Thirty-Two

“Maybe this is the start of something new for you, Fager. Like a reformed burglar advising businesses how to prevent break-ins. Finding weak locks, windows easy to open. You could be telling the district attorney how to spot the next sleazeball move coming from sleazeball lawyers. Hell, you should know.”

“Shut up,” Aragon said, and shot Goff a glance telling him he would be gone if he kept it up.

She sat across from Fager and Bronkowski, Lewis on her right. Juanita’s Café again, between lunch and dinner traffic. Goff, on her left, had started with a bowl of menudo before the rest arrived. She pushed a map clipped with a business card at Fager.

“So far, the information’s been one-way. I want that evened up.” She tapped the map. “Geronimo’s ranch. We can’t go in without a warrant.”

“And you being suspended and all,” Bronkowski said.

She returned a sour smile. “But you two don’t need a warrant. Even if you trespass, you can tell us what you learned, and no suppression motion will knock it off the table.”

“The silver-spoon doctrine,” Lewis said.

“Not quite,” said Fager. “That doctrine was rejected by the Supreme Court years ago. It allowed federal agencies to use evidence illegally seized by state law enforcement. And just because evidence is found by a private citizen does not mean it is insulated from a suppression motion. The question is whether that individual was effectively a police agent. A citizen becomes a police agent if they act under the instruction of the police, or the police controlled how they conducted themselves. So,” Fager looked straight at Aragon, “be very careful about your next words.”

Aragon raised eyebrows at Lewis.

“He’s the lawyer,” Lewis said. “I only know what I found on the Internet.”

“And it’s the silver-platter doctrine,” Fager said. “Not spoon.”

She could see Fager waiting for her to frame her next words. She had planned on telling him where to go and what to look for, exactly how to document what he saw and report back.

Instead she said, “It’s up to you, if you want to go to this place. Or not. Or that piece of land up the canyon from the house that may or may not be of interest because of what may be in the ground. You are free to throw this map away. Frankly, we don’t care what you do. Have menudo with Goff, for all I care.”

“We’ll give it a look,” Fager said, and passed the map to Bronkowski. “What piece of land up the canyon?”

She had found the right words to turn Fager loose.

“It’s federal land. But unless you’re a mountain goat you can’t get there without crossing Geronimo’s property.”

Lewis took over. He produced blowups of still frames from Game and Fish overflights.

“What does that look like?”

Fager and Bronkowski studied the photos. Goff ate silently with one eye on them, watching for their reaction.

“A graveyard,” Bronkowski said.

“Even a dumb Polack could see that,” Goff said, and turned his eyes back to his food.

“Maybe after,” Aragon said, “if you do go there, you might want to call that number on the card.”

Bronkowski read aloud, “FBI Special Agent Tomas Rivera.”

“If we feel like it,” Fager said. “We might call.”

“Sure, if you feel like it,” Aragon said. “Now, what have you been up to, Leon?”

Bronkowski looked to Fager. The lawyer nodded, then turned his attention to the aerial photo. Bronkowski gave them everything he had been doing since Linda’s murder, including his conclusions about Estevan Gonzalez blackmailing Geronimo and the cause of the residential fire on the west side of town—Lily Montclaire getting ahead of them, nixing a key witness and critical evidence.

Aragon said, “We’ve operated on the assumption that Geronimo killed Tasha. Step back for a sec. What do we have? She worked for Mujeres Bravas. They cleaned Geronimo’s gallery. There’s that. But that’s all we can confirm. It was Estevan Gonzalez, and only him, who said she had been getting cash to model for Geronimo. Yet Tasha was found nowhere near any place with a connection to Geronimo. I’m with you that Estevan’s blackmailing him. But maybe he’s blackmailing Geronimo with something else, like what’s in that ground behind his ranch. Rick found an interesting pattern in Santa Fe’s missing women.”

“I went back twenty years,” Lewis said. “Grouped missing women by age, weight, race, nationality. The largest number are Hispanic, age thirty-five to fifty-five, all dark hair, heavyset. Most were illegal immigrants. Some disappearances were reported immediately.
Others only much later, after the family stopped worrying about ICE. All the missing women in this category came from Hermosillo.”

“Who else came from Hermosillo?” Aragon asked, but knew the answer. Lewis had called her from his van in his garage late last night.

Lewis said, “Estevan and Tasha Gonzalez. The women worked at least one day for Mujeres Bravas Cleaning Service. They reported to an Allsup’s and were picked up, driven to the job by a guy named Steve. He paid cash.”

“Back up,” Goff said and put down his spoon. “Where you taking us? That Geronimo didn’t do Tasha Gonzales?”

“She was not found any place connected to Geronimo,” Aragon repeated, starting slow then gaining confidence as thoughts she’d been carrying found words. “Maybe Estevan had something to do with bringing women to Geronimo. Maybe Tasha was in on it. Estevan’s a plotter. I think he’s been squeezing Geronimo for a decade, but had the discipline to lay low until now. Maybe he wanted it all for himself. Or maybe Tasha did not want to profit off dead Mexican women and he got her out of the way.”

Fager tapped the aerial photo.

“So the missing Mexican women might be here. Of course, no way you could know that, never having been there.”

“Goff, I didn’t see it in the file. Did you talk to Estevan?” Aragon asked as she avoided Fager’s intent stare.

“Not the way I wanted,” Goff answered. “He left behind a big panel truck. I always wondered about that truck.”

“Maybe bringing people up from Hermosillo,” Aragon said.

“And you let him fly into the wind,” Bronkowski said to Goff. “A little by-the-book detective work and you would have learned he went north. Jackson Hole, Wyoming.”

“Fuck you, Bronkowski. I had the rug pulled before I got going.”

“I learned it with one phone call.”

“Walt, you want to say something,” Aragon said to steer the discussion from two guys bumping chests.

“I can’t see Linda fitting any pattern with those women,” Fager said. “The ones in the ground might be more like Linda, not Mexican at all.”

“You might want to take plenty of water,” Aragon said. “It’s hot out there, even this time of year. What’s there, you can’t drink.”

Fager lifted the map.

“But there’s a river right here,” he said, “Four witnesses just heard you say the water is undrinkable. Marcy Thornton will learn everything about this conversation we’re having. She’ll ask how you could know the water is undrinkable, unless you’ve already trespassed on Geronimo’s land. What do you tell her without requiring all four of us to lie and conspire to bail you out?”

Lewis reached across and dropped a finger on the blue line.

“Rio Salado” he said. “Salt River. Anybody would guess the water’s no good.”

“That’s right,” Aragon said, and tapped Lewis’s foot under the table.

Fager examined the map, then looked hard at her. He pushed himself away from the table, ready to rise.

“Yo, before you go,” Goff said. “Not you, Bronkowski. I know your answer. Fager, that case you did, the DWI multiple homicide, the family coming home from church, that bullshit narcolepsy defense you concocted to blame the father. What were the names?”

“Silviano Mares,” Fager said. “Not guilty. The jury returned in three hours.”

“The drunk driver, your paying client,” Goff said, eyes narrowing. “How about the family, the dead kids, remember them? The father who killed himself?”

“Actually, no I can’t.”

“What I thought.”

“The Shelbys,” Bronkowski told Fager.

“If you say so.”

“I better go now,” Goff said.

He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over. He slammed the chair back into place at the table, once, twice, like he wanted to drive its legs through the floor tiles.

Fager ignored him. He was staring at the aerial photos of the graveyard. Bronkowski said, “What the fuck?” Lewis scribbled “Shelby” on a napkin. Aragon’s phone rang. It was Rivera. They had found the knife that cut Cynthia Fremont open.

Outside, after the meeting broke up, Fager and Bronkowski sat in the Mercedes talking it over. Bronkowski was eager to check out the ranch. He had been curious about the property since it turned up in his research into Geronimo’s bankruptcies.

“We need something like that.” He nodded at the Ford F-350 with Aragon at the wheel backing into the street.

Fager said, “She knows what we’re going to find. She needs us to pass it to the FBI. Down the road, when Marcy’s deposing you and me, or taking her shot when we’re on the stand, we explain how we just happened to stumble across evidence no cops had been able to find.”

“We’re that good.”

“We are.”

“So you’re okay being used like this?”

Fager activated the ignition, adjusted the mirror. “Does Hertz rent Jeeps?”

“Got it. That crap Goff pulled, I don’t see why we need him in this.”

“That was the last meeting I’m in with him at the table.” Fager steered away from Juanita’s onto Airport Road. “Shelby, huh? I remember his eyes, the father, when I was done with him. I came back to the table thinking I’d gone too far. I didn’t know he killed himself.”

“Out in California,” Bronkowski said, wondering about the baby-blue BMW parked in the dirt lot next to the restaurant, a woman’s head ducking down as they drove past. “I got Goff’s treatment at our last meeting. Looked it up later. Daniel Shelby moved back where he lived before Santa Fe, where he got married. Did it there.”

“How?”

“Shot himself.”

“I remember Marcy’s eyes, too. I turn around after I pass the witness, she’s lit up. Behind me Shelby, Daniel, in pieces on the stand. I hurt him, worse than I knew, and Marcy’s turned on. I suppose
I showed her how to get away with doing that to people, judges holding them down while you break bones, this power we have as lawyers. She came away from that trial inspired.”

“You don’t need to be feeling guilty about Marcy,” Bronkowski said. “You were doing your job. And she was just a lawyer in your shop, not your daughter.”

“Right, I got enough to feel guilty about.”

They waited six back from the light at Cerrillos. Bronkowski noticed the BMW again, two lanes over, out of place among pickups and chopped Civics.

“I don’t get this,” Bronkowski said, “lowrider Hondas.”

A woman was driving the BMW. Long hair. Rings on the fingers holding the steering wheel. Too much glare on the windshield to see her face.

“I didn’t mean that—that you need to feel guilty about anything.”

“Maybe I do,” Fager said, and pulled into the intersection when the light changed.

Bronkowski looked again for the BMW, but it had dropped behind them.