Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) (28 page)

Fuentes didn’t say
anything.

Emilia was quicker
than Villahermosa and it all came together almost too fast for her to realize
what she was saying. “Fuentes and Inocente did it together,” she gasped.
“Tricked Morelos de Gama and you, too.”

“El Machete took
the kid to squeeze Morelos de Gama.” Villahermosa still didn’t get it.

“And he turned to
his partners for help to get his kid back,” Emilia said.

“The kid got
back,” Fuentes said. Sweat ran down his face. “Nobody got hurt except that
driver who didn’t know anything, anyway. El Machete didn’t know the
difference.”

“Yes, they did,”
Emilia managed. “Ruiz, the driver, had some before the ransom got delivered.
They know.”

Villahermosa
finally caught on. He swung the gun from Emilia to Fuentes, who stepped back.
The other men had disappeared and the door in the far wall was partially open.

“Where’s the real
money, Fuentes?” Villahermosa’s voice was flat.

“She’s lying.”
Fuentes realized his mistake. He backed up a pace. “Just trying to save her own
skin.”

“Inocente needed
money,” Villahermosa wasn’t the smartest but he understood the situation now.
“Clean money to pay off El Pharaoh and you and everybody else. He wasn’t making
enough this way. Too many partners.”

“Too many like
you,” Fuentes sneered. “You’re so thick. Fausto never told you shit.”

“Did you kill
Inocente and take it all for yourself?” Villahermosa asked.

“I didn’t kill
him,” Fuentes spat. “He was
mi patrón
. I owed him everything.” He spread
his hands, one still holding his own handgun. “Maybe you did, eh? You and
Morelos de Gama. Probably fucked him first, too. You like boys, don’t you?”

Villahermosa
squeezed the trigger. The sound exploded in the small space and his hand moved
back with the recoil. The shot left a thumb-sized hole in Fuentes’ forehead.
Fuentes sank to his knees, then pitched sideways into one of the workbenches,
sending it crashing into a ventilation pipe. The pipe wobbled and came apart at
a seam. Metal venting cascaded over the concrete floor, clattering loudly.
Villahermosa threw up a hand as sheet metal tumbled onto him.

Emilia dove for
the door as piping clanged to the cement floor. Villahermosa shouted but she
didn’t stop. She got through the door, slammed it shut behind her, and groped
her way up the slope, feeling the roughness change texture as the new cement
gave way to the original. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she headed back
down the maintenance tunnel the way she’d come, feeling her way with one hand
on the wall. She ran as hard as she dared, legs pulsing with desperation.

There was a door
on the right side of the tunnel, closed with a long lever. Emilia shoved hard
on the lever and after a teeth-gritting moment of intractability it ground
upward and the door swung open. Emilia tripped up two steps and spilled into
the near lane of the Maxitunnel.

A car loomed,
honking its horn and spraying yellow light into her face. Emilia rolled to the
wall and the car tires went by at eye level. She clawed her way upright, clinging
to the hard concrete. The tunnel was dark, lit by speeding headlights and a few
fluorescent overhead lights set into the ceiling arching high overhead. The
bend in the tunnel meant she couldn’t see either end.

Emilia started to
run toward the Acapulco entrance, hugging the wall, feeling the rush of
oncoming traffic like a force field. Ten steps and she stumbled on an old soda
bottle and went down hard on one knee, narrowly missing being brained by the
side view mirror of a truck. She struggled upright, Kurt’s image again flashing
through her thoughts. She would die with regret in her heart if Villahermosa
caught her.

He did, catching
the neck of her shirt and hauling her back into the doorway she’d come through.
The door clanged shut behind him. A gun jammed into the back of Emilia’s neck.
Villahermosa said nothing, just marched her back down the tunnel toward the
workshop and its half-open door.

Emilia dragged her
feet but he was stronger and taller and forced the pace, his gun bruising hard.
And then they were both falling backwards, Emilia flailing as she went,
skinning her leg and arm against the rough tunnel wall. There was a clatter and
grunting and she saw Villahermosa reach out and Silvio was there, too, and the
two men were snarling and grappling like wild dogs, rolling on the floor of the
tunnel. Emilia could barely see them in the gloom and then she was caught up in
it, too, when something sent her tumbling to the ground in the confined space.
Her head banged against the tunnel wall and Emilia saw stars. She rolled down
the incline, towards the workshop, stopping spread-eagled and unable to
breathe.

The fight was
carried to her, desperate and grim. Emilia looked up groggily to see
Villahermosa holding Silvio in a headlock. Silvio grasped Villahermosa’s
forearm with one hand and flailed with the other to find Villahermosa’s face.
Both men were bloody. The whites of their eyes and Silvio’s teeth--bared in a
snarl of pain—were bright flashes in the darkness. Villahermosa opened his
mouth in a grunt of triumph. Silvio started to gag.

There was
something sharp under Emilia’s thigh. Her splayed fingers touched cold metal.
Rico’s gun. She staggered to her feet, pressed the gun against Villahermosa’s
eye, and pulled the trigger.

Chapter 27

Emilia kept it
together, but just barely.

“Officer
Villahermosa was operating undercover,” Chief Salazar said. His eyes flickered
from Emilia to Silvio sitting across from him, testing their reaction. “For
some time. Then yesterday you blundered in with an unauthorized surveillance
and we ended up with a mess at the tunnel, dead cops, and drugs in the
headlines again. The mayor’s not happy and neither am I.”

“We shut down a
major smuggling operation route through the city, a bogus business, and two
dirty cops,” Silvio said through gritted teeth. His arms were scratched, his
face was swollen on one side and his neck was mottled with bruises. He kept
rubbing one ear; the result of a temporary deafness.

“You’re forgetting
what I just told you about Villahermosa’s undercover work,” Salazar replied
sharply. “The same goes for the other detective.” He paused, as if the name
wasn’t familiar, then got it out. “Fuentes.”

Neither Emilia nor
Silvio replied.

“That’s it then,”
Salazar said. He leaned back, as if his acre of polished wood desk wasn’t
enough distance between the two sullen detectives. “The mayor wants closure. Do
you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Silvio
muttered.

Emilia nodded, not
trusting herself to speak.

She was tired,
sore, heartsick, and scratched up from the cement walls of the tunnel. Her
brain kept going back to the fact that Rico was dead, touching the thought as
if an open wound.

She’d woken early
that morning with no memory of how she’d gotten home after the fight in the
tunnel and the crazy chaos of cops and army that had crashed down upon her in
the following hours. Once she’d pulled herself together, however, she knew that
the only hope of protection against Obregon’s wrath was Chief Salazar. Silvio
had apparently had the same thought and they’d swiftly written a report as the
day dawned. But Salazar had been ready for them even before they were announced
into his office at midday.

Salazar put on a
pair of reading glasses that had been lying on the desk. He peered through the
half-moons at papers from an open file. The two detectives waited while he
licked a finger and turned to the next page. Emilia glanced at Silvio but the
senior detective had his eyes fixed on the wall. He appeared to be staring at
Salazar’s framed diploma from a police training course in Cuba.

Eventually Salazar
looked up. “You get the water company,” he said. “Go ahead and arrest the head
of the outfit. The usual charges. Make it stick.”

“Is that all,
sir?” Emilia said, her anger simmering. They’d sent Loyola and Ibarra to pick
up Morelos de Gama and the building materials engineer Marco Cortez Lleyva
hours ago.

“Silvio, you can
go,” the chief said. “Take a couple days off. See a doctor.”

Silvio nodded and
walked out without looking at Emilia.

Salazar closed the
file folder and threw down his reading glasses. “A partnership gone bad?” he
asked tiredly. “Villahermosa killed Inocente? Or Morelos de Gama?”

“Or El Machete,”
Emilia said.

“Can you prove
it?”

Emilia hesitated, trying
to figure out which side Salazar was playing after all. “Probably not,” she
finally admitted.

“We’ll close out
the Inocente investigation,” Salazar said. “I’ll give you three days to figure
out how.”

“Three days?”
Emilia asked.

“There will be a
much-publicized police funeral in three days, Detective,” Salazar said, his
voice pinched. “The newspaper accounts of it will carry a brief footnote
regarding the Inocente case. The mayor’s Olympic committee will be the next
day’s headline.”

Emilia opened her
mouth and nothing came out. It was all so ludicrous.

“So in three
days,” Salazar went on. “You’ll come back here and tell me how you’re closing
the book on Inocente. You’ll tell me first, Detective, because for once you’re
going to respect the chain of command.”

“You mean I
shouldn’t talk to Obregon?” Emilia heard herself say.
The man who makes you
jump like a spider on a skillet?

Salazar’s face
darkened. “Three days, Detective. After we talk, you’ll give my office a press
release, put something in the file, notify the family, and go back to being the
junior detective. Dismissed.”

Emilia stood up
and moved to the door. She felt old and broken.

“Too bad about
Portillo,” Salazar said from his desk. “He took care of you but he was a sloppy
cop.”

“He was a decent
man,” Emilia said.

“You’re a good
cop, Cruz,” Salazar said. “The kind that die young.”

He stood and
turned his back on her to look at something on the other side of his desk.

A paper shredder
ground out a symphony as she left.

☼

Morelos de Gama was
in the holding cell when Emilia got back to the station. Silvio, Macias and
Sandor were in the squadroom. The drawers of Fuentes’ desk were open and there
was a little pile of items on the top. Snacks. A clean tee shirt. An empty
notebook.

“Nothing,” Silvio
said in response to Emilia’s questioning look. He jerked his chin at Rico’s
desk. “We left you Portillo’s.”

Emilia dumped her
shoulder bag on her old desk and went to the coffeemaker. Not only would she
have to clean out Rico’s desk but she’d have to call his two ex-wives with whom
he’d stayed close. She poured herself some coffee, her back turned to the men.
The penis face photocopy was gone. “I saw Morelos de Gama,” she said. “How did
it go?”

“He was packed and
loading up his car,” Sandor said with a rough laugh. “Ibarra and Loyola are
going through his house. See if there’s anything there. Gomez and Castro are at
the plant.”

Emilia finally
turned around. “Think he’ll tell us anything about
el teniente
?”

“No,” Silvio said.
“We shut down the drugs but he won’t tell us anything. The lawyers are already
doing his paperwork. He’s got enough money to wrap it around him like a
shield.”

Emilia sipped her
coffee. “Salazar says the Inocente case is closed in three days.”

“Three days,”
Silvio said. “Generous.”

“At least we can
make some phone calls,” Emilia said. She put down the coffee mug and pulled a
cell phone in a silver case out of her purse. She put it on Silvio’s desk.
“Here. Villahermosa’s cell phone.”

Silvio grabbed up
the phone. “You’re shitting me, Cruz.”

Emilia shrugged.
“I don’t even remember taking it off him.” She studied Silvio as he stood
there, thick fingers prodding at the touchscreen. “You look terrible. You
should go home.”

Silvio looked up. Emilia
couldn’t read his expression, but for once there was no malice in it. “You’re
more fucked up than me,” he said.

“Food will help,”
Macias said.

Emilia shook her
head then sat at Rico’s desk as the other three detectives left the squadroom.
She cleaned out the drawers, finding little of value, and then made the calls
to his ex-wives, both of whom she’d met at least once. She fought tears with
each call, as she promised both that she’d let them know the funeral
arrangements.

Another cup of
coffee fueled her to go into
el teniente’s
office. She sat down behind
the desk, and pulled up the dispatch log. Stared at it until she realized that
all the entries were closed out. Nothing new had come in that morning. She
opened all the drawers except the one that was still locked, and removed the
few things she’d put into the drawers: files, bottles of water, a small bag
with toiletries. A roll of toilet paper.

The office was
cramped and airless. The walls receded and Emilia was back in the dark tunnel,
panicked and trying to run, knowing that Villahermosa was behind her. Cold
sweat seeped through her tee shirt and she found herself gasping. She went home
and fell into bed. Nothing was going to happen in three days.

Chapter 28

CeCe didn’t seem
surprised to see Emilia. The maid opened the door for her and Emilia walked
into the apartment. It was the same sterile white it had been before.

The maid looked
better, however. The open sores around her mouth had mostly healed into scars,
the new ones brighter than the old. She didn’t look to be in pain anymore.

“CeCe,” Emilia
said. “I’m still looking for the keys to Lt. Inocente’s desk back at the police
station. I never really got to look through his office here and I was wondering
if it would be all right if I looked.”

“I’ll ask la
señora,” CeCe offered.

“She’s at home?”
Emilia asked. The apartment was virtually silent.

“Yes. The
children, too. It’s summer holiday.” The maid left Emilia in the entranceway
and disappeared down the hall.

Emilia realized
that she hardly knew about school schedules any more. Alvaro’s son was too
young, she didn’t have friends with school-age children, and the children she
saw on the streets probably didn’t go to school at all.

CeCe came back a
few minutes later and led the way down the hall and through the breezeway.
Emilia was struck again what a fabulous apartment this was, with the rooftop
patio and the study tucked away from the rest of the house for maximum privacy.
A nice private place for Fausto Inocente to bring Villahermosa and Morelos de
Gama and stupid, gullible Rogelio Fuentes.

“CeCe,” Emilia
began. “You said that Lt. Inocente brought his friends here sometimes to watch
fútbol.
”

“Yes.”

“Was one of his
friends young with a thin face but handsome? Another was big and strong like a wrestler.”

“That one had no
manners,” CeCe said softly.

That would be
Villahermosa. Emilia wondered if he’d groped the maid or frightened her
somehow. “I know,” Emilia said.

CeCe bent her head
and unlocked the study door.

“Thank you, CeCe,”
Emilia said.

CeCe turned on the
light and left. Her soft footsteps disappeared down the hall.

The study looked
just the same. Emilia doubted anyone had gone in since she and Rico had left.
Emilia put her shoulder bag on the desk and sat in the swivel chair. His computer
had turned up nothing. She doubted she’d find anything relevant but hopefully
she would at least find the keys to the damn desk drawer at the police station.
The drawer wasn’t that big but she imagined finding all the real ransom money
in it nonetheless.

The desk yielded
almost nothing of interest. Mostly it was household accounts. The condominium
association sent regular updates about the building. They belonged to a sports
club and paid that bill on time, too. Ironically, the Inocentes got their water
delivered from Bonafont. There were no keys.

Emilia felt under
the desk for hiding places, then scoured the shelves above the desk. There were
no hiding places behind the big painting on the wall or under the cocktail
table.

The big mahogany cabinet
stretched to the ceiling and had four doors. Emilia found the usual supplies in
the bottom; printer paper, ink cartridges for the printer. She opened the top
doors. On the left side there were bottles of water--Bonafont again--as well as
extra bottles of tequila, whiskey, and a variety of sodas.

“Party supplies,”
Emilia mused aloud.

The right side
held some books on computer troubleshooting, several rolls of white toilet
tissue, a roll of silver duct tape, and a large pair of dressmaker’s scissors.
Cup hooks were screwed into the rear wall of the cabinet. Several keys dangled
from the hooks and Emilia scooped them all up and put them into her shoulder
bag.

She arranged the
odd mix of items back the way she’d found them. The toilet paper rolls reminded
her uncomfortably of Lt. Inocente’s sightseeing excursions to the detectives
bathroom. She looked around. There was no bathroom nearby. The toilet paper
rolls seemed out of place in this masculine place.

As did the duct
tape. She searched the room again, looking for something repaired with the
heavy silver webbing. The roll was halfway used up. The scissors bore traces of
a gumminess that had probably come from cutting the tape. Yet there was nothing
in the room that had been repaired with duct tape.

Emilia stepped to
the breezeway doorway, a roll of toilet paper in one hand and the duct tape in
the other. “CeCe,” she called softly. “Could you please come here?”

The maid appeared
in the hallway a moment later. She took one look at Emilia and blanched.

“CeCe, what’s the
matter?” Emilia asked.

CeCe’s her face
crumpled and she began to sob.

Emilia’s stomach
clenched with uncertainty. “CeCe, tell me what’s wrong.”

She steered the
maid into the study and onto the sofa, then shut the door behind them.

“It was me,” CeCe
said. “No more, I said, and then I hit him.”

Emilia left the
toilet paper and duct tape on the desk and sat by CeCe. “What are you telling
me, CeCe?”

“I hit him and he
died.”

“Lt. Inocente?”

“Yes.”

Emilia put her arm
around CeCe. “CeCe, what did you hit him with?”

“My fist.”

“CeCe, I know you
didn’t do that.” The maid could no more have crushed Lt. Inocente’s head with
her fist than she could have flown to the moon. “Why would you say this now?”

CeCe rocked on the
sofa, in her own private hell. “I did it. I killed him.”

“Because of toilet
paper and duct tape, CeCe?” Emilia asked quietly.

Emilia’s voice
seemed to cut through the maid’s misery and she looked up. “Every few weeks el
señor liked to . . . he liked to . . .” she faltered.

“He liked to have
sex with you,” Emilia said as evenly as she could.

“Yes,” CeCe
whispered. “He would wake me up and make me come in here. He would tape my
mouth so I wouldn’t cry and make me hold the roll of toilet paper and then he
would--.” Her face collapsed again and she cried silently.

“Do things,”
Emilia whispered. She tightened her arm around CeCe’s shoulders but couldn’t
control her own shaking. “Things that hurt.”

“He did things,”
CeCe said. She drew in shaky breaths. “The tape would take my skin when he pulled
it off.”

“How many times
did he do this, CeCe?”

“Many times.” They
were both speaking in whispers, huddled together on the sofa.

“Why didn’t you
quit, CeCe?” Emilia asked. “No job is worth that.”

“He said . . . he
said if I left he would . . . he would take Juliana. So I had to stay. La
señora is never here.” CeCe looked up at Emilia. “Juliana is so small. Who
would protect her if I left?”

“
Madre de Dios
,”
Emilia swore. What the maid had gone through was horrific.

“But he lied.”
CeCe gulped for air. “He lied and he took her anyway.”

“When was this?”
Emilia asked but she already knew the answer.

“The night he
died,” CeCe said.

Emilia kept her
arm around the maid. “But you’re not strong enough to have killed Lt. Inocente,
CeCe. He was a big man.”

CeCe sobbed anew.

Emilia was shaking
so hard her teeth were chattering. “The guard at the marina said he saw Lt.
Inocente that night. He said he saw him go out on the boat.”

CeCe kept crying,
rocking back and forth as she sat there.

“The guard is your
friend, isn’t he?” Emilia asked. “He lied for you.”

“Stop,” CeCe
pleaded.

“Did your friend
hit Lt. Inocente? He knew Lt. Inocente was hurting you and he hit him?”

“No!” CeCe shook
her head, still rocking, close to hysteria.

Emilia covered her
own eyes with her hand. Prade had said the murder weapon might have been
rounded. Possibly the flashlight. Maybe something thicker. Emilia felt sick but
she had to know. “Was it Juan Diego?” she asked softly. “Did he hit his father?
With a baseball bat?”

The air went out
of the maid and Emilia let her crying peter out. They sat in silence for a long
time. Finally the maid coughed and could talk again. “El señor had gone out.
Juliana went to sleep. Juan Diego stayed up to watch television. I went to bed.
Sometime, I don’t know when, el señor came back and took Juliana and brought
her here. Juan Diego heard noise and got up and saw his father--.” She sobbed
once.

“He saw his father
raping his sister,” Emilia supplied.

CeCe slumped
against Emilia. “She couldn’t call out because he’d taped her mouth, too. Juan
Diego shouted and tried to pull his father off. El señor was . . . was . . . in
back of her. But Juan Diego couldn’t make his father stop. So he put a bag over
his father’s head to make him suffocate and pass out.”

“When that didn’t
work he hit his father with his bat.”

“Yes.”

Emilia felt the
tears rolling down her own face. “Did you help him take the body to the boat?”

“Yes.” CeCe looked
at Emilia with swollen, reddened eyes. The scars around her mouth stood out in
sharp relief. “Juan Diego knew how to work the boat and he swam back after
making it speed away.”

Except that the
boat didn’t have enough gas in it to go very far,
Emilia thought. “Your
friend saw, didn’t he?”

“He was only
trying to help me,’ CeCe whispered. “He knew about . . . the way el señor . .
.” She couldn’t go on.

“And then both
children went to school the next day,” Emilia said. “As if nothing had
happened.”

“Yes.” CeCe’s
voice was thin. “Juliana bled for a week and her mother never knew.”

Emilia fought
against the bile in her throat and the heaving of her stomach. All this had
taken place while Maria Teresa had been at her charity event and then at her
lover’s house, drinking champagne and fucking the night away. Meanwhile her children--and
the woman who’d gone through years of hell to protect them--lived out a
nightmare.

“Does their mother
know now?” Emilia asked.

“No.”

“CeCe, come with
me,” Emilia heard herself say. If she stayed in Fausto Inocente’s office another
minute she was going to vomit.

She led the way
back into the main part of the apartment and knocked on the door that on her
previous visit CeCe had identified as belonging to Juan Diego. He answered
immediately and she opened the door.

The room was an
homage to Mexican and
norteamericano
baseball. The walls were busy with
colorful posters of baseball superstars. Shelves were loaded with the boy’s own
trophies. Several fabric pennants hung from the ceiling.

Juan Diego had
been sitting in a low-slung chair but he stood up when he saw Emilia in the
doorway.

“I’m Detective
Cruz,” Emilia said and showed him her badge. “We talked at your father’s
funeral.”

“I know,” he said.
His voice shook. “I know why you’re here.”

“You do?” Emilia
asked.

“No,” CeCe said
urgently. “I did it. Juan Diego, listen to me. I did it.”

“I hit my father.”
The boy was shaky but didn’t waver or step backwards. “CeCe didn’t do
anything.”

“I know,” Emilia
said.

“I hit him to stop
him doing it to my sister.” Juan Diego was crying now but stood tall. “She’s a
baby and he did that to her. Taped her mouth shut and raped her.”

A blur of white
got by Emilia and then Juliana was in the room, too, sobbing. She was a
beautiful miniature of her mother, with honey-colored hair and an expensive
white track suit.

Juan Diego picked
her up, the same way he’d done at the funeral. “She’s my sister. I’m all she
has. And CeCe.”

“Your mother . .
.” Emilia couldn’t even complete her sentence. The emotion in the room was raw
and all encompassing.

“What does she
care?” Juan Diego looked up from Juliana, his face fierce with the need to
protect his sister. “If she cared she would have been here. She should never
have let him touch either of them.”

“What is going
on?” Maria Teresa came out of the room she’d called her sitting room and
frowned at the little crowd gathered in Juan Diego’s room.

“Señora,” Emilia
said. Her chest hurt so much she could hardly breathe. It was taking everything
she had not to break down and sob, too.

Maria Teresa
looked startled to see Emilia and it took her a moment to place her. “Detective
Cruz, isn’t it?”

“We need to talk,
señora,” Emilia said.

“Have you gotten
my children upset again?” Maria Teresa demanded. “You’re like a witch who flies
into our lives and destroys everything.”

“We are going to
talk,” Emilia said loudly. She grabbed Maria Teresa by the shoulders and
marched her into the hall. She heard Juan Diego’s door close behind them.

Once they were in
the sitting room Maria Teresa struggled out of Emilia’s grip and tried to slap
her. Emilia blocked the hand and when Maria Teresa tried again Emilia smacked
her across the face, hard enough to send the woman to the floor.