by Leigh Jones
While he talked, Amanda’s eyes grew wider and wider. Her red lips parted in a silent exclamation of shock and horror. When he was done, she clamped her hand over her mouth and sank back to the couch. For what seemed like a long time, the only sound in the room was the loud ticking of a grandfather clock Johnson hadn’t noticed before.
The jarring ring of a telephone broke the silence and made them both jump. Amanda looked over her shoulder toward what Johnson guessed was the kitchen. If that was her husband, the last thing Johnson wanted her to do was answer it.
“Mrs. Finney?”
Her head snapped back around, her eyes still wide.
“Do you think my husband killed this girl?”
“I don’t know what happened to her. All I know is that she’s dead, and she was wearing the necklace your husband bought.”
Amanda looked down, picking at the hem of her skirt while she thought. As the alarm faded from her face and she regained some of her composure, Johnson’s heart sank.
“But you said he told you it was stolen,” she finally said. “That seems entirely possible.”
Johnson shrugged. Amanda’s features had settled back into the mask of confidence and detachment Johnson first noticed in her driver’s license photo.
“When did you talk to him? Does he know you’re here, talking to me?” she asked.
“I stopped by his office this morning and then came here. I didn’t tell him where I was going.”
“Is my husband a suspect?”
“I suppose at this point, I would consider him a person of interest.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes and looked hard at him. After a few seconds, she stood abruptly and strode to the other side of the coffee table, putting some distance between them. Johnson stood reluctantly.
“In that case, detective, I’d better not say any more. You need to leave.”
Johnson didn’t try to stop her when she spun around and marched down the hall toward the front door, her heels clicking with displeasure. He thought for a moment he had seen genuine fear in her face when he told her about the dead girl. She believed, at least briefly, in the possibility her husband might be a murderer.
Had sincere doubt or a deep-seated instinct for self-preservation changed her mind?
At the end of the hall, she held open the door, her foot tapping with impatience. When he reached her, he held out his business card. She stared at it dismissively before finally reaching out and taking it between her thumb and index finger.
“I understand your desire to protect your husband, but if he’s involved in this in any way, you need to think of your safety and your own future, not just his.”
She opened her mouth to respond but then clamped her lips together firmly without saying a word. Johnson stepped across the threshold and heard the door click softly closed behind him. He hadn’t succeeded in convincing her that her husband was guilty of a crime. But he had planted seeds of doubt. He was sure James Finney would have some explaining to do when his wife got ahold of him. If he didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear, maybe she would give Johnson a call. If not, she’d already told him more than enough to propel the investigation forward.
He was pretty sure when he left Finney’s office that the businessman knew something about the dead girl and how she ended up on Channelview Drive. Now he was convinced. He would get a warrant for Finney’s financial records, to see if he could establish a pattern of visits to the island. That should be relatively simple, if not expeditious. Depending on what he found, he might have enough to bring Finney in for a formal interview. The first question he planned to ask him, the question he would have asked Amanda Finney if she hadn’t thrown him out: Who were the other men involved and what did they know about the dead girl wearing this necklace?
Chapter 30
Kate’s eyes had popped open that morning at six a.m. She’d stayed up well past midnight the night before, trying to weave together the strands of the unsolved murders. By the time she slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep, she’d convinced herself she was just one step away from untangling the knot that tied them all together. She wasn’t sure what woke her so suddenly. But as she lay in bed, she felt a lightness she hadn’t known for months: hope. She dressed slowly, savoring her coffee with anticipation. The day seemed full of promise.
Kate walked into the newsroom just after eight. It was deserted, as she expected. She drank another cup of coffee in peace and read through her daily batch of two dozen emails. The other reporters trickled in shortly after nine. Everyone was curious about the case. Kate had a hard time convincing them she didn’t know anything more than what was in the morning’s newspaper.
Shortly after ten, her phone rang. She snatched up the receiver, hoping to hear Johnson’s voice on the other end.
“Miss Bennett? This is Father Tomás, at Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
“Oh… hi.” Kate cringed at the obvious disappointment in her voice.
“I’m calling you on behalf of Muriel Costa.”
Kate sucked in a breath and sat up straight.
“Muriel has some information she would like to share with you,” the priest continued. “Could you meet us at the church in about half an hour?”
Her heart started to pound hard.
“Of course. Is there anything I should know before I get there?”
“No. But bring your notebook. I’ll let Muriel explain the rest.”
Kate’s head swam as she slowly hung up the phone. She’d left her last meeting with Muriel Costa convinced the widow knew more than she was willing to admit. Had she finally decided to come clean? If so, why was she calling the newspaper and not the police?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Twenty minutes later, Kate pulled up outside the church. A bright fall sun shone in a cloudless sky. It was cool but not cold, the kind of day that put everyone in a good mood. Even the salty breeze smelled fresh. Kate walked up well-worn stone steps to the church’s tall wooden doors. A colorful stained glass scene of a lion and a lamb sparkled above the arched entrance. She took a deep breath before stepping inside.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust. The church was warm and quiet. Peaceful.
“Miss Bennett, thank you for coming,” Father Tomás said, walking down the aisle toward her. His face was serene but serious. He motioned for her to follow him toward the front of the sanctuary.
When they were about half way down the long row of pews, she spotted Muriel Costa, sitting in the middle of the second row. She was looking up at the large cross hanging above the altar. As they got closer, she looked down at her lap. The priest stopped just in front of where Muriel was sitting, motioning for Kate to take a seat in the pew next to her while he walked around to the front row and sat down toward the far end. He was close enough to hear what they were saying but not intrude.
Kate trembled, her nerves overpowering her resolve to stay calm. The weight of this interview pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe. This case had consumed her thoughts for months. She was finally about to get some answers.
She sat down gingerly on the pew about six feet from Muriel. The widow’s eyes remained fixed on the rosary in her lap, the beads twisted tightly around her fingers. They sat in silence for several moments. Muriel finally sighed deeply and looked up.
“The most important thing you need to know is that my husband was a good man. He loved me and his kids. He only wanted to do right by us. He just made some bad decisions.”
She looked at the priest, who nodded encouragingly. Kate slipped her notebook out of her purse, pulled a pen out of the spiral binding, and flipped it open. Muriel looked back and smiled wryly when she saw the blank page.
“Write that down,” she said.
Kate’s cheeks flushed and she bit back a caustic response. Muriel sighed again and tugged at her rosary beads.
“We were not expecting another baby when I found out I was pregnant again. We were excited, but Julian was worried about how we were going to pay for
diapers and everything else. Things were tight, even though he had a good job. He had his mama to look after, too.”
Muriel wiped away a tear that had gathered at the corner of her eye. Kate’s throat started to tighten.
“You already know his friend Ricardo Peña. He knew how to make money. It didn’t matter whether it was legal or not. Julian tried to talk him out of the worst stuff. I think he succeeded about half the time. But Rico still managed to get himself in trouble. For the last year, he’d been pretty clean, at least that’s what we thought. One night he came over to have a beer with Julian after dinner. I heard them talking while I was cleaning the kitchen. Julian told him about the baby and how worried he was. Rico said he knew of some extra work Julian could pick up at the dock. He said he could hook him up.”
Muriel looked over at Kate briefly and waited for her to stop writing before continuing.
“He told Julian a few longshoremen were working with a group that was smuggling illegal immigrants onto one of the cruise ships and taking them to Houston where they could start new lives in America. All Julian had to do was help transport them from the dock to a warehouse nearby, where they would be put in a van and driven off the island. It seemed simple enough.”
Kate’s hand flew across the narrow page of her notebook, her marks barely legible, even to her. As she scribbled, frantically trying to keep up with the widow’s narrative, her mind whirled around the pieces of the puzzle she already had, trying to figure out where they would fit.
“Julian knew smuggling people into the United States was illegal, and he worried about getting caught. But we don’t look at immigrants like you probably do. We understand why people will do anything to come here. And when they get here, they work hard. It’s not like they’re looking for a handout.”
Muriel paused and shot Kate a defiant look. Kate met her eye and nodded. She understood.
“So even though it was wrong, it wasn’t like he was selling drugs or anything. He felt like he was helping people. And we needed the money.”
The widow swallowed. Tears filled her eyes again. Anxiety hardened into a knot in Kate’s stomach.
“It’s not like the immigrants came in every week or anything. It was maybe about once a month. A couple of crew members on the ship would sneak them off, hidden in luggage carts. They were drugged, which Julian thought was strange. But one of the other guys told him it was for their own safety, so they didn’t risk giving themselves away. The groups were small, two or three, and they were always young women. Julian didn’t think anything of it at first. Lots of young people want to come here for a better life than what their parents have back home. But then one day he heard the other guys making crude jokes about them and where they were headed. Julian started to get suspicious.”
Tears trickled down Muriel’s cheeks. Without saying a word, the priest handed her a box of tissue and took his seat again at the end of the pew. He must have been familiar with the story, but his furrowed brow and sad eyes told Kate it was just as hard to hear again.
“Julian asked Rico about it. He tried to blow it off, but Julian insisted. At first, Rico claimed the smugglers got the girls jobs as nannies and housekeepers. Julian didn’t believe him. Rico finally admitted they thought they were coming to work good, honest jobs, but they were headed for the strip clubs in Houston. They were drugged so they wouldn’t ask any questions or try to escape before they got there. He said they just had to work for a few months to pay off their debt to the smugglers, then they were free to go. Julian didn’t believe him. He told me later he couldn’t imagine what those girls had to go through.”
Muriel paused as the constant flow of tears turned into quiet sobs. Kate blinked back her own tears. The story grated across her soul with a raw, scarring sorrow.
“Julian told Rico he wouldn’t do it any more, that he was through. At first, Rico tried to reason with him. Then he got really angry. He told him the crew wouldn’t just let him leave. He said if Julian tried to do anything stupid, me and the kids would be in danger. … He was stuck.”
She looked at Kate, the sorrow in her face underscoring the family’s helplessness.
“So, he never said anything. He was too afraid. He told me the other guys had started to stare at him at work, just to let him know they were watching him. He knew then that Rico told them what he’d said about wanting out. Rico sold him out. His best friend. For Julian, I think that was the worst part of all. They were like brothers.”
Muriel ran her fingers over the cross on her rosary, as though touching it eased the pain of the betrayal. She took a shuddering breath.
“A few weeks later, the next group of girls came in. Three of them. Everything went just like always. But when they met the men at the ship, they realized one of the girls had escaped.”
Tears flowed down Muriel’s cheeks. They careened off her jaw and down her neck, wetting the collar of her sweatshirt. She didn’t bother to reach for a tissue, as if the pain of the memory paralyzed her.
“They went looking for her and finally spotted her running toward Fish Village. They planned to grab her, put her in the van, and take her back to the warehouse. One of the guys gave Julian a gun and told him to point it at her to scare her, so she wouldn’t try to keep running, or scream. He’d never held a gun in his life.”
Kate strained to understand the widow. Her tears made her voice thick and the words slurred together.
“Julian told me he wasn’t even thinking when they pulled up next to her and shoved him out of the van. He just wanted to grab her as quickly as possible before someone saw her. But she struggled and fought. The gun went off ...”
Muriel buried her face in her hands and sobbed, rocking back and forth. Father Tomás came around and sat on the other side of her, rubbing his hand between her shoulder blades until the sobs became shuddering gasps. She looked at Kate with pleading, bloodshot eyes.
“He was devastated. You have to believe me. He came home that afternoon and just lay in my arms and cried. He took a few days off work. He was sure the police would come for him. I think he almost wanted them to. The guilt, it consumed him. Rico came over two days later and told Julian the police had no idea what they were dealing with. They had no way to tie any of them to the girl’s murder. He told him they were just going to lay low for a while and everything would be ok.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw the priest shake his head sorrowfully. Muriel’s voice had started to sound hollow, as though telling the story had wrung every last drop of misery from her body.
“But Julian couldn’t live with himself. He planned to turn himself in. He came to Father Tomás first. They talked all night. I think Rico must have known, must have followed him. I don’t know if he’s the one who ambushed Julian the next morning on his way home or if he called one of the other guys. But I never saw him alive again.”
Kate’s gut twisted when she thought back to that early morning crime scene. Muriel’s inconsolable grief was seared into her memory. But something still didn’t fit. Why would Muriel let her husband’s killer go free if she had the power to help catch him?
“Why didn’t you tell the police?” Kate demanded.
Muriel stared at Kate with round eyes and slightly parted lips. She shook her head.
“I was terrified. Don’t you see? They killed Julian to make sure their secret stayed safe. You think they would have spared me, or my kids? The only reason we’re still alive is because I kept my mouth shut.”
Overwhelming sadness enveloped Kate. One bad decision after another. Most were small steps of error. But they had laid a path to desperation and ruin.
“So why come forward now? And why are you telling me and not the police?”
“I am going to tell the police. We’re going to the station as soon as we’re done here,” Muriel looked at Father Tomás, as if for reassurance and strength. “I wanted to tell you the story first because I don’t know how much the police will say once it all comes out. And I don’t k
now whether I’ll be able to talk then. I don’t want people to think Julian was just another bad guy. That he was some cold-blooded killer. It wasn’t like that. He was a good man. I want you to make people understand. He was a good man.”
Kate nodded. Readers might not sympathize with Julian Costa’s decisions, but she would do her best to make sure they felt the desperate situation he found himself in, even if it was a mess of his own making.
“Aren’t you still afraid?”
Muriel nodded slowly, as though she was realizing anew what she was about to bring down on her head.
“Yes. But I can’t keep looking over my shoulder every day. And I don’t want anyone else to die. I thought it was all over after you found out what was happening at The Clipper. I had no idea they had started to bring girls there, but since Rico was involved, I’m sure it was all part of the same operation. And now another girl has turned up dead. How many more?”
“But what about your kids?”
“Father Tomás arranged for one of the deacons to take them to stay with his family in San Antonio. They’ll be safe there until this is all over. And hopefully I’ll see them again someday soon.”
Kate blinked to force back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. Muriel Costa was willing to sacrifice her own life for the sake of justice. Most people would never know that kind of bravery.
“I keep thinking about that girl who washed up near Channelview Drive,” the widow said. “I wonder if she was one of the other two who came in with … the girl Julian…”
She trailed off as if she couldn’t bear to say to the words again.
Kate frowned. “Didn’t they just get sent to Houston like the others?”
“I don’t think so,” Muriel said, shaking her head. “When Rico came to talk to Julian … after … he said they were staying here. The boss had something special in mind for them. He said they were very beautiful.”