Guilty by Innocence Read online

  The left of the two sliding doors hung half off its rollers, rattling with a hollow booming sound as the wind tugged at it. The other door stood in place, braced with a splintery two by four. The flapping door, like the rest of the flimsy metal structure, had been painted a dull adobe tan, faded now to the same shade as the dust. The shed was mottled with rust spots where the paint had peeled or been scraped off.

  On that loose door, though, one mark stood out. It looked subtly different. Could it be a bloody handprint? Jax stooped to look closer, squinting at the faint swirls and lines, marked in the dark rusty brown. Yep, it was.

  Somehow he didn’t think any of the vics had been out here after the attack, unless one had escaped. He didn’t think Gabriel had either. The perp or one of the doers? Who knew? He slipped on a pair of vinyl gloves and lifted the door free, working the second roller out of the groove. He leaned it against the other one before he looked inside. That door had just become evidence.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Did he really want to see what might be in the shed? Wanting did not matter. He needed to do it. He stepped up the few inches to the decking, then stooped to duck through the low doorway.

  At first, he thought it was just a pile of old clothes and blankets, maybe a bed for a dog no longer there. Then the pile moved as a faint whimper emerged. Maybe it was a dog, hungry and scared. He dropped to one knee on the splintery wood floor and bent over, reaching toward the mess. Good thing he still wore the gloves. No telling what kind of filth and germs might be…

  A thin brown arm emerged, followed by a foot in a worn tennis shoe and finally a tangled head of black hair falling every direction to hide the face beneath it.

  “¡Jesus y Maria, socorrome!” The voice, barely above a whisper, held stark terror. “Por favor, no cortame.”

  Jax searched his mind for the right words in Spanish. He’d learned a lot since coming to El Paso as a teenager. After his father’s death in Kansas City, he and his mom had moved out here because his big brother Jeff was by then a probationary officer on the EPPD. Jax took Spanish in his last two years of high school, but you learned more of the real speech on the street.

  “Estoy un policia. Usted esta seguro.” I’m a cop and you’re safe. He’d practiced the assurance often enough that it came easily.

  Although he did not get the sense the person was reassured, the rags and tatters shifted some more as an angular form emerged. He wasn’t sure if it was a child or a very small adult. After the refugee stood, he identified it as female and probably in her early teens.

  “¿Como se llamo? ¿Esta usted herido?”

  The girl gathered her hair and shoved it aside, out of her eyes. She stared at him then, tense as a deer in the headlights. She appeared poised to leap, even though she had to see she could not get past him to escape through the door.

  He could see smears of blood on her arms and hands, streaks of it on her ragged, too-small dress, but no obvious wounds. “¿Esta usted herido?” he repeated.

  She shook her head. “No, pero mi familia, todos estan muertos. Mi abuella y abuello, mi madre, mi hermano, el bebe…” Tears welled, but she blinked them back. “El hombre malo, el cortan todos. Yo escaparse. Aye de mi.”

  “¿Hablo Ingles?” Jax hardly dared to hope, but he was rapidly exhausting his vocabulary and struggling to master the verb tenses and the nuances of the girl’s words. He thought she had said her family was all dead, even the baby, and the bad man had cut them. She had escaped? He wasn’t sure.

  She shook her head. “No Ingles.”

  Oh, well, it’ll keep. He held a hand out to her. “Vamanos. Venga conmigo por el carro.” Come, I’ll take you in the car.

  She hesitated, looking up at him with huge fearful eyes. Finally she nodded. “Esta bien. ¿Usted mi socorro?” All right. You will help me?

  “Si.”

  Her small hand felt ice-cold when she slipped it into his. He led her out to the car and put her in the back seat. He wasn’t afraid of her doing anything except perhaps freaking and trying to jump out, but she just huddled in a corner of the seat and wrapped her stick-thin arms around herself as if she might fly to pieces with the next breath. He could see she was shaking from both fear and cold. He got a blanket out of the trunk and handed it to her.

  “Gracias,” she whispered.

  Once he headed back toward the station, he called to see if Officer Lopez was on duty. Rita Lopez handled a lot of child cases, abused women, rape victims and the like. Small and very non-threatening to terrified kids and women, she also spoke Spanish fluently. He hoped she could extract some critical information from this poor horrified child. After that, he knew she’d see the kid to a safe place, too. Rita had a big heart for all her small stature.

  Only as he pulled in behind the station did he remember he hadn’t collected the door with the print on it. The mark had looked too large to belong to this little girl, but her hand might have slipped. As soon as he turned her over to Rita, he’d have to go back and finish his careful reconnoitering. The kid came first, but gathering evidence was a critical need, too.

  Rita met them at the door. She spoke to the girl in swift liquid syllables, most of which went right past Jax. After a moment, she looked up and nodded. “I’ve got this covered,” she said. “The first need is to take care of her, of course, be sure she isn’t hurt, and find a safe place she can stay, but I’ll get as much information I can in the meantime, too.”

  “Thanks, Rita. I want whoever murdered those poor folks, want him or them in the worst way. No telling what might be the key to catching the doer. Keep this poor kid safe, though—we owe her that much since we couldn’t save her family.”

  Rita nodded, a bleak expression passing across her delicate face. “Si. So well do I know. I hate it, this fucking war zone of a town they’ve made for us. It didn’t used to be this way.”

  Jax blinked at her use of the crude word, but he recognized the emotion behind it. They all hated the unrelenting battle zone, fought with all they had to gain the upper hand. Still, it was never enough. Making war on children and women was taking things a big step too far. Did these gangs and thugs have no scruples at all? How quickly humanity could descend to a level lower than the worst of the beasts. If that angelic looking young man had been a part of this latest horror, Jax would see him in hell before he was through.

  * * * *

  As the cell door clanged shut behind him, Gabriel sank onto the edge of the hard bunk. He felt as if his legs could no longer hold his weight. What was he doing here? Although a huge block of time remained a gray morass in his mind, some things had begun to emerge. He’d once lived in a nice home, a place of peace and comfort until…something happened that he could not recall yet. Then he’d studied somewhere…many books and papers, and again peace and serenity. He could not remember what or why, but he sensed peace was no part of his life now, either behind bars or outside of them. Why was he no longer part of that calm, orderly world?

  The thick, metallic odor of blood lingered in his nostrils. They’d washed his body clean in the hospital. They could not take the stench out of his nose, though. It hurt to try, but he had to remember. He’d been in a place awash in blood, smelled fear and the sickening odors of death. Heard screams and pleas, gurgling, choking sounds that still echoed in his ears.

  Why? Why was I there? Where was it? What happened?

  He clenched his fists and pounded them against his knees, hoping the pain would jolt free something that would make sense of all this.

  What have I done? Did I really kill helpless and harmless people who had done nothing to me at all? Strangers…they were strangers, weren’t they?

  Hot, stinging tears welled in his eyes.

  I never wished or tried to hurt anything, anyone. God in heaven, what’s happened to me?

  Finally, he lay down and dragged the single thin gray blanket over his body. He could not stop shivering. When the rough fabric of the jail jumpsuit rasped on his skin, he acce
pted the discomfort as his due. He wouldn’t be here unless he had done something very wrong.

  I did not kill them, though. I know I did not kill them.

  He repeated that like a mantra until he fell asleep, the lingering pain of his concussion still pounding through his skull.

  * * * *

  When Jax got back to the scene, the marked door still leaned where he had left it. With a sigh of relief, he picked it up and carried it back to his car. After popping the trunk, he eased the panel inside, before he closed the lid over it. Then he went back to continue his sweep of the area. After a moment’s hesitation, he bagged the pile of rags, rugs, and old blankets in which the girl had been huddled. The blood was probably hers since he’d seen the dried crusts on her hands and arms, but that would be for the lab to confirm. He didn’t find much else. The sandy soil, stirred by the wind and the people who’d come to the scene last night, held no clear prints. If a perp had fled, he’d left no trail. A small padlock still secured the double gate of the chain link fence, apparently undisturbed.

  Hadn’t done much good, though, at keeping danger out.

  Walking through the house yielded much the same result. He knew the crime lab techs had collected samples, probably dusted for prints in likely places, and, of course, secured the machete and any identifying items on the bodies. They were unfailingly thorough, but he still looked around, opening drawers and cupboards to see if he could find any mail, any drugs, any documents—anything to shed light on the horrific events that had happened here. The house, other than the bloodied living room, seemed utterly commonplace, bland, and benign.

  There was a small shrine in the family room, a statue of the Virgin and some burned-down candles, with faded old photographs of people on either side—probably relatives or ancestors in Mexico or long dead. The furniture seemed sparse and plain, same for the dishes and utensils in the kitchen. Just what the family needed with nothing much extra. Utility, no luxury.

  He found the three bedrooms no different—a few simple clothes hung in the closets, beds made with worn sheets and faded quilts, a few toys in one room where the children apparently slept in two twin beds and a beat-up crib. The medicine cabinet in the single bath held a near-empty bottle of aspirin, two toothbrushes, and a handful of Band-Aids with curling wrappers.

  After a couple of fruitless hours, he left with little to show for his time, except a shed door with a possible bloody handprint and a bag of rags. Of course, the yellow tape would not have kept out anyone who wanted to do a similar search for personal reasons. After the cops and first responders had left last night, anybody could have slipped in and cleaned up whatever they knew to be there with knowledge he had no way to obtain. Manpower was too short to leave an officer to guard the scene. If they did that at the site of every killing, there’d be no cops on the street.

  Fuck it. Where should I go next?

  Chapter 3

  Gabriel awoke when the jailers wheeled a cart down the aisle between the cells and shoved supper under the barred doors. The food smelled greasy, stale, and flavorless. It tasted the same way. Washed down with water, it would fill a man’s belly and keep him alive, though. Gabriel could not remember his last meal, so he cleaned up the beans and rice, the brittle tortilla and the few shreds of stringy meat. He emptied the glass, too, and then stacked it, the tray and the flimsy plastic fork neatly back by the door. He used the urinal and again sat on the bunk.

  There was nothing to do. At least he was alone. In some ways, he found that a relief. If anyone knew what he was accused of, they’d probably have a million questions, which he was in no way prepared to answer. A cellmate could not help him. He needed to think, to go back, to remember. He had to recall concrete details if he expected to have a ghost of a chance here. Arraignment—he thought that’s what they called it when you went before the judge and were officially charged with a crime. He’d been there once or twice, hadn’t he? But those times, someone had paid his bail and taken him away quickly. Someone—who? What had he been arrested for?

  The teasing scraps of memories were almost worse than none at all. He’d been scared to death last night when he awoke in the hospital and could not even recall a name, much less anything about his past or how he had come to be there. He had a name now, or at least he thought he did. It felt right, like it belonged to him. Some had called him Gabe or sometimes someone had said mi’jo in a voice full of affection and pride. My son…But that was before…Who were they, and why was he no longer in their loving circle?

  He’d slept too much during the afternoon. Now, as the jail darkened and fell quiet for the night, he could not sleep. Other prisoners moaned and mumbled; now and then a jailor walked through, glowering in at any prisoner who was obviously not sleeping. To avoid drawing unwanted attention, Gabriel lay down and pulled the blanket over himself again, but he did not sleep. He kept thinking, reaching, searching for the things he needed to know. He’d never felt more alone. He tried to pray, but the words would not come.

  * * * *

  Jax read the notes Rita had given him from her conversation with the girl. The child’s name was Catalina Rodriguez. Home for her was in a small village miles below the border, but she had come with her mother, two brothers and other relatives to escape erupting violence there a few months ago.

  She was thirteen, the eldest of three children. They had taken shelter with the relatives she called grandparents—although Rita believed they were not actually that—after her mother’s boyfriend had beaten her and threatened to harm the kids. She thought “Tio Antonio,” as she’d been told to call him, might be involved in the drug cartel, but she did not know. Things she had seen on television at her grandparents’ made her think he was.

  She could not name the bad man, the one who had come and killed them, but she thought she had seen him once when they were living with Tio Antonio.

  She’d been in the kitchen helping her grandmother fix supper the previous evening when they heard yells just before the man burst in. Grandma told her to hide on the back porch, which was dark, but she had peeked through a crack a time or two.

  A big man with a scarred face came in first when the door flew open. He’d had something in one hand, maybe a bat or club, and perhaps a machete on his belt. There might have been someone else. She wasn’t sure. At this point, Rita noted she felt the girl’s recollections were still jumbled by the trauma and said she had wept as she told her story.

  During the attack, she’d heard yells, screams, and harsh, horrible noises. She had not dared emerge from her hiding place between the washer and dryer on the porch, even to peek through the gap behind the door.

  Afterward, when silence fell, she crept in and saw the blood and bodies. She touched her mother and brother, but they did not respond. Sure everyone was dead, she had turned and run. Once outdoors, she had no idea where to go. She was hesitating in the backyard, after realizing she’d have to scale the fence since the gate was locked or go around to the front, when she heard more noise. It was probably as the first police arrived. Feeling trapped, she had hidden again, this time in the shed.

  Perhaps she’d slept some during the day after remaining awake most of the night, cowering in terror. She thought she heard someone stirring around after all the police left and the bodies were taken away. She had no idea what to do, so she just stayed hidden.

  Catalina thought she could recognize the assassin from a picture, but the mug shots Rita had showed her were not him, or at least the girl said as much. She seemed not to know the mysterious young man and wasn’t even sure she had seen him come in or noticed him among the bodies. No, she’d told Rita, the man with the machete and the club was big, older, had a scarred face and long hair.

  Rita had taken her to a clinic where they pronounced her unharmed, then made sure she went to a safe house. Jax guessed the girl was at a nearby convent with some nuns who took in orphans and wards of the state. The money the state provided for the children’s care helped the sisters in their
other charitable efforts.

  Jax dropped the three pages of careful notes on his desk. Not a lot there to go on and the girl’s report shed no light on Gabriel Suarez at all, although it did hint someone else had been the killer. Still, Gabriel had been found holding the bloody machete. It made no sense.

  Wonder if the kid has gotten his memory back? Maybe talking to him again would prove productive. Probably by now he’d overcome his confusion and fear, but not much chance he’d speak without a lawyer. It was almost funny how fast the lowlifes caught onto that ploy.

  They might pretend not to know two dozen words of English, but they could demand, “Quiero un abogado,” with complete confidence and refuse to say one word more. There seemed to be plenty of do-gooder lawyers who showed up, glad to work pro bono, unless they were paid under the table by the cartel. These days, you never knew.

  No harm in trying, though. He walked over to the jail section and asked to talk to detainee Suarez. A few minutes later, one of the jailors led him to an interrogation room as another brought Gabriel in by a different door. The young man looked pale still, hunched in the orange jump suit and wary as he sat carefully on the edge of one straight chair across from Jax.

  “I’m Detective McDermott. I was wondering if your memory has started to come back. Have you got anything to tell me today?”

  For several seconds, Gabriel looked down at his clasped hands. “I remember some, but still not what happened or why I was at that house. Not even when or how I got there. I know my name, for sure. I started to remember my old home and I asked to call my father. He refused to accept the call.