Falling Down (6 page)

“Is it a bad crime scene?”

“You'll need a drink afterwards,” he said finally, and disconnected.

“T
hey came in front and back,” Renteria said.

Wanting some of the Cuervo Gold on the table beside him.

A crime scene tech had already coated the bottle with black fingerprint powder and lifted off the prints. Renteria, stretching out shaking fingers, reaching for the bottle, got some of the powder on his hand and jerked the hand away, trying to rub off the blackness.

“Been printed before,” the lead detective said to me. “He knows what it's all about.” A very patient man, somewhere in his fifties.

We waited.

Renteria sat on the white plastic patio chair. Knees clamped together, trying to stop his thighs shaking, head in hands.

“They came in front and back,” Renteria said again.

“So you told us,” lead detective said.

“Excuse me,” I said to the detective. “I don't know your name.”

He thumbed a card from a gold case, handed it to me.

“Christopher Kyle. Numbers at the precinct. And my pager.”

“Chris,” I said. Took the card.

“Christopher.”

Skin wattles drooping along his neck, like he'd lost at
least fifty pounds in recent months. Saw me eying his canes.

“Hip replacements,” he said. “They offered me retirement, but I said I was too old to retire.”

Wraaaaaack. Wraaaaaack
.

Cactus wrens chattering on the roofing tiles above us, but otherwise it was quiet out here on the patio.

No bodies out here, no blood.

“These GPS units?”

“I'm not telling you anything,” Renteria said.

Meant to be a curse, or a scream, instead came out just a whisper, he'd gone past his defense positions.

We knew it. He knew it.

We just sat there, waiting.

“This lady here,” Kyle said. Cut his chin toward me. “She knows all about computers. And things like that.”

“Why is she taking my picture?”

Clatter from the wrens, two of them on the aluminum rain gutters.

“Well, she does that, too. She does forensics, she takes pictures, she looks at anything we think is a computer.”

“It's just a cell,” Renteria said. “Just a cell phone.”

“With a cloned chip.” Kyle scrunched his head at me.

“Phony,” I said to him. I'd taken the back off, ran a diagnostic with my laptop. “Stolen number. Untraceable.”

“Ain't mine,” Renteria said. “They didn't give me one.”

“Is that why you're still alive? Because you didn't have a cell phone?”

“Shit, man, I hear that front door crash open, I crawl under the sink.”

“A GPS unit,” I said. “Global Positioning Satellite.”

“
What the hell is that?
”

“C'mon. Ramon?” Kyle said. “That's right? Ramon Renteria? That's the name you gave us?” Didn't wait for an answer. “Ramon. That his woman and kid in there? Your friend's woman? Their child?”

“I don't know them, man.”

“How old's the child? That baby child?”

“Don't know.”

“I'd say, four years old. Tops. And the woman?”

“Not his woman, okay? Not his kid, okay?”

“So. Ramon. You know the guy well enough, you know it's not his woman or his four-year-old child?” Renteria said nothing. “Are they just hired out from Rent-A-Family?” Head still down, Renteria's eyes cut to Kyle for an instant.

“Drug couriers,” Kyle said to me. “Women and kids, they sell space in their bodies for a day. Drug mules. Swallow balloons of heroin, bring a kid along to look like a family. I go into the bathroom, Ramon, I'm gonna find some laxatives? Well, I'm here for drug smuggling. You're a suspect for a triple, Ramon. Three people dead. Your friend in there. His jacket's probably
loooong
and
thick
. Once we got him all ID'd, multiple multiple drug busts. Jail time, county time, prison, his friends, their jackets also an inch thick. Soon as we find out your real name, we'll know that you've got a jacket.”

“It's a cell phone, okay?” Renteria said. “It ain't mine. I don't even know how to use it.”

“Back to whoever came in. Front and back.”

“
Pendejo!
” Renteria said. “I've told you about that a dozen times, I'm not telling you again.”

Wraaaack wraaack
.

Wrens, desert trash birds. I hate them, hate their raucousness. The uniform officer standing nearby clanked his baton against the aluminum gutter downspout, but the wrens just went farther up the roof.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “All we want to know, you recognize anybody?”

Renteria shook his head. He wouldn't look up.

“He knows who they were,” Kyle said to me.

“
No,
man. I don't know who they were, okay?”

“Did they all have tattoos?”

Renteria's teeth chattered. Kyle offered him the
tequila and Renteria took large, thirsty gulps, tequila dripping onto his clothes.

“Tattoos,” Kyle said. A very soft, gentle voice. “They had big tats, right? Especially on their faces? Like a number? You know the kind of people I'm talking about, Ramon.”

“
Maras,
sure, okay? They're gonna find out I told you, I'm dead.”

“They won't find out.” Kyle turned to me. I'd been studying the GPS history on the cell. “Anything useful there?”

“One of the best GPS units around,” I said. “A Brunton multi-navigator unit.”

“I'm not a techie,” Kyle said. “What does it do?”

“Barometer, altimeter, compass. And a twelve-channel parallel receiver.”

“So?”

“You know those navigation systems in cars?” I said. “Same thing. This gives a simple, one-button to find your way back home, find your way anywhere. Stores up to ten reversible routes, with stops in between start and finish. It automatically records your trip and stores the data.”

“So?” Kyle said again.

“Four different locations,” I said.

“Meaning?”

“Just that. I can pinpoint three different places here on the south side. One up somewhere in Tucson.”

“Does that thing show addresses?” He leaned over, I turned the tiny screen so he could read it.

“Within a few houses.”

“What would we find there?”

“Not my job,” I said.

“Nope. Sure not your job. Just write 'em down, I'll send out detectives. This gonzo here. This Ramon. Whaddya think he knows from this GPS thing?”

“Doesn't matter. I've got the locations. Data talks, even if he doesn't.”

He waved the uniform over to keep Renteria secure. “You ready to go back in there?”

“Hooo,” I said, not meaning to exhale so loud.

“Repellent,” Kyle said. “Not pretty. You want to leave, just walk around the outside of the house. You got the GPS stuff, that's most important.”

He waited.

“I'm here,” I said finally. “Let's do it.”

He grabbed the assist canes, levered himself to his feet quickly. Fit the metal support bands around his upper arms and moved easily. Slid back the screen door to the dining room, went inside, and I followed.

 

One body lay across the kitchen floor, a hand pushed against a carport utility door screen with such force the man had shoved the bottom corner of the door open three inches before he died. The CSU techs weren't finished, so the door stayed open. Flies already swarming inside, feasting on the blood from the stumps where all his fingers had been chopped off. The man's other hand was nailed to the linoleum flooring, the fingers also missing, the arm smashed to bits at the elbow so the forearm protruded at an impossible angle from the body. Impossible if you're alive, I mean. When the tech moved I saw the feet lying flat against the floor, the ankles smashed and both feet also nailed to the floor.

“Different pattern with the fingers,” a CSU tech said. “Hand on the door, somebody just whacked it off with one blow. Probably used this.” Pointing at a meat cleaver on the Formica countertop. “But this hand…first they nailed it down. Roofing nails, I'd say. Zinc heads. Then Joey here—”

“Joey?” I said. “You've got an ID?”

“Tom, Dick, Joey, what's the difference? They started out, they took off one finger at a time. The other two, in the living room, shotgun with no hesitation. Didn't even have weapons, but whoever came in here, they wanted something only from Joey here. Did his teeth first. Then,
near as I can tell without running some DNA and blood analysis, this guy's hand? It's been chewed on.

“Chewed?” Kyle said. “He trying to fight off the horror?”

“Nah. He's already nailed down. My guess? A dog.”

“A dog,” Kyle said. “Jesus. I always think I've heard it all.”

The tech placed a latex-gloved finger under the body's jaw, turned it so I could see his mouth.

Bits of teeth and bone.

“Teeth first, or last?” another CSU tech said. “But not random, I'd say.”

“Bled out from both hands and mouth, small amount from the feet. They left this guy alive long enough to find what they wanted. Then they put the shotgun against his back, wham. Random?”

“These aren't gangbangers out to get revenge for some
vato
humping another
vato
's sister. This is deliberate.”

“Why are you so sure about that?” I said, done with my digital photographs.

“Well, I'm not. But first off, there's the familiar death card.
La Bruja
warns all snitches and rats and witnesses.
No me jodas
. Plus, in seven years working homicides, I've seen all kinds of mutilations, this just has the smell of deliberate torture, you know what I mean, lady?”

I did.

I went into the living room.

Sensory overload. Not the shotgun pattern. Nine double-ought pellets, bloody holes splattered across each man's shirt. The pattern tight, the shotgun probably no more than five feet away.

Not the pattern, nor the blood. Not the missing fingers. Just every detail of the room:

The woman and child had been irrelevant to the killers. I worked extra hard shutting down my gut feelings, shooting one picture after another.

Kyle moved next to me, his mouth to my ear.

“Guy was our inside man. Three years it took to get him inside. Now he's just toast.”

Rental house furniture with a busy tan and rust fabric that wouldn't show stains, the kind of junk you buy at a chain discount furniture outlet, no payment for one year, no interest for two. Five-foot-long faux brass coffee table, the mirrored top crazed with age. Flat black assemble-it-yourself entertainment center with expensive flat-screen TV and surround-sound speakers and DVD equipment. Biker and car magazines everywhere, stacks of porn tapes and DVDs.

I shot over a hundred images. Different aperture, different times. Had to mount my flash on the Nikon shoe for the body in the corner. Enough. I went out to the front yard, leaned against a TPD car in the driveway, hands down in front, holding the Nikon while I tried a mantra, to get the whole sensory data out of my system, I couldn't leave the crime scene unless I started reclaiming myself before I drove away. I can't do this work much longer, a thought which had distracted me a lot these days, distracted me now so that I didn't hear Kyle until he came beside me.

“You all right?” Kyle said.

“Smiles and cries,” I said finally.

“
Cries and Whispers?
” he said.

Out of my mantra, halfway between curious and irritated. He mistook it for confusion. “An Ingmar Bergman film, right?” he said.

“No.
Training Day
. Denzel takes this new detective, Ethan Hawke, to Scott Glenn's house, Hawke's over-
loaded with some PCP Denzel made him smoke, but Hawke says that's what the streets are. Smiles and cries. How you've got to learn to hide them.”

“Don't watch many cop movies. What do you see on this street?”

Typical South Tucson street. Small stucco bungalows on small lots, fencing everywhere, all the windows with wrought-iron bars. Old cars, furniture, discarded toys, even clothing, strewn around some of the yards. Half a block away a large Dodge pickup sprawled across a front lawn, the hood up, the car boom box speakers thundering.

“I don't see any people,” I said finally.

“Hiding. They all know that
maras
have been here. We'll do a house-to-house survey, but nobody'll know anything, they didn't see or hear anything. They don't want to be slaughtered, either.”

“This gang, these
maras,
are they really that savage?”

“You've been inside, you've seen the slaughter. What do you think?”

“The death card,” I said. “Who's this
La Bruja
?”

“No idea.”

“And the threat.
No me jodas
. Where'd
that
come from?”

“Border slang. My theory? You know that movie
Heat
?”

“I thought you didn't watch cop movies.”

“The bank shootout. Pure adrenaline, watching that scene. Anyway, there's this grungy guy who's part of the early crew that robs the armored truck.”

“Waingro,” I said.

“Yeah. Well, he's holding a nine mil on the three armored car guys, who are stupefied out of their brains by the accident and robbery. Waingro, he's pure psycho. He says to one of the guards, ‘Don't fuck with me. You want to fuck with me?' And kills the guard. These
maras,
they're like all gangbangers, they've got the director's cut of movies like
Scarface
. They get off on all the movie
psychos. Anyway. That's my theory about these cards. So what are you doing at this crime scene, anyway?”