“It’s been a long time, gentlemen.” Mr. White turned.
He had once been a handsome man—tan, blue eyes, trim figure. He loved spending time in his garden. He boasted of never being sick. At forty, he’d looked twenty-five. At sixty-two, when I’d last seen him, he could’ve passed for fifty. A local curandero once assured me Señor White had made a pact with the devil for eternal youth.
Now, as he was approaching seventy, it looked like the devil had decided to collect.
His gaze was as fierce as I remembered, but the skin under his eyes was translucent. His lips were colorless. He reminded me of a corpse with a light inside.
“Lymphoma,” he said, answering the question I didn’t dare ask. “I don’t make many public appearances these days. Not to worry, however. My doctors are quite optimistic.”
His eyes glittered as if this were deeply humorous. “Now, gentlemen, enlighten me. What do you claim to know about my son’s murder?”
“Sir,” Madeleine protested.
White held up his hand.
He gave me a smile that might’ve been mistaken as kind, if you weren’t used to dealing with reptiles. “You must excuse Madeleine. She believes I’m easily taken advantage of. A dying man, still doting over a dead, worthless son.”
“Sir, I never—”
“You’d never say so to my face,” he agreed. “You don’t need to.”
Alex cleared his throat. “I tried to tell her, Mr. W. I thought you should make the call.”
“Your sensitivity to my wishes is appreciated, Alex Cole.”
“Sir,” Madeleine said, now gritting her teeth, “the last private investigator—”
“Yes, my dear. The last private investigator took my money, taxed my health, played my hopes for nothing. But you paid him accordingly, did you not?”
White offered me another cold smile.
I wondered what lake that PI was floating at the bottom of.
“I understand from the news you are both wanted men,” White told us casually. “Shot your wife, did you, Mr. Arguello?”
“No, patrón,” Ralph replied. “I didn’t.”
Mr. White gave him a sympathetic look. “You put me in an awkward situation. I have my annual Christmas party tonight. I must keep up appearances, you know. Show my, ah, business associates I’m still alive. On top of this, I have the Secret Service hovering outside my house.”
“Secret Service?” I asked.
Ralph looked at me. “You owe me ten bucks.”
“My point, gentlemen,” White said, his voice a little frostier, “is that I have enough to worry about. Why should I not, as a law-abiding citizen, turn you in to the police?”
“We were friends of Frankie’s,” Ralph said. “You know that.”
White studied us. What Ralph said was technically true. In my case, “friends” was pushing it, but I tried to look, well . . . friendly.
“My wife,” Ralph said, “Ana DeLeon—”
“The homicide detective,” White said.
“—she was reopening Frankie’s murder case.”
White tugged the cuff of his Turkish bathrobe. “I knew nothing of this.”
“Ana had a fresh lead. She was getting ready to make an arrest when somebody shot her.”
“The police say you shot her.”
“’Course they do.” Ralph’s voice was raw. “The police hate my guts. They didn’t want Ana reopening your son’s murder case, ’cause they hate your guts, too. But Ana was my wife. I’d never shoot her. The person who shot her was the suspect. Frankie’s killer.”
Ralph’s gaze was so steady even I was impressed.
Guy White cupped his hand, as if to gather the pale winter light coming through the window. “What do you propose?”
“Sir, no,” Madeleine protested.
“I need to find this guy to clear myself,” Ralph told Guy White. “You want to find him, too. We have a common goal.”
Madeleine exhaled. “Sir, they have nothing to offer you. We’ve tried . . . you’ve tried for eighteen years. If there was a way—”
“All we need is some discreet help,” I put in. “Wheels. Clothes. Firepower. Your leverage to open a few doors. What have you got to lose?”
White pondered this. His face gleamed from the tiny effort of speaking with us. He looked impossibly ancient, nothing like the man I remembered. “Mr. Navarre, do you truly believe you can find my son’s killer?”
“I believe I have no choice.”
White’s eyes betrayed nothing. “I’ve been keeping tabs on you. You’re good. Probably better than you realize. I’ve heard you can find anyone.”
“This is bullshit,” Madeleine spat.
I wondered how Madeleine had kept her job and her life this long, with an attitude like hers. From her colleague Alex’s disdainful sneer, I figured he was wondering the same thing.
“My resources are at your disposal,” White decided.
“Sir!”
“However,” White said, ignoring her, “one of my people will be with you at all times.”
“I’ll do it, Mr. W,” Alex piped in.
“If I find you are using me, gentlemen,” White continued, “your life expectancy will be even shorter than mine. Alex, you stay here. Madeleine will see to their needs.”
“What?” she demanded.
“Go with them,” White commanded. “Cooperate with them. Watch them.”
“Frankie isn’t worth the effort. I don’t want this job.” Her fists were balled, her voice simmered.
Guy White raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have any choice, my dear. After all, he was your brother.”
Chapter 7
“SO YOU TOLD HER NOTHING,” ETCH SAID.
The old medical examiner, Jaime Santos, leaned against his porch railing.
Down below, winter mist filled the Olmos Basin. The pewter line of the dam cut through marshes and soccer fields, marching toward the hills where chimney smoke trailed up from the roofs of mansions.
“Nothing,” Santos agreed. “I mean . . . what would be the point?”
Santos met his eyes, then looked away.
He’s lying, Etch thought.
Doctors were not cops. They couldn’t pull off a lie.
Santos had aged since retirement. His eyes had turned soft and desperate. His chest caved inward. His hair had worn down to gray patches like a bad coat of primer.
“Miss Lee seems smart.” Santos tried to sound casual about it. “She asked about the blood under Frankie White’s fingernails.”
Etch sipped his atole.
It had been years since he had the stuff. The cinnamon and chocolate sent him back to Christmas at his abuela’s—stockings, presents, family dinners.
It had been a long time since he’d thought of Christmas as anything but sweep season for homicides.
“We got a DNA match,” he told Santos. “Ana’s husband—Ralph Arguello. Ana didn’t want to accept that. She claimed the test was tampered with.”
“One could fake something like that. You’d have to have access to the evidence room. You’d have to know what you were doing. But it’s possible. Look at that big scandal in Houston. They had to shut down their entire DNA lab.”
“What are you saying, Jaime?”
Santos shrugged. “Just that it wouldn’t be hard.”
Etch set his cup on the railing. There was a bullet hole dug into the rough-hewn oak. Etch put his finger on it. “Still the teenage snipers?”
“Damn kids,” Santos agreed. “They get on that utility road down there with a .22. My windows are the only thing you can see on this side of the hill at night. They think I’m a damn bull’s-eye. I keep calling the Alamo Heights cops . . .”
Etch nodded sympathetically. He took another sip of atole.
Christmas, nineteen years ago, Lucia and he had found Franklin White’s third victim. A community college student, Julia Garcia had been raped and strangled off Mission Road, abandoned like a used tire. The spot had looked a lot like the marshland below Santos’ deck.
Julia Garcia had been a few months shy of her twentieth birthday. She was the first in her family to go to college. Alive, she’d had a radiant smile. She volunteered with the barrio literacy program. She wanted to be a teacher. All that was cut short because she’d let a well-dressed young man pick her up at a bar.
Etch remembered standing in below-zero wind, watching the forensics team haul a draped gurney from the weed-choked gully.
Lucia said: We’ll get him, Etch. Don’t worry.
The father got away with it, he had told her. Why not the son?
Lucia’s face darkened. She couldn’t offer him any reassurance.
Guy White had never killed his women, but the distinction didn’t matter. It was still the White family proving their power, taking the women of the old mission lands like the Anglo cattle barons had before them and the Spanish alcaldes before that. The lords of San Antonio never changed. They had to find the heart of the city, the deepest foundation, and violate it. Possess it. Make themselves legitimate by proving that the oldest inhabitants of the land, families that had been here for three centuries, were defenseless against them.
Like Lucia, Etch came from mission blood. He’d grown up within the sounds of the bells of San Juan and San José.
He’d also been a cop long enough to know how easily justice could be bought and sold. He’d seen how reticent the homicide detectives were to approach the White family, how swiftly White’s lawyers counterattacked.
No one could bring Frankie White to justice. At least not in the conventional way.
No one would make him pay for snuffing out Julia Garcia’s life.
Etch took another sip of Santos’ atole. “You suggest anybody else for Miss Lee to talk to?”
The old ME wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Why?”
“Just curious.” He decided to risk a bit of the truth. “I have a guy tailing her.”
“You think that’s worth your time?”
“She’s a fugitive’s girlfriend. I have to assume eventually she’ll hook up with Navarre. Be stupid not to have her tailed.”
Santos’ hands trembled. “I don’t recall. We talked for just a few minutes.”
Etch couldn’t help feeling sorry for Santos. If he was Etch’s suspect, if this had been a formal interrogation, the old doctor would’ve been dead meat. “You remember Larry Drapiewski, used to be with the Sheriff’s Department? He told Navarre the hit man theory—Titus Roe.”
“Yeah?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some truth to that.”
“I . . . guess it’s possible.”
“Jaime, I don’t want the killer to be a cop. I wouldn’t like it if people were sending that message.”
“We take care of our own.”
“Used to be that way,” Etch agreed.
“So,” Santos said, moistening his lips. “How’s the sergeant in the hospital doing?”