White Tombs (11 page)

“It was a long time ago, Rita. I made some enemies in Colombia. They don’t forget. Ever. That’s all I can tell you for now.”

She picked up a small plaque that was on the mantel and quietly read the inscription.

Santana knew she had read it before because she had joked with him about it over breakfast one morning. The inscription read:

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Bertrand Russell

She turned and looked at him. “You ever think Russell was wrong about this?”

“No.”

“What makes you so damn sure? The job?”

“Among other things.”

She set the plaque down gently on the mantel and looked at him again. “This isn’t the first time they’ve come after you, is it?”

He said nothing.

“And you’re not afraid?”

He hadn’t had time to be afraid. It had all been reaction. Fight and live. Or panic and die.

“Fear leads to panic and panic is the enemy of survival,” he said. “I may be a target, Rita, but I refuse to be a victim.”

She gave a slow shake of her head. “You’re dangerous, John. To yourself and to others.”

“You going to put this in my jacket?”

“I could. And I could suspend you. Until we complete an investigation.”

He had worked with her long enough to know that she was bluffing. Still, he knew he would have to tell her more soon. He was running out of favors.

“I just gave you more information than any investigation will ever turn up, Rita. This guy, whoever he is, doesn’t exist in any data bank. Believe me. The people we’re dealing with made sure of that.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Write it off as an accident.”

“Just like that,” she said, as if she could not imagine how this whole investigation would end.

“He’ll be another John Doe down at the morgue. No one will come looking for him. Let me get back to the case.” He let her think about it before he continued. “Ask yourself this, Rita. If our roles were reversed, what would I do?”

“Dammit, John, if I let this go for now, I want to know everything when the murder book is closed on Pérez and Mendoza. No more secrets between us.”

“All right.”

She went back to the couch and sat down with a heavy sigh.

His eyes met hers and he knew immediately there was something she was holding back.

“What is it?” he asked.

She waited.

“What?” he asked again.

She looked at him for a moment longer. Then she said, “The lab found more than one set of prints on the .22 we found on Córdova.”

A fresh rush of adrenaline shot through Santana. He sat up in the leather chair.

“We also got a palm print we couldn’t run through the AFIS data base,” she said.

Santana knew that the Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems could not be searched for palm prints.

“One set of prints matches Córdova. But we got another match with a fingerprint out of San Diego.” She smiled.

“And?” Santana said.

Gamboni held the smile and her secret.

“Come on, Rita.”

“How does it feel?” she asked, obviously enjoying his frustration.

“Like hell. Now tell me.”

“You know when you apply for citizenship, you have to be fingerprinted.”

“The name,” he said with a nod.

A woman named Torres,” she said. “Angelina Torres.”

T
he next morning as Santana rode into downtown with a patrol officer, the sun’s red rays seeped through a thin bank of clouds like blood through gauze. The Crown Vic he signed out of the 11th Street lot was nothing more than a stripped down version of a squad car with the cage removed. He was certain his insurance company would write off the Explorer as a total loss, and he was thankful that he had the use of the Crown Vic. He had no time to look for a new SUV.

A northwest wind had sent the temperature plummeting faster than a skydiver without a chute. It pushed the big car to the left as he drove across the Wabasha Bridge over the Mississippi River. Small American flags atop each of the bridge supports flapped in the wind. Along the riverbank to the west, Santana could see the empty marina on Raspberry Island where the Minnesota Boat Club docked its boats in summer. At a traffic light at Plato and Wabasha he watched as an elderly black man with his right leg in a walking cast limped across the street and headed for the Health Partner’s clinic on the corner. Buffeted by a sudden gust, the old man swayed like a drunk as he moved tentatively along the sidewalk. Santana wondered if the man had broken his leg falling on an icy sidewalk, as so many senior citizens were prone to do.

Just south of the light, Del Sol pennants began appearing on lampposts. Mexican families had first immigrated to the West Side of St. Paul as early as 1900 after the original Wabasha, Robert and High bridges were completed across the Mississippi. Crop failures in the state’s sugar beet fields after World War I forced poor migrant workers to seek employment in the city. Many became permanent residents. Since the 1900s, the Mexican population had swelled in St. Paul to more than sixteen thousand.

Santana drove past the Torres de San Miguel housing project and the Boca Chica restaurant. He merged onto Cesar Chávez Avenue and then onto State Street in the Latino commercial district.

Before Gamboni had left his house last night, Santana told her that Angelina Torres and Father Thomas Hidalgo had come to see him yesterday at the station. He went over his notes with her, reviewing the conversation he’d had with Gabriela Pérez about her father and a possible Mexican connection with Rafael Mendoza.

When he finished recounting the conversation, Gamboni explained that the gun found on Córdova was reported stolen in California. He had asked her to update Baker and Hawkins and requested that they interview a short list of
El Día
employees to make sure their alibis were solid. The give and take discussion reminded Santana of how it used to be with Rita when they were partners and lovers.

The office where Angelina Torres worked was located in a converted, two-story apartment building. Santana parked in the lot out front and walked under a green canopy and in the main entrance.

A receptionist sitting behind a counter directed him to a hallway and to Angelina Torres’ small, windowless office.

“Detective Santana,” she said, standing to shake his hand.

She wore a black skirt, turquoise blouse, a thin gold necklace with a heart, and small gold earrings.

“
Tome asiento, por favor,”
she said, closing the door and pointing to a chair.

Santana sat down on a steel-legged chair with black vinyl pads opposite her desk. The walls of her office were bare except for a framed diploma from the University of Southern California. Next to him was a glass table with today’s edition of the
Pioneer Press
. One of the stories on the front page was about an unidentified illegal immigrant who stole a MnDOT truck after rendering the driver unconscious. The story went on to say that:

The man apparently lost control of the vehicle near the town of St. Croix Beach where he died in a collision with an Explorer driven by John Santana, a St. Paul homicide detective. The detective escaped serious injury.

A separate story further down the page described the deaths of nine illegal immigrants who were crammed into a pickup that crossed the median on Interstate 80 in Iowa at 2:40 a.m. and collided with a tractor-trailer. All of the victims were Hispanic men and women.

“I’ve been reading about you, Detective. Are you all right?”

The soreness in Santana’s right hand stilled throbbed with each beat of his heart. “Fine.”

“Have you found out something that might clear Rubén?”

“Not yet. I’d just like to ask you a few more questions.”

“If it will help,” she said, and sat down in a chair facing him.

He had considered bringing a tape recorder along, but figured it might intimidate Angelina Torres. He didn’t want her to know yet that she was a suspect in Rafael Mendoza’s death and possibly in Julio Pérez’s death as well. Once she was Mirandized and placed under arrest, she could get a lawyer who could derail the whole investigation.

He took out his notebook and a pen. Rather than interrogating her, Santana preferred a low-key interview so he could watch how she reacted to the questions he had mentally prepared. This would give him a chance to find out more about her background and to build rapport. He would have to rely on his intuitive skills and the training he’d had in college.

While majoring in criminology with a minor in criminal psychology, he had studied the Facial Action Coding System or FACS, based on the work of Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen. Through years of research, the two psychologists had created a taxonomy of about three thousand facial expressions. Santana had been trained to look for discrepancies between what someone said and what was signaled through facial expressions. It wasn’t a perfect science, but it gave Santana an edge.

“How long have you been in the states, Miss Torres?”

“For ten years.”

“Are your parents still living in California?”

He could tell by the way the corner of her lips drew down that they were not living in California or anywhere else.

Finally she said, “Like many of the
braceros
, they died of cancer.”

“
Lo siento
,” Santana said.

“You know Spanish, Detective, but you are not Mexican.”

“Colombian.”

A smile flickered across her face. “Do Colombians know anything about what happened to the
braceros
working in the fields?”

“I know a little something about Cesar Chávez.”

“Then you know how he organized the workers before he died. But the pesticides are still being used in California. Toxins like meta-sodium and chlorpyrifos. Workers are still not being told that a field is restricted. Employers do not provide translators when there is a complaint. When the government comes to investigate illnesses, the employer is there during the interview. The workers won’t speak up in front of them because they are afraid.”

She was remembering it all now, and the tone of her voice grew angrier.

“It is illegal not to give farm workers, even undocumented ones, breaks, toilets or drinking water. It is illegal to pay them for less than four hours of work per day and not to pay overtime. It is illegal to charge them for rides or tools. But these abuses happen all the time. If the workers complain, they are fired. They have no legal recourse. Even if they did, the companies could hire very expensive attorneys to shield them from litigation.”

Santana recalled the AFL-CIO farm worker’s flag he had seen in Córdova’s house. “So you have sympathy for the illegals.”

“Who keeps the service economy of this country running? You think the whites want to mop floors, clean toilets and flip burgers? Illegals are doing the jobs no one else wants. Businesses hire them cheap because they are afraid to join unions. Once in a while ICE closes some small business for hiring illegals. That way they can claim they are doing something. But everyone knows what’s going on. The schools, the businesses. So, yes, I have sympathy for illegals. Don’t you?”

“There are legal means of entering the country.”

She grimaced. “If you were desperate, and there was nothing for you in your own country, then you might think differently.”

“I might.”

She nodded as if to say, “I told you so.”

“What about you, Miss Torres? Are you illegal?”

She remained silent for a time before responding. “Once,” she said. “But now I have my papers and my citizenship.”

“You ever help get any illegals into the country?”

“No. I only want illegals to be treated fairly when they are here.” Her tone was calmer now, but he could hear the frustration in her voice. “Many of the young people I see in my office have tried working, but they have no rights. They see no future. Some give up and turn to crime.”

Santana remembered the Hispanic kid in the Bay Point Restaurant and the kids he had seen hanging around street corners in their baggy pants and do-rags. He wondered what he would have eventually chosen if he had not had Philip and Dorothy O’Toole to help him.

“Lot of crime out there, that’s for sure,” he said. “Citizens feel they need to protect themselves. Some of them buy guns. How about you Miss Torres? Do you own a gun?”

“No, I don’t.”

He watched Angelina Torres closely looking for any signs of deception. Because it was easier, most people lied with words rather than with their faces or body movements. Words were voluntary and could be managed, manipulated, rehearsed. Facial expressions, however, were involuntary and harder to control unless you were a con artist, actor — or politician. A suspect’s face was usually a roadmap of uncontrolled emotions. Santana knew the better a detective was at reading those emotions, the better he would be at locating the truth.

“You know,” he said, “Córdova had a gun on him when he was killed. The gun had your fingerprint on it. How do you suppose it got there?”

She let out a long breath. Let a few seconds pass. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything the day Father Hidalgo and I came to see you. But Rubén gave me a gun when I left California for Minnesota. I was driving alone and he wanted me to have it for protection. I really didn’t want to take it, but he insisted.”

“A .22 caliber?”

She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know much about guns.”

Suspects being interviewed or interrogated often manipulated their brow or forehead, so Santana looked for any signs that Angelina Torres was lying or trying to control what she said by focusing his attention on her lower jaw and mouth where it was more difficult to disguise an emotion. But she made it more difficult for him when she consciously or unconsciously looked down at her hands.

“How long ago did you give the gun to Córdova?”