A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

by Tyler Dilts

  “Fuck.”

  “Don’t go there,” McDermott said. He knew what I was thinking. Any decent cop would. I wondered if Solano had suffocated after we decided to interrupt the interrogation. Would he have just been given a solid but relatively minor beat-down if we hadn’t showed up?

  “Beckett, you still there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t blame yourself.”

  “I’m not. Solano was a douchebag who deserted his kids. He didn’t deserve what he got, but he wasn’t an angel.”

  “What is it then?”

  “His son.”

  “Not the one in jail. The other one?” He paused long enough to check his notes. “Jesús?”

  “He’s just a decent high-school student trying to take care of his little sister, and his world’s falling apart around him.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he said. “Give a kid a name like that, you’re just asking for trouble.”

  Jesús’s mother finally returned our calls and told us that her phone had died and she wasn’t able to charge it, just as we had hypothesized. She also sounded half-drunk, so the phone may have been lower on the priority list than she wanted us to believe. She’d spent the night at an acquaintance’s house. We sent a unit to pick her up.

  Ruiz had left Jesús and the social worker in the conference room. I went in and sat down next to him. He was reading a blue-and-black hardcover.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “It’s called The Fault in Our Stars,” he said. “We have to read it for our one-book-one-school thing that we have to do over winter break.”

  “You’re starting early.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it any good?”

  “It’s about some kids with cancer,” he said, as if that answered the question.

  “Sounds sad,” I said.

  “It is, but it’s funny too.”

  “You like to read?”

  He nodded. “My English teacher said I might be able to go into AP next year.”

  “That’s good.” I gave him a minute to go on or to change the subject, but he waited for me. He was sharp enough to know I wouldn’t have come in if I didn’t have something to tell him. “Your mom’s on the way,” I said. “She’s okay, and Maria is fine.”

  He tried to play it cool, but he was clearly relieved.

  “What’s going to happen to us now?”

  “We’re going to find someplace safe for you until we can figure out who took those shots yesterday. We want to make sure everything’s okay before you go back home.”

  “Where is it safe?” he asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer.

  Jesús had an aunt who lived in Oceanside. She agreed to let the family stay with her for a few days. I worried that that wouldn’t be long enough. And I worried that it wasn’t far enough away. Oceanside wasn’t much farther than Riverside, and Roberto Solano had been out of touch with the family for years. Apparently, the aunt checked in with her sister fairly regularly.

  When Ruiz called Jen, Patrick, and me into the conference room with Jesús and told us the plan, I kept my misgivings to myself. But I followed him out into the squad room and said, “Can I have a minute?”

  He led me into his office, and I closed the door behind us. “They’ll find him,” I said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “They found his old man.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “A parent is a lot easier to track down. It’s harder to find out someone’s aunt than it is their father.”

  “It’s not much harder. Besides, what if Pedro is talking?”

  Ruiz didn’t say anything.

  “They might be tracking his cell. The hitter went to Riverside a few hours after Jesús’s first call to his dad in years.”

  “Can you prove there’s a connection?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t know what else we can do. This is the best option we have.”

  “We can’t give them some kind of protection?”

  “There’s no actual threat. It’s just guesswork at this point. You’re assuming it’s some big conspiracy when you don’t have anything solid to even connect the Ohio shooting and the Solano killing. You just told me that the autopsy showed that his death likely wasn’t even intentional. They haven’t even been approving protection for witnesses testifying in gang murder trials. You know it’s a stretch.”

  “But you’ll still ask, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll try, but we both know the brass won’t approve it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Leave it open,” he said as I walked back into the squad room.

  I always kept a cheap prepaid cell phone in my desk drawer in case I needed to give someone a way to contact me.

  “Take out your phone,” I said to Jesús. He did. “Who do you have in the contacts that you might need to talk to in an emergency?”

  “My mom. David. Not Pedro anymore.”

  I slid a notepad and a pen across the desk to him. “Write their numbers down.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  While he did that I popped open the plastic packaging for the TracFone LG and programmed my number into it.

  “Trade me,” I said.

  Jesús looked at the new phone and wasn’t impressed.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s a piece of crap, but it will get the job done. I promise I’ll take good care of yours, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t add any other contacts. Just dial from your list if you need to.”

  He nodded again. “All right,” he said.

  “And the same rule’s still good,” I said. “You call me any time for anything. You remember that.”

  Mrs. Solano seemed sober, and as much as I wanted to force a Breathalyzer test on her before she got into her old Hyundai with her children and headed south on the 405 to her sister’s house, I fought the urge. Instead, I emptied my wallet and gave Jesús seven twenty-dollar bills and another one of my cards.

  “Check in with me every day or two, let me know you’re okay,” I said.

  “I will.” He made sure Maria was secured in her car seat and got in the front, next to his mother. He closed the door and rolled down the window. “Detective Beckett?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  I wished that there was something else I could do for him, but Ruiz had been right. “You’re welcome,” I said, reaching through the window to put my hand on his shoulder. “Remember, you can call or text anytime, okay?”

  He nodded, I pulled my hand back, and as the window began to close, Mrs. Solano said, “How much he give you?”

  Jesús watched me through the window as they pulled away. He looked small there in the passenger’s seat, small and alone.

  15

  WOOL GLOVES, ONE PAIR: GRAY, HOLES IN LEFT THUMB AND MIDDLE FINGER.

  After the shooting on Ohio Avenue, I had called Siguenza to arrange a meeting with Pedro. I wanted to see how he reacted to the news that someone had tried to kill his brother. Because of Siguenza’s court schedule, that afternoon was the soonest he could accommodate the request.

  Jen and I sat in the jail’s small concrete interview room with Siguenza and waited for the guards to escort Pedro in. We’d exchanged pleasantries with him, and in the silence that followed, I studied him. I made his age at forty-five or so, about the same as Benny, but he had little of the other man’s authority or presence. The most notable thing about him was his suit—not the same one he’d worn the first time I met him, but just as expensive and finely tailored. It looked like charcoal-gray money.

  When they brought Pedro in, he looked weary and frightened. Part of the effect came from the orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. He looked out of place and in over his head, as kids almost always do in his situation.

  When he sat down next to his lawyer across the table from us, I said, “How are you, Pedro?”
<
br />   He looked at Siguenza, who nodded back at him.

  “Okay.” His voice sounded far away.

  “We’re here because we need to tell you something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Somebody tried to kill Jesús.”

  His eyes widened and he again looked at Siguenza, who sat motionless with a neutral expression on his face.

  “Jesús is okay. So are Maria and your mom. But they killed your neighbor by mistake.”

  We watched him trying to process the information, and as he did, the confusion in his eyes slowly disappeared and was replaced by fear.

  “Is there anything you’d like to tell us?”

  Siguenza leaned forward and said, “I’ll need a few moments to confer with my client.”

  Outside in the hallway, Jen said, “You think he’ll tell us anything?”

  “Not now. Maybe after he sits with it for a while.”

  When we sat down again, Pedro looked as if he might have been crying. I wondered what Siguenza had told him and repeated my last question.

  “No,” Pedro said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t have anything to say.”

  Siguenza put his hands together and said, “I believe we’re done here.”

  On the way back to the station, I asked Jen if she wanted to get some dinner, and she reminded me that she’d already invited Patrick and me to her house for a barbecue.

  “Shit,” I said. “That’s tonight?”

  At least she laughed at that.

  “What can I bring?”

  “Something to drink.”

  “Who’s going to be there?”

  “Just you and Patrick, if he can get away from the drive-by.”

  “Okay.”

  “You look relieved.”

  “I’m just not feeling like I’d do well with a big crowd tonight.”

  “When have you ever not felt like that?”

  She had a point. I’ve never been much of a socializer. But I was worried about Jesús, and I knew I’d be thinking about work. With Jen and Patrick I wouldn’t have to worry about bringing it up.

  I went home and changed into cargo shorts and a T-shirt, tucked my Glock into an inside-the-waistband holster, and put on a plaid seersucker button-up to cover it while I stopped at Ralphs to buy Sam Adams and Diet Coke.

  The sun was low in the sky and beginning to color the altocumulus clouds orange when I parked on Colorado outside Jen’s Craftsman. Patrick’s VW was outside too, and there was an unfamiliar Honda Accord in the driveway behind Jen’s RAV4. I figured they’d already be out in the backyard, so I went through the gate in front of the cars and around the house.

  Jen was under the pergola with a pair of tongs in her hand, flipping chicken breasts on the grill, while Patrick sat at the teak table and sipped from a Blue Moon bottle.

  “Hey, guys,” I said, dropping the two six-packs on the table. “Whose Honda is that?”

  Jen laughed and Patrick shook his head and muttered, “Shit.” He slipped a twenty out of his wallet and held it up for her. She folded it in half with one hand and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans.

  “What?” I said.

  “She bet me that the first thing you’d say after ‘Hello’ was ‘Whose car is that?’”

  “Seriously? You two don’t have anything better to do?”

  “Not really,” she said, still happy from her win.

  “Really, though, whose is it?”

  This time they both laughed.

  Less than ten minutes later, Lauren Terrones, the rookie from Bishop’s murder scene who’d been assisting with the case, came through the gate, put a paper grocery bag on the table, and began to unload it.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi, Detective Beckett,” she said, opening a bag of tortilla chips and pouring them into a large orange bowl.

  “Call him Danny,” Jen said without turning away from the grill.

  Lauren looked uncertainly at me and I nodded. “Sure, call me Danny.”

  “I just ran down the street to that little store.”

  “Ma N Pa’s?”

  “Yeah. Seems cool.”

  She was right. It was a little hole-in-the-wall market that also made sandwiches and other to-go items. It was the only business in the residential area and had a kind of quaint charm that’s hard to find in any city, especially one as big as Long Beach. And they had fantastic homemade beef jerky.

  “I got some potato salad, too,” Lauren said.

  “Oh, thanks.” Jen was still turning over the chicken on the grill. The last time I’d been here for a barbecue, I’d tried to tell her not to flip it so much. I was half-convinced she was only doing it to mess with me.

  “What do you want to drink?” Patrick asked me.

  I wanted a beer, so I said, “Diet Coke.”

  He went inside and came back out with a Blue Moon and a can for me.

  “No glass?”

  “Seriously?”

  “I just wanted to see if you’d go back for one.”

  Lauren smiled at me, and I thought about what Jen had said about it sounding like I was flirting with her at the crime scene. That idea had honestly never entered my mind. I had just been trying to get her to feel comfortable. But now I didn’t know what to say. Why had Jen invited her here? She couldn’t actually think I was interested in a rookie, could she? I knew I could be an asshat sometimes, but she didn’t think I’d be a big enough douche to hit on someone just out of the academy, did she?

  Jen still had her back to us, so I couldn’t read her expression.

  “Jesús made it to Oceanside,” I said. “He texted me when they got there.”

  “That’s good.” Jen turned around and looked me in the eye. “He’ll be okay.”

  “I hope so.”

  “That’s the fourth boy?” Lauren said. “The one whose house got hit by the drive-by.”

  “Yeah. Do all the uniforms know about the connection?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Patrick dipped a chip into the salsa. “I told Lauren about it before you got here.”

  “Don’t spread it around,” I told her. “Okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  Jen was using the tongs to take the chicken off the grill and load it onto a plate. “There was no way we could have kept that quiet.” She put the plate on the table.

  “I know, but the fewer people who are talking about it the better.”

  “I won’t say anything,” Lauren said. She seemed nervous. Probably thought I was accusing her of something.

  “Jesús is going to be all right,” Patrick said.

  “I’m just being paranoid.” I looked at Lauren. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Didn’t think you did.” She served herself two kinds of salad—the potato she’d just bought at Ma N Pa’s, and a bunch of spring mix Jen put out in the middle of the table. We all filled our plates.

  “Good,” I said, wondering if I sounded as awkward as I felt.

  What was Lauren doing there? I looked quizzically at Jen but she just looked right back at me, pretending to be oblivious.

  “So you’ve been on the job, what, like a month now?” Patrick asked Lauren.

  “A little over.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Pretty much what I expected.”

  “Yeah?” Patrick seemed surprised.

  “Just like on CSI,” Lauren said without a trace of irony or sarcasm in her voice.

  He laughed. “You had me there for a second.”

  “Honestly,” she said, “I’ve got cops in the family, so there weren’t any big surprises. And I’m a little older than most of the other rookies. So I knew what I was in for.”

  “What did you do before the academy?” Jen asked.

  “Law school,” she said.

  I wondered if that was a joke too. She had the same deadpan expression on her face as she’d had a minute earlier.

  “No shit
?” I said. “Why aren’t you a lawyer?” As soon as I’d said it, the thought occurred to me that she might not have passed the bar exam or that something else might have derailed her plans.

  “Since the recession hit, there are three lawyers for every decent job. The LBPD sounded a lot better than ninety hours of contracts a week in a windowless cubicle for the same money.”

  “No prosecution work available?” I asked.

  “Have to get in line behind all the people who’ve been laid off in the last few years. And it didn’t look like I’d be able to pay off the loans with a public defender’s salary.”

  “You must not have told anybody,” Jen said.

  “Only Stan Burke. How’d you know that?”

  “Haven’t heard any jokes about rookie lawyers,” Jen said.

  “You think you would have?”

  “Are you kidding?” Jen said. “You’re the first new recruits in five years. Everybody hears everything about you guys.”

  “That’s good to know,” Lauren said. “Could you all forget I told you that?”

  “We’ll try,” Patrick said. He took another bite of chicken and washed it down with the last of his beer.

  Lauren was the first to leave. When she was gone and Patrick went inside to the bathroom, I asked Jen, “Why’d you invite Lauren?”

  “So you could hit on her again.”

  “Really.”

  “Because I knew it would make you uncomfortable.”

  “Come on.” I gave her my serious face.

  “You know you’re taking all the fun out of it, right?”

  More of the face.

  “She might rent the guesthouse.”

  I felt relieved. Then I started to worry about why I had been uptight about it in the first place. “Can she afford it? She was just talking about paying back her loans.”

  “If she wants it, I’ll give her a good deal.”

  “How much?”

  “I was thinking a thousand a month.”

  Patrick came back outside with a fresh beer. “A thousand a month for what?”

  “The guesthouse.”