Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(22)

Thirty years later, he could still remember the way she looked that night.

He opened his eyes. He thought again about what Miss Lee had told him.

He’d never trusted any cop the way he trusted Lucia. He sure as hell didn’t trust Kelsey to do things right.

He dialed the private number of a detective who owed him a favor—a narcotics guy who would’ve lost his job in an IA investigation if Etch hadn’t withheld some damaging information.

“This is Hernandez,” Etch told him. “I need you to do some surveillance for me. Starting now.”

MAIA WATCHED RETIRED M.E. JAIME SANTOS play golf for ten minutes before she decided he hated the game.

“You ever try driving with a nine-iron, Miss Lee?” he asked. “Horrible technique.”

The old man eyed the golf ball like it had offended him. He tapped it tentatively, holding his club in vein-gnarled hands. He swung. With a crack, the ball sailed toward the tenth hole. It rolled to a stop at the edge of the green.

If the swing gave him any pleasure, Santos didn’t show it. He pulled the pin out of the turf like a pest control expert extracting vermin.

Maia said, “Dr. Santos—”

“Call me Jaime.”

“—if I could ask you about the case.”

Santos’ eyes were watery brown.

Despite his sour expression, Maia thought she detected kindness there—deeply submerged, diluted from years of autopsying every type of atrocity man can do to man—but still present.

He glanced at the two caddies—his own, and the one who’d brought Maia out to the course. “Why don’t y’all run and get some drinks or something? The young lady and I will walk from here.”

“But, sir, your bag—”

“I got a nine-iron,” the doctor snapped. “What else do I need?”

He handed them each a twenty. The caddies got in their golf carts and drove away.

Maia and Santos began walking.

A cold drizzle fell.

In the distance, Highway 281 was shrouded with mist. Christmas lights blinked on the smokestacks of the Quarry shopping center.

“So you’re Tres Navarre’s friend,” Santos mused. “Met him a few times. Dark hair? Pain in the ass?”

“That’s him.”

“He did some work for a friend of mine who was down on his luck. Got the loan sharks off his back. He wouldn’t accept any payment.”

“That’s him, too.”

The old man found his golf ball, gazed across the green toward the tenth hole flag. “Thirty years of autopsies, Miss Lee, they all tend to run together. But the Franklin White case . . . like I told the lady cop, that’s one you remember.”

“You spoke with Sergeant DeLeon?”

Santos studied his putting angle, didn’t seem to like it. He nudged the ball a little closer to the hole with his foot. “Seven blows to the head. Six of those to the face. Don’t see pure rage like that very often. Mind you, plenty of people were mad at him. That young man made his father look like a gentleman.”

“How do you mean?”

Santos gave her a raised eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Santos gripped his club, faced the ball. “I hate golf. Blood pressure. Had to do something.”

“Jaime, about Franklin White?”

Santos sighed. “Back in ’87 there was a string of rape-murders on the South Side. Half a dozen young women picked up in bars, driven to secluded spots, raped and strangled. These women, all nineteen, twenty years old. All of them bright college girls, sweet kids. The kind of young women families pin their hopes on. You look at their photos . . .” The old man shook his head sadly, as if he could still see the victims’ faces. “Nobody was ever arrested, but they got a sketch of a man seen talking to one of the victims shortly before she disappeared. Young Anglo guy, blond and stocky, looked a lot like Guy White’s son.”

Maia felt her nausea coming back.

“You all right, Miss Lee?”

“I’m fine.”

Santos studied her more carefully. “Let me see your hands.”

“Why?”

“Come on now.”

Reluctantly, she extended her hands. The old man pressed at her fingers, felt her pulse.

“I’m fine,” she said again, pulling away. “Sergeant DeLeon thought you knew something about the Franklin White case. Something important, maybe about the blood under Franklin’s fingernails?”

For another moment, the old man stared at her. Then he turned his attention back to the golf ball. “Guy White isn’t what he used to be, Miss Lee, but he’s still vicious. Maybe more so now that he doesn’t have much time.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “You can’t be evil as long as Guy White’s been evil without it catching up with you. Rots you from the inside. That’s my medical opinion.” He tapped the ball. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stir up the Whites. I see a lot of directions this might go. I don’t like any of them, after what happened to the sergeant.”

“DeLeon wrote something about the timing being wrong.”

“I don’t know about that. The timing . . . I told Ana she should ask Mike Flume out at the Pig Stand. He could probably tell you about that, if the old bastard is still alive. Mike vouched for Lucia and Etch Hernandez that night. They had to have a clean alibi, see. All the cops involved did.”