Not of This Fold

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  I met Gwen outside and got into her car. I’d left no note at home. Nothing. I’d even turned off my phone so I wouldn’t be bothered with questions while I was out.

  “What are we going to say to him?” I asked.

  “He must have known something about the robberies. We can bring it up with him.”

  “But that won’t necessarily get him to talk,” I pointed out. “He’s probably afraid, just like Jesus and Bertran were.”

  “Then we have to remind him that Hope can’t be trusted,” Gwen said. “Why should Carlos do anything for a man that evil? Especially something as huge as prison time. We can get him out, and we’re the ones trying to get justice for Gabriela, whom he loved. He has to trust us—we’re on his side in every way, and we already know what’s going on.”

  This seemed reasonable to me, so I nodded. Gwen had made some bad mistakes here, but so had I when I’d first gotten drawn into a murder case. She was on a steeper learning curve, and I was proud to be helping her, though I was sure Gore and Kurt might have something to say about that “help.”

  At the prison, we went through the routine security checks and eventually got to Carlos.

  He’d had a haircut since our last visit, but it was awful. It looked like he’d done it himself—maybe put a belt around his head and shaved everything under it, then snipped the rest haphazardly with scissors.

  “How are you?” Gwen asked anxiously. His eyes were red, and he looked jumpy.

  “I don’t know if I can survive in here,” he said softly. “It’s so much worse than I thought.” He glanced around, then crossed his arms.

  I felt a wave of pity for him, but selfishly wondered if his despair might make him more forthcoming.

  “We want to understand what happened to Gabriela, Carlos. Now more than ever. We talked to some of your friends at Celestial Security,” Gwen said, subtly introducing the subject of the robberies.

  He held still for a very long moment. “What do you mean?” he asked warily.

  “Jesus and Bertran told us what was going on.”

  Carlos tried not to react, but his eyes widened.

  “We know you only did them because Bishop Hope forced you to,” I said.

  “He didn’t force us,” Carlos said after a long moment.

  What did he mean?

  Gwen said, “But he still paid you to do them. He told you which houses to rob, and when. He gave you all the information you needed. And then when the police got involved, he threw Jesus and Bertran to the wolves.”

  What? This was another guess, but it did make some sense. I looked to Carlos for a reaction.

  He began fidgeting, his fingers tapping incessantly on the table. This seemed like another one of those tells Kurt would have pointed out. He was coming up with a lie, I suspected.

  “Did he pay them for their time in prison? Or was him hiring their lawyers enough?” Gwen asked.

  I remembered that Bertran hadn’t been given his job back, but Jesus had. Why the discrepancy there? Was it just because Bertran had been connected with more of the robberies?

  “And then Gabriela was murdered, and Bishop Hope got you to confess to it because he said your life would be harder otherwise. Isn’t that right?” Gwen was trying to make eye contact with Carlos, but he looked away deliberately.

  She was forgetting the leverage Hope held over him. I wondered if more people than Carlos were under threat of losing something here. I waited and asked, “At the Pro-Stop, you were arguing with Gabriela about the robberies, too, weren’t you?” Gwen said.

  “I was arguing with her about how stupid she was being,” Carlos admitted.

  I glanced up at the camera in the corner. There was probably a videotape of us talking to Carlos right now, but would that audio be enough to use against Hope? I didn’t know, but I was sure Hope could easily get out of it with only this testimony against him.

  Carlos jerked up and tried to look away again, but when I caught his eye, I could see his tortured pain. I resisted the urge to pat his hand or shoulder, to comfort him somehow. I knew we weren’t allowed to touch the prisoners. The rule had been drilled into us when we signed in.

  “I told her that she needed to stop pressing him,” he said softly. “She wouldn’t listen to me. She called him twice while we were there, insisting he come talk to her.”

  Wait a minute. All my thoughts about getting Carlos to talk about what Hope held over his head vanished. How could Hope have been at the gas station? He’d claimed to have a rock-solid alibi. Could that have somehow been faked? I glanced at Gwen and realized she was as surprised as I was by Carlos’s statement.

  “Hope says he wasn’t there,” I pointed out. “That he was at a business dinner.”

  Carlos went still. “Ah, yes, he was. I forgot.” He shifted uncomfortably.

  “Carlos, why are you so afraid? What’s he threatening you with?” I asked.

  “You can tell us,” Gwen said. “We can help you.”

  But as I stared at Carlos, it struck me. It wasn’t about a threat. It was about a promise. “What did he say he’d do for you if you took the fall for him? Did he promise to take care of your family? Your mother? Your sisters?” I asked, guessing blindly.

  Carlos flushed.

  “Once the trial is over and you’re in prison, do you really think he’ll follow through on that? Think about what you know about him. He only does what’s in his own best interest. If you can’t give him any more, he’ll think of you as a bad investment,” I said.

  Carlos didn’t say anything, but I thought we had him.

  “Carlos, think of Gabriela,” Gwen said, going in for the final blow. “Think about what she would want. If Hope killed her, she wouldn’t want you taking the blame for it and getting him off the hook. She’d want you to help her. You say you loved her.”

  And that did it.

  “I did love her. So much,” Carlos said emphatically. “I wanted to marry her, but she kept putting me off. We were—it was wonderful when we were together.”

  “And Hope ruined all that. You could have gotten back together with her, had a life with her. She wouldn’t have gone back to Luis, not after everything he’d done,” I said. And although it was too late, I hoped that was true.

  “He took all of that from you. You have to tell the police what he did. Everything,” Gwen finished.

  Carlos put his hands on the table in front of him. “Nothing I say or do will bring her back.”

  “But you didn’t kill her, did you?” Gwen said breathlessly. “You were there to try to protect her from Hope because you knew he was dangerous, weren’t you? Hope was the one who wanted Gabriela dead, not you.” She was practically pulsating with excitement.

  Carlos folded his arms across his chest and frowned.

  I was loathe to say anything. Gwen was doing so well. She was so close.

  “Carlos,” she said urgently. “Help us stop him from getting away with this. Think of her children. Don’t Lucia and Manuel and Amanda deserve to live in a world where they know what really happened to their mother?”

  At the mention of Gabriela’s children, Carlos started to weep.

  “It was Hope’s idea, wasn’t it?” she asked. “He wanted to meet at the Pro-Stop. He told you to talk her into it.” I remembered Gabriela’s panicked phone call on Halloween, her repeated mentions of Hope.

  Carlos wiped at his eyes and gave a short nod. “It was close enough to the meeting he was at,” he said.

  I felt a strange sense of relief, a cold sensation spreading through me. Of course! He’d planned it all out carefully. A man like him certainly would. Gabriela had pressed him by getting President Frost involved in the bogus embezzling charge, and for revenge, he’d arranged for her death.

  “So he came there. After you were caught arguing on the gas station camera?” Gwen asked. Her
voice had smoothed out now, more in control. She sounded like Detective Gore again.

  “Yes,” Carlos said with resignation.

  “And he killed Gabriela?” Gwen pressed.

  There was another long silence.

  Finally Carlos said, “He acted like he always does. Smiling, pleasant, nodding along. Like he was going to do exactly what she asked, give her the money. He even took out his wallet. Then he reached for her, and it happened so quickly I didn’t know how to stop him.”

  “What happened so quickly?’ Gwen asked.

  I was horrified at all of this, but I couldn’t turn away.

  Carlos spoke dully, as if he were trying to distance himself from the events he’d seen so clearly. “He put his hands on her and held her throat so she couldn’t breathe. She tried to kick at him, but he was too big, too tall for her. He pushed her back against the wall and then to the ground.”

  I didn’t want to hear any of this. I didn’t want to imagine it happening, but I couldn’t help it. I’d been at the Pro-Stop. I’d seen the wall he was likely talking about, away from the lights of the convenience store, away from the camera. God, had Hope planned things down to that detail? Had he driven to the Pro-Stop and scoped out the right place for a murder hours, even days before?

  I thought of the man who’d met us at Celestial Security and had walked us through the building, emphasizing every detail he wanted us to see, pretending to answer our every question. I thought of the man who’d invited Kurt and me to dinner, and his little boys all in a row. This was a man whose life was perfectly manicured, a man who was always wearing a mask. I’d had that one glimpse behind his façade and convinced myself I’d imagined it. But I hadn’t. What I’d seen had been the truth.

  “Are you willing to testify to this in court?” Gwen asked quietly, exhausted now, her fidgeting gone.

  Carlos looked around the room, as if afraid that Hope would find out about this conversation. “Who would believe my word against his?” he asked. “And what about my mother and my sisters? Who will take care of them while I’m in prison?”

  It seemed to always boil down to that—about reputation, and about race. Hope was a bishop. He was a white Mormon in a land of white Mormons. I wouldn’t have believed how much that mattered before seeing it this starkly.

  “You have to tell the truth, Carlos. You have to get justice for Gabriela. And for her children. If you go free on the robberies because of this information, you can be the one who’s there for your mother,” I said.

  Carlos gathered himself enough to say, “What about all the people who depend on Bishop Hope? If he goes to prison, how will they pay their rent and buy food for their families?”

  Had he thought of this himself? I doubted it. More likely it was another pressure point Hope had used to get him to confess.

  “There will be a new bishop, Carlos,” Gwen said. “And people will find other jobs, maybe even better ones. Gabriela depended on you to protect her, but instead, you stood there while Greg Hope strangled her to death. You watched her die. Are you going to walk away from justice for her now?”

  She was harsher than I could have been, but this was probably what had to be said.

  “I can’t,” Carlos said.

  “So you’re going to stay in this horrible place because you’re afraid of the criminal who killed the woman you love? I thought you were a different man,” Gwen said.

  Our words were awful, but they were a last resort. We didn’t have much time left.

  But it didn’t work.

  “I’m sorry,” Carlos said. He stood up and knocked on the door to ask the guards to go back to his cell.

  I was speechless, shaking as we walked out of the jail and to the car. Gwen sat at the steering wheel with tears pouring down her cheeks.

  “We have to get him,” Gwen said when she had regained some measure of control.

  We did, though I didn’t know how. Greg Hope could not continue to act as a Mormon bishop, or a Mormon of any kind. He couldn’t be part of my religion. I had to do everything in my power to push him out, to make people see him as he really was.

  Chapter 38

  “I’ll text Detective Gore, and maybe she’ll agree to meet about what Carlos told us,” I said to Gwen as she drove back toward our neighborhood. I had no idea how likely this was, or how helpful it would be in building any kind of case against Hope as a murderer.

  “Make sure she understands it’s important,” she said.

  I worked on composing a text that might pique Gore’s interest:

  I visited Carlos Santos in jail today. He has information I don’t think you know about Greg Hope, Celestial Security, and Gabriela Suarez’s murder. There was a lot more going on the night he and Gabriela were at the Pro-Stop than an argument about their relationship. He may even recant his confession. I just thought I should give you a heads-up.

  Good enough. I sent it off. I hoped she was even getting these.

  “Brad working the night shift again?” I asked as Gwen pulled up in front of her dark, empty-looking house.

  She nodded. “Want to come in?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, since I wasn’t particularly eager to go home and explain myself to Kurt.

  We got out of the car and she locked it, leading me inside.

  I came around here occasionally, and it looked the same as always. The green curtains matched the textured green-flecked carpet, and there were some nice prints on the walls, including some of Brian Kershisnik’s angel paintings and Kirk Richards’s black Eve portrait, as well as a photo of Gwen and Brad at the Jordan River temple, where they must have been married.

  To my surprise, Gore responded almost immediately, saying she wanted to talk to us about both the visit with Carlos and the phone message from Gabriela, which she hadn’t seemed to think was important before.

  “Have her come here?” Gwen said after I’d called her and explained.

  I texted Gore Gwen’s address. She didn’t complain about coming to us, and said she’d be there in fifteen minutes. Did she finally think we had useful information for her?

  “Do you want some cookies?” Gwen asked.

  “That would be lovely,” I said before realizing what she meant. She brought out a package of Keebler Fudge Stripes. I dutifully took one and worked on it for the next few minutes, but I couldn’t help comparing them ruefully to Anna’s homemade cookies—or my own.

  Detective Gore was true to her word and arrived just a few minutes later. She was wearing far more casual clothes than I’d expected, just jeans and a sweatshirt, but then again, I’d called her on a holiday weekend about a case she’d thought was closed.

  “Linda, nice to see you again,” she said as she came in, looking at me and not Gwen.

  It seemed like she meant it. Mostly. Her expression was kind, but wary.

  “Do you want to know what Carlos told us about Gabriela and Celestial Security?” I asked.

  “Do I?” she asked.

  “Carlos admitted that he and Gabriela were at the Pro-Stop to meet with Greg Hope. The three of them argued about a robbery scheme she had encouraged him to go along with at Celestial Security, and about her blackmailing Hope with the threat to expose his involvement in it.” It could have been ruinous for Hope if that had come out, even if he’d been able to prevent legal consequences.

  But Detective Gore was clearly unimpressed. “That’s it?” Gore said. “I already know about the history behind Celestial Security and Bertran Lopez and Jesus Gonzalez.”

  I hadn’t even had to name them. She really had done her research thoroughly; I should never have doubted her.

  Gore went on, “It’s unpleasant, but unless I have more than suspicions about Hope’s involvement, someone who has an email or a phone message directly from him ordering a robbery or offering a reward for it, I don’t see how I can pro
secute him. We’ve looked through all Gabriela’s emails and everything on her phone, but we couldn’t find anything incriminating. Hope holds his cards close to his chest.” She shook her head and stood up, ready to leave.

  “Wait! Carlos said that Hope killed Gabriela. And he was there!” I didn’t know if he’d be willing to repeat this in court, but I had little doubt after hearing him that it was true.

  Gore stared at me, waiting.

  I hurried to explain the rest. “Hope was the one who set up the meeting place at the Pro-Stop. He must have planned it somehow so that Carlos and Gabriela would be seen together there. He knew where the security camera was and made sure he was never caught on it.” I was desperate to make her pay attention. I didn’t know these things for certain, but they seemed logical assumptions to make, given what Carlos had said.

  “More importantly, Carlos saw Hope murder Gabriela. He can testify against him in court,” Gwen added.

  Gore looked sadly at us and shook her head. “The only witness to this is a man who confessed to the murder himself? I can’t see how that would hold up in court. If he’d said it in the first place, it might have been worth something.”

  I felt empty at her words. So a murderer was simply going to walk free, his position in the church and his company intact? I’d always trusted Gore, believed that if we got her the truth, she’d be able to exact justice. But it seemed I’d been wrong.

  “Hope is a powerful man. Carlos was afraid of him,” Gwen said, unwilling to give up. “Wouldn’t that explain his not having spoken up sooner?”

  Gore held her breath for a long moment, then let it out and shook her head again. “There are a dozen witnesses who place Hope at a business meeting at the time of the murder. They’re all going to be much more reliable witnesses than Carlos Santos, who already confessed to the crime himself. The video footage and the existing relationship between Carlos and Gabriela are too damning.” She clearly wasn’t happy about it, but she seemed to shrug, as if to ask, what could she do?

  “Are you absolutely sure about the alibi?” I asked, trying one last gambit. “If these witnesses for Hope have a financial interest in his company, they might have a reason to lie for him. Do you have security footage of him at this meeting? Any real proof he was there at the exact time of the murder?”