
She nodded.
“That’s a yes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And there was an altercation of some kind?”
“No.”
“No? Tony wasn’t angry? He didn’t have words with Mr. Stallworth?”
“He came to get me because Jenny got sick. That’s all. Maybe he thought—I don’t know what he thought. It doesn’t matter. Mr. Stallworth had a whole plan to leave. That’s what I’m telling you. He didn’t love his wife.”
“He told you that?”
“Not exactly. But Jenny …” Lorena felt her cheeks start to burn. “She said her parents kind of hated each other. The affection was just an act.”
“Did he love you?” Guerrero said seriously.
“No.” She couldn’t describe what had passed between them. It wasn’t love, exactly. But it didn’t feel like a crush either. Mr. Stallworth had recognized her ambitions, her yearnings. He had breathed himself into her. She had glowed under his secret gaze.
Guerrero sat back but kept his eyes locked on Lorena. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”
“I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Anyone like who?”
“I figured you’d find him. The police would find him. And no one would get into trouble.”
“You keep mentioning trouble. Why would you get into trouble?”
“Not me. My mom.”
“Okay. You’re worried about your mom. I get it. But listen, Lorena. I have to tell you this. You have to listen. This is a homicide investigation. A criminal matter.” Guerrero spoke slowly, as if to underline the words. “If you don’t want anyone to get into trouble, you need to tell the truth. Right now. No more games. No more stories.”
“You don’t believe me,” Lorena said.
Guerrero sighed and set his notebook down and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t have beliefs,” he said. “That’s not how it works. I just need you to tell me what happened between your brother and Mr. Stallworth. I know they met on two occasions. You were present on both occasions. You are what we call a ‘material witness.’ That’s the legal term. We can do this right here or I can call your mom and she can bring you down to the police station to give a sworn statement. She’ll have to give a sworn statement, too. You understand what I’m telling you?”
THIS WAS HOW Lorena Saenz became a witness for the prosecution. She confirmed to Officer Pedro Guerrero that her brother had met Mr. Marcus Stallworth twice. On the first occasion, he had admired Mr. Stallworth’s Jeep. He had fled the scene when Stallworth appeared. On the second occasion he had come to pick her up in the middle of the night and, by her own account, had caught Stallworth behaving in an inappropriate manner. Yes, Tony had been angry. Yes, he had threatened Stallworth.
Guerrero asked if Tony had been carrying a weapon. Lorena said she wasn’t sure. Guerrero reminded her that withholding information from the police was a crime. Lorena began to cry. Maybe he had a gun but he would never use it.
“Maybe he had a gun?”
“It was dark.”
“Come on, Lorena.”
“He was just trying to scare Mr. Stallworth.”
“With a gun?”
“That’s how he is. He acts tough.”
“He threatened to kill Mr. Stallworth?”
“No,” Lorena said. “That’s not how it was.”
“How was it?”
“He was looking out for me.” Lorena began to cry even harder. “He was right.”
“About what?”
“I told him he was crazy. But he was right.”
“Have you talked to him since he left town?”
Lorena shook her head. Tears dripped off her chin. “Tony didn’t do anything,” she said. “Mr. Stallworth ran away. He had a plan. I can prove it.”
“How would you prove it, Lorena?”
“He had a giant map with his route all drawn out. You just have to follow the X’s with the coordinates next to them. I wrote them down.”
“The coordinates?”
She nodded frantically. “He’s going to Yuma, Arizona.”
“Okay. I hear you, Lorena. I’m listening. Let’s get you some Kleenex, okay?” Guerrero got up and grabbed some paper towels from a dispenser near the door. He sat down and took a deep breath. “I realize this is scary. But let’s think about this. Mr. Stallworth was a field researcher, right? He made a lot of trips into the desert. And he had maps in his office. I’ve seen them.”
“There were those other things, too. The police manual. And rubber gloves.”
“You saw these things yourself?”
She nodded.
“He showed them to you?”
Lorena said nothing.
“So you snuck into his office and found all this incriminating stuff just lying around?”
“It was locked in his file cabinet.”
“And you just happened to have the key?”
Lorena closed her eyes. Her neck pulsed again. “He forgot; he must have forgotten to lock it.”
Her lies had become so transparent that Guerrero felt bad for her. “It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly.
“He told me to find him.” Lorena sobbed. “I’m telling you the truth.”
Guerrero watched the girl shudder. He set another paper towel down in front her. “You’re not in trouble. We’re trying to help the Stallworth family, okay? That’s all we’re doing.”
GUERRERO KNEW IT was wrong to feel jubilant. But police work had its own narcotic lure. There were bad guys, or guys who did bad things. Sin made its mess in the world. His job was to detect its origins and to punish its authors. He was a kind of custodian—of motive and action.
He stared at Lorena Saenz, this poor kid who’d just given up her brother. He knew where she lived, and how. He knew her prospects. It was impossible to overstate the power Marcus Stallworth must have assumed in her mind. He was exactly the sort of man she would fall for: handsome, wealthy, devoted to family. A kind of superhero. Maybe Mr. Stallworth had been flattered by her attentions. Maybe he had encouraged her somehow. As a consequence, she had brought her brother into the orbit of this man and thereby, in all likelihood, contributed to his murder. Now she was stuck trying to protect her family.
The rule was simple: a witness who lies once will keep lying as the facts demand. She had denied that Tony ever met Stallworth. Then admitted to one meeting. Then a second. Then the altercation. Then the gun. Maybe Tony himself had cooked up this story about Stallworth’s secret getaway plan and fed it to his little sister. It had the feel of something hastily conjured, adolescent.
“What’s going to happen?” she said.
Guerrero wanted to offer her a reassuring response, the neat and necessary clichés of police work, about evidence and justice. Then he could lead Lorena back to her filthy dishes and steam. He had done his job, gained her trust, extracted the truth. But the nervy and improvised intimacy he had established between them suddenly felt more like manipulation. His mind drifted back to those gray bowls of pudding; the image soured his stomach. He had used her innocence to make his case. And though he couldn’t see it yet, that innocence would be turned against both of them.
“I need to check out what you’ve told me,” Guerrero said finally. “You’re not in any trouble. Neither is your mother. And Tony’s not in any trouble either. Not if he didn’t do anything. Okay, Lorena? I’m making a personal promise here. But don’t talk about any of this with anyone. Understand? No one. We’ll know if you do.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Lorena said.
“I know you are.”
“I can prove it,” she said again.
Guerrero stood and Lorena tried to do the same. But she wobbled and fell against the table between them and he reached to steady her, a brief hand upon the body he had ushered into ruin. He wanted to whisper that it was all going to be okay. Instead, he asked her to please stop crying.
GUERRERO GOT HIMSELF patched through to Hooks, who listened to his report in silence. Guerrero assumed the next step would be an arrest warrant. Dangle a plea offer, get Seanz to name accomplices.
“Not yet,” Hooks said.
“What if he drives down to Mexico?”
“Slow down,” Hooks said. “The little fuck is presumed innocent. You jack him, he gets a lawyer and suddenly we’ve got the ACLU up our ass.”
“What about the story in the Bee?”
“You’re not listening, Guerrero. This is big. We’re being tracked. You go too fast, you fuck it up. We need everything proper. Find another way.”
“What does that mean?”
But Hooks had hung up.
Back at the station, Jolley was waiting for him. “Where the hell you been? They found a witness who saw Stallworth the day he went missing, between three and four in the p.m. Some fast-cash hut south of Fresno. Witness says he came in wearing a ball cap. Real twitchy, like he was in a hurry. Cashed a money order for five thousand smackeroos.”
“Who’s they?”
Jolley handed him the report, an embossed FBI logo on every page.
“They’re going to take this fucking case from us,” Guerrero muttered.
“The feds are involved because someone wants them involved. That’s how it works downtown. You’re Chico, my friend. Not the Man. Try not to get your feelings hurt.” Jolley began to the whistle the theme from Chico and the Man. It had been a hit sitcom back when Guerrero worked in Oak Park, the hokey tale of a smiley Mexican mechanic and his racist-but- sweet-hearted old boss. Jolley laughed and patted his fat cop gut. Chico, he sang, don’t be discouraged. The man, he ain’t so hard to understand.
GUERRERO CALLED NANDO’S house from a pay phone—a little advance warning. A girl answered, one of his daughters or his new girlfriend. Nando was busy, she said. “Just wake him up, honey.”
“Really?” Nando said. “It’s the Sabbath, primo.”
“I need to talk to our little friend again. I’m heading down.”
“Monday?”
“Right now.”
“Don’t do that,” Nando said.
“Too late,” Guerrero said. “I already did.”
He could see the whole thing playing out. The feds swooping in, a press conference for the TV crews in a marble lobby, a quick thanks to the local police for their assistance. The drive should have taken three hours. He made it in barely two. Nando answered the door in his robe.
“Christ,” he said. “You’re one dumb fucking mule. What did I tell you? Calm down. Listen. You’re not the only one keeping tabs on Saenz. The Bureau called the boss man down here a few days ago. Capital B.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I figured you’d race down here and fuck up your career.”
“Hooks told me to come down.”
“I doubt that.”
“He implied it. He wouldn’t let me get a warrant. But he told me to find another way. Those were his words.”
Nando shook his head. “Good old Hooks. That’s one crafty bastard. You see what’s happening?”
Guerrero didn’t.
“The Bee publishes on Sunday. The TV stations blow it up. So now everyone’s watching, and what happens? Sacramento’s finest make the case. That’s the play, primo. Hooks is under orders to back off from the feds. So he tells you to back off. But he knows you. He knows you’re gonna barrel through that red light. If you get Saenz to confess, he’s the hero for putting you on it. If you mess it up, you’re the dumbass who defied a direct order. They always find a way to put the risk onto a brown man.”
“Hooks is Black.”
“Not since he made captain.” Nando hobbled to the kitchen to make them mugs of instant coffee.
“What’s Saenz been up to?”
“Hold on. Lemme check the Batphone.” Nando held a banana to his ear. “Nothing. Just scratching his nuts.”
“What about his friends?”
“The kids he invites over for slumber parties?”
“This coffee is crap.”
“Don’t leave a tip.”
“His business partner. What’s his story?”
“Victor Peña. He was running around town yapping about being Latin Kings a few years ago. Then some real banger stomped him. The end. No record to speak of. He and your guy were pals in the navy. They’ve got that little business going in surplus weapons.”
“Legal?”
“Permits and everything. They prefer the term private brokers. Very classy.”
Guerrero told Nando about the money order. “You know that place?”
“Bank of choice for Fresno’s finest narcotic retailers. Sounds like Stallworth had a helluva weekend planned.”
Guerrero gulped at his crap coffee. “They must have grabbed him and forced him to buy a money order. Maybe it’s a down payment on the ransom? Then things go bad.”
“Grabbed him from where? His house? The college up there? You’re making shit up.”
“The blood in that Jeep. The prints I lifted. Am I making that up?”
Nando was shaking his head. “You got the man’s Jeep, his wallet, his credit cards. Why make him buy a money order?”
“They wanted cash. No way to trace that.”
“Why run the risk? He could walk in and call the cops.”
Guerrero hated this about Nando, the way he picked at your logic, as if he were loosening a hastily knotted shoelace for the pleasure of watching you trip.
“Unless there’s someone, like, waiting in the parking lot with a loaded gun. Stallworth’s scared shitless. Maybe he takes too long. Tries to run.”
“You got a bunch of circumstances, primo. That’s a theory, not a crime.”
“It is if I get him to cop,” Guerrero said.
Nando lit up a cigarillo. Smoke billowed from his nostrils. “Feels like a setup to me, primo.”
THE SECOND AND final meeting between Officer Pedro Guerrero and Antonio Saenz lasted just five minutes. Guerrero entered the basement beneath the mercado from a door in the alley to which Nando’s men had directed him. The suspect was downstairs, hunched over some kind of ledger.
“That you, pendejo?” Tony called out.
“Afraid not.”
Tony glanced over his shoulder and saw Guerrero standing there in his wrinkled suit. The room smelled of silver polish. The display cases gleamed with weapons.
“You got a few minutes to talk?”
“We already talked.”
It was never good when the police came around a second time. But Tony’s perspective on the situation was considerably calmer than his sister’s. He understood himself to be on the fringes of whatever had happened to Marcus Stallworth. Mostly, he was confused as to how Guerrero had found his way into the private showroom of his new business.
“I told you everything I know,” Tony said politely.
“My partner—you remember him? He’s got this idea in his head. That you know more than you’re saying.”
“He’s wrong.”
“That’s what I think, too. But you can help me out, okay? Just tell me where you were two weekends ago? I’m talking about Friday, October 23, through that Sunday, October 25.”
“Where I was?”
“The weekend before Halloween. I’m trying to rule you out, Antonio.”
“Rule me out of what?”
Guerrero waited.
TONY KNEW WELL enough where he’d been that weekend, his second in Fresno. It began on Friday afternoon. He had the day off from his new gig at Quik Lube, but nowhere to go, so he showed up at the parking lot next door, where the staff sometimes gathered to drink after closing. This girl Trina, the niece of his shift manager Gonzo, showed up around dusk, already buzzed. She pulled a beer from the cooler, walked right up to Tony and asked him if he could pop the top. She wore a tight black tank top and mesh stockings; black liner slashed out from her eyelids like tiny scimitars. Gonzo told him to be careful. Trina shook her tits and laughed. “He can take care of himself.”
Tony was transfixed as only the lonely can be. They shared a six-pack and later Trina took him to a motel room off the freeway, a kind of flophouse (Tony saw that in retrospect) where they had some rum and laughed and kissed and Trina undressed and whispered what she wanted in his ear then climbed onto him and Tony had to stop himself from announcing that he loved her. Then this guy came by, an old white hippie with fucked-up teeth and a bunch of rock cocaine. Tony and Trina began smoking and talking frantically. It all felt deep and hilarious till the rock was gone. Then panic set in and they called the same guy, Winnie was his name, and it went on like that, Tony running to a cash hut for more, Trina laughing, dragging him into the bathroom, her mouth eager to engulf him. Then everything went black.
Tony heard pounding and a door opened and beams of sun struck his eyes. A fat little maid recoiled at the sight of him. Blood from a cut on his scalp had dripped down his cheek and painted his naked torso. His wallet was gone. He missed his Saturday shift at Quik Lube, and got the shitcan and the girl, or Winnie, or the both of them, charged a bunch of booze and stereo equipment on his card, maxed it out. His license was gone, too, his VA card, all that shit. Welcome to Fresno.
Tony had left Fruitridge because he had a problem. Now he knew how easy it was to find that same problem in Fresno. He called his friend Peña, who laughed for a full minute. “You got rode, bro. Lemme know when you’re ready to stop fucking up.” He had a new business, weapons, specialty shit, mail-order, COD delivery, totally legit.
Peña sent him off on a run with two antique pistols. Tony got pulled over. The cop found the guns, which were unregistered. He got cuffed, marched off to county. Peña showed up a few hours later, bailed him out, paid his fine, and threw in $500 for the trouble. “That was just a test, little man. Needed to make sure you weren’t a snitch.” Peña grinned. “Relax. Keep straight and we’ll make us a lot of money.” Tony didn’t have much in the way of options.
THE COP, GUERRERO, was still waiting for an answer.
“I don’t remember,” Tony said.
“That’s going to be a problem,” Guerrero said.
“How’s that?”
“My partner thinks you had something to do with the disappearance of Marcus Stallworth.”
Tony looked aghast. “Bullshit,” he said softly.
“Probably,” Guerrero said. “But you know how it is with cops. You got to unconvince them.”
“I told you everything I know.”
“Are there any people who can tell me where you were on those particular days? Who can account for your whereabouts? You need to think.”
“You serious?”
“Did you, or did you not, threaten Marcus Stallworth with a gun?”
“What?”
“Did you conspire to rob or abduct him?”
“No.”
“Did you visit physical harm upon him?”
The suspect’s cheeks swirled with blood; his eyes were skittish.
“Do you have any knowledge of the events leading to the disappearance and/or death of Marcus Stallworth? If you help me out, Antonio, I can help you.”
“Help me with what, man?”
“There’s evidence now. Fingerprints. Blood. Yours.”
Tony’s mouth fell open. In his previous dealings with cops, he’d been guilty of something. Deep down, he’d accepted that any story he might tell would unravel. Now he was being told about evidence that couldn’t possibly exist, proving he committed a crime he knew nothing about.
“Can you account for your whereabouts on the evening of Friday, October 23, or the next morning?”
“Hold up,” Tony said.
“This wasn’t your idea, Antonio. That’s what I figure. Peña, maybe some other guys, got you in and now they’re sticking you with it.”
“There was no idea.”
“Think about the big picture. Your family. Your mother.”
“No. No no no.” The kid was trying to hide his heaving now. “I been living straight. I don’t know nothing about that sick fucking bastard.”
“I’m trying to offer you a way out here,” Guerrero replied patiently. “Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe Mr. Stallworth deserved what he got.”
“I never said that.” Tony fell silent. He tilted his head back slightly, so no tears would come loose. He could see what this cop was up to now, what he’d been up to all along. “You’re framing me up, bro.”
Guerrero was operating on instinct. He knew the suspect was in a fragile state, having to decide in a matter of seconds how to navigate his guilt and where to invest his trust. “I’m trying to help you,” Guerrero said again. “Believe me.”
The suspect was trembling now.
Guerrero wanted to get closer to the kid, to establish some trust. But the distance between them kept growing. “I didn’t do shit,” Antonio Saenz murmured. “You know I didn’t do shit. So arrest me or get the fuck out of here.”
Officer Pedro Guerrero felt the weight of what he was about to do. It hovered before him like a blade. He stared at Saenz and thought, for a moment, about the kid he had been at eighteen, disrespected, helpless, ready to murder the world and call it an act of self-defense. He wanted to hug the kid, to squeeze the wickedness out of him, to forgive him for what he’d already done.
“You’re under arrest,” Guerrero said sadly. “You have the right to remain silent.” He pulled a pair of cuffs from his back pocket and grabbed the suspect and bound his slender wrists. If you’d been watching the two men through a window, they would have looked, in their brief moment of struggle, like scorpions engaged in a promenade à deux.