Fire and Ice (26 page)

“Does he have family?” I asked.

“A wife and two young sons. They came home from school a little while ago and went inside.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Lucy thinks we should meet up at their house. She’ll ride with me. We’ll park a couple of blocks away. You do the same. That way we won’t have a collection of unfamiliar cars sitting out front to warn him away.”

Following directions, we parked on a side street two blocks away from the address on Front Street; then Jaime and I walked to
a small frame house that reminded me a lot of Ken Leggett’s place in North Bend. This house was of the same vintage and in much the same shape. We met up with Mel and Detective Caldwell on the rickety front porch, which creaked ominously beneath our combined weight. Detective Caldwell’s partner was nowhere in evidence. Once we had dispensed with introductions, Lucy knocked on the door frame. The door was opened by a dark-haired, dark-eyed little boy who couldn’t have been more than eight or nine.

“I’m Detective Caldwell,” Lucy said, holding up her badge. “Is your father here? Or your mother?”

He simply stared at her and didn’t answer. Finally he turned back into the house, letting go with a volley of rapid-fire Spanish. I picked out something that sounded like police, but that was about it. From inside a woman said something back to him in equally quick Spanish. The boy started to close the door, but Jaime Carbajal stepped forward. In the very best door-to-door salesman tradition, he put the toe of his shoe inside the door and spoke softly to the boy in what sounded like fluent Spanish. When Jaime finished, there was another long pause. At last the door was wrenched open, revealing a dark-haired young woman who shoved the boy aside and then barred our way herself.

“What do you want?” she asked, speaking slowly in heavily accented English.

“We’d like to talk to you,” Lucy began. “To ask you some questions.”

The woman shook her head. “No comprendo,” she said vehemently, even though her English, although hesitant, had been entirely understandable. She was young, probably somewhere in her early thirties. She wore a sweatshirt and a pair of threadbare jeans. Not fashionably threadbare—really threadbare. She looked
haggard and frightened. There were dark circles under her eyes, and it looked as though she might have been crying.

Jaime glanced questioningly at Lucy, who nodded imperceptibly, giving him the go-ahead to join in. Jaime spoke to the woman in Spanish once again. I picked out something that sounded like
esposo
. My foreign language skills are pretty limited. My Spanish comes from what I’ve gleaned from perusing menus in Mexican food joints like Mama’s. Even so, I believe the word
esposo
means husband.

Jaime said something else. For a moment I thought she was going to slam the door shut in our faces despite Jaime’s still intervening toe. But she didn’t. Instead, relenting, she stepped aside, held the door open, and beckoned us into the house.

We trooped into a tiny but immaculately clean living room. In one corner sat a still-warm wood-burning stove, which I suspected was the house’s only source of heat. On the wall next to it, a gold-framed picture of the Virgin Mary hung over a small table where a glass-encased candle burned. Other than the table, the only furniture consisted of a small couch, no bigger than a love seat, a single cushioned chair, and a hulking television set that looked as though it was a refugee from the eighties.

As we came into the room, a second boy, a year or so younger than the first one, hovered warily in the doorway of the next room. The woman barked an order, and the two kids scampered away, returning moments later with a mismatched pair of kitchen chairs. The woman took one of those and gestured the rest of us into the other seats while the boys sank down on the floor and huddled near their mother’s knees. There was no disguising the anxious looks on their faces.

Under most circumstances, someone as close to the investigation as the victim’s brother would never have been allowed into
that kind of interview, but we needed a translator on the spot, and if it hadn’t been for Jaime Carbajal’s presence there on the front porch, I don’t think we would have gotten anywhere near Lupe Rivera.

He mostly asked questions that were framed by Mel and Detective Caldwell, who had spent the afternoon gathering as much information as possible about Tomas Rivera. Once the suspect’s wife answered, Jaime would translate what she said while both Mel and Lucy Caldwell took copious notes.

Where was her husband? Lupe didn’t know. Was she aware he hadn’t gone to work that day? Yes, she was. Was he sick? That question produced a long thoughtful pause followed by a dubious maybe. Had she noticed anything unusual in her husband’s behavior lately? Another maybe. It didn’t surprise me that Mel and Lucy were deliberately beating around the bush, having Jaime Carbajal ask questions without giving away the bottom line—that Lupe’s husband was now the prime suspect in a homicide investigation. Even so, each time Lupe answered she glanced at her children. It seemed to me that she was deciding how she should answer based on the fact that her sons were sitting there listening.

Jaime seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. He turned to me. “If you wouldn’t mind taking the boys out of here…”

Before I could object, Mel and Lucy nodded in unison. I got the hint. It was more than a little embarrassing to be voted off homicide island by the woman of my dreams, but I set about doing what I’d been asked to do without complaint.

“I think I have a teddy bear out in the trunk of my car,” I said, holding out my hand to the younger boy. His name was Tomas. He didn’t look to be any older than six or seven. “Would you like to go see it?”

He nodded and scrambled to his feet.

“How about you?” I asked Alfonso.

“I’m too old for teddy bears,” Alfonso declared, but he got to his feet and followed Tomas and me outside. It was a good thing Alfonso didn’t want one, because the truth is, my vehicle was equipped with only one Teddy Bear Patrol teddy bear. Tomas’s small face brightened as I handed it over. Then, with him cradling his bear, we walked back to the front porch and sat down on the top step.

We sat there in silence for a time while I struggled to find something reasonable to say.

Mel had passed me part of the paperwork. Tomas Rivera had a Social Security number, so he was most likely in the country legally. I doubted the same held true for his wife and sons. If they were illegal immigrants, having a collection of cops show up on their doorstep had to be scary for all concerned. From their point of view, the prospect of being busted by Immigration might seem catastrophic. But this was far more serious than that since we were investigating a homicide.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

Alfonso glared at me and shook his head, pretending he didn’t understand when he was really refusing to answer. When Tomas started to, Alfonso elbowed him to shut up.

Another long period of silence passed. Then, because Tomas seemed the more approachable of the two, I addressed my next question to him. “What does your daddy do?” I asked.

“He works in the woods,” Tomas answered with undisguised pride. “He cuts down big trees and saws them up so people can build houses.”

Alfonso elbowed Tomas again. “Shut up,” he said aloud.

I ignored him. So did Tomas.

“Your mom seemed real sad when we got here, like she’d been crying. How come?”

“Because of the picture,” Tomas told me.

“What picture?”

He shrugged. “Just a picture,” he said.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“In her pocket,” he said.

I stood up. “Wait here,” I told the boys. “I’ll be right back.”

Once inside, I spoke to Jaime. “Ask her about the picture.”

“Picture?” he asked. “What picture?”

He turned back to Lupe and asked the question. Her face seemed to dissolve. For a long time she said nothing at all. Finally she reached into the pocket of her jeans. Slowly she removed a photo—a small wallet-size color photo, the kind of head shot that comes home each year with every school-age kid.

She held it out to me. I was about to reach for it, but Jaime Carbajal beat me to it. “Oh my God,” he croaked, grabbing the picture out of her hand.

“It’s Luis!” he exclaimed, staring at it. “That’s my nephew. Where the hell did you get this?”

Where indeed!

FOR SEVERAL LONG SECONDS AFTER BUTCH TURNED OFF THE
ignition, Joanna sat in the car staring up at the towering steeple of Saint Dominick’s Catholic Church.

“What’s wrong?” Butch asked.

“This is the first time I’ve been back at Saint Dom’s since Deputy Sloan’s funeral,” she said. “I’m afraid that as soon as I step inside, that day will all come back to me.” Even now, closing her eyes, she could see the uniformed police officers standing row on row and hear the bagpipes wailing. It was overwhelming.

“This is a wedding rehearsal,” Butch reminded her. “You’ve got to let that other stuff go. Put it out of your mind.”

Nodding, Joanna knew he was right, but it was easier said than done. Butch came around to the passenger side of the car and lifted Dennis out of his car seat. Then he opened Joanna’s door and held out his free hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Just inside the double doors, Joanna was assailed by the screaming voices of two children. It turned out that the flower girl and the ring bearer, four-year-old fraternal twins, were in the throes of a total meltdown. The bride and the children’s mother were ineffectively trying to broker a peace agreement between the two warring children. Finally Father Rowan, the rector of Saint Dominick’s, stepped into the fray. With a calming word or two, he somehow put a stop to the battle.

The priest then turned to Joanna, smiled, and held out his hand. “How good to see you again, Sheriff Brady,” he said. “You know what they say. If the dress rehearsal is a disaster, opening night should be great.” He turned his attention to Dennis. “Is this your little boy?” he added. “With that red hair he clearly takes after his mother.”

Just as the priest had somehow managed to settle the hash between the two battling four-year-olds, his kind words and unexcited manner calmed Joanna as well.

“And where’s your lovely daughter this evening?” Father Rowan asked.

“Staying overnight with a friend,” Butch said. “Somehow coming to a wedding rehearsal and dinner just didn’t do it for her.”

“No,” the priest said with a smile. “I don’t suppose it would.”

Once the rehearsal started in earnest, Father Rowan walked the wedding party through their paces twice for good measure. The first time the recalcitrant flower girl was determined to go stand with her ring-bearer brother after her trip down the aisle and had to be convinced that her place was on the bride’s side of the ceremony. The second time she raced down the aisle at a dead run and had to start over at a more decorous pace. Dennis, seeing that the other kids seemed to be allowed free rein at the front of the church, wanted desperately to join them. Besides, since his
mother was standing right there in plain sight, why shouldn’t he be up there, too?

It turned out that the ongoing uproar over the kids was good for Joanna’s nerves, reminding her that this occasion was all about beginnings rather than endings. It helped immeasurably that Frank Montoya was nervous, too.

The rehearsal dinner was held in a private room at the clubhouse for Rob Roy Links, a golf club out near Palominas. They were driving there with Butch at the wheel when Joanna’s phone rang. The caller was Jaime Carbajal.

“We have a suspect,” he said.

“Who?”

“Tomas Rivera, the guy whose driver’s license was left in Marcella’s vehicle.”

“Do they have him in custody?” Joanna asked.

“No, not yet, but at least we know who he is. His wife found Luis’s school photo from last year hidden in her husband’s underwear drawer. When she saw the picture, she thought her husband had been fooling around behind her back and that Luis was her husband’s son with some other woman. I was able to tell her that wasn’t true. Turns out he was doing a lot worse than screwing around.”

“Does his wife know what he’s done?”

“Not yet. The detectives running the interview were cagey about that. They didn’t let on why we were there.”

“Does that mean you were there, too?” Joanna asked. “For the interview? I thought you were just going to the morgue to make arrangements to bring Marcella’s body home.”

“It’s a long story,” Jaime said. “I happened to be there at the time and was able to help out. They needed someone to translate, and I was the only one who spoke Spanish. While we were just
asking general questions, it didn’t matter that much, but once we saw the picture, Detective Caldwell terminated my involvement. She took Lupe Rivera to her office and has an official translator helping with the next part of the interview. Beaumont dropped me off at the hotel.”

“Has anyone been able to figure out Rivera’s connection to Marcella?” Joanna asked.

“Not so far,” Jaime said. “Once they take him into custody, I’m sure someone will ask. For right now, though, it looks like he may have taken off and left his wife and kids to manage on their own, which isn’t going to be easy. The way I read the situation, he has a green card. She doesn’t. Neither do the kids.”

“How are you doing?” Joanna asked. “You sound tired.”

“I am tired,” Jaime admitted. “At this point, I’m not sure why I bothered coming. Delcia was on the phone with the M.E. while I was still on the plane. She helped my mother order a casket through Costco.com. They’ll deliver it to the M.E.’s office here in Ellensburg sometime on Monday. They’ll release the remains to me at that time and give me the necessary paperwork so I can fly home with the casket Monday evening. I’ve hired a hearse from a funeral home here to get the casket and me to the airport in Seattle. Norm Higgins from the funeral home in Bisbee will send a hearse to Tucson to meet the plane. He’s cleared the funeral-home chapel schedule on Tuesday, so we can hold the service at our convenience. Since it’s going to be private—family only and officiated by Father Rowan—we can be pretty flexible about timing.”

It seemed to Joanna that Norm Higgins of Higgins and Sons Funeral Chapel wouldn’t be thrilled to hear that a casket was coming his way from Costco.com. She herself never would have thought of ordering one online.

“Good,” she said.

“And Delcia has spoken to the
Bisbee Bee
,” Jaime continued. “Someone from there called to see if we would be posting a paid obituary. She told them to forget it—that the family doesn’t want an obituary, paid or not. As you can well imagine, my parents don’t want a lot of publicity about this. Thankfully, though, we don’t have to worry about someone coming after Luis looking for the money Marcella and Marco stole. According to Beaumont, it’s been returned.”

“It has?”

“That’s what he said. Someone came around to see Marcella’s landlord and asked about it. The landlord went to Marcella’s place, found the money where she’d hidden it, and gave it back to whoever came looking for it.”

“That’s a relief,” Joanna said.

“I’ll say. Beaumont also said that once Marcella got to Washington it seemed like she was trying to get herself straightened out. She was working at a regular job for the first time in her life—waiting tables in a restaurant—and staying out of trouble. She had asked Marco for a divorce so she could marry a new boyfriend—a nice one. According to Beaumont, the guy is a truck driver who had even given Marcella an engagement ring. He’s hoping we’ll let him come to her funeral.”

“Will you?” Joanna asked.

“I don’t know,” Jaime said. “The idea that Marcella would ever hook up with someone decent sounds far-fetched, but Beaumont gave me his name and number. I thought I’d give the guy a call and check him out.”

By then Butch had parked the car in the Rob Roy Links lot and had been waiting patiently for Joanna to finish the call. Meanwhile, most of the wedding party had walked into the restaurant. Finally Butch gestured at his watch. “We need to go in,” he mouthed.

“I have to go,” Joanna told Jaime. She didn’t say she was going to the rehearsal dinner. The fact that Jaime was missing Frank Montoya’s wedding was one detail that didn’t bear repeating. “But if you need anything…” she added.

“Yes, boss,” Jaime said. “I know who to call. Thanks.”

People who aren’t citizens of this country are at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with law enforcement. They often come from places where cops have an inarguably upper hand. Lupe Rivera wasn’t a suspect in Marcella’s homicide and so far no one had mentioned that word in her presence. Her husband was the guy with the problem. Lupe would have been well within her rights to have refused to speak to us, but she didn’t, mostly, I believe, because she was petrified.

While we were still at the house and still using Jaime Carbajal as her translator, Detective Caldwell managed to make it sound like going back to the sheriff’s department in Ellensburg to continue the interview and record it was the most routine thing in the world.

Lupe made a small attempt at objection. “But what about the boys?” she asked.

“I’ll look after them,” Mel offered helpfully. “They can come with me. Maybe they’d like to go get something to eat.”

It was another of those good cop/bad cop, divide-and-conquer routines that Mel Soames does so well, and in the end, that’s how we did it. I drove Jaime Carbajal into Ellensburg and dropped him off at the Best Western. Then I drove back to the Log Jam Diner in Cle Elum where Mel had taken the two boys. Tomas was cheerfully mowing through a platter loaded with pancakes—the Log Jam is an all-day breakfast kind of place—while Alfonso sat star
ing out the window. His arms were folded stubbornly across his chest. He had refused Mel’s offer of food. Even the glass of water in front of him remained untouched.

“Where’s my mom?” he asked as I scooted into the booth next to Mel. “What did you do with her?”

“Your mother is fine,” I said. “She’s still with Detective Caldwell. She’ll bring your mom back to your house as soon as they finish.”

“You’re lying,” Alfonso insisted. “You won’t bring her home. You’re going to send us back to Mexico.”

“I ordered a burger for you,” Mel told me, then she turned to Alfonso. “You’re wrong,” she said. “We’re not from Immigration. That’s not our job.”

“Why are you here, then?” Alfonso asked.

Mel took a long meditative bite of her hamburger and chewed it thoroughly before she swallowed and answered. “We’re here because of your father. Has he seemed different lately?”

Done with talking, Alfonso shook his head and turned away. Tomas poured several more glugs of maple syrup onto a pancake that was already swimming in the stuff. Then he looked up at Mel.

“Papa has been mad,” Tomas said. “At everybody.”

Alfonso glowered at the younger boy and aimed an elbow in the direction of his little brother’s rib cage, but Tomas neatly dodged the blow and went right on talking as though nothing had happened. “He’s even mad at Mama,” he added. “He hit her.”

I’ve heard that kids learn new languages faster than older people can. Tomas’s English was far better than his mother’s, and better than his older brother’s as well. Fueled by his sugar-high short stack, he seemed ready to tell all.

“He hit your mother?” Mel asked. “When did that happen?”

Tomas shrugged. “The other day. Sunday night, when they had a big fight. They thought we were asleep.”

My burger came. It had obviously been sitting under a warming lamp for some time, and it wasn’t anything to write home about. Not eating it gave me a chance to study Alfonso. He was biting his lip. I guessed Tomas wasn’t the only one who knew about the fight.

“Why did your parents fight?” Mel asked.

“Mama was mad because Papa had been gone all weekend. She was yelling at him about that. That’s when he hit her. He was drunk.”

He said the words quietly and with no particular malice. That was simply how things were; how their lives were.

Then Mel sprang her trap. “Did you know your father lost his wallet?”

Alfonso shook his head.

“Just now?” Tomas asked.

“No,” Mel said. “It happened a couple of months ago. Someone found it and returned it. We wanted to find him and tell him thank you. We think his name is Miguel.”

Mel had mentioned the napkin fragment that had been found in Tomas Rivera’s wallet—a torn napkin with the name “Miguel” written on it along with a no-longer-functioning cell-phone number. She brought it up innocently enough, but the reaction from both boys was nothing short of electric. Tomas dropped his fork into his plate, slopping a spatter of sticky syrup onto the table. Alfonso drew in his breath in a sharp gasp. The wary look that passed between them spoke volumes.

“Does your father have a friend named Miguel?” Mel asked.

Now neither boy answered aloud, so I stepped into the melee to give Mel a hand.

“Does he?” I asked.

After a long silence, the younger boy finally nodded his head.
“We’re not supposed to talk about him,” Tomas muttered with a sideways glance in his brother’s direction.

“Why not?” I asked. “Why aren’t you supposed to talk about him?”

“Because…” Alfonso said. His eyes brimmed with sudden tears. I knew he was wavering, so I focused my attention totally on him.

“Well?” I persisted.

Even so, Tomas was the one who answered. “Papa told us never to say his name,” the boy said. “He said Miguel is a bad man. That if we talk about him he might come here and kill us. Or else he’ll tell Border Patrol about us and they’ll send us back to Mexico.”

“Have you met him?” I asked. “If you saw Miguel again, would you recognize him?”

“I would,” Alfonso said. “He has a big scar on his face.”

“When did you see him last?” I asked.

“This morning,” Alfonso said. “Before we left for school. He came to the house looking for Papa. Mama told him he was too late, that Papa was already at work.”

Tomas may have gone to work, I thought, but he didn’t show up at work. Big difference.

“Did you hear what Miguel and your mother talked about?” I asked.

“He said that if Papa knew what was good for him, he’d keep his mouth shut.”

“Keep his mouth shut about what?” Mel asked.

Alfonso shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think Mama knew either, but after he left she was scared. And crying.”

And she was still crying this afternoon when we got there, I thought.