Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(2)

ANA SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM, trying to formulate a plan.

He would be here in fifteen minutes.

There had to be a way—something to make him come clean. Their earlier conversation gave her little hope he would listen to reason, but she had to try. She owed him that much.

On the coffee table, a photograph of her mother stared back at her—Lucia DeLeon Sr., twenty-nine years old, in dress uniform, 1975, the day she received the Medal of Valor.

Her mother’s face was a patchwork of yellow bruises, her arm in a sling, but her posture radiated quiet confidence, black eyebrows knit as if she didn’t quite understand all the fuss. She’d saved three officers’ lives, become the first female cop in SAPD history to use deadly force. What was the big deal?

Ana liked to remember her mother that way—self-assured, indomitable, always firm and fair. But over the years, the photograph had lost some of its magic. It could no longer quite exorcise that other memory—her mother fifteen years older, slumped in bed with the drapes drawn, a glass of wine at her lips, skin sickly blue in the light of an afternoon soap opera.

Come back when you don’t feel like preaching, mijita.

Ana put her face in her hands. A sob was building in her chest, but she couldn’t give in to that. She had to think.

If her mother—the Lucia DeLeon of 1975—had been handed Ana’s problem, what would she have done?

Ana pulled her laptop out of her briefcase. She booted it up, typed in her password. She reviewed her case notes, the crime scene photos. Poor-quality scans of pre-digital black-and-whites, but Ana could still get the feel. She’d been to the scene many times.

Ana imagined herself as the killer.

It was a little before 10:00 P.M., midsummer, on the rural South Side. She was standing on the shoulder of Mission Road, arguing with the young man she was about to murder.

A warm rain had just pushed through, leaving the air like steam engine smoke, scented with wild garlic. In the woods, cicadas chirred.

Ana and the young man had both pulled over their cars—possibly a prearranged rendezvous, though why the young man would’ve agreed to it, Ana didn’t know. There was nothing for miles except barbed wire fence, railroad tracks and old mission lands overgrown with cactus and chinaberry.

The road was an ancient trail connecting the five Spanish missions of San Antonio. It was also a popular dumping ground for corpses—isolated and dark, yet easy to get to. Homicide department trivia: The first recorded murder along Mission Road had been in 1732. According to the diary of a Franciscan friar, a Coahuiltecan Indian girl was found strangled in the fields of maize. Not much had changed over the centuries.

On the night Ana was thinking about, the victim was a young Anglo, six-one, thickset, dressed in khakis and a white linen shirt. He wore a platinum Rolex that would still be on his wrist when the police found his body. He had shoulder-length blond hair, parted in the middle, feathered in that unfortunate Eighties style. He was handsome enough, the way a young bull groomed for auction is handsome, but his expression was arrogant—a natural disdain that came from being born rich, well-connected, absolutely untouchable.

She and the victim argued. There was probably name-calling. Some pushing. At some point—and this was critical—he grabbed her arm. When she yanked away, his fingernails drew blood. He turned away, probably thinking the fight was over. He started back to his car—a silver Mercedes convertible just a few yards away.

But the fight was not over for her. She grasped the murder weapon—a blunt object, shorter than a baseball bat. She imagined herself striking from behind, cracking the side of the young man’s skull. He went down, crumpling before her, but she wasn’t satisfied. Rage took over.

Afterward, she left him there—she made no attempt to hide his body or move his car. She would’ve known damn well who the victim’s father was, what kind of hell would break loose when the body was found. She knew what would happen to her if she was ever discovered. She simply drove away, and her secret had stayed hidden for eighteen years.

Ana could slip into the killer’s skin so easily it frightened her. But then, she knew him well. His size, his strength, his motive, the way he would’ve lost control. Everything fit.

But how could she make an arrest?

Light flooded the living room windows.

A car pulled into the drive—familiar headlights, ten minutes early.

Ana wasn’t ready. She glanced at the hallway closet, where her gun was locked, but he was already coming up the front steps.

Don’t panic, she told herself. It won’t come to that.

The doorbell rang.

Ana had a sudden desire to bolt out the back, run to the neighbors.

But no. She was in control. She’d asked for this meeting. She had faced down desperate men before.

She walked to the front door to greet him.

HE HAD BEEN IDLING A FEW blocks away in a taquería parking lot, getting up his nerve, replaying the argument with Ana over and over.

She was so goddamn stubborn. He’d put the obvious answer right in front of her, given her overwhelming evidence, and still she refused to believe.

He tried to think of an alternative to what he was about to do.

There wasn’t one.

He loaded the .357 Magnum, put the car into drive.

He wasn’t worried about neighbors. Ana DeLeon’s house fronted Rosedale Park. On either side were vacant lease properties—not unusual for the West Side. The only neighbors were the ones in back, an elderly couple across the alley.