Shattered Glass (37 page)

“Sit down.” Luis glowered and leaned back in his chair. I obeyed the order, but not without petulantly scraping the chair hard against the concrete floor. Luis pushed both hands through his hair. “It’s always these kids with you. I should have expected

it. But look, I get the money you give them, and the calls to DHS (child welfare), and I even get you shelling out for this kid’s lawyer. But all three of them living with you? Kids of men we work to put away? One of those kids is a killer; maybe they all are.”

I crossed my arms over the table and leaned forward, my voice a loud, angry growl. “You’re not listening to me. For once in my fucking life, I’m not looking for a criminal. I don’t care if he did it. Get that? I don’t give a fucking shit. And if I lose everything because of this, so be it. I’m doing what’s ri—” I trailed off as I lost Luis’s interest. He was looking to my right.

Peter, Darryl and my father stood in the doorway.

Desmond Glass cast a disapproving curl of his lip at me.

Darryl had the opposite kind of grin. And Peter? Peter’s smile held the sadness and despair I felt, and something else, too. I didn’t know what it meant, but it elicited a profound warmth in my chest.

The table spanned the majority of the room, and the evidence lay in piles covering almost every inch of it. Peter and Darryl were reaching left and right, exchanging items to be looked at and discarded.

We were tightly slotted into our cookie package, three on one side—if my father could be counted as being on a ‘side’—and two on the other. Peter was to my left, Desmond in the corner to Peter’s left, and Darryl and Luis across from us. Elbow room was nonexistent, which was unfortunate because Peter’s kept brushing up against mine, drawing attention to his pale, freckled

arm and making me lose track of why we were there. I kept wanting to trace through the soft copper hair dusting from elbow to wrist.

But my predicament wasn’t half as uncomfortable as Luis’s.

When Darryl stretched for an item across Luis, he made sure to brush against him: a shoulder against a shoulder, his hand skimming Luis’s, his face just close enough to be awkward. My partner’s responses were like a spastic attack. He scooted sideways, yanked his hand away, jerked his head back. I spent so much time laughing at Luis’s reactions that I was instantly aware when Darryl suddenly lost interest in pestering my partner. A frown passed over his elfin face. He leaned across the table and began to push baggies around, lifting them in quick succession.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

Luis removed his palm from his brow, his eyes darting after Darryl’s hands. “Something you don’t see?” “The beer place,” Darryl responded absently.

Peter sat up and began helping. “Right. I remember that.” “Beer place doesn’t help much.” Neither of them looked at me.

“Not beer,” Peter said, “Lager.”

“Yeah, Lager. That was it. It’s not here.” “Lager? Was that a name or an inventory item?” I started reading through the papers and tax forms they’d dropped.

“Neither,” Darryl said, pulling a large pile in front of him and following my lead with slow reading. “I just remember Rabbit ‘n’

me having this laugh about how they probably did really well at Oktoberfest because we saw the address was on the mall, and it said barn lager. Which probably didn’t sell at any other time of

the year.” The mall must’ve meant the 16th Street Mall, where every year an Oktoberfest celebration was held. “Like who drinks beer from a barn?”

Luis and I both wrote down ‘barn lager’. For some reason it seemed familiar to me, and I kept circling the word barn.

“I think there’s more stuff missing here,” Peter said and chewed his bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember what they were.”

“This was everything you found in the safety deposit box?” My father finally made a noise, in the way of clearing his throat. “Hypothetically.”

My gaze found the ceiling and glared. “Hypothetically speaking, is this all that was in the safety deposit box?” “Yeah. Except the money.” Darryl said. Peter slumped back in his chair and nodded.

“And there was no indication of another box?” “I didn’t find one,” Peter said.

“Mine was empty.” Darryl shrugged.

“You both had one?” They looked at Luis as he leaned forward, and both of them nodded in answer. “And the other boy?”

I could see comprehension slip slowly over Peter. Moments later he picked up his phone. “Hey, kiddo… Yeah, we’ll be home soon… Okay… Okay… I’ll call Dr. Sherman later about —… Yes, I’ll call her later about your prescription… We’ll work it out… Listen, I—… Cai… Cai, stop talking for—… Cai!” Peter rubbed the spot between his eyes. “I need to know if Joe got you a safety deposit box?… Cai? Are you there?…” Peter looked up and nodded, slowly. “No, I’m not going to look into

it… Yeah, I promise.” He grabbed his pencil and wrote the name of the police credit union and pushed the paper to me.

“Okay, no one is going to… We can talk about it when I get home… Me, too.”

When Peter hung up, there was a collective inhale as Luis picked up the phone to obtain a search warrant for Cai’s safety deposit box. However, it was late and there wasn’t enough of an emergency to awaken a judge. Luis came up empty-handed, but with news that squeezed the breath from my lungs.

“They want probable cause to get into the box,” he said.

Christ. Unless Cai gave permission to examine what was in the box—and thereby maybe incriminating himself further—Luis was going to have to tell the DA the truth about the evidence at Alvarado’s house. We’d have to explain that Peter set Alvarado up and that we covered up that information.

I should have been forced to wear a full body condom, because I had now completely fucked my partner, Peter and myself.

“I’ll speak to my clients alone now,” my father said. His inherent understanding the dilemma was a tribute to his skills as a criminal lawyer.

“What’s going on?” Peter asked, looking to me for an answer.

“We need a warrant to get into that safety deposit box. In order to apply for a warrant, we need to have permission or show probable cause. If Cai won’t give permission, the only way we can show probable cause is if we show there’s a likelihood of more evidence being stashed in there. Evidence that either of you, or Joe or Cai hid there.”

“Cai being arrested isn’t enough to look through it?” Luis shook his head. “Not unless they could show he used the box to conceal evidence.”

“As in, he visited the box immediately after Iss’s death.

That’ll take time, searches through security footage,” I explained at their blank looks. “Warrants aren’t all inclusive.” Peter worried his bottom lip hard enough that I saw the imprint of his teeth. “This is stupid. Cai can just—” “Don’t say anymore,” Desmond ordered, rising from his metal throne. Peter closed his mouth with a snap.

After that, the room stifled us all in an uncomfortable silence.

Peter scraped at the tattoo on his hand. Darryl flicked his

thumbnail against the back of his teeth. My father took in deep breaths and released them from his nose. Luis and I went about packing up evidence. My monotonous voice read item after item while my partner pencil check-marked the paperwork.

I was too busy trying to solve Peter’s problem to actually pay attention to what I was doing. Finding a solution was like trying to pinpoint the original design in a moving kaleidoscope.

Angelica and my father were going to encourage Cai to deny us access to the box. And Cai wasn’t going to take much convincing. He didn’t seem to want us in that box. Whatever was in there could link him to any number of crimes. It wouldn’t be much of a dilemma for Peter. He’d go to jail to protect Cai. It would be moot. We’d get into the box anyway. It would just take longer. Or maybe we wouldn’t. My father would side with Angelica in fighting a warrant on the box. She was a good lawyer. Either way, I couldn’t stop Luis from arresting Peter at this point, even if I begged.

“Item 43: Mexican Passport number…”

“Have you found all the people?” Darryl asked. Since I was off the case, and not entirely in the loop, I looked to Luis to answer. The rest followed suit.

He took the bag from me and checked off the list before adding it to the box. “Most of this group,” he nodded to the table. “Some of the others we tracked down were smuggled months and years ago. We haven’t had a chance to interview all of them. They all have forged passports and green cards, unlike these people,” he held up a passport.

Peter’s eyes were riveted to the evidence on the table. “Is that what Joe was doing? Forging green cards?”

“Joe and Alvarado, among others, near’s we can tell,” Luis said.

“So he wasn’t selling people?”

Luis was quiet, but all of us were staring at him expectantly.

Except my father, who was taking notes on his legal pad.

Fifteen-hundred dollars an hour, and he couldn’t afford a fucking laptop? “People were offered forged green cards for a hefty price,” Luis said. “They thought the money went to the cartels. If they couldn’t pay upfront, they smuggled in drugs and cash to pay part and went to work doing whatever Alvarado ordered to pay the rest. Unpaid labor for most of the men.

Prostitution for most of the younger women and children.” Darryl brought his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them, hugging his legs a little too tightly. “Why didn’t they just go back to Mexico or wherever?” He had more of the callous attitude I expected from a whore. He was jaded and flippant, but he cared more than he let on.

“If they thought the cartels were running the operation, back home was more dangerous than staying here. Cartels don’t give refunds for unsatisfied customers,” I said drily. Darryl lifted his lip in a sneer and went back to pressing his mouth into his knees. “Traffickers don’t explain the contracts, either. People don’t understand what kind of work they’re going to have to do to pay their way.”

When everything was tucked away, my partner loaded it all on a dolly and took it to the evidence room. I waited outside the door while Peter and Darryl met with my father.

I was leaning against the wall, head back and eyes closed, when the brush of a sleeve indicated someone’s presence next to

me. I lifted a lid, spotted Dave and smiled. “Thought you’d hang the other day and watch a game with me later. Where’d you disappear to?”

“Called away,” Dave explained. He rubbed the back of his neck and mimicked my position, eyes closing. “How’s the case going?”

“Just caught a break. Looks like there’s another safety deposit box.” Before I could start tapping my nervous fingers and toes, I stuck my hands in my pants pockets and crossed my ankles. It didn’t help, but at least the tapping was muted.

“Sounds like a good lead.”

“Yeah.” Dave stared at the opposite wall. His leg jittered.

The nervous energy so mirrored my feelings that I considered he had bad news for me. “You heard something from Del and Marco on the Alvarado murder?” I fished.

“Captain already tore down the target sign on your forehead, Oz.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I gotta head out. It’s late, and Marta wants KFC tonight.”

“Hey, thanks for looking over those papers the other day,” I called out as he walked away.

He turned, gave a tentative smile with a two fingered salute and walked backwards a few steps. “Sorry I couldn’t find anything.”

“Dave?” How did I thank him for standing by me? While the halls were filled with disdain at my presence, Dave hadn’t hesitated to let people know on which side he stood.

Turned out I didn’t have to thank him. “Whatever, Oz, our bromance transcends your fuckups. Rockies/Padres this Friday?” He asked loudly, by way of announcing to the entire

station where I stood in his eyes.

“Can we drink the beer this time?”

I received yet another glare from a patrolman passing by.

Dave noted it and tried to grin, but his smile wasn’t reaching his eyes.

“You and me, a six pack, and your big screen.” “It’s a date.”

“Quiet,” he yelled. “I don’t want the whole station to know I’m queer for you!”

I pulled a chuckle from the swirling depths of my throat and went back to looking casual while I waited. If I could make it through the day without Peter getting arrested, I might have to actually
thank
my father. I barely resisted shuddering at the thought.

They arrested Peter an hour later.

Bedraggled and Empathizing with a Cat. Where’s My Gun?

We had filled out paperwork for Peter’s release. The officer in charge of the arson investigation had given me an interview and us paperwork. The City Pound had given us one carry box, one demon and paperwork. The fire department had given us a list of hostels and shelters, the insurance company’s phone number and…paperwork. The entire day had added a headache, blurry vision and a cramp in my hand to the literal pain in my ass. I sat in the passenger seat, disoriented and anesthetized, my temple pressed against the car window.

It was dark and closer to morning than night by the time we journeyed home. Houses and streetlamps whizzed by in a blur of