J Bertrand - Back on Murder

“When I say dangerous, though, I really mean it. Like, drugs dangerous. And Mrs. Dyer got concerned, too, because of Evey’s past. She’d run away before, been on the streets awhile, and everybody was afraid of some kind of relapse, only you couldn’t say that to Evey because she was sensitive. Touchy about being judged.”

“So what happened?” I ask.

“Her mom put an end to it. There was a big fight. I remember Hannah coming to me, because she felt like she was in the middle. Anyway, after a week or two, everything seemed fine. Evey was back to normal, as normal as she ever was. But ever since I saw that picture, I’ve been thinking. Remember those youth-group girls who said Evey and James Fontaine were going to run away together? Well, I always thought there could’ve been a kernel of truth to that. Maybe it wasn’t Fontaine, though. Maybe it was this other guy, the one she’d met before.”

“Does this guy have a name?”

He shrugs. “I’m drawing a blank. That’s why you should talk to Murray. He talked to the guy a few times when he’d come into the center. Some deep conversations supposedly.”

“Why don’t we call your friend Murray now?”

Robb lights up as if the possibility never occurred to him. He goes around the desk, punching the number into the phone.

“I’ll put him on speaker.”

Murray Abernathy answers, but asks if he can call back later. “I’m with somebody.”

“I’ve got the police here, Murray. It’s really important.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “Give me a sec.” When he comes back, Murray settles into some kind of stuffed chair, the air hissing out as he applies weight. “All righty then. What’s up?”

Robb explains, then asks for the mysterious boyfriend’s name.

“His name? It was Frank.”

“Frank what?” I ask.

“Hold on,” he says. “It’ll come to me.” Another pause. “Frank was a Latino guy, in his early twenties I think, handsome and well-spoken. I was excited when he first showed up, because he was interested in all the big questions – life, the universe, the whole shebang. But I could see right off I wasn’t gonna make a convert. For him, it was like a test of wits. He always wanted to prove he knew more than I did. Frank was an autodidact, one of those guys who acts like he knows everything – and then surprises you with how much he really does know.”

“His last name?” I ask again.

“I’m trying to think of it. He had a cousin doing construction work around here. Somebody would drop him off, and he’d hang out at the center while he waited for the cousin to get off work.”

“The cousin worked construction?” Cavallo and I exchange a glance. The site across the street from where Hannah’s body was found is just one of many in the neighborhood. “Did you ever get the cousin’s name?”

“Wait a second.” He starts humming over the line, drowning out all distractions. “I got it. Frank was short for Francisco – ” He pronounces it Frahn-see-sco, reproducing the sound from memory. “Francisco… Rio? Rios? Something like that.”

“Francisco Rios?” The name is familiar. I quiz Cavallo with a raised eyebrow, but she just shrugs. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”

“I have no idea what the cousin’s name was,” Murray says. “But he’d pull his van out front and blow the horn, and Frank would drop everything and go.”

Cavallo leans forward. “You told Carter this guy was dangerous. Why was that?”

“He talked a lot of nonsense, but I started thinking maybe it wasn’t nonsense after all. Because he presented himself so well, I kind of assumed he was… normal. Like everybody else, you know? A little stuck up, but basically a decent guy. But some people in the neighborhood told me he’d offered to sell them drugs, and once he got in a fight out on the street and pulled a knife on somebody. Said he was gonna come back that night and shoot the guy. Around here, you’ve got yuppies living next door to dealers, you’ve got people walking designer dogs past muggers. Frank kind of fit the vibe, I guess, but when I heard one of those girls was running around with him, well…”

I lean over to Cavallo. “I know that name.”

She keeps asking questions and Murray keeps talking, but I tune it all out, focusing on those syllables, picturing the letters in my mind. I write them out in my notebook, underlining the words. Why is Francisco Rios so familiar?

And then it comes to me.

“Where are you going?” Cavallo asks.

But I’m off the couch and halfway through the door, leaving her to make apologies to Robb and come running after me. She catches up in the atrium – I make a point of not glancing toward the auditorium doors, where the coffin of Hannah Mayhew so recently stood – grabbing at my arm to slow me down.

“Come on,” I say.

“What’s the rush?”

“That guy, Francisco Rios? I know him. We scooped him up at the George R. Brown, and he handed me Salazar’s business card. He’s a confidential informant. I called to check, then cut him loose.”

“If he was Salazar’s snitch – ”

“It’s him. He’s the one we want.”

“So maybe Salazar will give him up.”

Out in the parking lot, the sun blazing overhead, I stop in my tracks, one hand on my hip, the other pressed to my forehead, trying to pull the memories free. “There was somebody with him. A guy named Coleman who had a warrant out. When we let Rios go, he blew up. He kept yelling he was going to tell everybody, that Rios was going to be dead.”

“Tell them he was an informant?”

I nod. “We need to talk to Coleman. I got the feeling they knew each other pretty well.”

Robb wasn’t wrong, not about the pattern. You stare long enough and nothing’s random anymore. The pieces fit.

Sometimes all too well.

I’d had him. Zip-tied and all to myself, alone in the restroom at the end of the corridor, Saturday morning on Labor Day weekend, within forty-eight hours of Hannah’s disappearance and Evey Dyer’s death. I’d had him and I let him go, not realizing who it was I was letting walk out into the sunlight. All I wanted was to get out of there, to bag the assignment and move on to real police work, to get my teetering career back on two feet. His fear comes back to me, how desperate he was not to be locked up, to the point he’d even out himself as an informant in front of Coleman. I’d even given him advice, telling him to play it cool next time, never wondering why he panicked in the first place.

And Salazar, when I’d offered to take the kid downtown, had suddenly changed his tune about wanting to see him. Neither one of them wanted Rios in custody. Now it made sense. Rios knew he had blood on his hands. Salazar didn’t want his informant, who’d been tipping him to the location of stash houses, to spend a moment inside, either, afraid he’d start talking.

“I didn’t see it.”

“See what?” Cavallo asks.

But I don’t answer. All the mistakes of the past couple of weeks come back to me. Getting kicked out of Homicide for ditching Lorenz. Spooking Thomson’s wife to the point that she outed him to his killers. Cutting Tommy slack when I should have come down on him, when for all I knew Charlotte was right and something bad had happened to Marta, the girl who spent the night in the garage apartment. It all pales in comparison to letting Frank Rios walk. The trouble is, in a case like mine, mistakes are irreversible. You can’t always work your way back. You can’t bring the dead back to life. And the man you let go might never be caught again.

There’s nothing left but the guilty knowledge of what you might have done, how brave or selfless or good you could have been, if only you’d known then what you do now.