Mornings always sucked, but the early alarm, the rushed coffee, and the sad-faced dog totally ruined this one. To top it off, Jess had left before I woke up, so I had no way of knowing if the edge from last night had worn down.
Things didn’t get any better when I got to the courthouse and made a bad choice about which door to use. Usually, the line to the underground entrance was smooth and fast since not many folks other than cops and lawyers knew about it, but today the metal detector was broken and we were all being searched like turban-wearing guys with one-way tickets at the airport.
When I finally shoved through the doors next to Judge Bowser’s courtroom, the bailiff was standing in the door to the jury room, tapping his foot.
“You’re late.”
And you’re king of the obvious, I thought but didn’t say. This was the guy in charge of attending to our every want and need over the next hopefully not-too-many days, and I didn’t want to piss him off. “Sorry. Metal detector’s down. Private guards aren’t so good with the personal searches.”
“Damn right, they’re not.” He delivered the words with a grunt. It was a point of contention with court security that the county had hired a private-security firm as the first line of defense. He offered a grudging smile. “Go on in. Judge is about to take the bench.”
I filed into the jury room and assessed the defendant’s peers. There was one other white guy besides McBusiness, three white chicks, including me, two black women, one black man, one Asian, three Hispanics—one male, two female, including Cris Perez-Soria. All in all, a pretty diverse cast of characters. I studied Cris the longest, certain something was off about a person who actually looked forward to the mind-numbing task we were about to start and wondering if she was any relation to my nemesis.
Everyone had formed little cliques already, and they were huddled in groups around the jury room. Glad I’d missed the friend-picking portion of the morning, I walked over to the coffeemaker and poured a cup while I scoured the counter for sugar. I was dumping the sweet stuff in my cup when I heard McBusiness say, “Ask her. She lives with a cop.”
I resisted the urge to turn around, instead stirring my coffee and reading the tedious information about jury duty some helpful courtroom personnel had posted on the bulletin board. My resistance worked. I heard Cris chime in. “They’ll keep us back here while they hear pretrial motions and deal with any issues they don’t want us to know about because they might prejudice us about the case.”
The fatter of the two white women piped up. “I’m not prejudiced.”
“Not prejudice like that,” Cris said. “Prejudice like if we heard what they’re saying, it might color how we look at things.”
“Well, whatever happened to the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?” This from McBusiness. Since when did you take an interest in what’s going on around you, I wanted to say, but instead I shook my head and held my tongue. I’d need every ounce of patience I had to make it through the next few days with these yahoos. Thankfully, the door opened and the bailiff walked in before we could get any deeper into a discussion on the finer points of the law.
“Judge’s ready. Follow me.”
I stuck to the middle of the pack, surprised to find Cris at my side. I’d expected her to make a beeline for the courtroom the minute this thing got started, but here she was, sticking to me like a burr. I studied her as best I could while we filed through the hall by the judge’s chambers into the courtroom. I didn’t see any obvious resemblance to Teresa Perez, but still. I know it’s a common name, but it seemed weird I’d get a lead on Perez and then be stuck in the same room with a woman with her last name for the next however long. I might be crazy, but I might also be looking her up when I had a free moment.
Which wasn’t now. The judge reminded us about the oath we’d taken the day before and the rules about not talking about the case and not reading or watching any news stories about it. If anything about this case had made headlines, then the next few days might not be so boring after all.
The first witness on the stand was a cop. No surprise there. I’d been a cop long enough to see how things worked, but not long enough to ever have to testify in a felony trial since the one suspect I’d taken into custody all on my own had pled guilty. Good thing, since we’d managed to shoot holes through each other during our one and only encounter. Reuniting would have been awkward at best. Anyway, the prosecutors usually put the cops on the stand first to set the stage. They’d tell about the investigation and give us a framework for the rest of the evidence they planned to present.
I struggled to pay attention and wished I’d actually listened to yesterday’s opening statements. The first cop was pretty green, and Rebecca, the hot prosecutor, took an edgy tone with him when he stumbled over the description of his initial investigation at the scene of the crime. Didn’t help that the cop spoke only formal cop talk, using phrases like “secured the perimeter” and “ascertained the appropriate measures” instead of just talking like a regular human. I don’t think I’d ever been that green. It took the better part of an hour for them to sketch out only a handful of pertinent facts. The initial report of the shooting came from a 911 call from the phone inside the bar where the murder occurred. Most of the patrons at the bar had scattered by the time the uniforms showed up, leaving only the bartender, the dead guy, and a single eyewitness. The dead guy, Manny Cruz, was shot in the parking lot behind the building, and he was toast by the time the first cops arrived.
Next up was the homicide detective who’d worked the case, Detective Tom Giraldi. He looked familiar, but I didn’t dwell on it. Even after I’d left the force, I’d dropped by several of the substations a few times either to see Jess or one of my other friends still on the job, and then there were the times I got hauled in for questioning after engaging in some of the more shady practices my type of work often demanded. Chances were I’d run into this guy on one of those occasions.
It only took a couple of minutes for me to realize he was a pompous, know-it-all dick. He talked about how he and his partner had interviewed the bartender and the eyewitness, and they both confirmed that the defendant and the deceased had gotten into a heated argument shortly before the murder. The eyewitness had left the bar immediately before the defendant and was still in the back parking lot when the shooting went down. The bartender confirmed the time he’d heard the gunshots. No security footage, no other witnesses, no gun, but to Giraldi it was an open-and-shut case.
I took a minute to glance at my fellow jurors, certain they must be as annoyed as I was at this guy’s bravado. Nope. They were glued to his testimony, as if he were the eyewitness himself. I shook my head and turned back to watch Giraldi as he described how they’d found the defendant at his home later that night. When they rolled up to his house and knocked on his door, they heard clattering in the house and the sound of a car roaring to life in the garage. They yelled “Police,” busted through the front door, and made it to the garage in time to haul him out of his getaway car. In an amazing stroke of luck, the murder weapon was sitting in plain view, on a table in the entryway of the house.
I smelled bullshit. Was I the only one? But then I remembered Jess’s words from last night about how she knew every last detail about the case and that it was a slam dunk for the state. She worked homicide, so it wasn’t surprising she was familiar with another case within her department, but based on what I’d heard so far, I had some serious reservations. If I’d just murdered someone, I’m not going to go home, hang out, and wait for the cops to show up. Then, when they do show up, I botch my escape, and to top it off, I leave my gun behind? Not likely.
According to Giraldi, the defendant had been a member of the Texas Syndicate, a tough-guy prison gang and sworn rivals of the dead guy’s gang, the Texas Mexican Mafia. Hard to believe he could survive that and turn into such a dope on the outside. Granted, plenty of criminals are stupid—a fact that keeps me and a whole lot of others in business—but if everything Giraldi said was spot-on, then this guy was the dumbest of the dumb.
I looked over at him. Rey Navarro was dressed in a suit that didn’t quite fit and a tie that didn’t quite match. He could barely look at Giraldi for more than a few seconds at a time, and his right leg bounced up and down under the table like he was about to launch out of his seat and run for the door. None of this was definitive. People got nervous about going to jail whether they were guilty or not, and anyone who says they can tell if someone’s guilty by the way they react to a situation is a big fat liar. My only gauge at this point was my visceral distaste for Giraldi, and my gut told me he was either lying about something or, at a very minimum, had let his cocky desire to close this case in a hurry get in the way of investigating all the facts.
When the prosecutor spoke the magic words “I have no further questions for this witness,” I looked at the clock. For normal people, eleven forty-five would be a perfect time to take a lunch break, but Judge Bowser could apparently subsist on justice alone. I held back a groan as I heard him say, “Ms. Watson, you may cross-examine the witness.”
Bea Watson stayed seated and spent a couple of minutes shuffling through papers while everyone tried to pretend like the lingering silence wasn’t awkward. When the judge cleared his throat, Bea looked up and offered an apologetic smile before she addressed Giraldi, whose own smile was starting to look a bit forced. “Detective, I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but for the life of me I can’t find a copy of the report showing the gunshot residue you found on my client. I don’t suppose you brought it with you today?”
Giraldi’s expression turned sour and he shot a look at the prosecutor. Watson followed his glance, which caused everyone in the jury box to look her way as well, and the prosecutor squirmed under all the attention. Finally, Rebecca stood and asked the judge if they could approach. For the next few minutes we watched the attorneys’ broad gestures and aggressive whispers, unable to hear exactly what was taking place. I had a hunch, though, and it was confirmed when Bea resumed her questioning with a more direct attack.
“Detective Giraldi, you do not have any evidence showing gunshot residue on my client’s person, correct?”
“Well, the reason the test—”
“Stop right there.” She turned to the judge. “I don’t want to have to slow things down with another bench conference.”
“Thank you, Counselor.” Bowser frowned at Giraldi. “Detective, I’m going to ask you to just answer the question that’s put to you.”
“No, we don’t have any such evidence.” Giraldi practically spat the words, but Bea nodded her approval at his admission. She looked back down at her notes, but before she could get the next question out, Giraldi had a bout of Tourette’s.
“But he probably washed his hands before we showed up to arrest him.”
Bea hesitated only a second before meeting his smug grin with one of her own. “Did you see him wash his hands?”
“Well, no, but—”
“And there’s nothing in your report about how you checked for evidence that he’d recently washed and dried his hands, correct?”
“Uh, I guess not.”
“So, it’s your conclusion that my client murdered Mr. Cruz, then drove home, washed away the gunshot residue, put the murder weapon on the coffee table right in the middle of the living room, and waited for you to come arrest him?”
While Giraldi tried to wrap his brain around the multi-part question, Bea shook her head and moved on to questions about the very first steps of the investigation. She was thorough and she’d scored some points with the whole residue thing, but it wasn’t a slam dunk. When she finally wrapped up, I was about to eat my arm.
Bowser gave us one slim hour for lunch and warned us about being late. I’d hoped for longer since an hour wouldn’t give me enough time to check out any of the spots still on my hunting-for-Perez list. It wasn’t enough time to leave the courthouse at all, and as we filed out of court, I again wished I’d paid attention to Jess’s suggestion that I bring along some food.
“Going to the cafeteria?”
I looked up to see Cris standing next to me. How did she manage to continually sneak up on me like that? “Uh, I guess. Judge sounds like he’s going to keep us late.”
“A few of us are planning to sit together. Want to join us?”
I willed my mind to switch gears and conjure up a reason I couldn’t sit with Cris and the band of bland. “Thanks, but I have to take care of a few things. I’ll probably just grab a burger and make some phone calls.”
Her look told me she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t challenge my excuse. “Okay. If you change your mind, we’ll be down there.”
I gave her a halfhearted smile and walked away. I wouldn’t be changing my mind. I grabbed a burger and fries from the grill and took the Styrofoam box of goodness outside into the sunny sixty-degree day. For February, the weather was pretty much perfect, and I ate my lunch in the front seat of the Bronco with the windows down.
With the burger in one hand, I used the other to dump the contents of what I’d now dubbed the Perez Papers onto the passenger seat. I stared at all the pieces, willing a pattern to emerge. Most of the places I’d managed to identify so far were dives, but a couple were highbrow watering holes. The locations were scattered all over the city, so geography was out as a common link. Perez was up to something and these joints were the key. If I wasn’t stuck at the courthouse, I’d be able to run these down in a couple of days, but no such luck. I divided the stuff into two piles: one for the places I still needed to check out and one for the places I’d managed to visit so far.
I picked up the coaster from Shorty’s and started to toss it onto stack number two, but a twinge of doubt made me hang on. Fred’s overreaction when I asked her about Perez told me she’d seen her, and she’d seen her recently. Shorty’s was definitely worth a return trip.
I managed to make it back inside and to the jury room before everyone else and leaned back in one of the folding chairs to try to sneak in a nap, but before I could drift off to sleep, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but on the off chance it was a lead about Perez, I answered. “Bennett.”
“You find her yet?”
Cantoni. I looked around, but I was still alone in the room and decided it was safe to talk. “Why don’t you ask the folks that’ve been following me?”
“I don’t know anything about that, but I do know she’s a popular gal.”
Gal. I could think of many other choice words for Teresa Perez. “Did you call to give me a lead or give me a hard time?”
“Hey, Luca, just trying to pay back a debt. I don’t know what kind of intel you got so far, but if a joint named Leroy’s is on your list, you might want to bump it up to the top.”
I opened the envelope and sifted through the paper. A matchbook from Leroy’s was in stack number one. “Leroy’s on Ledbetter. Got it. I’ll check it out. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. We square?”
“Yeah, we’re square.”
I hung up the phone and checked the time. The rest of the truth-finding crew should be back any minute. On cue, the door opened and Cris walked through, followed a few seconds later by the rest of the jurors. Their boisterous conversation died the second they saw me sitting alone in the room, and Cris’s eyes shifted quickly away. I didn’t really give a damn if they were talking about me, so long as they left me alone, but I was surprised when Cris sat down next to me and whispered, “Larry thinks you have secret information about the case.”
I held back a snort. Barely. “Secret information? What does that even mean?”
She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know. Maybe you have access to the full police report, things the rest of us aren’t allowed to see.”
“And how exactly do I get my hands on this ‘secret’ stuff?”
More shifting and the faint hint of a blush rose up her neck. “Didn’t you say you lived with a cop?”
“And you assume she’s the kind of person who leaks information about a case and I’m the kind of person who would use that information?”
Before she could answer, the bailiff appeared in the doorway. “They’re ready. Let’s go.”
This time I was first in line to get back to the boring business of listening to lawyers and witnesses drone on. The sooner we were back in there, the quicker I could escape my annoying “peers.”
The first witness of the afternoon was the medical examiner. I guess he was there to prove that the dead guy was indeed dead, because otherwise his testimony didn’t add much. Two bullets from a .45 to the chest equaled homicide as the cause of death. The prosecutor spent a little extra time getting him to point out the trademark Mexican Mafia tattoo, MM, on Manny Cruz’s shoulder as a way of emphasizing he and the defendant were fierce rivals. Bea asked him a few questions, but nobody really contested the manner of death, and she wisely realized there wasn’t much point hashing out the gory details a second time.
When the ME stepped down, I watched the judge look at the clock on the wall and spend about five seconds scratching his head before he told the prosecutors to call their next witness. They had their investigator bring in a guy named Joe Donner. Joe was the bartender, and he’d heard the gunshots and called the cops. It was pretty clear this guy hadn’t seen the crime and all he had to add was context. While the prosecutor drew out the questions, I could feel the burger and fries from earlier coursing through my system like an IV of sedatives. A hazy glance at the rest of the jurors told me I wasn’t the only one who was suffering from a food coma.
“They argued?” the prosecutor asked.
“Yeah. They got pretty loud. That’s when I told them to get out.”
“Do you know what they were arguing about?”
He shook his head. “Nope. We get a lot of guys from different groups in the bar. I try to stay out of their business.”
“By different groups, do you mean gangs?”
“You call ’em what you want. Texas Syndicate, Mexican Mafia. In my bar, they’re all just customers.”
Sounded to me like Mr. Bartender wasn’t keen on being here today. Business had probably taken a dive right about the time he’d been subpoenaed as a witness, since ex-cons didn’t usually hang out in places cops were crawling all over. But I perked up at the mention of the Mexican Mafia since that’s who Teresa Perez had been in bed with when she’d traded being a homicide cop for a drug dealer. The spark of interest faded as it quickly became clear he didn’t have much else to offer about the facts of the case. After he described the rest of the crowd at the bar in vague terms, Bea asked him a few pointed questions about the area behind the building to establish that the lighting was poor and it would have been difficult for the eyewitness to see anything. She also got out the fact that everyone in the bar had been drinking, which made it likely the eyewitness’s eye-witnessing might have been compromised.
When they finally let the guy off the stand, the prosecutor announced she needed just a few minutes before her next witness would be available. Bowser shook his finger at the clock and told them they had fifteen minutes to call another witness, no exceptions. The bailiff ushered us out of the courtroom and warned us to stick close. I edged away from the rest of my group and went out into the hallway to call Jess. She answered on the first ring.
“You guys done deliberating?”
“Funny. But at this rate, we might be done a lot faster than you thought. I think Bowser wears a bag so he doesn’t have to take pee breaks. I’m surprised he let us have lunch.”
“He hasn’t changed. So, he’s keeping you late?”
“Yep. And then, you know…”
“Right. You have to work. Got it.”
Her voice was flat and I detected a trace of pissed. I didn’t feel the need to explain again that I was working and didn’t really want to talk about it anymore since I was kinda sorta lying. Shit. She’d get over it or she wouldn’t, but if she’d already decided she couldn’t trust me to stay out late on a weeknight or that I would jump whenever her plans trumped mine, then we were in for years of fighting. “Okay. Well, then, I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Say hi to Bingo for me.”
She hung up before I could respond. So that was it. She thought I was gambling. Like I had any money to gamble. Well, she could keep thinking that since she’d be really pissed if she knew I was hunting Perez on my lonesome.
I turned the phone off and stepped back into the jury room, where the rest of the jurors were huddled in their special little groups. I barely had time to down a cup of thick, scorched coffee before Sam appeared and drug us back into the courtroom. The next witness was already on the stand, and Bowser swore him in. Only took a couple of questions from the prosecutor to make it clear this was the eyewitness. Finally, maybe the testimony would be interesting.
While he answered the softball questions, I gave him a once-over. Dressed in an ill-fitting suit and a too-starched, high-collared shirt, he looked about as out of place in formal clothes as the defendant did, but unlike the defendant, he seemed to relish his place in the spotlight. He answered every question with more detail than was asked for, and he smiled after each answer like he was expecting a pat on the head. Dante Guzman. Age thirty. Lifetime resident of Dallas. Worked as a contractor. Wonder if the State of Texas had purchased his suit rather than have him show up looking like he’d been crawling around in the dirt, or whatever contractors do for a living.
His story was he’d been at the bar to grab a couple of beers after a hard day’s work. He was barely into the second one when he heard the defendant and dead guy trading strong words. When the two started posturing, like they were going to exchange more than words, he slid a ten to the barkeep and slipped out. Before he could reach his truck, he heard loud voices and turned around in time to see the defendant pull a gun, fire three shots at the soon-to-be-dead guy, get in his car, and peel out of the parking lot. He shouted for someone to call 911, and then he ran to the dying guy and stayed with him until the police and paramedics arrived.
With only a few wrap-up questions, the prosecutor said the magic words, “pass the witness,” and every eye in the courtroom looked from the clock on the wall to the judge and back to the clock again. It was six thirty, way past time for anyone to be able to retain any other facts that might come out during the defense’s cross-examination, not to mention the fact that stomachs were rumbling all around me. All I could think about was where my next cheeseburger was coming from.
Apparently, Judge Bowser was hungry too and he adjourned for the day. I barely listened to his warnings not to watch the news or talk about the case as I ticked through my list of to-dos for the evening. When I was finally free and walking out the doors of the courthouse, I checked my phone and found a text from Jess.
Looks like you’re not the only one working late. Your turn not to wait up.
I read the lines several times, certain she was still angry with me but uncertain about whether to respond. This shit was new. If a woman got pissed at me in the past, the solution was simple: steer clear of her until she either got over it or moved on. But life had changed and I could no longer rely on my gut reactions. I lived with Jess. The house was hers, but there were still traces of me in every room. It wasn’t like I could just hole up in the apartment I no longer had and wait to see if she got over it. We shared stuff, including a dog.
Cash. Damn. If she was late, I needed to get home to feed him. I’d planned on heading directly to Leroy’s, but I’d have to detour.
When I walked through the front door of the house, Cash stood up and placed his big paws on my chest. “Come on, boy.” I opened the back door and followed him outside. While he did his business, I took in the view. Jess had bought this house when she’d been promoted to detective. She’d quickly moved up the ranks, which was good for her career but not so good for homesteading. She had a ton of plans for the backyard, but they’d stay plans for now: a deck here, a rock formation there.
Lately, she’d been asking me what I thought, and I didn’t have a clue. The only backyard I’d ever had was the one at my parents’ house, and it consisted of a balding patch of grass, a small grouping of aluminum chairs, and a rickety barbecue grill. And making plans seemed so damn permanent. Not like I didn’t plan on being with Jess for the long haul, but planning wasn’t my forte when it meant a change in my status quo.
All the planning I had in store for tonight consisted of feeding Cash and heading out the door. I shook some kibble into his bowl, and he skidded across the kitchen floor and wolfed it down like it was a hot dog lathered with cheese sauce. I was starving too, but I didn’t find anything grab-and-go in the fridge, so I figured I’d pick up something on the road. Besides, Jess had a thing for keeping the kitchen clean, which didn’t fit in with my schedule tonight. While Cash had his head buried in his bowl, I stepped my way to the front door, careful not to signal my departure, but the second I turned the doorknob, he was at my side, tail wagging his desire to join me. “I’ve got to work, but Jess will be home soon.”
He offered a few deep howls to tell me the promise of another woman wasn’t what he had in mind. To make his point clear, he stood and put a paw on the doorknob. I’m not usually one to fall victim to sentiment, but even I have my limits. Big blue pleading eyes and the sweet request of his begging tones did me in. I reached for his bright-red leash, and a minute later we were in the Bronco ready for adventure.