Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(27)

I wondered how Madeleine had kept her job and her life this long, with an attitude like hers. From her colleague Alex’s disdainful sneer, I figured he was wondering the same thing.

“My resources are at your disposal,” White decided.

“Sir!”

“However,” White said, ignoring her, “one of my people will be with you at all times.”

“I’ll do it, Mr. W,” Alex piped in.

“If I find you are using me, gentlemen,” White continued, “your life expectancy will be even shorter than mine. Alex, you stay here. Madeleine will see to their needs.”

“What?” she demanded.

“Go with them,” White commanded. “Cooperate with them. Watch them.”

“Frankie isn’t worth the effort. I don’t want this job.” Her fists were balled, her voice simmered.

Guy White raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have any choice, my dear. After all, he was your brother.”

Chapter 7

“SO YOU TOLD HER NOTHING,” ETCH SAID.

The old medical examiner, Jaime Santos, leaned against his porch railing.

Down below, winter mist filled the Olmos Basin. The pewter line of the dam cut through marshes and soccer fields, marching toward the hills where chimney smoke trailed up from the roofs of mansions.

“Nothing,” Santos agreed. “I mean . . . what would be the point?”

Santos met his eyes, then looked away.

He’s lying, Etch thought.

Doctors were not cops. They couldn’t pull off a lie.

Santos had aged since retirement. His eyes had turned soft and desperate. His chest caved inward. His hair had worn down to gray patches like a bad coat of primer.

“Miss Lee seems smart.” Santos tried to sound casual about it. “She asked about the blood under Frankie White’s fingernails.”

Etch sipped his atole.

It had been years since he had the stuff. The cinnamon and chocolate sent him back to Christmas at his abuela’s—stockings, presents, family dinners.

It had been a long time since he’d thought of Christmas as anything but sweep season for homicides.

“We got a DNA match,” he told Santos. “Ana’s husband—Ralph Arguello. Ana didn’t want to accept that. She claimed the test was tampered with.”

“One could fake something like that. You’d have to have access to the evidence room. You’d have to know what you were doing. But it’s possible. Look at that big scandal in Houston. They had to shut down their entire DNA lab.”

“What are you saying, Jaime?”

Santos shrugged. “Just that it wouldn’t be hard.”

Etch set his cup on the railing. There was a bullet hole dug into the rough-hewn oak. Etch put his finger on it. “Still the teenage snipers?”

“Damn kids,” Santos agreed. “They get on that utility road down there with a .22. My windows are the only thing you can see on this side of the hill at night. They think I’m a damn bull’s-eye. I keep calling the Alamo Heights cops . . .”

Etch nodded sympathetically. He took another sip of atole.

Christmas, nineteen years ago, Lucia and he had found Franklin White’s third victim. A community college student, Julia Garcia had been raped and strangled off Mission Road, abandoned like a used tire. The spot had looked a lot like the marshland below Santos’ deck.

Julia Garcia had been a few months shy of her twentieth birthday. She was the first in her family to go to college. Alive, she’d had a radiant smile. She volunteered with the barrio literacy program. She wanted to be a teacher. All that was cut short because she’d let a well-dressed young man pick her up at a bar.

Etch remembered standing in below-zero wind, watching the forensics team haul a draped gurney from the weed-choked gully.

Lucia said: We’ll get him, Etch. Don’t worry.

The father got away with it, he had told her. Why not the son?

Lucia’s face darkened. She couldn’t offer him any reassurance.

Guy White had never killed his women, but the distinction didn’t matter. It was still the White family proving their power, taking the women of the old mission lands like the Anglo cattle barons had before them and the Spanish alcaldes before that. The lords of San Antonio never changed. They had to find the heart of the city, the deepest foundation, and violate it. Possess it. Make themselves legitimate by proving that the oldest inhabitants of the land, families that had been here for three centuries, were defenseless against them.

Like Lucia, Etch came from mission blood. He’d grown up within the sounds of the bells of San Juan and San José.

He’d also been a cop long enough to know how easily justice could be bought and sold. He’d seen how reticent the homicide detectives were to approach the White family, how swiftly White’s lawyers counterattacked.

No one could bring Frankie White to justice. At least not in the conventional way.

No one would make him pay for snuffing out Julia Garcia’s life.

Etch took another sip of Santos’ atole. “You suggest anybody else for Miss Lee to talk to?”

The old ME wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Why?”

“Just curious.” He decided to risk a bit of the truth. “I have a guy tailing her.”

“You think that’s worth your time?”