Headquarters for the San Francisco Police Department was located at the Hall of Justice, a grim Stalinesque building rising from Bryant Street amid the low-rent units, office towers and high-tech firms in San Francisco’s Soma district.
Pruitt hustled up the steps of the Hall’s grand entrance to the polished stone lobby, flashed his badge at the security check and took the elevator to the fourth floor and Room 450-Homicide Detail.
Pruitt went to the file cabinets, pulled out everything on the old murder, settled into his desk and set to work reviewing the case. In a short time, Moseley and Jim Cavinder, their lieutenant, arrived and joined Pruitt in reacquainting themselves with the ancient case.
Eduardo Zartosa, a twenty-one-year-old Mexican national, was visiting the city on vacation with friends when he was shot to death. His body was found in an alley adjacent to a parking lot in The Haight on Waller. A Smith & Wesson.38 Special, stolen from a pawnshop a year earlier, was found in a trash bin on Belvedere. The autopsy and ballistics determined it was the murder weapon. A set of unidentified latents had been collected from the weapon and submitted to ViCAP, along with other details.
Zartosa’s friends said he’d left a party at an apartment to buy something to eat. There were no incidents at the party. No witnesses to the crime. Relatives arranged for the body to be flown to Mexico. Early on, Zartosa’s uncle would call for updates on the case, then the calls ceased. Contact information for the uncle and friends was no longer valid.
“When’s the last time anybody’s looked at this case?” Cavinder asked.
Pruitt struggled to remember.
“About two years back, an old-time gangbanger facing a charge tried to barter a lead on it, but it fizzled,” Moseley said.
The case was twenty years old. Over that time, it had been passed around to a lot of detectives.
The three of them gathered in Cavinder’s office and reviewed the material sent by the Canadians. They watched Montradori’s account of what happened the night Zartosa was murdered, with Pruitt taking notes, until it ended.
“All right, I want to move on this. I’ll call the D.A. You guys better look into a flight out to Phoenix tomorrow. Hold up,” Cavinder said as his phone rang. He took the call, listening for a full minute. All he managed at the end was, “Uh-huh. What? Right. Thanks.” Cavinder put the phone down and started working at his keyboard.
“I don’t believe this.”
“What’s up?” Pruitt said.
“That was the Captain. We’ve just got a call from the FBI crime lab. They’ve identified prints on the gun used for Zartosa.”
“What the hell?” Moseley said.
“And the Captain says SFPD also got a call from the El Paso Intelligence Center with new intel tied to our case. I’m flipping the material to you now.”
“What’s with that?” Moseley said.
“This case is erupting,” Pruitt said.
“Did we ever establish where Zartosa’s family tree reaches?” Pruitt and Moseley exchanged glances.
“It’s so old, I don’t think anyone’s checked, not in recent years. Why?”
“It goes deeper into that Phoenix kidnapping and it’s not good. Look-” Cavinder glanced at his watch “-you guys need to get to Phoenix ASAP. Get home and pack. I’ll get Shirley to check flights. I’ll call ahead, tell the FBI you’re coming. We need to work with them on this and we don’t have time to lose.”
45
Hackett stood at his desk, twisting a rubber band, staring at the map of Arizona covering the wall.
His phone should be ringing, confirming an arrest.
The last word came thirty minutes ago from Arizona DPS. They had the bus stopped at the Willcox terminal.
The border people and EPIC had confirmed the passport for a Carlos Manolo Sanchez, likely an alias. But they had a photo. At El Paso’s bus terminal, the ticket agent, aided by the photo and security cameras, assured two El Paso detectives that Sanchez had boarded the express bus for Phoenix with thirty-six other passengers.
Arizona DPS had made cell phone contact with the bus driver a few miles east of Willcox. The driver had confirmed that there were thirty-seven passengers aboard, including a passenger fitting the suspect’s general description. The driver had agreed to use the ruse of a mechanical problem to make an unscheduled stop in Willcox.
DPS was supposed to grab him.
EPIC’s intel indicated this was the hit man for the Norte Cartel, who was suspected of killing Salazar and Johnson in the desert.
Hackett’s land line rang.
“Hackett.”
“Agent Hackett, this is Sergeant Tim Walker, DPS Highway Patrol in Willcox. Our subject was not on the bus.”
“What?”
“He was not there.”
“What do you mean, he was not there?”
“Only thirty-six people were on the bus when we stopped it. Our people conducted a thorough search, confirmed IDs, tickets of every passenger. No Carlos Manolo Sanchez. Nobody came close to the photo. We found an open ceiling ventilation door above the bathroom.”
“That’s just great!” Hackett slammed the handset into the cradle.
“What happened?” Larson approached his desk.
“He slipped through our fingers. How in hell did he know to run?”
Larson cursed under her breath.
Hackett surveyed other agents working in the Bureau, considered the task force members at Cora’s house and shook his head.
Hackett looked down at his files, including the one holding that Bureau-wide memo on cartel infiltration of U.S. police ranks. Was his task force compromised? Or was his paranoia entwined with his guilt over Colombia? He glanced at Tilly’s enlarged photo on the board across the room. He could not bear to have another case end with an innocent victim’s funeral.
“Did you hear me, Earl?” Larson had her hand cupped over the phone. “Bruller’s calling from his car. He just heard what happened and needs to talk to you. Says it’s important.”
“He just wants to get in my face. Tell him I’m on another line, I’ll call him back.”
After Larson dealt with the ASAC, she got Hackett to focus.
“We’ve got work to do, Earl.” She opened a folder. “Look. We’ve got photos for Limon-Rocha, Tecaza and now Carlos Manolo Sanchez. We can run them with Tilly and Galviera’s picture, get it out in a release to the news media. Get everybody looking for these guys.”
“All right.”
“Good. I’ll get moving on that.”
Hackett then consulted the EPIC file and revisited his concerns about Gannon and Cora. If there was one thing Hackett had learned as an investigator, it was that no one ever told you the truth.
