Frank Zafiro - Some Degree of Murder

As he spoke a uniformed patrol officer appeared at my desk. I glanced up at him. He was black. His uniform was creased sharply and his hair was shaved to a quarter inch. He smiled nervously and lifted his face to me in greeting.

I held up my hand, then showed him two fingers. He nodded and stepped a couple paces to the wall and sat down in a chair there.

“When did you see her last?” I asked Williams.

“I couldn’t tell you for sure. Her last computer entry for any contact is seven months old and that was as a witness to a fight. I know I haven’t seen her for at least four and a half or five months.”

I considered that. It sounded like she probably kicked around a bit before landing here in River City.

“Something else you should know, Detective. Her pops, Jorge, was mighty pissed at her for leaving, from what I heard.”

“Really? How pissed?”

“Very. He found out she was down in L.A. about three months ago and sent his oldest boy Javier down to get her. Apparently, she blew town first and he didn’t find her. Which just pissed Jorge off even more.”

“You think they’d hurt her, if they found her?”

“Not in a million years. Are you very familiar with the Mexican family structure?”

“Not really.”

“It’s very tight. And the girls are the jewels of the family. They’d drag her back kicking and screaming, but never hurt her.”

“How about someone else hurting her?” I asked. “She have any boyfriends? Stalkers?”

Williams laughed. “Boyfriends? Sure, lots of ‘em. At least, lots who were probably trying. But she doesn’t have any protection orders or domestic violence entries in our system here. And I never heard of anyone steady.”

“It was a long shot, anyway,” I admitted.

“How’d she die?” he asked.

I gave him the barest details.

He whistled again. “That’s a shame.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Go ahead.”

“Would you be able to do a courtesy interview for me down there?”

“I could, if you want. I can make notification for you, too, if you like.”

“That’d be great. I was going to call our chaplain’s service today for that.”

“No problem,” Williams said. “I’ll have our chaplain call up there to yours and get the details. Then I’ll go with him. But I have to tell you, Jorge and his boys aren’t going to tell me diddly. The most you’ll get is some very pissed off cholos up there, cruising your streets and looking for her killer.”

“I don’t want you to interview them. I want you to talk to Lucinda.”

“Lucinda?”

“I think so. Serena’s cousin.”

“You probably mean Lucia. That’s Jorge’s sister’s kid. She’s about fourteen. Why do want me to interview her?”

“I think Serena was writing to her. I found a postcard in her room addressed to her prima . That means cousin, right?”

“Yeah. Girl cousin.”

“Plus one of the girls at the bar said she didn’t talk about her family, except for her cousin Lucy or Lucinda or something. If she was writing to her, I might be able to fill in her travels before she arrived here in River City.”

“I see,” Williams said. “Yeah, I can do that. You know, Lucia’s mother is a real bruja vieja . Almost as bad as Jorge, with her Welfare scams.”

“ Bruja Vieja ? What’s that?”

“Old witch. Anyway, I’ll catch Lucia at school, away from her family.”

“That’d be good. Thanks.”

“No problem. Call you in a day or two.”

We hung up and I turned to the patrol officer, who was already standing at my desk.

“Romeo McLaren,” he said, sticking out his hand.

I took it and he gave a firm shake. “John Tower. What’s up?”

He nodded toward the waiting area. I poked my head around my cubicle and saw Officer Glen Bates standing next to a blonde female in handcuffs. Bates was a veteran and an FTO.

“Who’s she?”

“Toni Redding.”

I watched him for a moment, waiting for him to go on.

“She’s a hooker. She’s claiming info on a girl that was just murdered a little while ago. She’s trying to get out of a prostitution charge.”

“What does she know?”

“She wouldn’t say. She said she’d only talk to the detective on the case. We called it in and they said it was your case.”

“It is. Fawn Taylor is the girl’s name.”

McLaren shrugged. “She didn’t even say that. Do you want to talk to her?”

“Put her in an interview room.”

“Okay.”

“Leave her cuffs on. Let me take them off of her.”

He nodded and left.

I returned to my desk and scrawled out my notes from my conversation with Detective Williams. I tried not to let my mind stray to the Taylor case as I wrote, but I could feel a tickle of anticipation.

I grabbed the Taylor file and a clean pad of paper and headed to the interview room. After a few steps, I stopped and returned to my desk and found the license photo of Serena Gonzalez.

McLaren stood guard outside the door to Interview One. Bates was standing a few yards away, making notes in a steno notepad.

I gave McLaren a nod and went inside.

Toni Redding sat sideways in one of the three chairs in the small room, her thin shoulders hunched over. She adjusted her flannel shirt by reaching her handcuffed left hand around and tugging on it. She looked up at me when I entered.

“You the detective?”

I nodded and closed the door behind me. I plopped the case file down on the table, followed by the notepad and pen. The sounds echoed around the tiny room.

“Turn around,” I told her.

She understood and turned around, offering her wrists up. I unlocked the cuffs and removed them, slipping them in the small of my back.

“Thanks,” she said, rubbing her wrists.

“You’re welcome.” I sat down and pushed the case file aside. I wrote her name, the date and the time at the top of the notepad. Then I looked up at her. Her long, blonde hair hung limply to her shoulders and her angular face would always be one step behind beautiful.

“The patrolmen out there think you might have some information for me.”

She nodded as she spoke. “First, I want to know something. If I give you this info, will you make those assholes out there drop this bullshit charge on me?”

“That depends on the information.”

She rubbed her upper arms with both hands. The t-shirt under her open flannel was a faded Disneyland souvenir. I looked for methamphetamine sores on her neck, but didn’t see any. Her face wasn’t broken out, either. My guess was that she was into heroin. “I might know something about Fawn, the girl they found at the bingo lot.”

“I’m listening.”

She bit her lip and looked down at the table. When she looked back up at me, she said, “Do you know Officer Paul Hiero?”

“Yes.”

“Well…he and I are…” she smiled slightly. “Friends.”

“Don’t bullshit me. Don’t even think about bringing an officer’s name into this conversation. If you do, you’ll destroy any credibility your story may have.”

She bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”

“How do you know the victim’s name?”

“If I tell you about Fawn, will you drop this new charge?”

“What do you have to lose? Either you don’t tell me and you go to jail. Or you tell me and maybe you don’t go to jail. It’s not like you can take your information down to the pawn shop and get ten bucks for it.”

“You better not screw me over.”

I pushed the file aside and put the notepad in front of me. “How did you know Fawn?” I asked her.

“I met her out on Sprague.”

“Was she working?”