by Chris Culver
Jacob looked at the altar in the fireplace. “We’ll do it. We’ll kill them.”
“They’ll die by our hands,” said Miguel.
Carla stopped the chant but continued rocking. Inside, she smiled, but outside, she kept her expression somber. After a few minutes, she slowed her rocking and then came to a stop. After that, she looked around the floor as if opening her eyes for the first time.
“How’d I get on the floor?” she asked.
Miguel reached his hand down and pulled her to her feet. “Come. We have work to do. Santa Muerte has given us her protection and a mission.”
Chapter 15
Before leaving the house, I checked the second floor to make sure we didn’t have any other victims. I didn’t find any, but I did find Quesada’s body in one of the bedrooms. In addition to his decapitation, he appeared to have puncture wounds to his abdomen and chest. I’ve been to a lot of grisly murder scenes, but rarely do I hear of someone cutting off another person’s head. There are better, easier ways to kill people. Guns work pretty well. You cut off someone’s head, though, you do it for a reason.
I went back downstairs and left the house to call in backup. The dispatcher would call in the troops, but I requested she place an additional call to Paul Murphy. He’d need to see this. The first officers should arrive within a few minutes, so, once securing the scene as well as I could, I walked to my car and sat on the hood. Normally, I would have gone up to the kids playing basketball up the street and asked them to get their parents so I could warn them that police officers would be arriving shortly, but since I had blood all over me, I didn’t think that’d be the best thing to do.
I held up my badge as the first patrol vehicle arrived. Unfortunately, the lights and sirens drew the kids. They didn’t recoil when they saw the blood on my hands and face, but it did dampen their enthusiasm some. After introducing myself, I led one of the officers to the backyard while the other entertained the boys. Paul—or whoever was given the case—would need to talk to those kids, so establishing a rapport now could go a long way toward securing their cooperation in the future. I showed the beat cop the machete, the back door, and the spot on the rear fence where our killer had jumped over, but neither of us wanted to go back into the house to see the body. He did flash his light through the French doors, though. Quesada’s head sat where I had left it. Both of us agreed that we didn’t need to check his pulse to ensure we weren’t dealing with someone who modern medical science could save. I went back to my car to wait for the detectives assigned to the case.
Paul Murphy and Captain Mike Bowers arrived at roughly the same time fifteen minutes later. Bowers wore a brown sport coat, white shirt, and a mustard-colored tie, while Paul wore a pair of jeans and an Indianapolis Colts sweatshirt. Both men had bloodshot eyes, haggard faces, and several days’ worth of facial hair on their chins. Homicide detectives routinely work twenty-four or even thirty-six hours straight after getting a case, and if I had to guess, Paul and Bowers were probably pretty close to that.
“Head’s in the front hallway,” I said. “Body’s upstairs. Aside from me, no one has gone inside the house.” I pointed toward the patrol vehicle around which the boys huddled. “Those boys were playing in the street when I drove up, so there’s a chance they might have seen something.” I pointed toward the patrolman leaning against his car in front of the home. “That officer—I don’t know his name—is manning the log book, so you’ll want to sign in with him.”
Paul yawned and nodded before looking around. “We ID’d the victim yet?”
“Tomas Quesada. He’s a member of Barrio Sureño, or at least he was ten years ago.”
Bowers crossed his arms and then looked at Paul Murphy. “Could you excuse us for a moment, Sergeant?”
Paul looked at Bowers and then at me. He mouthed good luck and then nodded to Captain Bowers. “I’ll be by my car.”
Once Paul had walked a sufficient distance away that he wouldn’t hear our conversation, Bowers looked at me and shook his head, sighing. “I thought I asked you to stay out of trouble.”
“I tried. It found me.”
Bowers rubbed his eyes and then reached into his jacket for a hard pack of cigarettes. He lit one up. “Tell me what’s going on. Honestly. Who was this guy?”
“Ten years ago, he was Barrio Sureño’s treasurer. I visited him this morning hoping he could shed some light on the people who killed Michelle and sent Dante to kill me. He told me to check out Danny Navarra, whose house burned earlier, almost taking Gail and Mark Pennington with it.”
Bowers took a long drag on his cigarette and looked to the growing crowd of children around the patrol officers’ cruisers. “I assume your conversation with Mr. Quesada was polite and reflected well on our department.”
I tilted my head to the side. “I was as gentle as the situation merited.”
Bowers nodded and then took a long drag on his cigarette. “After that fire, you naturally thought you’d, what, come back and have tea with him?”
I shook my head. “I had hoped to have a sensible conversation about his partners, after which I would have placed him in custody and driven him to your station for further interrogation.”
Bowers looked over his shoulder and waved for Paul Murphy to return.
“I appreciate that you include IMPD in the investigation. It’s sweet of you,” said Bowers. He waited until Paul Murphy arrived to continue his questions. “Can you tell us how you got the blood on you?”
I waited for Paul to take a notepad from his pocket before I spoke. “I went to the house, and upon arrival, I found the back door open. Fearing the worst, I went inside to perform a resident safety check. I announced myself and found a man carrying what I thought was a sword. In fact, it was a machete. It was on the back patio, but I imagine somebody picked it up by now. The assailant threw Tomas Quesada’s head at me and ran. I gave chase, but I couldn’t catch him. He dove into a car a street away.”
Paul wrote a few things down and then looked at me. “Just so you know, the official record will state that you came to this house and got a little head from an unnamed dude. Wanted to let you know in case you hear rumors around the station.”
Bowers shook his head, but I actually smiled a little. “Classy. Thank you for that, buddy.”
Bowers crossed his arms. “What’d your assailant look like?”
I thought back to the hallway. “It was pretty dark, so I didn’t get a look at his face. He’s a little shorter than me, maybe six feet. I’d say two hundred pounds tops, but probably closer to one-eighty. He’s fast and athletic. Skin tone in the darker shades. By the gang involved, I’d say he’s probably Hispanic. Took off Quesada’s head, so he’s got some upper-body strength. I don’t particularly want to run into him again.”
Paul wrote that down and nodded. “Anything in the house stand out to you?”
“I cleared it quickly, so I didn’t get much of a look at the place. I saw a Santa Muerte shrine in the fireplace in the living room, but I didn’t get much of a look. You’ll have to bring in Officer Rios. She might know something.”
“Anything else you want to tell us?” asked Bowers.
I looked at the house and shook my head. “I’m having a bad day. How’s your investigation going?”
Bowers looked at Paul.
“Not as well as yours, evidently,” said the sergeant. “What’s your next move?”
I looked at Bowers. He nodded, so I looked at Paul and spoke. “I plan to visit a Barrio Sureño associate at Pendleton and see if he’s heard any rumors lately. You want to come along?”
“You’ve given me and my team enough work here,” said Paul, glancing up from his notepad. “We’re going to be busy cleaning up this mess.”
Beneath Paul’s jovial facade, I could tell I had pissed him off. “I apologize for giving you a mess, but I didn’t kill Quesada. I didn’t want or expect this to happen.”
Paul hesitated for a moment, but then he sighed and I saw h
is shoulders relax a little as he looked at Captain Bowers. “I know. If Captain Bowers wants you involved, I guess you’re involved.”
“It’s nothing personal, Paul,” said Bowers. “We’ve got people dying, so we need whatever help we can get and Ash knows this case. We’ll use him as needed, but if he gets in the way, tell me and he’s gone.”
Paul looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “No. He’s not in the way. I just kind of wish he’d stop finding bodies.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But unless you guys need me, I’m going to head out. Considering that I shot Dante Washington yesterday, I’m not sure that I should be here when the media arrives.”
“Then get out of here,” said Paul. “I’ve got your number if I need you.”
“And, Ash,” said Bowers. “Don’t watch the news tonight.”
“You’re censoring my TV now, boss?”
“No,” said Bowers, shaking his head. “Dante and Michelle Washington’s family held a candlelight vigil at their church. A couple of newspeople attended, and the family didn’t say too many nice things about you.”
I exhaled slowly. On my reports and in conversation with my colleagues, I referred to Dante and Michelle as the victims. They weren’t the only ones, though. Their parents had lost two children in one night. I couldn’t even imagine that kind of pain.
“Thank you for the warning.”
“Good luck out there,” said Paul.
I nodded to them both before heading back to my car.
It had been a long day, so after my conversation with Mike Bowers and Paul Murphy, I could practically feel weights attached to my eyelids. I wanted to join Hannah and the kids at her sister’s house, but I needed some clothes first. After twenty minutes of driving, I turned into my neighborhood and found a black-and-white patrol vehicle parked in front of my house. I parked on the street behind the cruiser and got out of my car. Even from the street, I could see that somebody had broken one of my front windows.
I brought my hand to my jaw and swore under my breath. A heavyset patrolman stepped out of the cruiser and nodded to me.
“Detective Rashid?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I assume you’re here about the window.”
The patrolman looked at my house and then back to me, nodding. “Yeah. After that riot tonight, we’ve been trying to go by your house every half hour to make sure you’re okay.”
I furrowed my brow. “What riot?”
“You haven’t heard? There was some kind of march down Shadeland Avenue. It was just people holding signs, so it wasn’t a big deal. Then somebody brought out some booze, and the troublemakers got all riled up. They decided to torch the porno store on Massachusetts Avenue.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Captain Bowers told me it was just a candlelight vigil.”
“There was a candlelight vigil, but they weren’t a problem. It was the people outside.” The patrolman paused, looked around, and then drew a breath. “My partner chased down the guy who broke your window. He’s bringing him back now.”
“Good,” I said, nodding. “I’m going to go inside and see the damage.”
The patrolman said something, but I was lost in my own thoughts. When I got inside, I found a brick in my living room. Someone had written FUCK YOU on it with a black permanent marker. The glass would take a while to clean, but the damage was cosmetic mostly. I closed my eyes and thanked God that my kids weren’t there.
When I got back outside, the patrolman’s partner had come back, and he held a familiar squirming young man. Daniel Robinson. He was a high school senior, and he lived a block and a half away. His dad was my plumber, and the boy mowed one of my neighbor’s lawns. In the summers, Megan would sit at the window and watch him, but whenever he glanced toward our house, she would duck behind the couch. She denied it, but I’m pretty sure she had a crush on him. He seemed like a nice kid. Seeing him there, squirming against a police officer’s side, I felt a profound sense of loss that I couldn’t quite explain.
“Hey, Daniel,” I said. “You throw the brick through my window?”
“Fuck you.”
I’ve been a police officer for a long time, and people scream at me all the time. Words don’t hurt, but other things do. Daniel practically spit, he was so animated. In years past, that kind of screaming would have drawn everyone on the street out of their homes to make sure their neighbors were okay. Tonight, though, those doors remained shut and window blinds remained drawn. I realized in that moment what I had lost. Hannah and I might have owned this house, but we weren’t welcome on that street anymore.
The patrolman holding Daniel nodded to me. “I caught him about three blocks north of here. He didn’t have any weapons on him, but he did have a black marker in his pocket. You want us to take him in?”
As mad as I was at him, I understood where Daniel came from—at least to some degree. I got into trouble as a teenager, but I never thought the police would shoot me if they showed up. Daniel likely did—and he had good reason. I’ve got colleagues who would call him a thug simply because of his skin color. They’d judge him a threat and a criminal and treat him accordingly before they knew the first thing about him. Had I been in Daniel’s position with his experiences, I would have been pissed, too. I might have thrown that same brick. I didn’t think I deserved his anger, but it had merit and foundation.
At the same time, I’m not in his position. I’ve had at least half a dozen kids his age pull guns on me in my career. So far, I’ve been able to talk them down, but that’s not always going to be the case. In some of those instances, I probably had justification to shoot. Many of my colleagues wouldn’t have had the same restraint, and I couldn’t blame them. If we don’t shoot first, we might not make it home.
Contrary to what seems like popular belief, this isn’t a problem politicians can solve by shouting at each other on television. We’ve got too many guns on the street, too many young men without any hope for legitimate employment at all, and too many officers willing to shoot young men of color with or without provocation. I don’t know how to fix that. I don’t even know how to start. My only hope is that people smarter than me start caring about our young people and our communities enough to stop pointing fingers at each other and start thinking about real solutions.
I held Daniel’s hate-filled gaze, and for a moment I thought he would spit on me. I shook my head. “No. I’m not pressing charges.”
“You sure about that?” asked the heavyset patrolman.
I nodded. “Yeah. Drive him home and tell his dad what he did. I’m not going to send a kid to jail for doing something stupid.”
“But you’d shoot one for knocking on your door,” said Daniel, straining against the patrolman’s grip.
“Knock it off,” said the heavyset patrolman. “The detective’s doing you a favor.”
I wished I could think of something to say, something that would help Daniel understand my perspective. But I couldn’t. We came from different worlds entirely, and the collisions between those two worlds were rarely peaceful or sensible.
“Just make sure he gets home safe,” I said.
The patrolman holding Daniel nodded to my house. “You need any help with the window? My brother’s a contractor. Might be able to help you out.”
“Thanks, but no. I’ve got some plywood in the garage. I’ll tack it up and worry about the window later.”
The patrolman holding Daniel began guiding him toward the waiting cruiser, while the heavyset patrolman stayed and looked at me. “Just to let you know, the guys in the northwest district support you and what you did. Even the black guys. We all agree: guy breaks into any of our houses, we’re taking him down, too.”
I almost grimaced. I didn’t shoot Dante because he broke into my house, and I certainly didn’t shoot him because he was black. I shot him because I thought he had a gun. And even that didn’t make it right. I’ve, unfortunately, killed a number of people in my career, and I can say with some authority th
at it’s deeply and profoundly wrong, even when justified. How I could make people understand that, I didn’t know, but now didn’t seem the time to argue.
“I appreciate your support. And thank you for watching out for my house. I’m lucky to have so many friends.”
The patrolman nodded his agreement and got back into his car. As they drove away, I felt as if someone had just reached into my gut and pulled everything out, leaving me empty inside and completely numb. My tools and plywood were in the garage, so I walked over. Back when I drank, I used to stash bottles of bourbon all over my house in places I didn’t think Hannah would look. I’d gotten rid of all of them but one in that garage. I don’t even remember buying it, it had been so long ago, but I’d find it, unopened and perfect, behind my pegboard tool organizer above my workbench. All I’d have to do was stand on the workbench and reach behind.
I feel like I wake up every morning only to find someone staring at me from the dark. Wherever I go, he follows me, watching for those times I’m weakest. When I stumble, he pushes me down. When I struggle, he laughs. When I succeed, he tells me about the times I’ve failed. Every time there’s a reason to have a drink, he reminds me of it. I do whatever I can to ignore him, and I usually succeed. It’s not always going to be like that. I now know that whenever an alcoholic says he takes things one day at a time, that’s what he means. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow or the day after that. Maybe that dark figure will win, maybe he won’t. All I know for certain is that I’m going to have to fight him every single day for the rest of my life.
As I grabbed a sheet of plywood from the stack near my workbench, I thought of that bottle, of how it would feel in my hand and how its contents would taste and what it would do for me. Then I thought of how it’d make my wife feel. If I closed my eyes, I could see her face crumple, I could see her pain, her anger. I could also see the disappointment. I’d already given in once this week. I couldn’t do it again. One day, I knew I’d break into that bottle, but not tonight. Not with what I hold dear so close.