Back on Murder

by Mark J. Bertrand

  “Charlotte? She’s fine.”

  “Things between you two, they’re all right?”

  “What is this, a counseling session? If I want therapy, I’ll sign up for an art class, okay?”

  He holds his hands up in surrender. “I’m just asking, man. I know it’s tough, this time of year. Tell her I said hello.”

  But he’s not just asking. I know Wilcox. I understand the way his mind works. He’s sensed something in me, but can’t put his finger on exactly what, so he’s rooting around a little to see if he can work it out. Judging from the look on his face, he thinks he has.

  CHAPTER 11

  Apologies for my late lunch turn out to be unnecessary by the time I catch up to Cavallo, who’s packed the witness statements up tight and transferred the box to the trunk of her city car. I reach her in the parking lot just as she’s about to leave the station without me. If it were directed at me, the look in her eye would give me pause, but she hardly acknowledges my arrival.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  She gazes into the sky, brushing the hair back from her face. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just that as of this morning, we had no developments on the Fontaine front, and now all the sudden the order comes down to snatch him. Apparently he just made a buy.”

  “Stupid kid,” I say. “We’re making the arrest?”

  “The Sheriff ’s Department’s going to do the heavy lifting, leaving us to ask the questions. Are you up to it? Only it’s not like we have anything on him. The kid deals some weed, he knows our missing juvenile – that’s about it.”

  “If we catch him dirty, that’ll give us some leverage.”

  She shakes her head. “Not enough. All this investigation needs him to do is lead us to Hannah. If he can’t do that, he’s a waste of time. But if he can, do you really think he’ll cop to a kidnapping charge to get out of possession with intent?”

  “You have a point,” I say. “But still, how else would you expect them to play it? If surveillance really caught the kid making a buy, it’s not like we can pass up the chance to apply the thumbscrews, is it?”

  “We could play that card anytime. Doing it now reeks of desperation, if you ask me. But Wanda won’t listen. After this morning, she’s operating on the news cycle.”

  We climb into the car, slamming doors and snapping seat belts into place, then she reverses out of the parking space, cranking the wheel sharply. The tires kick up loose gravel as we bounce onto the road, cutting in front of oncoming traffic. Next time I’ll volunteer to drive. Cavallo has a knack for channeling emotion into the gears, and as often as I dream about it and wake up sweating, I’d just as soon not die in a car crash.

  “It’s all spinning out of control,” she says.

  “The case or the car?”

  She ignores my attempt at humor. Frustration comes off her in waves. I suspect that what isn’t released through her cathartic high-wire driving can only come out by talking. She’s not the type to hit or break things, which is too bad considering how calming violence can be.

  “Once a case gets traction in the media,” I say, hoping to get her talking, “you can only work it the right way as long as you keep getting results. As soon as you hit a wall, the daily pressure from upstairs to provide new sound bites overrules everything else. It’s not Wanda’s fault – ”

  “So have you heard the latest?” She wrenches the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity, like she’s thinking about snapping it off. “They’re trying to persuade Donna Mayhew to go on TV alongside the chief. They want to get her on Larry King Live.”

  “How does she feel about that?”

  “I’d ask her, March, if I could get her to pick up the phone.”

  “Ah,” I say.

  “Ah, what?”

  “That’s why you’re so worked up. You have a special bond with that woman, and you don’t like anybody interfering.”

  She stomps the accelerator like it’s my face. “Of course I have a bond with her. Who wouldn’t? Doesn’t your heart go out to her in a situation like this, with her daughter gone and – ”

  “Of course.” I cut her off, not wanting to dig too deeply into my heart and what it goes out to. “But you’ve been very protective of her.” I tighten my grip on the door handle. “Of them.”

  “Them? Who do you mean by them?”

  “The church people. The mother, yes, but Carter Robb, too. You know. Your fellow travelers, so to speak.”

  She makes no reply at first, letting her lead foot do the talking. I hunker down into my seat, trying not to think about air bags and side impacts and trauma to the head. I was lucky to avoid a chewing out for my late return. I should have left well enough alone.

  “March,” she says.

  The silence was too good to last.

  “Do you have some kind of issue with me?”

  “Issue?” I ask. “What kind of issue would I have?”

  “You keep needling me all the time, like I’ve done something to you. But apart from bending over backwards to do you a favor, and then taking responsibility for you when your friends in Homicide gave you the boot, I can’t think of what you’re holding against me.”

  She drifts in and out of the lane as she talks, while I do my best not to flinch.

  “Seriously? Listen, Cavallo, I think you might be projecting your frustrations about the case onto me – ”

  “What was that quip about my ‘fellow travelers’ then?”

  “I just meant . . . you know. That cross you wear.”

  She fingers the necklace, then lets it drop. “What do you believe, March? About God, the universe and everything?”

  “You’re asking me this for real?” I should keep my mouth shut. “All right, I’ll play along. About God, I guess it depends on what kind of mood I’m in. Sometimes he exists, sometimes he doesn’t, and when he does sometimes I’m all right with that, and sometimes I want to give him a good kicking.”

  She flinches and I know I should really stop. But I’m on a roll.

  “The universe? It’s pretty screwed up, if you ask me. The world is on its last legs, people are pretty much rotten, and happiness is just an illusion, a kind of opiate – but it’s not actual happiness that keeps us going, it’s the promise of getting a fix later on in the soon-to-be perfect future, which makes it that much more desperate when you think about it . . . Not that I often do.”

  There’s more. Something underneath the words, unspoken, for me unspeakable, an article of faith I can never doubt. What I believe in is evil. Its existence and power, the way it grows like mold on every surface, teeming beneath the walls, as insinuating as the Gulf Coast heat. It has a grip on all of us. It has its claws in me.

  “Fascinating,” she says. “And what do I believe?”

  “You?” I shrug, exhausted from my bout of self-expression. “How should I know? Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Don’t you know already?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Well if you don’t know, and you haven’t asked, then why don’t you stop making assumptions? And while you’re at it, you can stop with the little digs you’re always making, because I’ve had it up to here and the last thing I need on top of everything else is your constant annoying buzz in my ear. All right?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Now I’m the one who needs to hit something. As much as I’d like to, at least with words, all the lines that come to mind are variations on the same bitter theme: it’s your fault I’m here in the first place. And why is it her fault? Because given the choice, I decided to spend the afternoon with her rather than do my job. What can I say? It made sense at the time.

  But I can already hear her retort – how is that my fault? – and of course she’d be right. Not only that, but in making the argument I’d reveal something more pathetic about myself than my half-baked views on God and the universe.

  My loneliness.

  “That’s all you have to say?” she asks.

  I
nod. “That’s it. Or do you want me to apologize? I’m sorry for goading you. Won’t let it happen again.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “I’m just trying not to annoy you.”

  “Well,” she says, “you could sure use the practice.”

  The drunk girl at the Paragon comes back to me, the one with the glittering eyelids. Marta said she had bruises all over, like she’d been slapped around. But I didn’t do that, did I? The truth is, I can’t remember exactly what I did, or most of what I said. It was like someone else was doing it through me. I don’t know what happened. Like one of our notorious inner-city witnesses, I didn’t see nothing.

  My first glimpse of James Fontaine inspires some hope. He looks ready to crack. The Harris County Sheriff ’s Department team, a bunch of armed linebackers with shaved heads and mirrored sunglasses, nudges his black BMW X3 to the curb near the intersection of West Little York and Antoine, maybe a mile away from the Northwest Freeway. Our car is near the back of the convoy, tagging behind the surveillance truck.

  They drag him out of the driver’s seat, bend him over the hood, then do a quick search of the vehicle, going straight for the back compartment, where they find a vinyl flight bag with a Puma logo, right where they knew it would be. A squat surveillance officer in baggy jeans records everything with a handheld video camera.

  We thread our way through the flashing lights, coming alongside the X3. When he sees us, one of the deputies hands the bag to Cavallo, who’s just pulled on a pair of gloves. She plops it on the hood across from Fontaine, slowly fingering the zipper.

  James Fontaine is a lanky black kid of about seventeen, handsome in a boyish way, wearing a G-Unit polo that’s actually been pressed – the creases are still visible down the length of the sleeves. He looks about as thug as a clean-cut suburbanite whose knowledge of the street comes mainly from the media can. Now that he’s in custody, he makes no pretense to being a hard man. His eyes alternate between watching Cavallo unzip the bag and clamping tight in prayer, like he’s trying to make the contents miraculously disappear.

  Watching him sweat, a thought occurs to me. If he’s just made a buy, then he had no idea he was under surveillance, which means he hasn’t intentionally been avoiding the secret location where he’s stashed Hannah Mayhew. The odds that this kid has her locked up somewhere are thin to none. But maybe he knows something that can help. Cavallo peers inside the bag. “Wow, James. I guess you just re-upped, huh? You must have quite a little operation going.”

  I lean over for a look. Inside, a one-pound brick of what I’m guessing is Mexican schwag. Not the finest herb, but given the quantity there’s going to be no trouble calling this possession with intent to distribute.

  I lean over the hood to get him eye level. “Partner, you just stepped in it.”

  “That’s not mine,” he says halfheartedly.

  “So your fingerprints aren’t going to be all over it?” I point to the cameraman, who waves at Fontaine. “This gentleman here with the camera has been watching your every move. That means we’ve got every step of the process, from the time you picked up the bag and put it in your hatchback to right now.”

  He drops his head and starts sniffling. When he lifts it, sure enough there are tears streaking his cheeks. “Aw, come on, man,” he says, begging with his eyes. “You gotta be kidding me. It’s just weed, that’s all it is. It’s like, what, a misdemeanor, right? You don’t gotta call out the swat team and everything on account of something like this.”

  Cavallo dumps the brick onto the hood. “We’re talking about a pound here, James, not a gram. That’s possession with intent. You divide this up into ounces and hand it out to your little dealin’ friends, is that it?”

  “Look at that brown brick weed,” I say, nudging the plastic-wrapped packages. “I wouldn’t make brownies out of that. It’s a shame to go down for such low-quality product.”

  The insult dries his tears a little. He’s about to protest when one of the Sheriff ’s Department men takes his arm. “Come on, G-Unit. Let’s read you your rights.”

  They Mirandize the kid, then put him in the back of a cruiser to sweat. Once he’s stowed away, we all gather for an impromptu powwow around the BMW’s hood, everybody looking to Cavallo for direction.

  “This isn’t about building a case,” she says. “The clock is ticking, and if that boy knows anything we need to get it out of him fast. If that means he walks on the drug charge, are any of us going to lose sleep over that?”

  Headshaking all around. If there are any qualms in the group, they go unexpressed. Cavallo notices the surveillance guy’s camera.

  “That thing’s not on, is it?” she asks.

  Everybody laughs.

  “Okay, so let’s get him into an interview room and see what happens.”

  As the team packs up, I wander over to the unit where Fontaine sits. He leans his shoulder against the rolled-down window, sipping air through an inch-wide gap in the glass.

  “You all right back there?”

  “It’s pretty hot.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’ll only get worse.”

  The Northwest interview room is surprisingly spacious and well appointed. The table has all four legs, the chairs match, and the stains on the floor look dry and non-toxic. There’s even cold air blowing from the registers overhead. Fontaine slumps forward, his head resting on the table. We observe from the room next door, where the video feed is channeled onto a monitor. Lieutenant Mosser sits just to the side, where she can study the image closely, while Villanueva stands in the back corner, arms folded, signaling his unwillingness to get in the way.

  “He’s not sleeping, is he?” Wanda asks.

  Cavallo leans closer. “Sounds like he’s crying.”

  There’s an old saw about the interview room: Whoever sleeps while he’s waiting for the detectives is obviously guilty; only the innocent are plagued by fears. I don’t put much stock in that kind of thing. Leave people in a bare room for long enough and they’ll do all kinds of strange things.

  “What do you think this kid can give us?” I ask.

  Wanda studies me a moment. “That’s what you’re going to find out, Roland. You think you can handle that?”

  “Never mind him,” Cavallo says, taking my arm. “Come on.”

  When we pop open the interview room door, Fontaine gives us an apprehensive smile. Cavallo takes the seat across from him, and I sit on the corner, cheating my chair over a bit so that I’m technically on his side. He isn’t sure which one of us to face, so he splits the difference.

  We begin with small talk, Cavallo asking about his nice car, what his parents do for a living, how he likes school and what he thinks about his classes. His recent suspension for drug possession is glossed over – only happy or neutral topics for now. Hannah Mayhew isn’t mentioned. His answers are tentative at first, but the more questions she pitches across the plate, the more he loosens up and enjoys hitting them. This isn’t so bad, he’s probably thinking. He might just get through this.

  “You seem like a smart guy,” Cavallo says, getting him to nod along in agreement. “You’ve got a lot going for you. It’s a shame to see you in a situation like this, James. We’d rather be going after the real baddies, you know. Not giving guys like you a hard time.”

  “That’s all right,” he says, perversely apologetic. “You gotta do your job. I understand.”

  “Maybe you could help us, James. And maybe we could then help you. Are you nervous, James?”

  He nods.

  “I’d be worried, too, if I was in your shoes. Buying bricks like that, you know what it tells me? You’ve got more money than sense. And you know something, Texas is not exactly lenient when it comes to drug sentencing.”

  Fontaine mumbles something.

  “What was that?”

  “I’m a minor.”

  “In the eyes of the Penal Code, you’re an adult.”

  “Welcome to Texas,” I say.


  Cavallo smiles. “Problem is, if you’re slinging that stuff at Klein, you’re probably looking at a penalty enhancement, too, for distributing near a school.”

  “To actual minors,” I add.

  “Exactly. This is bad news, James. For one thing, say goodbye to that nice Beemer of yours.”

  I nod in agreement. “That’ll be seized for sure.”

  “You can do that?” he asks.

  “Sure we can. Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  “Or we can work together on something,” she says. “Like I told you, if you help us, maybe we can help you, too. How does that sound?”

  His eyes widen. “Help you with what?”

  Cavallo leans forward, ready to make her pitch. “The thing is, James, we’re willing to deal, but first we need to know if you have anything worthwhile. If there are any open cases you can help us with.”

  And just like that, he rolls over. I wish I could credit our interrogation skills, but James Fontaine would have cracked for anyone.

  “You want the names?” he asks. “ ’Cause I can give you some names. The dude I bought it off of, my connection, I can give you him. And the ones at school that actually do the dealin’? I can give you those, too. Me, I’m more like what you’d call a middleman, you know? The real bad guys, like what you want, I can give you some of those.”

  Cavallo takes everything down, the various names and nicknames, the way he breaks the brick down, who it goes to, the number he calls when he wants some more. He knows other dealers, too, and where they get their supply. By the time he’s done, he’s leaning over the table helping with the spelling of names, saying who to underline and who to cross out. He’s almost exhilarated, working with the cops, thinking his problems are about to go away.

  I can’t help feeling sorry for the kid.

  “All of this, James,” Cavallo says, tearing the page off her notepad. “It’s worthless. It’s nothing.” She balls the page up and tosses it over her shoulder.

  Fontaine’s jaw drops in shock. He glances to me for help as if to say, Look what she just did. I shrug. You asked for it, son.

  “There’s something else I want you to help us with,” she continues, ignoring his devastated look. “You know that girl who disappeared, the one from your school?”