El Gavilan (19 page)

Pouting, Shawn stormed to his room. He never got to say good-bye to Rosie. He never got to cross that borderline again. Never got to taste her mouth; to again taste Rosie there and kiss her with that taste on both their lips. Never again got to comb his fingers through her long, glistening black hair.

His mother found a lawyer and filed for divorce within six hours of their plane hitting the tarmac back there in the flatlands.

A couple of days later, she learned it was a moot point.

Sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning, Jeff O’Hara had put the snout of a.45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger. They found him with a framed family photograph clutched in his other hand.

TWENTY SEVEN

Shawn looked up. Tell Lyon, crisp and refreshed-looking, was standing outside his cell. Lyon’s black uniform was pressed and still reminded Shawn of some Nazi storm trooper’s togs. But now Lyon was wearing black cowboy boots in lieu of the standard black, high-polish dress shoes his deputies wore.

“Least someone got some sleep, from the looks of it,” Shawn said. His mouth tasted like someone else’s ashtray.

Tell said, “I hear Able already phoned you and gave you a heads-up on your status. As I’m sure Hawk told you, we’re kicking you loose shortly.”

“Can’t say I’m sorry to go, but I am surprised,” Shawn said. “I mean, a few hours ago, the worry from you two seemed to be protecting me from Walt Pierce.”

“It was a real concern for a time,” Tell said. “You can thank Able Hawk. He and his men found enough irrefutable evidence of your innocence in Thalia Ruiz’s murder to placate even Sheriff Pierce. I think you’re okay now on that front—the homicide.”

“You say that like maybe there’s some other front where I’m not so fine,” Shawn said, forehead wrinkled.

Tell shrugged and handed Shawn a bag edgewise through the bars. “Your personal effects. And some clippings from the area newspapers. You might as well read them now, Shawn. Digest them and prepare yourself. See what your fourth estate brethren have been saying about you. Or conjecturing, in some cases.”

Shawn scowled. “Pretty bad?”

“Sucks to be you. New Austin, in most ways that count, is still a small town, Shawn. Was me, I’d cut my losses and get out of this part of Ohio. The reach on these articles, fortunately for you, can’t be far. The local papers—other than your own, which is silent on this story for obvious reasons—they don’t even have proper Web sites yet, so this episode shouldn’t dog you in terms of eventual Google searches kicking up old bad press.”

Tell stepped back from Shawn’s cell. “Another twenty minutes or so, we’ll have the paperwork wrapped up and you’ll be free to go home. At least for the present time.”

“Present time?”

“I haven’t cleared you in my own mind of suspicion of rape. That Rope.”

Frowning, Shawn said, “You really ought to think about putting up walls or stalls around the toilets, Chief.”

Tell shook his head. “We did, we’d have the only jail on earth with them. This is supposed to be hell, Shawn. Just be glad you get to walk out of it. At least for a time.”

The reporter nodded. “Thanks for what you did, Tell. What you tried to do for me … what you protected me from.”

Tell said, “Billy’s stuck around an extra hour before going off shift. He’s volunteered to drop you at your place. You should take him up on that offer.”

“Thanks, but Christ, it’s only two blocks’ walk,” Shawn said. “I’ll hoof it. Need the air after this shitty night.”

“There are a couple of newspaper photographers and reporters camped out front,” Tell said. “One TV news crew too. And some demonstrators—about twelve Latinos out there, marching with signs and calling for your head. They look pissed.” Tell didn’t like the way he was riding Shawn.

“Shit.”

Tell said, “So Billy will take you out back and get you in a cruiser inside the sally port. You duck down when he drives outside and you’ll get away clean. For now. But tensions are running high in the Latino community right now. Time-bomb stuff. If I was you, Shawn, I’d think hard about leaving the state of Ohio. At least for a while.” Tell was still weighing Shawn’s likelihood to have committed rape.

“I’ll think about that,” Shawn said sourly. “Thanks again, Chief.”

* * *

Billy swung into the lot behind Shawn’s building. He gestured at the ATM mounted on the wall of the bank across the parking lot. “If I was you,” Billy said, “I’d plant a kiss on that camera on that gizmo. Sucker saved you from Walt Pierce, you know, you lucky friggin’ Mick.”

“I may do that,” Shawn said. “Thanks for everything, Billy. You made it bearable, buddy.”

“No sweat, Shawn. Stay in touch, brother.”

Shawn got out, stretched in the sunlight, then trotted up the fire escape, invigorated—acutely exhilarated to be free.

He unlocked his back door, then frowned when the door stalled against something inside—banging up against some barricade. Like that, his good mood vanished.

Shawn carefully reached around the door, groping. He felt a chair leg and moved it back, at the same time pushing the door further open.

Broken dishes and drinking glasses were strewn everywhere. His kitchen sink reeked of piss and all of the cabinet doors had been torn off.

His sofa and matching chair had been sliced open; stuffing and batting were scooped out and strewn around the room.

A word was spray-painted on the wall above the ruins of his couch:
Violador
.

The carnage went all the way back to the bedroom. And some items were missing: his television and DVD players, many DVDs. His stereo, armfuls of CDs and his personal computer were gone too.

The sheets and mattresses on his bed were sliced to ribbons.

A pile of shit lay on one of his pillows.

A scrawled note lay on the foot of his ruined bed. “Be glad you weren’t here, cocksucker. Not after the way you
joder
that sister,
pendejo
. Even if you didn’t kill her, if you treat her better, she be alive still, maybe. This no over, asshole.”

Illiterate cocksuckers.

Shawn cursed and went back to his kitchen. His phone had been ripped from the wall. The receiver evidently had been used to smash the glass front of his oven door, as it lay broken across the top of his gas range.

He fished out his cell phone, then saw that it had died without a charge while he had been in jail. Cursing again, Shawn slipped out the back door and clanged down the fire escape, headed back to the police station to file a report.

An old red Isuzu pickup truck rolled by. Two young Latino men sat up front. Three more were sitting in the truck’s bed, leaning over the side and gesturing at Shawn. The ones in back wore muscle shirts and matching red bandanas. The driver honked the horn and the Latinos waved at him, screaming things at him in Spanish. A
narcocorrido
blasted from the car stereo. One of the teens raised a baseball bat, pointing at the bat and then pointing at Shawn’s head.

The journalist sprinted toward the police station.

TWENTY EIGHT

Tell hauled himself out his command cruiser and locked it up. The ball fields were to be used for the coming Latino Festival, so the teams were crowding in extra summer games.

It was already muggy and it wasn’t yet ten
A.M.
Tell walked over toward the ball diamonds. He looked around again, searching for fresh inspiration. Far off, down the unmowed hill, he could see the tree where Thalia Ruiz’s body had been found. A few strands of broken crime scene tape were twisted in the twigs there, twirling in the muggy wind.

The backs of houses fronted the parking lot, but high hedgerows and privacy fences had been positioned to obscure the view of the gravel lot. There would be no helpful hints or clues coming from the homeowners.

Tell wandered over to the biggest of the ball diamonds. A mosquito league game was underway. Some screaming parents sat fanning themselves in the stands. A few solitary old men sipped Coca-Cola from waxed paper cups, watching the game. The bleachers’ backs were to the distant field where Thalia’s body had been dropped, so no sports spectators were going to be of likely use to Tell.

Apart from the bleachers and backstops—the dingy little dugouts—the only structure on the sports field was a small, cinderblock concession stand. Tell leaned against a fence next to a youngish man who held what looked to Tell to be a fairly high-end video camera with a directional mic mount.

The players went back to their respective dugouts between innings and the man turned off his camera, lowered it and massaged his neck and shoulder.

Tell said, “That looks like too much rig for you to be just a proud parent.”

The man glanced over, saw Tell’s uniform, and straightened.

“Right. I’m with Sports Images,” the stranger said. “Well, I
am
Sports Images. Kind of a one-man band. I record youth sports matches and games on spec. Work with the Kid’s Association and local schools’ athletic boosters. I burn the games onto DVDs, then sell ’em to proud parents who can’t afford a rig like mine. Or I try to sell them. High school and college scouters come around for them once in a while too.”

“Making a living?”

“Not bad.”

“You usually shoot from this angle?”

“Mostly,” the man said, looking curious. “You get each kid’s turn at bat … maybe grab a few reaction shots of parents in the bleachers behind the batters. And damn few of the kids drive one low and fast and over the head of the pitcher. You know, where they could drive one right into my lens before I could duck.”

“Digital camera?”

“Oh yeah.”

Tell said, “Can you let me stand there a moment?”

The sports photographer stepped aside. Tell moved into his place. The angle was right. When the batter was absent and the catcher in motion, Thalia’s “death tree” was in line of sight, as well as some buildings far behind the tree.

Tell moved back and said, “Please tell me you were standing just there last Friday, late morning.”

“I was.”

“What time would you say?”

“Oh, maybe ten
A.M.
to half past noon.”

“I need a copy of everything that you shot. It could be evidence in a murder case.”

The photographer said, “Oh,
that
case. Sure.” He paused. “Usually I get paid thirty bucks a disc.”

“I’ll pay you. When can I pick it up?”

The man handed Tell a business card with his address. “Drop by anytime after one. I’ll have it for you, Chief.”

TWENTY NINE

Shawn didn’t have the stomach to clean his place, so he got a couple of garbage bags and stuffed them full with the clothes the vandals hadn’t slashed, painted or pissed on. He gathered other mementos that survived their raid. He moved them into the newspaper office, along with his one, untouched pillow and a big old ugly afghan that his long-dead grandmother had knitted.

He cleared his desk, and, starved for sleep, climbed atop it and pulled the blanket over himself. The newspaper’s only advertising rep—the only other employee who regularly visited the office—might venture in at some point, but likely not for several more hours. Shawn promised himself a couple of hours’ sleep, then he’d tackle his apartment. Call a locksmith … get his place better secured.

He was stretched out on his hard desk, feet dangling off the end, uncomfortable, but still close to sleep, when the phone rang.

“Yeah?”

“Shawn? Jesus, but you’re the scarce one. It’s Able Hawk. As you’re in the office, I take it that for at least the moment you’re still fucking working press?”

“For the moment, yeah, Sheriff. Or I think so.”

“Well, get your ass to where I am, kid. This is either one to rebuild your godless career, or one to go out on. In other words, a hot fucking scoop.”

“What’s going on?”

“Mexican meth lab raid. Come on by my HQ, pronto. We’re suiting up now and we’ll roll without you. Make it here in ten, and you can go in with me and the second wave.”

“On my way.”

* * *

The lot was full of trucks, sheriff’s cruisers and Scioto County squad cars and vans.

Able Hawk was stepping into a white plastic hazmat suit. “Shawn!” He waved and said, “Scioto County, they’re the quadrant specialists in meth lab cleanups.” Able winked at Shawn. “Hot as can be, these fuckin’ suits, but what can you do? These meth sites, they’re like fuckin’ Love Canal, like Chernobyl.” He checked his watch. “Where the hell is Lyon?”

Shawn accepted a white hazmat suit. “Tell’s in on this too?”

“Interagency cooperation, for the record,” Able said. “Presupposing the fucking knight errant arrives in time.”

Shawn got both legs in the suit and started hiking it up around his torso. “So this stuff is as dangerous as they say?”

“Worse, Shawn. My grandson, he was showin’ me this Web site the other night called ‘Faces of Meth.’ Auschwitz-thin twenty-year-olds with no teeth. They look sixty. Depending on the mix, this shit can contain stuff taken from lithium batteries, rubbing alcohol, lighter fluid, road flare scrapings, phosphorus, kitchen match scrapings, ammonia, gasoline, Drano, peroxide, battery acid, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid, among other rancid shit never meant to eat.”

Shawn zipped up his protective suit. “Really? All that crap?”

“First wave of cops who dealt with these shit piles?” Able waved a hand and wrinkled his nose. “Unlucky bastards went in with nothing more than rubber gloves.” Able Hawk pulled on a big pair of white gloves that went up past his elbows. “Those bastards are now dying in droves from hideous kinds of cancer and lung diseases. Taking these Morales brothers down is doing God’s work.”

Tell Lyon skidded into the parking lot, his command cruiser kicking up a cloud of dust.

Able Hawk waved. “Get your suit on, Tell. We need to haul ass out of here.”

Tell shook his head. “Can’t, Able. I really want to, and I appreciate the interagency nod. I really do. But something else is up.”

Able scowled. “Thalia?”

“Tenuous, but a possible lead, yes.”

“You’ll keep me on the page, Lyon?”

“Absolutely.”

Able said, “Loan me your notepad and pen.” He scrawled down an address. “Let’s not bag that interagency beard, huh, Lyon? I still want that cozy patina of New Austin and Horton County law enforcement cooperation on this meth bust. Just to motivate the other municipal chiefs, like I told you a while back. Send one of your brightest lesser lights to that address. Do it in say, thirty minutes so he don’t beat us there and get in over his head. Whoever you send can be your proxy. Just don’t send that fat one, yeah? Billy? We don’t have spare suits that big.”