The Broken Saint: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  He turned and looked at me. “Phone call.”

  “One last chance, Hector,” I said. “You make us get you a lawyer, we gotta think there’s something you don’t want us to know.”

  He looked at me again and spoke softly. “Lawyer.”

  This time it was me shaking my head. “Ryan, turn on the tape.” He did it.

  I announced my name and Ryan’s and stated the time. “Hector Cruz, did you kill Maricel Salizar?”

  “I want an attorney,” Hector said, turning his head to face the camera, up near the ceiling in the corner of the room.

  “It is 11:17 am. We’re terminating this interview to enable Hector Cruz to make his phone call. Ryan, let him make the call.”

  We left Interview 1. As Ryan took Hector to make his call, I drifted back to the detectives’ bullpen and got a cup of coffee from the break room. When I got to my desk, Ryan was already seated at his.

  “I put Hector in Holding.”

  “You call the Public Defender?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Hector had a business card. His attorney will be here at 1:30.”

  “Son of a bitch. Did you catch who he called?”

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head. “Wait a second. It must be the Latin Vice Lords.”

  “That’s right,” Ryan said. “They’d have their own lawyer. He must have been in touch with them already.”

  “You know how we were wondering if Hector was in with the Vice Lords?”

  “You don’t think we have to wonder anymore?”

  “I think we got our answer.” I paused. “When we’re done with Hector, let’s go visit that dipshit—what’s his name?”

  Ryan smiled. “Are you referring to The One?”

  “Yeah, the two of us gotta talk to the one of him.”

  Ryan and I were seated back in Interview 1 at 1:25. Couple of minutes later, a uni opened the door, followed by Hector Cruz and a Hispanic guy, mid- forties. The guy came over to me, his hand extended.

  “Raul Samosa, Montana Hispanic Alliance,” he said, flashing me a quick smile. He did the same to Ryan. “You want to start?” he said, like he expected to run this show. Samosa was short and wiry, hair starting to go thin on top. He wore a carefully trimmed goatee. His eyes were intense, and he moved quickly. I could see a couple thousand bucks of clothing and jewelry on him: chalk-striped charcoal three-piece suit, gold collar pin beneath the knot on his maroon silk tie, thin gold watch with a croc band, a gold chain hanging between a vest buttonhole and the vest pocket, and gleaming black cap-toe brogans. Ryan always looks decked out, but Samosa looked like he took notes when he read GQ.

  Ryan turned on the recorder, announced the time and who was in the room.

  “Hector,” I said, “tell us about your relationship with Maricel Salizar.”

  Hector looked at Samosa, who nodded. “Like I told you before, she was my girlfriend.”

  “Yes, you told us that when we interviewed you on campus. And you met her in the Student Union building when she walked into a room where you were setting up chairs and asked you for directions. Tell me this: did you know she had an abortion about three weeks ago?”

  Hector looked at Samosa, who nodded again.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it your child?”

  “Yes.” He shifted in his chair, but it wasn’t embarrassment or grief or anything I could read.

  “How did you feel about her getting the abortion?” I said.

  Samosa leaned over and whispered in Hector’s ear.

  “I didn’t want her to do it.”

  “Why is that?” I said.

  “I’m Catholic,” Hector said. “It’s a sin.”

  “Any other reason?”

  “I wanted to raise the child with her.”

  “Did you want to marry her?”

  “Yes.” He looked me straight in the eyes. “I wanted to.”

  “Did you ask her to marry you?”

  “She made it clear that she didn’t want to marry me.”

  “She didn’t want to marry you then, or ever?” I said.

  “She said then.”

  “So what did you say when she said no?”

  “I told her I loved her and didn’t want her to have an abortion.”

  “And she said?”

  “She said she wasn’t asking me for anything, so it wasn’t up to me. It was her baby.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “I felt sick.”

  “After that conversation, when she said it wasn’t your business, did you see her again?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see her after she had the abortion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you say anything to her about the abortion?”

  “I could tell she wasn’t feeling too good. From the abortion, I mean. It made her sick. She made it clear she wouldn’t talk to me about it. If I loved her, she said, I would respect her decision.”

  “You have any arguments with her about it?”

  Samosa leaned toward Hector and whispered in his ear again. “No. No arguments.”

  “Nothing? This woman you say you love commits this sin, one of the really big ones to a Catholic, and you don’t get into a fight with her?”

  Samosa whispered to him again.

  Hector nodded to me. “No fight.”

  “You know, if it was me, and I loved her, and it was my baby, and she knows how I feel about abortions, and she just goes off and does it—I don’t know, I don’t see how I’d be able to not get into an argument with her.”

  Hector Cruz opened his mouth to speak but Samosa put his hand on Hector’s arm. “Detective Seagate,” Samosa said, “I won’t let you badger my client. You already asked him if he had an argument with Maricel. He answered your question. He said no. Do you have another question?”

  “Hector, can you think of someone who would do this to Maricel?”

  Hector shook his head.

  Ryan said, “Hector, you told us yesterday that Maricel said Mark Gerson was kind of strange, might have had a crush on her.”

  Samosa leaned over and whispered to his client. Then Hector Cruz said, “Maricel told me she thought Mark was interested in her.”

  “Hector,” I said, “you think Mark was capable of hurting Maricel?”

  Hector looked over at Samosa, who nodded. “Yes, I think he might have hurt her. Maybe he wanted to have sex with her. She said no, it became a fight. And he killed her.”

  “Hector, where were you on Sunday night, between ten and midnight?”

  “I was at home.”

  “Were you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’m gonna need you to answer that question out loud,” I said.

  “Nobody can confirm that,” he said.

  “Did you kill Maricel Salizar?”

  Samosa stood. “This interview is over. My client said he did not get into an argument with Maricel Salizar. He did not kill her. Obviously, you have no evidence against Mr. Cruz. This is a disgrace.” Cruz stood up and the two of them walked to the door, where a uniformed officer met them and led them away from Interview 1.

  Chapter 17

  “Gary, Karen Seagate. On the Maricel Salizar case. We just interviewed Hector Cruz, the vic’s boyfriend. He lawyers up, in walks a guy named Raul Samosa. Expensive suit, gold jewelry.” Ryan and I were still in Interview 1. I had called Gary Martinez in Anti-Gang and put him on Speaker.

  “Yeah, Raul,” Martinez said. “We like him.”

  “He’s the mouthpiece for the Latins?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you guys like a gang lawyer?”

  “Well, he’s a scumbag and a media whore—but an excellent attorney. Plus, he buys us a round when he beats us in court.”

  “Oh, well, sure, he buys you guys a round.” It was part of Anti-Gang’s vibe: the lawyer’s a scumbag and a media whor
e, but we’re cool enough to see that he’s a good guy underneath it. Of course, the fact that Martinez had to show me he was cool made him … well, kind of typical. Most guys I know, they stop maturing at about fourteen. This guy, maybe around twelve.

  “He’s not gonna cut you any slack,” Martinez said.

  “I got that impression,” I said. “Okay, thanks, Gary.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “Let me know when you want us to ride along to interview The One.” Now that I’d figured him out, I realized he wasn’t offering. He was asking a favor.

  “Yeah, we’ll do that,” I said and hung up. Probably not.

  Ryan said, “I’m liking Hector more and more.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What next?” he said.

  “Let’s ask the chief if he’ll approve a request for a warrant to search Hector’s trailer and his car.”

  Ryan stood up, eased into his suit jacket. “Think he will?”

  “No, I doubt it.”

  We walked over to the chief’s office. Margaret waved us in.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up from some papers on his desk.

  “We want to let you know where we are with the Salizar case.”

  “Good.” The chief was serious about keeping him in the loop. A lot of chiefs say that, but you can see them frown when you interrupt them.

  “She had a rough abortion about three weeks ago.”

  He straightened up in his chair. “How rough?”

  “We can’t figure out who did it, but the main doc who does them in town described a good one and a bad one, and she definitely got a bad one.”

  “A bad one that would’ve killed her?”

  “No,” I said. “A bad one that hurt like hell and would’ve made it more likely she’d miscarry if she got pregnant again.”

  He nodded his head. Thing I liked about the chief was he didn’t need to show us how much smarter he was than we were. He trusted his detectives to connect the dots and bring him a story that made sense. So he’d listen to us tell him the story, without interrupting or trying to second-guess us.

  “We talked to her boyfriend, Hector Cruz. He says he asked her not to do it—he’s Catholic. She told him it’s none of his business. He insists he didn’t get in a fight with her.”

  “Has he got an alibi?”

  “No, says he was at home. Alone.”

  “Did he give you anything else?”

  “Not exactly. He tried to put it on Mark Gerson. That’s the wackjob—”

  Ryan interrupted. “Mark Gerson is the son of the provost. He’s got paranoid schizophrenia.”

  “Did you interview Mark?”

  “Yesterday. He was at this gaming store downtown. He was having some kind of nervous breakdown.” I looked at Ryan to give him a chance to take over so I didn’t say it wrong.

  “He was having a psychotic episode,” Ryan said. “He’d been off his meds since Maricel disappeared, hadn’t slept any.”

  “So he didn’t give you anything reliable,” the chief said.

  “He said she was a sinner, and he was a sinner,” I said. “Tell you the truth, I don’t think Mark could’ve told you what planet he was on.”

  Ryan said, “We called the hospital and they brought him in for a psych eval. And we notified his father.”

  “You see Mark as a suspect?” The chief sighed. I guess he was like me: hoping to be further along, not happy to hear that we had new suspects. Or maybe he was sorry for the provost because we had to bring him more heartache, which certainly didn’t please a police chief who liked things to go smooth with the university bigwigs.

  “Technically, yes, we gotta look at the kid. He lived with her there in the same house since August. He probably saw her as attractive—would you say, Ryan?”

  “Yes, I think so.” Ryan nodded. “He would have. She was pretty—plus a few years older, and more experienced, therefore unattainable. Even with his mental problems, it’s likely he was sexually attracted to her. And he definitely would have known she had this boyfriend, Hector. So, yeah, he’s a possible.”

  “But, Chief,” I said, “we really like Hector more. He’s the boyfriend, she gets an abortion without his consent. We think he’s in with the Latin Vice Lords. When we interviewed him a little while ago, he brought in this lawyer—”

  “Yes, I know,” the chief said, nodding. “Raul Samosa.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not until five minutes ago, when he called me.”

  “Really?” I said. “What did he want?”

  “To tell me to turn on the TV at four this afternoon for his press conference.”

  “No shit. What’s he unhappy about?”

  The chief looked at me, his expression blank. “You.”

  I pulled back. “What’d I do?”

  “First,” the chief said, “you tried to suborn the Constitution—”

  I looked at Ryan. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Ryan said, “It means undermine the Constitution.”

  I put my hands out, palms up, a gesture that sits on the border between “I don’t know what you’re talking about” and “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “He claims that when you questioned Hector and he asked you for an attorney, you ignored—”

  Ryan interrupted. “That’s not at all what happened, Chief. Cruz said he wanted to make his phone call, and we simply told him what we tell anyone who says that: if you get an attorney, that changes the dynamic. You know that’s Day One in the course at the Academy. But as soon as he repeated that he wanted his phone call, we terminated the interview and he called Samosa.”

  “I do anything else?” I said. Maybe I was a little defensive. You screw up enough times, that happens.

  “He said you badgered his client.”

  “That’s bogus, Chief. We got the whole interview on tape.”

  “I know, Karen,” the chief said, cocking his head, his palms pushing down to tell me to keep it together. “I’m just telling you what he’s going to say at four o’clock.”

  “And how’re you going to respond?” I said, my hands on my hips.

  “Well, first I’ll listen to what he says, and then I’ll reply appropriately,” he said with a small smile.

  I sighed. “So you’re going to call a news conference?”

  “Probably not,” he said. “I don’t want to let him call the tune. It’d just encourage him to do another press conference. We’d end up in an arms race. I’ll see what he says at four. If I can, I’ll just issue a short statement.” That last sentence was meant to tell me to back off, let him do his job.

  A smart detective would take that as a good thing and let it be. I said, “Saying what?”

  “I’m hoping I can say that we’re conducting the investigation appropriately and that I have full confidence in the members of the Rawlings Police Department.” He looked at me directly and held my gaze.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to bring it down a notch. “Reason we came into your office, to ask if you’d okay a search of Cruz’ trailer and his car. Guess that’s off the table.”

  “Give me a reason.”

  “He was the boyfriend. We think he’s a member of the Latins, which, by the way, he lied about.”

  “He say he wasn’t?”

  I frowned, my left hand fluttering in the air. “He told us he was thinking about joining and put their tat on, then changed his mind.” The chief cocked his head, like he wasn’t buying it. “If we could grab some DNA, we might be able to match it to some hairs on the vic’s body. Robin found hair samples from two different guys on her.”

  “That won’t get us anywhere. He was her boyfriend.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I’d like to have a look at his car.”

  “What for?”

  “There were some polyester fibers on Maricel that might’ve come from a car trunk.”

  “That’s not probable cause.” The Chief was shaking his head. “Sorry.”

  I knew he was
right. Hector not having an alibi didn’t help him, but without anybody putting him somewhere else or some other evidence saying he was lying, no judge was going to okay a warrant.

  “Get me some more evidence …” he said, standing up.

  You want more evidence, I thought, let me bend the Constitution. But this time I didn’t say it. I nodded and we turned to leave.

  Chapter 18

  My eyes scanned the room. “No computer?”

  Mark Gerson shook his head. “There’s a few computers in the Rec Room. That’s what they call it.” He rolled his eyes. He looked a lot better than he did when we talked with him the first time. Having showered and washed his hair was a big part of that.

  “Internet access?” Ryan said.

  Mark Gerson shook his head.

  Ryan smiled sadly. “Guess they want you to be able to write letters and seal them in envelopes.” We were in Mark’s room at New Beginnings.

  Mark said, “This is total bullshit. I have no idea what they want me to be able to do.”

  “How’re you feeling?” Ryan sat on the wooden chair that went with the small desk.

  “How’m I feeling? Tired, lethargic, depressed, demoralized, fuzzy. Did I mention bored out of my fuckin’ skull?”

  “So they’ve got you back on your meds.”

  “That’s mostly what this place is about. It’s great, if you like people sticking their fingers in your mouth to make sure you swallow the damn pills. But you wouldn’t know about that.”

  “I don’t have schizophrenia.” Ryan was wearing a grim expression. “One of my sisters has it.”

  “She locked up?” Mark gestured with his hand, taking in the room, which had a single bed, a writing desk, a soft chair, and an adjoining bathroom. Some of the business at New Beginnings was short-term stays for people like Mark, but they made most of their money doing drug and alcohol rehab for non-violent offenders. There were cameras all over the place. Semi-lockdown.

  “No,” Ryan said. “She’s married. She has a family. It goes up and down. But she controls it.” I was standing off to the side, leaning on the windowsill, letting Ryan run the interview.