Dead Heat (22 page)

He considered, then nodded. “Keep me in the loop. If you get any vibes that there’s something off, call it in. If she knows anything about where Jaime Sanchez took the girl, we will interrogate her here. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

She didn’t release her breath until she left Juan’s office.

She went back to her desk and called Jennifer Mendez, relieved that the social worker picked up her phone and was amicable to a meeting.

Lucy signed out and drove to Child Protective Services, which was a good thirty minutes outside the city. But it gave her time to think and figure out how to interview the woman without Jennifer knowing she was, essentially, being interrogated.

Lucy parked in visitors’ parking and walked around to the front of the building to check in. Jennifer came out for Lucy immediately. “Can we walk?” she asked.

Lucy hesitated, then agreed. “Sure.”

“It’s going to be hot this afternoon, but right now it’s beautiful, and I need to get out of the office.” She pushed open the glass doors and led Lucy to three benches under a canopy of trees. Smokers used the place, but it was surprisingly clean.

Jennifer lit up a cigarette, took a long drag, then put it out in one of the sand-filled pots. “I’m quitting,” she said, “but it’s not easy, so I don’t want to stay here. Too tempting.” She started walking again, along the perimeter of the parking lot, shielded by trees. By the worn dirt, it looked like the path was well used.

Lucy asked, “Do you remember a boy named Richard Diaz?”

Jennifer stopped walking and turned to face Lucy. “I thought you were here about Bella.”

“I didn’t say that on the phone.”

“I assumed.” Her brows dipped in concentration. “Richard Diaz? That’s the boy you were talking about yesterday at the briefing.”

“He was murdered. We identified his body this morning.” Lucy waited a beat, trying to read Jennifer’s face. She looked wholly confused.

“You were his caseworker.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lucy handed Jennifer a printout of Richard’s file. She stared at it for a long minute, then tapped the bottom.

“I inherited this boy from someone who retired last year. I never even met him.”

“You didn’t remember that he ran away six months ago?”

“Runaways are not unusual. I—I let him slip through the cracks.” She stopped walking and stared at the paperwork. “I know this house—I try not to place kids there anymore. I didn’t like them.”

“Do you have a say?”

“Not usually, but I’ve learned to manipulate the system. It helps that I used to be part of it.”

She didn’t say it with anger or resentment, just a statement of fact.

“Did you know that he and Michael Rodriguez were acquainted?”

“No. I mean yesterday I listened to everything you and Agent Quiroz said, but I didn’t know then that this boy was mine. I’m truly sorry. When Maggie retired last year, I inherited half her wards. Because of budget cuts, we couldn’t bring on another counselor, and because I was new, I didn’t have as full a plate as the senior staff. But it was a lot to absorb at one time. I can look at my notes and see if I have anything that might help.”

“I would appreciate that,” Lucy said.

Jennifer flipped the pages of Richie’s file, slowly shaking her head. Then she tapped a handwritten note. “I wrote this. I remember this case.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s an internal code, but I added my own shorthand. It’s coming back to me. Richie ran away several times, always went back to his mother. He had a very mature sense of obligation to her. I never met him, but after he ran away I talked to his foster parents who said he often visited his mother’s to make sure she had food, clean up after her, check in. The woman is a drug addict, he was removed by the courts because she couldn’t take care of him or his siblings. She didn’t abuse him—that was his stepfather—but she didn’t feed him, she didn’t clothe him, she didn’t make sure he went to school or had his vaccinations or do anything a mother is supposed to do. She didn’t protect him. But…” Her voice trailed off.

“But he loved her.”

She nodded. “That was the sense I got. The system isn’t perfect. When he ran away, I was certain he went to her apartment. I checked a half dozen times over the next two weeks, but he never showed up. She wasn’t helpful, either.”

Jennifer closed her eyes. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”

“He was murdered, Jennifer. A month ago. At about the same time Michael Rodriguez was taken prisoner by Jaime Sanchez.”

“I don’t understand what this all means. Is Richie dead because of Sanchez? The same man who kidnapped Bella?”

That’s what Lucy thought, but she didn’t say it.

Jennifer sat down. Right where she was, in her pretty blue dress, on the grass under an elm tree. Lucy sat next to her.

“I try, every day I try to make lives better for kids who have lost all hope. You couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have everything you know taken from you. Even though it’s usually bad, often unsafe, it’s familiar. And then it’s gone. You’re put in a house with people who don’t know you, who pretend to care about you or, worse, pretend you don’t exist.” Jennifer glanced at her. “You have no idea what it’s like to have no hope.”

“You don’t know me, Jennifer.”

“Jenny.” She closed her eyes. “I had a wonderful childhood and then it was taken away. I saw an underbelly I had no idea in my perfect childhood even existed. Parents who abused their kids. Drug addicts, child molesters, kids who at fourteen were just as hard and violent as the people who spawned them. I had to try to stop it. And sometimes, I win. Sometimes, I get a victory. But mostly? I get shit. I get kids who are shuffled from good homes into bad because beds need to be found. Kids who are split up from their families because a foster home can only take one, not all three.”

Can only take one, not all three.

Very specific. Very personal.

“I failed that boy. I didn’t follow up. I didn’t know he was in trouble, but I should have. Now he’s dead and no one cares.”

“I care and you care,” Lucy said. “I need your help.”

“Why does the FBI care about the dead kid of a junkie and drug dealer?”

“Why do you?” she snapped. “You had a chip on your shoulder when I met you Sunday, and it’s still there.
We care
. It has to be enough.”

Jenny looked at her for a long minute, took a deep breath, and said, “What do you need?”

“You’re already helping by working with us, but the faster we get those files the FBI requested, the faster we find Michael. I believe that.”

She nodded. “I can do that.”

*   *   *

DEA Special Agent Brad Donnelly had wasted the entire morning. He’d gone back and forth between two Sanchez lowlifes trying to get one of them to break. Nicole had taken a stab at each of them as well, but nothing. They weren’t talking, they weren’t helpful, and one even went so far as to say he hadn’t seen Sanchez in over a year.

“We’re not hanging with the same
amigos, comprende?”

No comprende
. Gangs didn’t just change loyalties. If these two assholes weren’t talking to Sanchez, that meant they were lying or Sanchez didn’t trust them.

He’d also planned to interrogate again the five gangbangers who’d been at the warehouse, but three had been released on bail. Brad had gone through the roof when he heard. Their lawyers had gotten their bail set low, claiming that they didn’t know there were guns and drugs in the basement; they were just hanging out with friends. Brad didn’t buy that for a minute. But the two who’d fled through the tunnel had their bail set higher, and they were still in jail.

He buzzed Nicole. “Hey, can you set it up for me to interview the two pricks from the warehouse? Guiterrez and Hansen.”

“Do you really think we’re going to get anything more from them?”

“We’ve got nothing, I’m willing to go at them again.”

“Okay.”

He’d just hung up when his private cell phone rang. It was an unknown number. This was the line he used for snitches.

“Hello,” he answered.

“It’s Dixon. Ten minutes, usual place.”

“I’m in the middle of a huge investigation. I can’t drop everything right now.”

“It’s related.”

He hung up.

Brad holstered his gun and ran out of the office.

CHAPTER 17

It took Brad twelve minutes to get from headquarters to the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. Brad didn’t know what Dixon did for a living, if anything. He suspected the old man was an illegal immigrant, but doubted that he was breaking any other laws.

They’d met shortly after Brad started in the San Antonio field office. He’d busted a meth distribution network and during the cleanup, Dixon had approached him.

“You didn’t get them all.”

The old man handed him a slip of paper with an address and walked away.

The address had led to another meth house, bigger than the first, and the arrest of the ringleader of the operation. It was a good bust all around.

Brad didn’t know if Dixon was the scrawny Mexican’s first name, last name, or a fake name. He didn’t even know how old the man was, or where he lived. He dressed like a bum, but had expensive leather shoes. His face was like well-worn leather, pinched around the faded, irregular scar that ran from his temple to the middle of his cheek, as if he’d been hit with a broken bottle; his teeth were straight and white. Brad would have thought they were dentures, except he’d seen a flash of fillings when Dixon first sought him out. The man spoke fluent Spanish and fluent English, but had no accent.

He had to be over sixty, but he might have been eighty and Brad wouldn’t be surprised. Once, Brad had followed him into a modest middle-class neighborhood to see if he could figure out where he lived and how he always seemed to find verifiable information. But the old man had lost him, and Brad wondered if the entire excursion had been a wild goose chase.

Unlike most of Brad’s snitches, Brad had no way of contacting Dixon except through an anonymous email. Brad had traced one of Dixon’s responses to a public library and, on occasion, staked it out, but had never seen Dixon come or go.

More often, Dixon called when he heard something valuable, even before Brad put the word out. Brad suspected that he was the grandfather or great-grandfather of a gangbanger, someone who seemed invisible to others, but heard everything. Or maybe he hung out at a bar, sipping draft beer and listening. Dixon would never say. Probably to save his life.

Brad liked him. He’d offered money for information, but Dixon always refused. So Brad stopped offering.

Dixon was sitting on a bench feeding the ducks. The day turned out to be nice—eighty degrees, clear sky, low humidity. As soon as Dixon spotted Brad, he started walking down one of the trails. Brad followed.

“I almost didn’t call you,” Dixon said.

“I appreciate it.”

“You might not.” He walked a few steps and when they were out of view of any other passersby, he stopped and looked up at Brad. Brad towered over him, but Dixon looked neither intimidated nor scared. “I only heard part of a conversation, but because there’s a missing girl, I decided to tell you.”

“Where?”

“That’s off-limits. And it wouldn’t matter, he’s not there.”

“Who’s he?”

“The man you’ve been after.”

Brad’s heart raced. “Whatever you have.”

“McAllen. All I heard was that he left in the middle of the night, with the little girl, for a safe place in McAllen. If I knew more, I would tell you.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. But I’ve seen him from time to time.”

“Where?”

“I can’t. Mr. Donnelly, you’ve never asked me to say more than I can. If I told you where I heard, where I saw, the wrong people would know I talked. I must go.” He turned to leave.

“Why do you do this? Why risk it?”

He stopped, didn’t look back. “If not me, who?”

*   *   *

Brad went immediately back to the DEA office. The San Antonio field office was small, an offshoot of the main Houston office, so he wasn’t surprised when his boss, Assistant Director Samantha Archer, was standing in the lobby talking to Nicole.

“Brad, I didn’t know you went out,” Nicole said. She gave him an apologetic look over Sam’s shoulder.

“I just needed fresh air.”

Sam said, “Brad, a minute please.”

He nodded, because what else was he going to say? “Your office or mine?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Your office means I’m in trouble. Mine means I’m not.”

She almost smiled. Then she said, “Yours is fine.”

He led the way. The office wasn’t large, but his office was on the opposite side of the suite from Sam’s.

Samantha Archer had the title of Assistant Director, but she was also a good field agent. She only had five years’ seniority on him, but he was a year older—he’d spent time in the military before college, and she’d joined the DEA right out of college. She’d always had her sights on being in charge, and with her brains and political savvy, she’d be up for a major national appointment within the next five years.

He was her Achilles’ heel, he knew, and he used it whenever he could. Maybe in some ways he resented that she’d been quickly promoted. It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve it, it was because she was both a great agent
and
cautious, but she’d forgotten that sometimes in the field, dirty work was necessary.

Too many times they’d played fair, and their friends and colleagues had been slaughtered.

Drug cartels never played fair.

“Do you need to step away?” she asked as she closed the door.

“No.” He sat behind his cluttered desk and picked up a stress ball. Squeezed.

She stared at him for a minute. She had worry lines around her crystal-sharp blue eyes, a few strands of gray in her sunstreaked blond hair, but she was still as beautiful as when they’d first met. And smart. He had a thing for smart blondes. “I understand why you’re obsessed with Sanchez, but—”

He bristled. Except when they tried to play shrink with him. “I’m not obsessed. No more than you.”