Look For Me (Detective D.D. Warren #9)(71)

“Edgy choice,” Sarah said, still typing away.

“Exactly my thought. So who has cause to be mad at Juanita Baez?”

“Clearly, someone who was impacted by her drinking.”

“You mean other than her kids, who were taken away and stuck in foster care because their mom couldn’t get her act together?”

“I’d be pissed about that,” Sarah agreed. “But what are the odds of Roxy having the time to buy a bottle of tequila and then sneak back to the one place in the city with the highest concentration of cops looking for her and get away with it?”

“Juanita Baez was asking questions about the time Roxy and Lola spent at foster care. Maybe those questions were raising hackles. I got to talk to another one of their fellow foster mates tonight. Her name is Anya and let’s just say she’s not the happiest girl in town.”

“She’s from the same place Mike Davis lives?”

“Yep. The infamous Mother Del’s.”

“Interesting.”

“Apparently just the kind of loving environment to drive Lola Baez to join a gang and seek revenge on the head bully, the recently deceased Roberto.”

“Lola Baez was part of a gang?”

“Hispanic girl gang. Las Ni?as Diablas.” I paused. “Could they have been the ones to leave the tequila? Toast to a fallen comrade?” I shook my head. There were still too many things I didn’t know.

Sarah was staring at me. “That would explain all the posts in Spanish.”

“Posts?”

“The virtual memorial I created, remember? So we could track visiting IP addresses.”

Of course. Sarah angled her laptop toward me. I eyed the screen, which seemed to be an endless scroll of posts.

“Very active,” Sarah confirmed. “Some seem to be strangers, drawn to the tragedy of a family being gunned down. But also some of the coworkers from Juanita’s hospital, contractors, clients who worked with the guy Charlie. Some of Manny’s classmates, a couple of teachers. But then, all this stuff in Spanish. I’ve been running them through Google Translate.”

“What do they talk about?”

“Revenge.”

I paused, studied the screen. “As in they got revenge? That’s why they shot Lola? Or they now want revenge?”

“As in they’re now seeking it. Against”—Sarah had to click over to a new screen—“Las Malvadas. Which loosely translates to the Fiends.”

“So we have the Devil Girls versus the Fiends?”

“Sounds better in Spanish.”

I frowned, tapped the table. “What do we know about either gang?”

“Umm, working on that. Gangs seem to operate on a feeder system. You know, first you’re a Cub Scout, then a Boy Scout? Well, thirteen-year-olds start out as, say, Devil Girls, earning their stripes before joining the higher-ranking organization, Las Diablas, which is the female counterpart to Los Diablos.”

“How do you earn your stripes?” I asked, though I had a feeling I already knew.

“Sex and violence. Mostly on behalf of the parent organizations, so to speak. In general, it sounds like the female gang members exist to, um, service the men—”

“Even the thirteen-year-olds?”

“Yep. Which can lead to some drama. He’s mine. No, he’s mine. It sounds like feuding is actively encouraged, and if you need to take a knife to your rival to claim your man once and for all, that’s not a bad thing. But the gangs are also actively involved in the drug trade. So battle stripes also include working a territory, defending a territory, seizing new territory, et cetera.”

“And by territory, I’m guessing you mean middle schools, playgrounds, neighborhood parks?”

“You would make an excellent gang member,” Sarah assured me.

“Until it was time to put out and I cut off his penis instead.”

“That might lead to some issues.”

“What do the gang members get out of this? A feeling of belonging? Security? Because that seemed to be what Lola was looking for.”

“Exactly. Gangs exist here for the same reason they exist anywhere. Lots of lost kids living in poverty. Making it on your own equals loneliness, if not homelessness. Pledge loyalty to the local gang, however, and boom, instant family.”

“Lola had a family,” I said softly.

Sarah looked at me. “Roxy was scared. From the time I met her, she was clearly terrified. Meaning whatever the threat was . . .”

“Family wouldn’t be enough to save them.” I nodded slowly. “Lola was beautiful. She came from a household with a history of addiction and wasn’t considered terribly stable herself. For her, maybe gang life seemed an exciting choice.”

“From what I’ve read, she’d be a natural. Beautiful, dramatic, quick to fight back.”

“In return, maybe they helped her with her project, kill her former nemesis Roberto.”

“The bully from foster care?”

“His girlfriend, Anya, swears Roberto loved her too much to commit suicide. Not to mention they had this whole plan to escape Brighton and make it big in New York. Therefore, his death had to be Lola’s doing. Her homey friends shot Roberto, drove him to shoot himself, something like that. Also, to hear Anya talk, Lola and Roxy weren’t exactly helpless victims at Mother Del’s. They learned to give as good as they got.”