Between Darkness and Daylight (12 page)

Zane reached for his gum but realized he didn't have any with him. He clenched his hands as Leary and the young tech finished up.

"Thanks Jennifer. I owe you."

"You're racking up quite a tab, Detective." She chuckled as she left and closed the door behind her, leaving them alone again.

"Well? What's the verdict?" Zane asked.

"Not the knife."

"I could have told you that."

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"Hey, it's my time and resources I'm wasting, not yours."

Zane sighed, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger before staring at Leary. "I appreciate all the trouble you're going to."

"No trouble. It's old habit now." Leary grinned.

"Unfortunately." For a minute there, he'd hoped that maybe he was wrong, that for whatever reason, the knife was the one that had killed Sinny. At least then they'd have had a lead, something to go on. "So, did she say why she did it?"

"The mother's not talking. All we can get out of her is that you're a dirty filthy baby-killing liar and your girlfriend's a…" Leary paused, wincing.

"She actually said something to make
you
blush?"

"I'd just rather not repeat it."

"So, aside from the name-calling?"

"You went out to lunch and missed all the fun."

Zane frowned and leaned forward in his seat, waiting.

"Whatever you said to the girl this morning hit home. She called 911 a little after your session to report a rape. She was pretty hysterical, but what we could make out is that she was carrying her father's child and she wanted the man arrested for molesting her. We got the address and sent a couple of squad cars over. Our guys took the father in and her mother came down to the school to teach her little girl a thing or t—"

"Is Manuela okay?"

“Took a couple of whacks form the mother. Lady packs quite a punch, so the girl's a little shaken up. But she'll be okay. She's a tough kid."

"Maybe too tough."

"Hey, you did what you could, Youngblood. She did the rest. It's not your fault the mother decided to take matters into her own hands and pay a visit to the wonderful social worker who's 'putting lies into her beautiful little girl's head, telling her to kill her baby.'" Leary leaned back in his chair, pyramiding his fingers under his chin as he pierced Zane with a blue-green gaze.

Visit didn't begin to describe that madness outside the school. If it hadn't been for Nova… Zane unconsciously rubbed his chest where the knife would have gotten him, phantom pain burning a path through his 82

Gracie C. McKeever

heart. She'd reacted before anyone knew anything untoward was happening. Like she'd been expecting something. Like she
knew
.

Zane could see the gears ticking a mile a minute in Leary's head.

"You're disappointed."

"I really was hoping we had something."

"Why? Because they all have Hispanic surnames?"

A dark expression entered Leary's eyes as he worked his jaw muscles.

He looked two seconds from punching Zane’s lights out. "I'd rather we didn't bring race into this."

Zane stared at him, suitably repentant. He'd faced veiled and open racism all of his life, still faced it today and recognized most of its manifestations. He hated to think it, but he was getting pretty close to being used to others’ narrow-mindedness. Growing up with an African-American mother and a Caucasian father inured a person to double-takes, askance looks, and some-of-my-best-friends-are comments.

But something in Leary's look and tone just now told him he'd missed the mark this time, and Zane wasn't one to walk away from admitting an error. "Leary, I didn't mean to—"

"For the record, my mother's Puerto Rican." Leary silently glared at him, let his words sink in before he sighed and continued, "Look, Youngblood, I'm here to get a job done. If that leads me down a road where the suspects all happen to have Hispanic surnames, then so be it.

I'm checking every lead I can, regardless of who or what my parents are."

"And I appreciate that it's you working the case. I just didn't think that Manuela's mother had any connection to Enrique Martinez."

"Could be a distant cousin. Who knows?" Leary leaned forward in his seat and folded his hands on his desk. "Tell you what connection I do see, besides people with Hispanic surnames."

"What's that?"

"People who have it in for you."

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Chapter 8

Every day Enrique watched the kids come and go. He liked being a part of their lives in his capacity as a public school teacher, on the fringes, yet an honorary insider because they trusted him. They knew he was a kindred soul, a
compadre
who understood what they were going through and was always able and willing to relate to their teenage woes.

He'd been working at the school close to a year now, lauding the benefits of his fitness routine and leading the kids through his daily physical training, running them ragged with aerobics and calisthenics that could make a Navy SEAL cringe.

His exercise and nutrition regimen had made a few unhappy campers, but by and large, he knew most of the kids liked him. Enrique made himself available to lend an ear when a kid needed to talk, to give a few promising boys extra help with their jump shots and other aspects of their game. Athletics had always been his strength when he was in school, especially basketball, and if he could help a kid make it onto the school team, then he would do it.

He was as popular, if not more so, than the ninth-grade English teacher Mr. Steiner, and just as popular as the meddling social worker-slash-guidance counselor all the girls swooned over. Enrique heard the grapevine talk. Half of them envied Manuela and the other troubled teens who, for whatever reasons, had the opportunity to spend so much time in the "dreamboat's" company. The other half thought up reasons that they could be sent to his office.

He'd love to visit Mr. "Dreamboat Social Worker" in his office too, but it was too soon to reveal himself. Even if the chances were slim that Mr.

Caseworker would recognize him because he
didn't
look anything like what the man would be expecting, he couldn't risk it. The time wasn't ripe.

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Enrique's father used to call him lazy and shiftless because he kept his head buried in books all the time, didn't like to get his hands dirty doing

"man's work," and took his time going anywhere and doing anything. He'd gotten more than a whipping or two in his youth for not hopping to one or another of his father's commands. His mother, ever the mediator, would amend her husband's terminology to less negative connotations, claiming their son was a procrastinator like her and just a little laid-back. More often than not, she put her life on the line defying her husband to defend Enrique in so bold a manner, because Carlos Martinez was the head of the household and as such, not to be questioned on any issue, especially by the likes of a woman or a child.

His mother was only half-right about him, though, especially about the laid-back part. She could have added patient and vigilant to her description of him because he could put the palace guards at Buckingham to shame; he had no problems just waiting and watching before acting.

Until the time was right.

He'd rushed headlong into things before, jumping to conclusions with his wife Francesca, accusing her of all sorts of unfaithful behavior, and look where it had gotten him. Not that he hadn't had some provocation; Frenchie wasn't totally innocent, especially towards the end. But even with all her recalcitrance and back-talk, there was no way she would have left him without someone else pulling her strings and poking his nose where it didn't belong.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Enrique had been living and breathing his father's favorite motto all his life—the old man had been good for something besides beating on them
—

and saw no reason to stop now, to be a hot-head and rush into action without thinking first.

He smiled as he remembered the oft-quoted words his father had loved spouting at him and his five older brothers, especially after giving his youngest son a hardy beating. The old man never failed to deliver a lesson—
Haste makes waste; patience is a virtue—
with
his beatings. He liked killing two birds with one stone and got in the sermonizing that they missed by not going to church. The old man didn't believe in church, thought it full of propagandizing hypocrites his wife and boys were better off without.

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By far, Enrique and his mother had been his father's favorite punching bags—the female and the puniest in the family.

But that had changed a long time ago, both his puniness and the beatings. He'd had one of those much-celebrated growth spurts during his fourteenth summer, one of those spurts that everyone had been predicting he'd undergo like all his older, over-six-feet-tall brothers had.

That was the summer his father stopped hitting him, though he hadn't stopped hitting Mom. That same summer, Enrique became a man and left the nest, but not before taking care of important business with his father.

"Mr. Richards, got a little time later on to help me out with my layup?"

"For you, Eddie? Always."

"Cool. I'll meet you in the gym after last period."

He surreptitiously watched the teen's profile as he stood beside him at one of several sinks to thoroughly wash his hands. Kid had been raised right. They didn't all bother with the practice. "What was with all the fanfare out front earlier?"

"Oh man, you shoulda seen it…"

Enrique dried his hands on one of the boys' room's limited paper towels, listening as the teen excitedly recounted how Manuela Diaz's mother had gone on a rampage and tried to stab the guidance counselor in front of the school building, and how this real hot-looking lady had stopped her.

"Yo, shorty was tight, and she had, like, these cool Jackie Chan moves going on."

"You don't say." A shorty. A woman. He had a new woman in his life?

"Mr. Richards, you okay?"

He shook himself and nodded.

"Oh, cuz you looked like you tuned out for a minute there."

"So, everyone's okay? No one got hurt?"

"The cops came after the shorty took down Manuela's mother. I think shorty got cut and Mr. Youngblood got a little roughed up in the crowd, but everybody's all right. They took Manuela's mother away in a squad car. And an ambulance took Mr. Youngblood and the shorty to the hospital."

"Everything turned out all right then?"

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"Pretty much." Eddie's his eyes brightened. "Yo, I think that shorty who took down Manuela's mom is the same lady who—"

Enrique's brows went up as Eddie cut himself off. The teen looked as if he had slipped and mentioned something he wasn't supposed to. "The same lady who what?"

"Ransom, he kind of got into a little trouble last week. I'm sure you heard about it."

He waited for the teen to elaborate.

Eddie shrugged. "It was just this initiation thing we had him do. We dared him to snatch a lady's purse."

"Snatch a lady's purse?"

"To tell you the truth, we didn't really think he'd go through with it."

"You know you boys are older than him. He looks up to you. What did you expect?"

"Yeah, it was stupid. I know that now." The teen ducked his head, then glanced at his fitness teacher. "But everything turned out all right. She didn't press charges and Ransom turned up at school the next day, everything cool and the gang."

"Hmph." He was going to have to talk to Ransom about the kids he was hanging out with.

He liked Eddie and his crew, but their social values occasionally left a little to be desired. More than ironic, considering the school in which they were all enrolled.

Problem was, teens didn't think before they acted, didn't consider the repercussions, or that what they did now could affect and follow them around for the rest of their lives. For that matter, not too many adults considered their actions, either.

Enrique thought better of giving Eddie the lecture. He couldn't count the number of times he'd heard it from his own father, and it hadn't gone over well with him. In the end, it didn't matter whether he'd followed his father's rules or not, because the man had always managed to find something faulty about him, his actions, his very existence.

"Where's Ransom now? Is he okay?"

"Oh, homeboy went in the ambulance with his uncle and the shorty.

Otherwise he'da been hanging with me in the gym after last period."

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Enrique missed Ransom already, anxious for the boy's welfare. Of all the students in the high school, Ransom was the one most likely to empathize with his plight.

They had the same nemesis.

And now that nemesis had a weakness: a new woman.

* * * *

Enrique Martinez had always been a creative thinker and a doer, and except for a couple of choice times in his life, he planned ahead. He survived on his boldness, got by on his ability to assimilate and his gift of gab, which he used to charm off pants, especially those of the opposite sex.

Necessity was, after all, the mother of invention, and he had succeeded in reinventing himself over the last two years, creating a new identify, a new life after Frenchie and the kids had been taken away from him.

The new identity by no means annulled his memories. They didn't ease the pain of having to hide his old identity, didn't allay the grief of losing his family. He consoled himself with the promise that he would get it all back, get
them
back with him, where they belonged.

He had gotten the assignment at the High School of Discipline and Civil Values based on how well he pulled the wool over the school system's eyes, which had been very well. He'd had a lot of practice fooling people, making strangers see the man they wanted to see, the man they wanted him to be. But he was still surprised at how easily he had slid into his new persona, metamorphosing into the man listed at the top of his curriculum vitae, which catalogued personal facts, credentials, dates, and events from "Martin Richards's" biography as if he were a living breathing individual.