“What? The police said he’s thousands of miles away in Iraq. What are you trying to say? Are you saying he had something to do with your daughter’s death?”
“Can you stop him from getting Lucy?” she repeats, her hands clutching mine so tightly that it hurts.
“Not unless you cut the bullshit and tell me what you really know. What do you mean, he’s here?” Infected with her fear, I lash out, in a harsher tone than I intended. I tear my hand out of hers, open the front door, and step outside.
Instead of answering, she pulls back and closes the door on me as if I’ve slapped her. I pound and pound, but she doesn’t open the door. Finally I stop and put my mouth near the door.
“If you can’t convince me, you’ll never convince the cops.”
The door slowly opens. Only wide enough for her face to peer out.
“In her apartment. In her closet, there is a steamer trunk. Underneath is a loose board. There you will find her letters. If they are not there, check in the in-laws’ apartment. In the linen closet. She said she will hide them one of those places. They will explain everything. You have to believe me when I say Lucy is in danger.
“He is here.”
Chapter 13
AS SOON AS I’m in San Francisco, I find myself missing my exit for the Embarcadero and taking the next one. Before I know it, I’m parked in front of the apartment building in the Mission, peering up at the lighted windows of the four-story structure. Several windows are dark, including the corner apartment on the second floor, where Maria lived, and one on the third floor—the one where her in-laws lived? Is Mrs. Castillo crazy with grief, or is Lucy in danger? If the letters are there, I’ll believe her. And if she’s telling the truth, the cops need to know. I just won’t tell them exactly how the letters ended up in my hands. A minor detail. Besides, none of what Mrs. Castillo says is going to matter if we can’t prove it.
It only takes me a few seconds to decide. I’ll need to swing by my apartment first. Donovan left a message earlier saying he was going to try to sleep a few hours at his place before heading back to work.
At my place in North Beach, I rummage on top of my cabinets, where I keep things hidden: mace and my lock pick set. I have one canister of mace on my keychain, but I like to have an extra one hidden in my apartment. I grab my lock pick set and tuck it into a small bag I sling crossways over my body.
ONCE I’M IN front of the apartment building, I wait until the street is quiet before I get out of my car, closing the door softly and not setting my noisy car alarm.
At the front door of the building, I look both ways down the street before slipping inside, my heart pounding. I jog up the small flight of stairs to the second floor. At the end of the hall, the door to apartment 210, Maria’s apartment, looks normal. Once I’m in front of the door, I try the handle. Locked. I take out my lock pick kit. My hands are shaking, and my palms grow sweaty and slippery even looking at the door. I’ll start at the in-laws’ apartment upstairs. It has been a few months since I picked a lock.
Lopez gave me the lock pick kit in August for my birthday.
He spent an entire afternoon showing me how to pick different types of locks. Armed with a set of picks and a tension wrench, we practiced on dead bolts, combination locks, pin tumbler locks, and regular doorknob locks at his family’s homes.
“Get that torsion wrench in and hold it with a light touch with your thumb. Very little pressure. Now, take your pick and hold it like a pencil. Use your wrist, not your fingers, to move it . . . push it up and down gently. Feel the pins?”
I’d shake my head no, but he never lost his patience.
“Don’t push the pick all the way to the back. Do you feel a pin that is stuck? Yes? Apply a little pressure. You can tell every time you unlock a pin, because you’ll feel it in the wrench and the plug will move a little, got it?”
I’d nod excitedly when all the pins were unlocked.
“It’s all about the touch, man,” he kept telling me that afternoon. “The biggest mistake people make is they think they need to crank on that thing. When you pick a lock, a light touch is what works.”
Lopez always treats me like another one of his little sisters, and that day was no exception. He got so excited for me when I finally figured it out. “High five, man. You got it!” The rest of his family seemed to think this was a normal birthday gift and a perfectly reasonable way to spend our Saturday afternoon. His sister cooked a feast, and we stayed for the best tamale dinner north of San Diego.
Even though I pretty much have the hang of it, it takes a lot longer for me to open a door than it does Lopez. He’s promised to make me a bump key—a key that can open most locks—but hasn’t yet. A lock pick kit is better, he says, because you can sneak in and out without any trace, and bump keys sometimes ruin locks.
“Do burglars know about these?” I asked him.
“Fuck yeah, home skillet. ’Course they do.”
Great.
Upstairs, at room 312—Joey Martin’s parents’ apartment—I kneel in front of the door and work on the lock, remembering what Lopez taught me, but I am jumpy, worried every time I hear a small sound from neighboring apartments. Beads of sweat are dripping down my brow by the time I hear the last click and the door swings open.
Inside, I close the door behind me and lean against it in the dark, catching my breath. My blood is racing through my veins, pumping loudly in my ears. I did it. I am officially a burglar.
Moving carefully in the dark, I reach for a light switch.
The apartment is simple, like Maria’s down below, but it seems more cheery, homier. It also is impeccable. Is there a chance the cops dropped the ball and didn’t search this apartment?
There is a colorful afghan blanket thrown over the couch. I smell something that reminds me of my uncle Sal, and it makes sense when I see the small ashtray that contains a tiny, half-smoked cigar.
A Formica dining room table is spotless, and a morning paper is neatly stacked on one corner. I glance at the date. The morning Maria called me.
Everything is in its proper place. Dishes from breakfast are clean and resting on a dish rack to dry. Towels on the counter are perfectly stacked.
I glance around the bedroom. The bed is neatly made.
The few clothes in the small closet are neat. Shoeboxes contain well-worn and cared-for shoes. The bathroom, also, yields nothing. It smells like bleach. But it looks like the cops haven’t searched it. I wonder why not.
Holding my breath, I crack the linen closet in the hall and rummage around. It only contains neat stacks of towels and sheets. No letters. I scan the rest of the apartment. I’m not sure what I thought I could find. Maybe it’s what’s missing that tells me something. There is only one picture on a small end table—of Joey Martin’s mother and father taken years ago. Maybe their engagement picture? Or wedding picture. He wears a dark suit. She wears what appears to be a pale jacket over a high-necked blouse. Her hair is clipped neatly back away from her face. They are smiling.
But there is not one single picture of Joey. Not a baby or school picture. Not a wedding picture of Joey and Maria.
Before I leave, I give one last glance around, trying to memorize it and take it all in, just in case I missed something. I can’t believe the police searched this place and left it so undisturbed.
Back on the second floor, I pause, looking down the hall at Maria’s apartment, but I can’t make myself go in there. Not in the dark. Not by myself. No matter how hard I try, I can’t help but see the apartment in vivid Technicolor, full of bloody, chopped-up bodies. Their ghosts surely must haunt that tiny space.
But I owe it to Maria to look for those letters. I owe it to her and her baby. She turned to me for help. Someone killed her before she told me her secrets, but maybe I can help her now.
In front of apartment 210, I press my ear to the door
. The only sound is my heart thumping loudly in my ear. I know I’m overreacting, but I get the overwhelming feeling that a tangible evil is emanating from the apartment. My mouth grows dry, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I wipe my palms on my pants before I try the doorknob to make sure it’s still locked. I get out my lock pick kit. It takes a little less time than before. I stand back and gently kick the door open. The apartment is dark. A noise down the hall that sounds like a door opening sends me scurrying inside, pushing the door closed softly behind me. I reach off to the side for the light switch, but when I flick it, the room remains black.
My heart races, and even in the dark, I see bloody faces in corners, my imagination running wild, mixing with my memories of the massacre. The apartment seems alive even though I know all the bodies are long gone. A lingering evil presence remains. With shaking fingers, I fumble in my small bag for my flashlight. I’m about to turn it on when a floorboard across the living room creaks and I hear a breathy sound—like someone exhaling with scuba gear.
I am not alone.
Chapter 14
I FRANTICALLY CLAW for the doorknob behind me, but it’s too late. A weight slams into me in the dark, crushing me back against the wooden door. A gloved hand closes over my mouth, stifling my scream. My hand is on the doorknob behind me, and I have it twisted. If I can get our weight off the door, I can open it.
Clawing for the eyes, my fingernails scrape against bare cheeks. I bite through the gloves and meet flesh at the same time my knee connects with the man’s groin. He grunts and yanks at my hair, tugging so tightly that tears spring to my eyes. As he yanks me away from the door, my hand is still grasping the twisted doorknob. The momentum of him pulling away as I hold the doorknob sends the door careening open. The scream building inside me lets loose at the same time light from the hall illuminates my assailant’s face. Bushy eyebrows and full lips. Eyes narrowed with hate. The same face I saw in the wedding photograph with Maria.
Joey Martin.
His eyes widen as my scream goes on and on. Within seconds, doors down the hallway are opening, and he has scrambled off me and is gone. Without thinking, I clamber to my feet and chase him, heading straight to the bathroom. I climb in the tub and peer out the window in time to see a stocky figure in black leap off the bottom of the telephone pole beside the building. Something drops from his waist, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Instead, he gives one glance up and darts around a small fence, right when the sound of sirens fills the air.
Then I’m down in the alley, searching in the leaves.
I find a small, metal, pointy thing.
It’s like a metal stick with a sharp end like a stake. The gunmetal gray has ridges in it, like a piece of bamboo. The entire object is about the shape and size of a marker. I tuck it in my pocket as the police come charging around the corner with guns drawn.
KHOURY SITS ACROSS from me at her desk. She is not amused.
I’m not under arrest, but she wanted me to come down to the station to tell my story.
I already told her the whole story earlier, when she first showed up at the apartment. I told her how Mrs. Castillo thinks Joey Martin killed her daughter and that he is in town, not in Iraq. For a short time, she believed me enough to order an officer to pry up the floorboard in the closet. When the officer lifted the board, we all leaned down to see.
There was nothing there.
Now, back in her office, I can tell that Khoury won’t believe anything else I have to say.
“It was him, I swear. It was Joey Martin.”
“He’s in Iraq,” she says in a monotone.
I have one chance left to convince her. Digging in my bag, I hand her the piece of metal.
“He dropped this when he was running away from the apartment. I know I’ve probably corrupted the chain of evidence, but if it has his prints on it, will you believe me?”
She doesn’t answer, just puts on gloves and drops the metal stick in a plastic bag, which she seals.
“The fact that it was outside their apartment is not incriminating in itself. He did live there, right? It wouldn’t be unusual to find one of his possessions either in the apartment or outside it, right?”
My excitement fades. She’s right.
“But he attacked me.”
The look she gives me tells me she is not convinced.
“You’re lucky I believe you were attacked, because I hate to break this to you, but you’re not looking so squeaky clean yourself right now.”
My eyes widen as I take in what she means. “What are you trying to say?”
She clears her throat. “You found the bodies. You were in the apartment again tonight. You found some so-called weapon. Your prints are all over the crime scene and now on a potential weapon.”
Weapon?
“The only reason I’m entertaining any notion that you’re telling the truth is because you’re Sean Donovan’s girl and he did something for me once. I owe him—and you get to benefit from that.”
She pushes a stack of four-by-six photos toward me. “Prove you saw Joey Martin there.”
All of the photos are of men in army uniforms. I find him immediately. The blood rushes to my face, and my fingers shake as I pick up a photo of a man with full lips and bushy eyebrows.
“This is the guy who attacked me.”
She nods. She believes me.
“Has anyone shown you a picture of him before?”
My heart sinks. The wedding picture Mrs. Castillo loaned me is still in my bag.
“Yes.”
She presses her lips tightly together. “I don’t know who you saw, but Joey Martin is in Iraq. He’s coming home a week from Friday on leave so he can get his child out of CPS care,” she says. “She’ll be with family again instead of strangers. You should be happy to hear that.”
I shake my head. “He’s here. It’s been three days since the murders. He could have flown home by now. And if you ask his mother-in-law, she’ll tell you he was here at the time of the murders.”
Her eyes narrow. “So you’re not only saying the U.S. military is lying to the San Francisco Police Department but that Joey Martin killed his entire family?”
“Maybe.”
We have a stare down. She squints, as if she can see into my soul, before leaning back in her chair and exhaling.
“I’ll play devil’s advocate here for a second, and let’s suppose that you are right. Even if you are, there is nothing we can do about it. He’s heavily alibied. He was overseas. Iraq. The U.S. Army is vouching that he has been in Iraq since March.”
“The military is lying.” My voice is shaking.
She studies me for a few minutes. I wonder if she’s remembering how I refused to turn over Lucy the first time we met. Does she think I’m too stubborn to listen to reason? Leaning forward, she shuffles some papers on her desk without looking away from me.
“The military is not going to lie about this, Ella.” I cringe at her using my nickname, reserved for family only. The look Khoury gives me is a combination of pity and condescension. It makes me wonder what she knows about me. What she’s heard. I stare at her until she speaks again. “I’m sorry. I know you personally want this case solved, but you can’t want it any more than I do.”
“What if he was actually here during the murders, despite what the military says? Would he be a suspect then?” I don’t blink, and her gaze doesn’t falter.
“Mrs. Castillo may hate her son-in-law, but that doesn’t make him a murderer.” She waves her hand, dismissing my words.
“What if she’s right?”
“You mean what if some elderly woman is right and the U.S. military is wrong? Well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”
I give her a stony stare and stand to leave.
“Are you guys even going to search his pa
rents’ apartment?”
“My men already did.”
But I see a flicker of doubt cross her brow. She’s not sure they did, is she?
In my car, my cell rings. I don’t recognize the number.
“Giovanni,” I say.
“Give me motive,” Khoury says. “Why would Martin kill not only his wife but his parents, his sister, and his nephew as well? Give me one reason, and I’ll shift gears.”
“I’ll get back to you,” I say quietly and hang up.
DRIVING HOME, I pound the steering wheel in frustration.
I know what I saw. Joey Martin is here. He was in his apartment. What was he doing? What was he looking for? The letters under the floorboard? Did he get to them first?
The military is lying for him. To protect him? His own mother-in-law called him a devil. She said she would give her life to prevent Lucy from ending up in his hands. I believe her when she said the baby is in danger. And there is no doubt that Mrs. Castillo is afraid, terrified.
I worry I’ve ruined my credibility with Khoury. Now I’ve got to find proof of my own.
Because a week from Friday—in twelve days—they are turning Lucy over to a man who might have massacred five people, including his own parents. Meanwhile, that little girl has been with strangers in a foster home for the past three days and will end up spending two full weeks there. The realization hits me that staying in foster care might now be the safest place for her.
Chapter 15
LOPEZ MEETS ME at Peet’s Coffee on Lakeshore Monday morning near Donovan’s apartment. I called Donovan to see if he wanted me to bring him a coffee, but he was already at work and too busy to talk, asking if he could call me back.
I’m a little relieved. I don’t want to hear his reaction when I tell him I was attacked last night at the Martin apartment and had to go to the cop shop to give a witness statement that was barely believed.
Lopez and I park ourselves on the bench in front of the coffee shop. I hand him the double espresso I sprung for to get him out of bed so early. Lopez usually sleeps in late after staying up most of the night listening to the police scanner.
Blessed Are Those Who Weep Page 6