Girls With Guns

by Ali Vali

“I guess.” I pulled a couple of plates out of the cabinet—my small contribution to homemaking. “Say, when you said it was open-and-shut, how does that translate in terms of days? Two, three?”

  “Oh, so now you want intel from me?”

  “Come on. I’m trying to plan my life here.”

  She drained the pasta and it slid neatly into a big red bowl. “Well, Judge Bowser runs a brisk court—long days and short breaks, but even so, you’re looking at a couple of days at least for the state’s evidence. If you find the guy guilty, you’ll probably be there all week.”

  I groaned.

  “Sorry, pal. But hey, no matter how late he makes you stay Wednesday, keep the evening open. I have plans. Special plans.”

  She delivered the words “special plans” with the same sexy smile she’d used to try to seduce me for information. I was super tempted to give her anything she wanted. But my libido would have to wait. “I may have to work every night this week.” I pointed at the pasta. “I’m going to have to go out after dinner tonight.”

  “Really?”

  Her disappointment almost made me take it back. Almost. If I was going to run down these leads on Perez, I had to strike now. I’d never expected her to stick around. A smart villain would have left the scene of her last crime and not looked back. Perez was smart, but she was also greedy. If she’d stayed in the area, it meant there was some lucrative reason for her to be here, and I was going to find out what it was. Of course I didn’t plan to tell Jess any of that. “Gotta earn my keep.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jurors only make a few bucks a day. Did you know that? I mean, what’s the point of paying us at all?”

  She sighed and passed me a hunk of garlic bread. “Sure, Luca. Eat your dinner. You’re going to need it if you’re going to work at night and get up early to be a good citizen.”

  I did my best to ignore the edge in her tone and ate the spaghetti. Three bowls of it. It tasted amazing, but then it sat like a rock in my belly while I tried to process the change in mood between us. Jess was pissed. Mildly pissed, but still pissed. It was pretty out of character for me to obsess about work, so I got it, but telling her what I was up to wasn’t likely to change her mood, so I didn’t bother. She’d come around when I found Perez, and if all went well, that would be tonight.

  *

  I spotted the SUV three streets away from the house. The driver was careful to stay just far enough back, but I’ve tailed enough cars to be able to spot when I’ve got a shadow of my own. Besides, I’d kind of expected I might be followed. Whoever had provided me with the envelope full of Perez likely had a vested interest in finding her. Mexican Mafia, the feds? I didn’t have a clue, but I was happy to do their dirty work if it meant I got to see the look on her face when she got caught.

  When I turned into the drive for Shorty’s, the SUV shot past on the main road. I waited in the parking lot, thinking they might double back and I could confront my silent partners, but after fifteen minutes of lonely, I gave up.

  For a Monday night, the place had a decent crowd. I spent about an hour at the tables, with nothing to show for it but a lighter wallet. I’d never been much of a pool player, but I was trying to blend in. I’d gotten nowhere with my subtle questions, so I retired the cue stick and took a seat at the bar.

  The bartender was a big, burly chick who went by Fred. Her real name was Freda and she’d owned this place for over twenty years. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when my dad first brought me here and set me up with a cherry Coke while he lost grocery money playing eight ball. In a best-selling novel or TV movie, the whole situation would have been sentimental. Freda would’ve been like a second mother, sneaking me food and listening to my stories while my sad dad tried to strike it rich to give us a better life. In reality, Fred bullied my dad to pay for my one Coke—no free refills—and my only meal on those nights was the single cherry at the bottom of my glass. Dad eventually gave up pool as a source of income and took up poker at Bingo’s place. I’d been back here over the years, looking for deadbeats, but I doubted Fred had a clue that I was the same scraggly kid who’d hung out at her bar.

  “Whatcha want?”

  Fred’s eyes bored holes into me, and I knew her question was more about telling me I couldn’t just sit here without ordering something rather than trying to find out how she could assist me. “Beer. Draft.”

  She jerked her chin and tapped a perfect pour. “Three bucks.”

  I slide a five across the bar with Perez’s picture on top. No sense being cagey. She slid the bill out from underneath the photo and started to walk off. “Hang on,” I said. “Aren’t you even going to look?”

  “Don’t need to. You drink that and head on out of here.”

  She acted all nonchalant, but her eyes shifted to and away from the photo twice before she ordered me to leave.

  “You’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

  “What makes you think I’d tell you if I had?”

  “You let her hang around here, you’re in for trouble. Real trouble.” I leaned in close. “Of course, maybe that’s what you’re looking for. Maybe you and she are, you know.” I twisted fingers together in a mock display of simpatico. I was reaching here, but sometimes you have to get a rise out of someone to get the truth.

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  I knew exactly what I was talking about, but before I got to make my point, I heard a click behind me, real close to my ear. It wasn’t a gun. Worse, it was a knife. I could see the glint of steel out of the corner of my eye. Damn, I hate knife wounds, especially when you see them coming. Slow-moving, personal, and painstaking. I’d already taken a bullet because of Perez, and getting stabbed wasn’t part of my plans. I slowly held a hand in the air. “Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe you could fill me in.”

  Fred shot a look at Knife Wielder, and the blade clicked shut. I turned my head just enough to see Fred’s protector and tried not to laugh at the short, scrawny dude. Knife or not, I could take him, but instead I sat quietly and waited for Fred to talk. She didn’t have a lot to say.

  “Bitch moved on.”

  “Any idea where?”

  “Nah.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Dunno.”

  I motioned at the other losers in the bar. “She hang with any of these folks?”

  “I wasn’t her babysitter.”

  Yet you were glad when she left. Fred knew more, but I wasn’t going to get it straight from her. It was late and I had to be up early. Time to move along and approach this from another angle. I emptied my glass, climbed off the bar stool, and made my way to the door.

  Chapter Five

  Mornings always sucked, but the early alarm, the rushed coffee, and the sad-faced dog totally ruined this one. To top it off, Jess had left before I woke up, so I had no way of knowing if the edge from last night had worn down.

  Things didn’t get any better when I got to the courthouse and made a bad choice about which door to use. Usually, the line to the underground entrance was smooth and fast since not many folks other than cops and lawyers knew about it, but today the metal detector was broken and we were all being searched like turban-wearing guys with one-way tickets at the airport.

  When I finally shoved through the doors next to Judge Bowser’s courtroom, the bailiff was standing in the door to the jury room, tapping his foot.

  “You’re late.”

  And you’re king of the obvious, I thought but didn’t say. This was the guy in charge of attending to our every want and need over the next hopefully not-too-many days, and I didn’t want to piss him off. “Sorry. Metal detector’s down. Private guards aren’t so good with the personal searches.”

  “Damn right, they’re not.” He delivered the words with a grunt. It was a point of contention with court security that the county had hired a private-security firm as the first line of defense. He offered a grudging smile. “Go
on in. Judge is about to take the bench.”

  I filed into the jury room and assessed the defendant’s peers. There was one other white guy besides McBusiness, three white chicks, including me, two black women, one black man, one Asian, three Hispanics—one male, two female, including Cris Perez-Soria. All in all, a pretty diverse cast of characters. I studied Cris the longest, certain something was off about a person who actually looked forward to the mind-numbing task we were about to start and wondering if she was any relation to my nemesis.

  Everyone had formed little cliques already, and they were huddled in groups around the jury room. Glad I’d missed the friend-picking portion of the morning, I walked over to the coffeemaker and poured a cup while I scoured the counter for sugar. I was dumping the sweet stuff in my cup when I heard McBusiness say, “Ask her. She lives with a cop.”

  I resisted the urge to turn around, instead stirring my coffee and reading the tedious information about jury duty some helpful courtroom personnel had posted on the bulletin board. My resistance worked. I heard Cris chime in. “They’ll keep us back here while they hear pretrial motions and deal with any issues they don’t want us to know about because they might prejudice us about the case.”

  The fatter of the two white women piped up. “I’m not prejudiced.”

  “Not prejudice like that,” Cris said. “Prejudice like if we heard what they’re saying, it might color how we look at things.”

  “Well, whatever happened to the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?” This from McBusiness. Since when did you take an interest in what’s going on around you, I wanted to say, but instead I shook my head and held my tongue. I’d need every ounce of patience I had to make it through the next few days with these yahoos. Thankfully, the door opened and the bailiff walked in before we could get any deeper into a discussion on the finer points of the law.

  “Judge’s ready. Follow me.”

  I stuck to the middle of the pack, surprised to find Cris at my side. I’d expected her to make a beeline for the courtroom the minute this thing got started, but here she was, sticking to me like a burr. I studied her as best I could while we filed through the hall by the judge’s chambers into the courtroom. I didn’t see any obvious resemblance to Teresa Perez, but still. I know it’s a common name, but it seemed weird I’d get a lead on Perez and then be stuck in the same room with a woman with her last name for the next however long. I might be crazy, but I might also be looking her up when I had a free moment.

  Which wasn’t now. The judge reminded us about the oath we’d taken the day before and the rules about not talking about the case and not reading or watching any news stories about it. If anything about this case had made headlines, then the next few days might not be so boring after all.

  The first witness on the stand was a cop. No surprise there. I’d been a cop long enough to see how things worked, but not long enough to ever have to testify in a felony trial since the one suspect I’d taken into custody all on my own had pled guilty. Good thing, since we’d managed to shoot holes through each other during our one and only encounter. Reuniting would have been awkward at best. Anyway, the prosecutors usually put the cops on the stand first to set the stage. They’d tell about the investigation and give us a framework for the rest of the evidence they planned to present.

  I struggled to pay attention and wished I’d actually listened to yesterday’s opening statements. The first cop was pretty green, and Rebecca, the hot prosecutor, took an edgy tone with him when he stumbled over the description of his initial investigation at the scene of the crime. Didn’t help that the cop spoke only formal cop talk, using phrases like “secured the perimeter” and “ascertained the appropriate measures” instead of just talking like a regular human. I don’t think I’d ever been that green. It took the better part of an hour for them to sketch out only a handful of pertinent facts. The initial report of the shooting came from a 911 call from the phone inside the bar where the murder occurred. Most of the patrons at the bar had scattered by the time the uniforms showed up, leaving only the bartender, the dead guy, and a single eyewitness. The dead guy, Manny Cruz, was shot in the parking lot behind the building, and he was toast by the time the first cops arrived.

  Next up was the homicide detective who’d worked the case, Detective Tom Giraldi. He looked familiar, but I didn’t dwell on it. Even after I’d left the force, I’d dropped by several of the substations a few times either to see Jess or one of my other friends still on the job, and then there were the times I got hauled in for questioning after engaging in some of the more shady practices my type of work often demanded. Chances were I’d run into this guy on one of those occasions.

  It only took a couple of minutes for me to realize he was a pompous, know-it-all dick. He talked about how he and his partner had interviewed the bartender and the eyewitness, and they both confirmed that the defendant and the deceased had gotten into a heated argument shortly before the murder. The eyewitness had left the bar immediately before the defendant and was still in the back parking lot when the shooting went down. The bartender confirmed the time he’d heard the gunshots. No security footage, no other witnesses, no gun, but to Giraldi it was an open-and-shut case.

  I took a minute to glance at my fellow jurors, certain they must be as annoyed as I was at this guy’s bravado. Nope. They were glued to his testimony, as if he were the eyewitness himself. I shook my head and turned back to watch Giraldi as he described how they’d found the defendant at his home later that night. When they rolled up to his house and knocked on his door, they heard clattering in the house and the sound of a car roaring to life in the garage. They yelled “Police,” busted through the front door, and made it to the garage in time to haul him out of his getaway car. In an amazing stroke of luck, the murder weapon was sitting in plain view, on a table in the entryway of the house.

  I smelled bullshit. Was I the only one? But then I remembered Jess’s words from last night about how she knew every last detail about the case and that it was a slam dunk for the state. She worked homicide, so it wasn’t surprising she was familiar with another case within her department, but based on what I’d heard so far, I had some serious reservations. If I’d just murdered someone, I’m not going to go home, hang out, and wait for the cops to show up. Then, when they do show up, I botch my escape, and to top it off, I leave my gun behind? Not likely.

  According to Giraldi, the defendant had been a member of the Texas Syndicate, a tough-guy prison gang and sworn rivals of the dead guy’s gang, the Texas Mexican Mafia. Hard to believe he could survive that and turn into such a dope on the outside. Granted, plenty of criminals are stupid—a fact that keeps me and a whole lot of others in business—but if everything Giraldi said was spot-on, then this guy was the dumbest of the dumb.

  I looked over at him. Rey Navarro was dressed in a suit that didn’t quite fit and a tie that didn’t quite match. He could barely look at Giraldi for more than a few seconds at a time, and his right leg bounced up and down under the table like he was about to launch out of his seat and run for the door. None of this was definitive. People got nervous about going to jail whether they were guilty or not, and anyone who says they can tell if someone’s guilty by the way they react to a situation is a big fat liar. My only gauge at this point was my visceral distaste for Giraldi, and my gut told me he was either lying about something or, at a very minimum, had let his cocky desire to close this case in a hurry get in the way of investigating all the facts.

  When the prosecutor spoke the magic words “I have no further questions for this witness,” I looked at the clock. For normal people, eleven forty-five would be a perfect time to take a lunch break, but Judge Bowser could apparently subsist on justice alone. I held back a groan as I heard him say, “Ms. Watson, you may cross-examine the witness.”

  Bea Watson stayed seated and spent a couple of minutes shuffling through papers while everyone tried to pretend like the lingering silence wasn’t awkward. When the ju
dge cleared his throat, Bea looked up and offered an apologetic smile before she addressed Giraldi, whose own smile was starting to look a bit forced. “Detective, I’m sorry to keep you waiting, but for the life of me I can’t find a copy of the report showing the gunshot residue you found on my client. I don’t suppose you brought it with you today?”

  Giraldi’s expression turned sour and he shot a look at the prosecutor. Watson followed his glance, which caused everyone in the jury box to look her way as well, and the prosecutor squirmed under all the attention. Finally, Rebecca stood and asked the judge if they could approach. For the next few minutes we watched the attorneys’ broad gestures and aggressive whispers, unable to hear exactly what was taking place. I had a hunch, though, and it was confirmed when Bea resumed her questioning with a more direct attack.

  “Detective Giraldi, you do not have any evidence showing gunshot residue on my client’s person, correct?”

  “Well, the reason the test—”

  “Stop right there.” She turned to the judge. “I don’t want to have to slow things down with another bench conference.”

  “Thank you, Counselor.” Bowser frowned at Giraldi. “Detective, I’m going to ask you to just answer the question that’s put to you.”

  “No, we don’t have any such evidence.” Giraldi practically spat the words, but Bea nodded her approval at his admission. She looked back down at her notes, but before she could get the next question out, Giraldi had a bout of Tourette’s.

  “But he probably washed his hands before we showed up to arrest him.”

  Bea hesitated only a second before meeting his smug grin with one of her own. “Did you see him wash his hands?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “And there’s nothing in your report about how you checked for evidence that he’d recently washed and dried his hands, correct?”

  “Uh, I guess not.”

  “So, it’s your conclusion that my client murdered Mr. Cruz, then drove home, washed away the gunshot residue, put the murder weapon on the coffee table right in the middle of the living room, and waited for you to come arrest him?”