Back on Murder (16 page)

“What prompted this change of his?” I ask, suddenly thinking of Coleman, the supposed prison convert we rearrested at the George R. Brown. “Let me guess. Did he find Jesus?”

“You’re not going to like this,” he says, cracking a smile. “What changed Thomson was finding himself a new role model. Thomson left the gang unit and started working for Reg Keller.”

Keller. Some messiah.

If I have a nemesis at HPD, it’s Keller, the man who’s been dogging my steps for the past fifteen years or more. I tried to bring him down once and failed miserably.

“The Homeland Security thing?” I ask, keeping my voice even.

He nods. “The Golden Parachute Brigade.”

“So that’s how he knew I’d be hooked: Keller’s involved. You know, I was talking to one of Keller’s guys the other day. Remember Tony Salazar?”

“Sure.”

“One of his CIS wandered into our cars-for-criminals net.”

“Salazar’s on our radar screen, too. He paid cash for a nice boat a while back, and since he jumped to Keller’s camp, he’s been living way above his means.”

“Well, I respect the guy personally. He’s a sharp detective.”

“Maybe,” Wilcox says, meaning not so much. “But getting back to Thomson, I think Keller had a talk with the man. Told him to get his ducks in a row, that kind of thing. If you look at Keller’s roster, you’d think he was running some kind of halfway house. He recruits the worst disciplinary cases, then turns them into model detectives.”

“By pointing them to the real money?”

“Yes,” he says. “That’s my theory anyway. If I could prove it, I wouldn’t be sitting here.” He pauses. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

He slides around the table and heads upstairs to the restroom. As soon as he goes, the waitress comes by to refill my water glass. I take a bite of fish, surprised that it’s gone cold.

I met Reg Keller a long time ago, when we were both still in uniform. I was on patrol and he was an up-and-coming sergeant about to make the jump to plainclothes. We rode a shift together one night and something happened. He put me in a bad spot. It took a long time for me to work out the truth, not until I made detective myself. Once I did, though, I was at his throat, and for a while it looked like I’d nail him.

But I missed my chance.

My career rocketed into the stratosphere, burned bright a little while, then tumbled back to earth. My life in general went off the rails. Meanwhile, Keller racked up promotion after promotion, storing favors away for a rainy day, until he was too far up the line for a rank and filer like me to so much as touch.

Sometime after the Dubai Ports World scandal back in early 2006, when the administration tried to hand over American ports to foreign control, including stevedore operations at the Port of Houston, Keller somehow managed to get the green light on a special unit whose official remit was to assess security threats related to the port and Bush Intercontinental Airport. Even a longtime opponent like me had to admire his cunning. There were already a number of agencies doing the work, so Keller’s team was superfluous from the start, but the assignment would look great on a résumé and no doubt lead to lucrative security work once he retired. Hence the nickname Golden Parachute Brigade. Nice work if you can get it.

“You look angry,” Wilcox says, resuming his seat.

“I am angry. It’s all coming back to me, the whole thing with Keller. You’re telling me you can’t touch a guy like that in IAD? Are they even trying?”

“I’m not going to comment on any ongoing investigations. But let me make something clear. For Thomson to get what he wants, this blanket immunity, we’re going to need more from him than the shooters from your multiple murder. If he can give us something on Keller, on the other officers in the unit, then we can talk. You have a problem with that?”

Oh, I don’t have a problem with that. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Wilcox should know better than to even ask. Finding those shooters might be my lifeline back into Homicide, but bringing Keller down, that would be personal. Like I said, I have my reasons.

“You take care of things with the district attorney,” I tell him, “and I’ll make sure Thomson’s ready to talk. And, Steve, we should move fast on this, all right?”

“I’ll start making the calls the minute I leave.”

I reach my hand across the table. “It’s good to be working with you again.”

He just looks at my hand, not wanting to take it. At the last second he changes his mind. We shake, and afterward we both look away in embarrassment.

“This doesn’t change anything,” he says.

“I know.” I lay some cash on the table and get up. “But it will.”

“March, wait.”

I stop, but I don’t sit back down.

“How’s Charlotte doing?”

“Charlotte? She’s fine.”

“Things between you two, they’re all right?”

“What is this, a counseling session? If I want therapy, I’ll sign up for an art class, okay?”

He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m just asking, man. I know it’s tough, this time of year. Tell her I said hello.”

But he’s not just asking. I know Wilcox. I understand the way his mind works. He’s sensed something in me, but can’t put his finger on exactly what, so he’s rooting around a little to see if he can work it out. Judging from the look on his face, he thinks he has.

CHAPTER
11

Apologies for my late lunch turn out to be unnecessary by the time I catch up to Cavallo, who’s packed the witness statements up tight and transferred the box to the trunk of her city car. I reach her in the parking lot just as she’s about to leave the station without me. If it were directed at me, the look in her eye would give me pause, but she hardly acknowledges my arrival.

“What’s up?” I ask.

She gazes into the sky, brushing the hair back from her face. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that as of this morning, we had no developments on the Fontaine front, and now all the sudden the order comes down to snatch him. Apparently he just made a buy.”

“Stupid kid,” I say. “We’re making the arrest?”

“The Sheriff ’s Department’s going to do the heavy lifting, leaving us to ask the questions. Are you up to it? Only it’s not like we have anything on him. The kid deals some weed, he knows our missing juvenile – that’s about it.”

“If we catch him dirty, that’ll give us some leverage.”

She shakes her head. “Not enough. All this investigation needs him to do is lead us to Hannah. If he can’t do that, he’s a waste of time. But if he can, do you really think he’ll cop to a kidnapping charge to get out of possession with intent?”

“You have a point,” I say. “But still, how else would you expect them to play it? If surveillance really caught the kid making a buy, it’s not like we can pass up the chance to apply the thumbscrews, is it?”

“We could play that card anytime. Doing it now reeks of desperation, if you ask me. But Wanda won’t listen. After this morning, she’s operating on the news cycle.”

We climb into the car, slamming doors and snapping seat belts into place, then she reverses out of the parking space, cranking the wheel sharply. The tires kick up loose gravel as we bounce onto the road, cutting in front of oncoming traffic. Next time I’ll volunteer to drive. Cavallo has a knack for channeling emotion into the gears, and as often as I dream about it and wake up sweating, I’d just as soon not die in a car crash.

“It’s all spinning out of control,” she says.

“The case or the car?”

She ignores my attempt at humor. Frustration comes off her in waves. I suspect that what isn’t released through her cathartic high-wire driving can only come out by talking. She’s not the type to hit or break things, which is too bad considering how calming violence can be.

“Once a case gets traction in the media,” I say, hoping to get her talking, “you can only work it the right way as long as you keep getting results. As soon as you hit a wall, the daily pressure from upstairs to provide new sound bites overrules everything else. It’s not Wanda’s fault – ”

“So have you heard the latest?” She wrenches the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, like she’s thinking about snapping it off. “They’re trying to persuade Donna Mayhew to go on TV alongside the chief. They want to get her on
Larry King Live
.”

“How does she feel about that?”

“I’d ask her, March, if I could get her to pick up the phone.”

“Ah,” I say.

“Ah, what?”

“That’s why you’re so worked up. You have a special bond with that woman, and you don’t like anybody interfering.”

She stomps the accelerator like it’s my face. “Of course I have a bond with her. Who wouldn’t? Doesn’t your heart go out to her in a situation like this, with her daughter gone and – ”

“Of course.” I cut her off, not wanting to dig too deeply into my heart and what it goes out to. “But you’ve been very protective of her.” I tighten my grip on the door handle. “Of them.”

“Them? Who do you mean by them?”

“The church people. The mother, yes, but Carter Robb, too. You know. Your fellow travelers, so to speak.”

She makes no reply at first, letting her lead foot do the talking. I hunker down into my seat, trying not to think about air bags and side impacts and trauma to the head. I was lucky to avoid a chewing out for my late return. I should have left well enough alone.

“March,” she says.

The silence was too good to last.

“Do you have some kind of issue with me?”

“Issue?” I ask. “What kind of issue would I have?”

“You keep needling me all the time, like I’ve done something to you. But apart from bending over backwards to do you a favor, and then taking responsibility for you when your friends in Homicide gave you the boot, I can’t think of what you’re holding against me.”

She drifts in and out of the lane as she talks, while I do my best not to flinch.

“Seriously? Listen, Cavallo, I think you might be projecting your frustrations about the case onto me – ”

“What was that quip about my ‘fellow travelers’ then?”

“I just meant . . . you know. That cross you wear.”

She fingers the necklace, then lets it drop. “What do you believe, March? About God, the universe and everything?”

“You’re asking me this for real?” I should keep my mouth shut. “All right, I’ll play along. About God, I guess it depends on what kind of mood I’m in. Sometimes he exists, sometimes he doesn’t, and when he does sometimes I’m all right with that, and sometimes I want to give him a good kicking.”

She flinches and I know I should really stop. But I’m on a roll.

“The universe? It’s pretty screwed up, if you ask me. The world is on its last legs, people are pretty much rotten, and happiness is just an illusion, a kind of opiate – but it’s not actual happiness that keeps us going, it’s the promise of getting a fix later on in the soon-to-be perfect future, which makes it that much more desperate when you think about it . . . Not that I often do.”

There’s more. Something underneath the words, unspoken, for me unspeakable, an article of faith I can never doubt. What I believe in is evil. Its existence and power, the way it grows like mold on every surface, teeming beneath the walls, as insinuating as the Gulf Coast heat. It has a grip on all of us. It has its claws in me.

“Fascinating,” she says. “And what do I believe?”

“You?” I shrug, exhausted from my bout of self-expression. “How should I know? Why don’t you tell me?”

“Don’t you know already?”

“I can guess.”

“Well if you don’t know, and you haven’t asked, then why don’t you stop making assumptions? And while you’re at it, you can stop with the little digs you’re always making, because I’ve had it up to here and the last thing I need on top of everything else is your constant annoying buzz in my ear. All right?”

“Sure thing.”

Now I’m the one who needs to hit something. As much as I’d like to, at least with words, all the lines that come to mind are variations on the same bitter theme: it’s your fault I’m here in the first place. And why is it her fault? Because given the choice, I decided to spend the afternoon with her rather than do my job. What can I say? It made sense at the time.

But I can already hear her retort – how is that my fault? – and of course she’d be right. Not only that, but in making the argument I’d reveal something more pathetic about myself than my half-baked views on God and the universe.

My loneliness.

“That’s all you have to say?” she asks.

I nod. “That’s it. Or do you want me to apologize? I’m sorry for goading you. Won’t let it happen again.”

“Are you mocking me?”

“I’m just trying not to annoy you.”

“Well,” she says, “you could sure use the practice.”

The drunk girl at the Paragon comes back to me, the one with the glittering eyelids. Marta said she had bruises all over, like she’d been slapped around. But I didn’t do that, did I? The truth is, I can’t remember exactly what I did, or most of what I said. It was like someone else was doing it through me. I don’t know what happened. Like one of our notorious inner-city witnesses, I didn’t see nothing.

My first glimpse of James Fontaine inspires some hope. He looks ready to crack. The Harris County Sheriff ’s Department team, a bunch of armed linebackers with shaved heads and mirrored sunglasses, nudges his black BMW X3 to the curb near the intersection of West Little York and Antoine, maybe a mile away from the Northwest Freeway. Our car is near the back of the convoy, tagging behind the surveillance truck.

They drag him out of the driver’s seat, bend him over the hood, then do a quick search of the vehicle, going straight for the back compartment, where they find a vinyl flight bag with a Puma logo, right where they knew it would be. A squat surveillance officer in baggy jeans records everything with a handheld video camera.

We thread our way through the flashing lights, coming alongside the X3. When he sees us, one of the deputies hands the bag to Cavallo, who’s just pulled on a pair of gloves. She plops it on the hood across from Fontaine, slowly fingering the zipper.

James Fontaine is a lanky black kid of about seventeen, handsome in a boyish way, wearing a G-Unit polo that’s actually been pressed – the creases are still visible down the length of the sleeves. He looks about as thug as a clean-cut suburbanite whose knowledge of the street comes mainly from the media can. Now that he’s in custody, he makes no pretense to being a hard man. His eyes alternate between watching Cavallo unzip the bag and clamping tight in prayer, like he’s trying to make the contents miraculously disappear.