Broken Saint, The (11 page)

Chapter 16

Ryan called William Saffert, the boss from Buildings and
Grounds, and got a current location on Hector Cruz. We drove over to the Life
Sciences Building, where he was working on the second floor. I didn’t expect
Hector to run. He seemed too smart for that. Still, I walked up to him from the
staircase on the east side. Ryan came in from the west side.

Hector looked up when he saw me walking up toward
him. He shook his head, an inarticulate gesture that said either “I’m screwed”
or “Fuck you,” or some combination of the two. I wish lowlifes would be a
little more informative with their body language. It would save us a lot of
time.

“We’re going in to headquarters,” I said, “have
you make a statement.”

He stuck out his wrists to Ryan.

“No cuffs, Hector,” Ryan said. “We just need a
statement.”

The three of us left the building, walked out to
the lot, and drove to headquarters.

We put him in Interview 1, which is the room with
the cuffs attached to a bar on the top of the big, beat-up table. I like
Interview 1 for violent offenders because it sends a clear message. With its
cracked-tile walls, the steel interview table, and an old gray filing cabinet
with corners that seemed like they would hurt if you somehow fell into them,
the room looked like the one place in the whole building where you definitely
want to think it over before lying to us.

I signaled for Ryan to turn on the camera from the
controls on the wall near the door. “Okay, Hector, we want to talk with you a
little more about your relationship with Maricel Salizar.” I was standing, my
back leaning against the big one-way mirror we used for looking in from the
hallway.

“Phone call.” He was sitting, his fingers
intertwined on the scratched surface of the interview table.

I walked over to the table and faced him. “Excuse
me?”

“I want to make my phone call.” His face was
blank.

I sighed and sat down opposite him. I leaned in.
“Hector, let’s talk. Just the three of us.” I pointed again
to the recorder controls on the wall, and Ryan got
up and turned off the system. “Hector, we’ve seen the shithole you live in. No
way in hell you can afford a lawyer. You call the public defender, you’re
getting either a kid with an earring who barely passed the bar the third time
around or a middle-aged loser who’s half in the bag most of the time. You ask
for a lawyer, we gotta change the way we come at you.”

He sat there, impassively. He looked at me, then
his gaze drifted off.

“Wouldn’t it be smarter to just let us ask you a
few questions? You don’t like the way it’s going, you can always get the
lawyer. But give us a chance to help you see your way through this thing. I
don’t know exactly what you did, but I don’t think you killed her. If you did
some stupid shit, we can coach you so you don’t end up taking the fall for
someone else. Hector, you’ve been straight with us. Your boss says you’re stand
up. Whatever you did, you can walk away with a misdemeanor, maybe, or a real
light sentence. We know you didn’t kill her, Hector.”

He turned and looked at me. “Phone call.”

“One last chance, Hector,” I said. “You make us
get you a lawyer, we gotta think there’s something you don’t want us to know.”

He looked at me again and spoke softly. “Lawyer.”

This time it was me shaking my head. “Ryan, turn
on the tape.” He did it.

I announced my name and Ryan’s and stated the
time. “Hector Cruz, did you kill Maricel Salizar?”

“I want an attorney,” Hector said, turning his
head to face the camera, up near the ceiling in the corner of the room.

“It is 11:17
am
.
We’re terminating this interview to enable Hector Cruz to make his phone call.
Ryan, let him make the call.”

We left Interview 1. As Ryan took Hector to make
his call, I drifted back to the detectives’ bullpen and got a cup of coffee
from the break room. When I got to my desk, Ryan was already seated at his.

“I put Hector in Holding.”

“You call the Public Defender?”

Ryan shook his head. “Hector had a business card. His
attorney will be here at 1:30.”

“Son of a bitch. Did you catch who he called?”

“Nope.”

I shook my head. “Wait a second. It must be the
Latin Vice Lords.”

“That’s right,” Ryan said. “They’d have their own
lawyer. He must have been in touch with them already.”

“You know how we were wondering if Hector was in
with the Vice Lords?”

“You don’t think we have to wonder anymore?”

“I think we got our answer.” I paused. “When we’re
done with Hector, let’s go visit that dipshit—what’s his name?”

Ryan smiled. “Are you referring to The One?”

“Yeah, the two of us gotta talk to the one of
him.”

Ryan and I were seated back in Interview 1 at
1:25. Couple of minutes later, a uni opened the door, followed by Hector Cruz
and a Hispanic guy, mid- forties. The guy came over to me, his hand extended.

“Raul Samosa, Montana Hispanic Alliance,” he said,
flashing me a quick smile. He did the same to Ryan. “You want to start?” he
said, like he expected to run this show. Samosa was short and wiry, hair starting
to go thin on top. He wore a carefully trimmed goatee. His eyes were intense,
and he moved quickly. I could see a couple thousand bucks of clothing and
jewelry on him: chalk-striped charcoal three-piece suit, gold collar pin
beneath the knot on his maroon silk tie, thin gold watch with a croc band, a
gold chain hanging between a vest buttonhole and the vest pocket, and gleaming
black cap-toe brogans. Ryan always looks decked out, but Samosa looked like he took
notes when he read
GQ
.

Ryan turned on the recorder, announced the time
and who was in the room.

“Hector,” I said, “tell us about your relationship
with Maricel Salizar.”

Hector looked at Samosa, who nodded. “Like I told
you before, she was my girlfriend.”

“Yes, you told us that when we interviewed you on
campus. And you met her in the Student Union building when she walked into a
room where you were setting up chairs and asked you for directions. Tell me
this: did you know she had an abortion about three weeks ago?”

Hector looked at Samosa, who nodded again.

“Yes.”

“Was it your child?”

“Yes.” He shifted in his chair, but it wasn’t
embarrassment or grief or anything I could read.

“How did you feel about her getting the abortion?”
I said.

Samosa leaned over and whispered in Hector’s ear.

“I didn’t want her to do it.”

“Why is that?” I said.

“I’m Catholic,” Hector said. “It’s a sin.”

“Any other reason?”

“I wanted to raise the child with her.”

“Did you want to marry her?”

“Yes.” He looked me straight in the eyes. “I
wanted to.”

“Did you ask her to marry you?”

“She made it clear that she didn’t want to marry
me.”

“She didn’t want to marry you then, or ever?” I
said.

“She said then.”

“So what did you say when she said no?”

“I told her I loved her and didn’t want her to
have an abortion.”

“And she said?”

“She said she wasn’t asking me for anything, so it
wasn’t up to me. It was her baby.”

“How did you feel about that?”

“I felt sick.”

“After that conversation, when she said it wasn’t
your business, did you see her again?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did you see her after she had the abortion?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say anything to her about the abortion?”

“I could tell she wasn’t feeling too good. From
the abortion, I mean. It made her sick. She made it clear she wouldn’t talk to
me about it. If I loved her, she said, I would respect her decision.”

“You have any arguments with her about it?”

Samosa leaned toward Hector and whispered in his
ear again. “No. No arguments.”

“Nothing? This woman you say you love commits this
sin, one of the really big ones to a Catholic, and you don’t get into a fight
with her?”

Samosa whispered to him again.

Hector nodded to me. “No fight.”

“You know, if it was me, and I loved her, and it
was my baby, and she knows how I feel about abortions, and she just goes off
and does it—I don’t know, I don’t see how I’d be able to not get into an
argument with her.”

Hector Cruz opened his mouth to speak but Samosa
put his hand on Hector’s arm. “Detective Seagate,” Samosa said, “I won’t let
you badger my client. You already asked him if he had an argument with Maricel.
He answered your question. He said no. Do you have another question?”

“Hector, can you think of someone who would do
this to Maricel?”

Hector shook his head.

Ryan said, “Hector, you told us yesterday that
Maricel said Mark Gerson was kind of strange, might have had a crush on her.”

Samosa leaned over and whispered to his client.
Then Hector Cruz said, “Maricel told me she thought Mark was interested in
her.”

“Hector,” I said, “you think Mark was capable of
hurting Maricel?”

Hector looked over at Samosa, who nodded. “Yes, I
think he might have hurt her. Maybe he wanted to have sex with her. She said no,
it became a fight. And he killed her.”

“Hector, where were you on Sunday night, between
ten and midnight?”

“I was at home.”

“Were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Can anyone confirm that?”

He shook his head.

“I’m gonna need you to answer that question out
loud,” I said.

“Nobody can confirm that,” he said.

“Did you kill Maricel Salizar?”

Samosa stood. “This interview is over. My client
said he did not get into an argument with Maricel Salizar. He did not kill her.
Obviously, you have no evidence against Mr. Cruz. This is a disgrace.” Cruz
stood up and the two of them walked to the door, where a uniformed officer met
them and led them away from Interview 1.

Chapter 17

“Gary, Karen Seagate. On the Maricel Salizar case. We just
interviewed Hector Cruz, the vic’s boyfriend. He lawyers up, in walks a guy
named Raul Samosa. Expensive suit, gold jewelry.” Ryan and I were still in
Interview 1. I had called Gary Martinez in Anti-Gang and put him on Speaker.

“Yeah, Raul,” Martinez said. “We like him.”

“He’s the mouthpiece for the Latins?”

“Yeah.”

“And you guys like a gang lawyer?”

“Well, he’s a scumbag and a media whore—but an
excellent attorney. Plus, he buys us a round when he beats us in court.”

“Oh, well, sure, he buys you guys a round.” It was
part of Anti-Gang’s vibe: the lawyer’s a scumbag and a media whore, but we’re
cool enough to see that he’s a good guy underneath it. Of course, the fact that
Martinez had to show me he was cool made him … well, kind of typical. Most guys
I know, they stop maturing at about fourteen. This guy, maybe around twelve.

“He’s not gonna cut you any slack,” Martinez said.

“I got that impression,” I said. “Okay, thanks,
Gary.”

“Good luck,” he said. “Let me know when you want
us to ride along to interview The One.” Now that I’d figured him out, I
realized he wasn’t offering. He was asking a favor.

“Yeah, we’ll do that,” I said and hung up.
Probably not.

Ryan said, “I’m liking Hector more and more.”

“Me, too.”

“What next?” he said.

“Let’s ask the chief if he’ll approve a request
for a warrant to search Hector’s trailer and his car.”

Ryan stood up, eased into his suit jacket. “Think
he will?”

“No, I doubt it.”

We walked over to the chief’s office. Margaret
waved us in.

“Hey,” he said, looking up from some papers on his
desk.

“We want to let you know where we are with the
Salizar case.”

“Good.” The chief was serious about keeping him in
the loop. A lot of chiefs say that, but you can see them frown when you
interrupt them.

“She had a rough abortion about three weeks ago.”

He straightened up in his chair. “How rough?”

“We can’t figure out who did it, but the main doc
who does them in town described a good one and a bad one, and she definitely got
a bad one.”

“A bad one that would’ve killed her?”

“No,” I said. “A bad one that hurt like hell and
would’ve made it more likely she’d miscarry if she got pregnant again.”

He nodded his head. Thing I liked about the chief
was he didn’t need to show us how much smarter he was than we were. He trusted
his detectives to connect the dots and bring him a story that made sense. So he’d
listen to us tell him the story, without interrupting or trying to second-guess
us.

“We talked to her boyfriend, Hector Cruz. He says
he asked her not to do it—he’s Catholic. She told him it’s none of his
business. He insists he didn’t get in a fight with her.”

“Has he got an alibi?”

“No, says he was at home. Alone.”

“Did he give you anything else?”

“Not exactly. He tried to put it on Mark Gerson. That’s
the wackjob—”

Ryan interrupted. “Mark Gerson is the son of the
provost. He’s got paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Did you interview Mark?”

“Yesterday. He was at this gaming store downtown.
He was having some kind of nervous breakdown.” I looked at Ryan to give him a
chance to take over so I didn’t say it wrong.

“He was having a psychotic episode,” Ryan said. “He’d
been off his meds since Maricel disappeared, hadn’t slept any.”

“So he didn’t give you anything reliable,” the chief
said.

“He said she was a sinner, and he was a sinner,” I
said. “Tell you the truth, I don’t think Mark could’ve told you what planet he
was on.”

Ryan said, “We called the hospital and they
brought him in for a psych eval. And we notified his father.”

“You see Mark as a suspect?” The chief sighed. I
guess he was like me: hoping to be further along, not happy to hear that we had
new suspects. Or maybe he was sorry for the provost because we had to bring him
more heartache, which certainly didn’t please a police chief who liked things
to go smooth with the university bigwigs.

“Technically, yes, we gotta look at the kid. He
lived with her there in the same house since August. He probably saw her as
attractive—would you say, Ryan?”

“Yes, I think so.” Ryan nodded. “He would have.
She was pretty—plus a few years older, and more experienced, therefore
unattainable. Even with his mental problems, it’s likely he was sexually
attracted to her. And he definitely would have known she had this boyfriend,
Hector. So, yeah, he’s a possible.”

“But, Chief,” I said, “we really like Hector more.
He’s the boyfriend, she gets an abortion without his consent. We think he’s in
with the Latin Vice Lords. When we interviewed him a little while ago, he brought
in this lawyer—”

“Yes, I know,” the chief said, nodding. “Raul
Samosa.”

“You know him?”

“Not until five minutes ago, when he called me.”

“Really?” I said. “What did he want?”

“To tell me to turn on the TV at four this
afternoon for his press conference.”

“No shit. What’s he unhappy about?”

The chief looked at me, his expression blank. “You.”

I pulled back. “What’d I do?”

“First,” the chief said, “you tried to suborn the
Constitution—”

I looked at Ryan. “What the hell does that mean?”

Ryan said, “It means undermine the Constitution.”

I put my hands out, palms up, a gesture that sits
on the border between “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and “I didn’t do
nothing.”

“He claims that when you questioned Hector and he
asked you for an attorney, you ignored—”

Ryan interrupted. “That’s not at all what
happened, Chief. Cruz said he wanted to make his phone call, and we simply told
him what we tell anyone who says that: if you get an attorney, that changes the
dynamic. You know that’s Day One in the course at the Academy. But as soon as
he repeated that he wanted his phone call, we terminated the interview and he
called Samosa.”

“I do anything else?” I said. Maybe I was a little
defensive. You screw up enough times, that happens.

“He said you badgered his client.”

“That’s bogus, Chief. We got the whole interview
on tape.”

“I know, Karen,” the chief said, cocking his head,
his palms pushing down to tell me to keep it together. “I’m just telling you
what he’s going to say at four o’clock.”

“And how’re you going to respond?” I said, my
hands on my hips.

“Well, first I’ll listen to what he says, and then
I’ll reply appropriately,” he said with a small smile.

I sighed. “So you’re going to call a news
conference?”

“Probably not,” he said. “I don’t want to let him call
the tune. It’d just encourage him to do another press conference. We’d end up
in an arms race. I’ll see what he says at four. If I can, I’ll just issue a
short statement.”
That last sentence was meant
to tell me to back off, let him do his job.

A smart detective would take that as a good thing
and let it be. I said, “Saying what?”

“I’m hoping I can say that we’re conducting the
investigation appropriately and that I have full confidence in the members of
the Rawlings Police Department.” He looked at me directly and held my gaze.

“Okay,” I said, trying to bring it down a notch. “Reason
we came into your office, to ask if you’d okay a search of Cruz’ trailer and
his car. Guess that’s off the table.”

“Give me a reason.”

“He was the boyfriend. We think he’s a member of
the Latins, which, by the way, he lied about.”

“He say he wasn’t?”

I frowned, my left hand fluttering in the air. “He
told us he was thinking about joining and put their tat on, then changed his
mind.” The chief cocked his head, like he wasn’t buying it. “If we could grab
some DNA, we might be able to match it to some hairs on the vic’s body. Robin
found hair samples from two different guys on her.”

“That won’t get us anywhere. He was her
boyfriend.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’d like to have a look at his
car.”

“What for?”

“There were some polyester fibers on Maricel that
might’ve come from a car trunk.”

“That’s not probable cause.” The Chief was shaking
his head. “Sorry.”

I knew he was right. Hector not having an alibi
didn’t help him, but without anybody putting him somewhere else or some other
evidence saying he was lying, no judge was going to okay a warrant.

“Get me some more evidence …” he said, standing up.

You want more evidence, I thought, let me bend the
Constitution. But this time I didn’t say it. I nodded and we turned to leave.