Cool in Tucson (33 page)

A dark-eyed man in jeans and a knit shirt stepped through the door beside the receptionist’s window two minutes after Sarah walked in. The name tag that hung around his neck on a cord read, “Special Agent Philip Cruz.” He didn’t smile when he said, “Detective Burke?  Phil Cruz, how are you?”

“Sarah,” she said, and put out her hand. 

“My boss’s office is right down the hall.”   He opened the door he had just come through. “You can sign in here if you will.” 

The ledger was on a high counter that walled off the girl from the hall.  In her tiny, isolated space, she seemed to be almost as protected from the occupants of the building as from outside visitors.   

            A sandy-haired man, large-boned and gaunt, stood up behind his desk when they entered.  He was dressed like Cruz but his whole outfit was upgraded in subtle ways Sarah didn’t have time to analyze.  Cruz said, “Sarah, this is Special Agent Morrell.”

            “Mark,” he said, and shook her hand.  “Thanks for coming so promptly.”  They all sat down.  Sarah put her purse on the floor and her package in her lap.

            Morrell nodded toward it and said, “Is that the…uh—?”

            Sarah nodded.  “I brought this transfer of evidence form.  Can we—”

            “Oh, right, sure.  Let’s see…” he leaned back in his chair to read Delaney’s neat block printing, taking his time.  Finally he said, “Fine.  Here we go.”  They both signed, each took a copy and she put one on top of the package.  “Now—” he looked at her searchingly when she handed it over “—you haven’t shown this to anybody but Delaney?”

            “No.”

            “Or checked it into your system?”

            “No.”

            “Right.  And,” that look again, “you haven’t told anybody else what you found?”

            “I called Delaney as soon as I saw what was in the bank.  When I told him what I had he called you.  He said tell no one, come straight here, so that’s what I did.”

            “Good.  No offense meant, Sarah.”

            “None taken.” 
The Man says chill. 

            “Good.  I think—” he rolled his chair back from his desk a little, rested his elbows on his chair arms, tented his hands in front of his chin—“what I need to hear from you, Sarah, is what made you go back and search that apartment again?”

            “Too many things about the victim didn’t fit the profile of a street dealer.”  She told them about identifying the body off prison records, and her growing curiosity as the investigation revealed quiet personal habits, regular hours and scrupulously organized records, extreme neatness.   “He seemed all wrong for his life.  So I got a bright kid on the support staff to scrutinize the prison records and he found the funny business.”

“The funny—“

“The DLMs were all the same.”  Just for a second, Sarah saw Morrell and Cruz exchange a silent
oops
. 

            Cruz asked quickly, “Besides your computer guy, who knows about the records?”

            “Delaney.”

“You didn’t talk to anybody else?”

She shook her head.  “My whole crew’s out on a new homicide.  I decided there must be something in Ace Perkins’ apartment that we overlooked, so I went back by myself.”  She told them about the key in the napkins and they traded another of those looks.  “I expected to find a box full of money in the bank.  When I found these things instead, I called Delaney.”

            “Uh-
huh
.  Well, we’re certainly grateful you did that, Sarah.”  Morrell had been cutting the tape on her evidence bag while they talked.  Now he pulled out the long manila envelope and opened it.  His face remained impassive when the gun and shield slid onto his desk.  Sarah wondered if he knew he had made a small, sorrowful sound. 

Cruz stood up and leaned over the desk, swore under his breath, and sat down.  The gold second hand of the electric clock on Morrell’s desk made a complete revolution inside its gleaming lucite case while they sat in silence. 

Finally Morrell said, “Sergeant Douglas MacDougal, as you see here, was a DEA agent detached from his home office in Denver.  He was helping us with a…a job we’ve been working on.  Been here a little over four months.”  He cleared his throat.  “Unusually long for an undercover assignment.”  His bland gray eyes searched her face.  “You’re the primary, right?  You’re running the case?”

“Yes.”

“You found him Tuesday morning, is that what Delaney said?”

“Yes.”

Cruz’s phone buzzed at his hip.  He answered quickly, said, “Okay,” and then, to Sarah, “Excuse me,” and left the room.

Now
, Sarah thought, and leaned toward Morrell.  “I have to ask you, didn’t you know he was missing? I thought undercover agents had to carry a monitor.”

“They do.  But he was just finishing up here and starting on a week’s leave.  Originally the job he came for was supposed to last three months, tops.  But things got a little more…complicated than we expected…so it took longer than it should have and he was in a hurry to get home, said there were things he couldn’t put off any longer.  We wanted him to stay for the roundup but he said you’ve got all my information, you don’t need me, I’ll come back to testify but right now I need some time off.  We owed him a ton of leave so we agreed that after the Monday night run he wouldn’t call us any more and his monitor would be off.”

“I was at his autopsy.  We didn’t find a device on him.”

“Oh, they make them so small these days…Doug’s was in his phone.  That’s not here, have you got it?”

“No, but—” She told him about the phone call that was briefly answered and immediately cut off.  “Did he have a GPS in the thing, too?”

 “Oh, yes.”

“We wanted to try tracking it but we don’t have the gear yet.”

“We can do that.”  He made a note.  “We’ll get right on that, thanks.”

Sarah chewed her lip and decided,
Oh, what the hell
.  “Uh…we still have his homicide to investigate.”

“I know you do and we want to help, believe me, we want his killer caught more than you do.  But, uh—” he smiled at her, very collegial “—starting tomorrow, okay?”

“Oh?  Well—could I just ask you about something in the autopsy?”  She told him about the burns, the broken fingers.

Morrell’s face grew sad.  “Doug was captured a couple of years ago, by the drug ring he was investigating.  They took him into the desert across the border and…did some very bad things before his unit could arrange a rescue.  By rights he should have quit after that, but…Doug was a very dedicated agent.”

Obsessed, Sarah thought.  “One more question?”       

Morrell, watching her face, said, “What?”

“Well…am I right that you’re scooping up a lot of the people Ace was dealing with?  Forgive me for calling him Ace, I’m afraid—”

“That’s who he is, to you, huh?  Yes…um…I can’t tell you everything but today is the day we’re hoping to put the whole ring away.”

“So can I get that list when you’re through with it?”

“Absolutely.  And we’ll tell you everything we’ve learned that might be of use to you.  In fact…as long as you’re here would you like to see the two we’ve got in interrogation right now?”

“Could I?”

“Don’t see why not.  We’ve got their cases made.  Right this way.”  He led the way down a cement-block hall, their footsteps quiet on tight-weave carpet, to an office-like door near the back of the building.  He walked past it and opened the drape on a one-way window next to it.  Sarah looked into a room where Cruz and another agent faced a red-faced, indignantly gesturing middle-aged man across an empty granite table.  The blue-suited man beside him had to be his attorney. 

            “Uh…is that Pappy Grimes?”

            “Sure is.”  Morrell had a little trouble holding his cooler-than-thou look; a touch of pride kept leaking out.    

            “The great philanthropist pushes coke on the side?”

“No, he’s the money launderer,” Morrell said.  “He was the toughest nut to crack, the reason the operation took so long.”  They walked around a corner, past another bank of work-stations, to another window in a wall.  “Here’s the other one.”

 “Oh, now, wait,” Sarah said, staring, “Anthony Delarosa?”

“I hope he wasn’t a particular friend of yours.”

“No, I just knew him in the Department.  But—” 

“I know it’s hard to believe about one of your own.” 

“How—who’d he sell to?” 

“Oh, he wasn’t dealing,” Morrell said, “just servicing his own habit.  Reporting Ace Perkins as his snitch gave him cover.  That’s been his MO for some time, arresting pushers and turning them into his own private source of coke.”

“But he must have had to turn in some information sometimes, didn’t he?  To keep the game going?” 

“Oh, sure.  Some of it was pretty good stuff, too.  Delarosa was an accidental find, by the way, we weren’t looking for him.  MacDougal came back laughing after one of his nights on the street and told us how he got turned and then turned again by the same cop.”

“So,” Sarah said, with a bitter taste in her mouth, “Delarosa’s been furnishing the comic relief, huh?”

“In drug interdiction,” Morrell said, “you’ll take a laugh any place you can get it.”

“Uh-huh.”  She had not even liked Tony Delarosa, but now, seeing him gathered up into a heavy-muscled lump with his thick arms across his chest, his ruddy cheeks purple with rage, Sarah turned away in sorrow.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose, though, that
he
killed Special Agent MacDougal.”

“No, not much chance he would cut off his own supply.” 

As they walked back toward Morrell’s office Sarah asked, “Will you notify next of kin?”

“Yes, we’ll take care of that.  The body’s at the, let’s see, is it Pima County—”

“Forensic Center, yes, on East District.”

“We’ll need to see him, ID him for the Denver office.  Can you arrange that?  Thanks.  How far has the investigation gone?  I mean…have you got a suspect list?”

“No.  We have one print, that we lifted off his leg the day we found him.  We haven’t matched it so far.”

“What about the money?”

“The what?”

“He should have had a lot of cash on him.  We did wonder why he hadn’t made the drop.  Might have been as much as eight or ten thousand dollars.”

“We found ninety cents in his pockets.  And no wallet.”

“So…I guess that’s what he was killed for.”  Morrell’s face became briefly a mask of regret.  “The money.”  He sighed.  “It’s hard to understand, though.  He was a highly skilled agent with a great deal of field experience.  What about his weapon?”

“Nothing on him.  Do you know what he was packing?”

“Yes, a Ruger nine…uh…P95C, I think.  The car, did you find that?  A Ford, uh—”

“Excursion, yes.  That was missing too, when we found him.  But one of our street patrolmen located it last night behind a Fry’s store.” 

“Strange.  Any sign of Hector Rodriguez?”  

“Who?”

“His gofer, driver.  You don’t know about him?”