[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.To Gil, sex offenders were almost worse than murderers.A killer stole a life once.A molester stole a life over and over again.Gil agreed with the Catholic Church about the death penalty, except when it came to child molesters.The quicker they were dead, the better for everyone.“Are you Brianna’s father?” Gil asked.“No,” Rodriguez said.The first strong objection he’d made during the entire interrogation.“I’m fixed.”“You had a vasectomy? When?”“About ten years ago.” If it was true, then he wasn’t Brianna’s father.“Do you know who Brianna’s father is?” Gil asked.“Tony Herrera,” Rodriguez said, giving the same answer as everyone else.Gil could see that Rodriguez didn’t have much more information to offer.“When was the last time you had intercourse with Ashley?” Gil asked.“Last year when she wanted me to sign the papers.”“Which papers were those?” Gil asked, thinking less about the question and more about getting out of the room so he could finally breathe.“The papers about Brianna, you know,” he said.“I’m not sure what you are talking about,” Gil said, his mind coming back to the conversation.“The adoption papers that lawyer had us sign,” Rodriguez said.CHAPTER SIXTEENSaturday MorningLucy zipped down streets and through traffic lights on her way back to Starbucks to drop off Andrea, who swayed and jostled in her seat, although she didn’t seem to notice as she told her story.The woman Andrea had interviewed was Gladys Soliz Portilla.She had been the owner of the second car that had gotten torched.It had only taken a few questions to get Gladys to open up about it.The woman, who had come from Mexico with her young son a few months ago, had her Dodge Neon towed from the apartment parking lot.When she went to get it from the tow company, they told her she had to produce a lease showing she lived at the complex.Because of her undocumented status, she hadn’t signed a lease.“Then,” Andrea said, getting into the story, “a man comes to her house and tells her that if she pays him eight hundred dollars, she can have her car back, but that’s like almost a month’s salary.She tells him that she’ll call the police.That’s when her car was torched.I guess when the people couldn’t pay, their cars were burned to send a message.”“This towing company sounds lovely,” Lucy said.“It just pisses me off that anyone would take advantage of people like this,” Andrea said.Lucy smiled.Andrea was still too young to understand that it was human nature to pick on the weakest among us, and who is weaker than undocumented single mothers? The whole scam relied on the victim not feeling like she could go to the police.When the woman went outside her role as the victim and threatened to call the cops, they proved to her that they were untouchable by torching her car.“She says that it’s happened to at least three of her neighbors,” Andrea said, speaking fast.“What’s the name of the tow company?” Lucy asked.Andrea checked her notes and said, “Ultimate Towing, but I bet you all the tow companies in town are in on it.”“Wait a minute,” Lucy said.“We have no proof of that.Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She found it strange to be the one urging restraint.“Okay, so we need some proof,” Andrea said.“We can go over to Ultimate Towing, and I can pretend that they took my car—”“Hell, no,” Lucy said.“Fine, then, we can stake them out—”“No way,” Lucy said.“Listen to me.That’s not how it’s done.There is a bunch of documentation we need to get on them first—”“I’ll be careful, I swear—”“I don’t care about that.You’ll ruin the investigation,” Lucy said, not realizing how cold she sounded until the words were out of her mouth.Andrea looked a little stung and a whole lot young.The girl was just excited about doing real journalism, and now Lucy was crushing her.“Okay, look,” Lucy said, trying to make amends.“How about we go over to the county impound lot? That’s where they would have taken all the burned cars.”Andrea clapped her hands, which Lucy took to mean that she was up for it.What Lucy didn’t tell her was that they wouldn’t be going into the lot.It was a Saturday, so it was unlikely that anyone would be there to open the gate.Even if someone was, Lucy and Andrea were not official county personnel.They would never be let in.At best, they would be able to peek through the fence before they were scared away by a security guard.Lucy drove out toward the grassy plains on the highway and turned down a dirt road where an orange sign full of bullet holes read: ROAD PERMANENTLY CLOSED.That never meant anything out here.There would be side roads and dirt paths that meandered out to nowhere.A bird squawked on a telephone line as they drove by.They turned into the county impound lot, which was fenced with eight-foot-tall razor wire.They pulled up to the closed gate, and Lucy was about to explain to Andrea that they would have to just look through the fence when a little man in overalls wandered out of a small shack and opened the gate.He came over to them, looking at Lucy flatly, then over to Andrea.“Hi,” Lucy said.She wasn’t sure what else to add
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]