No way out

Chapter Fifty-seven

Traffic was blocked off at both ends of the block, police barriers and uniformed cops keeping us from getting close to Staley’s Market, a small crowd forming along the line of sawhorses. I got out, gripping the open car door, and scanned the street. A squad car, an unmarked Crown Vic, and two ambulances were parked in front of the market, a body lying in the open doorway too distant to make out race or gender.

“Oh, my God,” Kate said. “Who do you think it is?”

“No way to know from here. Could be someone was trying to rob the store and ran into Nick Staley and his nine-millimeter.”

“Why rob a store that’s out of business?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You don’t think it could be…” She stopped, unable to complete the sentence.

“Roni?”

Kate nodded, echoing the fear that was turning me inside out. Everywhere I went in this case, I got there too late.

I signaled to one of the cops on the line. When he turned, I recognized him from the hospital.

“Fremont!”

He hesitated a moment, matching my face to his memory, meeting us at the center of the intersection. “Agent Davis. What are you doing here?

“We were on our way to see a man named Nick Staley. That’s his grocery. What’s going on?”

“Double homicide.”

“Any ID?”

“None yet, one older and one younger, that’s all I know. I just got here.”

“Who’s got the scene?”

“Detective Carter.”

“I may be able to identify at least one of the victims.”

“I’ll call him, see where he wants you,” he said.

“He’s probably pretty busy. Don’t worry,” I said, patting him on the shoulder, “I’ll tell Carter you weren’t here yet.”

It was all I could do not to run down the block, visions of Wendy lying on a New York City street, face against the curb, telling me she knew I would come for her as I scooped her into my arms, hugging her, watching her die. Fearing my nightmare’s renewal, I held myself in check. I’d get there soon enough.

Crime scenes are organized chaos, everyone doing their jobs, no one paying much attention to anyone else, assuming that whoever is there belongs there. No one stopped us, asked us who we were or what we were doing until I reached the body in the doorway, taking a deep breath, bending over, hands on my knees when I saw Eberto lying in a pool of blood.

“Eberto Garza,” Carter said.

I hadn’t seen Carter; I was too relieved that the dead body wasn’t Roni, imagining the sorrow of Eberto’s mother that it wasn’t someone else.

“I didn’t know.”

“Know what?”

“His last name, Garza.”

“But you knew him. How’s that?”

I ignored his question, relief giving way to anxiety. “Who’s the other victim?”

“Nick Staley. Owned the grocery. Now what are you doing in the middle of my crime scene, and how do you know this no-account gangbanger?”

I stepped around Carter, over Eberto’s body and into the grocery. Nick Staley’s body was propped up on the floor, his back against a crimson stained wall, his chest a bloody mess, his legs folded beneath him.

“They shoot each other?”

“Doubtful.”

I looked at Eberto’s body, his feet inside the door, the rest of him lying outside on the sidewalk. He was on his stomach, his head turned to the side, arms extended over his head as if he had been shot while in flight, an entry wound visible in the middle of his back.

“The bullet could have severed Eberto’s spinal cord, struck his heart or another major artery, or all of the above. Staley was an ex-Marine who’d seen combat. He knew how to shoot to kill. Eberto could have surprised him, fired first and ran. Staley could have lived long enough to return fire, taking him down.”

Carter said. “The kid wasn’t armed. The only gun we found was a nine registered to Nick Staley. Preliminary indications are that it had been fired recently, but there are no powder burns on Staley’s hands. Ballistics will tell us for certain if Staley’s gun was the murder weapon, but that seems likely.”

“The way that Eberto is laid out, it looks like he was shot in the back, probably while he was trying to get out of the store.”

“Coroner says Staley was killed during the night, an hour either side of midnight. Eberto was shot later, probably around dawn.”

“You think the shooter spent the night in the store and killed Eberto on his way out this morning?”

“The timing works, but why stick around after killing Staley?”

I thought of his son, imagined him on the run, coming back to the store for more money or to get even with his father for smacking him and for a lifetime of other slights. It was easy to picture them arguing, Nick reverting to form, belittling Brett, his son pulling a gun, Nick laughing, daring him to shoot, both of them astounded when he did. Brett could have been drunk, high, or both and passed out until Eberto woke him.

“Maybe he had no place else to go.”

“What killer wouldn’t have a better place to go than the murder scene?”

“Brett Staley,” I said, telling him that Nick had caught his son trying to rob the store and laying out my scenario.

Carter listened, interrupting with the right questions. “That’s as good a take as any. What were you talking to Nick Staley about in the first place?”

“You know the missing-kids case Adrienne Nardelli is handling, the Martin kids?”

“Yeah. She told me how you broke the case on that other missing kid, Timmy Montgomery. Makes me almost want to take back all the things I’ve said about you. How did you get from there to Staley’s Market?”

“Peggy Martin was cheating on Jimmy. She filed for divorce, got a restraining order against him so he couldn’t see his kids except with court supervision. The kids disappeared, and Jimmy refused to answer any questions about what happened to them. Peggy thinks he took the kids to punish her, but she wouldn’t give us the name of her boyfriend. I was trying to find out who he was.”

“You figured if she was cheating on Jimmy with his best friend, that would make him even angrier.”

“Right. And Jimmy told his lawyer the two of them were buddies. Nick acted like he hardly knew the guy, but I think Jimmy was telling the truth.”

“Only it turns out the wife was banging the neighbor kid, so it was a wasted trip.”

“Not entirely.”

I told him about seeing Eberto on the bus on Monday and outside the grocery yesterday along with Cesar Mendez.

“And you don’t think Mendez stopped by the grocery to pick up a carton of milk?”

“I think he was looking for Brett Staley.”

I explained Brett’s relationship with Frank Crenshaw and Mendez, and my theory that Brett had acted as the middleman on Crenshaw’s purchase of a gun from Mendez and that Mendez had forced Brett to kill Crenshaw so that Crenshaw’s lawyer wouldn’t offer Mendez in a trade for his client’s life.

“I worked gangs for a while. Mendez is smart enough not to get blood on his hands and cold enough to make sure someone else does. But I don’t think he’d take any chances on a white boy like Brett Staley. He’d get someone he trusts to pop him.”

“Someone like Eberto.”

We watched as paramedics rolled Eberto into a body bag, zipped it closed, and carted him away.

“You tell all that to Braylon Jennings?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“He’s real sensitive on the subject of Brett Staley. I think Staley was his CI.”

“Which puts Jennings’s balls on the chopping block if his CI has graduated to murder.”

“Jennings used his ATF clout to get the charges against Roni Chase dropped so he could use her as bait to draw Brett out, make it easy on Mendez.”

“Son of a bitch,” Carter said, biting off the words.

“No fun to get played, huh?”

“You talking about what I did with Roni and her gun? Tell me you would have done it different. You’ve forgotten what it means to be a cop. So has Jennings. Where’s Brett Staley now?”

“In the wind.”

“And Roni Chase, is she riding the breeze with him?”

“I don’t think so. Brett’s been off the grid since you cut him loose at the hospital Monday night. I stopped by her office this morning. She’d been there, but had stepped out, left it wide open with a warm cup of coffee on the table.”

“Maybe Brett called her, said come and get me. Love will make you forget about your cup of coffee.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think she’s in love with him. Besides, her mother had a stroke a while back, and she’s taking care of her. I don’t see her running off with Brett or anyone else.”

“Maybe he didn’t give her a choice.”

“You don’t know Roni. She makes her own choices.”

“And you don’t know Cesar Mendez. If he’s behind all this, I guarantee you he doesn’t give a shit what Roni Chase wants, or Brett Staley for that matter. All he cares about is making sure nothing lands on his doorstep.”

“Where can I find Mendez?”

“You can’t find him anywhere. Go home before he makes you a hood ornament.”