Janice Johnson - Dead Wrong

More footsteps in the hall. Why was she thinking about Will Patton? Trina turned to face the door.

She’d seen the photo taken of Ricardo Mendoza when he was booked. Not much more than a kid, he’d stared at the camera with a mix of defiance, fear and feigned indifference. The man who nodded at the guard and stepped into the room had changed in ways that had more to do with being an inmate than with the six years that had passed.

In the blue prison garb, he looked thin and tough. A scar, pale against swarthy skin, curled from his temple onto his cheek. No longer the cocky young man, he was still handsome despite the disfigurement, the complete lack of expression on his face and the lines carved by bitterness. She thought she saw a flicker of interest in his dark eyes as he studied her, but that might be because she was a woman, not because of her mission or her job.

“Mr. Mendoza,” she said. “I’m Detective Giallombardo. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“It’s not like I have anything else to do.” He went to the chair on the far side of the table, facing the glass wall and the guard who waited outside the room.

Trina sat across from him.

When she didn’t immediately begin, he said, “You here to find out what makes me tick, so you’ll be able to catch other guys like me?”

He was curious after all. She was interested, too, in the irony in his voice.

“I’m actually hoping you’ll tell me about the night Gillian Pappas died.”

His body jerked. Good, she’d surprised him.

“What’s the point of that?”

“I’ve read your testimony. I’m hoping to hear what happened, as well as you can recollect it. Including anything you weren’t able to say in the courtroom.” She held up her hand when he started to speak. “I promise, I’ll tell you why, but I’d like to hear your story first, un-colored by what I have to say.”

She’d thought his face expressionless. Now, for a moment, emotions she could only guess at boiled to the surface. Finally, he gave a jerky nod.

“Like I said, I got nothing better to do.”

“Thank you. Do you mind if I tape the interview?”

He shrugged. “Why would I?”

Trina turned on the recorder and had him repeat his consent. Then she began. “When did you move to Elk Springs?”

He answered her questions, explaining that his father was a migrant worker, but legal, and that he, Ricky, had been born in this country. His parents still followed the harvests: strawberries, peas, apples, even tulip bulbs in Skagit County in Washington State. He had managed to graduate from high school and learn some mechanics along the way. Two years before Gillian Pappas’s murder, Ricardo Mendoza had gotten a job in Elk Springs, at an auto body repair shop.

“They had this bullshit reason for firing me.” Remembered anger roughened his voice. “That’s when I got drunk and stole a car from the shop. I wrecked it on purpose. Yeah, I know. I was a goddamn genius.”

Yeah, he’d shoplifted, too, when he first got to Elk Springs. “I was hungry,” he said with a shrug. And, sure, he’d beaten the crap out of this guy who’d insulted Ricardo’s girlfriend in a bar one night. “I had a temper.”

After plea bargaining, he’d done six months for the auto theft. “Detective Patton actually put in a word for me. She helped me get a job when I got out. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have stayed in Elk Springs.” His laugh was harsh. “Big favor, huh? God, I wish she hadn’t done me any favor.”

No, his girlfriend hadn’t stuck by him. He didn’t have a girlfriend after he got out of the joint.

He’d worked the day Gillian Pappas was murdered. It wasn’t as good a job as his last one, it didn’t take any skill, all he was doing was changing oil in one of those quickie places where people sat in their cars while guys with oil embedded under their fingernails worked in the pit, but it was okay.

“I mean, I figured, six months, a year.” He shrugged. “I could show what a good employee I was. Then maybe a car dealer would hire me. Detective Patton…” His face closed.

“Detective Patton?”

“She knew someone at the Subaru dealership. She said she’d talk to him.”

No wonder the lieutenant had wanted Trina to come alone. She’d had more history with Mendoza than she’d admitted. It sounded as if he’d been some kind of project of hers. Cops sometimes got involved this way, when they thought someone had gotten a raw deal or maybe just believed they saw a spark in someone who’d made bad choices. They thought if they fanned a little, the spark would burst into a warm, crackling fire. Sometimes it even worked. People did get raw deals. Kids with crappy backgrounds could turn around because someone said, “I see promise in you. I know you can do better.”

But Ricky Mendoza hadn’t turned his life around, according to a jury of his peers. Instead, he’d brutally raped and murdered Gillian Pappas. Trina didn’t like imagining what the lieutenant had felt, knowing that without her intervention Mendoza would probably still have been in prison.

“After you got off work that day, what did you do?” Trina asked.

“I went home and had dinner, then decided to go have a couple beers at this bar. Maybe shoot some pool.” He was silent for a moment, looking at Trina but seeming no longer to see her. “I stayed a couple hours. I was about to go when I saw this girl come in.”

“Did you approach her?”

“Not at first. I figured she was meeting someone. But I kept an eye on her. She ordered a drink, then another one real fast. A couple guys hit on her, but she handled them. I went to take a leak, and when I came back this guy was giving her a hard time. I gave him a shove and told him to back off. I guess she was grateful, because she asked my name.”

“Did she tell you hers?”

“Yeah, Gilly. Gilly Pappas.”

He described how they talked. She had another drink, and he persuaded her to eat some chicken wings because he could see she was getting plastered.

“All of a sudden she stood up and said, ‘You wanna screw?’”

“Did anyone else hear her?”

“I don’t think so. I guess people did see us leaving together. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention, but turns out I was wrong.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked if she was getting back at someone. She grabbed my shirt and said, ‘Do you care?’”

“Did you?”

For the first time, he looked angry. “Shit, yeah, I cared! She was…she was classy. Okay? I knew that, but we really talked, and I thought…” He jerked his shoulders. “Well, I quit thinking. I’d have rather it wasn’t revenge sex. You know? But it had been a while, and she was real pretty. So I said, ‘No.’”

“You lied.”

“Yeah, I lied. So sue me.” He guffawed. “No, convict me of murder. Worked even better, didn’t it?”

“Please tell me what happened next.”

Lightning-quick, he reverted to anger. “What do you think happened? She came out to my car, told me to drive back to the alley and park. Then she unzipped my pants, lifted her skirt and bit my neck. She didn’t want to come back to my place, and she didn’t want pretty. Afterward, I thought she’d wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. It was like something she had to do.”

“Did you have a condom?”

“No, and she didn’t ask me to put one on. I figured she was on the pill or something. Or maybe too drunk to care. I don’t know. I wish I’d worn a condom.”

Trina bet he did.

“Did you talk at all after?”

“No. She got real quiet. Scrambled into her panties and adjusted her clothes like she felt dirty. She started to get out and I told her I’d drive her back to her car. She shook her head and just took off. Walking so fast she was almost running. I drove around the block and saw her come around the side of the bar. She was crying. I felt like shit.” He fell silent.