Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(47)

“Did you see anything right before you heard the gunshot?” D.D. tried. “Maybe a reflection, a flicker of movement out of the corner of your eye?”

Hector shook his head.

“How long do you think you’d been standing there, with the dogs, before you were hit?”

“I don’t know. I spoke to the officer for a bit. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes?”

In other words, D.D. thought, plenty of time for Roxy to spot Hector’s approach from her second-story hideout, then sneak back down to street level, take up position behind the tree, and ambush him.

“Do you own a gun?” Phil was asking Hector now.

“Me? No, no. Why would I have a gun?” But Hector’s gaze slid away as he said this. Which made D.D. wonder again what they didn’t know about this man. His grief over his son appeared genuine. And yet, if their theory was true and Roxy had lured him to the coffee shop just to ambush him, why? Surely that meant he couldn’t be a totally neutral party or family outsider. Whatever was going on in the Boyd-Baez family, he must’ve played a role, too, to win himself a spot on a teenage girl’s hit list. Or could it be even more sinister—Roxy believed he had been the one to murder her family and this was her attempt at revenge? With the dogs as bait?

D.D. resisted the urge to rub her temples again. Cases often reminded her of distorted images. Peer at them directly and nothing made any sense. But the moment she came up with the right vantage point, they snapped into focus. That’s what she and Phil needed now. The right vantage point to make sense of four dead and one wounded, all in the space of twelve hours.

“What about Charlie?” Phil was pressing now. “Did he own a firearm?”

Hector grimaced. “I can’t speak for that man. He didn’t even like me. But I would doubt Juanita would allow a gun in the house. She doesn’t like them. She’s an ER nurse. She’s seen what they can do.”

Phil nodded; in fact, he’d already run Charlie Boyd’s name against gun permits. Hector Alvalos’s name, as well. Which only proved neither man legally owned a firearm, and still made these questions worth asking.

The use of a gun was one of the pieces of the puzzle that bothered D.D. She could picture Roxanna hiding out in the abandoned office space across from the coffee shop; in fact, that was the best explanation for why dozens of patrol officers and alerted civilians hadn’t been able to find her in the hours after her family’s murders. D.D. could also imagine Roxy purposefully tying up the dogs across from her hiding spot in order to lure Hector into her line of sight. But where had the girl gotten the gun? And when had she learned to shoot? Because trying to target a man standing twenty yards away on a crowded street while remaining tucked behind a tree was no mean feat. Roxanna, if she had been the shooter, was lucky she’d hit Hector at all, let alone missed a random bystander and the two dogs.

Would the girl even have risked firing with Blaze and Rosie so close? Seemed reckless to D.D., and nothing they’d learned about Roxy suggested impulsiveness.

“You said Juanita blamed you for her drinking,” D.D. said now. “What about Roxanna? Did she blame you as well?”

Hector shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know.”

“You picked up Manny every Sunday,” Phil piled on. “Who oversaw the exchange? Juanita? Charlie?”

“Or Roxanna. There was no set pattern. I didn’t linger. I’d knock on the door, out would come Manny. End of the day, we do the same. In reverse. Manny was a good boy. He’d be ready for me.”

“But Juanita was home,” D.D. pressed, remembering the earlier explanation of the woman’s crazy schedule. “She ever talk to you?”

“Sometimes. Small stuff. Manny has this homework, that soccer practice. A game later in the week. I tried to go to any activity I could.”

“You hang out with Juanita and Charlie there?”

“No. Juanita and I are better apart. We both know this. We stay apart.”

“What about Roxanna?” Phil asked. “You talk with her during Manny’s soccer games?”

“No. She stays with Juanita and Charlie. Often, she has books with her. She sits, does her homework.”

D.D. had a thought: “What about Lola?”

Hector’s eyes widened slightly. He glanced quickly away.

“Lola hang out with her family?” D.D. pushed.

“She and Juanita fight too much,” he mumbled.

“So Lola wanders around on her own. Maybe even comes to stand next to you. Anything to provoke her mother.”

Hector didn’t look like a tough guy anymore. If anything, his scar stood out pitifully against his ashen face. “I try not to be alone with Lola,” he said at last. “The soccer field, I might not stand with Juanita and Charlie, but it’s crowded. Lots of other families. I make very sure there are many people about if I’m with Lola.”

“Does Lola think you’re a big, strong man, Hector?” D.D. asked quietly. “Does she think, if you were good enough for her mother, maybe you’d be good enough for her?”

“Stop it!” Hector slammed his fist against the hospital bed. He grimaced immediately from the pain, his IV bag shaking, one of the machines now beeping. “She is a child. She doesn’t understand. She might think she’s pretty, but she’s just a little girl.”