Broken Saint, The (18 page)

Chapter 30

“Do we know if anyone from the Philippines is coming?”

“No,” I said. “The only one there is Grace, the
aunt, and she couldn’t afford it. She wanted Maricel’s remains sent back to
her.”

Ryan and I were driving over to the campus for the
memorial service, which was going to be in the Special Events Center. The
auditorium held three hundred. I had no idea how many people would be there.

A kid at the entrance to the parking lot stopped
us to tell us there was restricted parking because of the service.

I showed him my shield and he let us through.

Flurries were coming down as we got out of the
cruiser and headed into the building. There was an empty ticket window off to
the left, with posters of upcoming events. Some Chinese acrobats, a piano
player, and a lecturer talking about “the idea of nature,” whatever the hell
that was. Your car dies at midnight out on State Road 61 in February, you know
nature’s not an idea.

The floor of the lobby, covered in a
bright-colored red, yellow, and blue carpet, sloped upward toward three sets of
heavy-looking metal double doors opening up the back of the auditorium. On an
easel propped near the entrance was a large portrait photo of Maricel, bordered
in black.

We walked into the auditorium. I was surprised to
see only about forty people, scattered in the first three or four rows, in the
seats between the two aisles. A small wooden podium stood on a dais on the
stage. Four people sat on folding chairs off to the side of the dais. As I got
closer to the stage, I recognized them: the CMSU president, a guy named
Billingham; the provost, Al Gerson; the dean of students, Mary Dawson; and the international
programs woman, Christine Hardtke. All of them were wearing black. Next to the
podium was another, larger version of the same photo of Maricel Salizar.

As we got halfway down the center aisle, I said to
Ryan, “You know, I think it’d be better if we could get backstage so we could watch
the people in the audience. You mind going back out and seeing if we can do
that?”

Ryan nodded and headed back uphill toward the
lobby. I took a seat just off the aisle. A minute later, Ryan returned. “Follow
me.”

Ryan led me back out to the lobby and around to a
side hallway that led downhill toward the stage entrance. “I got a guy to open
it up for us,” he said as we walked through a couple of metal doors to the
dressing rooms and the area behind the stage.

We followed a sign on the wall to a hallway that
led toward the stage and set ourselves up on a couple of folding chairs behind
the curtain where we could see out.

Andrea Gerson was in the first row. She was
dressed in a black dress with a single row of pearls. I was surprised that Mark
wasn’t there. Farther down the row was Hector Cruz, sitting next to his
attorney, Raul Samosa. In the second row I saw Amber Cunningham.

Jared Higley wasn’t there, which I considered a
victory for Amber.

The university president got up and walked slowly
to the podium. He was about sixty, gray hair, a little chunky but distinguished.
The kind of guy you’d trust to orchestrate this kind of event. He started by
asking us to bow our heads for a moment of silent meditation in honor of the
memory of Maricel Salizar. I could hear a few people crying in the auditorium.
Then he spoke for about a minute, saying how it was a terrible thing when a
young student died. How it gives us an opportunity to consider that life is
fragile, that we need to remember that the many people we interact with every
day, as we rush from one thing to another, are God’s children, and that we need
to treat them with respect, consideration, and love.

He was real smooth. I could tell he’d done this
sort of thing before, that he knew what to wear, what to say, how to act. It
was also clear that he didn’t know Maricel Salizar from Eve.

Al Gerson came up next. He looked like he had aged
some years over the weekend. His shoulders were stooped, his tall frame bent
over in sadness. He stood behind the podium that read Central Montana State University,
briefly looked at the audience, and pulled a sheet of paper from his jacket
pocket.

“As some of you may know, Maricel Salizar was an
exchange student from Manila, in the Philippines, and she lived with me, my
wife, Andrea, and our son, Mark, here in Rawlings. Our family has had the
wonderful opportunity, over the years, to host a number of international
students …” Suddenly, he stopped talking. His head bowed, and his hands came up
to grip the sides of the podium. He reached down and picked up the paper he was
reading from, folded it, and placed it back in his jacket pocket. Silence hung
in the room. The people in the audience began to look at each other and started
whispering.

Finally, he lifted his head and looked at the
audience. “Some of you may know that I am a member of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Like many Mormon young men, I served a mission. In
Manila, in the Philippines. There I met and fell in love with a young woman
named Esperanza Salizar. We had a daughter, whom Esperanza named Maricel.”
There was a gasp from the audience. I looked at Andrea, who closed her eyes.
She was a little too far away for me to be sure, but I think she was shaking.

“At that time, I did not acknowledge Maricel. I
turned my back on her and her mother. I did not inform my Church, and I did not
inform my fiancée, Andrea, who is now my wife of twenty-two years. I betrayed
everyone in my life. I betrayed my Church. And I betrayed Heavenly Father.
Because of my actions—and my failure to take responsibility for them—I
contributed significantly to the sorrow, the poverty, and the degradation that
Maricel’s mother endured for the rest of her brief life. And I consigned
Maricel to a life without a mother and a father. Maricel was on the verge of
becoming a wonderful young woman—despite my failures—but her formative years
were lonely, and she battled insecurity and a lack of self-confidence. That is
my shame, a shame I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

“What I hope you can learn from my words this
morning, however, is not that I am a sinner, although that is certainly true.
What I hope you hear is that, although I betrayed everyone in my life, every
ideal to which I aspired, and every promise I had made, the one I hurt most …
was myself. I lacked the courage to ask Heavenly Father and the people I loved
to forgive me, to give me a chance to become the person they thought I was, the
person who the Lord knows I can be.

“I never took the opportunity to ask Maricel for
her forgiveness, for the sins I committed against her and her mother. And I did
not ask my dear wife, Andrea, and my beloved son, Mark, and my beautiful
daughter, Judy—not until yesterday afternoon—to forgive me.

“Now I cannot ask Maricel or Esperanza for their
forgiveness. They are in the next life, with Christ, in a world far better than
this one. They are spirit now. I will continue to pray that the Almighty ease
the pain and the suffering that my actions have caused them.

“I will continue to ask my family to help me
become a better person. And I will continue to pray to the Almighty that, through
His infinite grace, they will someday forgive me.

“I ask you today not to make the mistakes I have
made. I ask that you not turn away from the people you love, from the God you
love, because of fear and cowardice. No matter what you have done, no matter how
far you have fallen, they will love you, and God will love you, if you have the
strength to open yourself to their love. I believe that with all my heart. And
I ask that you pray, not for me, but for my daughter, Maricel Salizar, who is
now alive in Christ.”

After the service ended, a large crowd of students
formed around Al Gerson. Flashbulbs went off, and reporters from the university
newspaper and the Rawlings paper clustered close around the provost.

I went over to Andrea Gerson, who slowly rose to
her feet, gripping the back of the chair. Ryan saw me and came over, too.

“Can you give us a minute, Ms. Gerson?”

She nodded. Her eyes were red-rimmed and
underlined with gray shadows. She was shaking.

“Can you tell us what happened with your husband
yesterday afternoon?”

“Just what he said: he told me and Mark everything
about the affair with Esperanza. Then he phoned Judy at her college and told
her.”

“I noticed Mark is not here at the service.”

“He was very upset when Al told him.”

“Do you know where Mark is now?”

She started to weep. “No, he left, and we haven’t
seen him since. He isn’t taking our calls.”

“Ms. Gerson, did you know about Maricel before
your husband told you yesterday?”

She looked at me. “My husband has always been an
attractive man. From the moment I met him at BYU, I knew that it would be
difficult for him to obey the teachings of the Church in that regard …”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gerson, but I need you to answer
my question: Did you know about Maricel before your husband told you
yesterday?”

“You’re asking a question for which I cannot give
you a simple answer.”

“Try.”

“I knew that Al loved Maricel in a way I did not
feel and did not understand.”

“Could he have killed her?”

“I do not believe that would be possible.”

“Ms. Gerson, did you kill Maricel?”

“How do you have the nerve to ask that … that
question, at her memorial?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gerson, but we need to ask that
question of all the people closest to Maricel. This is still an ongoing murder
investigation.”

“Detective, why in the world would I want to hurt
that girl? No matter how Albert loved her …” She looked away.

“Thank you, Ms. Gerson. I hope we don’t have to
bother you again.”

“Detective Seagate.” I recognized the voice coming
from behind me. I turned around. It was Raul Samosa, the gang lawyer. He was
wearing his uniform: black suit, gold jewelry. He looked good.

I sighed. “What can I do for you, Mr. Samosa?”

“I thought I made it clear to you you were not to
harass my client, Mr. Cruz.”

I paused. “I didn’t do that, Mr. Samosa.”

“You did not ambush him at his job site and
browbeat him into letting you search his car and trailer without a warrant?”

“Way I see the situation, Hector has every right
to let us search his things if he wants.”

“Under the threat of arrest for assaulting an officer.”

“It was him took a swing at a detective. Nobody
made him do that. You’re unhappy with any of the choices Hector makes, maybe
you should be talking to him.”

“The one I will be talking to is Chief Murtaugh.”

“Go right ahead. This investigation is clean, top
to bottom.”

“We’ll see.”

Chapter 31

“We wanna keep you up to date on the Salizar case.”

“Good,” the chief said. “Anything interesting at
the service?”

Ryan said, “Kind of. Al Gerson admitted that
Maricel was his daughter.”

The sun was streaming through the partly closed
blinds behind the chief’s head. This time of year, everyone’s so hungry for
sunlight they give it a little more leeway than they do in the summer. The chief’s
big frame was lit up from behind.

“Hmm,” the chief said. “You called that one,
right, Karen?”

“Good thing about being totally cynical: you’re
right a lot of the time. I thought either he was her father or her lover—or
maybe both. But my money was on Gerson being the father, just like he said.”

“What about you, Ryan? You buy what he said about
being her father?”

“I’m a little less sympathetic than Karen on this
one.”

The chief looked puzzled. “Meaning?”

“I’m not saying I think he’s lying now. But saying
she was his daughter could be a tactical retreat.”

The chief shifted in his chair and extended his
palm for Ryan to explain.

“Let’s say Maricel was here to blackmail him—she
could be his real daughter and have no feelings for him because he doesn’t
deserve any, or she could be impersonating his daughter just to get him to pay
up. Either way, Gerson could see killing her as a rational move. She doesn’t
have any family or advocates here, whereas he’s the pillar of the community.
The pillar of two communities, in fact: the LDS community and the university.
He’s afraid we might dig up some forensics that will implicate him, either
financial records or crime-scene. So he does this dramatic
mea culpa
at
the memorial service. It’s obvious he’s going to face some serious
consequences, in the Church or the university or both, but nobody’s going to
think he killed her. It was his daughter. Now that he says he’s the father, if we
don’t find any forensics, we’re not going to pursue him on the murder. If we do
find forensics, it doesn’t matter if his career is ruined and he gets tossed
out of the Church. He does life or gets the needle, anyway.”

The chief was tapping an index finger against his
chin. “So what do you want to do?”

“If we want to figure out if Maricel was
blackmailing him,” Ryan said, “we could get his financials. Check them against
hers. It’s not foolproof, but it might show a pattern.”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “A guy that smart, he’s
gonna hide his tracks.”

The chief cleared his throat. “How about this,” he
said. “Look at Maricel’s financials, if she has any accounts. You see a red
flag—a pattern of big deposits that isn’t a scholarship from the university or
small gifts from the Gersons—and I’ll put in for Al Gerson’s financials. If
either of the two of them is dumb enough to leave a trail, it’s her. That sound
reasonable?”

“You bet.” I looked at Ryan. He nodded.

“Okay,” the chief said. “Where are we with—wait a
second,” he said, looking at his screen. “The forensics on the drive-by at your
house are in, Karen.”

“Yeah?”

The chief was looking at his screen. “The two
rounds were .45s, full metal jackets. No matches.”

“Nothing at all?” I said.

“Sorry, nothing from Montana or any federal
databases. It was a clean pistol.”

“Shit,” I said. “I was really hoping we could tie
the bullets to Hector Cruz or the Latin Vice Lords.” I let out a breath. “You
were asking where are we with the
investigation?”

The chief nodded.

I opened up a folder we had just gotten from the
forensics from Hector Cruz’ car and his trailer. “On Hector Cruz, we searched
his locker at the university, his trailer, and his car …”

The chief picked up a phone message on a pink
sheet. “I’m guessing that’s the urgent message from Raul Samosa?”

“I think so,” I said. “We chatted at the service a
little while ago. He said he was gonna report us to you.”

He frowned. “What did you do to Samosa?”

“To Samosa? Nothing. We did ask Hector if we could
search his stuff.”

“Without a warrant? He agreed?”

“Ryan said something rude about Maricel to
Hector’s face, so Hector took a swing at him.”

The chief looked at Ryan and smiled. “Okay, so
what are the forensics on Hector?”

“Bad news is, we didn’t find a gun that he shot at
me, or a knife that he stabbed Maricel with, and the black polyester rug from
the trunk of his car doesn’t match a few strands on Maricel’s body. So we can’t
tie him to the murder—yet.”

“And we can’t tie him to transporting her to the
river in his car,” the chief said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“So what’s the good news?”

“The good news,” I said, “is we found almost three
ounces of weed and a couple dozen off-brand oxycodone in baggies in his
trailer.”

“Each of those two would be up to five years,
right?”

“That’s right,” Ryan said. “So Hector’s going to
continue to cooperate with us.”

The chief shook his head. “But there’s nothing
emerging that’s tying him to the murder.”

“So far,” I said. “But keep in mind, he’s got a
felony record, he’s in with the Latins. He got in a fight with Maricel about
her abortion. And he was a little sensitive when Ryan asked him if he was okay
with her sucking this other guy’s dick while he was screwing her.”

The chief raised an eyebrow. “Anything else you
want to do about Hector?”

Ryan shrugged.

I said, “We could pressure him into giving us some
DNA. That might link him to the hair on Maricel’s body.”

The chief shook his head. “We already decided that
would be meaningless since he’s the boyfriend.”

“I realize that,” I said. “But it would tighten
the vise on him. Maybe make him do something stupid, or force Samosa to make
another move.”

“No, Karen, we’re not going to do that. I agree
with you that it might make something happen. But it’s not proper. Samosa would
call another press conference—and he’d be right to do it. We don’t have
probable cause. When you searched his place and his car, a judge might have
struck down anything you found—”

“Those were clean searches. The drugs were right
there in his trailer.”

“They were clean in that he gave you permission,”
the Chief said. “But Samosa would argue—and a judge might buy it—that he gave
you permission to search because you entrapped him.”

“We’re not allowed to ask him if he’s okay with
his girlfriend giving another guy a blowjob?”

“I’m saying that could be interpreted as
entrapment in that it was a statement that might reasonably be expected to
cause him to assault an officer. With his assault record, you’d probably be
okay, but it’s borderline.”

“So we’re in trouble because he’s stupid?”

“Take a deep breath, Karen,” the chief said.
“Nobody’s in trouble. I’m just explaining how his attorney could present this.
He could make a reasonable argument that that statement was a form of
entrapment, and therefore anything you found in a search is off limits because
it’s the fruit of the poisonous tree.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

The chief smiled. “Perhaps. But it’s also the
law.”

I just shook my head.

“So we’re clear, right?” the chief said. “You’re
not to push Hector around anymore, okay, unless you get me probable cause?”

“We’re this close to ruling him out,” I said, “or
nailing him for it.”

The chief held my gaze for a moment. “Any other
questions?”

“Can’t think of anything else at the moment,” I
said.

“What else have you got?”

“Not that much,” I said. “There’s two more
Gersons. Andrea, the wife. She’s so messed up, I don’t think she’d have the
physical strength to stab Maricel. So, even if she hated the girl for bringing
all this shit into her family, she would’ve had to get someone to stab the girl
for her.”

“You see a motive for her?” the chief said.

“No,” I said. “I really don’t. It’s possible she
saw Maricel as a threat to the family—Al’s the only source of income, so if he
gets booted out of the university and the church, they’re screwed. But I don’t
see her worried about the future. I think she’s all about the past—her dead
son, Mitch, and how her son Mark inherited the schizophrenia from her side of
the family. She’s just trying to get through each day without falling apart
more often than necessary. That her husband fell in love with a woman twenty
years ago? Given the stuff she thinks about all day long, that’s penny-ante
shit.”

The chief was nodding his head. “And the
schizophrenic son, Mark. What’s his role?”

“Mark’s a real possibility,” I said. “According to
the parents, Al told her and Mark yesterday afternoon how he was Maricel’s dad.
Mark took off, hasn’t checked in.”

“That could be another psychotic episode?” the chief
said.

Ryan nodded. “Could be, or could become one. He
has a habit of going off his meds when he really needs to be on them.”

“So how do you read what happened when Dad told
him Maricel was his half-sister?”

My hands came up in a gesture of confusion. “Maybe
a shrink could say. I have no idea. If Mark was screwing Maricel, even if he
was a normal kid he might freak out when he heard that. If he had repressed
sexual thoughts about her, no telling how bad that could mess him up.”

“Keep in mind, too,” Ryan said, “he already thinks
he killed his twin brother for daring him to go out of bounds with the
snowboard. He’s pretty close to the edge. Realizing he was trying to sleep with
his half-sister might just make him snap. In his head, that could mean that he
should take out the half-sister to make it go away. Schizophrenic kids can get
violent.”

“I think it would be a good idea to try to track
Mark down.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Any other players?”

“There’s the other couple: Amber Cunningham and
Jared Higley,” I said. “We don’t like Amber for the murder because she didn’t
know Maricel had been killed. You agree, Ryan?”

“Yes.”

“And Jared. He’s the kind of shithead you’d automatically
dislike. A felony DUI, and he hit Amber in the face hard enough to send her to
the ER. Plus, he lied to her. So, he’s a real creep, but we don’t have anything
on him.”

Ryan said, “He wasn’t at the memorial service with
Amber this morning.”

“Which maybe says Amber’s decided to move on,” I
said, “which is good for her, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the case.”

The chief sat there at his desk, his fingers
tented beneath his chin. “The only thing I can see now is try to find the
schizophrenic son.”

“Okay,” I said.

He picked up the message slip from Raul Samosa.
“Would one of you like to call the attorney back?”

“I think he’d be insulted if he didn’t get to talk
to the chief of police, sir,” I said, with a slight smile. “And didn’t you
mention he said it was urgent?”