connection between their son and Randall Donovan, but not about Billy Canning. Markham had insisted on handling the Rodriguezes himself. He felt he should be the one to inform them their son had been murdered by a serial killer, but more important, felt he should be the one to ask them about their son’s sexuality.
Of course, there had been nothing in the case file to indicate that the young man might have been a homosexual. However, Markham needed to exclude that possibility for himself before he could move forward with the victim profile. He also felt he had a good bead on the Hispanic culture from his stint in Tampa—and unless the Rodriguezes were an unusually enlightened family of Catholics, he had a feel- ing they wouldn’t take kindly to an implication their son might have been gay.
It was a slim possibility, Markham thought; but nonetheless, that line of questioning needed to be handled delicately. He decided Mrs. Rodriguez would be the best bet—would be the most receptive to him—but still he needed to catch her alone, while her husband was at work. The case file said she had a part-time job in the mornings, which meant she would be home this afternoon when the kids got back from school.
Besides, Markham wanted to determine for himself if Mrs. Rodriguez might be hiding something—not just from him, but also from her husband.
Markham drove first to the Rodriguezes’ old apartment in Fox Run—got a sense of the layout and gazed up through the rain at the large streetlights that peppered the parking lots. They looked out of place, an afterthought in the rundown, gang-infested neighborhood, but told Markham the property would’ve been well lit at night. Moreover, the apartment complex had too many balconies. It was raining on the night Rodriguez disappeared, but there still would’ve been a lot of people around to see the killer waiting. And there was only one entrance in and out of the place—too risky for Vlad to take him here.
Then there was the bus stop and the walk home. Not the safest area, but still well lit and well traveled. At the very least, someone would have heard the gunshots.
But the bus stop on the other end? That mysterious place from where Jose Rodriguez was really travelling on Wednesday and Saturday nights? Well, that was the big question, wasn’t it?
The police figured out early on that Rodriguez’s waitering job was bogus, but had since been unable to pin down exactly where he’d been coming from on the night he was shot. On the other hand, there was a strong possibility that one of the restaurant owners was lying; his employees could be lying, too, for fear of getting involved and being deported. That’s what bothered Sam Markham the most: that he couldn’t rule out the possibility that perhaps Jose Rodriguez might have been telling the truth all along.
But Alex Guerrera had gone somewhere on Saturday night, too. He hadn’t been seen by his roommates since the night before and had asked to use the car they shared but then canceled at the last minute. Odd, they thought, but that’s all they could tell the police. No knowledge of a connection to MS-13 or any of the other Latino gangs that had sprung up in the area. There was nothing there, Markham felt instinctively, but he would talk to the cousin and track down the roommates if he got desperate.
It had stopped raining by the time he reached the Rodriguez family’s new home thirty minutes later. The apartment complex was located in North Raleigh; typical three-floor multi-unit built in the early seventies, complete with a sign at the entrance that advertised LU URY RENTALS in faded letters and a missing
He drove to a building at the rear of the complex, parked in a space beside an old Malibu and emerged to find two Hispanic boys staring down at him from a second-floor balcony. The older one (Markham pegged him to be about fifteen) was leaning over the railing smoking; the younger (short, twelve or thirteen) had been fiddling with an iPod and stood up as he approached.
The complex was strangely quiet, Markham thought; only the sound of the wind in the pine trees. He looked up at the building number; watched the boys out of the corner of his eye, and pretended he was unsure he had the right place. Judging from the layout, he guessed that the balcony with the boys was most likely the balcony for the Rodriguez family’s new apartment; the taller boy, most likely Diego.
“You looking for something,
The younger boy laughed and Markham turned back to them—produced his cred case from underneath his Wind-breaker and flipped open his ID. He held it up by his face and smiled as wide as he could.
“Looks like you get to be my boyfriend today,” he said. “FBI. Came a long way to ask you out, Diego Rodriguez.”
The taller boy swallowed hard, took a final drag off his cigarette, and flicked it from the balcony. He disappeared inside. The younger boy followed, calling out to someone in Spanish.
Markham mounted the stairs and quickly reached the apartment door—was about to knock when he heard the security chain rattle inside and the dead bolt unlock. The door opened slightly, and a Hispanic woman squeezed her face through the crack.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said in a thick accent. “My brother and my husband is working. Only me and the children right now.”
“I’m Special Agent Sam Markham,” he said, holding up his cred case. “FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. Are you Mrs. Rodriguez?”
“No. She my brother’s wife. They all working now they live here.”
“I see,” Markham said. “I’d like to ask Diego a few questions.”
“He in trouble again?”
“No, ma’am. It’s about Jose.”
The woman hesitated, pulled back from the doorway, and whispered in Spanish to someone inside. “I’m not going to make trouble for you,” Markham said. “Just send Diego out, and I promise I won’t come in. I’ll wait over here.”
He crossed to the stairs, leaned against the railing, and slipped his hands in his pockets. The Hispanic woman watched him for a moment, then closed the door. Markham waited, and soon became uncomfortable as he felt the presence of people looking at him through the peepholes of the surrounding apartments.
Finally, Diego Rodriguez emerged from the apartment. He was dressed in an oversized black T-shirt and a black baseball cap—tags still on and cocked to the side. He eyed Markham up and down and shuffled over, postured himself against the opposite wall and hooked his thumbs in his pockets.
Markham glanced quickly at the boy’s fingernails; saw that they were cut neat and clean against his baggy knockoff jeans.
“What time’ll your parents be home?” Markham asked.
“They both working,” Diego mumbled. “Six, six-thirty. Maybe seven.”
“You know why I want to talk to you?”
Diego shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know how much TV you watch,” Markham said, “but your brother’s murder has been turned over to the FBI now. You know what that means?” Diego said nothing. “Means now we have more people trying to figure out who killed him. Means now I have to ask you some questions like the police did so I get my facts straight.”
“I didn’t talk to Jose that much, and I don’t know nothing more now than what I already told Five-O. Only interested in us again cuz of that lawyer that got smoked. They asked my father some questions about Colombians and gangs and drugs and shit. Shit is wack is what I’m saying. Me and Jose, we wasn’t down with that. I told y’all that from the beginning, but no one wants to listen cuz some fool says the
“You have some of the same friends?” Markham asked, reaching inside his pocket. “Does this guy look familiar to you?”
Markham handed him a picture of Billy Canning. The boy scanned it quickly.
“No,” said Diego, handing back the paper. “Like I said, me and Jose wasn’t close.” There was a hint of regret in the kid’s voice—almost shame, Markham thought—and he folded Canning’s picture back into his pocket.
“You know where Jose might have gone on the night he disappeared?” he asked.
