by Chris Culver
I walked inside the house, knowing I’d soon see them again.
Chapter 16
I screwed the plywood into the lumber that framed the interior of my window, securing the house for the night before driving to my sister-in-law’s place. I told Hannah about our broken window, but I didn’t think I had the strength to tell her about my trip to the bar the night I shot Dante. Tomorrow. My wife and I slept in the same bed that night, which was nice. Sometimes just that little contact can make the world seem okay.
At nine the next morning, I drove to the City-County Building. Paul and his team probably hadn’t even made it home from Tomas Quesada’s house. While I wondered if they had come up with anything, I still had leads to chase down. As soon as I had something they could use, Paul would be the first call I made. Until then, I didn’t want to lose the momentum I had.
I took the elevator to the floor that housed the homicide unit, and browsed the desks until I found the one with a picture of Paul’s wife, Becky, on it. He had left his computer running, so I sat down to search the Department of Corrections’ database. Before his demise, Tomas Quesada had given us two names; the first owned a home that hid two captives, while the second, according to the DOC’s database, lived in the Pendleton Correctional Institute where he was serving a fifteen-year sentence for armed robbery. Before this most recent conviction, IMPD had arrested him multiple times on drug charges and still considered him a suspect in several open unsolved violent crimes. Based on his file, he very well could have had soldiers on the outside.
Realistically, Paul or someone else from my department should have called Pendleton and set up an appointment, but I had friends in the administration there. I called the assistant warden at home and caught him before he went to church. With a little prodding, he agreed to set up an interview with Salazar at noon, which meant I needed to move quickly to make it on time.
I turned the computer off, and took the elevator to the ground level and then walked to the parking lot. The drive to Pendleton took just under an hour in morning traffic, and I spent most of that listening to a jazz CD my wife had purchased for me. She thought I needed to broaden my horizons and add some depth to my character, apparently having gotten the idea after falling in love with a series of mystery novels about an LA detective who listens to jazz. Try as I might, I couldn’t get into it. I don’t think I’m cool enough.
I arrived at the main administration building at Pendleton at a little after eleven to begin the check-in process. Reluctantly, I surrendered my firearm and cell phone as part of that. I knew the justification behind it—not even corrections officers carried firearms if they were going to meet with inmates—but it always made me feel uncomfortable. After that, I went through half a dozen locked checkpoints and nodded hello to almost a dozen guards. By the time I made it to the interview room, over an hour had passed since my arrival.
The room looked purposefully designed to depress everyone who stepped inside it. A stainless steel table and matching seats were bolted to the center of the floor, while a video camera hung in the corner of the room. A large red panic button adorned the wall beside the door. I’m sure an enterprising inmate given sufficient time could manufacture something in that room into a weapon, but I should be safer there than just about anywhere else in the building.
I sat down facing the door, waiting while the guards brought Tristan in. He had a shaved head and tattooed flames where his hair should have been. Restraints secured his hands near his waist, while leg irons kept him from running. He looked at me, and I saw the sort of cool, dispassionate anger in his eyes that I had seen on more faces than I care to recount.
“I don’t know you,” he said, shuffling toward the table.
“No,” I said. I looked to the guard. “You can go.” I then looked at the seat opposite me. “Sit down.”
The inmate wriggled the chains that bound his wrists and grabbed his crotch. “How about you crawl under this table and suck my dick?”
He probably thought that would shock me or maybe even intimidate me. I didn’t blink. “All these years in prison, we both know who in this room likes to suck dick, and it’s not me. Now why don’t you sit down before we give the guards watching us something else to laugh at?”
Salazar turned around and glowered at the still open door. “That concha’s not going to say anything to anybody, is he?”
He had just called the guard—a man—a quite vulgar name for part of the female anatomy.
“That’s not going to win you too many friends,” I said. “Now sit down and shut up.”
He didn’t sit down so much as slither into his seat. The guard shut and locked the door finally. “They told me you’re Ash Rashid.”
“You can call me Detective Rashid,” I said, reaching into my jacket for a pen in case he said something worth writing down. I glanced to the video camera in the corner of the room. “You know the drill. Cameras aren’t on, but you tell me something, I can use it against you in court. You can have a lawyer here if you want.” I paused and shrugged. “You know the rest by now, I’m sure.”
“I know my rights,” he said, lacing his fingers together on the steel table. “You going to tell me why you wanted to talk to me?”
I shrugged and looked around the room. “To be honest, I really don’t care about anything you have to say. I came because I wanted somebody to search your cell, and I figured since I drove all the way out here, I might as well say hello.”
He tilted his chin up at me so he could look at me down his nose. “What do you think you’re going to find in my cell?”
“Cell phone. I’ve heard a rumor that you’re ordering murders on the outside. Care to substantiate that?”
He leaned forward and then reached beneath the table. “Care to substantiate my ball sack?”
I opened my mouth to respond and then realized that I didn’t know what to say. “That doesn’t even mean anything.”
He merely smirked and then slouched down in his chair. I crossed my arms.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “I came here to talk about two murders. Two individuals who testified against Santino Ramirez have been murdered. So was Tomas Quesada. You remember him?”
Tristan crossed his arms. “You lie on the stand, you die in the streets. It’s called justice. As for Quesada—if someone took him out, he deserved it.”
I shook my head. “Our witnesses didn’t lie.”
“Tino wasn’t even in town when Angel went down.”
Quesada had said something similar. I didn’t believe him, and I sure didn’t believe Tristan, but it wouldn’t hurt to hear what he had to say.
“If Tino wasn’t in town, where was he?”
Tristan leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “It’s none of your goddamn business.”
“What was he doing?”
“Working.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What kind of work?”
He refused to look me in the eye. “The kind that needed to be done.”
Probably killing someone, then. If so, that would explain why Ramirez hadn’t brought it up during trial as an alibi.
“Regardless of what Santino Ramirez did or didn’t do, a lot of people in Indianapolis are pointing fingers at you.”
“Is that right?” he asked. He leaned forward, held up his hands, and jiggled the chains. “They tell you how I killed anybody while I’m sitting here?”
“Let’s not play stupid,” I said, shaking my head. “We both know how this works. One phone call from you, and somebody in my city drops. I’m asking man-to-man if you’ve been making those calls. I’ll even tell your homeboys all about it to make sure you get the credit.”
He leaned back and looked almost as if he wanted to put his feet up. “My boys know when to give credit when it’s due.”
“The way I hear it, your boys couldn’t find an asshole at an asshole convention right now. You sure they even remember your name?”
“What’s that supposed
to mean?”
I shrugged. “Just that I’ve heard they’re moving on. Santino Ramirez is going to die in just a couple of days, and his gang is going to need a leader. I hear Danny Navarra’s stepping up.”
He waved me off. “Danny’s a stupid kid. Nobody’s going to follow him.”
“What about his Uncle Miguel?”
That shut him up for a moment. “Miguel’s got his own thing.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I’d suggest you start talking. I’m building a case against the people killing my witnesses, and one way or another, you’re going to be involved. You don’t work with me, the next time you get out of this building, you’ll be in a coffin.”
He turned away, snickering. “You can’t do shit to me because you don’t have shit on me.”
I put my hands on the table and leaned close to him. “You’d be surprised at what I can do to you.”
“You want to waste your time, you go right ahead, Detective.”
“I’m going to give you some time to think this through. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”
Before Tristan could say anything, I walked to the door and motioned for the guard to open it up.
“Hey, Detective,” say Tristan, smiling from the table. “Can I ask you something?”
The guard unlocked the door and stepped inside. I gestured for him to wait near the exit while I walked back to the table. Normally prisoners take a day or two to stew before contacting me.
“Yes?” I asked, drawing the syllable out.
He gestured for me to come closer. I kept my eyes on his hands and then leaned in another inch or two.
“Your wife still wear that tablecloth on her head when she goes outside?”
My body went cold. He shouldn’t have known that Hannah wore the hijab. Not unless he had seen a picture of her. I looked over my shoulder at the guard. “Did you hear what he just asked?”
The guard nodded, and Tristan gave me a toothy grin. For most of my adult life, I’ve stood across metal tables just like this one, staring at men and women just like Tristan Salazar. Almost every time, I’ve felt something inside me, something very dark, try to claw its way out. It begs me to lash out, to hurt those people who would hurt others. At one time, I would have given in. I would have punched Salazar from across the table and broken his nose. I’d probably even call it justice and argue that he deserved it for threatening my family.
But that’s not justice, and it never made me feel better anyway. I put my hands on the table and leaned forward so I could look Salazar in the eye. I had read his police jacket before coming over. He was thirty-three, and we’d arrested him multiple times for nonviolent felonies, most recently for auto theft. Most of the people we arrest for nonviolent felonies aren’t bad. They grew up in poor neighborhoods with terrible schools, few employment opportunities, and little chance to make something of themselves. Had I seen Salazar’s arrest record without knowing anything else about him, I might have recommended him for an alternative program, one that taught job and life skills, rather than locking him up. Salazar, though, had a mean streak and a violent temper. I had no doubt that he had left a string of bodies in his wake; we simply hadn’t caught him yet.
“You may not know me, but I know you. You’re in for auto theft, and you’ve got a year left on your sentence.”
“That’s right,” he said, crossing his arms.
“I’m also pretty sure you were murdering someone with Santino Ramirez the day Angel Hererra died.”
He pursed his lips but didn’t say anything.
“You looking forward to getting out next year?” I asked.
“I got some plans.”
I smiled, but I refused to allow any goodwill into it. “Then you had better hope nothing happens to my wife or anyone else I care about. On the street, threatening people probably makes you sound cool or scary. Here, it implicates you in a conspiracy to commit murder. If anyone so much as lays a finger on her, they’ll bury you here.”
I didn’t give him the chance to say anything before leaving the room. On the way out, I asked the guard to put him in isolation so he couldn’t contact any of his friends on the outside.
If he had threatened me, I could let it go. But Hannah was a civilian. He wouldn’t get the chance to hurt her.
Chapter 17
Nobody could hurry the steps required to leave a prison, so it took me almost forty-five minutes to reach the lobby and pick up my stuff. By that time, the guards had finished searching Salazar’s cell. They found and confiscated a couple of pornographic pictures, but no cell phone or other contraband. That disappointed me, but I still had leads to follow. I checked my voice mail as soon as I got my phone back. Paul Murphy had left me three messages, his voice growing increasingly urgent with each message. The first message simply asked me to meet him at a crime scene. The second asked for my location, while the third said that if I didn’t call him back within the hour, he’d put patrol on notice for my car.
As soon as the messages finished playing, I called him back.
“Paul, it’s Ash. What’s going on?”
“I had your wife and kids picked up, and I’ve got people looking for you now. You okay?”
“I was going to ask you to pick them up, so thank you. And I’m fine,” I said, crossing the asphalt toward my car. “I’ve been visiting a prisoner at Pendleton. What’s going on?”
“We found our killer’s safe house. They know where you live, they know what you drive, and they’ve got the weaponry to kill you before you even see them coming. We found AK-47s, AR-15s, and enough ammunition here to stock a small army.”
I held my phone to my ear with my right hand and looked at the landscape around me. I was alone, so no one could overhear me.
“Slow down. Where are you?”
“A house in the Bates-Hendricks area. The place should be empty, but people have been staying here for the past few days. One of the neighbors let us in. We found a Santa Muerte shrine covered in human blood on the first floor, maps and surveillance photos on the second floor, and a clean room in one of the bathrooms. We ran a bomb-sniffing dog through. We think they had explosives, but they’re gone now.”
I arrived at my car but didn’t open the door yet. “Tell me about the surveillance photos. Who are they of?”
“Your family, for one thing. That’s why I had them picked up. They’ve also got pictures of the judge who presided over Santino Ramirez’s trial and everybody else who worked the case.”
I nodded and let my mind process that for a moment. From Paul’s description, the people who had stayed in that house had surrounded themselves with the implements of war. Heavy weapons, surveillance photos, maps, explosive devices, and a room in which to make more. There was no telling if this was even the only safe house they had. This gang could hit us where we didn’t expect it and then slink back to the darkness before we ever got the chance to stop them.
I ran my hand through my hair. “This just got a whole lot bigger than a couple of murders. Have you talked to Special Agent Havelock since that first briefing?”
“No,” said Paul, his tone a little softer. “What would Havelock have to do with this?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, opening my car door. “Are you still in the house?” I asked. He said he was. “Describe the room you’re in.”
“Why?”
“Just humor me,” I said.
He grumbled, but I could hear the floorboards creak as he turned around. “I’m in a bedroom. There’s a camp stove near the window, a pair of sleeping bags in the center of the floor, and surveillance photos and maps tacked to the walls. There are three AR-15 rifles in the corner and three boxes of ammunition beside them.”
“And there’s a clean room down the hall,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“You ever heard of gangbangers engaging in that level of planning?”
“Not usually.”
“H
ave you ever seen it?” I asked.
Paul paused for a moment. “You think we’re dealing with domestic terrorists?”
“I don’t know yet, but Agent Havelock came to your initial briefing for a reason. He mentioned the name Miguel Navarra. He’s come up at least twice so far in my investigation. I think we need to find out everything Havelock knows.”
“I’ll give him a call, then,” said Paul.
Even though we were fifty miles apart, I shook my head. “Havelock and I go back a ways. Let me handle him. You work your case.”
“I’m getting tired of being kept in the dark, Ash.”
“I don’t mean to keep you in it,” I said, quickly. “As soon as I find something, you and Mike Bowers will be the first two people I call.”
He told me that had better be the case and then hung up. Special Agent Kevin Havelock and I had worked a case together a couple of months back, so I had his cell number in my call history. I sat down in the driver’s seat of my VW and called. Unfortunately, his phone went straight to voice mail.
“Agent Havelock, this is Detective Ash Rashid with IMPD. We need to talk off the record about Barrio Sureño. I think you know something, and I think you’re holding back on us. We’ve got enough victims as is. If you can help us close our case, I would be very grateful. Please call me back.”
As soon as I hung up, I waited, half hoping he’d call me back immediately. That didn’t happen, but I didn’t expect it to and I had other calls to make. So far, I had resisted calling on my network of informants, but I had one in particular who could probably help me out a lot. He’d want something in exchange, though, something expensive. Given our present situation, I couldn’t see any other option but to pay. I slipped my phone back in my pocket and then drove northeast to a Speedway gas station a couple of blocks away, out of eyesight of any of law enforcement officials.
Truthfully, the informant I planned to call was probably the most dangerous man in Indianapolis. He had professional hitters at his beck and call, and I knew of several murders in which he played an active role. He’s a bad man, no doubt about it, but because of him, I’ve taken out a human trafficking ring that sold children for sexual exploitation, I’ve arrested one of the Midwest’s largest distributors of cocaine, and I’ve stopped a group of rogue police officers from murdering innocent people to cover up their crimes. Every single tip Konstantin Bukoholov has ever given me, in fact, has paid off, but every single tip has also given him something important, something he couldn’t have achieved but through my help. He uses me, and I use him.