by Mike Markel
My phone rang. I looked at the screen. It was Saffert.
I picked it up. “Seagate.”
“Detective, he’s doing the restrooms in the Multi-Purpose Building. That’s 1750 University Avenue. Look for his cart.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Saffert. Appreciate it.” I hung up and said to Ryan, “You think you got a lousy job?”
“Me? No, ma’am.” He put on his good-boy face. “It’s a privilege to be a cop.”
We drove over to campus. Temperatures had soared into the mid-twenties, and the sun was breaking through the swirling clouds. The snow on the roads was getting churned up and wet around the edges. My windshield was picking up a gray mist from the traffic in front of us.
We parked in a metered spot outside the Multi-Purpose Building. It was one of the newer buildings on campus, with lots of glass on each of the four corners, exposing the staircases, where we could see students going up and down. It was kind of a cool look. Like an ant farm but with college kids.
Inside, the first floor was devoted to a food court, with a bagel place, a pizza place, and the sandwich shop. “Look at this,” I said to Ryan. “Like they’re helping the kids make the transition from the mall to the classroom.”
“Admit, it, Karen. You’re just an old fuddy-duddy,” Ryan said, smiling.
“Me? At least I don’t say ‘fuddy-duddy.’”
“The universities write contracts with these shops, and a certain percentage of the revenue goes to scholarships.”
We passed an elevator, which I would’ve taken if I was alone. But Ryan always takes the stairs. So up we climbed. “Whatever happened to state legislators funding state universities?”
“The state share has gone from sixty percent to thirty in the last decade.”
“Where’s the state money go now?”
“Corrections. It’s us recruiting people for the prisons.”
“Hey, don’t blame me,” I said. “When I catch ’em, I let them kill themselves.”
He smiled. “Okay, now I get what you did with the Hagerty case.”
The first case Ryan and I did together was about this vic named Hagerty, a phony evangelist killed by a guy who worked with him. I knew the murderer wouldn’t kill anybody else, so when I arrested him I kind of let him kill himself, which I knew—and probably hoped—would get me fired. Which it did, but being fired didn’t work out that well because it gave me more free time to be a self-destructive drunk, for which I apparently have a real aptitude.
We tracked Hector down on the third floor. He was cleaning a women’s restroom. His cart was out in front, the door held open with a block of wood and a yellow plastic sign that said Caution: Cleaning in Progress, in English and Spanish.
“I’ll bring him out,” I said. I pulled my shield from my bag and put it around my neck. Then I pulled my coat and blazer back in case I needed to get to my belt holster fast.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said without looking up, “the restroom is closed for a few more minutes.” He was swabbing the floor with a long string mop. When he noticed I hadn’t left he looked up and saw my shield. He straightened up, his hand still holding the mop.
“Hector Cruz?” I said.
He nodded, looking ragged and depressed. It wasn’t exactly a you-got-me look, but it was at least an I’ve-lost-another-shift look.
“Detective Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department.”
He nodded.
“You want to come talk to me and my partner?”
Again, he nodded.
He put the mop head into the bucket and walked out of the rest room, pulling the wheeled bucket behind him.
“You mind if I go lock this up, right down there?” He pointed to the janitor’s closet twenty yards down the hall.
“Go ahead.”
He kicked the block out from under the door, folded the cleaning sign, carried the stuff down the hall, and came back to me and Ryan, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“This is my partner, Detective Ryan Miner.”
Hector Cruz nodded, his hands at his side.
“How ’bout we go over there?” I pointed with my chin toward a bank of study carrels with fiberboard dividers between them, up against the floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the north face of the building.
We walked over, him between me and Ryan, his head hanging down. I could tell he wasn’t going to bolt. I could see he was thinking about how his future was going to get a lot less pleasant, but I couldn’t tell if he was thinking in terms of a few hours, a few days, or twenty-to-life.
“Sit down.” I motioned to one of the study carrels. Ryan and I stood, pretty close to him so we could speak softly.
“You know Maricel Salizar is dead?”
His head sagged as he nodded.
“Is that a yes?” I said.
He lifted his head, his forearms resting on his legs. “Yes.” He paused. “I knew that.”
“Tell us about your relationship with Maricel.”
“She was my girlfriend.”
I put him at five-nine, one sixty, with a thin waist and good shoulders. His skin was medium dark. He had a broad nose, like maybe he had some Indian in him. His hair was thick and black, cut long and moussed, combed straight back, carefully trimmed around the sides. He was wearing blue jeans, black Nikes, and a long-sleeved Henley shirt, the buttons undone.
“I appreciate you not wasting our time with rambling answers, but could you tell us a little more? When did you meet her, what were your plans with her, that sort of thing?”
“I met her in August, just after she arrived here.”
“Come on, Hector. Where’d you meet her?”
“I met her here on campus, in the Student Union Building. I was working, setting up folding chairs in one of the meeting rooms. She came in and asked me directions to a room in the SUB. She smiled, I smiled back. She said ‘Gracias,’ I said ‘No hay de qué.’ She looked a little lost. I asked her if she wanted to sit down. We sat and talked. She seemed happy to be able to speak Spanish. I asked her for her phone number. That’s what it was.”
“So you started going out.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you ever pick her up where she lived?”
“Couple of times. Mostly I picked her up somewhere in town, or here on campus.”
“So you met the provost?”
“I don’t know what that word means.”
“The family where she lived. That man is the provost of the university.”
Hector shook his head. “You mean the professor, Dr. Gerson? Yes, I met him a few times.”
“How did that go?”
“He was okay with me. Seemed protective of Maricel.”
“He didn’t give you any attitude, you not being a college guy?” Students walked past us on their way to classes. With the way Hector was dressed and Ryan and I were dressed, we were the ones stuck out.
“No, he talked with me about school a few times. Said I could take courses almost for free if I was working full-time at the university. How he’d be happy to talk with me or get me in touch with someone who would sit down with me.”
“That’s pretty good.” I nodded. “Did you ever take him up on that?”
“I didn’t feel real comfortable around him and his wife. And their son.”
“The wife do anything to make you feel that way?”
“No, nothing she did. She was just … I don’t know the word. She was just … I’m not sure what her problem is. She couldn’t look at you when you talked. Whatever.”
“And the son. Mark, that his name?”
He nodded. “He scared me.”
“Yeah, how’s that?”
“He was so spaced out. I didn’t understand half the things he said. Just strange. The things he said.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t remember. He just couldn’t talk normal. Things would get all mixed up in his mind. And Maricel told me she thought he was kind of a freak. She didn’t like
hanging out with him. She said he seemed to have some kind of crush on her or something. She would catch him staring at her.”
“Mark was two or three years younger than Maricel, right?”
“That didn’t mean he wasn’t hot for her.”
“So you didn’t hang out a lot at Maricel’s house.”
“I’ve got my own place.”
Ryan said, “Hector, you in with the Vice Lords?”
Hector looked at him hard. “No.”
“I notice you’ve got their tat on your chest.” Ryan was pointing to the top of the letter “L” partly visible at the open neck of his shirt.
“Four years ago, I put it on. I was going through a bad time, felt kind of alone, got in a few scrapes. I thought I wanted in.”
“How far did it get?”
“I met with them, we talked. The president, guy calls himself The One, he didn’t like it I’d put their colors on. How I hadn’t earned the right, hadn’t gone through an initiation.”
“What happened next?” I said.
“That was as far as I took it. I thought about it, decided it wasn’t for me.”
“I mean, from their point of view. You say The One didn’t like you putting on their colors. What’d he do about it? He say he’s real disappointed in what you did?”
Hector looked at me for a moment. “He didn’t do anything to me.”
“Interesting,” I said. “He sounds like a very reasonable guy. I’d’ve thought he maybe would’ve asked you for some favors since then?”
“He didn’t do anything to me.” His expression told me that whatever beatdown he took, whatever they made him do, he wasn’t going to tell me and Ryan.
“Where were you two nights ago, around ten or midnight?” I said.
“I’d been with Maricel.”
“Where was that?” I said.
“I’d picked her up, we got some takeout, took it to my place. I took her home around eight. She had to study.”
“Did you have sex with her that night?”
“Is it necessary to answer that question?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not interested in your sex life, or hers. It has to do with the murder investigation. But you do get the choice of whether you answer it here—now—or at police headquarters.”
“No, we did not have sex that night.”
“There you go. That wasn’t that hard,” I said. “Can anyone vouch for where you were?”
“If I was going to kill Maricel, I’d have brought her someplace public so people could see us together, lay down an alibi. But we were just hanging out, so I didn’t think to do that.”
I saw that as a reasonable answer. Some cops would see it as obnoxious. Hector was unhappy. I didn’t blame him. But he wasn’t stupid. Some guys are so stupid they show you they’re pissed. They curse you out or flip you off or, if they’re genuine morons, try to run away or take a swing at you. So you put a check mark next to Bad Temper in your mind. You start to think about how that could figure into what happened to the victim. No, Hector wasn’t stupid. He looked at me long, and I could see the wheels turning, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for me to think he killed Maricel.
“And yesterday, you didn’t come in to work. And you didn’t contact the university.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know. I was very upset. Wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Can you help us with anyone would want to hurt Maricel?”
“Like I said, Mark Gerson is kind of loco, but I have no idea.”
Ryan said, “Yet you’re the one with a battery conviction.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Hector looked down at the carpet. “It was a long time ago. I got in a fight with a guy. No weapons. We were drunk. I punched him. He lost a tooth. That was all.”
“Stay in town, Hector.”
“Can I get back to work now?”
“Yeah, go back to work.”
Ryan and I headed toward the staircase. I turned my head to see what Hector was up to. He was back at the janitor’s closet, pulling the mop and the bucket and the other stuff out into the hall.
Ryan and I started down the stairs. “You buy what he’s saying?”
“About not having an alibi?” he said. “Yeah, that sounded good to me.”
“And about the Vice Lords?”
“Not so sure about that.”
“He could be on the hook to them,” I said. “All kinds of little favors they could’ve been asking him to do over the years.”
“True, but the question is, would one of those little favors be to kill his girlfriend?”
“That would be a pretty big favor,” I said.
“I bet The One can be quite persuasive.”
“Maybe it’s time to talk to Martinez in Anti-Gang.”
Chapter 11
We were heading back to headquarters to try to track down Martinez from Anti-Gang when the radio message told me the manager of Game World phoned in about a kid named Mark Gerson who was acting real strange, how it might be related to the Salizar case.
“Thanks a lot,” I said into the radio. “We’re heading there now. Over.”
Game World was in the middle of one of the shabbier blocks on Second Street. Three blocks from the heart of the business district, this portion of Second was hit real hard when the mall went in twenty years ago, and it never recovered. Besides the geek palace it had a store that sold cigars and newspapers, a place that specialized in work shoes, and two bars. The busted sidewalk was covered in swirling garbage, cigarette butts, dried puke, and two or three street guys who turn coins into bottles of Thunderbird.
We walked past the three fourteen-year-olds, dressed all in black, smoking and giving us a fuck-you-very-much look, pulled open the big glass doors at Game World, and walked in.
A thirty-year-old guy, mostly bald with a full beard, denim and flannel, walked over to us. Ryan was probably the first guy wearing a suit, and I was maybe the only female ever, to set foot in his place.
“My name is Richard Williams,” he said. “I’m the manager. I called the police.” He didn’t offer his hand. I was glad.
“My name is Seagate. This is Miner. Which one’s this kid, Mark Gerson?” I looked around, spotted five different slouching losers who could have been eighteen. The store was maybe thirty by forty feet. I don’t have much of a memory for these things, but I think it might’ve been a shoe store, then a gift shop. The green industrial carpet was covered with dark stains. The walls were lined with cheap industrial display racks, full of boxed games and all kinds of game hardware, new and old. A glass display case over near the counter with the cash register contained dozens of comic books in plastic sleeves. Many ways to spend all your money on worthless shit.
“We have a room in back for some of the regulars.” Williams pointed with his thumb.
“That’s what Mark Gerson is?”
Williams nodded. “He’s here a lot. Sometimes I let him crash here.”
“How long’s he been here this time?”
“Two or three days.”
“Is there a door goes out the back?”
“No, there’s a door to the alley behind the register over there,” he said, “but nothing out of the back room.” There was some kind of music playing, really annoying. Sounded like a car factory.
“You let Mark crash because he’s a really good customer?”
“No, he never has any money,” Williams said. “But he just kind of wanders around the place, helps customers find the stuff they’re looking for. He knows all the old games, the old systems, you know, Coleco, Atari, Commodore, Sega. We get a lot of customers looking for the old shit. Plus, he writes a lot of the articles we put on our site. Reviews, that kind of thing.”
I took a deep breath. It was the unmistakable smell of my college dorm. “You supply the weed for him?”
“Absolutely not. I swear it.”
Ryan said, “We’re not here to bust you. All we’re interested in is learning what we can about Mark G
erson. Long as you’re helping us with that, we’re not going to go looking around for roaches.”
Williams exhaled deeply.
“So, Richard,” I said, “why’d you call the cops?”
“Mark seems to be kind of freaking out.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I’m out here with customers, and I hear a chair crash against the wall. Or he’s shouting. Then it gets real quiet. I go look in the room, he’s sitting at the computer. Keeps saying this name, sounds like Moroney. Something about angels.”
“All right, Richard, we’ll take it from here. You go about your business.” He drifted away.
I turned to Ryan. “This make any sense to you?”
He nodded. “Moroni’s an angel in my Church. He wrote part of the Book of Mormon, appeared to Joseph Smith. Told him where he had buried the plates.” He paused. “Mind if I lead on the interview?”
“Because he’s a guy who’s scared of women?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. But no, because he’s LDS, and I might be able to understand him better than you can.”
“Absolutely. Let’s see what we can get from him about Maricel before we call the ambulance.”
The back room was hazy with cigarette and marijuana smoke. It had a few scruffy couches around the perimeter, with three widescreens hanging from the walls, their cords dangling down to a tangle of surge protectors and extension cords along the baseboard. In the middle of the room were four wooden tables with computers set up on them.
Mark was sitting at one of the tables, typing away. He had a pale face full of baby fat and acne, his brown hair oily and matted. He had a scraggly goatee which you had to look at real hard to see. From ten feet away I could smell him.
He didn’t seem to hear us open the door. We walked over to him, slow so as not to freak him out. But he seemed calm. He was just concentrating on the screen.
“Hey, Mark. My name is Karen Seagate; this is my partner, Ryan Miner. We’re police officers.”
He lifted his head and turned to me, then to Ryan. “They send you here to arrest me?”
Ryan stepped in. “Who would have sent us, Mark?”
I pulled back a little.
“The angels. Moroni.” He said it matter-of-fact, like he’d just gotten an email heads-up.