Authors: Christopher Valen
“Then what was the connection?”
“I have no idea. I told you before that my father never knew …” she stopped speaking. Her lower jaw dropped and her eyes widened. “My God! You think Rubén Córdova killed Mendoza and my father.”
She sat back on the couch and stared straight at him. But he could tell by her glazed look that she was not seeing anything.
“I have no evidence to support that.”
She sat stiffly on the couch for a time before her eyes finally blinked and seemed to focus again.
“Please don’t be evasive,
señor
. Why else would you be asking me these questions about my father, Mendoza and Córdova?”
“There’s no sense in speculating, Miss Pérez. I’m still gathering evidence.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why would Córdova do this?” She took another drink of wine and ran a hand through her hair.
“Miss Pérez. It’s very important that you think about this carefully. How long had your father known Mendoza?”
“My father did not know him.”
“Mendoza’s card was in your father’s Rolodex.”
“I was close to my father. I knew all his friends.”
“What about your mother? Would she remember?”
“She already told you what I have told you.” The frustration was evident in her voice. “Besides, my mother is in no condition to answer more questions, Detective. My father’s funeral is in two days.”
“Could your father have known Mendoza in Mexico before he came here?”
“I do not know. It is possible, I suppose.”
“Where was your father born?”
“In Valladolid. But even if my father had known Mendoza years ago in Mexico, what could he have done that got him killed now? And what does any of this have to do with Rubén Córdova?”
Santana didn’t respond. But he intended to find out.
Chapter 8
W
ET SNOW AND FREEZING MOISTURE
from car exhaust coated Interstate 94 with black ice, and cars moved slowly along like novice skaters on a recently flooded rink. A large snowplow loomed in Santana’s rearview mirror. He could tell by its size that it was one of the new 30-ton Superplows that MnDOT had purchased. The trucks were loaded with sand and had onboard computers, guidance systems and video cameras. He considered pulling over and letting it pass, but he knew that once he got behind it his Explorer would be pelted with sand and salt, damaging the finish and possibly the windshield. He decided to take his chances on the slippery freeway. He accelerated, putting some distance between the snowplow and the SUV.
He found it difficult to focus on driving instead of his conversation with Gabriela Pérez. From the beginning of the investigation, he had believed there was a connection between Julio Pérez and Rafael Mendoza. Perhaps Pérez and Mendoza had known each other in Mexico, and that association had somehow started a chain of events that inevitably led to their murders. He needed to find out more about Mendoza’s background and how Rubén Córdova fit into all of it.
Santana took the County Road 18 exit south and followed the tire tracks made by previous cars for about a quarter mile. He turned left onto Fourth Street, drove down four blocks and turned onto a narrow road, which ran parallel to the river. More snow had accumulated here than on the well-traveled freeway. The Explorer muscled its way in four-wheel drive through ever deepening drifts before the road dipped slightly and the sheer weight and depth of the snow forced him to stop fifty feet from his driveway. He shifted into reverse, but the rear tires spun helplessly on the ice. When he tried opening the driver’s side door, it refused to budge. He envisioned the headlines in tomorrow’s
Pioneer Press
: DETECTIVE TRAPPED IN CAR FREEZES TO DEATH.
He turned off the engine and headlights. Sat in the darkness thinking. Noted that something or someone had shattered the bulb in the nearest streetlight. Finally, he decided to crawl through the cargo area and out the tailgate. He unbuckled his seatbelt, slipped out of his overcoat and sport coat and unclipped his holster. As he adjusted the seat to give himself more room to move, he heard the rattle of chains and the scraping of metal against blacktop. In the rearview mirror he could see a MnDOT plow turning into the street behind him, sweeping snow aside like a gigantic steel broom. It seemed odd that this narrow stretch of road would be plowed so soon. Usually it was one of the last roads to be plowed, which was why he had bought the Explorer, but he wasn’t complaining. All he had to do was wait and the blacktop would be clear enough for him to back up.
Snow arched like a geyser off the plow as the truck picked up speed, coming toward him, pushing a white wave ahead of it. Headlights bore down on him. Santana suddenly felt a prickling sensation on his skin and a rush of adrenaline. The truck wasn’t slowing down.
He slammed his shoulder against the driver’s side door, tried to force it open as a wall of snow thundered down on the roof. The plow caught the Explorer’s right rear bumper in one grinding crunch, lifted the SUV off the ground and momentarily out of the snow. In that split second, Santana got the driver’s side door open enough to hurl himself free amid chunks of ice that clubbed him across the head and shoulders. Dazed, lost in an avalanche of snow, he barely avoided a truck tire by rolling away from it at the last second.
The ground trembled as the plow pushed the Explorer forward and hammered it like a nail against a thick oak tree on the side of the road. The collision triggered the airbags and collapsed the Explorer’s front end. Steam hissed into the air, leaving an acrid odor, as fluid from the shattered radiator drained over the hot engine. A loud, repetitive beeping began as the truck shifted gears, backed up and stopped.
Santana rose to his hands and knees and then into a crouch. He knew from the moment the snowplow hit the Explorer that it was no accident, that it had been following him on the freeway. Once the driver discovered Santana had gotten out of the SUV alive, he would come looking. Instinctively, Santana reached for his Glock. Then he remembered he had left it on the front seat in the Explorer.
The snowplow was at a forty-five degree angle with its front tires on the shoulder of the road, directly behind the back end of the crumpled Explorer. Light from the truck’s headlights reflecting off the SUV painted the scene in an eerie glow and cast long shadows along the roadway, as if dark spirits were crawling out from graves.
Santana brushed away the snow clinging to him and cleared his head with a deep breath. The plow had swept away most of the fresh snow. What remained on the road was icy and compacted. He moved fast behind a huge rear tire on the passenger side of the truck. The metal rotor was still turning, spitting bits of sand on the pavement. Clouds blanketed the moon. The truck’s headlights and the red glow from its taillights was all that illuminated the darkness along this stretch of road.
A pair of heavy boots hit the ground as the driver jumped down from the cab. He checked the action on an automatic and walked to the Explorer.
Santana moved past the spinning rotor again and crouched near the left rear taillight. Peering around the corner, he saw the driver up ahead in the headlights.
He wore a red ski jacket and knit stocking cap and carried a gun in his right hand. He wrenched open the Explorer’s driver side door with his left hand, pulled back and whirled around. He looked in the direction of the side of the road and the stone wall in front of Santana’s house. Then he crept away from the SUV, knees bent, holding the gun steady with both hands, as only a professional would.
Santana had no weapon. But he had his wits, the cover of darkness and the element of surprise. The situation reminded him of the moment he began living in the shadow of death. The moment he realized that he had to accept death in order to control his fear of it. Fear often led to mistakes; mistakes that could cost him his life. And though he had long ago accepted the inevitability of an early death, he had vowed never to go quietly.
The driver moved cautiously toward the truck again, climbed up into the cab. The bed rumbled.
He thinks I’m hiding up in the truck bed.
The huge bed whined and rose slowly like some mechanical monster rising out of the earth. Sand poured out the tailgate. Santana turned and ran counterclockwise around the rapidly growing sand pile and along the passenger side. He stopped near the front tire and looked underneath the truck. The gunman climbed down from the cab and headed toward the sand pile. Looking for Santana to slide out the tailgate. Waiting to put a bullet in Santana’s brain.
Santana rolled under the truck and out the other side behind the gunman and got to his feet. He could tell that the dark silhouette just ahead of him was about three inches shorter, more wide than lean. Santana came in low, hard and fast. He drove his right shoulder just below the back of the knees. Hooked both arms around the gunman’s legs and took him down like a free safety tackling a squat, powerful, running back. Then Santana was on his feet again.
The man rolled onto his back and raised the gun and aimed it in Santana’s direction. Santana kicked it. The muzzle flashed and the gun flew out of the man’s hand. Santana felt a bullet whiz past his left ear a split second before he heard the explosion of gunfire and a round slap into the metal siding of the truck.
Santana bent down and gripped the gunman’s ski jacket with both hands, jerked him off the ground. He blocked a looping punch with his left arm; drove his right fist into the man’s solar plexus, heard the wind rush out of him, as if he were a balloon losing air. Then he threw a right cross that caught the man solidly on the jaw and sent him stumbling backward. Santana stepped forward quickly, grabbed the gunman’s right wrist and spun him one hundred eighty degrees and threw him into the sand pile. The man cried out.
Santana wasn’t sure what had happened until he saw the dark stream squirting out of the man’s neck. Then he realized that the sharp metal rotor at the back of the truck had cut easily through the thin layer of exposed skin, sliced open the carotid artery.
“
Hijueputa malparido
,” the gunman said in a raspy voice.
Santana recognized the Colombian accent.
The man struggled to his knees. Tore off his stocking cap. He pressed it against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding. It took two minutes before he went into hemorrhagic shock and three more before he bled out, toppled forward and lost consciousness.
Santana dragged him off the sand pile and rolled him over. He unzipped the ski jacket, searched the pockets for an ID he knew he would not find.
The metal rotor continued spinning, flinging bits of sand, flesh, and blood into the air.
Breathing hard, shivering from the cold now, his face and bare hands burning from the wet snow, his ears ringing from the gunshot, Santana looked upward at the unending darkness. They had come for him again. And he knew they wouldn’t quit until he was dead.
Chapter 9
DAY 3
F
LASHING RED LIGHTS FROM THE ROW
of squad cars parked along the blacktop road in front of Santana’s house pulsed like hearts pumping blood across a bruised sky. Heavy snow had turned to flurries, and a gusty, northwest wind created miniature tornados that whirled out of the snow.
The oak and birch logs burning in the fireplace and a glass of aguardiente had warmed Santana’s chilled bones. The ice bag he held over his right hand had reduced the swelling and numbed the throbbing pain in his knuckles.
“Why don’t we go through it one more time, John, just to make sure I’ve got everything.”
He turned and looked at Rita Gamboni in her burgundy ribbed turtleneck and stonewashed jeans, sitting on the leather couch and holding a notebook and pen in her hands. Then he walked away from the window and sat down in a leather chair across from her.
“All right. I got stuck in the road near my driveway. A plow deliberately rammed the Explorer and pushed it into a tree in front of my house.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“The driver got out carrying a 9 mm Beretta.” Santana pointed to the gun in an evidence envelope on the coffee table. “If he didn’t intend to kill me, Rita, then what’s the Beretta for?”
“And your weapon was still in the Explorer?”
“I left it in the SUV when I exited rather quickly.”
She paused for a moment, taking it all in, before she continued. “There was a struggle. The metal rotor that spreads sand and salt on the road sliced open his carotid artery and he bled to death. Is that right?” Her tone was incredulous.
When Santana didn’t respond, she let out a long, slow breath. “So who the hell was this guy, John?”
“He had no ID.”
“You think it has something to do with the Pérez-Mendoza murders?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him without speaking. Finally, she said, “Why is it that I think you’re not telling me everything?”
“Cops get that way after a few years, Rita. They don’t trust anyone. Apparently, not even their ex-partners.”
Her expression hardened. “Don’t hand me that bullshit, John. You want me to trust you, yet you won’t trust me with the truth.”
“Just do me a favor and write this one off as a nut case, Rita. MnDOT driver goes berserk.”
“It’s not that simple. The actual MnDOT driver was found unconscious in the cab of the truck. He was hit in the head. Sustained a mild concussion, but he’ll recover. No, John,” she said, shaking her head in denial. “This guy didn’t just suddenly go berserk. He took out the driver and went after you. If this doesn’t have anything to do with the Pérez-Mendoza case, then I want to know why you’re a target.”
She tossed her notebook and pen on the coffee table in front of her and got up off the couch. She walked in front of the fire where she stood in profile with her arms crossed.
The fire crackled as flames stripped the bark off the birch logs. She had been at him for over an hour now. The hot shower, aguardiente and fire, along with her persistence, had just about drained the last of the adrenaline out of him.