31
8:00 A.M., Monday, April 12
Nogales, Arizona
Sheriff Renteria called into his office as he drove into town. “Going to get a haircut,” he told his secretary. “I’ll be in as soon as I can.”
Sheriff Renteria didn’t need a haircut so much as he needed information. In the old days, crooks and cops had found common ground in churches. They may have been good guys and bad guys, but they were Catholic good guys and bad guys, with priests functioning as the diplomats who moved back and forth between them.
That was no longer true. A lot of the younger people on both sides had moved away from the Church. Now the man who stood with a foot in both camps was Sheriff Renteria’s cousin, his father’s brother’s son, the barber Ignacio.
When Sheriff Renteria arrived, the barbershop was empty. Ignacio was sitting in his barber chair, reading a newspaper. He smiled, picked up his cape, and shook it out. “Need a little trim?” he asked.
“A little.”
Manuel didn’t have much to trim these days. Ignacio fired up his clipper and went to work. As long as the clipper was running, neither man spoke.
“What do you hear from Pasquale?” Manuel asked once the shop went silent. They both knew what he meant-that they were talking about the shooting.
“He didn’t do it,” Ignacio answered at once. “The people he works for didn’t do it, either. That was the agreement he made with you, that your guys wouldn’t be targeted.”
That was the informal peace treaty Sheriff Renteria had negotiated with Pasquale years ago, back when he was first elected. Some would have called it a deal with the devil. There had been nothing in writing. The sheriff had met with Pasquale in his father’s barbershop. The two had spoken briefly, then they shook hands. That had been it. The drug business was like a many-headed hydra. An agreement with one division didn’t necessarily cover another, but as far as the Nogales area was concerned, Pasquale had enough influence to make it work.
“Was Deputy Reyes dealing?” Manuel asked.
On the surface, it was a stupid question. Sheriff Renteria had seen the evidence himself-the plastic-wrapped packages in the trunk of Jose’s patrol car; the hundred-dollar bills lying scattered on the ground like so many dead leaves.
“Pasquale says no,” Ignacio said quietly. “At least not for the Nogos.”
“What would happen if he was dealing for someone else?”
“That would mean he was poaching on Nogo territory,” Ignacio said. “Pasquale wouldn’t like it, and it would also take your deal off the table. What if somebody set him up to look like he was dealing?”
In the mirror, Manuel Renteria met and held his cousin’s gaze. “Any idea who?”
Ignacio shook his head.
“We found drugs at the scene,” Manuel said. “If they didn’t come from Pasquale, where did they come from?”
“I’m sure Pasquale is asking the same question.”
Ignacio brushed loose hair from the back of Renteria’s neck, removed the cape, snapped it clean, and folded it up.
“Thanks,” Sheriff Renteria said. “Tell Pasquale I said hello.”
Standing up, he pulled out his wallet and pulled out five ten-dollar bills. One at a time, he counted them into Ignacio’s outstretched hand-ten bucks for the haircut and forty bucks for the tip, in every sense of the word. As far as Sheriff Renteria was concerned, it was well worth it. Ignacio had hinted at a possibility the sheriff hadn’t considered-that maybe Jose Reyes really had been set up.
He thought about it for a time, but not for long. As much as he wanted to believe it, he couldn’t. There was too much compelling evidence that said otherwise.
32
9:00 A.M., Monday, April 12
Vail, Arizona
Al Gutierrez was returning from a morning run when his phone rang. “What the hell were you thinking?” Sergeant Kevin Dobbs demanded.
“Excuse me?”
“You had no business going off Lone Rangering it. Now I’m in deep caca with the higher-ups, and you’re in deeper caca with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the ‘informal’ visit you paid to Buckeye yesterday. You weren’t in uniform. You weren’t on duty. I just got off the phone with a homicide detective from Phoenix. She’s all over my butt, asking all kinds of difficult questions. Before she called me, she tried calling Pima County to ask about the progress of the investigation on the assault near Three Points. When they didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, guess what? She started nosing around with Border Patrol, and somebody pointed her in my direction. Thank you very much for that, by the way. Really appreciate it. I told her the paperwork on the assault must have gotten lost between here and Pima County. I expect you to back me up on that, by the way.”
Al had found the injured girl on Friday afternoon. This was only Monday morning. “Paperwork gets lost all the time,” he said. “What’s the big deal? And why a homicide detective?”
“The big deal is that your ‘assault victim’ is evidently a missing person in two jurisdictions and a homicide suspect in another. It’s like she’s all over the place, and I’m the one left holding the bag. So while I’m straightening out the paperwork, you can expect a phone call from the homicide cop. I gave her your number. Her name’s Rush- Detective Ariel Rush.”
“What do you want me to tell her?”
“That we handed our report in on Friday and have no idea what happened to it afterward. That we’re sending a duplicate over to Pima County. As for why you were following up on something when you were out of uniform and it wasn’t your concern? Knock yourself out. Tell ’em whatever the hell you want, but if it comes back and bites me in the butt, you’re looking at a minimum three-day suspension.”
Call waiting buzzed, but Dobbs had already hung up before Al switched from one line to another.
“Al Gutierrez?” a woman asked.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
“I’m Detective Rush,” she said. “Detective Ariel Rush with Phoenix PD, Homicide.”
“Sergeant Dobbs told me to expect a call from a homicide detective. What he didn’t say is who died.”
“I’m investigating the murder of a man who was found dead from blunt-force trauma and dumped in North Phoenix sometime early Friday morning. He has since been identified as Enrique ‘Chico’ Hernandez, who ran a high-end call girl operation in Phoenix. On Saturday, some young women-Mr. Hernandez’s employees-called to report that he and one of their roommates, a girl named Breeze Domingo-a young woman with a rose tattoo on her right breast-had gone missing sometime early Thursday morning. The reason the roommates came forward in the first place is that Chico’s name was the one on the rental agreement for their apartment. He had fallen behind in the rent. Without him there, the other girls were worried about being tossed out on their butts with nowhere to go and no protection.
“It wasn’t until Mr. Hernandez’s bloodstained vehicle was found abandoned in downtown Phoenix early yesterday afternoon that we were able to put the missing persons report together with the homicide. When we ran prints found in the vehicle through AFIS, we ended up getting a hit from another missing persons case, that of a fourteen-year-old girl named Rose Ventana who ran away from her home in Buckeye over three years ago. Since Rose was also reported to have a rose tattoo in a pretty distinctive location, I think it’s safe to assume that Breeze
