Desert Jade

by CJ Shane

  “Yes.” Letty looked at the card. The name on the card was Frederick Clark, a well-respected Tucson attorney.

  Letty was about to rise from her chair when a teenage girl came into the room. She had long, dark braids, and she was dressed in a Catholic school uniform – dark plaid skirt and long-sleeved white blouse.

  “Grandmother?” the young girl asked.

  “Miss Valdez, this is my granddaughter Elizabeth, and this is my husband, Colonel Baird. He’s retired U.S. Marine Corps.”

  A tall, fit man with an erect bearing entered the room directly behind Elizabeth.

  Letty rose to her feet. “Sir.” Old habits die hard, Letty thought to herself. Commanding officer. Stand up. Say “sir.”

  “You come well recommended, Miss Valdez. You were on the ground in Iraq. Correct?”

  “Yes, sir. I served as an Army medic, sir.”

  The Colonel nodded gravely.

  Letty noticed that Elizabeth had a look on her face best described as bored.

  “Miss Valdez, here’s something to get you started,” Mrs. Baird handed her a check. “If you need more, let me know. Make contact with my attorney, and keep me informed.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Baird. I’ll do that.”

  Letty made her escape. The room had become very claustrophobic.

  Back in her truck, Letty looked at the check and gasped. It was for five thousand dollars, and it was made out to Leticia Valdez. Once over the initial shock of having so much money available to her all at once, Letty began thinking about what she’d just experienced. She wondered who had recommended her to the Bairds, and she also wondered how an Anglo Marine colonel had met and married a Mexican-American woman who was presumably a native of Tucson. There’s a story in that, Letty thought.

  She drove directly to her office where she checked her phone messages.

  “Miss Valdez, this is Jessica Cameron from Mr. Clark’s office. I’m calling about the Gomez case. I understand you’ve met with Mrs. Baird already. I emailed you a link to a folder with the paperwork on our client. I’ve arranged for you to interview José Gomez this afternoon. After you’ve spoken to him, call me for a Monday appointment. We’ll meet at my office to discuss this.”

  The voice was polite but at the same time, very assertive. Letty got the feeling that Jessica Cameron didn’t like to take no for an answer, and it was already obvious that Cameron was very organized. Letty wondered who Cameron was. She did a quick search on her computer. Clark was the head of a large law firm. Cameron was listed as a shareholder in the firm. Her photo suggested that she was fairly young, mid-thirties, very blonde, and rather pretty. Maybe that explains the assertiveness, Letty thought. She’s getting her bluff in before someone tries to push around a pretty girl.

  Letty retrieved Cameron’s email and saw that there was a file attached. She glanced at her watch. She had just enough time to make it into the jailhouse before Saturday afternoon visitation ended. She’d have to look at the documents later.

  ***

  Letty never liked going to the jail. It reminded her of her childhood when she had to visit her mother in jail on more than one occasion. Drunk and disorderly. That was always the reason. And there was something about it that reminded her of Iraq, too – a pervasive sense of despair and the ever-present threat of sudden violence.

  She went immediately to the front desk and announced her purpose. After a brief wait, she was ushered through the security process fairly quickly. Jessica Cameron had handled all the paperwork and made the right connections so Letty’s path was open. It was clear to all that Letty Valdez was there on business on behalf of the influential Clark law firm.

  Letty was led to a room with rows of booths. Each had a television screen and two telephones. She eased herself into an uncomfortable plastic chair. Only a minute later, Gomez appeared on the television screen, a telephone receiver at his ear. Letty picked up her telephone receiver, too. She knew that any interaction she had with José Gomez was being monitored and recorded.

  The teenager was slumped down in his chair, waiting.

  “Who are you?” he demanded sullenly.

  Letty took in his appearance. He had a wiry build, not especially tall, with a dark complexion and long dark hair in cornrow braids. Tattoos were visible on his right arm and both hands. She didn’t recognize the tattoos as belonging to any gang she knew. He glared at Letty with angry eyes.

  “My name is Letty Valdez. I’m a private investigator. I’ve been hired by Mrs. Consuelo Baird and your lawyer to help you. You have been charged with murder.”

  José Gomez looked away toward the wall.

  Letty waited.

  Nothing.

  “The police report says that you and some of your friends got into it with another group of teens, one of whom was the dead woman’s son. Is that true?”

  He shrugged.

  “The police report says you were arrested outside the Baird house. A gun was found discarded nearby. Is this true?”

  José hesitated. “If the police say so, it must be true. Right?” He snorted derisively.

  “Is the gun yours?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kill Mrs. Baird?”

  “No!” José spit the word out.

  “Then who did?”

  He fell silent. He looked away at the wall.

  Letty waited.

  Finally José said in a low voice, “I don’t have anything else to say.”

  Letty waited.

  “Look. Your family is spending a lot of money on you. They want to help you. I want to help you. My guess is that you didn’t kill this woman. I have a feeling that there’s something else going on here. But you have to help me. Give me something to go on. Some information that no one has. Someone to see. Some question to ask. Help me help you.”

  More silence.

  Finally José Gomez turned to Letty. His eyes were bright, and he looked very sad.

  “I can’t talk.”

  Letty waited, and then finally she said, “Okay. I’ll be back.” She stood, turned around and walked out of the room without a backward glance.

  ***

  Back in her truck again, Letty clenched the steering wheel. It was very obvious that Gomez was hiding something. She had a strong sense that he wasn’t talking because he was trying to protect someone. Who? One of the other boys in his group of friends? It had to be one of them. But why? Simply because Gomez didn’t want to be seen as a snitch? Was he willing to go to jail for life to avoid being labeled that way? Or was there more to it than that?

  The sun was getting lower in the sky when Letty made it back to her office again. She opened the email from the attorney Cameron again and saved the attached file folder to her hard drive. She opened the folder. The first document contained rather sketchy information that repeated what Mrs. Baird had told her. José Gomez was eighteen years old – old enough to be tried for murder as an adult. A gun had been retrieved at the scene. It appeared to have been thrown by the shooter into a hedge next door to the Lyles’ home. Ballistics tests were underway to see if the bullets in the gun matched the bullet that killed Barbara Lyle. Her body had been transported to the morgue and made ready for an autopsy in the coming week.

  There was a second document, a police report that included the names of individuals who had been at the dust-up on Speedway. She saw Travis Lyle’s name as well as four other boys from University High. The other group, the one including Gomez, was larger and included four boys and two girls. On Monday, Letty would contact the dead woman’s husband and try to get an interview with him and with the son, Travis Lyle. Then she’d start on the others in both groups of teens and attempt to interview them as well.

  One more possibility for today was to talk to José’s mother, Mrs. Baird’s sister, and see if she knew anything. Letty found her number listed on the arrest papers as Mercedes Gomez. She dialed the number and got a quick response and an invitation. Fifteen minutes later, she was in Mercedes Gomez’s living roo
m south of downtown Tucson.

  With Mercedes were two daughters, both younger than José, and a third teenage girl that Mercedes introduced as Emily Castro.

  “You can call me Em,” the girl said to Letty. She was a Mexican-American girl, very pretty, about Jose’s age.

  “Em is José’s girlfriend. She’s been trying to comfort me,” said Mrs. Gomez, “but I’m just too upset.” She started crying.

  Letty attempted to ask a few questions, but Mrs. Gomez had little to add. It was clear that her son, at the age of eighteen, was not at home much. His mother knew very little about what he was up to most of the time.

  “He has a job at the tire place. He patches tires and takes them off cars and puts them back on. His dad is dead but if he were here, he would be so proud of José,” Mrs. Gomez said. “José is a good boy. He’s a good boy.” She started to sob.

  Letty waited patiently but felt that she wasn’t going to get much more out of Mrs. Gomez.

  “Em, would you mind coming out to my truck with me?” Letty asked José’s girlfriend.

  “Sure.”

  Letty had to be careful. This girlfriend might be the one who did the shooting. Maybe she’s the one José is trying to protect from the police.

  “Em, I’m trying to help José, but he’s not helping me. He’s just not telling me anything. Do you know anything that could help get him out of jail?”

  Letty watched her reaction.

  Em looked directly into Letty’s eyes. She appeared to be hiding nothing.

  “No. I don’t believe José would kill someone. I just don’t believe it.”

  “Then why did he follow Travis Lyle back to his house?”

  She shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  Em sighed. “Oh, everything and nothing. They just don’t get along. Those boys from University High were calling us names …racist names. I know most of the kids that go to that high school are okay. I’m even good friends with a girl there. But Travis is a real ass. He likes to start trouble. He’s thinks he’s such hot stuff.”

  “Can you remember some of the things they said to each other?”

  “Well, like I said, they were calling us stupid names like greasers.”

  Em hesitated.

  “This could be about me, I guess.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Travis has been bothering me. He knows I’m José’s girlfriend. But Travis keeps asking me out, and once he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I pushed him away. But then I told José, and it made him really mad.”

  “So what did José and Travis say to each other?

  “Travis stopped talking to José. He started flirting with me instead. He said in front of everybody that he had something I needed…something José couldn’t give me because José’s wasn’t big enough.”

  Em sighed heavily.

  “Then José yelled at Travis and called him a pinche cabron and he said...” she paused.

  “José said, ‘It’s not enough that you got those Chinese girls. You want my girl, too.” That’s when they started throwing punches.”

  Letty breathed in. She felt herself grow tense.

  “Are you sure José said something about Chinese girls?”

  “Yes, but I have no idea what he was talking about. José has never mentioned anything to me about Chinese anything.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “A police car just happened to be cruising by. The two cops saw what was going on and stepped in. They stopped the fight, took everyone’s name and phone number, and told us to grow up and stop acting like little kids. Then they told us all to go home. I left because I have a part-time job, and I was due for my shift. I work at a local restaurant, and we were starting to serve a new ice cream flavor that day. I had to be there because it was going to be really busy.”

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “No.” Em hesitated. “Is José okay?” There were tears in her eyes.

  “For now,” said Letty, “but he really needs to start talking and help me find the real killer. Does José have a gun?”

  “No, not that I know of. I’ve never seen him with a gun. He’s never talked about a gun.”

  Em reached out and touched Letty’s hand. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  “Thank you, Em. You’ve been very helpful.”

  As Letty drove away, she felt a sudden thrill that was somewhere between excitement and dread. This might be the break she and Zhou had been looking for. She might have found a local connection to the triads who had appeared so recently in Tucson. She had to call Zhou. She headed for her office.

  ***

  Not far away, Zhou and Jade had just finished searching Jade’s garage. The garage was so full of stuff and junk that Jade’s car was left outside in the driveway. Zhou systematically went through everything. He looked through the tool box and a wooden cabinet with tools and supplies that Carlos had used. He looked under the base of Jade’s pottery wheel. He opened the door to the wooden cabinet where she kept pottery supplies, and he moved bottles and sacks around to see what was under and behind everything. He went through a big box filled with clothing and personal items that had belonged to Carlos. He climbed up a ladder and looked above the rafters to make sure there were no boxes hidden away. He peered behind every container and knocked on the walls, looking for empty spaces that might hold something.

  “I find nothing,” Zhou finally said to Jade.

  “That’s what I expected,” Jade said. “Come inside and I’ll make us some coffee…or more of that green tea you like.”

  Seated again on her living room sofa, Zhou decided to show Jade some photos of known Hong Kong triad members. He pulled a notebook from his backpack and set it on the coffee table.

  Jade returned with two cups of hot tea.

  Zhou looked up at her. “Jade, will you please look at my photo album?”

  “Oh, how nice! Do you have pictures of you when you were a child?”

  Zhou laughed. “No, not that kind of album. This is a policeman’s photo album. What you call ‘mugshots.’”

  She sat beside him, and Zhou opened the album. Each page had twelve mugshots. The faces looking back at Jade were all known members of various Hong Kong triad groups.

  “Look carefully and see if you recognize anyone.”

  Jade did as instructed. She turned the pages slowly after observing each photo carefully. She came to the end of the photo album, then turned suddenly back to the third page. She tentatively pointed to one photo. It was of a middle-aged man with graying, short-cut hair.

  “This man looks a lot like a termite inspector who came here. I’m not sure.”

  Zhou asked, “Termite inspector? When did he arrive here?”

  “Maybe a three or four weeks after Carlos disappeared. This was about a year ago.”

  “Describe everything you can remember.”

  Jade closed her eyes, and then she opened them and looked directly at Zhou. “He came to the front door. His panel truck was out front. It was white and had some kind of business logo on the side. He was dressed in khaki uniform with a logo on the pocket. He said Carlos had ordered a termite inspection for our house. He talked kind of like you. Sort of Chinese with a British accent. Oh, my god. I never thought about him again until you showed me this photo. I didn’t tell the police or Letty about him. I just didn’t think of it. I was very upset then.”

  “Not to worry,” Zhou patted her hand. “Tell me more.”

  “He had a clipboard and an order form. He showed me the order form. Carlos had signed it….or it looked like Carlos’s signature. I let him in, and he did the inspection. He inspected everything…inside and outside the house and the garage…everything. It took him over an hour. When he was done, he came and told me that he found no evidence of termites. He asked me to sign the form. I did. Then he left. Come to think of it, I never received a bill for the inspection.”


  “Did you have a conversation with him?”

  “No. After just a few minutes, I went back in the house. I didn’t even watch him. You know, at that time I was so distressed because Carlos had been gone for a while, and no one could find him. That was all I could think about. It never occurred to me that Carlos might not have ordered this inspection.”

  Zhou nodded his head. “I understand.”

  “Who is this man?” Jade pointed to the photo.

  “Do you remember I told you about the Red Pole?’

  Jade nodded.

  Zhou said, “This is Chong Ma, the Red Pole.”

  Tears filled Jade’s eyes. She leaned against Zhou and put her head against his shoulder.

  “Zhou,” Jade said softly.

  Zhou knew what she wanted. He pushed her away gently. “We must not allow ourselves to be distracted with this…..this attraction between us. This is dangerous. We must be very watchful.”

  ***

  Letty sat back in her chair at her office to think about what she’d learned from the interviews she’d done that day. Mrs. Baird, Jessica Cameron, José Gomez, Em Castro.

  The phone rang. It was Eduardo.

  “Big Sister, I need some help. I rescued this migrant in the desert this week, and I brought her to town. Now she’s disappeared. She promised to call me, but she didn’t. I need to find her. Uncle Mando said maybe you could help me.”

  “Whoa. Slow down.” Letty wondered why Eduardo had so much interest in this particular person. He’d found migrants before in the desert. After helping them when he could, he had let them go on their way. What was different about this one?

  “I’m heading home now,” Letty continued. “Come to my house and we’ll talk about it. Will has been talking about connecting with you anyway. He’ll be glad to see you. We can eat supper together.”

  After getting Eduardo’s agreement, she hung up. The phone rang again immediately. This time it was Zhou.

  “Miss Letty, Jade has identified one of the triad members from my police photos. I want you to see the photo so you will be able to recognize Chong Ma.”

  “Fine. We’ll meet tomorrow morning. I have some important news for you, too. I think I found a local connection to the Chinese criminals. I’m not sure. I want to discuss this with you.”