Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1)

by Carmen Amato

  “And did Obregon say why he thought you should be acting lieutenant?” Salazar glanced away from her and at some papers on his desk.

  “He said women are less corrupt that men,” Emilia said. She rubbed her palms on the thighs of her jeans.

  She’d made it to the main police administration building in record time, the white Suburban barreling through the old part of town to the more centrally located new police administration building. As promised, there was a parking space for her and she was escorted to the chief’s outer office by a pretty female cop whose uniform had been tailored to show off every curve. The aide took her into the chief’s inner office, served them both glasses of aqua de jamaica, and withdrew.

  “We’ll see if he’s right.” Salazar picked up a pen and scribbled something on his paperwork. “Keep the department running and find out what happened to Inocente.”

  Emilia couldn’t read Salazar at all; didn’t know his relationship to Obregon and if he’d like the directions that Obregon had given her to turn over information instead of making an arrest. If they were enemies, she might be caught between them. If they were friends—or even collaborators—Obregon would find out that she’d tried to get him in trouble.

  “One thing I’d like to clarify, sir,” Emilia said to Salazar’s bent head. The expanse of hairless scalp was like a shiny brown egg. “Señor Obregon--.”

  “Is a very powerful man.” Salazar looked up. “Use him before he uses you. Other than that, I regard him as a friend of this police force.”

  “Yes, señor,” Emilia said.

  “Send my office the press statement tomorrow morning before the meeting with the mayor.”

  “Of course.”

  Salazar made a flapping motion with his hand. Emilia scrambled out of her chair and left.

  ☼

  An hour later Emilia was back in el teniente’s office with every scrap of paper she could find related to the kidnapping of 8-year-old Bernardo Morelos da Gama. Acapulco hadn’t handled the case and there wasn’t much. The family had hired a private security firm to negotiate with the kidnappers and deliver the ransom. That wasn’t unusual; corruption was so endemic in most police departments that police were either the kidnappers or joined in to get a piece of the ransom if called upon to handle the case. Private security was much more reliable, better paid and had often trained in El Norte or even Israel.

  The only thing that she figured out, which wasn’t exactly shocking, was that Fausto Inocente had been in Acapulco, sitting behind his desk both when the child was snatched from his piano lesson in Ixtapa and when the child had been dumped in the abandoned Suburban on the highway above the Palacio Réal. If the kidnapper, he’d had help. Or maybe he’d been the help, using his position to be a facilitator for the kidnappers.

  She leaned back in the chair. It was strange sitting in his office, behind his desk, with the squadroom empty on the other side of the doorway. Cleaners had been through, startled to see her there, but they’d come and gone quickly.

  Emilia lost track of time as she dug into the other files that the squadroom had worked around the time of the kidnapping, hoping to find something related. Each team of detectives usually had a dozen or so open cases, the majority of which would never be resolved. Volume, but little variety, with murder, missing persons, and robbery topping the charts. The last was the most desirable as whomever was robbed would usually pass along an incentive for the detectives to devote more than the usual amount of attention to their case. Castro and Gomez got most of those.

  Halfway through the stack Emilia came across a month-old murder report and a name jumped off the page. A 20-year-old woman, Dion Urbino Cruz, was reportedly stabbed to death along with her toddler daughter. According to neighbors, the perpetrator was probably her seldom-seen husband, Yoel Ramos Martinez, 37, no known occupation. Macias and Sandor had asked the usual questions and the file contained a few statements from neighbors in a run-down apartment complex. There had been no autopsy, no murder weapon taken as evidence, no next-of-kin identified. Ramos Martinez was still at large.

  Emilia got out the binder of las perdidas, sure that the name was familiar. After all, Dion was unusual and Cruz was Emilia’s own name. And there it was, a yellowed newspaper advertisement asking for help from anyone who knew the whereabouts of a teenaged Dion Urbino Cruz. A picture of the girl accompanied the ad. Dion had been a sweet-looking thing with dark eyes and long hair. Emilia stared at the picture, wondering at the path the girl had taken and the fear she must have known at its end.

  Her aunt had placed the ad, Emilia recalled. All she’d been able to afford was a small one near the masthead.

  It took more than the usual number of paper jams to finally make a copy of the death report. Emilia tucked it into the binder with the ad. Only after she informed the aunt would she cross Dion’s name off the las perdidas list.

  Only 51 to go. Unless there was another name tomorrow.

  She got a cola out of el teniente’s fridge to clear her head and turned to the case file on Ruiz, the dead driver. Like so many drug-related cases that the detectives handled, it had been suspended pending further information that everyone knew would never be found. She combed through the gruesome forensics section of the file. Prade had not done an autopsy on the head and the body had never been found but there were descriptions of the burn marks and speculation on the type of implement used to sever the head from the body and how many blows it had taken. Prade suggested a dull axe. Ruiz had been alive when the first blows had struck.

  The file was thick with useless statements from people whose car had been in the lot. Kurt’s statement was in it as well, as was the paperwork about his own car and a copy of the release that the secretary had taken so long to process.

  Emilia leaned back and remembered that evening, the way Kurt had been patient with the bureaucracy. And concerned for her. She got the free drink coupon out of her old desk drawer and stuck it in her wallet before reading on.

  Silvio and Fuentes had worked parts of the case. They’d done most of the interviews with car owners. They were supposed to have contacted the next of kin but Emilia did not see any record of that conversation.

  Emilia found the thinner file for Ruiz’s initial arrest for a foreign placa violation. The cousin that had bailed him out was named Horacio Valdes Ruiz. She typed it into the public database. The man’s cédula came up, with a grainy picture and an address.

  She was yawning and the words were getting blurry as Emilia closed down her computer and shuffled the papers back into the folder. The folder had several sections, each one tabbed with a subject. She hadn’t noticed it before but the tab marked “Owners” was empty.

  Emilia tried to remember what should have been in that section of the folder. The request memo to contact the Arizona state authorities, the copy of the car title, the report from Kurt’s first visit to the station to request Ruiz’s telephone number and find out how to get the car back. She rubbed the fatigue out of her eyes and went through every other section of the folder. None of the papers was there.

  Maybe the paperwork had been misfiled. With a sinking feeling she went through everything related to the Morelos de Gama kidnaping and then the files of a dozen cases that had been handled at about the same time.

  It was long past midnight when she understood that Harry and Lois Hudson of Flagstaff, Arizona, had never been to Mexico.

  ☼

  Emilia was almost too tired to think when she stumbled through her own front door but she had her gun out in record time when she switched on the light and saw a man on the sofa.

  It was Ernesto Cruz. The box with his grinding wheel and his clothing bag were on the floor next to him. He snored gently, half covered with the quilt from Sophia’s bed.

  Emilia went upstairs and fell asleep in her clothes.

  Chapter 10

  Silvio and Rico showed up for the morning meeting at 9:00 am.

  “Murder board looks good,” Emilia said. The three
of them were standing in front of the murder board and Emilia knew it was going to be a very long day. It had started with Sophia gushing on about how Ernesto had just returned from a “business trip.” The man in question just looked vacant when Emilia asked where he’d been during the last few weeks and she had the sick feeling he didn’t know. He’d been sleeping rough, that was apparent, but he had some money and his grinding wheel and clothes. Sophia had bustled around the kitchen in her best Sunday dress, making him breakfast.

  Emilia had on her one nice suit for the meeting with the mayor. It was plain gray. The blazer was boxy and hid her shoulder holster but the cut made Emilia feel as if she was wearing a tent. A white long sleeved blouse and shoes with heels completed the outfit. She was already hot and uncomfortable. “Any hotline tips?”

  “Couple of things,” Silvio replied shortly. “Gave them to Gomez and Castro to run down along with the wife’s charity stuff. They didn’t turn up anything yesterday.” He drank coffee from a chipped mug with a big sun and Acapulco, baby! in script on the side. Silvio set it on the top of the file cabinet before consulting his notebook. “Loyola and Ibarra are still working with Forensics on the laptop but the fingerprint report came in. A lot of different prints. One matches el teniente’s.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Where is what?”

  “The report from Forensics.” Emilia hadn’t seen it in her inbox or received a paper copy.

  Silvio casually strolled over to his desk and picked up a thin folder. Emilia knew that pitching a fit wasn’t going to help so she simply took the folder and leafed through it. There wasn’t much. All the blood on the boat belonged to Fausto Inocente. Numerous fingerprints had been found, including that of el teniente. At least one appeared to be that of a child. “We’ll have to get his family in to take their prints,” she said and tucked the folder under her arm. “Are they going to run the prints through the national database?”

  Silvio nodded. “It’ll take a day or so. Macias and Sandor were at the apartment building. Front desk doesn’t track residents in or out, doorman said he thought Inocente usually got home around 9:00 pm so that matches what you got from the maid.” He looked at Rico. “Seems the family was pretty private. Other people in the building barely knew him.”

  “Nobody admitted slipping it to el teniente late at night when his wife was out?” Rico said, half-jokingly.

  “No.” Silvio didn’t look amused.

  “What about the boat marina at the building?” Emilia asked.

  Silvio picked up his coffee and took a long swallow. “They’ll go back today, supervisor was off yesterday and nobody else knew anything about the security cameras.”

  “Did they forget that we were meeting this morning?” Emilia said, keeping her voice even.

  “I’ve got their reports, no need to waste their time with meetings.” Silvio went back to his desk and sat down.

  Still by the murder board, Rico did an embarrassed little shuffle. Emilia swung her attention to him.

  “Fuentes says he’s sick,” Rico said.

  Silvio got up and walked out of the room.

  Rico passed an agitated hand over his face. “Madre de Dios, the tension around here,” he exclaimed to Emilia. “You gotta deal with Silvio, chica. He’s going to make everybody choose between him and you.”

  Emilia clenched her fists, torn between pride and despair. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Fuck,’ Rico said. “I don’t know. Something.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rico tapped the picture of the boat on the murder board. “Last night I kept thinking about how a dead guy ends up on his own boat in the middle of the ocean.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “What other boats were out that late at night?” Rico went to the coffee maker, found a mug, ran his thumb around the rim and poured coffee into it. “I still think he goes to do a meet at sea, they kill him, dump his back on his own boat.”

  “We can check that.” Emilia took a deep breath. “When Macias and Sandor get in I’ll have them ask around to all the marinas, not just the Costa Esmeralda building and the one at the hotel. See what private boats were out that night.”

  “Okay,” Rico said, looking pleased with himself. “Good.”

  Emilia walked over to the table where she’d left the dispatch clipboard after picking up the new dispatches from the dispatch switchboard. “Maybe Loyola and Ibarra can help out as well. If they ever show.”

  She unclipped from the clipboard the two dispatch messages that she’d picked up at the dispatch desk earlier that morning. Another dead body and a burglary at a church. She handed Rico the two dispatches. “Your lucky day.”

  ☼

  “So you talked to Chief Salazar last night?”

  Obregon was all in black again. Black suit, black collared shirt, narrow black-on-black striped tie. Emilia gathered that he’d be in the meeting with the mayor with her. Chief Salazar would be there as well.

  “Yes.” Emilia felt like her suit was killing her. It was too stiff, too heavy. And the unaccustomed heels were useless; she’d never be able to run in them. And running was on her mind; maybe because she felt overwhelmed in the backseat of the car with Obregon while Villahermosa drove.

  “He won’t get in your way,” Obregon said. A tone sounded from his pocket and he took out a cell phone. Emilia stared out the window. The palm trees lining the street slid by as he carried on a brief conversation. No. No. Not that. Okay.

  Obregon pocketed the phone. “So what do you have for Inocente so far?”

  Emilia knew the timeline now by heart. “Fausto Inocente came home at 9:00 pm,” she rattled off. “Got a phone call at 10 pm and went out. Coroner says he died around midnight from blunt trauma to the skull while wearing a plastic bag on his head. He’d had sex shortly before his death. From the blood marking on the boat, we think he was put on the boat after he was struck.”

  Obregon actually grinned. “A bag on his head? What kind?”

  “Like you get at the grocery store.”

  “Holes cut out for the eyes?”

  Emilia blinked. “No. It was just a plain plastic bag.”

  “You said he’d had sex.”

  “You think this was some sort of sex game gone wrong?”

  Obregon grinned again. “How do we know he’d had sex? You find his partner?”

  “No.” Emilia shook her head and felt the back of her ponytail rub against the back seat. “His wife wasn’t around but the coroner said there was semen on his underwear.”

  “So all you know is that he ejaculated.”

  “I guess that would be the precise thing to say.” Emilia felt her cheeks warm. “Fingerprints on the boat look to be his family’s. We’re checking on that.”

  She gave him the rundown of the investigation so far, including Bruno Inocente’s assertion that his brother was a big gambler and that the family business had paid off his debts, bought his apartment, and provided him a fixed income. She kept to the facts they had and left out any speculation, certainly nothing she and Rico had discussed.

  “Are you getting the help you need?”

  Emilia nodded. “We’ve got some uniforms working the hotline. We’ll pull them in to do some of the routine questions if we need to. It’s still going to take some time.”

  Obregon raised his eyebrows. “So what are you going to tell Carlota?”

  “The mayor?” Emilia was taken aback by his casual use of the mayor’s first name.

  “Carlota doesn’t have time for all the dark details like whether Inocente was jerking off or had the fuck of his life before his head got bashed in. She needs the confidence that her police department is handling this with skill and confidence.”

  “Isn’t that Chief Salazar’s job?” Emilia pressed. “Or yours?”

  “Sometimes,” Obregon admitted to Emilia’s surprise. “But it’s good to mix things up, show her some new faces. Today it’s your turn. Give her something she can
use in her press conference.”

  “I have the press release Chief Salazar approved.” Emilia indicated the briefcase at her feet.

  Obregon frowned. “You’d better have worked up something good. The story is all over the news and it’s making the city look bad. And if Acapulco looks bad, Carlota looks bad. And Carlota never looks bad.”

  “Look,” Emilia said uneasily. This was all his fault. “I told you not to make me acting lieutenant.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself,” Obregon chided her. There was nothing of the menace he’d shown yesterday. “I was tough on you before because I had to. Otherwise you’d still be trying to hide behind Silvio. And that’s a bad move.”

  Emilia didn’t reply.

  “I need people like you, Cruz.” Obregon dropped his voice and Emilia had to lean toward him to hear what he was saying. “People who know the difference between right and wrong. Can step carefully around the dirt rather than in it.

  “You’re assuming a lot,” Emilia said.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you.” Obregon’s voice was lower still, his head close to hers.

  “I wasn’t scared,” Emilia said, hearing the waver in her voice.

  “If you want to think I’m a fucking sonuvabitch, go ahead.”

  Obregon paused, so close in the cramped back seat of the car that Emilia could feel his breath on her cheek. She didn’t move, sure that he was going to touch her and unsure of her own reaction. “You’re a good cop, Cruz,” he went on. “More importantly, I trust you.”

  The car went over a tope as it made its way through the gates surrounding the alcaldia, the mayor’s office complex. Emilia bounced away from Obregon and was glad for it. He’d drawn her in, made her think they were having an intimate moment and she’d almost bought it. She eyed him as he lounged against the seat. There was something smoldering deep inside him. He knew people were afraid of him and he liked the power that gave him. The dark good looks, obvious muscle, and the black clothing were all part of the Obregon brand. Sex with him was always on offer. It would be wild, brief and imminently regrettable. Emilia gave herself a mental shake.