BOOK FOUR OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED MAYHEM

THE HOURS FOLLOWING THE ARREST of Antonio Saenz for the murder of Marcus Stallworth were chaotic for all those bound by the events.

Pedro Guerrero drove the suspect to the Fresno Police Department, where he was photographed, fingerprinted, and placed in a holding cell. Guerrero called Hooks to inform him of the arrest. The captain had left for the day—it was by then nearly 8 p.m.—but dispatch patched the call through to his home. “Tell me you got a confession.”

“He confessed to threatening the victim,” Guerrero replied. “With a gun.”

Hooks spent some time breathing into the phone. “That’s not a confession.”

“He was a flight risk, sir.”

“Zip it. Unless you want to explain to the FBI why you decided to disobey a direct order from your superior. Would you like to do that, Guerrero? Does that sound like a fun Saturday evening?”

“No, sir.”

Hooks was grinning broadly. A tumbler of scotch awaited him, to which he now added a third finger. He happened to be stark naked. In a few minutes, after the profound pleasure of phoning the FBI’s deputy director to inform him of the arrest, he would settle into a hot bath drawn by his lover, a young escort named Drew, who was already in the tub.

“Jolley will inform the family,” Hooks said. “Apparently, you offended the victim’s wife. Remand the suspect to Fresno. And keep your mouth shut. This is going to be a shitstorm by tomorrow.”

JOLLEY DROVE TO the Stallworth home and informed Rosemary that a suspect had been arrested for the murder of her husband.

The color seeped from her face. “What are you talking about?”

“A suspect, ma’am.”

“A suspect?” She reached for the arm of the sofa.

Fearing a collapse, Jolley hastened to her side, but she flinched his hand away and seated herself. “But how do you know—have you found …”

“In these cases, the victim is not generally recovered until the assailant makes a full confession.”

“I don’t understand. Has he confessed or not?”

“He has confessed to certain facts.”

“To killing my husband?”

“I realize this is a lot to absorb.”

“Then you don’t really know, do you?” Mrs. Stallworth said sharply. She shook her head, as if to dispel the whole unpleasantness. “I appreciate the work you and your colleagues have done. But until such a time as my husband is located, I would prefer to be left alone.”

“That’s not how the system works,” Jolley said helplessly. “It’s a felony charge. There’s likely to be a court case. State court, or even federal.”

“Federal?” She touched at her hair, which had been carefully arranged.

“The young man in custody is named Antonio Saenz. He’s the older brother of one of your daughter’s classmates. Lorena.”

“Lorena?” Mrs. Stallworth spoke the name in tender bafflement. “That’s absurd. She’s just a poor little Mexican girl.”

“Antonio Saenz attempted to rob Mr. Stallworth. There’s a good deal of physical evidence, I’m afraid. Fingerprints. Blood.”

“But it’s all just speculation. This is senseless. I’ll need to consult my attorney.” Mrs. Stallworth went to the phone. “I’m sorry. I think that would be the best thing.”

“I’d like to leave a police detail,” Jolley said. “To make sure you’re not disturbed.”

“Disturbed?”

“There may be reporters outside your home. Television crews.”

Rosemary Stallworth was so aghast at this notion that she seemed incapable of speech. She fixed Jolley with a withering stare. “I have children. In high school. This is completely unacceptable. I was very explicit about that.”

Jolley stood awkwardly and let himself out of the house while Mrs. Stallworth dialed her attorney.

In his brief report of this conversation, Jolley noted that the victim’s spouse was quite evidently in shock. What he did not report, and would never learn, is that Rosemary Stallworth knew who Antonio Saenz was. She had seen him through her bedroom window, on the same night Lorena found her husband bleeding and fled.

Rosemary did not witness their embrace under the streetlamps. Nor did she hear the ardent words that passed between them. It was only the noise of Tony’s car that roused her. She saw Marcus on his hands and knees and Lorena standing over him. She saw the young man bound from his car and watched Lorena trying to calm him down, Marcus shrinking back, like the coward he was. She knew the young man was trying to protect his sister. She could see it on his face. And in some stubbornly hushed part of herself, she knew why.

The next morning, when she confronted him, Marcus would say only that it was a misunderstanding, that she wasn’t to worry. He swore that he loved her and that things would get better between them, as they did in the weeks before his disappearance. To mention any of this to the police, Rosemary knew, would be to open a new front in the investigation, one that could only lead to ruin. And so she sent the fat officer called Jolley away. Within twenty-four hours, her hair had turned the color of ash.

THE PHONE RANG, as Lorena knew it would. The clock radio read 3:17 a.m. It had been twelve hours since Pedro Guerrero had interviewed her. She listened to the groan of the sleeper sofa, her mother padding to the phone. A better daughter would have gotten there first.

Graciela had the receiver pressed to her chest, as if to stanch a wound. “Tony’s in jail,” she moaned. “He won’t say why. He wants to talk to you, mija. Make him tell you what’s happening.”

She took phone. “Tony?”

“Don’t tell mom shit. I don’t want her worrying.” He was speaking quick and quiet, in English.

“Where are you?”

“Fresno. Listen. They think I did something to your rich asshole friend Mr. Stallworth. It’s going to be fine. I didn’t do nothing. This is what the cops do. They throw shit against the wall.”

“You’re under arrest?”

“They needed to hang it on someone.”

“Hang what?”

“His murder.”

She began to cry, as quietly as she could manage.

Her mother was staring at her. “What is it, mija?”

Lorena covered the receiver. “He’s okay,” she said. “It’s just a misunderstanding.” The word she used was desorden: disorder.

She saw Tony marching around the neighborhood in his navy whites, a boy still starved for the regard of his father. He couldn’t be a killer. Or maybe she was being naïve. Maybe something in him had grown more dangerous than she had been able to admit. She was left with no good choice: either her brother had been party to murder or she had been party to his false arrest.

“Calm the fuck down and listen,” Tony snarled. “I’m going to get a lawyer to straighten this out. That’s how it works. But the public defenders are for shit, okay? They work for the state. So you gotta call Peña, my partner.”

“Your partner?”

“Peña. Victor Peña.” He gave her Peña’s beeper. “Get him on the phone, gordita. Tell him what happened. I’m at county lockup. Not jail. That’s the city. County lockup.” A recorded voice informed them they had half a minute left to talk. “Call Peña until you get him. Tell him I need a real lawyer. And don’t say shit to Mama.”

“Wait. What if Stallworth’s not dead?” Lorena said. “What if he just ran away?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He wanted to leave. His family.”

“How do you know?”

The recorded voice came back on, announcing that the call would terminate in ten seconds.

“I told you those rich assholes were trouble,” Tony said miserably.

“But he’s alive,” Lorena said. “I’m almost sure.”

“Then fucking find him, you little bitch. You got me into this mess. Get me out of it.” Tony was trying to sound hard, but his voice kept cracking. “Tell Mama I love her,” he said. Then the line went dead.

LORENA FELT HER mother gently pry the receiver from her hand and hang it up. “What did Antonio do?”

“Nothing.”

“Why is he in jail, mija?”

“Like I said, it’s a misunderstanding.”

“What’s the charge? Don’t hide the truth from me. It will come out anyway.”

“It has to do with that family, the Stallworths. The father disappeared and they think Tony might know something.”

“They don’t arrest young men for knowing things. They arrest them for doing things.”

Graciela Saenz handed her daughter a paper towel and told her to blow. In a few hours, she would pack a lunch and head off to her first shift, mopping floors and emptying waste bins on the maternity ward at Mercy, where young mothers limped the bright hallways with their pink bundles of hope, their perfect little somethings, stunned with gratitude. Then she would take a bus to Roseville, where she worked in a halfway house for seniors with dementia. These jobs allowed her to cover rent and groceries, to make tithes to her church and send money to her family in Honduras. There was a little besides, which she put away in the hospital’s credit union for her children. She wanted them to go to college—both of them, eventually—to have possibilities larger than her own. She had seen the dashing new president delivering a speech on television, and though she hadn’t understood most of the words, she could feel him invoking this radiant and fragile dream.

Her daughter stood quaking. She had begun to dress in clothes that clung to her curves, to squander the precious gift of her intelligence. Graciela felt a sudden urge to slap the girl, to rouse her from the foolish spell of her hormones.

“He’s got a lawyer, mama. They’re going to figure it out.”

Graciela went to fetch her cigarettes. She was already thinking about deportation, how Tony’s idiocy had flushed them, once again, from the shadows into a bright realm of panic. “He was always weak,” she murmured, through a shroud of smoke. “Like his father. God can’t save a coward.”

These were the most damning words Lorena would ever hear her mother utter.

GRACIELA SAENZ WAS ashamed to have made such a statement. It arose from the part of herself she kept a secret from the world. For Graciela wasn’t merely the person her children perceived, a weary and vigilant mother. She, too, had been passionate in her youth, impulsive, drawn to risk. She had married a man her parents didn’t trust, then followed him to America.

Graciela was pregnant with Lorena when her husband declared that the child would be born in America. He would travel first, with their son, and join his uncles in the fields of California. She didn’t want to let the boy go, but her husband insisted the trip would be too arduous for a pregnant woman with a child. He sent for her five months later.

For a brief time, it was as he promised: a decent life. But the humiliations her husband absorbed on the journey north had changed him. He began to stay out late; there were other women, drunken disputes. She would have made her peace with all of it, for the children, but Antonio Sr. now blamed her for the move to America, her Honduran pride, her demands.

She could see the changes in Tony, as well. When she tucked him in at night, he clung to her, then wiped away her kisses.

After her husband left, Graciela joined a church, where she vaguely hoped she might find another man. In a sense, she did. Her devotion to Jesus Christ allowed her to come to terms with her own suffering, which she could see, in more forgiving moments, as a kind of fatal innocence.

She moved into the basement of a cousin’s apartment in Sacramento. Late at night, after the kids were in bed, this cousin had played records, mushy romantic ballads mostly, but also more raucous norteño songs that allowed the women to dance. Graciela loved to dance.

Her favorite band was Los Tigres del Norte. They played corridos, story songs about immigrants driven to drastic measures. Her favorite was an old hit, “Contraband and Betrayal,” about Emilio and Camelia, a pair of lovers who sneak across the border to make a big drug deal. The moment they have the cash in hand, Emilio announces that he is leaving Camelia for another woman. So she shoots him dead and disappears with their fortune. The police find only a dropped pistol.

Graciela worked hard, avoided drink, saved her money. Los Tigres marked her only vice. On her thirtieth birthday, she allowed her cousins to take her to a concert at the Sacramento county coliseum, where she took her place amid the couples dancing cumbia, twirling like bright bows to the jaunty growl of the bajo sexto.

As her children grew older, Graciela tucked away her devotion to Los Tigres. The music, with its tales of mayhem and drugs, was a bad influence. But there were moments when she couldn’t help herself, when the kids were out of the apartment, and she would pull a battered cassette from beneath her mattress and slip it into the boom box they kept in their room, so that she could listen, again, to the story of Camelia, and let the music lift her body into a kind of illicit grace.

She knew it was wrong to root for a woman who sold narcotics and committed murder and got away with it. But she knew, also, that nestled within the obedience of her circumstance was the spirit of an outlaw. Tony had inherited that spirit.

ON THE MORNING of Sunday, November 5, Sacramento chief of police Robert Ellis called a press conference to announce the arrest of a suspect for the murder of Marcus Stallworth. Privately, law enforcement officials referred to such events as FTPs. They were designed to Fuck the Press. The editors at the Sacramento Bee faced a particularly awkward circumstance: a few hours before the press conference they had printed a front-page story suggesting that police had been unable to crack the case.

Chief Ellis made no reference to the Bee’s report. He merely emphasized that local investigators had worked “around the clock” in close coordination with federal agents and the FBI’s crime lab. The suspect, Antonio Saenz, was nineteen years of age. He was an illegal alien. He had “a troubled history” that included gang violence and drug use. He had been discharged from the navy for the latter. His lengthy record included pending charges for grand theft auto and possession of unlicensed weapons. He had apparently attempted to rob Marcus Stallworth, who had resisted. The suspect’s fingerprints had been found on the vehicle, his blood inside.

Reporters clamored for more information. Where was the body? Why had the vehicle been abandoned in Death Valley? Had the suspect acted alone? A reporter from the Bee asked why, given the preponderance of evidence against Saenz, police had taken more than two weeks to arrest him.

Chief Ellis stood before a bristle of bulky microphones and a bank of television cameras, staring down the reporter. He outlined the unprecedented challenges law enforcement faced: the absence of a body, a crime scene that had lay degrading in the desert heat for four days, and a perpetrator, or perpetrators, who had acted with considerable “criminal acumen.” It was only the use of new scientific methods, pioneered by the FBI, that had allowed police to link Saenz to the crime.

Above all, the chief said, his department had remained cognizant of due process. They had exercised an abundance of caution. Antonio Saenz, he reminded the assembled, was a suspect, not a convict. It was up to the judicial system now to adjudicate his guilt. Regardless of that outcome, one family had suffered a devastating loss. He asked the press, by its use of discretion, not to compound that pain.

Reporters continued to yell questions. How had Stallworth been murdered? Had Saenz confessed? Shown any remorse? Did he know where the body was?

Chief Ellis took no questions. But before stepping away from the microphone, he quoted the book of Ecclesiastes: Do not let your spirit rush to be angry, for anger abides in the hearts of fools.

This odd declaration, which never appeared in the subsequent news coverage, lingered in the mind of Pedro Guerrero, who was one of the dozen officers standing behind the chief. If one were tracking the inner life of the aspiring detective, the man responsible for the arrest of Antonio Saenz, this was the moment at which he began to lose faith in his own work.

BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Chief Ellis had turned in a virtuoso performance. He had cast the most powerful spell known in the world of journalism, the spell of Officially Confirmed Mayhem. The reporters disgorged themselves from the press conference. But they couldn’t bring themselves to leave the lobby of police headquarters just yet. They gathered in a scrum of orgiastic glee, one that disguised itself in solemn murmurings. The Tabloid Process had begun, the process by which the Fourth Estate took possession of a private misfortune and began to tell a larger, more lurid story to the public.

Reporters and cameramen fanned out across Oak Park and Fruitridge and sped down to Fresno and Barstow. They ransacked the available police records for photos, relics, visuals to entice the viewer. They pressed their “law enforcement sources” for background info, something more to go on. They interviewed anyone with an inkling of a connection to the culprit or the victim: the elderly neighbor who had seen Antonio Saenz in front of the Stallworth home, the university secretary who described Stallworth as “a gentle soul,” the pastor who praised his “dedication as a father.”

What made the case difficult for law enforcement—namely, its many unanswered questions—supplied news organizations the ideal blueprint for a serialized saga. A new detail unearthed by our team! Paradoxically, this slow drip of clues deepened the mystery and the horror. Truth, in its confounding subtlety, receded; conjecture came to the fore.

One of the local television stations, noting his stint at the China Lake Naval Reserve, cited “law enforcement sources” who speculated that Saenz might have buried the body in nearby Death Valley National Park. The graphic accompanying this report read THE DEATH VALLEY KILLER? The question mark soon fell away.

A former friend from the “violence-plagued ghetto” where Saenz had grown up recalled how the suspect—a munitions expert in the navy—had taught neighborhood children how to break down and reassemble a rifle during a July Fourth picnic. Intrepid TV reporters dispatched from downtown offices stood in front of the shabby apartment house where the killer had lived, so that viewers came to understand Fruitridge not as a community of low-wage workers but a criminal habitat.

The default image in media reports was a photo taken of the suspect after his arrest on gun charges, just days after the alleged murder. He wore the bleary glower so common to mugshots, one eye half closed, the other glaring at the camera. A dark bruise mottled the flesh above his right eye, unmistakable evidence of his violent proclivities. The second image, which found its way into the hands of local media, was a photo of the homemade tattoo emblazoned upon the killer’s slender shoulder, a blurry crown with five points, which was identified as the gang marking of the notorious Latin Kings. These images were presented to the public hundreds of times, often in tandem, until they became symbolic of the suspect himself: the iconography of the Death Valley Killer.

Footage soon emerged of the “arsenal” Saenz had amassed in the basement of a Fresno grocery store. One carefully shadowed informant spoke of his connection to the Kings. Another cited his addiction to crack cocaine, a virulent new form of the drug with the potential to trigger psychotic episodes. Self- styled criminologists, citing his record as a juvenile, branded him a “career criminal,” and speculated about the possibility that the assailant had stalked his victim. An expert on gang warfare hinted at the possibility of torture. These reports inevitably referred to the killer as an illegal, neglecting to mention that Saenz had been brought to America by his father at age four.

The story exuded a racial and economic paranoia so reflexive as to be virtually invisible to its intended audience. The key phrases—gang-related, drug-fueled, cholo culture, suburban tranquility—became a kind of code. Residents of the Fabulous Forties sighed wearily when interviewed about the case and harkened back to an era in which they and their children could walk the streets free from the terror of abduction. By some quirk of actuarial fate, Marcus Stallworth’s murder marked the three thousandth homicide in California that year, a grisly milestone that rendered the story a proxy for the larger wave of violent crime that had engulfed the state.

All of this happened within the span of three days.

AMONG THOSE TRACKING the coverage was the First Lady of the United States. She had asked to be informed of any developments in the case and was among the first people to learn about the arrest of Antonio Saenz. She immediately went to her desk and composed a handwritten note of condolence to the widow:

Dear Rosemary,

I was stunned and saddened to learn of your husband’s disappearance. Please know that Ronnie and I are praying for your family. It breaks my heart to think of the suffering caused by the dark souls of certain men. If there is anything we can do to lessen your burden, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Most sincerely, Nancy

The First Lady considered adding her last name but decided not to. She knelt beside her bed and prayed for the victims of violent crime. Then she got into bed next to her husband, who was sleeping, his famous hair peacefully mussed against the pillow. She stared at him for a time, then went to the small balcony overlooking the East Lawn and tried to make out the relative position of the planets. The lights from the roof of the White House reduced them to smudges.

She came back inside and called down to her assistant. She wanted more information about the suspect. A teletype arrived within the hour. She took down Antonio Saenz’s date and time of birth and approximate location (San Pedro Sula, Honduras) and sent these along to her astrologer. The chart returned to her the next day showed an astral formation known as a Yod at its center, which, in his case—he was a Scorpio with Mars as his rising planet—indicated restlessness, instability, and the risk of harm to others. The First Lady was sufficiently alarmed as to order a copy of the chart transmitted to the director of the FBI.

The chart had revealed precisely what she expected, what she might have learned from watching even a few minutes of the local television coverage. The suspect had been fated to transgress.

SHORTLY AFTER JOLLEY departed, Rosemary Stallworth called her children home and told them about the arrest of Antonio Saenz, and the police speculation—this was the word she used—that their father was gone. Both remained silent for a long time.

“That’s bullshit,” Glen said. “They didn’t even look for him.”

Jenny couldn’t stop thinking about Tony, the way he’d looked her up and down, the lewd bulge of his gun. She had dared Lorena to bring him by. “I knew it was him,” she said quietly. “That fucking thug.” Then she burst into tears.

The next morning, the family woke to find TV vans lining the street in front of their home. Rosemary unplugged the phone. The crowd showed deference to the grieving family; they were allowed to come and go without being filmed or harassed. Reporters resigned themselves to canvassing neighbors and conducting stand-ups on the sidewalk. One especially aggressive columnist from the Bee approached the home. He was roundly booed before he could make it halfway up the stairs.

Rosemary could see what lay in store. Vultures with notebooks and cameras stalking her, snooping into the history of her family, ripping loose gossip to set before their readers like a feast of shame. She summoned her children to the den and told them to pack for a short trip and booked three rooms at the Hyatt Regency in Monterey.

It took only a few hours for reporters to track down the address of the apartment in Fruitridge where Antonio Saenz had grown up, and where his sister and mother still lived. On Monday morning, Graciela Saenz walked outside and into a phalanx of glamorous strangers. The men wore suits and ties; the women were impeccably made-up, their hair ironed straight and blown out. They looked to her like movie stars, and not just because of the cameras trained on them. Then the movie stars did something curious: they began to surge toward her and to push microphones into her face.

Señora Saenz! they called out. Graciela!

Most of the stations had hired stringers from Spanish language radio stations, in the hopes of coaxing a few words from the mother of the Death Valley Killer. They began to yell questions about her son, if she thought he was innocent, if she’d spoken to him, how he was going to plead.

It wasn’t just the reporters who wanted answers. Dozens of her neighbors had gathered, lured by the scent of some trouble that did not belong to them. They were friends, acquaintances, children she had watched grow and on occasion fed. Their faces shone with a shy malice, and their eyes would not meet hers. She thought of the coyotes that had prowled the outskirts of her village when she was a girl.

Graciela Saenz carried a sack lunch in one hand and her Bible in the other. In her rush to retreat from the horde, an apple escaped from her lunch and rolled into the gutter. One of the young stringers, sensing opportunity, plucked up the fruit and ran toward Ms. Saenz. It was this young man who captured the only words spoken by the Death Valley Killer’s mother before she scuttled back inside. ¿Por qué está pasando esto? she whispered. Why is this happening?

GRACIELA SAENZ UNDERSTOOD now that her son had been charged with a serious crime. She was petrified that the police would arrive and discover she had no papers. This would lead to a detention cell and deportation. She didn’t say any of this to her daughter; she didn’t need to.

Graciela called Pastor Jorge, who devised a plan: the church van would pick them up in an hour and drive them to the basement of the church, which would serve as a legal sanctuary. Lorena told her mother this plan was crazy but Graciela clung to the idea that church property was impervious to the laws of the secular world. Lorena didn’t know whether this was true; she doubted it. But she also didn’t know what the police would do. She hadn’t even told her mother about the cops who had come to see her. She still had the card Guerrero had left with her, tucked under her mattress.

For now, she needed to calm her mother down, so she went along with the getaway plan. She ducked into the van and hauled her backpack down into the basement, which smelled of menthol cigarettes and moldy hymnals. Only after her mother left for work did she sneak into the church office and dial Guerrero’s number. The phone rang nine times before she heard a woman asking who was on the line.

Lorena paused for several seconds then gave her name.

“Please hold,” the woman said.

Guerrero’s voice came on the line. “Lorena?”

They could both hear her breathing.

“You lied to me.”

“I know everything feels crazy right now.”

“I told you the truth and you ignored me.”

“This is a police investigation, Lorena. I’m directed by the facts.” Guerrero began droning in the way officials did when they wished to silence someone who was not an official. It was a way of becoming nonhuman.

“I’m calling about my mother,” Lorena said. “You promised she wouldn’t get in trouble.”

“Let’s take one thing at a time. This has to do with your brother.”

“You promised,” Lorena said.

“Is she in trouble?”

“She’s scared to death. There were a million cameras outside the house.”

“Okay. Calm down. Let me explain what’s going to happen.”

But she didn’t want any more of his explanations. “I want you to swear that my mother won’t get in trouble. She had nothing to do with any of this.”

“Your mother isn’t the target of this investigation. But she may be called to testify. That’s how it works.”

“He’s alive—I told you.”

“I heard everything you said, Lorena. But your brother’s blood is all over Marcus Stallworth’s car. Okay? His fingerprints. They didn’t get there by accident.” Guerrero could hear the pinch of cruelty in his tone. He had become the father of this tragedy, charged with bearing the bad news to all parties. “Look, I’m sorry it went this way. I’ll try to take care of you and your mom. But we have to follow the facts, Lorena.”

He expected the girl to knuckle under, to accept him as her protector.

“You’re the one who started all this,” she said softly, as if she had been reading his mind all along. “You’re not sorry. But you’re going to be.”

AT SCHOOL, SHE moved about in the shadow of her infamy. Her classmates had seen the reports on television. Wherever she went, kids elbowed one another and quickly looked away. Her teachers, clearly stunned to see her in class, made elaborate efforts to pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. She saw two of the girls she sat with at lunch and they nodded at her, as if from the far side of an ocean. A boy from church, a gangly sophomore, grasped her hand and announced that his family was praying for hers. There was no sign of Jenny Stallworth whatsoever.

Just before lunch she was called out of class and led down to a dinky office where the guidance counselor, Mr. Olney, began to speak with her about her options. He was an enormous man with a high-pitched voice that seemed to be apologizing for his bulk. “You can certainly remain in school. But it’s also possible for you to work from home if you prefer. That would be easy to arrange. Just until things get back to normal. Really, it’s up to you.” Olney brushed a crumb off his tie, which was decorated with a cartoon turtle famous for his guileless idiocy. “We don’t want to see this situation affect your academic performance.”

He prattled on about the logistics—work packets, take-home tests—and presented her with documents for her mother to sign. “Do you have any questions?”

Lorena shook her head. “Can I leave now?”

“Of course.” Olney paused a moment and looked at Lorena. His hands, which were pink and puffy and damp, seemed to want to reach toward her. “Everybody knows you had nothing to do with all this.”

ON HER WAY across the parking lot she heard a familiar voice call out her name. She turned to find Miss Catalis striding toward her. Without a word of warning she wrapped Lorena in a hug. It was an act of presumption that registered as a display of concern. She had no choice but to accept it.

Miss Catalis stepped back to take her in, still holding her by the elbows. She looked as she always did: earnest, imploring, her lipstick beginning to flake. “My God. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Miss Catalis shook her head and hugged her again. Her sweater stank of formaldehyde. Lorena wanted to ask what she was doing at the high school in the first place. “I saw your mother on TV this morning. She looked … Jesus, they’ve staked out your house, haven’t they? Is there anyone to help you out?”

“We have some friends from church.”

“Church,” Miss Catalis said. “That’s good. But I meant someone, like, a legal representative. To help explain the process. There are groups that can advise you, Lorena. I have a friend who works at Legal Aid. Let me give you her number.” Her eyes glistened with pity.

Lorena wanted no part of it. This was what the official world did: it sent spies who offered help as a means of sneaking past your defenses. They couldn’t be trusted. Her mother had tried to teach her that, but the lesson hadn’t stuck. “My brother has a lawyer,” she said.

“I just feel so terrible about all this. I keep thinking about Jennifer and her family. About both of you. I can’t help feeling that I’m responsible.”

Lorena could hear the self-regard in this comment, the condescension adults often mistook for compassion. She had to restrain herself from pushing Miss Catalis away.

It was she and Mr. Stallworth who had started all this, on that car ride home months ago. His arm had brushed the skin of her belly. A spark had been lit. That had been the beginning. Without her, Tony would have never visited the Stallworth home, never become a suspect. Those were the facts.

“You have such potential, Lorena. I don’t want anything to get in the way of that. Do you understand what I’m telling you? You can always talk to me. You’re not alone.” Miss Catalis stared at Lorena, squeezed her elbows. She smelled like something dead.

“You have nothing to do with any of this,” Lorena murmured.

Miss Catalis released her grip and took a step backward. She knew she had been rebuked, and this pleased Lorena.

FOLLOWING HIS ARREST, Antonio Saenz was remanded into custody and processed. These were the prevailing verbs, ones that eased a person (son, teenager, veteran) into an abstraction (suspect). Fingerprints. Mug shot. The surrender of clothing and property. Issuance of a cement-colored jumpsuit. Hours spent on benches in municipal buildings. You couldn’t even take a shit in private. The officer who accompanied him walked with a limp and wore a fat man’s grin.

Nando saw the precarious nature of the situation: a patrol officer—at the prodding of his superiors, but driven by his own ambitions—had jumped ahead of the facts and arrested the suspect for murder without a body. Now they were all committed to the same theory of the case. He understood his given role: to trot out his magic Chicano bullshit and try to extract a confession from the suspect, or some stray filament of incrimination.

But another part of him was quietly rooting for Antonio. He couldn’t help himself. The alleged murderer was so obviously a child. His jumpsuit swam on him, and from within it he exuded a homely, pimpled truculence, a befuddled loneliness, that was instantly familiar. Antonio reminded him of his own cousin, Pedro.

THE SUSPECT REFUSED to say anything. He just kept asking to make his phone call. “Tranquilo, hombre,” Nando said. “Tranquilo.”

Tony was calm. He had done nothing wrong. Yelled at Stallworth, maybe threatened him a little. That was it. The asshole who arrested him had lied. Cops did it all the time. Peña had warned him. The key was not to let them get under your skin. Ask for your phone call. Ask for your lawyer.

Nando led Tony to a holding cell and, an hour later, escorted him to a small room with a pay phone. It was one in the morning. Tony called Peña at home; no answer. He hung up and closed his eyes and his forehead came to rest against the concrete wall.

“Nobody home, huh?” Nando said. “Saturday Night Fever.” He began whistling the Bee Gees song. “Okay. Look. I’ll make you a deal. You listening? I’m gonna let you make another call. I don’t got to do that. But I want something from you. I want you to tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

After a few moments, Tony said, “I’m thinking how corny you are.”

Nando let out a whoop. “You’re a sharp one, joven. The fuck you doing in lockup?”

Tony’s second call was the one his mother received, in which he directed his sister to contact his partner, Victor Peña. Peña, in turn, left a message with the attorney he employed for legal troubles. A few hours later, Nando escorted Tony to a tiny interview room. Inside was a man in a rumpled polyester three-piece. His thinning silver hair had been trimmed into a patchy crew cut. “Good morning, Mr. Saenz. My name is Stanley Gill. Stan.”

“You’re my lawyer?”

“In the matter of your bail hearing, yes. That will be this morning. You know what a bail hearing is?”

“Are you my lawyer or not? I’m entitled to a lawyer.”

“That you are, Mr. Saenz. It’s a constitutional right. But I’m a private attorney. I haven’t been assigned by the court. Mr. Peña retained me on your behalf. For me to become your attorney of record would require us to come to an agreement regarding fees and expenses. That’s something we can discuss later.”

“Peña promised to take care of this shit.”

“Let’s focus on what we can control, Mr. Saenz.” He glanced down at the two-page intake document that constituted his case file. “My apologies, Mr. Saenz. I’m playing catch-up. It’s Sunday morning. I keep telling the police to refrain from making arrests over the weekend, but they never listen. That was a joke.” Gill pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You mind? Want one? So you were navy, huh? And now you’re here. Christ. Okay, let’s start with the basics. You’ve been arrested under what are called ‘exigent circumstances.’ Just means the police didn’t obtain a warrant. The state is claiming you were a flight risk and also that you might have destroyed evidence. So the first thing we can do is file a habeas writ. That’s a motion to go before a judge to argue that your detention is unlawful.”

“That gets me out?”

“No. But it’s good to get on the record.” Gill made a note on his pad. “Now then. Do you mind telling me if you committed this alleged murder?”

“Hell no.”

“Did you have anything whatsoever to do with the alleged crime?”

“No.”

“Please keep in mind that whatever you tell me is confidential, Mr. Saenz. I can’t speak about it to anyone else.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Belief doesn’t enter into it, Mr. Saenz. My job is to prepare a defense. I need to know as much as possible about the case the prosecution is building. They’re not going to tell me what they’ve got. You have to do that. I only know what’s in the news reports.”

“News reports?”

Gill fell silent. “Okay,” he said. “Listen. This is a serious accusation. There’s going to be a lot of media coverage, TV cameras, all that. If I were a betting man, I’d say the FBI is involved.”

“I’m not scared.”

“I get that. But I need you to recognize what’s going on here. The state is going to have to produce a complaint within the next day or two. We’ll know more about the charges at that point. Until then, you’re my only source. You need to tell me everything you know about Marcus Stallworth.”

Tony confessed to what little he knew. His primary concern was that his mother would be dragged into this mess and turned over to INS.

Gill sucked at his cigarettes and scribbled a note from time to time. He didn’t make a promising portrait, with his smudged bifocals and frayed cuffs. But Gill was a shrewd and seasoned lawyer, a legend among the criminal element of greater Fresno. He’d been a prosperous defense attorney in Glendale for years, specializing in public corruption, but a drinking problem and a nasty divorce led to a few bad decisions, which led to him being disbarred. A decade ago, he’d been reinstated and moved to Fresno to rep clients such as Victor Peña, whose business interests brought them to the attention of the police.

Gill had worked both sides of the criminal justice system. He knew one set of rules prevailed for the rich and another for the poor. He’d watched the chief of police trumpet Tony’s arrest on TV. Clearly, the cops had needed to make an arrest. The problem was they didn’t have a body. The Latin term was corpus delicti. There was always a chance the corpse would be located. But without it, the prosecution was in real trouble—unless Saenz confessed.

Stan Gill had three decades of experience with the police. He knew that cops hid their hunches behind a bearing of assurance, and that they often steered big investigations toward an intended result without recognizing they were doing so. They gave credence to statements that supported their charge, ignored ones that didn’t, and presented scientific evidence as ironclad when it was often something more like educated speculation. He also understood that the inner workings of any police investigation—the blind spots, the missed opportunities, the unconscious collusion—only came to light at trial. This was why the state worked with the defense to plead cases out: to serve justice in the eyes of the public, without exposing its underside.

Gill knew Antonio Saenz would be denied bail but also that he had far more leverage than he realized, so long as he kept his mouth shut. As Tony was cuffed, Gill set a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t speak to anyone from the state, Mr. Saenz.”

These were the last words of counsel Stan Gill would offer the defendant.

LIKE MOST VETERAN cops in Fresno, Nando Reyes knew Stanley Gill. He had been deposed by Gill, more than once, and the experience always left him shaken. Gill could pinpoint places where an official declaration of fact gave way to guesswork, where a reasonable assumption, if exposed to sustained scrutiny, could be recast as reasonable doubt. Gill was precisely the sort of defense attorney that Antonio Saenz would need. That was the whole problem.

When Guerrero called to see how the bail hearing had gone, he naturally asked about Stanley Gill. Nando could have feigned ignorance, or dodged the question. He could have told a version of the truth, that Gill was a borracho who had been disbarred down in SoCal and come to Fresno as damaged goods. But he knew that anything short of the truth would be a betrayal. “He’s not the guy I’d want at the other table,” Nando muttered. “He’s old but crafty as shit.”

“How the fuck did Saenz land a private attorney? His partner must have put up the money.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Time to talk to Peña, then. He’s next on my list anyway.”

Nando knew exactly what Guerrero meant. His cousin would interview Victor Peña in a manner that made it clear he was a person of interest in the investigation. Peña would almost certainly retain Gill, making it impossible for him to represent Saenz. With any luck, a judge would disqualify Gill altogether.

It was the right play, and Nando was proud of his cousin for recognizing it so quickly. But he felt a twinge of remorse, too. Antonio Saenz deserved a fighting chance. An advocate like Stan Gill gave him one.

GUERRERO SHOWED UP at Peña’s apartment a few hours later. Peña refused to be interviewed until his attorney, Stanley Gill, was present. Gill, who had just met with Saenz, understood at once what the police were up to. He scowled at Guerrero, then disqualified himself from representing either man.

When Peña finally sat for an interview, he told Guerrero that he knew Saenz from the navy. He’d spent a little time trying to help the kid adjust to military life. Peña felt sorry for him because he was so clearly in over his head. He was always looking for someone to impress, “one of those guys where the tougher they try to act, the more you see how scared they are.” He hadn’t been surprised when he heard Saenz got the boot.

They reconnected a few days before Halloween. Saenz had just been fired from a job at an oil change place. He had a bandage on his forehead. He reported having gotten into some trouble over the weekend. “There was some shit about a girl and her pimp who fed him drugs, then busted him up. That’s what he told me. He wanted to get straight.”

Peña had offered these details as evidence that Saenz was not a sophisticated criminal mind, but a naïve young man, more likely to get himself rolled by a couple of lowlifes than to plot a robbery or murder. Guerrero heard something else entirely: confirmation of the suspect’s drug habit and the injuries he sustained on the weekend in question.

Guerrero interviewed three of the suspect’s co-workers at Quik Lube. They remembered having beers with Saenz on Friday. His shift manager, Gonzo, reported that he failed to show up for work on Saturday and was fired on Monday. He, too, mentioned the bandage on Saenz’s forehead. He did not mention that Saenz had departed the Friday gathering with his niece. He saw no reason to involve Trina. She had enough trouble with the law as it was.

In the twenty-four hours since his arrest, Antonio Saenz had lost the representation of a skilled attorney. Testimony from witnesses who might have provided him an alibi instead suggested his use of alcohol and drugs during the period of the alleged victim’s abduction. He had disappeared for two days and resurfaced with a head wound.

This was all before he was loaded into a van and driven north to the Sacramento County Jail, where he emerged in shackles before a jostling of television cameras. Portable klieg lights illuminated the path from the van to the jail’s prisoner entrance. This brief promenade—staged for the benefit of the assembled media and replayed hundreds of times over the next two days—provided television viewers their first look at the figure who had come to be known as the Death Valley Killer.

Graciela Saenz saw the footage the next morning, on a TV mounted in the hospital room she was cleaning on the Labor and Recovery ward. The TV had been left on but the sound was turned down, so that she heard none of the reporter’s rapturous narration. All she saw was a brief shot of her son shuffling toward a gray building. He was surrounded by police officers. Lights washed down upon him and he blinked into the brightness, thin and terribly young, with a thick chain wound around his waist like a medieval belt.

Graciela was so stunned that she dropped the bundle of garbage in her arms. One of the bags split and its contents tumbled across the floor—disposable diapers, wipes streaked with baby shit, a pair of the temporary panties worn by new mothers, clotted with the dark purple of afterbirth. It was, in its own way, a kind of crime scene, the reeking peril of motherhood laid bare. For a moment, in the perfect silence of the room, Graciela Saenz wept, while behind her a baby suckled at the swollen pink bosom of his sleeping mother.

ACROSS THE COUNTRY, in the bedroom of the West Wing, the First Lady of the United States watched the same scene unfold on a video feed she had requested of her favorite Sacramento television station. She was troubled to discover that the suspect who had abducted Marcus Stallworth looked more like a child than a killer. She had to remind herself what he had done. The reporter noted that the alleged assailant had been a drug addict. That made sense to Mrs. Reagan. It was the drugs that had transformed this slip of a boy, this star-crossed Scorpio, into a murderer.

Lorena didn’t see the footage of her brother’s arrest until Monday evening. Her boss at the retirement facility called her into the break room and gestured at the TV. There was her brother shuffling toward a gray building amid the rampart of officers.

“That’s why that cop was here before, huh?”

Tony’s face emerged for an instant, his narrow jaw set in a grimace. It was an expression she had seen a thousand times, the look of a kid tucking his terror away behind a frail mask.

Tony had been a cruel older brother, quick to taunt, to pinch and punch. It often seemed to Lo that all she saw of her brother was the part of him that needed to hurt her. But that was just her selecting memories. He had fought on her behalf on the playground, in the courtyard. He had performed a boy’s imitation of a father, all rage and no tenderness. Their mother had relied on him but she hadn’t believed in him.

TWO DAYS AFTER his arrest, the case against Antonio Saenz was transferred from state to federal jurisdiction. This decision, which stunned legal observers, was based on a technicality: Marcus Stallworth’s vehicle had been found on a federal access road; thus the alleged crime had been committed on federal land. The move signaled to all involved—the media and the defense in particular—that the full weight of the US government would be brought to bear in the service of justice.

Pedro Guerrero was livid. He paced for an hour in the break room, working up the nerve to confront Hooks. Jolley wanted no part of it.

“We made the case. Jolley and me. And now the feds, they’re gonna march in like conquering heroes. It’s bullshit. Excuse my language, Captain, but that’s the truth.”

Hooks understood Guerrero’s beef. The case represented the apex of his career, his shot to make detective. Now it was being snatched away.

But Maurice Hooks—who had been required to change in a separate locker room for the first decade of his career, who had been called boy and Uncle Tom and worse, who had been pulled over and frisked by cops in a dozen jurisdictions, who had been shot at three times in the line of duty, who had concealed his desires to keep his badge—had no patience for self-pity. It was an indulgence, a gift the world handed white people. Guerrero would have to figure that out on his own.

“You did fine,” Hooks said. “I’ll remember.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Now get out before I start to regret giving you the shot.”

THE UNITED STATES attorney for the Eastern District of California filed a criminal complaint against the defendant. This document was immediately presented to a grand jury, whose members ratified it as a true bill within the hour.

The complaint alleged that Antonio Saenz had engaged in a verbal altercation with Marcus Stallworth in late August of 1981, during which he had threatened Stallworth with a gun, demonstrating malice aforethought. Several weeks later, on or about October 23, Saenz again encountered the victim and attempted to rob him. Stallworth resisted and Saenz murdered him. He then abandoned the victim’s Jeep in a remote location of the Mojave Desert and disposed of his body.

The defendant’s fingerprints had been found on the roll bar of the Jeep. More significantly, the FBI’s serology lab, using state-of-the-art technology, had discovered the blood of the assailant and his victim soaked into the carpeting below the front seats of both driver and passenger, a circumstance that suggested a sustained struggle.

Additional witnesses reported that Saenz was under the influence of drugs during the commission of the crime, and sustained a head wound consistent with an altercation. There was also evidence suggesting that Saenz had forced his victim to withdraw $5,000 cash from an “instant loan service” in Fresno, one notorious for its use by those engaged in the drug trade.

The complaint served a legal function: it initiated the criminal justice process. Just as important was its narrative function. By means of language—elegant, formal, indisputable—the murder obtained an official story. The magnitude of this story was signaled by the transfer of the case into federal jurisdiction, which the media interpreted as evidence that the Stallworth murder was a capital offense.

The suspect, having met with his newly assigned court- appointed lawyer for less than ten minutes, entered a plea of not guilty at his arraignment.

Afterwards, a spokesman for the US attorney issued a brief statement on the front steps of the courthouse. He characterized Antonio Saenz as a “profoundly deviant individual” who had yet to grasp the gravity of his situation. He suggested that the case represented the grisly alchemy of gang activity and drug addiction, plagues that too often transformed young American men into “soulless predators.” He assured reporters that investigators were continuing to gather information, and that they expected to recover the remains of Marcus Stallworth with or without the defendant’s assistance.

SAENZ’S ATTORNEY, a federal public defender named Holly Roy, did not address the press. She slipped out a side door. Her superiors had selected Roy because she was considered a skilled negotiator. The defense wanted the matter resolved, not litigated.

Cases of this sort were virtually impossible to win at trial. Prosecutors had too much invested in the outcome, which represented a referendum on their ability to protect the public. The state would devote unlimited resources to affirm that ability. The media, meanwhile, would spend the weeks preceding the trial profitably polluting any jury that might be empaneled.

In a sense, it was Antonio Saenz who had disappeared. He had been replaced in the public imagination by the Death Valley Killer, a hunter hopped up on cocaine and blood oaths, who sold weapons and stole cars and mutilated upstanding white professors.

The state’s version of events had massive holes. But Roy knew that her office—with its meager budget and enormous caseload—stood little chance of rebutting the physical evidence, or her client’s own self-incriminating testimony. This is not to suggest that Roy did not advocate for her client. She listened to his story and sent notes along to the public defender’s investigative team. She read the reports made available to her. At Saenz’s request, she ordered a polygraph test, which he passed. The lead prosecutor dismissed it: “Sociopaths always ace polygraphs.”

THE DAY AFTER the arraignment, Roy was summoned to a private conference room in the federal courthouse. She was surprised to find her client slumped at a table under the watchful eye of a US marshal. Across from him, the prosecution team sat in dark blue suits. One of them offered an awkward greeting.

“What’s this all about?” Roy said. “You can’t just dragoon my client without consulting me.”

“You are being consulted,” said a friendly voice behind her.

She turned and saw the US attorney, flanked by a pair of aides. He was an extraordinarily stout man, famous within legal circles for his bright bow ties and ruthless affability. In a few years, the Attorney General would appoint him a deputy, and charge him with spearheading the War on Drugs.

He toddled into the room. “Mr. Saenz, my name is Cecil Stubbs. I run the office that’s conducting the prosecution of your case.” His voice was high and piping, his face cherubic. “You may recognize these gentlemen from court. They work for me. Your attorney did not call this meeting. She is no doubt skeptical of my having done so. I must apologize to you, Ms. Roy. It was not my intention to stage an ambush. I merely wanted a chance to speak candidly. Is that amenable to you, Mr. Saenz?”

“Say what you got to say.”

“Ms. Roy?”

Roy glanced at her client. He looked even thinner than at the arraignment; he smelled of the ammoniac disinfectant she had come to associate with the incarcerated.

Stubbs gestured for her to sit. “It is my understanding, Mr. Saenz, that you have no intention of changing your plea.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Tony muttered.

“Understood.”

“Whatever you think you got, you wouldn’t be here if it was solid.”

Stubbs took this in with a nod. His pink brow furrowed. “I will beg to differ with you on that, Mr. Saenz. Please listen carefully to what I’m about to say. Ours is an adversarial system. But that doesn’t mean we can’t listen to one another. Ms. Roy, I know by your reputation that you will make known any objections to my little soliloquy.” Stubbs proceeded to the head of the table. “The first thing I must tell you is that we have investigators combing the area near where Mr. Stallworth’s car was found. His corpse, in whatever condition, will be recovered. Once it is recovered, the offer set out today will be considered null and void. We believe that you did not act alone, Mr. Saenz. But in the absence of cooperation, you will be considered to have acted alone and the state will seek the death penalty. This decision is based on the nature of the crime and the fact that the victim was tortured before his murder.”

“You’re making up more shit to scare me,” Saenz said.

“No effort is being made to scare you, Mr. Saenz. I’m merely apprising you of the government’s intentions.”

“Just a moment,” Roy said. “Before we go any further, I’d like to speak to my client in private.”

“Of course.” Stubbs nodded, but his eyes remained fixed on Saenz. “Let me say a quick word about the blood evidence, which may inform your discussion. You should realize that forensic serology has become far more sophisticated in the past decade. We are no longer limited to testing for type. Serologists in this case looked at specific biochemical markers, the enzymes found on the red cell membrane. They are called PGMs. These are more like fingerprints that trace to an individual, not a group of individuals. Ms. Roy will have a chance to scrutinize the work of the FBI’s lab. She will be able to tell you that this evidence is virtually unassailable. Your blood is in that car. The blood of Marcus Stallworth is in that car. They are comingled.”

“Bullshit,” Tony Saenz murmured.

Stubbs grinned, as if he had been paid an unfortunate compliment. “I would like to mention one other factor. If I may, Ms. Roy? As you know, there is a good deal of television coverage of this case. There will be more if and when we move to trial. Inevitably, reporters will begin to investigate your life more broadly. They will want to offer some history of the defendant’s family. This would be a natural line of inquiry in any such case. But it is likely to be more intense given that your sister is a prominent witness for the prosecution.”

Tony looked up at Stubbs; his face went red. “What’re you talking about?”

Roy set a hand on her client’s elbow, but he jerked it away. She regarded Stubbs. “Stop trying to bait my client.”

“Nobody’s baiting anyone,” Stubbs responded. “I’m attempting to provide your client with the information he needs to assess our offer. I would be negligent if I failed to do so. And if you discouraged me from doing so.” He fixed his bright stare on Tony again. “You need to realize that questions about your mother’s status as an illegal resident of this country will arise, as a natural extension of your status. I say this not as a threat. As Ms. Roy knows, my office has nothing to do with the decisions made by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Nor is it my intent to make race or ethnicity the subject of this case. Justice is blind to such considerations. But these are aspects of the indictment that are likely to excite public interest, particularly as it is presented in the media.” Stubbs paused, a jolly man beleaguered by regret. “It is not only your actions for which you will be held accountable, Mr. Saenz. Your loved ones will be impacted by the decision you make.”

Tony turned away from Stubbs and shook his head. He was struggling to abide by Stan Gill’s advice, to muzzle his fear and keep himself quiet.

Roy didn’t know quite how to respond. She felt obligated to defend her client from what was clearly an event staged to intimidate him. And yet she could not dispute what Stubbs had said. It was a delicate situation.

Stubbs motioned to one of his aides, who handed him a folder. “I won’t keep you another minute. I simply wanted to convey to you the urgency of the situation from our perspective. Though you are not an American citizen, Mr. Saenz, we are extending to you the right to a trail by a jury of your peers. You are innocent until proven guilty. But given the gravity of the situation and—if I may be frank—my own feelings about capital punishment, I felt I should talk to you in person rather than relying on go-betweens.” He studied the defendant a moment longer, then slid the folder across the table to Roy. “This is our final offer on a plea. You have a decision to make. I hope you will consult your conscience and heed your counsel.”

Roy waited for the prosecutors to file out of the room, then nodded at the marshal, who posted himself outside the door.

The prosecution wanted full cooperation: a confession, accomplices, the location of the body. In exchange, they would reduce the charges to second-degree murder, kidnapping, and possession of a stolen vehicle. Maximum prison time twenty-two years; as little as thirteen, at the discretion of the judge. Roy was astonished at the offer. She had expected the prosecution to seek first-degree murder, life in prison.

She explained this to her client, that he could be out in a dozen years, that he was being given a chance. She didn’t use that word but her tone made it clear.

“You think I did it,” Tony said.

“I’m not saying that. But it’s my job to represent your interests. I have to consider what it would mean to go to trial, what your chances would be, how to keep you—” Roy stopped herself short. She knew the word alive would alarm her client, so she settled on safe, though it was absurdly inadequate. Such was the trap Stubbs had set for her. She nearly snapped her pencil in consternation.

Neither one of them spoke for a minute. Tony refused to look up. His eyes had gone wet with rage. Roy sensed that she had lost his trust; or rather, that she had never had it in the first place. She was simply the stranger who pretended to be on his side. The good cop, the good lawyer.

“That shit he was saying—about my mom?”

“That’s not a part of the case, Mr. Saenz.”

“Is it true, though? They gonna deport her?”

“Not necessarily.” What was she supposed to say? Was she supposed to lie? “They’re giving you three days. Then this deal is off the table. You have to figure out what to do.”

“Me? You’re my fucking lawyer. You’re supposed to help me.”

“I’m trying to help you. I am. I need to see what evidence the state has. It’s called a motion for discovery.”

Tony sat there, sucking in his cheeks. Roy felt overrun by an unwelcome contempt. She wanted to ask this kid how the hell his blood wound up in the Jeep belonging to Marcus Stallworth, if he understood how easy it would be for society to end his life.

TONY’S BLOOD WAS not in the Stallworth Jeep. The “second sample” detected by the FBI’s serology staff belonged to the alleged victim himself. It was the result of Stallworth’s original effort to stage his disappearance, the night he had cut his palm too deeply and panicked and returned home, the night Lorena had found him in the bathroom downstairs and Stallworth had followed her outside and Tony had come upon them—the night in question.

The blood sample appeared chemically distinct to the FBI’s blood experts because Stallworth had attempted to scrub it away the next morning with a cleanser that included bleach. The blood had then been trampled and scorched for the next ten weeks. The nature of the PGM markers—the enzymes found on the membranes of all those tiny red blood cells—had degraded.

Kathleen Blunt, the serologist charged with comparing these enzymes to the ones found in Tony’s blood, knew none of this. Blunt was not a malign or incompetent person. But she was aware that her superiors were eager to find a relationship between the two samples. Nobody said this to her directly. Nobody had to. There was a particular climate that prevailed when the request was pressing.

The science of PGM markers was new and inexact. In just a few years, forensic serologists would turn to DNA testing, which provided a far more precise and durable genetic fingerprint. PGM markers would be virtually forgotten in the annals of forensic investigation. But this was the method used in the case of Marcus Stallworth, and though the serologist could not establish a definitive match between the two samples, there was enough of an overlap in the enzyme cohort observed (67 percent) to merit her use of the phrase “significant statistical likelihood.”

In fact, any two random blood samples would have showed an enzymatic overlap of 30 percent or so. Blunt had included these statistics in the initial draft of her report. But her supervisor—after consulting with the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Sacramento office—deemed this contextual information immaterial to her ultimate conclusions.

Blunt would have detailed all this in court, if a skilled trial attorney had cross-examined her, someone like Stan Gill. Gill also would have questioned how the suspect could have engaged in a dispute violent enough to leave the blood of both participants’ in the vehicle without also leaving behind additional physical evidence, such as fragments of skin or clothing or hairs.

Finally, Gill might have noted another curious discrepancy, one buried in the serologist’s preliminary notes, and excluded from her final report. Both blood samples taken from the Stallworth Jeep were listed as O+. The blood drawn from Antonio Saenz for his naval drug test sample was listed only as type O.

His blood type was, in fact, O-.

WITH THE TRANSFER of the case to federal jurisdiction came a flurry of activity. Agents from the FBI and the US attorney’s office formally took over the investigation and fanned out across Sacramento, Fresno, and Barstow. A retinue from the Army Corps of Engineers was on standby to hunt for and disinter the remains of Marcus Stallworth, should new information emerge.

US marshals transported Antonio Saenz to the federal lockup facility, and his public defender arranged for a meeting between the defendant and his family. This took some negotiation, because Graciela Saenz believed she would be deported the moment she left the church basement where she had sought refuge.

Eventually, Graciela submitted to a formal interview with a young FBI interrogator named Maria Diaz in the basement of the federal building. Graciela wept silently, brushing the tears away. Antonio had never been able to focus in school, she told Diaz. He had gotten in trouble as a teenager, but joining the navy had taught him discipline. He was a child who needed discipline, a follower, not a leader. She was unaware, until recently, that he had been discharged for drug use. She knew her daughter had visited the Stallworth home. She had met the mother, who reminded her of Nancy Reagan. She did remember Lorena calling late one night, perhaps in August, and that Tony had gone to pick her up. But she knew nothing else about the family.

“I’m sure I appear quite naïve to you,” Graciela said. “Mothers always make themselves a little blind to keep their hairs from turning white. But I know my children. Antonio is like his father. He talks, but he’s a coward. He might be able to fire a missile through the ocean, but he could not kill a man as the television describes.” At the conclusion of the interview, she asked Diaz to pray with her.

GRACIELA JOINED HER daughter in the lobby. Tony, they learned, was being housed in the building right next door. A marshal escorted them to the federal lockup and led them into a small room with vending machines. Tony sat at a table bolted to the floor, in shackles. Graciela couldn’t see his body inside his jumpsuit; plum-colored patches stood out beneath his eyes. The marshal moved to another table to allow the family privacy. The conversation was being videotaped anyway.

Graciela embraced her son. “You’re not eating,” she whispered, in Spanish. “I can feel your ribs.”

“I’m eating,” he murmured.

She turned to Lorena, hovering behind her. “Come hug your brother!”

Lorena came forward and the two exchanged a hesitant embrace. Graciela took notice. “What’s going on here?” she said. “My God. I won’t have the two of you fighting at a time like this. We have to stick together as a family.”

Tony took his mother’s hands in his own. “This whole thing is a mistake. The police messed up. We just have to be patient and the truth will come out. In the meantime, you need a lawyer. Don’t talk to anyone until you get a lawyer. Cops will twist up what you say.”

“I have to cooperate,” Graciela said. “You know the situation.”

Tony’s mind flashed to the fat prosecutor, Stubbs, the threat he had issued. “That’s why you need a lawyer,” he said. “Talk to my public defender. She can tell you what to do. Holly Roy. She works on the third floor of this building. Otherwise, they’re going to try to scare us into doing something stupid.” He looked at Lorena. “Isn’t that right, little sister?”

“I didn’t do anything.” Lorena protested. She was crying now, in the same unobtrusive way as her mother. “They showed up at our house, Tony. At my work.”

“Who showed up?” Graciela said.

“The police,” Tony snapped. “She talked to the fucking police.”

Her mother turned and stared at Lorena, who was too ashamed to look up.

“Is that true, mija?”

“She’s a witness for the fucking prosecution, Mama. How’s that for the family sticking together?”

“I just told them the truth.” But Lorena knew she had gone well beyond the truth with Jenny Stallworth. She had twirled her brother’s crimes like a bright cape around her own dull life. She kept trying to apologize to Tony. The words choked her.

“Okay,” Tony said. “Calm down. We’ll get through this shit.”

Graciela began to sway; the air in the room felt too close, too thin, as if she couldn’t get enough of it to remain upright. Her eyes drifted to the vending machines, the bright lettering of the candy bars. Long ago, her children had pleaded with her to buy them something sweet from the machines in the basement of the hospital. They had visited her at work back then, to spend time on her lunch break, two bus rides and six more blocks, Antonio a grim little soldier, leading his sister by the hand through the bright chaos of the lobby. A bar of chocolate had been enough to make them happy back then. She should have relented more often.

Tony reached over to support her; she had apparently fainted. He tried to get up to get her some water from the fountain, but he was shackled to the table. Her son was shackled to a table. The big marshal brought a cup of water and Lorena wet a paper towel and Tony held it to his mother’s brow. “I’m sorry, Mama. I should have told you about the navy. I messed that up. But the rest of this, about Stallworth, whatever you’re hearing, it’s a frame-up. The cops are trying to make a case. I swear to God.”

Graciela kissed her son on the forehead. It was the first time in years. “You don’t have to answer to me, mijo. You have to answer to God.”

“He didn’t do it,” Lorena said. She had settled on the other side of her mother, so that the three were pressed together on the tiny bench, fused into a single unit of misery. “Mr. Stallworth ran away. He planned it all out.”

“How do you know this?” Graciela said.

“I saw his maps,” Lorena said.

“Then tell that to the goddamn police,” Tony said, his voice rising again.

“I did tell them!”

Graciela set her hand on her son’s arm. His wrists were bruised from the handcuffs and so so thin. She wanted to buy him something from the vending machine, anything he wanted, but she knew he wouldn’t take it. It was too late.

“I told them everything,” Lorena sobbed.

“Well, tell them again,” Tony said, more quietly. “Make them believe, hermanita. Because it sure as fuck didn’t stick the first time.”

IN HER FIFTEEN years as a US resident, Graciela Saenz had been detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service only once. It had happened in the hectic months after her husband left, when she took a job in a basement factory, attaching beaded eyes to plastic dolls. An INS officer walked in and calmly explained that everyone present was under arrest. This led to a bus ride and several hours in detention. She pleaded with every agent who passed by the cell. During her intake interview, she grew hysterical. She had a four-year-old at home, who was being watched by her brother, age eight. The children were expecting her home. They weren’t safe without her.

“What kind of mother does that?” asked the agent, who was herself a mother.

“Have mercy on me,” Graciela whispered. “I beg of you.”

She was led back to her cell, where she kneeled in prayer. An hour later, with no explanation, she was sent home with a summons to appear in six months. It was as if the US government had taken a look at the state of her life and decided such ruin was beyond their jurisdiction. Or perhaps her prayers had been answered. “The migra don’t care about your kids,” her cousin told her. “They just get a list from the governor of which businesses to raid.”

Still, the words of the woman agent haunted her: What kind of mother was she? Graciela was much more careful after that. She held out for jobs she knew to be safe, where she had a referral. She avoided public spaces where police might have reason to appear, abstained from parties and rides in cars. She began to feel, also, that she would have to take a tougher line with her children, especially Tony, who had no papers.

She wanted—perhaps needed—her children to succeed, to make lives that would transport them beyond the reach of calamity and justify the decision made to bring them to America. She needed them to be responsible, to get themselves to school and back, to keep their heads down and do the work. When Tony began to act out, she told herself it was because she had been too soft with him.

She could see now that it was just the opposite: she had been too hard on her children. She had stifled tenderness to instill obedience and her babies had turned away from her, into lives where she could no longer reach them.

Graciela understood, too, why the rest of her family had stayed in Honduras, with its poverty and corruption. At least there you had family, someone to look after the young ones, traditions that kept you bound together. America was a place where everyone wanted more and where everyone wound up apart.

THESE WERE HER thoughts as she rode the elevator down to the third floor of the federal building and watched her daughter explain their circumstance to the secretary at the public defender’s office, who smiled and nodded, then sent them away with a business card.

Graciela believed Tony was innocent. But she accepted that she didn’t know him well enough to say for sure. That was what troubled her most, beyond the legal risks—the distance between all of them, the enormity of the deception within her own family. Tony had tried to make something of himself, to recast his weakness into strength. Perhaps the pressure had been too much and, like a bomb, he had exploded.

And what of Lorena? She had always been a good child, quiet and serious. Her body had grown into womanhood too early, and the men of the neighborhood had taken note. She knew Lorena put on makeup at school, and tucked her hems, and walked in a different way. Graciela wasn’t a fool.

That was why she had been happy to see Lorena make friends with the Stallworth girl. It meant she was spending time with a good family, coming out of her shell in a safe place. She had seemed more assured, watching her weight, cutting back on the hair spray. She returned home with fancy clothes from secondhand shops, which she washed and pressed herself.

But Graciela knew her daughter had been hiding things, too. There was a caginess about her now, one that traced back to her friendship with Jenny Stallworth. Her life had become more covert. There were clues left scattered about: missing cigarettes, borrowed cassette tapes, a notebook filled with long passages devoted to the wonders of scorpions, even an amulet with a tiny golden scorpion inside. When Graciela asked about this last item, Lorena blushed. “I got that for Tony. He’s a Scorpio, right?”

THE TV CREWS had decamped at last, so they were able to return to the apartment, and Graciela ran to the market and made baleadas with fatty pork for supper, because those had been Lorena’s favorite, in the days before she worried about zits and extra pounds. Neither of them ate. Before she could escape to her room, Graciela regarded her daughter. “Why didn’t you tell me police had come here, mija?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“They came to your work, too?”

“It was about Mr. Stallworth at first, not Tony.”

“You said that man ran away. Why would you say such a thing?”

“I saw things in his office.”

“What were you doing in his office?”

Lorena sighed at her own foolishness. “I got interested in scorpions. That’s what he studies. I shouldn’t have gone down there.”

“It makes no sense,” Graciela said. “Why would any man do such a thing?”

“Men leave their families all the time,” Lorena murmured. For a moment neither of them spoke, then Lorena added, “I don’t think the Stallworths were happy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Jenny used to say it all the time.”

Graciela narrowed her eyes. “But somehow Tony got mixed up in all this. It makes me ask what else I don’t know, Lorena.”

The girl shifted in her seat. “Let’s just do what he said, Mama. We can get a lawyer. The public defender will help us.” She got up to fetch the card.

Graciela followed her daughter down the short hall to the room she had once shared with Tony. Her eyes settled on a shiny object that lay on the dresser, amid the pencil erasers and hair ties. It was the amulet she was going to give to Tony, the tiny scorpion lodged in its casket of amber. She remembered the saying her grandmother had uttered when she checked her shoes before church, flipping them over to make sure no scorpions had climbed inside: El escorpión caza mientras el resto de nosotros soñamos. Por eso conoce todos los secretos del mundo.

The scorpion hunts while the rest of us dream. That’s why he knows all the secrets of the world.

AFTER BEING RELIEVED of his duty as Antonio Saenz’s minder, Nando Reyes returned to his Fresno substation with no expectation that he would play any further role in the case. But a few days later, he received a strange call from one of his patrolmen. The officer had booked a local transient by the name of Winnifred Thoms into the Fresno jail for possession and attempted sale of a controlled substance. While awaiting transport, Winnie spotted a familiar face on the television hung overhead to keep prisoners pacified. He began boasting that he had recently partied with the young man being hailed as the Death Valley Killer. “That kid ain’t hard enough to kick a kitten,” he announced.

Nando knew the feds would want to interview Winnie. But he figured there was no harm in their having a preliminary chat. The two men had history, after all. Winnie had made himself useful in a couple of drug busts. He was a thief and a liar, like all addicts, but he also recognized the power Nando held and didn’t dare bullshit him. This made him a useful informant.

Winnie was ebullient when a deputy pulled him out of lockup. “Told you motherfuckers they got the wrong guy,” he crowed. The deputy led him to a private cell in back, where Nando was waiting.

“If it isn’t Minnesota Fats.”

“Winnifred. Good to have you back in our humble facility.”

“I didn’t do shit.”

“You never do.”

“What’s going on, boss?”

“I wanna buy some coke.”

“It’s not a weight-loss product.”

Nando winked. “I’m told your stash just got popped, anyway.”

“It wasn’t my shit, man. I got set up.”

“Calm down. I just want to have a little parlay about Antonio Saenz.”

“Who?”

“The Death Valley Killer.”

Winnie perked up. “I can tell you a story about that, boss. But I’d like to know what my incentible is.”

“Your incentible? Your incentible is that you’re under arrest for possession and attempted sale. Given your lengthy record of coking up the youth of south Fresno, you’re just the kind of degenerate who would make an ideal poster boy for our new antidrug campaign. How’s a five spot at Folsom sound?”

“Folsom?”

“Better yet: San Quentin. Get you some beachfront property. They love strung-out white boys up there.”

Winnie wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Just tell me everything you know about Saenz, Winnifred.”

“I partied with him a few weeks back, down at the Vagabond. This girl Trina said she made a new friend who was looking for a good time. That’s it. End of story.”

Nando shook his head. “I don’t think I made myself clear. This kid is on the TV with his own graphic, okay? He’s charged with murder. That murder happened the same weekend you were gobbling narcotics with him. This county is crawling with FBI who believe he had help. Do the math here, Winnie. You’re a person of interest now, okay? Take a deep breath and try again. And this time, don’t leave anything out, not one fucking detail, or I’ll toss your ass to the feds and let them decide which penitentiary would look best on your resume.”

Winnie began raking at his wispy beard. “We messed that kid up a little. But that’s it.” The rest of the story poured out: how Trina called him for supplies, how they got him high, sent him out to get more cash, and rolled him.

“What’s ‘rolled’ mean?”

“Fed him some rum and a lude, just enough to black him out.”

“He didn’t have any help?”

“Come on, man. Do I look like I thug people up?”

“He had a cut on his head.”

“He hit it on the bed frame. That’s what Trina told me. I was in the bathroom, but I did hear, like, a thump. He was bleeding all over the place. You know how head wounds are. I said, ‘What the fuck, Trin?’ She said, ‘What a fucking lightweight.’ We laughed about it for a while.” Winnie paused. “I guess you had to be there.”

“Then what?”

“We took his wallet and did a little shopping.”

Nando had Winnie tell the whole story again: when Winnie showed up, what drugs they did, what time Saenz went out to get more cash, how long he was gone, when he blacked out, the room number, the layout of the room, where and how Saenz had fallen, everything they bought with his credit cards. He worked the details for two hours, feeding Winnie Pepsi and Pop-Tarts to keep him sharp. It was what you had to do with dopers, take them through the events again and again, to see what other details might bubble up from the mush of their memory banks.

At last, Nando shut his notebook.

“What happens now?” Winnie said.

“You keep your fucking mouth shut until someone asks you to open it.”

“I mean about my legal situation.”

Nando laughed. He bellowed out to his deputy in Spanish. “Okay, we made love for long enough. You can have this pubic hair back.”

NANDO KNEW THE proper procedure would be to inform his supervisor, who would turn his notes over to the FBI. But he was now even more troubled by the case. As it had been presented, the suspect had abducted Stallworth on Friday, October 23, presumably in Sacramento. He had then driven Stallworth’s vehicle south, stopping at a Fresno cash hut between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m., where he ordered Stallworth to withdraw $5,000. Sometime later—it remained unclear when—Saenz and Stallworth had a physical altercation. And still later, Saenz, acting alone or with others, disposed of the body and abandoned the vehicle outside Barstow.

Winnie’s story blew up that timeline. Saenz would have had to abduct Stallworth and murder him, then spend the rest of the day and night partying. Either that, or he had tied Stallworth up, or stashed his body, before breezing over to that parking lot where he met Trina. Was Antonio Saenz a criminal of sufficient expertise to pull off any of this?

Winnie’s story explained several other incriminating details. Such as why Saenz was reluctant to confess to Guerrero where he’d been on October 23 and 24, and why he had a cut on his head. It also clarified, possibly, why his own credit cards had been used for a buying spree, hours after his commission of a lethal robbery. There was always a chance that Winnie had been in on the scheme. But why would he draw attention to his involvement?

Nando tracked down the number for Trina’s probation officer, which led him to Trina herself. She sat in an IHOP clawing at her wrists and reluctantly confirmed Winnie’s account, right down to the quaalude and the theft. “Why do you care so much about that poor kid?” she asked at one point. “Did someone dust him or something?”

Then it was over to the Vagabond, where the manager owed him a few favors. He even called up the maid who was on duty that night. Like most of his staff, she was undocumented, and thus obliged to cooperate. She provided a positive ID of Antonio Saenz and admitted to finding him in rough shape a couple of Saturdays ago. She led Nando to the room and let him inside. “They’d been drinking a lot and doing all that sort of thing,” the woman explained. “The boy was lying here.”

“Did it look like someone beat him up?”

“No. He hit his head. There, I think.” She pointed to a spot on the bed frame with a large dent. Just below, the yellow shag carpet had streaks of brown. “The boy opened his eyes for a second when I came in, then went right back to sleep. I think maybe he had a concussion. I told the manager. He said to clean the room anyway.”

“Did you?”

“Of course. It’s my job. I just cleaned around him.”

“He didn’t get up?”

“He must have, eventually. I left at four and he was still in there, sleeping it off. They charge by the hour, you know.”

That was the thing about motels like the Vagabond: the rooms were all, to some degree or another, crime scenes.

WOULD THE FBI ever interview Winnie and Trina? Nando doubted it. Agents pursued leads that helped them make the charge, not unmake it. Let the defense chase down the alibis, if they had the means. So he wrote up his notes and had a currier deliver them to Guerrero. He wanted his cousin to hear what he’d learned, firsthand: that Winnie’s story had checked out, all of it, right down to the credit card receipts.

Guerrero called him the next morning. “What the fuck, Nando. Does anybody else know what you been up to?”

“Old habits.”

“Look, it’s the feds’ party now. They got me typing up statements, then I go back to rescuing kittens.”

“Something’s off, man.”

Guerrero glanced at the stack of interviews he’d just finished transcribing. A vision of Lorena’s face reared up before him; its calm defiance infuriated him. “They got blood in the car. That’s all Hooks wants to hear about. You want to make trouble, get yourself busted down to Traffic, go ahead. But keep me out of it.”

Nando said nothing for a few seconds. Then, almost with regret, he murmured, “You made the arrest, primo. You’re in it for life.”

GUERRERO FULLY INTENDED to turn his handiwork over to Hooks. But he kept hearing the girl’s implacable claim: I can prove it. He took one last spin through her statements, zeroing in on the story she’d told in the final interview, about finding Stallworth in the bathroom across from his office, covered in blood.

He swung by the Stallworth home the next morning, early. It was still unmistakable, but upon closer inspection, the mansion looked more ragged. The mint-green paint had cracked near the foundation, and the front lawn showed weeds. He rang the doorbell and saw a light flick on upstairs. After a minute, he heard footsteps and a meek voice asked, through the door, who was there. The accent was the same as his. Guerrero introduced himself as a police officer who’d been sent out to make sure everyone was doing okay.

“Can you hold your badge up to the peephole, please?”

She opened the door but not in a way that would allow him to enter.

“Is the señora here?” he asked in Spanish.

“Oh no. She and the children left a few days ago.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“Out of town for a few days, to get away from all this. She said she would call.”

“And you are?”

“Lucia.”

“Lucia what?”

“Sanchez.”

“May I come in, Lucia?”

She moved aside, apprehensively. Lucia was older than most domestics, perhaps in her fifties. She wore curlers and an elegant house robe that reached the floor, apparently on loan from her employer.

“I’m sorry, Officer. I get so scared.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m being superstitious. But the boy who killed the señor, he found his way to this house, didn’t he? They said on the TV that he might have friends in the gangs.”

“Have you seen anyone suspicious?”

“I guess not.” With the toe of her slipper she absently straightened the area rug Guerrero had trod upon. She had a manner he recognized from his own mother, a kind of borrowed grandiosity that derived from working for an upper-class family.

“Have any other police officers come by to talk to you?”

“To me? Why?”

“You work for the Stallworths, don’t you?”

“Not really.” Lucia shifted nervously. “I used to work for them. But I took some other jobs. Anyway, it’s not important. Everything is okay here.”

“I’d like to take a quick look downstairs,” Guerrero said. “I promised I’d just do a sweep of the utilities. Do you know your way around down there?”

Lucia shook her head.

“You never went downstairs?”

“That was Mr. Stallworth’s office.”

“I’ll just take a minute.”

The bathroom was spotless, conspicuously so, and smelled of disinfectant. Guerrero shut the door and hung a towel across the window to darken the room, then sprayed luminol and oxidant on everything in sight. He couldn’t see anything at first. But as his eyes adjusted, specks of blue appeared beneath the sink and toilet, and in the grooves of the tile at the base of the shower—the places hardest to reach. He sprayed in the hall outside the bathroom: more droplets. Working a hunch, he checked the utility closet down the hall. The pattern was unmistakable: spatters and streaks around the bucket and mop, ghosts of blood. He peeked into Mr. Stallworth’s office and was stunned to find that it had been cleared out entirely, the desk, the file cabinet, everything.

LUCIA WAS WAITING at the top of the stairs. She had put on her day clothes and her day face: soft blue eye shadow, lipstick a few shades too bright, the same as his mom.

“All good,” Guerrero said.

“Thank you, Officer. It was kind of you to come by.” She glanced at the front door. But Guerrero walked into the living room. The family photos had vanished, and there was dust on the sill of the bay window.

“Do you know when the señora will be coming back?”

“Who can say? In such a situation.”

“When’s the last time you spoke to her, anyway?”

“A few days.”

“Well, you can tell her everything is okay, Lucia. But listen: Do you have something to drink, maybe? The air is full of dust down there.”

“Of course,” Lucia said miserably.

Guerrero followed her into the kitchen.

“Is water okay? Or juice?”

“Coffee would be better, if you have it.”

Her jaw bunched as she put on a kettle.

From overhead came the faint whine of bedsprings, then feet coming to rest, as gently as possible, on the floor. Lucia Sanchez had a guest. She glanced at Guerrero, then down at the floor, her cheeks flushing.

“That’s just a cousin of mine. He needed a place to stay for the night.”

“It’s okay, Lucia. That can be our secret.”

“I just don’t like staying here alone. There’s a tragedy hanging over this house, you know?” The kettle began to shriek and Lucia busied herself making him coffee. “I need to get off to work. I have another house to clean this morning.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Stallworth would understand,” Guerrero said. “I imagine she was a good employer.”

“Of course. It’s her I feel the worst for, the poor thing. Did you know her hair turned gray overnight? One day she had all that lovely blond hair, the next it was the color of ashes.”

Lucia handed him his coffee. “Milk? Sugar?”

He shook his head.

“Can I ask you something, Officer? What will happen next? With the killer, I mean? On the TV, they said there would be a trial. And then if he was guilty, they would put him in the electric chair. He deserves it. I know that. But still.” She curled away for a moment. “He’s the same age as my son, you see.”

“I don’t think it will come to that. But I’ve been wrong before.” He dipped his chin. “Why did you stop working for the Stallworths, anyway?”

“The kids were getting older. Maybe they wanted to cut back on expenses.” She quickly amended herself. “I don’t really know.”

“You don’t have to worry about talking to me,” Guerrero said. “I’m not here to investigate anything. The FBI is doing all that now. I’m just curious. My mom did the same work, you know. She said when you found a good family you had to stick with them. Ride them like a donkey to the river.”

Lucia laughed. “It’s true. Some of my friends get stuck with the bad ones. Cheap. Or they expect you to work on the Lord’s day. Or teach the little ones Spanish. Or the fathers have those busy hands. Thankfully, I’m an old lady now.”

“You’re still pretty enough to receive visitors.” Guerrero rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and grinned. He wasn’t much of a flirt, but Lucia didn’t look displeased.

“They were a decent family, anyway. So good-looking! And such a home. All this light! They just ran short on money. I thought a professor would earn a lot. But I guess they don’t pay so much to study those disgusting creatures.”

“Scorpions?”

She made a face. “He would bring them home in little plastic cans. You could hear them rattling around in his pockets like maracas.” Lucia shivered. “Mrs. Stallworth wouldn’t let him bring them upstairs, thanks to God. He had a place for them, like an aquarium with sand. She made him get rid of that, too.”

“Did they fight?”

“Oh no,” Lucia said quickly. “Not that I saw. They were just very different. The señora was social, you see. She did a lot of volunteer work. She could have been working, too, you know. She used to sell houses. She sold a house to Nancy Reagan once.”

“Imagine that.”

“It was when Mrs. Reagan was the wife of the governor. The señora didn’t like to brag about it. But they took a photo together. It’s here somewhere.”

“What was he like?”

“Very private. Quiet. Handsome, too, behind those big glasses.”

“Did he treat you with respect?”

“Oh yes. He was a gentleman. He liked to speak Spanish to me.”

“He spoke Spanish?”

“Not exactly. He was learning, I guess.” She did an imitation of his gringo Spanish and they both laughed.

“I wouldn’t figure they had any problems with money in a house like this.”

“Oh, you can always see how it is. They cut back on the gardener, the pool man. The steak becomes hamburger meat. The flowers come from the garden. Then they don’t need as many cleaning days. They almost took out another mortgage on the house a few years ago. Anyway, none of that matters now,” Lucia said.

“Did you tell the investigators this?”

Lucia looked perplexed. “Like I said, I didn’t work for the señora when all this happened.”

“I guess not.” Guerrero swirled his mug. “This was delicious. Thank you. I should let you get on with your day.” Then, as if it had just occurred to him and was of no great importance, he asked, “Who cleaned out Mr. Stallworth’s office anyway?”

“The officer with the pointy mustache. I don’t know his name.”

Guerrero had to conceal his alarm. “Van Dyke?”

“Yes, he was the one helping her manage things.”

“But why get rid of everything?”

“It’s haunted now, isn’t it? The whole place. At least for her.” Lucia whisked his mug off the counter and into the sink. Then she straightened up, as if she meant now, after all the small talk, to set the record straight. “I will tell you one thing, Officer Guerrero: they should never have let that girl into this house.”

“Who?”

“The little sister. Lo, she called herself. She made friends with Jenny. That’s how he targeted Mr. Stallworth in the first place. I never trusted her.”

“Why not?”

“She had stars in her eyes. You could see it from the start. A girl like that, riding her bike all the way from Fruitridge. She was like a peasant walking into a palace.”

“Dazzled?”

“It was more, you know, there’s a certain kind of girl who makes trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“She used to look at the señor in a certain way. You know what I mean.”

“Did the señor look back?”

“Of course not!” Lucia snapped. “Oh, you were joking, weren’t you? I see. No, he stayed away from her. But she was always lurking around, kind of spying on him. She used to sneak downstairs to his office. One night, she convinced Glen and Jenny to swim naked in the pool. I saw it myself! I told Mrs. Stallworth, but she would always make excuses. ‘Think about the life she’s led, Lucia. She’s got no father. Her mother is at work all the time. We can be a good influence.’ The señora was like that—too trusting. Then, after Mr. Stallworth moved downstairs—”

“He moved downstairs?”

“Just for a few weeks over the summer. They made up. But it was something about that girl. I’m telling you, she brought a bad spirit into this house. I know that sounds like superstition, but now you see how it is, Officer. Look at what her brother did in the end. He ruined a whole family.”

GUERRERO DROVE BACK to office and dug out the embossed business card of Royce Van Dyke; it still smelled of his cologne. He left three messages with the answering service. Van Dyke called back late in the day. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gutierrez. I’ve dealt with a lot of inquiries on this case, for obvious reasons—”

“It’s Guerrero. Officer Guerrero.”

“Of course. Congratulations are in order. I saw you on TV.”

“Thanks. I figured I might check in on the Stallworths. Make sure they’re okay.”

“Not necessary. Rosemary took the kids out of town for a few days.”

“Do the prosecutors know she left?”

Van Dyke exhaled loudly, impatiently. “Of course. I’m sure nobody blames her, given the situation. Anyway, your concern is noted, Officer. Now, if you don’t mind—”

“Actually, I wanted to ask you something. Do you know who did the deep clean on the bathroom in the Stallworth basement?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I understand you also helped Rosemary straighten up the house. Did you dispose of items in his office, too?”

After a moment of hesitation, Van Dyke released a trill of laughter. “Would you like to put me under oath, Officer Guerrero?”

“I’m just trying to figure out the nature of your involvement with the Stallworth family.”

“I might ask you the same thing,” Van Dyke replied. “I thought you were calling out of concern for the victim’s family. But I see now that you have some other agenda.”

Guerrero envisioned him leaning back in a plush leather chair, smoothing his mustache. “Answer my questions, please.”

“You just helped put a monster behind bars. You should be bucking for a promotion.”

“Thanks for the career tip. But I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come down to the station? I get the feeling you’d be more forthcoming in that setting.”

“I assume you’re acting at the direction of your superior officer,” Van Dyke shot back. “Is that right?” His tone was almost mocking.

Guerrero paused.

“I’m happy to call Captain Hooks myself. Shall I? I imagine Maurice would be fascinated to know what you’re up to.”

Before Guerrero could muster a response, he heard a click, then a dial tone. He stared at the receiver. He felt sure Van Dyke was bluffing but he had no idea what the bluff meant.

PEDRO GUERRERO WAS not yet convinced of Antonio Saenz’s innocence. To believe this, he would have had to ignore too much evidence. It would be more accurate to say that he was unnerved. Each new revelation chipped away at the Theory of the Case that had prevailed when he arrested Antonio Saenz. The testimony of those who had partied with Saenz. The verification of Lorena’s claims. The darkening portrait of the Stallworth marriage itself. He knew blood never lied. And yet he had trouble assembling the facts of the case into a coherent narrative. There were too many gaps.

Had Guerrero been a homicide detective, had there been less institutional pressure for an arrest, had this been a different era, he might have been able to request a copy of the serology report from the FBI, might have found some way to root out the elisions and tricks of language that made probability sound like incontrovertible fact. He might even have discovered the glaring discrepancy between O+ and O-.

But Guerrero was living in Sacramento, in the fall of 1981, the season of the Death Valley Killer. He steered his beater Buick back to the station with a knot in his gut and only a vague sense of what to do next. He would compile his notes and present them to Hooks, maybe even Chief Ellis. They would want to know about the supplemental evidence. He could hear Nando in his ear. You’re driving in the wrong direction, primo.

He cruised past the visitor parking lot, which was clogged with news vans. They spilled out onto Capitol Avenue, where reporters were stiffening their $100 haircuts with cans of Aqua Net, readying for their stand-ups. Inside the lobby of the admin building, a mob of reporters hurled questions at the public affairs staffers. Guerrero saw Jolley and Hooks huddled with a couple of Ellis’s deputies, everyone wearing grins. Jolley spotted him and elbowed Hooks, who flashed a thumbs-up.

“What’s going on, Doug?” Guerrero called out.

“You didn’t hear yet, little man? Saenz pleaded out.”

“What?”

“Sang like Tweety Bird. The chief’s doing a presser in a few. Just wants to make these jackals sweat their balls a little.” Jolley gestured at the reporters. “Hey, Guerrero, how about a smile? You arrested the little fuck. They’re gonna put your face on a trading card.”

IN FIVE DAYS of custody, Antonio Saenz had been booked into four different facilities. He had eaten almost nothing and barely slept. His first lawyer, the old guy Peña hired for him, had been replaced by a public defender he didn’t trust. He grasped the basic situation; the cops had framed him. But he didn’t understand why his sister had helped them, or how his blood had been found in the vehicle of a man he barely knew. There was the additional mystery of his sudden notoriety, the swarm of armed guards and TV cameras and reporters that jostled around him as he was marched to and from court. Such moments triggered an uncanny sensation: he was a boy again, being led away from home, into a life of certain doom.

Most of all, Tony felt a crushing sense of betrayal. The episode at the Vagabond Motel had been a wake-up call. To wind up in a place like that, with a ribbon of blood tracing his scalp, a hammering headache, his wallet gone, and only scattered memories of the preceding events—such a circumstance felt, to him, at age nineteen, like the culmination of every bad decision he had made in his brief life, all the times he had trusted the wrong people, taken the wrong drugs, lunged for joy and landed in despair.

This was why he had reached out to Peña; he needed help, a guy who understood his limitations, who didn’t fuck around. He had taken a job that looked sketchy from the outside but was, for him, a first step on the path to getting right. Even the gun bust Peña had engineered was a vital lesson. Remain loyal and he’d bail you out.

What sleep Antonio managed was marred by dreams that caused him to wake in a sweat, his heart thudding. Surveillance cameras mounted in his cell had captured footage of him during these events, flailing, shrieking, “Déjalo en paz!” Leave him alone! Antonio couldn’t remember what he had dreamed, but the panic was familiar. He had suffered the same night terrors as a child.

In this reduced state, the suspect was transported to a room on the top floor of the federal lockup and remanded to the custody of a baby-faced FBI agent, who rose from his seat and nodded at him amiably. “Mr. Saenz, my name is Joel Salcido.” It took Tony a moment to recognize that the man meant to shake hands with him. “I won’t say pleasure to meet you. We both know that would be bullshit.” Salcido’s smile was more like a wince. “Let’s see if we can figure a way out of this mess.”

TONY UNDERSTOOD WHAT was happening, that he was going to be questioned. But the room didn’t look like an interrogation cell. Usually, they stuck you behind a table in the corner, facing away from the door. In this case, the table was in the middle of the room and his seat faced a full-length window that overlooked the capitol building. Sun beat down on the fancy columns of the portico, the beams disappearing into the black dome, as if captured.

Salcido didn’t look much like a federal agent. He was Hispanic, for one thing, one of those pale Mexicans with eyes that had green in them, which meant Spanish blood. He wore a sweater vest, not a suit, and radiated the kind of eager goodwill that Tony recognized from the youth pastors in his mother’s church, the guys who were always hauling out their Bibles to recruit some fresh souls.

“You FBI or what?”

“Special agent,” Salcido said. “That’s my official title.”

“How come you don’t got a partner? Someone to play bad cop?”

Salcido shrugged.

“I got a right to my attorney anyway.”

“You certainly do, Mr. Saenz.” Salcido opened the folder in front of him and scanned the top sheet. “Miss … Roy. I can have her up here in ten minutes, if that’s how you want to do it.” He gestured to the phone at his elbow, as if to tender the offer. “My guess is she’s trying to plead you out. Which means keeping you quiet so you don’t screw up the deal.”

“You want the same thing,” Tony said. “For me to say I did it, so everyone can call it a day.”

Salcido stared at Tony. “I know you did a hitch in the navy. I served four years in the army. It’s the same mentality: cover your ass. Maybe that’s what the government is trying to do, sweep this case under the rug. I can promise you one thing, Mr. Saenz: I don’t want you lying. That’s not why I flew out here. That’s not my job.”

“What’s your job?”

“To figure out how the hell we got here. But you got no reason to trust me, Mr. Saenz. And you do have the indisputable legal right to remain silent until you have a lawyer present. So if you want me to call Miss Roy, say the word.” Salcido, who had studied drama as an undergraduate, who understood the gestural tools at his disposal, looked to the phone again and set his hand down on the receiver.

Tony didn’t buy the gambit. He knew he was being sweet- talked; the naval recruiter had coaxed him into his office with the same pop psychology. At the same time, he couldn’t quite dispute the logic. Miss Roy had ordered him to keep his mouth shut. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to prove you’re innocent of these charges, Mr. Saenz.”

“How do I do that?”

“By telling me the whole story, start to finish.”

ONCE SUSPECTS START talking, they keep talking. This is the cardinal rule of interrogation. It redounds to a basic human compulsion: to be seen, heard, understood, perhaps even forgiven. All Joel Salcido had to do was ask rudimentary questions. When had Saenz returned to Sacramento from the navy? Under what circumstances had he come into contact with Marcus Stallworth? Where was he the weekend of the alleged abduction?

Salcido knew the answers to these questions already. But he was listening for the hidden clues, the story beneath the story. It went this way for a couple of hours. Salcido listened, nodded, said “right, right, okay.” Mostly, he let Saenz vent.

Eventually, the sun started to drop down over the capitol, dragging a curtain of orange light behind it. Salcido sat back and stretched. “Okay. That’s enough for now. You hungry? Let’s get some food. What do you want? Can’t imagine you’re getting takeout in federal lockup.”

Tony shrugged. Salcido was working him. He knew it was bullshit. But he was starving.

Salcido picked up the phone. “Yeah, we’re almost done in here. Can we get some comida sent up? No, get takeout. What’s close by? Okay, hold on.” He turned to Tony. “You like tamales, pupusas, that kind of thing? Sure. Thanks.” Ten minutes later, a marshal showed up with a bag full of pupusas, refried beans, garlicky yuca frita. Salvadoran food.

This was the same food he had eaten as a kid, back when his father was still living with them, before he ran off to Florida, or wherever the fuck he was. It was no mistake. FBI analysts had worked up a full psychological profile on Antonio Saenz. They knew his father was a Salvadoran immigrant who had abandoned the family when Saenz was nine. It was the reason they had dispatched Special Agent Salcido. He had a touch with young Hispanic subjects, a way of disarming them, playing the harmless uncle until it was time to get real.

SALCIDO KNEW SMALL talk would only make the kid wary, so he excused himself and let Saenz eat in private. He watched, via close-circuit camera, as the kid stared at the food warily, nibbled at a sliver of yucca, then allowed himself a bite of the pupusa. They did the chicharrón just the way he liked it, with little chunks of charred pork fat. He took another bite and sucked Coke from a big Styrofoam cup.

By the time they started up again, the blood had rushed to his belly and the windows were throbbing with the soft purple of twilight. Salcido called in a marshal to clear away the food. “Just a few more questions.”

“I already told you everything I know,” Tony said.

“I know. But I’m still confused.” Salcido picked up a folder from the stack in front of him. “I got this report that tells me your blood was in Marcus Stallworth’s jeep, Antonio. Your fingerprints, too. Something’s not adding up. Now, I listened to every word you spoke. That’s why I’m here. To listen. But sometimes there’s a distance between what we say and what someone else hears. So I want you to take a deep breath and listen to what I heard. Okay?”

Tony looked down and nodded drowsily.

“The first thing, we got to be honest about this. You had a drug problem, okay. We can’t just ignore that. As we sit here today, looking at the evidence, Antonio, we can’t ignore that.” Salcido spoke softly and swiftly, as if issuing a reluctant but necessary verdict. “I know something about addiction. It makes good people into liars. And we know you were still doing drugs in Sacramento, because we talked to some of your friends. I’m not judging you. I would have done the same thing. I have done the same thing. But we gotta stick to the facts. I don’t know if you were on drugs when you drove your sister to the Stallworths. I don’t even know if you had a gun, like she says. But you were pissed. I feel the same way when I drive through a place like that, with Porsches all over the place. You were driving, what, a Pinto?”

“Bobcat.”

“Right. The Bobcat with the busted muffler. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, Antonio. Your own sister doesn’t want you to get out of the car. She’s afraid you’ll make a scene, right? You start messing around with the Jeep in the driveway. Then the dad appears. And what’s your reaction? You scurry back to your beater. But why? Why not say hello? Why not say, ‘Hi, I’m Lorena’s brother, Antonio. I was just admiring your Jeep, sir.’” Salcido shook his head. “Because you know what he’s thinking. You can see it in his eyes. What’s this coked-up spic doing in front of my house? Talking to my daughter? He’s thinking the same thing as Lorena: you don’t belong here.”

“You’re just making shit up now.”

“What am I making up? That you burned rubber out of there? That you were driving a stolen vehicle? Am I making up that you warned your sister not to hang out with the Stallworths? Am I making up that Lorena called you a couple of weeks later, in the middle of the night, freaked out? That she begged you to pick her up? That you drove to that same house and saw Marcus Stallworth hugging on her? Your sister—fourteen years old. A kid. A dumb, dreamy kid. This little Mexican girl—”

“We’re not Mexican.”

“Course you’re not. But we’re talking about Stallworth. When he looks at your sister, all he sees—you have to excuse me for saying it like this, Antonio, but if we’re gonna be honest—all he sees is a set of young tits and an easy mark. Okay? You knew exactly what was going on. Hell, you were the one who warned her. So now you do what any decent brother would: you defend her. You threaten the sick fuck—those are your words, Antonio. I happen to agree with them.”

“And that’s all I did,” Tony said. He peered out the window, at the dusk seeping away. Soon, it would be impossible to tell what time it was.

“I wish that were the case, Antonio. I do. But we both know there’s more to it than that. Because of the fingerprints. The blood.”

“My prints got there cuz I touched the Jeep. I told you.”

“That tells me you admired that Jeep, Antonio. It was something he had that you might take from him. Like he took your sister.”

“My sister says the perv faked the whole thing. That’s why you can’t find a body. There is no body.”

“Right,” Salcido said. He was thumbing through his file. “Claimed Stallworth didn’t love his wife. That she saw maps down in his office. I read her interviews. But you know what’s odd, Antonio? Aside from the fact that nobody else ever saw these magic maps. Lorena never mentioned any of this until her third interview. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? Two whole interviews and those facts just slipped her mind.”

“Maybe she didn’t know you guys were going to set me up.”

“So we somehow got your blood into Stallworth’s jeep. How, Antonio?”

“You tell me,” Tony snarled. “You got all the answers.”

“Okay.” Salcido nodded slowly. “I’ll to give you two scenarios. You tell me which one sounds more likely. The first scenario—and I’m being serious now—the first scenario is that someone did frame you up. Maybe it’s the cops. Maybe it’s someone you did wrong. Here’s how that would have to work. First, they’d have to get ahold of your blood. Second, they’d have to know Marcus Stallworth was someone you might target. Third, they’d have to kidnap Stallworth and spill some of his blood in the front seat of his Jeep and mix it up with your blood. Then they’d have to make him disappear into thin air. I don’t know how many enemies you have, Antonio. But that’s a lot of work. Not saying it’s impossible, but that’s the only way your blood is getting in that vehicle. Unless something else happened.”

Salcido leaned across the table. He had that handsome face, which Tony wanted to punch; and yet, confusingly, he also wanted Salcido’s approval.

“You’re not going to like this, Antonio. But I want to set out another possibility, based on what you told me. Because my job is to make sense of the evidence. That’s my only job. I want you to do what I did: listen. Don’t interrupt. Just listen, okay?”

Outside, the sky had gone black, the clouds snuffed out. The room in which they sat felt too bright against the darkness, like the set of a play. Tony was suddenly so tired as to feel drugged.

“We know you left Sacramento because you were getting caught up in the same stuff as before, the drugs. You wind up in Fresno. Change of scenery, fresh start, you know some guys down there. But you get yourself in a little trouble right away. The girl, Trina, her dealer Winnie. Some booze. Some coke. This new rock stuff that feels like rocket fuel in your brain. We know you needed money for the drugs. We know you went to that quick cash hut. Things get pretty out of control. At some point, you black out. When you come to, it’s the next morning. You’re trying to remember what happened the night before, but it’s spotty. You’ve lost some hours. You’re bleeding from the head, which means something violent happened. Trina and Winnie the Pooh are nowhere to be found. But here’s something you couldn’t have known, Antonio: a witness saw Marcus Stallworth enter the exact same quick cash hut as you did, on the exact same day, October 23.” Salcido tapped the folder in front of him. “Can you imagine the odds?”

“I never saw him,” Tony said.

“You don’t remember having seen him,” Salcido replied calmly. “There’s a difference, Tony. Now, I’m not suggesting that you drove up to Sacramento and grabbed Mr. Stallworth. I’m not even suggesting that you stalked him, hoping to nab that Jeep you liked so much. I’ve got colleagues who think you did that. They think you’re a sociopath, frankly. That’s not what I think. I think you were out of your mind on drugs and you saw this guy—this sick fuck, as you put it—and you told your new friends about him, his fancy Jeep and his big mansion, and I think they cooked up a plan to rob him.”

“They knocked me out in the hotel room. I told you.”

“You told me you woke up in the hotel room, Antonio. There’s a big difference. Now listen to me. There’s such a thing as a cocaine-induced psychosis. It’s even got an abbreviation: CIP. It’s what the brain doctors call a ‘dissociative state.’ That means you’re awake, but you’re not aware. You can’t recall the events. It’s like a bad trip and a blackout rolled into one. You understand?”

Tony managed a sneer.

“That’s what I think happened. This guy, Winnie—you have no way of knowing what kinds of drugs he’s feeding you. Isn’t that right? You have no clue. We do know that you were wiped out for the rest of the weekend. They hatched the whole plan, Antonio. And you were too cranked up to think straight. We know Stallworth got shook down for five grand. We’ve got paper on that. A few hours later, his Jeep winds up in Barstow, with your plasma and his in a puddle. Come on now, Antonio—do the math. These folks fed you drugs. They saw a big payday fall into their laps and they got you to do the dirty work. That’s how you wind up with a gash on your skull. Maybe you and Stallworth got into it. Or maybe they set you up. I don’t know about that. I do know that you got cold feet at some point, though.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony managed. “How’s that?”

Salcido pulled a VHS tape from his stack of evidence. He got up and wheeled over a cart with a VCR machine and a TV. In went the tape, with a click. A grainy video popped onto the screen, taken from above, of an emaciated teenager on a narrow cot, thrashing in his sleep. His only discernible words were a repeated imploration, delivered in Spanish. Déjalo en paz. Leave him alone.

ANTONIO SAENZ HAD never seen himself on film before. Nobody he knew could afford a camcorder. He found it deeply upsetting, the way he kept flailing in the greenish dark, his limbs no thicker than twigs; his trembling voice. It made him question what else the cops had on him.

Salcido clicked off the TV and shoved the cart away. Rather than sitting down across from Tony, he went and stood by the window and rubbed his face with both hands. All this was done for dramatic effect. He wanted the suspect to recognize that he took no pleasure in presenting his theory of the case. It had been a professional obligation. “I don’t guess you’re reading the papers these days,” Salcido said, without turning around. “They’re writing some crazy stuff. That the murder was a gang initiation thing. That you went on this big shopping spree afterwards, to celebrate. The worst stuff is about your family. The Bee did a piece about how your parents snuck you and your sister across the border. Made them sound like real masterminds. That puts pressure on the INS to do something. They haven’t found your dad yet, in case you were wondering. And Lorena—they’ve been floating this theory that she tried to seduce Marcus Stallworth. Sells papers, I guess.”

Salcido walked slowly back to the desk, where Tony sat motionless, staring at his lap. “They got a hundred soldiers looking for that body, including six canine units.” Salcido crouched down and gently laid his hand on the shoulder of the Death Valley Killer. It felt as frail as driftwood. “They’re going to find that body, Antonio. And when they do, it’s game over. They’ll rip up that plea deal and file this as a capital offense. They’ll put your mom on the next plane down to Honduras. It’ll happen fast. I’m not trying to scare you. I’m trying to tell you what comes next. You got a decision to make.”

They were seven hours into the session, the point at which most suspects, even the innocent ones, signal a willingness to cooperate. But Tony was no longer responsive.

“Okay,” Salcido said. “Get some rest. We can finish up in the morning.”

JOEL SALCIDO WAS one of the FBI’s most skilled interrogators, but the methods he employed were standard practice. The goal was to shift the dynamic from confrontation to collaboration, from denial of the crime to an explanation of its commission. This required patience, improvisation, and a willingness to embellish the evidence. Bad guys broke the rules all the time. Sometimes good guys had to break the rules to make them stick.

But for Salcido, who was a devout Christian, there was something more profound vested in the process, a moral restoration commonly associated with faith. Confession allowed for forgiveness and healing. By his sins, the suspect had been cast out of the family of man. By his surrender, he rejoined that family. Salcido saw himself as an angel of mercy. Without his guidance and support, Antonio Saenz would remain incarcerated within his false denials. He would be put on trial and convicted and executed.

The public defender, Holly Roy, had raised no objection when the regional director of the FBI informed her boss that he was sending Salcido to Sacramento. Roy might have read the serology report more carefully, or interviewed additional witnesses. But she wasn’t building a defense for Saenz. She was urging him to plead out. She, too, was trying to save his life.

IN HIS INTERVIEW notes, Salcido would describe the suspect as “catatonic” at the conclusion of Session One. In fact, Tony was experiencing a common somatic reaction among traumatized people. Unable to fight or flee, he had frozen. He returned to his cell under his own power but appeared oblivious to his surroundings. At the direction of a psychiatric consultant from the FBI, he was moved to a unit known as a rubber room, one with no sharp corners. In addition to hourly rounds, an officer monitored the video feed from his cell.

There was very little to see. Tony lay on his cot. The real action was inside his head. He was thinking about the journey north, from Honduras to America. The trip returned to him now in fragments: his mother instructing him to be brave, promising him that he would be able to eat apricots in California. He remembered struggling not to cry, his father’s hand clamped onto his, jerking him up the massive steps of a bus, brown scrub through a smudged window, a shroud of cigarette smoke around his father, the noxious fumes of diesel exhaust and diarrhea.

Now, languishing in a cell from which there was no escape, drifting in and out of consciousness, other memories began to dart into his mind. He remembered sleeping on the olive-green benches of a large bus station, his father meeting another group of men, all of them riding into the desert on the bed of a pickup truck. There were two men in charge and they spoke a different kind of Spanish, city-quick and full of slang. Tony didn’t understand them. He didn’t understand most of what was happening.

He remembered sitting near a campfire, the adults discussing what to do when they reached the border. Tony imagined a wrought-iron gate, the kind that surrounded cemeteries, only much taller, and beyond, in the magical land called America, an endless grove of apricot trees, the fruits lit from within like orange bulbs.

Then it was night and he was alone. A few men were still awake, gathered around a small fire, drinking from pint bottles. His father’s voice rang out, with its worrying belligerence. Instinctually, Tony stood and tottered toward the commotion. He found his father curled in the sand. The two men in charge were kicking him. Tony yelled at them to leave him alone, but they tossed him aside, and a third man grabbed him. “Calm down, little warrior,” he murmured. “Your papa is a drunk. He’s going to get us all killed.” He remembered the damp thuds of the beating, his father’s girlish yelps. Tony could do nothing but return to the fire. He was too far from home. The next morning, he woke to the face of a monster: the nose gashed and mottled purple. A split eyebrow clotted with blood. Tony knew better than to ask what had happened.

His father told him anyway. Un maldito escorpión me picó. A goddamn scorpion stung me.

They traveled the rest of the way as outcasts, walking a few hundred yards behind the main group. A tense silence prevailed. It seemed to Tony that his father was never the same again. But the opposite was true, as well: Tony was never the same. He became a withdrawn person, quietly defiant, mistrustful. He felt he should have saved his father. At the same time, he wanted his father dead.

HIS MOTHER WOULD never understand him; she hadn’t been there. She had sent him away, at age four, with a drunken maniac.

It couldn’t be true, what Salcido said. It wasn’t true.

But the longer he lay in the dark, the more confused he became. There was a wickedness within him. He understood that much. He could be led astray by others, those more assured than him. Could the drugs have blotted out his memories? Was he remembering the assault of his father or was the man bleeding onto the sand Marcus Stallworth? Had he been dragged away from his father, or from the body of the man he himself had slain?

According to the surveillance tape, at 2:22 a.m. Antonio Saenz rose from his bunk and stumbled to the toilet in his cell. He stuck his head so deep inside the bowl that the agent monitoring him worried he might be trying to drown himself. Instead, the suspect violently expelled the food he had devoured hours earlier.

AS FOR THE confession offered by Antonio Saenz, that was mostly the work of special agent Joel Salcido. Tony was in the room, of course. He consented to the statement and participated in its construction, mostly in an advisory role. But there was no dramatic moment of capitulation. The process was incremental.

Step one was Tony’s admission that it was possible he had been involved in criminal activities he could no longer recall, owing to his drug use. From there, Salcido extrapolated. Isn’t it possible, he would ask. Isn’t it possible you saw Mr. Stallworth’s jeep in the parking lot of the cash hut? Isn’t it possible Winnie and Trina convinced you to take part in the armed robbery of Mr. Stallworth? Isn’t it possible he resisted? Isn’t it possible there was an altercation? Isn’t it possible he wound up dead?

Salcido never said these things happened. Nor did he expect Tony to do so. It was only a matter of admitting to a set of possibilities. In this way, the suspect was eased from innocence into a provisional form of guilt.

Tony was never quite alone. Salcido was right there, ready to offer him options. If Tony didn’t remember shooting Stallworth, or burying the body, then perhaps his companions had done so. Perhaps Tony had tried to stop them. (Leave him alone!) These were mitigating circumstances—that was the phrase Salcido used. And they would be taken into consideration by the government. But they were not part of the Interview Report itself, which is what Salcido called the confession.

The theory of the case that emerged from this process was that Tony had been in a drug-induced state during the commission of the crimes. His apparent amnesia solved two other crucial problems for the prosecution; it explained why the murderer could not provide investigators the location of the body, and it justified the government’s remarkably lenient plea offer. Despite the Death Valley Killer’s deplorable actions, despite the call in some quarters for the death penalty, it was technically impossible to charge him with premeditated murder.

Next, they had to prepare the document. Salcido went over the facts again. (“We have to get this as clear as we can, okay?”) He had the statement typed up. In effect, Antonio Saenz confessed to participating in the murder of Marcus Stallworth, which had transpired in the commission of an armed robbery. The report included several small but obvious errors, by design. Tony’s last named was misspelled twice, for instance. The company for which he worked was identified as Quick Lube rather than Quik Lube. This required the suspect to initial each of the corrections. A notary was brought in to witness the final reading of the Interview Report, which Tony signed at 11:47 a.m. on November 10, 1981.

The two men had spent more than twelve hours together. It was time for them to part ways.

“What happens now?” Tony said.

“Just hang tight,” Salcido said. “The hard part is over.” He nodded and a pair of US marshals, watching for this signal through a one-way mirror, entered the room with shackles cradled in their arms.

“I’m proud of you,” Salcido said. “The truth is a tough path to walk.” He stood up and took Tony’s hand into his own and pumped it. His green eyes gleamed with the grace of their partnership. He had just saved a young man’s life.

“Wait, where are you going?”

LORENA DIDN’T WANT to visit Rosemary Stallworth. She felt she had no choice. Officer Guerrero had brushed her off. The public defender had informed her that a plea was Tony’s only hope, given the evidence. At night, she listened to her mother whispering to God. She heard Tony, too, his final snarling order, which she eventually recognized as a plea for remedy: Make them believe, little sister.

Lorena arrived in the Fabulous Forties wearing a baggy sweater, with her hair tucked under a baseball cap; she feared that reporters might be gathered outside the Stallworth home, like on TV, but the only person around was the old woman next door, stationed next to a bag of mulch. For more than an hour, she troweled her flowerbeds, until the borders were just so.

Rosemary’s Cadillac was in the garage but only a few lights were on in the house. Lorena hurried up the front stairs and stood for a full minute, not quite brave enough to ring the doorbell. She was especially nervous about seeing Jenny, who she knew hated her, probably always had. She peered through the windows, checked the garage and kitchen doors, and proceeded to the backyard, keeping to the shadows along the house.

It was unclear to Lorena whether she was prepared to break in, or how she would do so. But she had come this far. The pool water had gone murky. The deck furniture lay scattered about in the dusk. A pile of towels no one had bothered to pick up sat on a chaise longue near the sliding glass door that let onto the sunroom; she had to resist the urge to fold them. She tugged at the handle to the sliding door, and nearly stumbled when it slid open. Her heart was beating wildly.

“Lorena?”

A familiar voice sounded out her name from behind. She turned and saw that the rumpled towels had somehow reassembled themselves into a terrycloth robe, which was loosely wrapped around a tall figure.

Lorena let out a brief shriek. “Mrs. Stallworth?”

“What in God’s name—”

“I’m sorry. You scared me.”

“I scared you?” Mrs. Stallworth sat up, somewhat groggily, and pulled the robe around herself. An empty wine glass sat beneath the lounge chair. “You were just breaking into my home, if I’m not mistaken.”

“No,” Lorena said. “I was trying—I rang the—but nobody—” She was suddenly gulping for air. “I just wanted to say, to tell you how sorry—” Her knees buckled. “To you, and Jenny, and Glen. In person, so you would—” Mrs. Stallworth was staring at her. Lorena started crying, couldn’t stop herself. “I know Jenny hates me.” She had made a terrible mistake. This had been terrible mistake. She buried her face in her hands. Mrs. Stallworth rose up, blotting out what remained of the sun.

Then Lorena felt herself drawn into an embrace, pressed against the robe and the long, bony body beneath, the smell of smoke mingled with face cream. “Oh, you poor lost lamb.” They stood that way for a long time, swaying a little, and Lorena knew, without wanting to, that she had come for this, too.

“What’s with the hat?” Mrs. Stallworth said at last. “It makes you look like a cat burglar.”

“I just wanted to talk, I swear.”

“Okay. Calm down now. I believe you.” She eased Lorena away and pulled the cap off and watched her hair came tumbling down. “You’ve always had such a nice thick mane. I’m the one who could use this.” Mrs. Stallworth seemed to consider putting the cap on then tossed it into the pool instead. Her hair was in disarray, frizzy, smooshed down on one side, its natural gray showing through as the dye washed out.

“Is Jenny here?” Lorena said.

“She and her brother are away for now.” Rosemary had returned after Lucia informed her that the little Mexican cop had come snooping around.

“I mostly wanted to talk to you anyway,” Lorena said.

Rosemary pulled a cigarette from the pocket of her robe. “Let me get my bearings. I’m a tad bleary from the sun. And I certainly didn’t expect to see you.” She sat on the edge of the deck and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth.

“I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

Mrs. Stallworth let out a sharp, rueful laugh. “I imagine the irony of that comment eludes you. You did surprise me, Lorena. I was not informed, for instance, that your brother was a violent criminal. Nor that you brought him to our home. I only learned that a few weeks ago. I suppose there was a lot going on around here nobody saw fit to tell me about.”

“That was a mistake,” Lorena said. “I made a mistake. But my brother, he didn’t—” She took a deep breath. “This may sound crazy, but I believe Mr. Stallworth is still alive. I think he wanted to disappear, that he made a plan.” Before she could stop herself, Lorena confessed to all that she had seen in his office and bathroom. She didn’t mention that Mr. Stallworth had touched her, or said things to her, but there was something in the precision of her knowledge about him, in the timbre of her voice, that affirmed their intimacy.

When she had run out of disclosures, she fell silent and glanced at Mrs. Stallworth, whose face hovered inscrutably in the dense blue of dusk.

“What are you asking me, Lorena?”

“Asking?”

“What is it you imagine I’m going to do with this … information?”

“You could tell the police. They’ll listen to you. Mr. Stallworth could be in Arizona right now. That’s where you used to live, right?”

“Are you suggesting that the police go digging around in our past, as if we were the criminals? Do you have any idea how deluded you sound?” She brought her fist down onto the deck and Lorena tensed. Just as suddenly as she’d erupted, Mrs. Stallworth seemed to gather herself. She straightened up and let out a long sigh. “I would like more than anything in the world to believe you, Lorena. Because that would mean Marcus was alive.”

“He could be. You said it yourself. Everyone has their own getaway plan.”

Mrs. Stallworth flicked her cigarette into the pool. “Please don’t twist my words. Fathers and husbands don’t just disappear.”

“Mine did,” Lorena said quietly.

Rosemary stared at Lorena with an expression that seemed to fluctuate between pity and wrath. “Your family and mine are nothing alike. I suspect that’s why you chose to spend so much time here. I don’t think you understand the nature of what’s happened. Maybe, because you’re young, because you grew up in a certain milieu, it hasn’t sunk in yet: your brother is charged with killing my husband, the father of my children. Knowing this, as, on some level, you must, the very idea that you would show up on this property, that I would find you, by all indications, attempting to break into my home, that you are, even now, portraying yourself as if you were a victim in all this, speaks to a kind of criminal depravity.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“That truth just happens to include a trove of evidence the police never discovered. And just happens to exonerate your brother.” Mrs. Stallworth’s voice was a gentle snarl. She stood and reached out to steady herself against the cabana. “You know, when you first came into this home, I felt we had received a blessing. My children mock me for saying such things. They think I’m hopelessly naïve. But I choose to think the best of people. My parents raised me that way. I can remember watching you and Jenny lay out by this pool over the summer. It feels like a long time ago, now. I thought to myself: Now isn’t that lovely? This young girl from Fruitridge, so studious and respectful, but so much on her own in the world. I was delighted we could give you a little support. And I could see how much more confident you became. It was quite striking. But I suppose Lucia was right, in the end. She tried to warn me. A girl like that, she said, with no father and a mother who works till all hours. When you take in a stray, you never know what else comes in the door. That was how she put it.”

Mrs. Stallworth began to advance on Lorena, the tiny ember of her cigarette flaring. “Jennifer eventually admitted to everything: that she had been visiting your apartment, the drinking you two did, the older guys, the skinny dipping. She tried to protect you at first. We all did. But I can see now what you were up to, that you needed a certain kind of regard. Even Marcus tried to give you that, in his own way. He sensed how lonely you were, a girl in your circumstances; he understood how much you needed a father in your life. He was sensitive to such needs, because of his own history. Need makes people do ugly things, Lorena. And then they tell themselves a story about it.”

Lorena felt a cool prickling along her skin. “A story?”

“You were attracted to my husband. It’s only natural. His looks have made him a target in the past. You’re not the first young woman to get confused. But I won’t have you spreading lies about my family. You pursued Marcus. You were the one who made the plan, Lorena. Lost all that weight, got those nice clothes, learned to style your hair. Jenny and Lucia saw what was happening. But as I said, I can be a little slow to face the truth. We see what we want to see.”

“That’s not what happened.” The prickling had become a kind of numbness, as if Mrs. Stallworth’s voice were a serum that had seeped in and was creeping along her limbs.

“So you weren’t attracted to my husband? You didn’t seek him out?”

Mrs. Stallworth had closed the distance between them. The sun was setting behind her, casting a molten light upon the surface of the pool. For a moment, she appeared poised to reach out and seize Lorena by the neck.

“I never imagined that you would try to break up this family, nor that you would endanger us. But now you have gone so far as to desecrate the memory of a man who wanted nothing more than to give you a little attention.”

“It was more than attention,” Lorena said.

Mrs. Stallworth’s hand shot out and slapped at Lorena, grazing her cheek. “There was a time when I considered you—” Her voice broke and she stared down at her own hand, as if it had acted without her permission. “I’m going to do you a favor now,” she whispered. “I’m going to give you ten seconds to leave this property before I summon the police. I’m sure my children would not approve. But as you know, strays have always been my weakness.”

ROSEMARY DID NOT contact the police. Instead, she phoned her travel agent and bought three plane tickets to Philadelphia. She told her mother that she refused to subject her children to any further harassment by police or press. By the time they landed, the next morning, Antonio Saenz had confessed to the murder of Marcus Stallworth.