“Yo te mato.” The prisoner in an orange jump suit launched into a loco act. Sonny Para snarled and banged manacled fists on the steel table, eyes burning into APD detective Jack Gallegos. Para, detained for questioning about a double homicide, looked every bit a gang hardliner. Head shaved, neck and arms stained with tattoos, he glared at Jack, leaned forward and spat.
Jack dodged the loogie and slid his chair back.
The interview with Para wasn’t going well. He was the alleged head of Los Brutos, a virulent gang that had infected the poorest streets of Albuquerque and spread to other Southwest cities.
Sonny was thought to be behind the murders of a local taco shop owner and his wife. The couple’s only son, Jason Gonzalez, had connections with Los Brutos, and had told Jack and his partner, Detective Russell Connor, he wanted out of the gang. And away from Sonny Para’s violent trajectory. Jason had said he had received a voice mail from Para threatening to kill Jason’s parents. Then the couple had been murdered, and Jason had vanished.
Now the two detectives were trying hard to provoke the volatile crime jefe into revealing something that would keep him behind bars.
Also viewing from behind a glass window were investigators from the New Mexico State Police and the Bernalillo County Sheriff.
“You wasting my time.” Para smirked at Jack and ignored the court-appointed public defender beside him. “You got nothing. Nothing. Some stupid vato says I threatened people? You got no proof. I got some advice for you two. Work harder, you lazy scum.”
“You’re going down, little man. Your own people are turning on you left and right.” Detective Connor goaded the prisoner, hoping he would incriminate himself.
Instead, Para barred gold-capped teeth and lunged toward Connor, snapping like an attack dog. He started out with a relatively mild curse, “Maldigo a tu familia,” and escalated to increasingly foul assertions.
“We’re done.” Jack rose and lightly touched Connor’s shoulder. They turned their backs and headed for the door.
After the interrogation, the prisoner was headed back to lockup downtown, but he would be released within forty-eight hours. The detectives could not establish Para’s connection to the murders of Barco and Letitia Gonzalez.
While investigating Los Brutos, Jack Gallegos had met twenty-year-old Jason Gonzalez, who had been threatened for trying to leave the gang. Jason had offered to discreetly ask around about Para’s operations. But that opportunity dried up after the young man disappeared.
Jack and his partner had reason to believe the gangster was a major player in the distribution of deadly fentanyl, a street opioid flooding into New Mexico. They believed Los Brutos were working with a Mexican cartel to distribute the drug throughout the state and into the rest of the U.S. It wasn’t clear how the supplies were getting across the border, or how Para was handling distribution.
A week after Jason had made a deal with the detectives, he got a voice mail warning from a man who sounded like Sonny Para. The same day, a man entered his parents’ restaurant and told Barco Gonzalez to watch his back. A day later, Jason’s parents were killed. He had found them, shot execution-style, in their restaurant kitchen.
After the murders, calls to Jason’s cell phone went unanswered. Jack felt swamped with guilt that he hadn’t done enough to protect Jason and his family.
The two detectives were back to square one in trying to take down the crime boss. They had managed to arrest Para, claiming an unidentified witness saw him in the taco shop before the murders. The detectives knew Para would be released, but they hoped the arrest would make him nervous and cause him to say or do something incriminating.
After today’s futile interview, Jack Gallegos was disgusted and angry. He needed to get his mind off work, go for a run, do anything but dwell on the lack of progress in the case. But he returned to the station to finish up paperwork that had been piling up on his desk.
He passed the office of his immediate supervisor, Captain Mac Spitzer. The captain’s door was ajar and Jack heard voices inside. He rapped on the wood frame and waited. Might as well share the bad news.
“Come in,” Spitzer called out. Lieutenant Cory Marsdon and Ron Peppler sat in front of the captain’s desk. Marsdon headed the department’s drug and gang task force, and Peppler was a homicide detective who sometimes worked with task force investigators.
Marsdon and Peppler nodded at Jack. Captain Spitzer pressed his bifocals up against the bridge of his nose. “What’s the latest?”
The words stuck in Jack’s throat. “Can’t charge Para. He’ll be out in a day or two.”
“I hate like hell to see that guy walk.” Peppler screwed up his face.
“And with that witness gone missing,” Spitzer said.
“Yeah, that sucked.” Jack wondered if Jason Gonzalez was lying somewhere in the desert with a bullet in his head.
Marsdon looked away. “That’s the problem with snitches. Something happens to them, the case goes down the drain.”
“I hear anything different, I’ll let you know. See you guys.” Jack left the room abruptly, miffed about Marsdon’s comment. He didn’t view Jason Gonzalez as just a snitch, but a courageous young man who had taken a big risk by offering to spy on Sonny Para. Maybe Jason was alive but on the run. Jack wished he knew for sure.
He decided he couldn’t face more forms and reports that day, and walked past his office and out of the building. It was just after six, and he took back streets to avoid rush hour traffic.
He snagged a parking spot near his condo close to Old Town Albuquerque, his mood improving as he walked to the front door. Time for a quick run and a shower, then off to have dinner with Cait and her parents. Tomorrow he and his bride-to-be were headed to Zuni to get ready for the first wedding ceremony.
He stood on the porch, key in the lock, as a small bug-eyed dog raced toward him, yapping and growling. The white teacup Chihuahua darted behind him, nipped at his calf and latched onto his pants leg.
“Chiquita, ven acẚ.” Neighbor Mariela Rivera leaned on her porch railing and laughed. She set down a wine glass and trotted after the petite beast, which clung like a burr to Jack’s pants.
“Little scamp thinks she’s a pit bull.” Mariela reached out, grabbed the squirming dog and retreated.
“It’s the little ones you have to watch out for.” Jack chuckled.
He unlocked the front door, cracked it open, and bent down to examine tiny tooth marks on the back of his leg. A split second later, a concussive blast hurled him backwards. Everything turned white, then faded to black.
Jack regained consciousness briefly. Wondered why he was lying on the ground, a broken door tented over him, the wood charred and splintered. He had ended up wedged against the trunk of a desert willow growing near the sidewalk. The leafless branches reached out like skeleton fingers tracing the winter sky. Unable to move, torso and lower limbs numb, he felt the searing heat of flames shooting from his apartment.
Shock set in as he whispered Cait’s name. He didn’t want to die without seeing her again. His neighbor’s screams were the last sounds he heard before he passed out again.