No Witness

by Warren C Easley

  “Yeah, well, maybe he was right. I needed to get away from there, figure things out.” His chin trembled ever so slightly. “If I caused this somehow, I could never forgive my—”

  “Don’t do that to yourself. It wasn’t your fault, no matter what.”

  He lowered his eyes again and nodded.

  “Do you suspect Darrell Benedict?”

  He laughed with derision. “That hijo de puta? He doesn’t have the cojones to pull a trigger.”

  “Are you sure? It was a cowardly ambush.”

  Luis took another drag, exhaled, and absently stroked his chin. “I tried to look him up, but I found out he moved to Idaho six months ago to join some white supremacist militia.”

  “What were you going to do if you found him?”

  “Just check him out, look him in the eye. I wanted to make sure.”

  “And if you decided he did it?”

  “I would kill the bastard.”

  I swiveled my body around to face him fully. “That won’t bring Olivia back, and it would put you smack on death row.”

  He shrugged defiantly. “So what?”

  “Did you tell the detectives about him?”

  “Yeah, I mentioned me and him had a fight.”

  “Okay. What about the Tequila Cantina? Why did you start hanging out there?”

  He took another drag, exhaled, and eyed me more carefully. “Olivia asked me to.”

  I leaned in closer as my pulse ticked up a couple of notches. “She did? Why?”

  He shrugged with a puzzled look. “She wouldn’t tell me. She said the less I knew going in, the better.”

  “Back up. When did this happen, and what else did she say?”

  “It must have been a month ago. She said something like, ‘You like to play pool, right?’ I said sure, and she asked me if I’d go to the cantina in Lafayette and start playing there. When I asked her why, she said that a group of Latinos hung out there, in the back where the pool tables are, and she wanted me to go there and try to find out what they were up to. I tried to get more information, but she said, ‘Please, just go, play pool, be friendly, watch and listen. It’s important.’ I told her I would.” He smiled bitterly. “I’d do anything for Olivia.”

  “What did you find out?”

  He dropped the cigarette and ground it out under the heel of his boot. “It was like a recruitment center of some kind. But I never found out what it was they were doing. You had to be selected by the jefe. One of the guys told me to be patient, that I’d probably get in. He made it seem like it was a good deal, kind of an honor. The jefe finally talked to me.”

  “What did he say?”

  Luis paused and stroked his chin again. “He told me I looked like a man in search of a future, or some shit like that. When I said, ‘I’m undocumented. I have no future,’ he said, ‘Sure you do. This is America.’ I told him, ‘That’s the problem.’ Then he just laughed and gave me this fake fucking smile. Said he might be able to help me, and we should talk later. He took my number and said he’d be in touch. Olivia got shot three days later, and not one word from him.”

  “The jefe’s name is Diego Vargas, right?”

  Luis shot me a look. “How do you know that?”

  “Timoteo and I went to the cantina to talk to the guys in the pool room. We wanted to know if you had any trouble there.”

  “¡Mierda! I didn’t use my last name. Now they can connect me to Olivia.”

  “We didn’t know you’d been sent there by your sister. You were thinking about going back to the cantina?”

  Deep furrows appeared on his forehead. “I was, if Vargas called.” He paused, and his young face grew taut. “Now I’m not sure what the fuck to do. I need to know if this somehow led to Olivia’s death.”

  I met his eyes. “We all do, Luis. What did you tell the detectives about this?”

  “Nada. At the time they questioned me, it didn’t seem important. I was in shock, man. I don’t trust them, anyway.”

  “Can you trust me? We can work together on this. Timoteo’s helping me.”

  He didn’t reply, and his expression was difficult to read.

  “Does Vargas know where you’re staying?”

  He smirked. “Not unless you told him.”

  I ignored the barb. “It’s a good idea to continue to stay out of sight. If he contacts you, would you call me? We can decide what to do. It could be dangerous if you do this alone.” I went on to describe the shiv that got left in my tire in the parking lot of the cantina.

  He held his inscrutable expression for so long I thought he wasn’t going to respond. Finally, he nodded once. “Okay.”

  I handed him a card. He dropped it in his shirt pocket. “I know you’re not answering Timoteo’s calls. Will you answer mine?”

  Another nod. “How’s my mother?”

  I exhaled a sigh. “Not good at all. She’s staying in her room, doesn’t want to cook, doesn’t want to eat. She sent the priest away. Your father needs you, too. So does Timoteo.”

  He grimaced, and the pain returned to his eyes. “Ay, chingo… Tell them I’m okay, that I’ll come by soon, that I, ah…love them.”

  Luis got up and joined Marlene. I watched them as they headed across the freshly mowed grass, the little fox prancing next to them. Luis’s stout body next to Marlene’s spare frame had a touching asymmetry, and when they joined hands, I felt a lump in my throat.

  A hopeless romantic. That was me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I called Timoteo on my way back to Dundee. When I finished filling him in, a long pause ensued. “Oh, man, I was such a dick that night. I blamed Luis for hanging out at the cantina. Hell, I blamed him for Olivia’s death.” An audible exhale. “It turns out she asked him to go there. No wonder he took off.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. You had no way of knowing what Olivia asked him to do. I think he understands. He told me to tell you all he loves you.”

  Another long pause. “I knew he was okay, but I’m still relieved. My father will be glad to hear this, too.”

  “Maybe this will help your mother’s recovery,” I offered.

  “Maybe, but to be honest, I’m not sure she’s missed him at all. If I left, she wouldn’t miss me, either.”

  “Have you called the grief counselor?”

  He exhaled another sigh. “Not yet. I have to get my father on board. He keeps hoping Mamá will snap out of it.”

  “Don’t wait too long,” I cautioned. “She needs help now.”

  “I won’t,” he said a little defensively before changing the subject. “Luis has no idea why Olivia sent him to the cantina?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s going on there, anyway?”

  “Good question. I’ve been turning that over. Diego Vargas is definitely recruiting young Latino men for something, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.”

  “What do we do if Vargas calls and wants to recruit Luis?”

  I paused for a couple of beats. “If that happens, we need to be very careful. We have to assume Vargas is involved in the murder and is trying to lure Luis into the open. If Olivia was the intended victim and Vargas has made the connection between them, then he’ll want to know what Luis knows, at the very least. If Luis was the target, then Vargas will want to finish the job. Either way, he’s at risk.”

  Timoteo laughed, a single, bitter note. “Or Vargas is just recruiting Amazon drivers. In which case, my father was the intended victim, and we’re back to the cartel theory.”

  “That’s right, although it begs the question why Olivia sent your brother to the cantina in the first place.”

  The line went quiet. “Luis said he’d let you know if Vargas makes a move, huh?”

  I didn’t like the tone of that question. “He will, won’t he?”


  Another bitter laugh. “Luis? No telling what he’ll do.”

  ***

  When I got back to the office, I had a wave of anxiety about sitting on the fact that the shooter may have been driving a Kawasaki but decided to let it ride a little longer. Things were in flux. The fewer cops the better at this juncture.

  It was a quiet afternoon. I closed up early, loaded Archie in the car, and headed for the Aerie with the intention of getting in some work on my rock wall. The afternoon sky was cerulean blue, thanks to a fast-moving squall that had washed the air clean. I changed, and when I came out on the porch, Archie stood there with a tennis ball in his mouth and a determined gleam in his eye.

  I laughed. “Okay, Big Boy, I get the hint.”

  Twenty minutes later, with my rotator cuff rapidly fraying, I held up the slobbery ball. “Last one!” I heaved it as far as I could. He tore after it, snatching it in midair on the first bounce.

  “Nice catch, Archie!”

  I turned around to see Zoe, standing at the gate and clapping for my dog.

  “Yep, he’s still got it,” I said as I walked over to her. “How did Gertie’s checkup go?”

  “Pretty good, but she’s been warned not to have a false sense of security. She still has a lot of healing to do.”

  I laughed. “Keeping her quiet’s going to be a challenge.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “You’re telling me?” Archie trotted up and dropped the ball at her feet, his tail wagging at full clip. She picked it up and gave it an impressive heave. “What’s the latest on the case?” she asked as my dog bounded across the field.

  I told her about finding Luis and what he had to say. She scrunched up her brows. “Good grief, that scene at the cantina sounds pretty sketchy. That thickens the plot considerably.”

  She was right. My stomach clenched a little at the thought.

  We kicked the case around while Zoe kept Archie busy chasing the tennis ball. “Does he ever get tired?” she finally asked after a half-dozen tosses.

  I shook my head. “It’s not in his DNA.” I laid the ball on the ground and wagged a finger at him. “That’s it, Big Boy.” His ears dropped, and he lay down between us with his chin on his paws.

  Zoe said, “Luis sounds like an angry, mixed-up young man.”

  “Yeah. There’s quite a contrast between him and his older brother.”

  She leaned against the gatepost, crossed her arms, and looked pensive. “I don’t blame him for being angry. I mean, he didn’t ask to be brought here, to a country that’s now telling him he’s not welcome. I think his parents acted selfishly, bringing their kids here illegally.”

  “Really?” I said, a bit taken aback.

  She looked at me straight on. “After the fact, they expect sympathy.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe I’m not that willing to give it to them. They broke the law, after all.”

  “True, but it would look different if you were in their shoes, Zoe. They wanted a better future for their kids and themselves. Carlos was a laborer in a vineyard in Mexico with no prospects of ever becoming anything else.”

  “A better future? They live in fear now.”

  “It wasn’t always like that. It was understood that if you had the guts and took the initiative to come here, there would be good employment, that the laws would be winked at. This country welcomed the cheap labor, even if the laws didn’t reflect that. We’ve been schizophrenic on the issue.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed slightly. “We’re supposed to be a nation that honors the rule of law. They broke the law, and now they’re being called on it. Isn’t that the only way to look at it? I mean, you took an oath as a lawyer, didn’t you?”

  I felt some heat rise in my neck. “Of course I did. But there should have been better laws, more clarity. It’s hard for me to hold the parents responsible for having basic human aspirations.”

  She forced a smile. “Ask Luis how he feels about it.”

  “Ask Timoteo how he feels about it,” I shot back.

  An awkward silence ensued during which we stood there almost glaring at each other.

  “I’ve got a dinner to cook,” Zoe said quickly, and I silently thanked her for deescalating the situation. She knelt down and hugged Archie’s neck, then turned and headed toward Gertie’s house without saying another word.

  Well, shit, I said to myself as she walked away. Like aunt, like niece.

  ***

  My progress on the aboveground course of the wall looked pathetically insignificant as I parked the empty wheelbarrow next to the rock pile and slipped on my leather gloves. I tried to picture the completed structure, a low circular wall with the two ends offset to create an entrance, but the effort only discouraged me. “Whose idea was this, anyway?” I said to Arch, who’d taken up his position as foreman. He lifted his head and looked at me as if to say “It’s not going to build itself.”

  With an hour and half of daylight left, I began working with a goal of laying at least another twenty feet of the first course, which would run a circular path of one hundred and fifty feet or so when completed. I had the look I wanted now—stacks of narrow slabs alternating with blocks of roughly the same height—and had become more adept at spotting the right chunks of basalt to pull it off. But the sense of tranquility I usually got from the work was absent that evening. The meeting with Luis was still churning in my head, and the encounter with Zoe had me flummoxed, for lack of a better word.

  Damn it, she’d raised a sensitive issue—should compassion ever bear on the rule of law? Carlos and Elena Fuentes chose to break the law to provide their family the possibility of a better future. Did their admirable motives mitigate in any way their culpability? Or was there no room for compassion in judging what they’d done?

  Zoe seemed to take the latter position. That surprised me, although I suspected her comments reflected a bit of a contrarian nature, not unlike Gertie’s. I pondered that as I picked through the rock pile. By the time I had the wheelbarrow loaded again, I was on to thinking about my own position. Sure, I’d taken an oath, but was a law valid if it was winked at or ignored? And should people who broke the so-called law for good reasons suddenly be judged and held strictly accountable? The questions were complex, and I reckoned that good people could come down on either side of them.

  But my moral compass said no to both.

  As the afternoon progressed, I became less philosophical and more focused on the task at hand. In fact, I was so absorbed that it came as a shock when the solar lights along my driveway lit up. I stood up, massaged my lower back with both hands, and surveyed my progress. I’d beaten my goal, having completed maybe a third of the first course. I should have felt good, but something weighed on me. Was it the silly spat with Zoe?

  I hoped not, because that would suggest I was becoming emotionally entangled. And that was the last thing I needed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Around three a.m. the next morning I surfaced from a deep sleep, suddenly fully alert but not knowing why. I lay there listening, and the only thing I heard was Archie’s steady breathing until my friend the great horned owl came in with his four-note song. Realizing it was the owl’s call that woke me, I got up and opened the bedroom window and sat next to it. The air was cool and still and the intermittent hoots carried from the shadowy line of firs along the east side of my property. The plaintive sounds stirred something deep inside me, a longing whose origin lay just outside my consciousness. Archie came over and placed his muzzle on my knee. I scratched him between the ears, and after we listened to several more choruses, I said, “We’re kindred souls, that owl and us.”

  Timoteo was in his family’s car in the parking lot of my office when Arch and I arrived that morning. We were late. “We took advantage of the weather to get a jog in,” I explained as Archie trotted over to greet him. “We need to get you an office key.”


  He flashed a grin that told me he’d taken the comment as a compliment. “I’ll take care of it today,” he said. “I know a good locksmith.”

  The phone rang just as I sat down behind my desk. It was Nando informing me that he had obtained crucial video evidence in a lawsuit that had been on my back burner. While driving a motorized scooter in Portland, my client struck and injured a pedestrian who was suing for half a million dollars. Nando had obtained a video from a nearby hotel that proved the injured party, a tourist from Ohio, had crossed the intersection against the traffic light.

  “Excellent work,” I said. “Any news on the cartel front?”

  “I have not heard from my source in L.A., but my man in Mexico City just got back to me. If the cartels that sprang from the Guadalajara breakup are involved in the hit, they are not bragging about it. He also told me Plácido Francisco Ballesteros grew up on a small farm outside El Tecuan and has no known cartel involvement. Nothing on the other two.”

  “Noted. What about Darrell Benedict?”

  “He is in jail in Idaho. Manslaughter. He has been there for four months.”

  “Good. At least we can rule him out.”

  After Nando signed off and I brought Timoteo up to date on the conversation, he said, “Wow, Nando gets a lot done.”

  I laughed. “He’s the best PI in Portland and probably on the West Coast. And I’m lucky to call him my friend.” I extracted a folder from my filing cabinet and handed it to my new assistant. “Here’s the file on the lawsuit. I want you to read this over, do some research, and write me a memo on what you think the next steps should be.”

  Without a trace of intimidation he said, “Sure, I’d love to do that. You, um, really want my—”

  “Your opinion? Sure,” I said with the twinkle of a smile. “Doesn’t mean I’ll agree. I’ll look at it when I get back.”

  He flashed the Fuentes family smile. “Well, sure, okay, I’ll do that. Where are you going?”

  “To Prosperar.”

  “To talk to Sofia Leon?”

  “Yeah, and also Robert Harris, the boyfriend. I’m taking a chance they’re in. I like to pop in on people so they don’t have time to rehearse.”