The Unmade World

by Steve Yarbrough

  Being there nearly killed him. He recognized Danny’s son, who’d filled out since the last time he’d seen him, and he found it impossible not to wonder what he might have come to mean to Anna. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe they’d be trying to coordinate college applications now. Maybe they’d be sitting side by side onstage. He would never know.

  He shut his eyes and let the music envelop him. The Berg was dissonant, at times even violent, and he kept thinking of the face that had looked at him that night as he sat strapped into the old Mercedes. His wife and daughter were either dead or dying, and the person that face belonged to must have known it. And knowing it, he walked away. He never called the police, never called a hospital, just left them there to bleed and freeze.

  For many years, Richard Brennan had been a man about whom many things could be said. That he was a father and husband, a lover and companion. That he was good at what he did. That when he couldn’t get out of wearing a tie, he chose a clip-on. That he loved a rich cassoulet. That he hated Pepsi but could tolerate Coke. That he knew the music of Bud Powell like the letters of his own name and could list the personnel on every cut the great pianist had ever recorded. Now there was only one thing worth saying about him: that he was trying hard but mostly failing to overcome his loss.

  By the time the lights went on for intermission, he was damp all over. He knew he must look terrible. He also knew he’d better act then, if he intended to, because there was no way he’d make it through the Mahler. When Danny placed his hand on the armrest to rise, he did the same. The other man looked right at him, nodded, then stepped into the aisle. He didn’t have a clue who he was.

  “Danny?”

  Scanlon looked at him again. “Richard? Sorry, I didn’t . . . I mean, well, it’s been a while.” He offered his hand. There was nothing to do but shake it and hope Danny didn’t notice the moisture.

  Richard decided to drop any pretense. “Can we step out for a minute?” he said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”

  “Well . . . I mean, yeah. Sure. Okay.”

  Once outside, they stood on the sidewalk in front of the music building, students streaming by, many of them wearing green-and-gold UCC Cowboys paraphernalia.

  “This place has gone football crazy,” Danny said, probably because he was puzzled and felt the need to say something. Later, Richard would realize he had no idea what was coming, that he might not even have remembered Richard was a journalist, if in fact he’d ever known it. Not that many people read the L.A. Times in Fresno. Home delivery north of Bakersfield had stopped fifteen years ago.

  Danny was four or five inches shorter, so Richard was careful not to crowd his space. “Forgive me, but I’ll get straight to the point. You were one of the officers who responded to the Aguilera shootings back in August.”

  It was a statement, not a question. But Scanlon treated it otherwise. “Yes, I was. But what’s this about, Richard? Why are you asking?”

  “To be blunt, I’ve been looking into the investigation.”

  “Looking into it? Looking how?”

  Richard pulled out his wallet, extracted a business card, and handed it to him. “I work for a newspaper. I thought you knew.”

  The other man stared at the card for a long time. Then he stuck it in his shirt pocket and raised his gaze. “You know, you really should contact Public Affairs. That’d be the normal way to arrange an interview. But I’m not the one you need to talk to. That’d be Joe Garcia. He’s—”

  “I know who he is. I also know that contacting Public Affairs would do neither me nor you any good.”

  “Me? What are you getting at, Richard? I haven’t seen you in years. Not since . . . not since, like, two or three years ago.”

  “Did you or any of the other officers who entered the Aguilera residence that night find a cell phone? Before you answer, let me tell you what I know. You guys requested and were granted a search warrant. When the warrant was returned, it didn’t list a cell phone among the recovered items. Both Jacinta Aguilera and Andres Aguilera had mobile phones, and I know the numbers of each one.”

  By that time, Danny was looking pretty bad himself. Sweat beads had popped out on his forehead, and his glasses were starting to fog up. “I don’t have anything to tell you, Richard,” he said. “Except that you should call Public Affairs. That’s the proper way to approach something like this. Now, before long, the second half of the concert’ll start, and I need to use the bathroom. So I’ll ask you to excuse me.” He turned toward the building.

  “The last thing I have to tell you,” Richard said, “is that if I don’t get an answer to my question, I’m prepared to contact the grand jury. That’s what you do when you suspect misconduct during an investigation.”

  Scanlon kept going.

  “My cell number’s on the card. The conversation would just be between you and me. Your name wouldn’t appear in any story I might write.”

  Danny entered the building, the glass door swinging shut behind him.

  Richard walked to the parking lot and climbed into his car. He sat there for a good while, losing track of time, as he so often had these last couple of years. The less you cared how you spent it, the less a minute meant. He thought of time as a substance to be burned.

  Nothing he did would resurrect Jacinta Aguilera or her three children. Whatever he uncovered could only lead to more trouble: perhaps for Danny and his son, for Garcia and his family, for Nick Major and his family. Once again, the temptation to walk away from the story and write a piece about classic roadside diners or the freaks who hung around the spot where James Dean crashed his car arose. About the only thing preventing him was a woman who reminded him of his daughter every time she tossed her hair.

  He finally started the car and drove home, where he took a long shower. He’d just walked into the kitchen and opened a Sierra Nevada when his cell began to vibrate. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was local.

  Scanlon wasted no time on hellos. “Richard, it’s Danny. I need you to swear on the Bible you’ll keep my name out of this.”

  “For me to swear on a Bible wouldn’t mean much, Danny. And anyway, I haven’t got one.” He was already reaching for a notepad. “But I give you my word I won’t reveal you as a source.”

  “Even if you go to jail. I got my son to think about, Richard.”

  “I know you do, Danny.”

  “He and I don’t have anybody but each other.”

  He started to tell the other man he knew that and that each of them was lucky to have the other. “I’ll keep my promise,” he said.

  “All right,” Scanlon said. “So I know there was at least one cell phone in the house that night.”

  “Where was it?”

  “On the kitchen table.”

  “Near the woman’s body?”

  “About . . . about a few inches from her hand.”

  “Which hand?”

  “Her right hand.”

  “So her right hand was on the table?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else was there?”

  “Salt and pepper shakers. An avocado. Stack of white napkins.”

  “No beer bottle?”

  “What?”

  “Was there a beer bottle on the table?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No particular reason. You think maybe she’d recently taken a phone call?”

  “I have no idea. When you walk into a situation like that, you’re not wondering if somebody took a call.”

  “Was the phone turned on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you touch it?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was Garcia on the scene when you saw it?”

  “Not yet. He got there a couple minutes later. My partner and I were already in the bedroom.”

  “Had your partner seen the phone?”

  “I don’t know. We
never talked about it.”

  “So you went into the bedroom.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “What do you mean what happened, Richard? Do you have any idea what we saw in there?”

  “Actually, I do.” The coolness he heard in his own voice reassured him. There were still things worth doing. And maybe he could still do them. “I read the police report. The boys in bunk beds. The toddler in her crib. Andres Aguilera on the floor. Blood everywhere. I assume that’s right?”

  “Yeah. Your assumption’s correct.”

  “So where did Garcia go when he entered?”

  “He went . . . he went to the kitchen, I guess. That’s where he was when I stepped out of the bedroom.”

  “And was the phone still on the table?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “Because, you know, I’ve seen some traumatic sights myself, Danny. Mostly in the line of work. But not exclusively. And things like whether or not the phone was still lying there . . . I tend to remember them. Just like you remember there were salt and pepper shakers on the table, and an avocado, and a stack of white napkins, and no beer bottle. I’m a person, but I’m also a professional. And so are you.”

  Silence on the other end. Then Danny Scanlon said, “The phone was gone.”

  Something always happened to him when he knew he’d found his story. A moment came when it seemed as if it would write itself as long as he kept putting one foot in front of the other and didn’t complain about lack of sleep, difficulties that threw themselves before him, people who either lied or paid out the truth like fishing line.

  “So we know Joe took the phone himself,” he said that same evening, on the couch in Maria’s living room. She’d thrown a fake log in her fireplace, and it was flickering nicely but producing no heat. Which was fortunate, since the temperature outside was about sixty-five.

  She wore velour pajamas that landed on the color spectrum somewhere between maroon and purple. She also had on a pair of furry pink sleepers. She must be cold-natured, he decided.

  “Not that it was ever in much doubt,” she said and sipped her pinot noir. “We knew he took it. We just didn’t know it.”

  “The question is what he did with it.”

  For once, she deferred. “You know him a lot better than I do. What does your sense of Joe Garcia tell you he’d do?”

  “Try to turn it to his advantage. But in order to do that, he’d have to first find out what was on the phone. And that’d be difficult if she set a passcode. You still have that little item you stole?”

  “No. I kept my promise.” She gestured at the fireplace. “It went up in smoke.”

  “I suspect you made a copy.”

  “Your suspicions are well founded. Would you like to see it?”

  “No, because I hope to die without becoming a felon. But I wouldn’t mind if you went and got it.”

  She rose and disappeared down the hallway, then returned a moment later with a manila folder labeled W-2 Forms.

  She’d already told him that the cut-off date on the bill she’d stolen from the overflowing mailbox was thirteen days past the shootings. Both phones were registered to Andres Aguilera. One of them never called anybody except the other number and the body shop where Andres worked and an all-night gas station on West Jensen, where they knew he sometimes picked up a few hours. The second phone got a lot more use. Before her boss ordered her not to rock the boat, Maria had phoned every number it had called or texted or received a call or text from in the month of August. One number was in Mexico, and it belonged to Jacinta’s mother, who burst into tears when Maria said she was calling about her daughter. Her mother couldn’t speak English, and Maria spoke only a few words of Spanish, so the only thing her call accomplished was to cause the poor woman more grief. One number, in Brooklyn, belonged to Jacinta’s sister, who immediately hung up when Maria said she worked for the Sun. Another number belonged to the elementary school the older boy attended, another to a day care center, yet another to the Golden Palomino. Everybody who picked up at any of the other numbers either answered in Spanish or sounded Hispanic, and no one would tell her anything about Jacinta Aguilera. One number with the local area code was no longer in service, and she’d done reverse lookups online without finding it. It had sent forty-one texts to Jacinta in the seventeen days before she was murdered, the last of these arriving the evening she died.

  “The disconnected number,” he said, “what was it again?”

  She read it off.

  “That’s a mobile phone, of course,” he said. “So the number tells us nothing about where in the area code it might have been located. It still could prove useful, though. A few years ago—I’m guessing back in 2005, but it could have been either late 2004 or early 2006—there were three or four articles in the Sun about excessive cellular charges for several UCC employees. One was actually the former campus police chief. My recollection is that he was making non-school-related use of a state-owned phone—nothing particularly juicy, if I remember right, just lots of calls to department stores, liquor stores, the gym, his kids’ babysitter, his wife, carry-out places, and so on. Somebody at the Sun—I’m thinking maybe it was Jim Concannon, who accepted a buyout before you were hired—got wind of it and filed a FOIA request and was able to access the charges that way. It’s mostly administrators who get assigned school-owned mobile devices. Deans, vice presidents, fund-raisers, etc. Professors and department chairs are too lowly. But I wouldn’t be surprised if every single Athletic Department employee has one.”

  “But why wouldn’t it show up in a reverse-number search? I went through two different sites, and it didn’t come up on either one. And they’ve got lots of government-owned phones listed there, as well as the names and addresses assigned to numbers that were disconnected years ago. For instance . . .”

  “For instance what?”

  She stood in front of the fireplace, staring at the floor as if she wished she were beneath it. It must have cost her a considerable sum in emotional currency to look at him, but she finally paid it. “Well, I think I found the numbers that belonged to your wife and daughter.”

  “Oh.”

  “You probably didn’t need to know that.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Let’s forget it.”

  “I’d love to.”

  He told her that if need be, he’d file a FOIA request and attempt to learn if the disconnected number was a state-owned phone assigned to a UCC employee. “In the meantime,” he said, “the bill probably tells you what kinds of devices the Aguileras were using. Right?”

  She shuffled the pages until she found what she was looking for. “One of them was a Nokia 6085. That’s one of those older flip-top phones. The other was an iPhone 3G.”

  “Let me guess. The one with all the calls on it was the iPhone.”

  “Yep.”

  “So that’s the one Jacinta was using. And for our purposes, that might be a good thing.”

  “How come?”

  “What kind of phone do you use?”

  “A BlackBerry Curve. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.”

  “I did. The question was rhetorical. That’s what I use too.”

  “I know you do. The other night at the Mexican restaurant, when you went to the bathroom, I picked it up and tried to see what was on it. But you’d set a passcode.”

  “I set it earlier that day,” he said, “since I knew you’d check it out the first time you got a chance. Until you entered my life, Maria, I didn’t bother.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Don’t be. When you went to the bathroom, I took yours out of your purse and tried the same thing. But of course you’d set a passcode too.”

  “I thought you’d looked through my purse,” sh
e said. “But I discounted the possibility, figuring you were just too damn forthright. It’s nice to know I’m the impetus for character change.”

  He let that one slide as well. Anyhow, he’d lied to her about going through her purse. He’d worry about why he’d lied later. It was a troublesome sign. “An iPhone costs about twice what a BlackBerry does,” he said. “From what I know, it can do everything our phones do and a lot of things they can’t. And every kid, as well as every adult who hasn’t quite grown up, wants one.” Last year, he told her, he’d gone to Massachusetts at Christmas to see his father. While there, he’d read a piece in the Globe about a guy in Watertown who was making a killing repairing damaged iPhones. “Because obviously, if a kid with a seven-hundred-dollar toy drops it in the toilet, the warranty’s no good.”

  “I actually remember that article—I was still in Worcester. The guy called himself iPhone Ed, right?”

  “iPhone Art. It didn’t sound like what he was doing was illegal. It mostly involved drying phones out or replacing cracked screens or whatever. But I guarantee you there’s somebody in Fresno who specializes in fixing those devices. And whoever it is probably knows how to do a number of other things to the phone too. So I’m thinking what we need to do, starting tomorrow morning, is locate that person, or those persons, and see if Joe Garcia’s made their acquaintance.”

  As it turned out, there were several. She found the first one before breakfast, an ad for local iPhone repairs on Craigslist. No address was provided, so she gave him the phone number. As soon as he dropped the kids off at school, he called.

  The voice that answered could have belonged to either a man or a woman. It did not sound particularly young. That surprised him more than its androgynous timbre. He told the person on the other end his name, said he was not calling with a repair request but that he was a newspaper reporter researching an article about how new technologies spawned the need for new services, like the one the individual on the other end was advertising. Would he or she perhaps consent to an interview?