Saturday Mid-Morning
The first thing Lucy noticed when Marissa Garcia answered the door was that she was very, very pregnant. The second thing was the six-year-old boy pressed up against her legs.
This was the worst death notification of her career.
Walker took off his hat. “Mrs. Garcia? I’m BCSO investigator Jerry Walker and this is FBI Special Agent Lucy Kincaid. May we come in?”
Marissa’s bottom lip quivered.
A voice with a thick Spanish accent called from the back of the house. “Marissa? Who is it? Is it Julio?”
“No, Mama,” Marissa said, but her voice barely carried. “Please, please—no.” She clutched her son.
Lucy stepped in first and put her hand on Marissa’s elbow. “Marissa, let’s sit down.”
The woman allowed herself to be led to the back of the house to a comfortable, cluttered family room where an older woman sat in an easy chair, her leg in a cast. Two younger women immediately hopped up and went to Marissa’s side.
“Sit, Issa,” one of the women said. “I’m Sandra, Marissa’s sister.” She looked at the other girl and nodded toward the boy. “Anna.” She tilted her head again.
“Dario, let’s start lunch,” Anna said, her eyes darting from Lucy to Jerry.
Dario clutched his mother tighter. “Mommy?”
Marissa didn’t move. She stood there shaking with her spine as straight as it could be considering her condition.
“Just tell me,” she whispered. “Just tell me.”
Jerry said, “We regret to inform you that your husband was killed late last night.”
“Dear Lord, no,” the old woman sobbed loudly and crossed herself. “No, no, no! My Julio!”
Anna knelt next to the woman and took her hand.
“Wh-what. Ha-happened.”
Sandra led her sister to the couch and urged her to sit. Sandra sat next to her and Dario climbed into his aunt’s lap.
“He was so tired, so tired working to support his family!” Mrs. Garcia said. “Coming home so late at night, so late! Working overtime! I told you, Marissa! Too many hours.”
Lucy cleared her throat. This situation could quickly get out of control. Jerry looked uncomfortable.
“May we sit?” Lucy asked.
“Of course,” Marissa said, waving to a couch. “Just—what happened?”
“I told you!” Mrs. Garcia said.
Marissa rubbed her eyes. “Mama, I’m sorry.”
“Marissa, you didn’t do anything,” Lucy said. “Julio was murdered.”
“Julio worked so hard, six days a week,” Marissa said, evidently not hearing what Lucy had said. “We were saving up for the kids. Dario’s school. The house. College. We wanted them to have what we never had, we wanted our children to have a real education. Julio loved his job, but it was many hours and he was so tired. It was only until the baby starts school. Then I can go back to work.”
She hadn’t heard, but Sandra did. She said, “How?”
“We’re still investigating,” Lucy said cautiously. She wasn’t going to give any of the details of the crime yet. Dario was old enough to understand, and she didn’t want those images in his head.
Jerry said, “He was killed at a park off two eighty-one close to the interchange last night. We confirmed with his employer that he left at eleven thirty, and we suspect he was killed shortly after.”
“Killed?” Mrs. Garcia said. “Murdered? Who would murder my son? Who, Marissa?”
“I don’t know,” Marissa said.
Because Jerry didn’t suggest it, Lucy had to do something to prevent this situation from getting out of control.
“Anna, Mrs. Garcia, let’s take Dario into the kitchen for a minute so Investigator Walker can talk to Marissa,” Lucy said.
“No,” Mrs. Garcia said firmly. “I want to hear exactly what happened to my son. I deserve that!”
Marissa was fighting not to cry, and Sandra stared at her sister’s mother-in-law with fierce displeasure. Sandra glanced at Lucy, then stood, picking Dario up with her. “We leave them alone now, Beatrice. You’re upsetting Marissa, and I won’t have that.”
Mrs. Garcia objected, but Sandra took charge and handed her a cane. “Don’t do this,” Sandra said quietly to the old woman, “not around Dario. Not now.”
The woman grumbled and complained but went with Sandra and Anna.
Lucy was relieved, and it appeared Marissa was, too, as suddenly she started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Lucy handed her a small package of tissues. “Nothing to be sorry about, Marissa.”
“What happened to my Julio? I really don’t understand why someone would kill him. We don’t have a lot of money.”
Jerry said, “We don’t believe that this was a robbery. We are still investigating, but there are some similarities between Julio’s murder and those of two other local men. Do you know Billy Joe Standish or Steven James? Standish works in construction and James is an accountant.”
She seemed completely befuddled. “I don’t know them. At least—I don’t think so. I don’t know the names. I don’t know. Oh God.” She clutched her stomach.
“Are you okay?” Lucy moved to sit next to Marissa. She took her hand. “How many months are you?”
“Thirty-four weeks. My baby—she’ll never meet her papa.”
Jerry stood and said, “We’ll come back later, Mrs. Garcia. You should rest.”
“Why would someone kill Julio? Everyone loves him. He would give you the shirt off his back. If he was mugged, he would give his car or wallet. He wouldn’t fight back. He wouldn’t risk being hurt. He was a good man. A great man. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll find out what happened,” Lucy said. “But you need to remain calm for your baby. She has a few more weeks she needs to grow.”
“Mama—she will never believe me. She blames me.”
“Blames you for what?” Lucy asked.
“Everything. That Julio works so many hours. She thinks it’s because I want things, but I don’t. I don’t want anything. I just want my family. Julio and Dario and Baby Bump.” She smiled through her tears. “Julio calls her Baby Bump because we don’t want to name her until we see her.”
“That’s sweet,” Lucy said.
“I just want my family. They are all I care about. And … he’s gone. He’s gone. Julio is my true love. My soul mate. My … my … I can’t.”
Lucy looked at Jerry and said quietly, “Tell the others what we told her, and ask her sister to come in.” To Marissa she said, “Deputy Walker is right, we can return when you’ve had a chance to rest. I’m sure you didn’t get much sleep last night.”
She shook her head. “When I woke in the middle of the night and Julio wasn’t home, I couldn’t sleep. He called when he was leaving work, and I should have stayed up. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”
“There was nothing you could have done, Mrs. Garcia,” Lucy said. “He was already dead when he was expected home.”
Jerry stepped out of the family room and into the adjoining kitchen. He was clearly uncomfortable with the intense emotions and family conflict. Death notifications were hard, but this situation—the absolutely senseless act of violence that had ripped Julio from the people who loved him—was disturbing on multiple levels. Lucy didn’t know how she remained calm, but she would pay for it tonight. When everything came crashing down and she felt the loss that rolled off Marissa in waves of grief as she processed her tragedy.
“I want you to think about your baby right now, your baby and your son,” Lucy said. “I know this is not going to be easy for you or your family, but your children need you to be strong. Especially this little one.” She rested her hand on Marissa’s stomach. Almost immediately she felt the baby kick. She took a deep breath and held it. Then slowly let it out. It wouldn’t help Marissa or the investigation if she became emotional.
“I—I don’t know how to go on.”
“Sandra and Anna are your sisters, right?”
She nodded.
“What about your parents?”
“My mom—she’s been gone for a long time. A car accident when I was in high school. Sandra took over. She was in college and she left to take care of me and Anna.”
“And your father?”
She shook her head. “We all believe he died of a broken heart.” She stared at Lucy, anguish clouding her face.
“Why? You said it wasn’t a robbery.”
“We don’t know why yet.”
Sandra led the way back into the family room, and Mrs. Garcia hobbled behind her. Anna and Dario weren’t with them, which was probably a good thing. “I’ll take care of my sister,” Sandra said. “If you need anything from us to find out who did this—call me.” She handed both Jerry and Lucy a business card. ROBERT & SANDRA VALLEJO, REALTORS.
“We’ll have more questions,” Jerry said, “and I’ll call before we come by.”
“When can I bury my son?” Mrs. Garcia said.
“Mama,” Marissa pleaded. “Not now.”
“I need to call Father Paul. We have to make arrangements.”
“The coroner will contact you when they release his body,” Lucy said. She wrote the number on the back of her card and handed it to Sandra. “That’s me, and the number on the back is the coroner’s office. But it will be at least forty-eight hours. There is nothing you need to do today except relax.”
“Thank you,” Sandra said. “I need Marissa to lie down.”
“We’ll let ourselves out, ma’am,” Jerry said with a nod to each of the women, then motioned for Lucy to go first.
They left. “Well, damn,” Jerry said quietly as he climbed back into his car.
“There are few truly random killers out there—especially with weeks between murders,” Lucy said. “But I don’t see a motive. A loving family man, a close family? We need to dig into the pasts of these three men. Maybe … maybe it’s something that connected them long ago. They may not have grown up in the same town, but maybe they were at the same place at the same time. An airport. A conference. A vacation. Something has to connect them.”
“It would be more likely that if the murders aren’t random, San Antonio is what they have in common. Meaning, perhaps it was an event or situation here that they were involved in. That narrows it down to the last eight years.” He paused. “I really hate senseless violence.”
“We need to make a list of ways these men could have known each other, over and above the obvious like church or employer or gym.”
“Like if they all witnessed a crime. Or were on a jury together.”
“Exactly. Maybe they went to the same concert, took a continuing education class. Or perhaps the wives are connected and that’s how the killer is targeting his victims. Did the other two men have children?”
“Steven James has a daughter, freshman in high school. Standish has no kids.”
Jerry pulled up next to Lucy’s vehicle at the park. Nearly everyone was gone from the crime scene, though a two-person patrol remained to keep the park closed. CSI would release the scene as soon as they confirmed they had everything they needed.
“You know, Kincaid,” Jerry said, “a random serial killer is not unheard of.”
“I sincerely hope that’s not what we’re dealing with.” Some serial killers might seem random, but most weren’t. They were generally organized and targeted a specific type of person—in this case married men. But married men was far too broad a category for a traditional serial killer. Maybe the killer didn’t know these men were married. A killer driving around, looking for a male driving alone? That would lend to the theory that the killer was a cop or impersonating a cop—pulling over a vehicle. But if the victim was summoned by someone pretending to be in trouble, then the killer knew when and where the victim was going to be in order to set the trap.
Jerry concurred. “It’s like the sniper in DC—if anyone can be a target, everyone panics.”
“That, and a truly random killer is going to be much harder to find until he messes up. No fingerprints have been found at any scene, no weapon, no witness has come forward. Nothing that connects to the killer other than the MO. And the MO doesn’t make sense right now. Is it sexually motivated or revenge? Targeting the hands indicates theft of some sort, stealing—targeting the groin indicates a sex crime. But both? It feels … unnecessary. Then the final gunshot? To ensure they are dead? I don’t know.” Lucy paused, thinking things through, but not seeing any answers. “I want to be there during the autopsy. Would you object?”
“We don’t routinely observe autopsies, even homicides. The procedure is recorded.”
“Still—I need to see exactly what was done to the bodies. It’ll help me.”
“Help you how?”
“Get inside the killer’s head.”
“Psych mumbo jumbo,” he said.
Lucy shook her head. “And here I thought we were getting along.”
“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound like he meant it. “You seem like a smart cop. I just don’t really cotton to the whole my daddy hit me so now I kill people it’s not my fault mentality.”
Lucy almost smiled. “Well, it’s a lot more complicated than that.”
“And I don’t want to give the defense any reason to get the guy off.”
“Most serial killers are sane by legal standards.”
“You want to watch the autopsy, go right ahead. Might even be this afternoon. I’ll call over there and find out their timetable.”
“Thank you. And in the meantime, I’d like to review the complete case files of the first two murders.”
“And I’ll get started on paperwork. I don’t know about you feds, but we spend more time filling out forms than hitting the ground.”
“Another thing we have in common,” Lucy said.