Laying Down the Paw (22 page)

“Let me guess. Derek told you?”

“Of course. That guy's worse than the women at my hair salon. I'm tempted to buy him a stylist's chair and one of those old-fashioned hair dryers so he can sit under it and blah-blah-blah all day.”

I didn't consider Derek so much a gossip as a tattletale and an ass-kisser. One false move on my part and he went running to the chief to discredit me and score brownie points. “Can you get me a replacement car?”

“Honey, I can do anything.” She turned to her computer, hit a few keys, and consulted the screen. “Three-oh-one is available.”

“Is that the Barf-mobile?”

“Mm-hm.”

Car 301 had worn shock absorbers and suffered a perpetual alignment problem, meaning it swayed and bounced and shimmied like those dance teams on
America's Got Talent
. More than one criminal prone to car sickness had filled the back floorboards with the contents of his stomach. One had even tossed up a latex balloon filled with cocaine.

“There's nothing else?”

“Not unless you want to go on bike patrol. I can get you a nice Schwinn with a banana seat, a flowered basket, and a shiny bell.” She made flicking motions with her thumb. “Ching-ching.”

Damn.

I let out a long breath. “Guess I'll take the Barf-mobile.”

She unlocked a cabinet behind her, exposing a pegboard with rows of hooks and keys, and retrieved the set for car 301, holding them out to me. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

She cocked her head. “I'm assuming you'll need a new laptop, too?”

I nodded and she slid a clipboard onto the counter with a property damage form attached. I snatched a pen from the cup on the counter, completed the form, and returned the clipboard to her.

Melinda stood and went to another locked cabinet, where she pulled out a brand-new black laptop and padded computer bag.
Cool.
New equipment. Looked like getting your ass kicked by a twister had some advantages.

She handed the laptop and bag to me. “You know the drill. Don't download any new programs to it. Don't use it for personal purposes. Don't upload photos of yourself naked to the hard drive.”

“Got it.”

As I took the laptop from her, my eyes spotted the police sketch of the possible murder suspect tacked to the bulletin board behind her.

Holy guacamole.

Now I knew why the guy at the liquor store seemed familiar. He looked just like the guy in the sketch. Well, except for the cowlick. But a detail like that would be easy for an eyewitness to miss, especially when she only saw the potential suspect in motion and caught just a quick glimpse.

As I stood there, mouth gaping, the door to Captain Leone's office opened behind Melinda. Chief Garelik stepped out, along with Detective Jackson.

“We need some movement on the murder case,” Garelik barked at Leone and Jackson. “Soon. The damn media's breathing down my neck demanding to know why we haven't been able to identify a suspect yet. They're playing things up like we've got some kind of drug war going on in Fort Worth.”

Detective Jackson's lips pursed. “We're doing our best, sir.”

Chief Garelik turned his charm on me now. “Officer Luz. Good God a'mighty! Next time a tornado's bearing down on you have the sense to pull into a safe place. Those cruisers don't come cheap and we've got enough idiots out on the street without our own officers adding to it.”

He didn't wait for me to reply, instead pushing past me to head out the door.

Jackson's eyes met mine. “Always nice to start the workweek with an ass-chewing, isn't it?”

I offered her an empathetic chin lift. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Is it important? I'm swamped.”

“It's important.”

“All right, then.” She waved me to follow her down the hall to her digs. The chief might not trust my judgment, but it was flattering to know Detective Jackson did.

She slid into her rolling chair behind her desk, while I closed the door and took a seat in one of her wing chairs. “When I was patrolling on foot after the tornado Saturday, I ran into a gang looting the Bag-N-Bottle liquor store on Berry Street.”

“You're not the only one,” she said. “We had gangs hit a Radio Shack and a jewelry store, too. To be expected. Criminals see an opportunity, they're going to take it.”

Her tone was short, telling me to get to the point.

“One of the men who l-looted the store looked like the police sketch of the man who'd been seen in Forest Park.”

She leaned forward now, putting her hands on her desk. “This is getting interesting now.”

“Here's the thing,” I said. “The guy was the only one who didn't p-pull a gun on me. In fact, he defused the situation. He didn't give off a violent vibe.”

She raised a shoulder. “Just because someone doesn't draw on a cop doesn't mean he wouldn't willingly kill a civilian, especially if he had a good reason to.”

“True.” Still, the guy had shared beef jerky with Brigit. Even if the snack was stolen, it was still a sweet gesture, wasn't it? “I noticed the guy had one of those wallets with the chain that attaches to his pants. Do you think the chain that was used in Samuelson's attack in Forest Park could have been that type of chain?”

She cocked her head. “I think it's a distinct possibility.” She picked up her phone receiver. “Is the guy still in lockup or has he been released already?”

“He was never arrested.”

“Why not?”

“Because they weren't cooperating and backup wasn't able to get there in time to help me. I couldn't take in four men by myself. I had no choice but to let them walk off.”

She dropped her phone back into the cradle.
Clunk.

I pulled out my cell phone. “I got a photograph of them, though.” I pulled up the picture and showed it to her. The man in question was the shortest of the bunch. He walked to their left and slightly apart from the others.

She heaved a sigh. “All it shows are the backs of their heads.”

An angry flush warmed my cheeks. “Well, I couldn't very well take a picture when they were facing me. For one, I had my gun in my hands. And for two, they might have shot me.”

She raised a conciliatory palm. “I didn't mean to rub you the wrong way, Officer Luz. I realize you did the best you could under the circumstances. All I'm saying is that the photo doesn't help much.”

I took a breath to calm myself and sat back in my chair.

“Any idea who the guy might be?” the detective asked. “Or any of the men with him?”

“The guy who looks like the murder suspect wore a white hoodie with a black tornado on it.” I went on to tell her that I'd spent an hour on the Internet last night, trying to track down the logo or mascot on the hoodie. “There's a brand of vacuum named after the tornado, as well as a protein shake. The tornado is a mascot for a number of high schools and colleges from as far south as Key Largo, Florida, to Anoka, Minnesota, and even way out in Washington State.”

Her lips pursed again. “So what you're saying is that the hoodie, and our suspect, could be from anywhere.”

My ire began to rise again but I tamped it down. The detective was only stating facts. No need to get my knickers in a twist.

“Wouldn't the odds be greater that he'd be from somewhere close?” I suggested. “Texline High School has a tornado for a mascot.” The small town was located in the panhandle, just south of the Oklahoma line on the Texas-New Mexico border. “So does Texas State Technical College.” The college had numerous campuses throughout the state. “Ball High in Galveston also has a tornado for a mascot.”

“The Golden Tors,” Jackson said, nodding. “I drove past the school once on summer vacation. I remember thinking a hurricane would've made more sense than a tornado.”

Galveston Island had suffered a massive hurricane in 1900 that killed over 6,000 people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Beyond tragic. The seawall was put into place thereafter, to protect the island from future storm surges. More recently, Hurricane Ike, which struck Galveston in September of 2008, claimed over three dozen lives. Okay, maybe I could see why the high school wouldn't want to have a hurricane as a mascot. Maybe it would have been better to avoid storm references all together—call themselves the Sharks or maybe something more original like the Jellyfish or the Sunburns.

Jackson pulled a pen and legal pad from her desk drawer to take notes. “What else can you tell me about these looters?”

“One was Asian with a spiky neck tattoo. Another was a black guy with lots of muscles and one of those swirly designs cut into his hair.” I circled a finger over my ear to indicate the location of the design. “The last guy looked to be Latino. He had pointed features and a thin mustache and beard.”

Jackson tapped the point of her pen on the pad. “So we've got a guy of apparent mixed race, a black guy, an Asian, and a Latino. Sounds like the kind of diverse group they'd feature in a brochure for military recruitment. The only thing missing is the white boy.” She jotted down a few notes before looking up at me again. “You file an incident report?”

“I filed one online Saturday night.” After spending a half hour curled up on my couch, crying. “But I didn't put it together until just now that the guy in the hoodie resembled the man in the sketch.”

“We need to get crime scene techs over to the Bag-N-Bottle ASAP.”

“It's unlikely they'll find any fingerprints for the murder suspect,” I said. “He was wearing gloves. The others were, too.”

Her brows rose. “That so? Maybe he's already got a record and doesn't want to get caught. And even if they wore gloves, it's still possible he or one of his cohorts left a print before they put them on. If we can find one of them, maybe he'll lead us to the guy we're after.”

She picked up her phone again and punched a button, relaying the information to someone in forensics and requesting they send a team to the Bag-N-Bottle immediately. When she hung up, she hit some keys on her computer keyboard, pulling up my report. She read through it and cut her eyes my way. “‘
The fourth suspect exuded an aura of despair and melancholy that seemed to run as deep as his soul?'
What the hell kind of report is that?”

I shrugged. “I'd just faced down death. I was feeling poetic.”

She exhaled a long breath and waved for me to come around to her side of the desk. “Bring your chair and laptop with you. This may take a while.”

I dragged the wing chair and my computer around her desk. Brigit followed me, flopping down at our feet to take a nap.

Jackson gave Brigit a scratch behind the ears. “Hey, puppy.”

Brigit responded with a
swish-swish
of her tail.

The detective maneuvered her computer mouse and addressed me while gazing at her screen. “You familiar with Gangnet?”

“A little.” I knew Gangnet was a database maintained by the Tarrant County District Attorney's Gang Prosecution Unit to share information on gang activity in the state, but I'd never had reason to access it before. I told the detective as much.

“Well, you'll learn it now,” she said. “I want you to help me look through the database and see if you spot any of the men from the Bag-N-Bottle. Of course the fact that the group was interracial is unusual and may make it harder to track them down.”

She went on to tell me that most gangs tended to form within a single race. Latinos made up Tango Blast, the state's fastest-growing gang, as well as the Texas Syndicate, the Texas Mexican Mafia, the Latin Kings, and Barrio Azteca, a particularly dangerous gang with ties to drug cartels. The Aryan Brotherhood operated in the state, along with a support group who called themselves the Solid Wood Soldiers. Needless to say, whites made up these gangs. Whites also made up the majority of the membership in the Hells Angels and, despite the Spanish name, the Bandidos. The biker gangs often coordinated charity events to gain favor with the public and put a fresh patina on their tarnished images. Asian gangs included the Asian Boys and Asian Pride. The black gangs were more creative with their names. Hoova Crips. Bustin Heads Daily. Untamed Gorillaz. Playas Afta Cash. There was even a gang called the Fuck You Clique.

How charming.

Still, while gangs tended to separate along racial lines and used to engage in often violent rivalries, they'd recently learned they could sometimes profit by working together. Members of the Aryan Brotherhood had even set aside their racism—temporarily—to engage in crimes with members of other racial groups.

“We've seen more of these gangs teaming up,” Jackson said. “It's possible the four men you saw are members of different gangs and joined up solely to do some looting.”

During the police academy, the instructors had informed us that gangs were such a problem in the big cities of Texas that the state had formed the Texas Anti-Gang (TAG) Tactical Operations Center in Houston. The team included representatives from the DEA, Homeland Security, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the ATF, Houston city police, the Harris County Sheriff's Department, U.S. Marshals, and the Harris County DA's office.

Gangs were ranked by the Department of Public Safety under a three-tiered “Threat Index” that took into consideration eleven factors including, among other things, the gang's links to drug cartels, the type and frequency of crimes committed by the gang's members, the level of violence, the prevalence of the gang throughout the state, whether juveniles were involved, the gang's organizational effectiveness, the extent to which the gang was involved in human trafficking, and the threat posed to law enforcement. Gangs who posed a threat to law enforcement only if fleeing apprehension were considered a lower threat than those gangs who intentionally targeted members of law enforcement.