4 Angel Among Us

by Chaz McGee

  ‘If you start uncovering evidence that leads to him,’ Gonzales said, ‘I want to know it by the end of the day and I will expect hourly updates after that. Is that clear?’

  ‘Oh, he did it,’ Calvano predicted. ‘I knew Danny Gallagher when he was a kid and he was a bad one.’

  Maggie flashed him a look that meant, ‘Shut your mouth or I will strangle you.’ It usually rolled off him like oil and this time was no different.

  Gonzales looked mildly interested. ‘How long did you know him?’ he asked.

  Calvano looked nervous. He was not used to Gonzales actually paying him attention. ‘We grew up on the same block for the first nine years of our lives,’ Calvano explained. ‘But his parents got divorced and he moved away, I think to live at his grandfather’s house.’

  ‘When he was ten, he went to live with his mother and grandfather on the family farm,’ Maggie explained calmly. ‘It’s the same farm he owns and works now. Apparently, he is a highly respected organic farmer who is some sort of leader in something called the farm-to-table movement. It’s embraced by restaurants that believe in only using local produce.’ Maggie was smart enough to have already done some background checking.

  Gonzales looked mollified that Maggie was on the case. ‘Where is the mother now?’ he asked, knowing that the mayor’s ex-wife was a clear candidate for the ‘most likely to throw a wrench into our cog’ award.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Maggie said. ‘She died about two years ago of cancer and left the farm to her son. He’d already been living there and, apparently, working it pretty hard for years until about two and a half years ago, when he disappeared for a month and came back with his wife. No one quite seems to know where he went to get her, or how he knew her, or what the situation was.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Calvano asked, sounding annoyed. As hard as he tried, he could never catch up with Maggie and there were days when it really bothered him.

  ‘My father,’ Maggie said, with a glance at Gonzales. They both knew that if Colin Gunn had provided the information, then it was true. Colin had been on the force for over forty years before he retired and he knew the importance of reliable information.

  ‘How does Colin know the family?’ Gonzales asked. He was always on the lookout for potential problems and a conflict of interest was a big one.

  ‘He knew the mayor’s first wife, Danny’s mother, from growing up,’ Maggie explained. She hesitated, not sure of how much to share. ‘They were friends, and maybe even more than that when they were young. I think they kept in touch, especially after my mother died. But then she got sick and passed soon after. It was a lot for my father to take.’

  Gonzales nodded thoughtfully. He had thought he knew all the players in what was sure to be a tricky situation, but now he was calculating even more possibilities, thinking up ways to head off potential trouble.

  ‘I want you both to go talk to the husband,’ he finally decided. ‘Find out where he met his wife and see if you can uncover a reason why she was so afraid. So far, all I’m hearing are a bunch of rumors from the teacher’s break room at an elementary school. That’s not good enough for me. We have to be very, very careful here. I don’t have to tell you what would happen if Terrence Gallagher lost the mayor’s race to some immigrant rights candidate next year because we offended the Latino community.’

  No, he didn’t have to tell Maggie or Calvano what would happen. They all knew it would mean drastic budget cuts and a lot of new paperwork for justifying the frequent stop-and-searches they all knew the front line of the force was getting away with at the moment. And they wanted those traffic stops to stay. No one in our town wanted it to become part of the drug highway that led from New York City straight south down I-95 into Florida. It was not uncommon for any driver who looked like a stranger – never mind what their skin color was – to be stopped on some pretense if they lingered too long in town. And a stop was almost always followed by a search of their car. It bordered on the illegal, hell, it was illegal, but the policy had inspired the drug trade to give our town a wide berth and helped preserve its almost eerily wholesome nature, at least if you lived in the right neighborhoods.

  ‘Sir,’ Calvano said suddenly. His eyes were focused outside the window.

  ‘What, son?’ Gonzales demanded, making it obvious he didn’t even remember Calvano’s name. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘You know how you said you were afraid our town would turn into a media circus?’ Calvano asked. He swallowed. His mouth had gone dry.

  Gonzales stared at him like he was a giant cockroach. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘They’re already here.’ Calvano pointed out the window. Down the street that ran in front of the main station, a television news van from a national cable station specializing in crime was having a stand-off with a van from a major news network. Both wanted the parking spot that offered a full view of the front door of the station and neither was willing to give way.

  ‘Shit,’ Maggie said.

  No one argued with her.

  ‘How did they get here so quickly?’ Calvano asked. He was not politically savvy enough to know the answer, but both Maggie and Gonzales had already figured it out.

  ‘The mayor probably called them,’ Gonzales said. ‘He thinks it will put pressure on us to work faster.’

  ‘This isn’t going to help,’ Maggie predicted. ‘If they start getting to the witnesses before we do, we’ll never get a straight story out of anyone.’

  ‘I’ll assign two more teams to help you question witnesses,’ Gonzales promised. ‘And I’m going to ask the FBI to look into the Mexican angle so you two are free to work the local angle. In the meantime, go out the back door. Go see the husband and stay there until you get him to talk. I want to know if you think he’s involved.’

  The Mexican angle? I didn’t know what Gonzales meant by that remark, but I did know what it meant for this case: Gonzales hated that the victim was Latino and he was going to make it a problem for everyone involved.

  FIVE

  ‘I think Danny Gallagher did it,’ Calvano predicted as we were heading toward the hospital where he had been taken. ‘He just didn’t figure on being caught.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’ Maggie asked. ‘If you get that in your head now, you’re going to do a crappy investigation and you know it. You need to have an open mind.’

  ‘Danny Gallagher was famous on our block,’ Calvano said. ‘He hit first and asked questions later. He stole my bike so often I ended up keeping it at his house. It was easier that way. He stayed on the streets until dark, just looking for someone to hassle. Once, he decided he liked my little sister Gina and followed her everywhere for weeks until my mother went over to his house to talk to his mother about it.’

  He had left something out and Maggie sensed it. ‘And what?’ she asked curiously.

  Calvano looked uncomfortable. ‘When my mother got to his house, she said she heard Danny’s parents fighting so loudly she was afraid to knock on the door. Things were being thrown and were crashing to the floor so she came right back home. About a month later, Danny’s father left him and his mother. I heard my parents talking. Danny’s father had moved in with some girl about twenty years younger than he was. Danny and his mother left town soon after. I wasn’t sorry to see him go. No one was sorry to see him go. He was a bully and obsessed with finding the perfect girl. Leopards don’t change their spots.’

  Actually, Calvano had changed his spots. At least a little. Unfortunately, I was in no position to point that out.

  ‘Did you ever think that maybe he was a bully because he was unhappy, and that he was unhappy because everything sucked at home?’ Maggie asked. ‘Did it ever cross your mind that maybe his father was taking it out on him and that Danny stayed out until dark because he couldn’t bear to go home?’

  ‘Hey, don’t put that on me,’ Calvano protested. ‘I was a kid. It wasn’t my problem. Don’t make me feel sorry for the guy.’

  ‘Yeah, well
I remember when his father left his mother too. It was a big scandal. My parents talked about it all the time. Danny’s father was on the city council then and the woman he ran off with was some college student who had interned for the summer. It was pretty public, if I recall. It must’ve been hard on Danny if he was just a kid.’

  ‘Why do you care?’ Calvano asked. ‘It’s not like you’re the product of a broken home.’ Everyone knew that Maggie’s parents have been married for nearly fifty years before her mother died of cancer a few years before.

  ‘I just think that people should be allowed to change,’ Maggie said. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly. ‘Not everybody stays the same. Some people change.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ Calvano decided. But then, in typical Calvano fashion, he added under his breath, ‘He did it.’

  Danny Gallagher didn’t look like much of a killer. He was laid up in his hospital bed, pale and propped up against a mountain of pillows like he was too weak to sit up on his own. A Catholic priest was helping him sip water from a cup. I can’t say I had much respect for the dude. His wife was missing and the best he could do was collapse like some weak old lady and be carted off to the hospital?

  Danny’s eyes took a moment to focus on Maggie and Calvano. Clearly, he had been given something to calm him down. ‘I think the police are here,’ he told the priest.

  When the priest looked over his shoulder, I was startled by what I saw. It was as if someone from another century had stepped into the modern world. The priest had a long, thin face and jet black hair. His features were prominent and clearly Eastern European. But it was his eyes that captivated me completely as he focused them on Maggie. They were the bluest eyes I had ever seen, but neither the blue of the sky nor the teal of rock quarry waters. They were something in between, yet somehow also darker. His gaze was like the mouth of a deep well, as if you could fall into those eyes and tumble downward and downward into infinity. I wondered if he could see me, his gaze was that intense, but he made no sign of recognition.

  Maggie seemed as startled as I was. She said nothing and Calvano came to the rescue. ‘Father Sojak,’ Calvano said in a respectful voice as he extended his hand. ‘I’m Detective Calvano and this is my partner, Detective Gunn.’

  The priest shook Calvano’s hand and looked at him quizzically, wondering how he’d known his name.

  ‘I see you at St Raphael’s,’ Calvano explained. ‘I sometimes attend the eleven a.m. service.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ the priest said, rising to his feet, though I did not think he recognized Calvano. ‘Father Lansing still does the eleven a.m. I’m with the early risers.’

  ‘That would not be me,’ Calvano admitted. I was curious at the transformation in him. He deferred to Maggie in most situations. But he was clearly comfortable talking to the priest. He was far more Catholic than I had realized.

  ‘We need to talk to Mr Gallagher about his wife,’ Calvano explained. ‘Would you like to stay while we question him?’ I wasn’t convinced Maggie was on board with his offer, but she said nothing to contradict him.

  The priest exchanged a glance with Danny Gallagher and sat back down. Danny wanted him to stay.

  ‘I know you,’ Danny said to Calvano weakly. ‘We grew up together. We lived on the same block.’

  Calvano sat down in a chair next to his bed. ‘That’s right. I remember you well.’

  ‘You must think I’m a terrible person,’ Danny said. He glanced at the priest and I wondered what they had been talking about before we entered the room. ‘That was a bad time in my life. A very bad time and I wasn’t a very good person because of it.’

  Maggie looked at Calvano with no small sense of satisfaction.

  ‘But that stuff doesn’t matter right now,’ Danny continued. ‘Whatever you need me to do, I’ll do. I just want you to find my wife.’

  Maggie interrupted. She was afraid he was going to say all the things that husbands say when their wives go missing, and she knew there was no time to go through the motions. ‘You looked completely terrified when you found out your wife was missing,’ Maggie said. ‘Why? You have to tell us what it was you were afraid of. You have to tell us everything you know about your wife’s life. It’s the only thing that might bring her back.’

  The priest and the husband exchanged another glance. They were hiding something, and they both understood that what they did next would likely determine whether the world thought Danny Gallagher innocent or guilty in his wife’s disappearance.

  A silence filled the room until Father Sojak nodded at Danny. ‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Tell them about your wife’s history.’

  Calvano took notes as Danny Gallagher told them the story: he had met his wife, Arcelia, four years ago while attending an agricultural college in Mexico. He was learning about new hybrid variations of vegetables hardy enough to be grown in the United States and sold to its growing Hispanic population. Arcelia had been working in the fields for one of the farmers Danny Gallagher had visited with his professor and class.

  ‘It was just like in the movies,’ Danny said, his voice breaking. ‘I looked at her and it was as if the world changed from black-and-white to color. She looked back at me and I could see it in her eyes. She felt it, too. We had been meant to find one another.’ His voice grew stronger as he talked. He did not seem embarrassed at how sentimental his story sounded. He did not seem the least in doubt that what he was saying was true.

  ‘We didn’t talk to each other that first day, but I came back the next week and she was sitting on a bench outside the gate of the farm, waiting for her ride home. I stopped my truck and sat next to her and we ended up talking for hours. She told me she was in school, studying to be a teacher, and was working at the farm to make money to pay for college. She told me about her family, they were poor with lots of kids, and I told her about mine. When her ride came, she waved it on. It was dark by the time we ran out of words. I don’t even remember everything we talked about. My Spanish was pretty bad back then and her English was no better. But we understood each other perfectly. Somehow she sensed what I was going to say before I even opened my mouth and I could feel her thoughts in the same way.’

  I watched the priest during this speech, curious to know how he reacted to a world he would never experience himself. His eyes never left Danny Gallagher’s face. It was as if he was willing him the strength to go on.

  ‘So you got married?’ Calvano interrupted. He was anxious to get to the part that would help them.

  ‘No,’ Danny explained. ‘Not at first. She couldn’t leave her family. Arcelia has twelve brothers and sisters and her father is too old to work anything but part-time. She was needed at home to support them and she had her school and I still had to finish getting my graduate degree. So I went back to the States and we made arrangements for her to visit at Christmas.’

  ‘And you sent her money in between?’ Maggie guessed, not quite disguising her belief that there was a possibility he had been scammed.

  ‘Of course I did,’ Danny said angrily. ‘You have no idea what it’s like to live down there. There is no running water in her village and no way to find work. She rode almost a hundred miles each way on a bus just to go to our equivalent of community college two days a week. The only money to be had where she comes from is from drug gangs, and if you don’t cooperate with them your life is always in danger. I couldn’t send her much money at first, a couple hundred a month, but it made all the difference to her family. It made it possible for them to survive.’

  Calvano had perked up at the mention of drug gangs. ‘I’m gathering she didn’t cooperate with the drug gangs?’ he asked.

  ‘She did not,’ Danny Gallagher said. He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the pillow. ‘Her parents thought she was, though. She didn’t tell them about us because she knew they would panic if they realized she was planning to leave. So they just assumed that the money I sent her was from drug activity somehow. They
didn’t like it but they took the money. I should never have left her behind when I returned to the States. But she told me a lot of Mexico was like that. That people were used to it. That there was no way to get away from the drug gangs and she wasn’t afraid of them. She said they would leave her alone so long as she steered clear of them.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like the Mexican drug gangs I know,’ Calvano said drily.

  For the first time, Danny Gallagher almost lost his temper. ‘I know what you’re thinking, that she had a boyfriend in a gang or something like that. But she just said she had a friend who would make sure that she was safe and I believed her.’

  Arcelia had clearly believed it, too, but the scars I had seen on her body told me that either she had been mistaken to trust her friend, or that friend had not remained one for long.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Maggie said. ‘Did she get involved with a gang?’

  The priest intervened, an act of mercy I hoped was designed to give Danny Gallagher some peace and not just an attempt to make sure he didn’t reveal more than the priest wanted him to reveal.

  ‘A drug gang kidnapped Arcelia about three years ago,’ the priest explained. Danny Gallagher’s eyes were closed. ‘They held her for a few months. We don’t really know why, because she will not speak of that time, but it could be as simple as someone saw how beautiful she was and wanted to use her for a few months.’

  I thought of the scars I had seen criss-crossing her body, of how her tormentors had been careful to maim her only in places where it would not show. Whoever had wanted to use her had been sick. He had wanted to have her beauty, and yet destroy it at the same time.

  ‘When they grew tired of using her, they went to her family and demanded five thousand dollars for her return,’ the priest said. ‘The family had no money, of course, certainly nothing approaching that sum, and so they contacted Danny.’

  ‘How did they find you?’ Maggie asked Danny. ‘You said that they did not know of your existence.’