“Something drew them here,” Barnes added.
“Or someone,” Paula said.
“What’s your theory, Detective?” Barnes asked.
She looked surprised that the lieutenant wanted to hear what she had to say. “Um . . . I haven’t run this by Detective Penley yet. It’s only a theory.” She got another nod from Penley. “According to all our interviews with the victims’ families, there was no reason for Mercer or Johnson to be in Sacramento. Cardozo moved his wife and kid here but kept his ties across the river. The killer got them all to come to him. What would lure a gang member? Money or power. If our killer got them to meet him with a promise of a payoff or some information they could use to move up the ranks, it means he’s not randomly targeting his victims. He knew who he wanted and went after them.”
Lieutenant Barnes pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he fought off a headache caused by the puzzle pieces Paula laid out. “He’d have to offer one hell of a payday to convince someone like Cardozo to turn on the West Block Norteños. What is special about this guy that he can be the Gangland Pied Piper and get his victims to come to him?”
“I don’t know, but it means he has a way to identify them,” she responded.
“Which is . . .” Barnes said.
“I–I don’t know yet. He’s precise in everything, so why not in his choice of victims?”
“What else?” Barnes asked.
“He has a place where he takes them and kills them. It has to be private and isolated, with access to the river. Cardozo was dumped by boat, the bike trail is next to the levee, and Miller Park is right on the water. Nothing is random about that.”
Barnes nodded, then after a pause said, “Find out how he does it, Detective.” He began to walk back to his office, stopped, and turned back. “Good work, Newberry.” He turned around once more and headed away.
Paula looked back to John, and a pained look grew on her face. “John, look—I’m sorry I said anything. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Don’t you ever do that again,” John said.
“I’m sorry! The lieutenant surprised me, and I blurted it out. I feel so stupid.”
“That’s not what I mean. Don’t ever apologize for doing your job. Not in the past and not now. The lieutenant’s right. How long have you been working on the idea that the killer has a place near the river?”
Paula sat behind her disheveled desk and pushed files around like a bad poker dealer until she found the one she wanted. “Yesterday before work, I took a run along the bike trail. I didn’t really put it together with Cardozo getting dumped on the riverbank until today. The bike trail is next to the river, and the spot where Mercer was dumped is maybe fifteen feet from the water.”
She pulled a city map from the folder and handed it to John. The map had green circles indicating the three body-drop sites.
“If you look at the map, the bike trail curves toward the river in this spot. Ten yards up- or downstream, the bike trail bends away from the water,” she said.
John looked at the map, opened a desk drawer, and pulled additional photos from a file. He flipped through them until he found one that showed an angle of the waterline from Mercer’s body. “I know we did a grid search of the entire scene, but nothing popped up near the riverbank to indicate the body came in that way.”
“Everyone focused on the bike trail and the parking lot a hundred and fifty yards to the west. That seemed like the most logical approach for his body dump.” Paula came around to John’s desk and tapped the green circle she’d drawn around Miller Park. “The boat ramp at the park is no more than twenty yards from where we found Johnson’s body.”
“The bodies hadn’t been in the water, so we didn’t look at the water as part of the MO,” John said. He pushed back from the desk, upset he didn’t make the connection earlier. “You know what bugs me about this? He’s going to a whole lot of extra trouble to make these dumps. Talk about risk versus reward. It would be much easier—and safer—for him if he just dropped the bodies in the river.”
“This means that the open display of the victims is as much a part of his work as the body parts he keeps. He isn’t dumping them—he’s showing us what he can do, like advertising. He wants us to know.”
John chewed that last point over in his mind.
“What? You’ve got the quiet, gloomy thing going,” Paula said.
“I’m not gloomy. I’m thinking.”
The phone on Paula’s desk rang and cut off her response.
John fidgeted with the photos and stacked them neatly. He noticed another pink message slip from a newspaper reporter. It went into his wastebasket. Reporters always wanted the inside scoop from the lead investigator instead of going through the department’s public information officer.
Paula scribbled notes as she spoke with her caller, and John picked up the leftover message slip from someone named Mario Guzman. John dialed the number, and someone responded on the first ring. The guy must have been sitting on the phone.
“Mario Guzman?”
“Who’s this?”
“John Penley,” he responded, purposefully leaving out the “detective” title.
“Hold on a sec.” In the background, voices of children faded, followed by the unique sound of a screen door slamming against a doorframe.
“Detective Penley?”
“Yes.” Guzman knew who John was.
“Manny Contreras said I should give you a call.”
“Let me guess, Manny told you to tell me that the West Block Norteños had nothing to do with Daniel Cardozo’s murder. Well, you can tell him that you passed on the message.” It was clearly another smoke screen to insulate the gang from murder.
“I don’t know if they did or not,” Guzman said.
Not the response John expected. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t know how the Norteños figure in Danny’s death. He’s dead because of what he—what we saw.”
John’s neck tingled. “What did you see?”
There was a pause on Guzman’s end of the phone, then, in a raspy whisper, he said, “We saw dead bodies, man.”
TEN
John and Paula sat across from Mario Guzman in a booth at a mom-and-pop diner in West Sacramento. The place sat a few blocks south of the interstate, overlooked by truckers, travelers, and tourists. Greasy windows cast a tallow-yellow pallor over the locals perched at the counter. Little more than time was consumed in this place.
“Let me get this straight. Cardozo asked you to help him with a job,” John said.
Guzman sat across from the detective and wrapped his hands around a chipped gray coffee mug in front of him. “Yeah. He needed my truck, and I helped him load up.”
“When was this?” John asked.
“About two months ago—that’s when Danny first asked. He said there was some good money in it for me. So I asked him if this was anything illegal, ’cause I don’t want no trouble.”
“Sure, Mario, you’re a pillar of the community,” Paula said.
“A what?”
“Never mind. Tell me about the job,” John pressed as he kicked Paula under the table.
“We picked up the containers, loaded ’em in my pickup, and dropped ’em off. That’s it. Danny knew when to pick ’em up and where they were supposed to get delivered. I didn’t know about any of that. Danny would call me, and I’d have to run right over. He said that was why the money was so good.”
“Where did you pick them up?” John said.
“There were four deliveries, all from a big ol’ warehouse on Fifteenth.”
“The drop-off?” John asked.
“That was always the same too. The airport.”
“Get to the part about the bodies,” Paula said.
Guzman looked over his shoulder and ensured no one was within earshot. He leaned in and spoke in a hushed tone. “The containers were the same—always. Silver metal boxes with heavy-duty locks on them, you know the kind that bankers use to ca
rry important papers and shit. So I figured that it must be something really valuable that we was lugging around.”
“So you snuck a look,” John said.
“Danny didn’t know what we was hauling. I thought, you know, I could skim off a little of whatever it was and make a quick buck. Danny said the guy we was doing this work for said that he could never, ever open the containers. That told me that we had a big score in the crates. I cut the lock offa one with my bolt-cutters and opened it. I swear I didn’t know what we was doing.”
“What was in it?”
“A heart. A heart all sealed up in a plastic like a—what do you call it? A trophy.”
“You sure about what you saw? A heart?” John asked, trying to hide the anticipation in his voice. He hid his emotions better than his partner, who began to bounce on the seat next to him.
“Yep. It wasn’t like one of them beef hearts in the meat counter at the carnicería. This one was human. I know it. When I saw the damn thing, I fell on my ass. Danny looked really scared—like he was into somethin’ that he got trapped in, you know? I told him to close it up and drop it off like nothing happened.” Guzman stopped, looked from John to Paula, and put a hand up like he swore an oath. “I didn’t take nothin’ and didn’t touch nothin’ from that box. Neither did Danny. We dropped off the containers at the airfreight terminal like we was supposed to and hightailed it outta there.”
“Did you put another lock on the case?” Paula asked.
Guzman’s eyes widened. “No. No, I didn’t even think about it. We just wanted to get outta there. That’s how he knew.”
“When was this?” John asked.
“The day before Danny was killed. Now I know it has somethin’ to do with what he saw.”
“Then why aren’t you dead?” Paula asked.
“Because Danny didn’t tell the dude I was helping.” Guzman sat straight in the booth, and the blood drained from his face. “Wait, you think Danny told? You ain’t gonna tell what I saw, are you?”
Paula let him twist for a moment and sipped her coffee. “Does this taste burnt to you?”
“Tastes like it was strained through old gym socks,” John said.
Guzman leaned forward again and bumped his coffee mug. He grabbed it before the bitter brew spilled onto the worn Formica surface. “You can’t rat me out. That’s against the rules.”
“Sometimes to get the big fish, you gotta use a little fish for bait, Mario. You”—John tapped on the table—“are the little fish here.”
Guzman stood quickly in the booth, and his thighs caught the lip of the table. His coffee mug tumbled off the surface and shattered on the floor. The waitress shuffled over to the booth and dabbed the coffee off the table with a dingy brown towel. She tossed the towel on the floor and used her shoe to mop the spill. Guzman waited for her to leave before he continued. “You can’t tell. Look what happened to Danny.”
“How did Cardozo contact the guy?” John said.
“I dunno.”
“How did you know when to make a pickup?”
“I dunno. That was Danny’s deal. I asked him about it, and he told me that the dude always called him. Danny swore he never saw the guy.”
“How’d you guys get paid?” John asked.
“When we was done with the delivery, at the airport, Danny picked up an envelope with the cash.”
Talking to Guzman was like pulling teeth from a guy with lockjaw. “Mario, put all the shit together in one sentence. Exactly where did you go and who paid you? And don’t tell me Danny paid you,” John said.
Guzman’s brow furrowed, and he bit his lower lip while he contemplated how to respond. Then, like a kid in seventh-grade math class, his eyes brightened when he figured out the answer. “Danny and me drove to the warehouse down on Fifteenth, like I said. Then we loaded the cases, drove them out to the airport freight terminal, and unloaded them. Danny always checked in with a dude that worked for the freight company and got us the money.”
When he finished, he looked expectantly from John to Paula for approval.
“You remember the name of the freight company?” John asked.
“The guy wore a dark-blue uniform. I don’t remember the name.” Guzman glanced at his watch and said, “I did good by you guys, right? You ain’t gonna tell that I saw anything, right? I gotta get going to work over at the ball field. I can hook you guys up with some River Cats tickets when they’re in town. Sometimes they let me chalk the baselines.”
“Yeah, you did fine. Go on, get to work,” John said.
Guzman nodded and carefully got up from the table this time. He made for the exit and hit the door in full stride.
“Is this guy for real? He’d have us believe that all he did was loan Cardozo his pickup truck,” Paula said. She went for a sip of coffee but thought better of it before the mug was halfway off the table. “You know he held something back. This killer doesn’t simply drop off his body parts and call some doofus with a pickup truck.”
John shifted in the booth so he faced his partner. “He probably didn’t tell us everything. He said they picked up cases of body parts, but he only copped to opening one of them. I bet they looked in more than one crate too. What he did tell us explains why none of the body parts turned up. The killer ships them out. That also means he has someone to help him on the other end of the delivery who picks them up and gets rid of them.”
“That’s why we haven’t heard anything out on the street about body parts in someone’s dumpster.”
A pair of uniformed Sacramento police officers entered the diner and headed toward the detectives. John recognized Officer Stark from the preshift briefing with a uniform as rumpled and crusty as his demeanor. A younger, thinner, and more presentable officer trailed a few steps in Stark’s wake. They sat across from the detectives without asking, and Stark signaled for the waitress.
Stark pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket. “Your CI is a nutjob. Jimmy Franck called nine-one-one, at your behest, and claimed he found a body. We roll on the call to the old ice factory on Fifteenth and meet your CI. You could smell the eight ball on his breath, and he twitched more than an old man with Parkinson’s and Tourette’s combined. He points out the place, and we go check it out. The lock on the main door is busted. Squatters and homeless got the place all torn up. But in the middle, there’s this circle of melted candles, some chalk drawings, and right in the center of it all, there’s a body.”
“Jimmy found a body?” Paula said. Her eyes popped wide, and she nearly dropped her coffee cup.
“Yep, wings and all,” Stark reported.
“Huh—wait, wings?” Paula asked.
“It was a chicken. Your CI called nine-one-one over a dead chicken.” Stark forced a laugh that reddened his complexion.
The waitress appeared, put down coffee mugs for the new arrivals, and left the table without much attention. She sensed Stark wasn’t a tipper.
The younger officer poured a dollop of creamer in his cup and stirred the light strands of white into the brown sludge. John noted that he was Tucker B., according to his nametag. “Gotta give the little tweaker his due,” Tucker said. “It wasn’t a chicken, though. It was some kind of hawk. That was a weird sight, what with all the candles and stuff.”
“But still—you can’t mistake a bird for a human,” Stark said.
“You find anything else there?” John asked.
“Nah. We gave the place a once-over. There was nothing else and nobody else in the place. From the flies, I’d say the bird was there for a few days. I didn’t call the evidence geeks in for some feathers,” Stark said.
“What’d you do with Jimmy?” John asked.
“We ran him over to the Effort for detox,” Tucker said.
Tucker looked up from his coffee and caught Paula eyeing him. He smiled and held her gaze until she looked away.
“Tell me about the place,” John said.
Stark took a sip from his mug, “Whaddaya mean? It’s an em
pty shell.”
“Except for the whole voodoo, dead-bird thing,” Tucker added.
“Did you guys give the place a good look?” John asked.
“You trying to tell me how to do my job, Penley?” Stark challenged.
“I’m only asking if you searched the rest of the building.”
“I already told you that nobody was in the place.”
John pushed back in the booth and clenched the muscles in his jaw. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Did you look for anything in the building, like bloodstains, clothing, or tools that someone might use to cut up and hide a body?”
“Your CI is a flake. I’m telling you for the last time that there wasn’t nothing else there—end of story,” Stark said. He swung his thick thighs out of the booth and stood. “Let’s go, Tucker.” The veteran patrol cop didn’t bother to wait for his partner and headed toward the exit. Over his shoulder he said, “Thanks for the coffee, Penley. Watch yourself with this one. You wouldn’t be the first good cop she brought down.”
Paula tensed, and her cheeks flushed an angry hue.
Tucker slid off the worn bench seat and shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that said he was used to Stark’s gruff behavior and knew the futility of expecting anything different. “We were in the warehouse for five minutes, tops. Once we found the candles and voodoo stuff, Stark hightailed it outta there. I think it gave him a case of the heebie-jeebies.”
“Would it be worth a follow-up search?” Paula asked.
“I dunno. I only cleared the place. Nobody else was there, but there were a couple locked metal doors that I couldn’t access. Since they were padlocked from the outside, I figured the owner sealed them so the street people couldn’t set up nice little condos.”
Tucker pushed a five-dollar bill on the table to cover the coffee that his partner walked out on and headed for the door.
“Sorry about Stark,” John said. “He’s a special kind of nasty, that one. He went to the academy with Carson.”
“I know.”
When the officer had departed, John said, “Why would an abandoned ice plant have locked doors?”
At What Cost Page 5