Cause of Death (Det. Annie Avants Book 1) (18 page)

Sunday, 26 August 2012, 1:00 PM

Noura pulled into the parking lot off L Street that was open on weekends for visitors to the County Jail.  She didn't enjoy passing the information she'd received about Tito's arrest to her family, but it was necessary.  They didn't normally read the local papers and they hadn't yet seen any of the newscasts when she had gone to their home the previous Friday evening.

The fact that she had helped Tito's friend, Manolo Alcantar, avoid conviction for robbery in one of Annie's cases haunted her.  She had her cousin, a police officer with the Bakersfield Police Department, hide the crucial piece of evidence so it wasn't available during the trial.  This led to the verdict of not guilty.  Noura's guilt at instigating this was immense.  She loved her little brother, believed him when he said that Manolo Alcantar was innocent, and asked for her help.

Now, she wondered if he was truly innocent of the previous crime.  Before she agreed to help Tito, she checked Manolo Alcantar's record and found nothing.  He was barely 18, so any juvenile records were sealed and not available to her.

She walked up the stairs and signed in at the window.  While she was there, she put $50 on Tito's "books" so he could buy 'extra stuff' while locked up in County.

She sat down in the bleak waiting room.  No one else was there.  A couple of people came in to put money on someone's books, but no one else waited to visit.  Maybe more people would come after church, she didn't know.

Finally, the deputy at the window called her name and she entered the visiting area.  The visitors were kept separate from the prisoners by a wall with windows and spoke to each other over handsets.  No physical contact was allowed.

She sat down to wait.  After a couple of minutes, a deputy brought Tito in and stepped back outside the door. 
He looks like hell
, she thought.

"Hey, Sis."

"Hey, yourself, what the hell is going on?  How did you get yourself in this mess?  What were you doing in the East Side Crips territory?  Do you know what will happen if you go to jail after being there when your little friend killed a Crip?"

"Hey, we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sis, don't get your panties in a snit."

"And you were in the middle of a robbery?  What's wrong with you?"

"They took something of ours when they came to Southgate.  We wanted it back.  Things just got out of control, ya know?"

"I want to ask you something, and I want a straight answer.  Did Manolo do the robbery that I helped get dismissed?  Don't lie to me, brother."

"Yeah, yeah, he did it.  I lied to you, but you're so gullible you would believe anything."

Noura sat there, stunned.  Her little brother, whom she helped raise and loved more than any of her other siblings, had taken advantage of that love and she committed an unpardonable sin - tampering with evidence.  Not only could she lose her job, but she could go to jail, as well.

She couldn't sit there and look at the smirk on his face any longer and got up to leave, barely able to control the tears that formed in her eyes.

"Hey, Sis, where're you going?  Is your fancy lawyer boss gonna get me outta here?"

"No," she answered curtly.  "You can make do with a Public Defender.  I don't know you anymore.  You're not the little brother I loved so dearly.  You can rot in hell for all I care."

On that note, she turned and left.

She sat in her car while her heart silently broke into pieces.  She loved Tito but she had to open her eyes and see what he had really become.  For ten years he ran with the gangs but she closed her eyes to what he did.  The rest of her family was no different.  He was the big shot of the family and came to family gatherings with his gold jewelry and flashed his money around.  He never brought other gang members to the family home and he didn't visit her ever at her home where she lived with her husband and baby. 

She knew she couldn't change him and so she just accepted him and loved him the way he was.

However, that was over.  He had used her and that was unforgivable.

Monday, 27 August 2012

Annie, Tom, and Mike Everett stood on the lawn in the Catholic cemetery where Gabriela was being interred.  They had traveled to Roseville that morning to attend the funeral mass for Gabriela after her body had been released by the morgue and sent to her family in Roseville.

Not only were they there out of respect for Gabriela, but to observe discretely who else attended.  Mike was able to covertly take pictures of most of the people there and they would review them later.

"It's so sad," Annie said.  "All these years the family has been wondering what happened to Gabriela and this is the outcome.  At least they have closure now."

"I didn't see anyone who looked suspicious," Tom said.  "Of course, the funeral wasn't announced in Bakersfield so the perp wouldn't have known it was today.  There will probably be a notice or news blip about it today or tomorrow.

"Did you notice anything, Mike?"

"No, and there aren't that many people here, so it was easy to check each person out.  It wasn't hard to get pictures of most everyone as they arrived for the funeral mass.  I don't see anyone new here at the cemetery, either.  This is where I would expect the perp to show up if he was going to come."

With a heavy heart, Annie walked with the men back to their vehicle and they headed home to Bakersfield.

"When is the funeral mass for Carmen scheduled?" 

"Friday at 2:00 PM," Annie said.  "The wake is the night before, but like Mike said, the most likely place for the perp to turn up is at the interment, not the wake or funeral mass."

"I'm going to make a couple of calls from my cell phone.  It's already 4:00 PM and we won't be back in Bakersfield for a long time.  I want to set an appointment with Dr. Lydell Goodkind and I need to update the Sarge," Tom said, as he pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket.  "I don't want to put this off any longer."

Tom opened his notebook to Dr. Goodkind's number.

"Could you connect me to the office of Dr. Lydell Goodkind?" Tom asked the person who answered the phone at Modesto Junior College.

"Certainly, I'll be glad to.  Whom may I say is calling?"

"This is Detective Tom Weston from the Robbery/Homicide Unit of the Kern County Sheriff's Office in Bakersfield, California."

"One moment, please."

"Hello, Detective Weston.  This is Dr. Goodkind.  What can I do for you today?"

"Doctor, I'm hoping to set up a meeting with you to discuss a perplexing case we have that may turn into a serial."

Tom brought the doctor up to speed on the two murders and Maria Ortiz, who was still missing.  By the time Tom finished, Dr. Goodkind was interested in helping any way he could.

"I'll tell you what, fax or email what you have now so I can review it tonight.  I don't have a class tomorrow and plan to take care of some personal business in Fresno.  If you're available, we could meet in Fresno for lunch, say at noon at Baja Fresh on North Blackstone, and I could give you my impressions. This way you won't have to travel all the way to Modesto or I won't have to go to Bakersfield."

"OK, but I'm on the road right now and probably won't be back in my office until after 7:00 PM.  Is that too late?"

"No, that will be fine.  I have a lot of work to do and will wait here for your materials."

"That's great.  Give me your fax number and the address of the restaurant and we will meet you there at noon tomorrow."

Once Tom got off his cell phone with Dr. Goodkind, he called Sgt. Collins to bring her up to speed on what had happened that day.

"What do you plan to do next?" she asked.

"We have a conference call set up for Wednesday with Dr. Kavi Bhakta of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta.  He's their resident expert on all sorts of spiders and the results of their bites." Tom said.

"Tomorrow we're going to take everything we have, along with the Murder Book - as slim as it is - and meet with Dr. Lydell Goodkind from the Police Academy at Modesto Junior College.  He teaches a course in Police Procedure and is a retired FBI Profiler - a Criminal Psychiatrist.  We'll meet him in Fresno tomorrow at Noon.  I'm going to send him what information we have as soon as we get back into Bakersfield.  He'll look it all over tonight, do some research, and see what he can come up with.

"We won't have the autopsy reports for a while, but we have discussed both cases in detail with Doc Richards.  He's given us an estimated time of death for each woman," Tom added.

"Did the Arvin Police Department send over their initial missing persons report and follow up for the second victim?" Sgt. Collins asked.

"Yes, and their investigation is ongoing, even though the homicide is ours since the victim's body was found outside Arvin city limits.  They're working out a time line to try to determine where she was and what she was doing during the seven days prior to her disappearance."

"Our main concern right now is Maria Ortiz, who has been missing for five days.  As soon as Sarah returned with the sketches provided by the Abeyta sisters of the man Maria was last seen with, she had the PSO give copies to all the deputies and they are circulating them throughout the County, but to no avail," Tom said.

"That's good.  OK, keep me posted.  We need to get these solved ASAP before we have a panicked city on our hands.  Actually, we already have concern within the Hispanic community and we need to stop it before someone decides to find the killer on their own and take action."

"Right, the last thing we need is a vigilante group, but I can't say that I would blame them.  These are their young daughters who are the victims and that hits close to home," Tom said, as he hung up the phone.

Monday, 27 August 2012, 8 PM

Annie was somewhat surprised when she returned home and had a message on her answering machine from Noura.  Noura said to call her immediately, that she would like for the two of them to meet for dinner as she had something important to discuss with Annie.  Normally the two women had lunch a couple of times a month, usually on a Friday, so this was very unusual and Annie was curious.  She called Noura and they made arrangements to meet quickly at The Olive Garden on New Stine Road since they were only open until 10:00 PM on Monday.

When they were seated, Annie could see that something was troubling her friend.  She noticed lately, whenever she and Noura were together, that Noura seemed more somber, like something was on her mind.  A couple of times she got the impression that Noura wanted to talk to her and share what was bothering her, but she never did.  Annie thought perhaps Noura was having problems with her marriage and didn't press her.

The waitress came and brought bread sticks and a big bowl of salad and took their orders.  Noura just ordered raviolis and didn't pour over the menu as she usually did when they ate at The Olive Garden.

Finally, their food arrived and as Noura picked at her food Annie decided enough was enough and said straight out, "OK, Noura, what's on your mind?  Something has been eating at you for a while.  You need to just spit it out."

Tears formed in Noura's eyes and her hand trembled slightly.

"I don't know how to tell you this, Annie.  I have valued our friendship for many years, and I hate to see it fall to pieces."

"Oh, come on, Noura.  What could be so terrible that it would end our friendship?"

"I'm the one who had the evidence hidden in the Alcantar case so the jury would return a verdict of not guilty."

"What?" Annie couldn't believe her ears.  "Why on earth would you do something like that, Noura, and jeopardize your job and your reputation as a Paralegal?"

Annie was numb with shock.  Not only did Noura break the law, she caused a guilty man - in Annie's opinion - to go free.  Now, he was back in jail for committing another crime, this time killing someone.

"There's a lot about me that you don't know, Annie.  I have a brother, Tito, who has been involved in the gangs for many years.  I don't talk about him or let any of my friends meet him.  He's involved with the Southside Bakers in Southgate, along with Manolo Alcantar.

"I love my little brother so much and he's always been able to twist me around his little finger.  When he came to me, crying, that Manolo was innocent of the robbery you were investigating, I believed him.  He begged me to help him get his friend freed.  I went to the County jail and talked with Manolo.  He, too, seemed sincere.

"I didn't know what to do.  We were defending Manolo Alcantar and I read everything on the case.  I saw that the knife was in evidence and it seemed to be the only physical link between Manolo Alcantar and the crime scene.  I thought if the knife disappeared, and couldn't be entered into evidence, the case would be too weak.

"Another thing I've never talked about with anyone is that I have a cousin who is a police officer with Bakersfield PD.  Mexican families are very close and loyal to each other, so I talked to Carlito and asked what he thought we could do to help Tito's friend.  I mentioned the knife in evidence and speculated that if it couldn't be found, the case would probably fall apart.

"I let Carlito come to the conclusion that perhaps he could go into evidence, pretending to look for something or whatever, and hide the knife so it just looked like it was misplaced when they found it later.  It wouldn't matter because the chain of custody of the knife would have been compromised.

"I know it was stupid.  Normally uniforms aren't allowed back into the evidence room, but he timed it just right so that the evidence clerk was busy and he just told her he would only be a minute, that he just was going to check on the number of an item he put into evidence a few days before.

"She said he could go back and while he was there he hid the knife."

Annie sat there dumbfounded.  Tampering with evidence was not a good thing.

"When did he put the knife back?"

"Well, actually he didn't have to.  When the knife came up missing at the trial and it was decided the chain of custody was broken, the clerk did a thorough search of the evidence room and found that it was 'misplaced'.  She let the Court know and put it back where it belonged.  She didn't connect my cousin's visit to the misplaced evidence.

"I'm so sorry, Annie.  Tito and Manolo are in County and Manolo has been charged with robbery and murder.  I confronted Tito and he admitted that he lied to me about Manolo's innocence for the previous trial.  He laughed at my vulnerability to do whatever he wanted.  I know you will have to report this, and I'm prepared.  I gave notice at work on Friday.  I'm ready to face whatever happens next.  Mitch didn't want me to leave, but I told him the whole story, and he didn't see any other alternative."

"I don't know what will happen, Noura.  I still can't believe that you did this.  What were you thinking?"

"Annie, sometimes blood is thicker than water and I loved my little brother more than anything.  That's the only excuse I have.  I will say, though, that after the fact I felt guiltier for betraying our friendship than for getting Manolo Alcantar off.  Of course, my actions are responsible for the murder of an innocent man.  If Manolo had been in jail, this wouldn't have happened."

"Wasn't the man he murdered a Crip from the East Side Crips?"  

"Yes, they have an ongoing war and it was stupid for Tito and Manolo to even be in their territory.  Apparently the man they killed had stolen something from the Southside Bakers and the dumb asses went over there to get it back."

Annie couldn't finish her meal, she was so overwhelmed by the news of Noura's actions. 

"Just go home, Noura.  Let me talk to Jesse and Tom and see what they suggest.  We'll be in touch."

With that, the two women paid their checks and left the restaurant, both saddened by the situation.