Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(42)

I remembered Stirman at the soccer field, his barely restrained rage as he looked down at Jem. Tell your mother— She knows what I want. She’d best give it back.

“There’s more,” DeLeon said.

“The woman who died was his wife.”

DeLeon looked momentarily impressed. “Yes, but not just that. Stirman claimed the PIs didn’t only shoot her. They shot their baby.”

I stared at her.

DeLeon curled her fingers over the stack of torn sugar packets on the table. “There was no baby at the scene. No sign there had ever been one. But according to Stirman, the mother and child were both kil ed.

Maybe accidental y. Barrow and Barrera let Stirman almost bleed to death while they destroyed the evidence and toted away the cash. There was no cash at the scene when the police arrived.”

“Did anybody believe Stirman’s story?”

“Why should they? Cons say shit about their captors al the time. Of course, Stirman also claimed he was innocent of supplying the women to McCurdy’s ranch. Nobody believed that, either.”

“Kil ing a child doesn’t sound like Sam Barrera’s style.”

“Neither does framing somebody.”

I glanced over at Major Cooper, who was stil admiring the bluebonnet pictures. “Why hide a child’s death and not the mother’s?”

“Kil ing an il egal immigrant woman is one thing,” DeLeon said. “Kil ing an infant—that’s something else.

Even the shittiest public defender could make use of that in Stirman’s trial. Let’s say Barrow or Barrera panicked. One stray bul et. You’ve just murdered a child. You’re going to live with that on your conscience forever. As soon as the media find out, you’l be publicly crucified. You can guess what happens. We get a dozen cases like this every year. The child’s body conveniently disappears. A lot easier to conceal that kind of murder than the death of an adult.”

I wanted to say it wasn’t possible.

Then I remembered Barrera’s haunted look as he toured the McCurdy Ranch, as if he needed to remind himself there’d been justification for what he and Barrow had done.

Erainya had kil ed Fred Barrow only a few weeks after Stirman’s arrest. Fred had been treating her like dirt for years. Maybe something besides the abuse had made her snap—some new proof Fred Barrow was a monster.

“No cop wants to believe a guy like Stirman,” DeLeon said. “None of them spread these rumors outside the department. By the time Stirman got to trial, he’d gone tight-lipped. He never mentioned the dead child or the money again. Like he’d already started planning his own revenge. But if you’re wondering why Barrera and your boss weren’t anxious to bring in the police . . .”

“Give me a few hours,” I said. “Let me talk to Barrera.”

“Major Cooper is wil ing to listen now. He might not believe you, but if he gets the idea later that you held back information—”

“I could deal with Stirman more effectively my way.”

“You mean Ralph’s way.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to tel her about her husband’s track record for finding his enemies, or what he did with them afterward. I knew she wouldn’t want Ralph to have any part of this.

She sipped her coffee, no doubt trying to contain her anger. “Tres . . . if somebody kil ed my baby . . . I wouldn’t care how much money they stole from me or where they hid it. Do you understand? I wouldn’t trust myself to keep them alive long enough to find out. And this is me talking, the law-abiding one. When I think about how somebody like my husband might react . . .”

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t need to.

“Just a couple of hours,” I said. “I’l cal you tonight.”

She looked at Major Cooper, two tables away. She shook her head.

“You didn’t see what Gerry Far looked like when we pul ed him out of the river, Tres.” She slid out from the booth, pul ed on her raincoat. “For Erainya’s sake, don’t wait too long.”

When I got home to 90 Queen Anne, the two-story craftsman was dark except for my little in-law apartment on the side. Rainwater streamed down the driveway, carrying away petals from my landlord’s purple sages and blue plumbagos.

Sam Barrera waited on my stoop in the glow of the porch light. He was catching moths and shaking them like dice.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“It’l cost you.”

Sam studied me.

I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him with a five-o’clock shadow before, or with his tie loosened.

He said, “Cost me?”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir. Two bags ful .”

He released his moth, watched it flutter up the side of the screen door. “So you know.”

In my younger days, I would’ve hauled off and decked him, but I’d mel owed over the years. Now I was perfectly wil ing to breathe deep, thinking rational y, and invest the few extra minutes it would take to invite him inside, find a gun, load it, and shoot him.

“Mi casa es tu casa,” I told him.

I unlocked the front door, just missed stepping on the dead mouse Robert Johnson had left for me on the carpet.

The offending feline sat smugly on the kitchen counter. He had one paw in the middle of his empty food dish. A subtle hint.