The Fourth Precinct station in southern St. Louis County was a modern, clean building well suited for a professional police organization. My mom—a retired captain in the St. Louis County Police Department—and I had attended the ribbon cutting eight months ago when they opened the building, but I had yet to go inside. The instant I stepped through the front doors, though, jealousy spiked throughout my body. Everything was clean and open, and all the overhead lights worked. It didn’t even smell like vomit or mold.
The officer manning the front desk smiled upon seeing me, so I showed him my badge and introduced myself. He handed me a sign-in sheet.
“Mathias knows you’re coming, so he should be down any moment.”
“Great,” I said, writing my name and contact information in the squares on the paper. Detective Blatch walked into the waiting room a few moments later with a smile on his face.
“Come on back, Detective,” he said. “We’ve got Trevino in an interrogation booth now.”
I followed him through the station to a row of interrogation rooms at the back of the building. Two rooms were free, but the third had a sign on its door that showed someone was inside.
“Have you told him about the ballistics match yet?”
Blatch shook his head. “That’s your case, so I thought you could break the news to him. At the moment, we’re holding him on a lot of drug charges. He’s looking for a deal on those because he knows we’ve got him dead to rights.”
I lowered my chin. “Has he asked for a lawyer?”
“Not yet,” said Blatch, “but he knows the system. He’s already signed a rights waiver form, so we’re good to go as far as the interrogation.”
I nodded.
“What kind of record does he have?”
Blatch drew in a breath and raised his eyebrows. “We’ve picked him up four times for distribution of a controlled substance but nothing violent.”
I slowed and furrowed my brow. “We found over a pound of marijuana in Laura Rojas’s home. If Trevino is selling in that quantity to other dealers, he must be a big player. Why was he still on the streets?”
“You’d have to ask the prosecutors,” said Blatch, a bemused smile on his face. “Are you questioning our police work?”
“Not at all,” I said, softening my tone. “I’m trying to get the facts straight before we go in there. If he’s someone’s CI, we might have an issue.”
“Not a worry,” said Blatch. “You ready to go now?”
I nodded. “I am.”
Blatch held the door for me, and I stepped inside a small, windowless room with rough gray fabric on the walls and ceiling and matching Berber carpet on the floor. In the center of the room, thick bolts held a metal table to the floor. There were wooden chairs around it. On one sat Duke Trevino. Blatch had said he was in his mid-twenties, but he looked forty. He had a jagged scar on his cheek and cold, brown eyes. The harsh overhead light gleamed on his dark skin. He was bald and looked pissed off.
Had I been alone in a dark alley with him and had he looked at me with the malevolence I saw in his eyes now, I might have drawn my weapon. As it was, he wore an orange jumpsuit and thick shackles that kept him rooted to his chair. He could have lunged across the table at me, but there were dozens of officers not ten feet away. They’d keep me safe enough.
I pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat across from him. Blatch did likewise, sitting beside me.
“Duke Trevino?” I asked. He nodded.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m Detective Joe Court from the St. Augustine County Sheriff’s Department. I imagine you’ve already met Detective Blatch.”
He looked at my face and then to my chest. “Your momma want a boy or something?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Excuse me?”
“You’re a lady. What kind of name is Joe?”
I smiled. “My full name is Mary Joe. My mom was a big fan of Joe Montana, the football player. He was NFL MVP the same year I was born. You like football?”
Duke looked confused by the question.
“You bring me all the way down here to talk football?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head, “but sometimes it’s easier to start an interview if you know something about the person sitting across from you. I was trying to be nice.”
He grunted. “You want to be nice, you’ll take these chains off me. You keep a man in chains too long, he’s liable to snap.”
“They’ll come off you soon enough,” I said. “We won’t let you snap.”
“Why the hell am I here?” he asked, throwing up his shackled hands and looking at me. “I’m missing lunch.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your lunch,” said Blatch, tossing a manila envelope in front of me. When Trevino looked away, Blatch winked at me and nodded to the envelope. “Tell you what. I’m hungry, too. How about we get through this interview, and I’ll get us some tacos? There’s a food truck up the street.”
Trevino considered but then nodded.
“I want mine with cheese and beans and shit.”
“You answer our questions, you can have anything you want on it,” said Blatch.
Trevino leaned back and nodded. “Fire away, boss.”
Blatch looked at me, so I reached into my purse for my cell phone, which I used to record the conversation.
“For the record, this is Detective Mary Joe Court. I’m sitting with Detective Mathias Blatch and Duke Trevino in the St. Louis County Fourth Precinct station. Do you agree to talk to us today, Mr. Trevino?”
“Like I got a choice?” he asked, rattling his shackles.
“Detective Blatch has placed you under arrest, but you can remain silent. If you talk to us, we can use what you tell us in court against you. If you want a lawyer here, we can get you one. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you. So. You want to talk to us or go back to your cell?”
He paused for a moment and focused on me. “View’s better here.”
“Is that a yes?” I asked.
He looked at Blatch. “I know my rights. Yeah, we’re cool.”
“You want a lawyer here?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t pay one, and those public defenders ain’t worth shit. They screw up more than they help.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m here to talk to you about Laura Rojas.”
He gave me a blank stare. Then he shrugged.
“Don’t know her.”
“You sure about that?” asked Blatch.
Trevino focused on the young detective and leaned forward.
“I ain’t ever heard the bitch’s name.”
Blatch didn’t respond, but I leaned back. “Okay. Let’s take a step back. What do you do for a living, Mr. Trevino?”
He looked at me. “Whatever I gotta do.”
“Does that include selling drugs?” I asked.
He jangled his chains and looked at Blatch. “Ding, ding, ding. Get the lady a prize. That’s why you folks arrested me, isn’t it? You say I’m slinging dope or something.”
“We found four ounces of marijuana in your apartment,” said Blatch. “That’s good evidence.”
He smirked. “Four ounces? That’s nothing.”
I sat back, surprised. He was right. Possession of more than an ounce and a quarter was a felony, but if we sent everybody with that much weed to prison, our college campuses would go empty, and our prison population would swell tenfold. Not only that, he had supposedly sold Laura a pound of product. If he moved that much dope, I doubted he’d only have a quarter pound in his apartment.
“Who do you get your product from?” I asked.
“That ain’t none of your business,” he said, looking at me.
“My badge says it is my business,” I said, “but we’ll get back to that. Can you tell me about the gun you hid under your mattress?”
He sat straighter and shook his head. “Ah, hell no. I didn’t hide no gun under no mattress.”
“Are you sure?” asked Blatch. “Because we found one there. Three officers witnessed the search.”
“They’re liars,” he said. “I’ve got kids. I don’t keep guns around the house.”
“But you keep drugs around the house,” said Blatch.
“It’s weed, man. God made it grow in the ground,” he said, shrugging. “That means it’s okay, right?”
I doubted that reasoning would hold up in court, but I nodded as if it made sense.
“If it wasn’t your gun, how’d it get under your mattress?” I asked.
He nodded to Blatch. “Mr. Suit-and-Tie put it there.”
Blatch chuckled. “Sorry, buddy, but no. It’s your gun. And it’s Detective Suit-and-Tie.”
“You find my fingerprints on it?” he asked.
“Someone wiped it clean,” said Blatch. “They also wiped the magazine and every round inside. If you had thrown it away after killing Laura Rojas, we wouldn’t have been able to tie it to you. Why did you keep it? You want a souvenir?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, holding his hands up, palms toward us. “I ain’t even heard of Laura Rojas.”
“And yet we found her murder weapon under your mattress,” said Blatch, “and we found a bag of marijuana in her closet with your fingerprints on it. How do you explain that?”
“I didn’t kill nobody, and that’s the truth,” he said, pounding his index finger on the table. “I ain’t even heard of this chick.”
I picked up my phone and flipped through pictures until I found one of Laura’s face. I turned it around and showed it to him.
“You didn’t kill this girl?” I asked. His eyes shifted to the picture.
“Nah. Never seen her.”
“Look again,” I said. “And consider your answer well. We’ve got enough evidence to put you away for her murder. Are you sure you’ve never met her?”
He looked at me and spoke so that every word became its own sentence.
“I. Don’t. Know. Her.”
“If you don’t know her, let’s clear this whole thing up right away,” I said. “It’s Tuesday today. She died on Saturday night. We found her Sunday afternoon. Where were you?”
“Saturday?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. I nodded. “I was in fucking Jeff City with my baby’s momma.”
Blatch leaned forward.
“Can anybody verify that?” he asked.
Trevino held up his fingers and counted them off as he spoke.
“My baby momma, my kids, my baby momma’s momma, her dad, her grandma, the minister at her church, and everybody in church. We went to a church picnic.”
“Even if you were there earlier, that doesn’t mean you were in Jefferson City when Laura died,” said Blatch.
“What time did she die?”
“Late,” I said.
“I spent the night in jail. Got drunk and pissed on a fire hydrant. Cop took exception.”
Neither Blatch nor I said anything for a moment. Then Blatch took a notepad from his pocket and tossed it to Trevino before standing up.
“Detective Court and I will step outside for a minute. Do me a favor and write down the names of everybody who saw you in Jefferson City on Sunday.”
“I’ll need a pencil,” he said. I tossed him a pen from my purse and left the room with Detective Blatch. He shut the door and gave me a tight smile.
“How certain is your coroner of Laura Rojas’s time of death?”
“Not very,” I said. “Laura’s body went through an ordeal when she died.”
“Do you have evidence that could tie him to the scene?”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “Maybe if we’re lucky. We got hit by a tornado right after finding her body. My team did what they could, but the storm wrecked the scene and destroyed the coroner’s van. We’re lucky nobody died.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Jeez.”
“Yeah. It was a mess. Once we saw the tornado coming, we evacuated the scene but had to leave most of the evidence behind. We picked up a handful of beer bottles, I think. They might have prints on them, but I doubt they’ll match.”
Blatch looked at the door. “You believe our intrepid drug dealer in there?”
“I don’t know what I believe right now. You think it’s strange that you’d pick up a drug dealer who sold over a pound of marijuana to Laura but who only had four ounces in his apartment?”
“Maybe he made a big deal and sold most of his supply,” said Blatch, shrugging.
“That’s possible,” I said, nodding more to myself than to him. “Did you find any canisters like the ones we found in Laura’s house in Trevino’s place?”
Blatch hesitated and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “He kept his weed in Ziploc bags.”
“Laura kept her drugs in sealed canisters and mylar bags. Those would keep her weed safe and potent for a long time. Her dealer kept them in Ziploc bags that would allow the cannabinoids to break down within months.”
Blatch looked to the closed door. “Maybe he gets the drugs, keeps them for a while, and moves them on before they can break down.”
“It’s possible, but I’m not feeling this. He whipped out his alibi right away, and it’s not just his girlfriend. It’s his girlfriend’s family, it’s her minister at church, it’s the church congregation. If he’s lying, it won’t be hard to find out.”
“Don’t tell me you believe his story,” said Blatch, crossing his arms. “We didn’t hide a gun on him.”
“He’s lying,” I said, my voice soft, “but that doesn’t mean he’s a killer. He deals drugs, but I don’t think he killed Laura.”
“Who did?”
I hesitated and then shook my head. “I wish I had a clue.”