Vigilante

CHAPTER 12

I went inside and found Alexa waiting for me in the bedroom. She was lying in bed reading a crime stat report, but she was also wearing a sexy pink negligee and she looked beautiful. I needed something beautiful to end my day. I stretched out beside her and moments later we were making love.

Even though my head was spinning with this case, I could always find a way to lose myself with her. We began our lovemaking on the bed but consummated it on the floor. The way that happened was Alexa, always a playful lover, started tickling me and we ended up rolling off the side of the bed.

When we were done, I held her, feeling her warm breath against my neck.

“He’s not going to get us,” she whispered in my ear.

Later, when we were lying in bed and I could hear her breathing deepen and grow steady, I looked at the ceiling and tried to further sort out my feelings about Lita Mendez, Carla and Julio Sanchez, and Nixon Nash. Every fiber in my body suggested whatever was going on, it wasn’t going to end well. I was beginning to buy into Nash’s dire prediction for my future.

Sleep wouldn’t come, so I slipped out of bed, grabbed a robe, and went to my desk in the den. I sat there, trying to categorize and systematize.

At the top of my bothersome issues list was Edwin Chavaria. Even though his tip had produced the Sanchezes, the ceiling fan, and the rest of that fire drill, there were big parts of Chavaria’s story that wouldn’t lie down for me.

I’m not exactly a gang squad expert, but I’ve worked my share of gang cases. In my experience these guys rarely, if ever, put their business in the street. They take care of their own problems in their own ways. They don’t rat anybody out or bring in the cops.

Beyond that, Chava had actually gone on camera with Nix Nash, calling out Carla Sanchez, putting a murder beef on her. How was that going to look to his homies on First Street when it aired? Would a guy like Chava who had done serious prison time actually play the rat on national TV? What would that do to his street cred? I suppose it was possible, but I had my doubts. Unless, of course, somebody had put him up to it and made it fiscally worth his while. Then he could brag to his vato homeboys that he’d gamed the chota, getting them to chase false leads.

Muy rifo, homes.

Nash’s MO was to get cops investigating bogus leads and then, while they ran in circles, solve the case himself. That’s exactly what had happened in Atlanta, and my gut told me that’s what he was trying to do here.

All things considered, I was very unhappy with our case against the Sanchezes.

I was also worried about the smells we’d noticed when we arrived in Lita’s stuffy house. Both Hitch and I had smelled garlic, and the ME’s report said Lita had a partially digested dinner of beef enchiladas and beans in her stomach but that there was no trace of garlic in the stomach contents.

I’d been kidding Hitch about missing the boat with his guess that it was Bolognese sauce, but Hitch really is a Class A chef. Alexa and I had been up to his house many times and he’d cooked some of the best gourmet food I’ve ever tasted. He knew his stuff, and he’d said he smelled garlic, onions, and bay leaf or sage.

I went on the computer and found a few recipes for enchiladas online. Most of them contained garlic. I shut off the computer and sat there thinking. I get hung up on stuff like this. Little details that fight the pattern. How could Hitch and I have both smelled garlic if she didn’t have garlic in her stomach?

I opened my notebook and made a note to try to find out why. It might be nothing, but either way, I knew it would pester me until I found the answer.

Then I closed my crime book and sat back, planning tomorrow’s moves. I had a lot of people to talk to, including a bunch of cops who would become pissed the minute I suggested they might be suspects.

At the top of my interview list was a name that threatened my future like the swine flu.

First thing tomorrow, Hitch and I had to go talk to the Dark Queen of Internal Affairs.