Look the Other Way

by Leigh Jones

  When Lieutenant Mark Jarrell marched down the steps, looking annoyed at having his Sunday evening interrupted, Johnson gave him a rough sketch of what they knew, which wasn’t much. Jarrell rolled his eyes when Johnson pointed out the distance of the body from the seawall and suggested she might have been pushed.

  “Do yourself a favor, detective. Unless you have a really good reason to label this a murder investigation, leave it alone. You have a dead prostitute that no one’s going to miss and two unsolved murders in your file already. How likely is it you’ll find whoever did this, if it even was a murder? Unless the coroner finds something suspicious, no one’s going to question this as a suicide.”

  Johnson stared hard at the body while the lieutenant marched back up the steps to go home to his family. He was right, no one would miss her. But police didn’t pursue and punish killers based on the victim’s value to society. Anyone who snatched someone else’s life from the hand of God deserved justice. The unsolved murders weighed on his conscience, not because his colleagues thought he’d bungled the investigations but because the killers might never pay for their crimes. His only comfort came from knowing they wouldn’t escape eternal justice.

  After he watched the coroner peel Miss Kitty off the rocks, Johnson slowly climbed the steps back to the sidewalk. Most of the crowd had moved on after the coroner drove away. Johnson found Kate sitting on a concrete bench about 30 feet from the top of the steps. Behind her, the lights of the The Clipper hotel glowed a dirty yellow. He sat down next to her and let silence hang between them for a few minutes. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

  “You don’t think she was murdered, do you?” Kate asked accusingly.

  “I don’t know. There’s just no way to tell at this point. She could have been pushed or she could have jumped. We’ll have to see if anyone comes forward to say they saw something suspicious.”

  Kate snorted. “How likely do you think that is? And when no one does, what then?”

  Johnson watched three waves roll ashore before answering.

  “Then I don’t think we’ll have any choice but to classify it as a suicide.”

  Kate whipped around to face him, her eyes narrowed into glittering, angry slits. “What about whoever roughed her up several weeks ago? What about this new prostitution ring everyone’s talking about? What if someone saw her talking to me and didn’t like it?”

  “Based on what, Kate?” Johnson asked, as gently as he could amid his own mounting frustration. “We have no proof that there is some new gang in town, and even if there is, pimps don’t normally go around killing people. The last thing they want to do is draw attention to themselves.”

  “But what if they thought someone was starting to take notice of them and they wanted to continue operating under the radar? What if they killed Miss Kitty because she knew too much about them and they knew no one would look closely into her death?”

  “I am going to look into it, I’m just not starting from the assumption that she was murdered, when I have no evidence to support that.”

  “No evidence,” Kate sneered. “That sounds familiar.”

  Johnson recoiled as though she’d slapped him. Her accusation lodged between his ribs like an arrow on fire. The heat of her anger, mixed with his own, slowly spread down his abdomen and arms until his stomach was a hard knot and his fingers throbbed. He smacked the palm of his hand on his thigh.

  “Damn it, Kate.”

  Before he said anything else, Johnson shoved himself off the bench and jogged to his car. He never looked back as he gunned the engine and rocketed into the empty street. As he drove past The Clipper, he spotted a man standing on the second floor walkway, leaning on the railing. The end of his cigarette glowed red in the darkness.

  Homeless woman found dead at base of seawall

  Investigators have ruled the death a likely suicide

  By Kate Bennett

  Galveston police officials have identified the woman found dead at the base of the seawall Sunday night as Sharneece Willis.

  Tourists out for a late-night stroll spotted the body at about 11:30 p.m. Willis, 45, was laying face-down on the granite boulders between the wall and the beach.

  Galveston County Coroner Trevor Ostermeyer said her neck was broken, suggesting she likely died immediately. Ostermeyer is still waiting for the results of toxicology tests, but Willis was a known drug user with multiple convictions for possession.

  “I won’t be making a final determination until I get all the test results back, but at this point, I see no evidence of foul play,” Ostermeyer said. “She wouldn’t be the first homeless person who fell, or jumped, to her death.”

  About a year ago, a homeless man was found under similar circumstances. Officials believe he fell asleep in his wheelchair without setting the break and rolled off the wall onto the rocks below.

  David Lyons, director of Last Hope Ministries, said Willis had lived in Galveston for about 20 years. Lyons is working with police officials to try to contact her family in Louisiana.

  “It’s just a shame,” Lyons said. “She was a good woman, with a good heart. But she was haunted by a lot of demons.”

  Chapter 17

  It had been four weeks since Esperanza and Gloria made their plan to escape. But they’d had no chance to put it into action. Jim hadn’t visited again, and Esperanza had finally come to accept that they’d lost their opportunity. It had been a hard blow to absorb, harder than every slap El Jefe had laid across her cheek. The fledgling hope that filled her heart died an agonizingly slow and painful death.

  She’d tried to keep Gloria’s hope alive through the first two weeks. But eventually she had to admit to her baby sister that the whole scheme had been as foolish as their dream of making a good life for themselves in America. Gloria had accepted her sister’s assessment with calm resignation. But Esperanza heard her crying that night after they’d gone to bed.

  The last week had passed uneventfully. Even El Jefe skipped his usual weekly visit. After they cleaned the house and cooked their meals, the girls had nothing to do but watch TV or flip through the fashion magazines El Jefe had left the last time he stopped by. They were always several months old, which made Esperanza think he picked them up after his wife discarded them. Although he wore a flashy gold band set with diamonds on his left hand, he never mentioned his wife. Esperanza wondered whether she knew what went on at his cabin perched above the marsh.

  The girls were curled up on the couch, absorbed in a Spanish language telenovela, when they heard tires crunching on gravel. Esperanza jumped up when she heard two car doors slam in rapid succession. El Jefe never brought anyone with him to the house during the week. El Carcelero came in from his perpetual perch on the deck, stubbing out his cigarette against the door frame as he bared his teeth in a menacing grin.

  “Looks like you’ve got a visitor,” he said before slipping down the hall to the back door.

  Esperanza heard a brief murmur of conversation before El Jefe opened the front door. Trailing right behind him was the man who had occupied so much of the sisters’ thoughts and discussions during the last few weeks. Relief flooded through her. He’d come back! She glanced at her sister. Gloria’s smile radiated a joy that should have been completely out of place given the circumstances. But Esperanza understood. Hope had been reborn.

  “Ah, mis chicas guapas! You are a sight for sore eyes at the end of a long day,” El Jefe said appreciatively. But his smile quickly faded as he looked them over from head to toe. A surge of alarm coursed through Esperanza. They were wearing jeans and T-shirts. Neither had on any makeup. He normally didn’t care what they looked like when he visited them alone. But he always wanted them to look their best for the customers.

  “Perhaps I should have told you I was coming, so that you could have made yourselves a little more presentable. But I bumped into our friend here unexpectedly and he insisted on joining me.”

  “I think they look wonderful,” Jim said, smilin
g his hesitant, love-sick smile.

  “Bah, mi amigo! As long as you are satisfied.” El Jefe threw himself down on the couch and sighed heavily. “Esperanza, come here and help me forget my cares.” He patted his lap.

  Esperanza willed her reluctant legs to carry her towards her tormentor. When she sat down on his wide thigh, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her face toward his. He left a trail of gentle kisses down her neck and across her collarbone. She tried to still her anxious breath as she waited for the rebuke she was sure would come. When he pinched her hard in the stomach, it was all she could do to keep from crying out.

  “Make sure you don’t embarrass me again by not being ready to receive guests,” he whispered as he kissed her behind the ear. “You’re lucky he’s so besotted with your sister.”

  Esperanza followed El Jefe's gaze across the room to where Jim had sat down next to Gloria on the couch. He had taken her hand and was gazing into her face as he talked to her. It looked like he was telling her about his day. The teen was smiling encouragingly, looking at him as though she found every word fascinating. Esperanza smiled with a glimmer of satisfaction and relief to see her sister playing her part so well. But the performance only made her hatred for their captor burn that much hotter.

  “Get me a drink, chica,” El Jefe said as he stood up, pushing her off his lap. “And bring it back to your room.”

  Esperanza continued to watch her sister and her admirer while she uncorked a new bottle of wine and poured the garnet liquid into a bowl-like glass. Jim’s long absence had apparently done nothing to dim his infatuation. Esperanza strained to hear their conversation.

  “So it was a long day,” he said. “And all I could think about was coming down here to see you.”

  Gloria smiled, fixing him with her luminous eyes.

  “God, you are so beautiful,” the man said, bringing her hand to his mouth and kissing it fervently. “A beautiful angel.”

  Esperanza didn’t dare linger longer and risk El Jefe's wrath. As she walked down the hallway, she heard Jim say hesitantly, “Do you think we could...”

  She shook her head in amazement at his almost gentlemanly manner. If she didn’t know better, she might think they were courting. She hoped fervently her sister could convince him to rescue her.

  When Esperanza opened the door to her room, El Jefe scowled up at her from the middle of her bed. He was propped up on her pillows, nestled under the covers. His clothes lay in a pile on the floor.

  “What took you so long?” he barked. Esperanza flinched and he chuckled. “Don’t worry, putita. I won’t bite. Come here and make me forget all about it. You know how cranky I get when you keep me waiting.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  El Jefe left, with Jim reluctantly in tow, several hours later. Esperanza waited until she heard the tires of their car crunching on the gravel drive before she knocked softly on her sister’s door and slipped inside the room. Gloria sat on the chair in front of her dressing table, gazing into the mirror. Esperanza sat down slowly on the end of the bed, trying to read her sister’s vacant expression. Had something gone wrong? She was starting to get really worried when Gloria met her eyes in the mirror.

  “I think it just might work,” she said, amazement reverberating through her hushed tones. “I told you I would try, but I didn’t really believe I could do it.”

  Esperanza’s heart started to thump with hope as Gloria swung around in her chair and fixed her wide, innocent eyes on her sister’s face.

  “You should have seen him! After he was finished, we lay in silence for a while. Then he asked me what I was thinking. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. I told him everything, just like we’d talked about.”

  Esperanza wanted to jump up and shout with relief. Could this really be the beginning of the end of her sister’s torture?

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing, for a long time. But he looked really worried. He frowned a lot. It scared me, and I finally asked him if he was mad at me.” Gloria paused and shook her head at the memory. “He put his hand on my cheek and said, ‘Never!’ Can you believe it?”

  Esperanza started to bounce up and down on the bed, her lips curling into an involuntary grin. This man was even more obsessed with her sister than she had imagined. Could it really be this easy?

  “And? Then what?” she prompted.

  “He said, ‘I had no idea.’ I really believed him. Is that stupid?”

  “No. I’m sure El Jefe hasn’t told the men how we got here or why we never leave. Not that most of them would care.”

  “Don’t be mad, but I didn’t ask him about paying off my debt and taking me with him. I didn’t want to go too far, too fast.”

  “No, of course that’s right. You do it when you think the time is right. Did he say why he hadn’t been here in so long?”

  “Yes, he said he’d been away on a business trip and then had some other things that kept him from coming. The way he said it made me think it was something with his family.”

  A shadow crossed over her sister’s face and Esperanza wondered whether they were making a huge mistake. They were hanging their hope on a man who was unfaithful to his wife and regularly abandoned his family to spend time with a woman he paid for intimacy. He was not a man anyone should trust to keep his commitments.

  But what choice did they have?

  “There’s something else.” Gloria said. She tucked her fingers under the collar of her sweatshirt and pulled out a thin gold chain with a heart-shaped pendant floating on the end. “He gave me this. He said that’s why he wanted to see me tonight. He bought it today and couldn’t wait to give it to me.”

  Esperanza shook her head in amazement.

  “I can’t believe it went so smoothly,” Gloria said. “Maybe it was too smooth.” The teen rested her chin on her arm, draped over the back of the chair, and began chewing on her lower lip.

  “No, no chula. Don’t think like that. You did really, really well. Now we’ll just have to wait and see. Did he say when he was coming back?”

  “No. He just said he would see me soon. And he kissed me so tenderly... If he’s always like this, I think I could easily learn to live with it. He’s so different than the others.”

  Esperanza nodded but didn’t say anything else as heavy footsteps came down the hall. She jumped when El Carcelero pounded on the bedroom door.

  “Time for bed. Lights out. Now.” His growl left no doubt that he would enforce his curfew with his fists if he needed to.

  Esperanza sprang up, gave her sister a quick, tight hug, and slipped out the door.

  Chapter 18

  Two days later, Kate sat hunched over her desk, clicking the top of a ballpoint pen rhythmically as she stared at nothing. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Miss Kitty’s broken body. She refused to believe the woman killed herself. She had no evidence to prove otherwise, but a gnawing certainty in her gut told her Miss Kitty’s death was just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. She couldn’t figure out whether Johnson didn’t want to see it or simply refused to because he didn’t think he could do anything about it. No one in the police department or city hall wanted another unexplained dead body spoiling the idyllic summer. Either way, Johnson seemed content to let it go. Kate couldn’t.

  “What are you so morose for?” Delilah Peters asked, sauntering over to Kate’s desk and stepping into her vacant stare. “Did you find out something about the layoffs the rest of us should know?”

  Kate sighed as she looked up at her co-worker. The crows feet around her usually bright hazel eyes seemed to have deepened in the last few months. Fear over the newspaper’s future weighed heavily on everyone. The never-ending budget haggling only made it worse. At this point, most of the reporters just wanted the axe to fall so the uncertainty would end.

  “No, it’s not that at all,” Kate said. “I’m just trying to decide what to do about a story. At least I think it’s a story.”

  “What does you
r gut tell you?”

  “I’m sure there’s a story there, I’m just not sure how to dig it out.”

  “Well, if it’s a good story, it’s worth pursuing. Any chance you’ll get scooped on it? Is anyone else sniffing around?”

  “No, it’s not even on the radar. That’s part of the problem. No one else seems to think it’s a story.”

  “I would trust your gut before I would trust everyone else,” Delilah said, smiling. “The best stories are the hardest to dig out. If it turns out to be a huge scoop, it might keep you from getting fired. If it’s a bust, at least going after it will keep you distracted from this mess. It’s a win-win situation.”

  “You’re right,” Kate said, grimacing. “I could use the distraction. Now I just have to figure out where to start.”

  Across the newsroom, Delilah’s phone started to ring. “Start where you left off,” she said as she scooped up the receiver and cradled it between her ear and her shoulder.

  Kate thought about Miss Kitty again. She said she used to have a special arrangement with the management at The Clipper, until this new pimp came in and took over the territory. And Slava was convinced someone was running a good-sized prostitution ring out of the hotel. But that wasn’t enough to start asking questions. She needed to see it for herself.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The lunch crowd at Franks had dwindled to just a few tables when Kate walked in and asked to speak to Slava.

  “But you’re too late for lunch and too early for dinner,” the waiter said as he came out of the kitchen and walked around the long mahogany bar toward her, wiping his hands on a towel. “And where is the doctor?”