Janice Johnson - Dead Wrong

“Did you see her get into her car?”

He shook his head. “It was one-thirty, two o’clock. The place was still busy. The parking lot’s not that well-lit. She kind of disappeared behind a pickup.”

“What did you do then?”

“I drove home. Got up, went to work in the morning. We listened to the radio in the shop. Late afternoon, I hear about this woman’s body that was found. I didn’t think anything about it. That night, I see her face on TV. That’s when I started to feel scared.”

“Did you consider going to the police and telling them that you thought you were the last person to see her alive?”

“Sure,” he jeered. “Yeah. I screwed this girl without a condom, she bit my neck and drew blood, her fingerprints are all over my car, and anybody is going to believe I didn’t kill her? Well, here’s a news flash.” He looked around as if in exaggerated surprise at their surroundings. “Nobody did believe me.”

She wanted to argue that it might have been different if he’d come forward on his own. But she wasn’t so sure. It had looked bad. His semen, her fingerprints in his car, the wound on his neck and scratches on his shoulder. His skin under her fingernails. The cops had had Gillian Pappas’s boyfriend saying, “She would never have had sex with a strange man she picked up in a bar.” And then they’d had Ricky Mendoza, a seeming loser with a record that included violence because of his temper. How could they call it any different?

“Did you have friends, family, to give you character references?”

She saw a flash of pain on his face.

“My parents. They came a couple of times. But they don’t speak such good English. They kept saying, ‘You wouldn’t kill no girl, would you? We raised you to respect girls.’”

“You must have other family.”

“Because we’re Catholic? You think I must have ten brothers and sisters? Well, I don’t. Just a sister. She’s ten years older than I am. Back then, she was already married and had kids. Her husband had cancer. I think he got it from using so many pesticides in the fields. You know? But he was an illegal, so who cares? He died, and she had enough to do, raising three kids.”

“You never heard from her?”

“She called once and said, ‘I’m sorry, what happened to you, Ricky. I know you wouldn’t hurt some woman like that.’” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “She sends me a Christmas present. And she writes sometimes.”

“How old are her children?” Trina asked softly.

“Her oldest is eleven, her youngest is six. Ricardo. They named him after me.” He sounded both proud and defiant, as if to say, Somebody thinks I’m worth naming a son after.

“Do you have other family? Cousins?”

His mood shifted. His eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”

“I’ll explain, I promise.”

In a hard voice, Ricky Mendoza said, “I have cousins back in Mexico. Not here.”

“Friends?”

“Nobody who stuck around once I was arrested.”

Mildly shocked, she asked, “So people who knew you thought you might have done it?”

“I don’t know if they thought that, or just didn’t want anything to do with the cops. They were, like, people I had drinks with. My best buddy, he got knifed in prison. He ran this chop shop, see. Three months inside, and he was dead.” Another shrug, more feigned indifference.

“Let me ask you this, Mr. Mendoza.” Trina leaned forward. “Can you think of anyone who cares enough about you to try to get you out of here?”

He was either a heck of an actor, or he was stunned. “Get me out of here? You mean, like someone’s planning a break?”

“No,” Trina said. “Not a break. Someone murdered another woman and displayed her body in exactly the same way Gillian Pappas’s was displayed. The crime is almost a perfect copycat.”

“You think…” He swallowed. “You think someone did that so it would look like I couldn’t have murdered Gilly. So you’d get a pardon for me because I must not have done it.”

“We think it’s a possibility that’s the motive. Yes.”

“Nobody would do that for me.” He actually shuddered. “You think somebody would do something like that just to help out a friend?”

“We do think it’s a possibility,” she repeated.

“Yeah, well, the only people who care about me are my family, and they’re not murderers!” He flattened his hands on the table and half rose. “You’re not going to be trying to haul them in, are you?”

She didn’t move and kept her voice nonthreatening. “We might look into their whereabouts. That’s all.”

“They live in Union Gap. They wouldn’t be down here. It’s winter. There’s nothing to pick.”

“If we can verify that, they’ll be out of the picture.”

His angry stare clashed with her steady one. Finally he dipped his head abruptly and sank back into the chair. After a moment, he asked, “This girl. The one that was killed. Did she look like Gilly?”

“Yes. Quite a lot like her.”

“What was her name?”

“Amy Owen. She grew up in Elk Springs.” She paused a beat. “Did you know her?”

“Why would I know her? I told you. Girls like Gilly. They didn’t pay attention to someone like me.” His bitterness could have etched metal. “Not unless they wanted to piss someone off.”

She wondered if that was true. Ricky Mendoza had been a handsome young man. Possibly a little wicked looking. But if his story was true, he was essentially decent. He’d made the effort to follow Gillian Pappas to her car, to ensure she was safe. He must have seemed a godsend to her, a nice enough guy she could imagine having sex with him, but also rough enough around the edges to make him different from Will Patton. Someone whose identity she could fling at Will, use to hurt him.

What she had never dreamed was that the one who would end up hurt was Ricky Mendoza.

Because she ended up dead.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Ricky asked now, “that maybe I didn’t kill Gilly? That maybe the guy who did is still out there? That this Amy’s murder wasn’t a copy? It was the real thing?”

“You were convicted of Gillian Pappas’s murder.” She hesitated, debated, then said very carefully, “However, that possibility is also one we have to consider.” She clicked off the recorder and rose to her feet. “Mr. Mendoza, thank you for your cooperation.”

Looking as though she’d elbowed him in the gut, he sat gaping at her.

She nodded and walked out, passing the guard on his way in.

A WEEK AGO, his mother had asked him to Sunday-night dinner. Nice to have her seem disconcerted to have him show up.

“Will!”

“Do I have the wrong night?”

“No! No, of course not. Come in. I’ve just been crazy with this murder….” Her voice trailed off and she let him in. “Sorry.”

“At least you’re having dinner at home tonight.” He knew from experience that she might eat fast food for a week straight when she was pursuing a fresh case.

She laughed. “Scott’s amazed. He’s actually the one cooking tonight.”

“Come to a dead end?”

His mother hesitated. “Maybe. No one close to Amy looks like a viable possibility.”

Following her toward the kitchen, he said, “That’s because Amy is such an unlikely victim. I mean, I know beautiful women who enjoy enraging men. Amy isn’t—wasn’t—like that.”

“So everyone keeps repeating. Why Amy? they ask.” She sounded frustrated. “I have to say, ‘I don’t know.’ If we knew why she was chosen, we’d be halfway to making an arrest.”

“You working with someone in the D.A.’s office?”

“I talked to Louis Fein. Since I don’t even have a suspect, we didn’t have much to say.”