Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Jeans, a baseball cap, new Nike sneakers, a T-shirt, sunglasses, and a backpack. He looked like a dork waiting to be robbed.”

  “Who was his ride? Who was going to pick him up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where was he going?”

  “Why do you keep asking that?”

  The interviewing agents turned to Juan’s drug trafficking. They embellished. They created witnesses and a confession that might implicate her, then showed her photos of the secret compartment in Juan’s Hullabaloo van.

  She blurted, “He messed up.”

  “Who messed up?”

  “Juan did.”

  “How?”

  I saw Agnew shake his head, as in “Don’t answer,” but she was frightened. An agent asked quietly, “What do you mean he messed up?”

  She stumbled to her feet, saying, “I need a bathroom.”

  Before she reached the door, she vomited. An agent led her to a restroom. Everybody else stepped out into the hallway. I looked at Agnew dabbing a dampened Kleenex on his white corduroy pants, trying to clean vomit splashes off, before informing everyone the interview was over for now. My phone rang as he said that, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t listen to the voice mail a Las Vegas Metro homicide detective named Donna Perth left until after Agnew made it clear that everything to do with his client was on hold until an agreement was in writing.

  Detective Perth’s message said, “I’m working a homicide you might be able to help me with. Adult Hispanic male, young, and possibly killed the night of the Alagara bombing outside of Jean. Please call me.”

  Probably smiling when she hung up. She knew she’d get a quick call back.

  19

  I didn’t check in with Venuti and went out the back way to my car, though that was more habit than dodge. Thirty miles south of Vegas, hot crosswinds swept I-15, and gray dust clouded the valley east of the interstate. I exited at Jean, turned into a Shell station off to the right, and pulled up alongside Detective Perth, who was parked beneath an American flag whipping hard in the wind.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said.

  She drove, and I looked at photos on her iPad as we made the gradual five-and-a-half-mile climb up to the Goodsprings Bypass Gravel Haul Route.

  “Gruesome, aren’t they,” she said. “An old boy that lives out this way got curious about the vultures and went out for a look yesterday, but he didn’t tell anyone until dawn this morning. Maybe what he saw got into his sleep and he had a change of heart.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, some mumble-bumble bullshit that didn’t make any sense.” She glanced over again. “He didn’t want to get mixed up in it, or he owes on a ticket, or, I hate to say it, he may have found a watch, a wallet, something out here and took it home.”

  I couldn’t tell much about the victim’s identity from the crime-scene photos, but I gave her what she was waiting to hear.

  “If there’s any possibility it’s Juan Menderes, we’ll expedite DNA testing. If it’s Menderes, there’s a woman named Rosamar Largo who claims he’s her half brother.”

  “Is he?”

  “Probably not.”

  “If it turns out he is, I want to talk to her.”

  “Sure.”

  She slowed to a stop. “Here we are. Lovely, isn’t it?”

  Despite bright sunlight, I pulled off my sunglasses for a better read of the ground. It was a flat gray-white spot facing desert hills, littered with beer cans, trash, and bullet casings. Tire tracks crisscrossed the sandy soil. It looked like a regular place for target practice. Taking it in I had an obvious, quick early thought: whoever killed the victim wasn’t worried about him being found.

  “Busy place,” I said.

  “Yep, civilization,” she answered. “People come out here and drink and target shoot. It’s far enough out to not bother anybody and close enough to the road not to be inconvenient. The dark spot there is where he died. What I don’t understand is why he was disfigured the way he was. I can’t get my head around them cutting off his hands and doing what they did to his face. Makes me think they had something personal with him.”

  Perth was a big-boned woman, sturdy not overweight, in jeans, cowboy boots, a solid leather belt, and white shirt, probably freshly ironed this morning but sweat-wrinkled now in back. Her hands were big, her face strong-featured. I heard sadness in her voice that caused me to look at her more closely.

  She pointed at two knee prints in the gray-white soil.

  “I think he tried to stand after being shot. See the second knee print and the toe dug in? See there and then there, where his left foot landed as he stumbled to his feet.”

  She pointed out dots of black blood sprayed and dried hard on mesquite.

  “Shotgun,” she said. “The coroner thinks the first barrel took away his lower jaw, so he wasn’t going far when he stood up again. He was bleeding out and struggling for air. Look here, though, the footprints that come in from the side after he’s up on his feet again.”

  I saw them, but it was a hard read so I asked her, “Are you used to tracking game?”

  “All my life and in desert country.”

  “What made you think the victim here could be Juan Menderes?”

  “Body type, and I thought maybe that might explain the violence done to him.” She added, “I needed something that could explain it.”

  “This isn’t public yet, but it’s looking like Juan Menderes delivered drugs in addition to Hullabaloo party cakes. The Hullabaloo drivers use the same van every day. They’re responsible for keeping them clean and cared for. Looks like he had his modified. We found a hidden compartment welded in the floor of the van. The Rosamar Largo that I was telling you about says she dropped him at a southbound 95 on-ramp a little after 11:00 p.m. the night of July 4. A ride was set up.”

  “He’s her brother, but he doesn’t tell her where he’s going? That’s a little bit hard to believe.”

  “He’s not her brother.”

  “Is that opinion or fact?”

  “A little of both. I don’t think she’s worried about him. She’s worried about herself. It’s in everything she says.”

  My opinion was just more hearsay to Perth. She pointed at mesquite thirty yards away.

  “Part of his jaw was over there. If we come up with dental records, there won’t be any way to match them. The shotgun took away his nose, cheekbones, and eye sockets. Took away any easy way to visually ID him.”

  That was probably the goal, I thought. Perth turned to me.

  “I saw a dismembered body once. A man butchered his wife after a fight. He gutted her and pieced her like he would an elk, then wrapped the pieces in butcher paper and put them in his garage freezer. He doubled up two garbage bags and ran her guts out into the desert in his pickup and dumped them. Told us he aimed to dispose of the rest slowly. That’s as close as I’ve been to something like this. The victim here, even his ears and genitals are gone. They aimed to erase his identity. Is there any reason you can think of to take it that far with Juan Menderes?”

  When I didn’t answer quick enough, she pointed at the dark stain then a boot print, a heel dug in, the shooter trying to balance between what he was trying to achieve and keeping blowback off himself and the shotgun.

  “I think the shotgunner is a little bit of an artist or thinks he is,” she said. “He’s got a way of doing things. This wasn’t his first time. He’s too good with the gun. He’s got a feel for the spread rate of the pellets. That’s not easy, and I know. I grew up with a shotgun in my hands.” She paused then said, “I may have heard the name Rosamar Largo before. What does she say about who picked him up?”

  “She says she doesn’t know who he was getting the ride from.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “No.”

  “A sister would ask.” She thought about that another several seconds, then repeated. “A sister would ask unless
she already knew what was going down. Is she claiming they were close?”

  “She said they were coming from different places, but he was her only sibling.”

  Which made me think of Melissa. I pushed that away to get back to this conversation.

  “Rosamar Largo said she grew up in LA, Juan in Mexico. They had the same father,” I said.

  “And you don’t believe her?”

  “I need to see proof.”

  “We found a cap the wind had carried. Don’t know if it was the victim’s. It was new, not even sweat-stained on the brow. A new cap doesn’t wander out here by itself. Blue jeans and a T-shirt that was white at some point.”

  “Shoes?”

  “Black Nike sneakers, also new. Nothing else. No wallet, nothing.”

  “The sneakers fit. Describe the cap.”

  “It’s a blue baseball-style cap with a black Nike emblem.”

  “That fits. What about a small black backpack?”

  “No other clothes, nothing else.” She turned. “A blue baseball-style cap with a black Nike emblem fits?”

  “It does.”

  I took in the sandy white, the mesquite, and hills once more before we left. When we reached the paved road, Perth pushed the air-conditioning fan up but left her window down and we were both quiet on the drive. I looked down the valley and out at the bright, hot, windy day and couldn’t stand it that Melissa, Jim, and Nate were gone.

  “Let’s start by finding out if it was Juan Menderes,” I said after we pulled into the Shell station. “Get a DNA test sample together, and I’ll get it out today.”

  “Get it out today?” She smiled at that and said, “I liked your voice as soon as I heard it. Now I know why.”

  20

  Julia looked younger and frailer and withdrawn into grief tonight. A stack of used Kleenex was on the nightstand near her. I pulled a chair over and was talking to her when hospital administrator Dr. Lena Schechter stopped by.

  “You’re her uncle?”

  “Yes. Paul Grale.”

  “Can I have a few minutes of your time?” Outside the room and down the wide corridor, she asked, “Are you close to Julia?”

  “We’re good friends. I’m very fond of her. I’ve watched her grow up. Why do you ask?”

  “There’s a couple who are neighbors of the Kern family who have told me they’d like to adopt her. They’ve spent much of the last several days here. Do you know them?”

  “I’ve met them. Julia will live with me unless she wants to do something different.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “I do.”

  “Is your lifestyle compatible with raising a teenage girl?”

  “Not really, I’ll have to make changes.”

  I reached slowly for my wallet to give her my card. I didn’t doubt the responsibility I was taking on, to see Julia through high school and college and the years it would take to get over the loss of her family, if ever.

  “Again, I have to apologize for invasive questions, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not a problem. I have a house. There’s a bedroom for Julia. My wife died in a car accident a decade ago, and I live alone. I know I haven’t been at the hospital enough and people are wondering. I understand.”

  I pulled one of my cards out and handed it to her. She read it and looked puzzled.

  “FBI?”

  “Almost nineteen years. I’m on the Domestic Terrorism Squad in the Vegas field office. It’s why you haven’t seen more of me in here.”

  “I had no idea. The neighbors . . .”

  I stayed another hour with Julia, then drove to the Alagara on my way home. I didn’t get out but did stop and lower the passenger window. There were many more flowers, many roses. I’d heard someone had tweeted something about roses that went viral. But for me, it was knowing they were out there and that they cared. I sat parked there several minutes. At home, Jo was waiting with Chinese to go and a bottle of red that felt out of place tonight, but it was grand of her to get anything.

  Some agents hadn’t been home since the bombings. They showered in the gym and slept on chairs, but that didn’t work well for me. Sometimes answers come when you take a step back. I used to joke that my brain worked best when I didn’t think. We ate and I checked in with the office. When I walked back out, Jo was in the lap pool, her clothes draped neatly over a pool chair. She swam a slow crawl and her body looked lovely. When she stopped, she waded toward me and said, “I want to see you swim.”

  “You want to see me swim?”

  “Yeah, I want to see if you’ve kept working on stretching out those lower back muscles. Show me.”

  Water beaded on her skin as she climbed out into the warm night. It wasn’t about my back or torn muscles or disfigurement. She was putting herself out there at a hard time, but it felt right to heal the hurt between us and move somewhere new. A fence blocked the view of the only neighbors, and the other side looked out on the desert. I stripped off my clothes and swam, and maybe for the first time since I was wounded, I gave myself up to what I’d become.

  Many got hurt in Iraq and Afghanistan. What were my wounds next to what soldiers had done and endured? Mine were nothing. They were bad luck, a failed mission. The way I had looked and felt before was gone forever, so let it go. Let it just be that I’m lucky to hold Jo again. Let it just be that and nothing else. Let it be without questions. Later, we made love in a slow way in the bed where I’d once slept with my wife, and then lay with the sliding door open and moonlight falling across the floor.

  Early the next morning I wrote Jo a note before slipping out at first light. I like the gentle quiet and beauty of dawn. The early morning drive to the office is also when I sometimes do my best thinking about cases.

  This morning I felt particularly down. I felt terrible sadness, yet tried to think through the pieces of what Lacey and I had: Mondari, Menderes, Rosamar Largo, the unknown bomb maker who I thought had to be here. I thought about C-4 magically disappearing from a Phoenix warehouse. My head also swirled with dark thoughts and images from the Alagara. I needed to think about cremating the bodies of Jim, Melissa, and Nate and what to do about a memorial service. Should Julia see them once more, or would that be traumatizing? She wanted to see them, and no one had significant facial injuries. Maybe she needed that finality, but I shuddered to think of a trip to the morgue with her. I was there in my head when my phone rang.

  A soft-spoken southern voice identified herself as with Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. She then conferenced me into an ongoing call with a DC-based ATF unit working the Vegas bombings. I heard static, a piercing electronic squeal, and then without introduction, an ATF agent, a male voice, maybe midcareer, hard-edged, and not a voice I recognized. But I could guess why he was calling.

  “Good morning, Special Agent Grale, we’re calling about your request.”

  “I’ve been patched into a conference call?”

  “You have. We got your request yesterday and are wondering what you’re after.”

  “It wasn’t clear enough?”

  “Whatever partial DNA came off the bomb detonators and the casings has already been run through the terrorism database. You must know that, so why do you want to run it through the ATF database?”

  “ATF has the best database on domestic bombers, and the lists haven’t always matched in the past.”

  “It might have been that way once a long, long time ago, but it’s not anymore. We’ll do the run for you, but it’s not going to turn up anybody new. Are you looking at a domestic bomber?”

  “I’m leaning toward a freelancer.”

  There was a pause that I knew I was supposed to fill but didn’t.

  “Can you tell us what you’re working on?”

  “My first cup of coffee.”

  Somebody chuckled, and something about that chuckle was familiar. Couldn’t quite place it yet, but it was familiar.

  “Look, I’m not w
orking any headline stuff. My role here is to chase the orphan leads along the edges of the main investigation. I’m like a guy in the basement with a flashlight and stacks of files in moldy cardboard boxes, which would fit, right, for an old-school guy not up to speed.”

  “I’m not sure what all that meant. Do you have a bomb maker you’re specifically looking at?”

  “I’m working a list of known bomb makers.”

  “Your request made it sound like you have someone in mind.”

  “Can I get it run if I change the wording a little?”

  A deeper voice broke in. “We’ll get it run for you, Grale.”

  “Carl Brady?”

  “It’s me, Paul, and it’s been way too long. What’s going on with you? Why aren’t you a supervisor by now?”

  “I’d rather solve cases.”

  Brady laughed and I smiled, and the brutality of the bombings and all the darkness I’d carried into the dawn receded just a little. Maybe it was Brady’s laugh calling up better times. He was a big guy with a deep laugh and a head as bald as a bone. I’d been ready to jump down their throats for this pimp phone call to get whatever lead I had, but Brady’s voice reminded me that we were in it together.

  “I’m looking for a freelancer we may have been tipped about in early June, but not in the context of what happened. The tip came from a confidential informant we’ve worked with before. I’m not clear where he got it. I can’t even find him right now. Our agent killed in the secondary bombing was working with him, and I’ve been going through her notes. It could be he was hustling us as he’s done before, but he’s missing and there are other things unexplained. I’m looking for the bomb maker, Carl. That’s my focus.”

  “We’ll get it run for you today.”

  “Thanks, and somewhere out there, we’ll catch up.”