by Marc Rainer
He started to call Boo back, but she was already off on her recon mission. Trask turned toward Lynn.
“I see him,” she said before he could warn her.
Boo came loping back. She snorted, and then headed off into the grassy infield.
“Boo doesn’t like him either. Should we turn around?” Lynn asked.
“No. Let’s see what’s happening here.”
When they were about ten yards apart, the man with the eye patch seemed to notice them for the first time.
“Mister Trask. A pleasant surprise. And this must be Mrs. Trask?”
“Yes, Señor Rios. My wife, Lynn.”
You speak English after all, Rios—or whoever you are. American English.
“It is an honor to meet you,” Rios-García said, bowing his head slightly.
Lynn nodded back.
“That’s quite a dog you have there,” Trask said, looking the animal over. It was three feet tall at the shoulders, with a thick chest and massive head.
“Yes, Franco is a Spanish mastiff. I brought him back to El Salvador after my last visit to Castille. My grandparents still live in Spain.”
“Franco?” Trask asked. “After the late Generalissimo?”
“Yes. Very astute of you. I was born in Spain. My parents emigrated to El Salvador after the Generalissimo died.”
“Your English is excellent,” Trask said, “but not European in accent.”
“Thank you. You are correct again. I attended college here in the States.”
The conversation was interrupted by a deep growl as the mastiff suddenly lunged toward Nikki. Trask saw the leash slip from Rios’ hand, and he instinctively bent down to protect the smaller dog and Lynn, who was also reaching for Nikki. His concern was unnecessary. A large, dark blur flashed between them and Rios, slamming into the mastiff and knocking Franco off his feet. Boo stood over the other dog growling, her teeth bared in warning.
Trask took Boo by the collar and pulled her back. Rios grabbed the mastiff ’s leash and angrily barked a command in Spanish. Franco returned to his master’s side. The dog heeled and sat, looking vulnerable and confused.
“My sincere apologies,” Rios said. “That’s quite a dog you have. What kind is she?”
For a second, Trask considered making up an exotic breed name. He decided against it. “A hundred percent, pure-bred American mutt,” Trask said, patting Boo on her side. We’re a melting pot, in case you hadn’t heard.”
“Of course I’ve heard,” Rios responded. “Much like our mestizos in El Salvador.”
Trask detected a hint of contempt in Rios’s voice. “I’ll hold her until you put some distance between us,” he said, his hand still wrapped around Boo’s collar.
“Of course,” Rios said, nodding toward Lynn. “It was very nice to meet you.”
He turned and gave an angry tug on the mastiff ’s leash, walking back toward the parking lot. Trask and Lynn waited until Rios was a good distance away before following. They circled past the exit gate, watching as the mastiff was loaded into a limousine by a very large man who seemed to be taking directions from Rios. Trask made a mental note of the diplomatic license plate.
STL-467. S for staff. TL—the country code for El Salvador.
He watched the limousine pull away while Lynn took the leashes off the fence and hooked them on the dog’s collars. When they were back in the car, she turned to him.
“That was no accident, was it?”
“Only if you think that members of the Salvadoran diplomatic corps like driving thirty miles out of Washington to walk their dogs.”
“Was it another warning? Was he trying to chase us off the case?”
“I don’t know. I just know it was no chance meeting. I also know that there’s something that doesn’t fit about our man Rios being part of the current government of El Salvador or its embassy here.”
“That Spanish connection?” she asked.
“Yeah, the Franco stuff. If eye patch’s family was connected to Franco and his Nazi-backed goons during the thirties, and if he can’t mention the word mestizo without sneering, it makes me wonder how he ended up as deputy to an ambassador appointed by the supposedly egalitarian Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. Mr. Rios, as he currently calls himself, fancies his pedigree to be as pure as the one for that big weenie of a dog he’s hauling around.”
Trask reached behind the seat while he drove, finding Boo’s furry head in its usual place, looking out the front of the car in the gap between the two front bucket seats. He gave her a long series of head-rubs and ear-scratches. “Hell of a body slam, Boo-boo. Nikki owes you one.”
“He said he went to college here,” Lynn said.
“Yep, but didn’t want to tell us where,” Trask said. “Normally that would have been volunteered. He didn’t want us to have that information. What people hold back is often more important than what they say. There’s a lead in there somewhere.”
“Sure,” Lynn scoffed. “All we have to do is guess what his real name is first, then research historical student roles of every university in the country. Some lead.”
Trask felt his cell phone vibrating in its belt holster. He flicked it open. “Hello?”
“You’d better get back here ASAP, Jeff.” It was Barry Doroz’ voice.
Trask pushed the speakerphone key and handed the phone to Lynn, who held it close to his face while he drove. “Why Bear? What’s up?”
“Tim just called. He was listening to the car wash bug when all hell broke loose. Auto-fire gunshots, screaming, the works. Somebody just hit the MS-13 troops again. Patrol units just got to the car wash. Four dead on the scene.”
“Shit!” Trask pounded the steering wheel. “Any witnesses left alive, Bear?”
“Nope. They’re all dead.”
“We’re on our way. We’ll drop our dogs at the house and meet you there in about thirty, traffic permitting.”
The car wash was a bloodbath, with four corpses perforated by multiple, high-velocity rounds. Trask, with Lynn following in his footsteps, was careful not to tromp on anything that might be considered of evidentiary value as he picked his way toward the hallway that ran parallel to the wash track. His right hand began tapping out a bass line on the seam of his jeans.
“Song?” she asked.
“‘Dead Man’s Party.’ Oingo Boingo, 1985. Danny Elfman. Very tight horn line.”
The first body lay inside the door to the hall from the waiting area. One hand stretched toward the other end of the hall, and the smeared trail of blood that ran from the waiting room to the corpse’s feet showed that he’d been able to crawl a few feet after the bullets found their mark. Someone had finished him off with a shot to the base of the skull, the entry wound indicating that a small-caliber handgun hand been used for the kill shot. Trask looked back at the dead man as he made his way down the hall. The empty eyes stared past him, toward the room at the end of the hallway. The mouth was stretched open, as if calling out.
He was trying to get to the office. Trying to warn the others.
Two other victims were sprawled across the floor in the office doorway. The crime scene techs were looking over a fourth corpse slumped over the blood-soaked desk inside the office. The body was half-sitting in a swivel chair, the back of which was turned sideways.
Hello, Mario. Wish we could have met under better circumstances. Maybe you can tell us a couple of things, anyway.
Barry Doroz was busy retrieving the bug from the desk telephone. He looked up from a notepad when he saw them. “Welcome to Hell 4.0,” he said. “I’m getting tired of these multiple homicide scenes. I called in some of our guys from the drug squad. Puddin’s with ’em upstairs. They’re processing the marijuana operation in the attic.”
“Did the shooters grab anything upstairs?” Trask asked.
“Not that we could tell. There’s packaged product and a lot of maturing plants. Doesn’t look like anyone was interested in it. Of course, the stair steps weren’t
dropped down for access. We had to do that.”
Trask looked at Lynn. She shook her head.
She’s thinking the same thing I am. Other gangbangers would’ve looked for the dope, run off with it.
Frank Wilkes was in a corner of the office, holding a shell casing up to the light. He answered Trask’s question before it could be asked. “Common 7.62 rounds. The cheap stuff again.”
Trask nodded. He leaned over the desk and looked at the wall behind the body. There were two holes in the sheetrock about four inches apart, each about thirty inches above the baseboard. The hole on the left had some small blood splatter marks encircling it. The one on the right did not. “Frank…” Trask called Wilkes over. “Take a look at this.”
Wilkes peered at the wall over Trask’s shoulder for a moment, then looked at the photographer standing behind them. “You get your shots of the body?” Wilkes asked.
The crime scene tech with the camera nodded. “Yeah, you can move him now.”
Wilkes stepped around the desk, and using hands covered in latex gloves, gently pulled the corpse back into the swivel chair. Trask saw two entry wounds in the man’s torso, one in the center of the chest, one below the left ribs about an inch inside the edge of the body.
Wilkes looked up. “Want to take a stab at this?”
“Three-shot burst, fully automatic AK clone,” Trask said. “The first round hits the victim dead center, and is either still in the vic or in the chair back. The second shot is a through-and-through, causing the wound in the side and then following on into the wall, with the splatter around it. It might have caught the chair back, too, except the victim wasn’t sitting straight when hit…probably starting to stand up, or trying to run. The third round of the burst missed the vic and is in or somewhere behind the wall.”
“One hundred percent, so far,” Wilkes said, nodding with approval. “Here’s the hard part, gangbanger shooters or pros?”
“Pros. I’m sure of it,” Trask said.
“I agree,” Wilkes nodded again, “but tell me why.”
“I’ve fired a Norinco before,” Trask said. “ATF invites us to their little shooting demos once in a while. If you’re not well trained on an automatic weapon like the AK—or one of the Chinese knock-offs—and you’re righthanded, you’ll always pull it up and to the right when you’re firing fully automatic. You’ll also probably crank off six or seven rounds in the burst. This was a three-shot, controlled burst by someone who knew how to keep the barrel down while firing the weapon.”
“And why wouldn’t a gang member be that proficient with the weapon?” Wilkes asked.
“He could be, professor,” Trask smiled at him, “but it’s not as likely, since they don’t usually have the time or place to practice. These fully automatic weapons are illegal, and you can’t just take them to your friendly local firing range to mow down cinder blocks or cut targets in half, emptying banana-clip magazines in three seconds. I’ve seen gang drive-by scenes before, and it’s always the same. Seven or eight round bursts pulling up and to the right.”
“Excellent,” Wilkes said. “May I assume that this eliminates the need for a trial prep interview on the subject?”
“Yeah, for now,” Trask said. “That is, if we ever have a trial. You have to identify defendants and arrest them to have a trial.”
“Speaking of defendants, Bear,” Lynn asked, “is one of these dead guys Ortega?”
“No. Tim said he’d left for the day before the fireworks started.”
“Then,” she said, “I’d suggest we find him. Whoever did this may be still looking for him.”
“Good point,” Doroz replied, sarcastically. “Got any ideas where we might find him tonight?”
She shook her head. “No. Sorry.”
“Wherever he is, if he’s heard about this, he’s got his head down. He won’t be easy to find,” Trask observed. “No point in chasing ghosts if we don’t know where to look.”
“Agreed,” Doroz said. “We’ve got this, Jeff. You two go home. We’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”
Ortega was sitting in the basement by a tool bench, waiting for the ringtones to stop. The party on the other end of his call would wait for him to speak first.
“El Gato Grande, por favor.”
“Momento.”
A different, but familiar voice replaced the one who had answered the call. They spoke in the Salvadoran dialect of voseo Spanish.
“Esteban?”
“Yes, Jaguar.”
“I heard about the raid on your car wash. Very sad.”
“We lost four good men, and all of the product as well.”
“So I heard. Any idea who is responsible?”
“Mario was on his cell phone with me when he was killed. He said, ‘La sombra.’”
“It is true, then. You are being hunted. I will send help. I would come myself, but I have seven more months to spend behind these stinking walls. La Esperanza never changes.” There was a short pause. “Did you say Mario called you on his cell?”
“Yes.”
“Did he call your cell?”
“Yes. The phone I’m using now.”
“Throw it away as soon as you hang up. In a river, preferably. You must assume that La Sombra has Mario’s phone and that they are looking for the person he was talking with when they killed him. They have your number now and can track you through the GPS in your phone, Esteban. Pull the battery out and get rid of it immediately.”
The line went dead. Ortega reached for a hammer hanging on a pegboard and smashed the phone. He had only been on the line for a few seconds.
Surely that would not have been enough time…
A noise from outside startled him. He was out the rear door of the basement and into the alley in seconds.
Chapter Twenty
Tuesday, September 12, 9:05 a.m.
The mood in the squad conference room had returned to a somber confusion.
“Now I’m beginning to hate this room as much as my office,” Doroz quipped. “Just when we think we’re getting a handle on this, somebody blows away the only location we’ve got a read on and scraps a bug it took everything we knew to get authorized.” He looked down the table at his squad. “Any ideas?”
“Are we prepared for another retaliation raid by our MS-13 targets?” Carter asked.
“Sorry, Dix. I meant to welcome you back,” Doroz said sheepishly. “I called the cops on the Maryland side and gave ’em a heads-up. They tried to do the humane thing and warn the few 18ers they knew in the area. Couldn’t find any of them. Seems the word got out in the Salvadoran community, and none of the Barrio 18 boys wanted to be held accountable for this last mess.”
“Can’t say as I blame them,” Carter responded. “That guy the MS-13 dumped on your doorstep looked a bit worse for wear.”
“Not much flesh left on the bones,” Doroz agreed. He paused, looking around the table.
“So…anybody have any suggestions?”
“Just one,” Trask said from the other end of the table. “We need to redecorate.” He nodded at Crawford. “Puddin’ old pal, would you run down to the supply room and bring me about six boxes of pushpins, please? They’re easier on drywall than tape.” He pulled out a briefcase from under the table, and from that he retrieved a stack of typed pages.
“I’ll bite. What do you have there, Jeff?” Carter asked, speaking for the group.
“Jigsaw puzzle pieces. If two heads are better than one, then the collective wit and wisdom of this group ought to be a miracle-working marvel, and that may be what we need right now,” Trask replied. “Besides, everyone in here, with one exception of which I am very certain, is a male.” He nodded at Lynn, while the others laughed. “I am also very confident, being a male, that most of the minds in this room are sparked by visual aids.”
Crawford entered the conference room with the requested pushpins and slid the boxes across the table to Trask.
Trask opened a box of the pins and sta
bbed four into the corners of the first sheet of paper. “Puzzle piece number one,” he said.
Incident One
Monday, August 8
Headless corpse of Armando Lopez-Mendez, son of Ambassador of El Salvador, found in front of Embassy of El Salvador
Suspect: Diego Morales of MS-13 (now deceased)
(Freshly “beat-in” shortly after victim’s murder)
Victim had “18” tattoo
Cause of Death—Decapitation
Ligature marks on wrists and arms noted at autopsy
Place of death—Undetermined
QUESTIONS:
No proof victim killed by MS-13
Who else had motive?
Inconsistencies with other known local MS-13 homicides?
Who ordered murder?
Trask stepped back to give the others a view of the paper now pinned to the wall.
“That’s where Dix and I came in, but if that’s a puzzle piece, we’re screwed,” Wisniewski volunteered. “It’s got all kinds of holes of its own.”
“No doubt about that,” Trask responded. “But maybe there are answers to this piece in the other ones. That’s what this drill is all about. I won’t pretend for a minute that I’ve found many of the answers, but I want everyone’s best ideas. The next puzzle is really two.”
“Can’t hurt.” Doroz shrugged his shoulders. “Next piece of wallpaper.”
Incident Two
Early Morning Hours of Wednesday, August 10
Convenience Store (Managed by MS-13)
Langley Park, Maryland
Two MS-13 victims killed by high-quality rifle firing NATO rounds
No specific suspects to date
QUESTIONS:
Barrio 18 involved?
Ballistics indicate rounds probably fired by US-made sniper rifle. Who has those?
Motives?
Related to #1? How?
“And the next one,” Trask said.