The missing identity of that American had been plaguing Diego’s mind ever since they learned of the equinox’s significance. Now, that nameless face taunted his thoughts. Was he Acatzalan? Had Diego unknowingly turned the Equinox Killer away from the scene of the crime?
Diego had already checked the local car agencies for customers who’d rented silver Chryslers during the week of March 21st. He ended up with a two-page list of names and addresses that, once all other nationalities were removed, was whittled down to thirteen Americans. Only two of them were among the New Agers that were arrested, leaving him with eleven guesses. And even if the American’s name was among those still on the list, that still wouldn’t prove he was the Equinox Killer.
The list was practically useless. It was a crap shoot, but at least it was a shot.
Diego took a sip of his coffee as he continued along the street. He hadn’t yet swallowed the heat when he felt something hard press into his side.
“
Buenos días
, Armando,” a menacing voice growled low behind his ear.
The gun nudged a rib—a warning not to turn around.
“Get in the car.”
A dark-tinted
Lincoln
waited in a no parking zone nearby. As if on cue, the back door opened to an ominously dark interior. Diego was shoved inside where he found himself wedged between the gunman and a second who silently but swiftly wound a cord around his neck and drew it tight.
Diego reached for his throat but the gunman pulled his hands away. He heard his own air sucking down his throat, his lungs pulling for every ounce, and his lap was on fire from twenty-two ounces of spilled cinnamon coffee.
The car began to move.
“Agent Diego,
mi amigo
.”
A well-dressed man turned in the front passenger seat to face him. He was a small man.
What is it with small men this week?
His thinning black hair was oiled back, his toothy grin just as greasy. A blood-red carnation sprouted from his lapel.
Zedilla.
“Where have you been, Diego?”
Diego gasped, fighting for air. “I can’t…breathe.”
“But you can listen.” Zedilla turned back around and lowered the sun visor. He looked at himself in the small vanity mirror, then shifted it to get a better reflection of Diego.
“You see, I have this problem,” he said, licking his fingers and stroking them across his hair. His eyes remained on Diego.
“Your officers stopped one of my trucks last week. That truck was worth over two million American dollars. That’s a lot of
pesos
, my friend.”
Diego struggled for more air, but the cord pulled even tighter.
Zedilla was still watching him through the mirror. “The real stink of it is that while the AFI was seizing my shipment, a competitor drove right by,
no molestado.
Now, that doesn’t gain a lot of respect in my business.”
He gave his hair one last pat and flipped the visor back up. “And it violates the terms of our agreement.”
Diego felt nauseous and light headed. “It’s not—”
Zedilla turned around in his seat once again. His coal-black eyes seemed to penetrate right through Diego, as if probing for a sign of weakness. He leaned over the leather seat just a bit, tilting an ear in. “¿
Perdón?
”
“I can’t…”
Zedilla watched him for a moment more and then, as though bothered by a fly, casually flicked a hand in the air. “Let him go.”
The cord released from Diego’s neck and sweet air rushed into his burning lungs. The heat from his face was fading away with each strained breath when Zedilla reached across the seat and slapped him.
“I believe you were addressing me,” he said.
“It’s not my fault,” Diego gasped. “They assigned me to a homicide case.”
Zedilla looked amused. “So what, you’ve turned murder detective now?”
“For now. I have no control over the drug squads.”
“And yet, we still pay you.”
“I haven’t collected in three months,” Diego argued.
“But we’ve paid you still.”
Diego felt his anger mounting. A man like Zedilla might consider one payment sufficient for a lifetime of service, and anything above that might just as well be considered gratuity. Diego didn’t see it that way at all and they both knew full well the terms of their agreement, twenty thousand pesos for each month Diego diverted the AFI from the Zedilla cartel.
Regardless, Diego was powerless should Zedilla decide to change the rules in the middle of the game. The leverage that he had in directing the AFI straight to the drug dealer’s door was trumped by bribes distributed to all levels of enforcement authority. For all Diego knew, Regional Director Escaban, the pious crusader of justice himself, was probably bought off with Zedilla money. There was no chance Diego was going to win this argument, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“Nobody has touched you until now, have they?”
“Don’t play games with me,
compadre
. I expect to get what I pay for.”
“And you have. You’ve paid nothing recently, so you received nothing recently.”
Zedilla’s face turned sour. “
Para
el coche
!” he ordered.
The car swerved out of traffic and as soon as it came to a stop, Diego was thrown out onto the curb. He rolled with the momentum, half stunned and still feeling the sting of the cord on his neck. As he gathered himself, Zedilla rolled down his window and threw a wad of cash at Diego’s feet.
“Find a way to take care of my trucks, Armando,” he said. “Or I’ll find a way to take care of you.”
AFI Headquarters
Regional Director Carlos Miguel Escaban was fuming by the time Diego shuffled into his office. He pointed at the door with a stiff finger and the agent obediently shut it behind him. “Sit down, Armando,” he ordered gruffly, taking note of his agent’s unusually heavy saunter. Without so much as the defiant sneer Escaban had come to expect, Diego collapsed into a chair. His face was pinched as though distracted by laden thoughts.
“Where in the hell have you been?” Escaban pressed.
Diego stiffened like he’d just been pounced on by a pit bull. The agent’s jaw set like a steel trap as he tried to stare him down, but Escaban wasn’t fazed.
“I spilled coffee on my pants,” Diego explained. “I had to go home and change.”
Escaban wasn’t buying it. “Are you sure you didn’t sleep in this morning?” he asked. “I hear you had a late night.”
“¿
Como
?”
Escaban propped himself assertively over his desk. “Don’t play dumb with me. That New Age leader was found dead in his cell this morning and a guard says he saw you bringing him in around three this morning.”
Diego didn’t even blink. “
Sí
. I brought him in.”
“And just how did he get out?”
Diego shrugged. “He could have escaped any number of ways,” he said, coolly. “He was small enough to climb through a mouse hole.”
“Don’t get smart with me. I know all about those tricks you played during the PJF days.”
“Do you?”
“
All of them
.”
Diego crossed his arms. “If that’s so, then why do you bother to keep me on this case? I’m better off working the drug cases.”
Escaban understood exactly where Diego did his best work. He may have taken over the
Federal District
six months ago, but that didn’t make him ignorant of his agent’s history. He knew Diego came out of the PJF. He was also aware of the former agency’s corruption, the very reason it was restructured in the first place.
It may have been the degenerate nature of Diego’s former employment that tainted Escaban’s original impression of him. Regardless, there was something about the man that just didn’t set right. Maybe it had something to do with Diego’s hollow eyes. His lips were as thin as the moustache that never seemed to fill in, giving his expressions a coy appearance. That, matched with Diego’s “take it or leave it” attitude, lent a sly impression of a gambler assured by the cards hidden up his sleeve. Escaban wondered just what kind of game Diego might be playing.
“I don’t keep you because I approve of your tactics,” Escaban said. “I keep you because you can be just as effective without them.”
Diego didn’t offer a response. He simply watched and waited as Escaban stood and slowly paced around his desk. He stopped between Diego and the desk, keeping his back turned. He didn’t want to admit to his agent that he needed someone who knew how to get things done. Despite Diego’s wretched actions—which he’d never been able to prove until the death of Citlalpol—Escaban knew that it might take such deplorable efforts to bring in his nephew’s murderer.
“I want this Equinox Killer,” he said wearily. “I can feel him slipping away with each day that goes by.”
Escaban could feel the murderer slipping away with each suspect they released. In truth, he had nothing on the New Agers. It was strikingly clear the group was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. The AFI had held them far too long and to keep them any longer might stir protests from humanities groups, and Escaban could not afford that kind of attention. Not when his promotion to the
Federal District
was intended to bring justice in a judicious manner.
Escaban slammed his fist onto the desktop and spun around. “Dammit, Diego!” he roared. “Citlalpol was the man I’ve spent the past two months looking for. We hadn’t finished questioning him and now you’ve hauled off and beat him to death!”
“He resisted arrest and I did what I had to do to bring him back into custody.”
“Somehow I doubt that.” Escaban paced before his desk like a lion trapped in a cage. “Citlalpol knew the Equinox Killer and he would have led us to him given a little more time.”
Diego didn’t appear the least bit troubled. “You still have twenty or so New Agers in custody,” he reasoned in that slithery tone of his. “Use their leader’s death to get more information out of them.”
Escaban crossed his arms. “A scare tactic, huh?”
“
Sí
.”
“Don’t you think spending two months in this hell hole has been tactical enough?”
Diego shrugged. “We might have found your killer by now if you’d just let me work things out on my own instead of sitting in that damned interrogation booth. Hell, a ten-year-old could have taken the notes I got. I should have been spending that time out in the field.”
Escaban hardened his glare. “Look here, you bastard. I don’t need your kind of interference when it comes to the handling of prisoners.”
“As I recall, I wasn’t the one who asked to be assigned to this case,” Diego said. “
You
stuck me here.”
“Don’t go thinking for a minute that your insolence will send you back to the drug cases. I’m keeping you on the Equinox Killer whether you like it or not. But if you pull another stunt like this I’ll not only have your job, I’ll throw your ass in a cell myself.”