She didn’t move. “Sir…”
“What?”
“We don’t need to do that, sir.”
I stared at her incredulously. “What are you talking about? That kid’s got a gun. And the closest cop to her is Thomas Pasquale.”
She nodded. “And in another minute, the supervising sergeant will be there. And so will experienced backup, sir. Thomas Pasquale isn’t even going to get close to the front door of that trailer by himself, if at all. Sit down and relax.”
I stood rooted, not knowing what to say. As if to break the silence, the radio barked. “Three-oh-seven, three-oh-eight. Ten-twenty?”
Eddie Mitchell’s voice, even over the scratch reception of the handheld, was calm and unperturbed. “Three-oh-seven is just turning onto Grande at Bustos. ETA about a minute.”
“Ten-four, three-oh-seven. You’ll see the P.D. just inside the entrance to the park. Park there and approach on foot.”
“Ten-four.”
“I’ll pull right through the place and park on the north side of the trailer. That way we’ll have spotlights on both sides.”
“Ten-four.”
Estelle looked at me as if to say, “There, you see?”
I sat down again and leaned forward, keeping my voice down. “Estelle, now listen to me. Remember a long, long time ago there was a day when you helped me escape from a goddamn hospital when I needed out of there the most? Do you remember that?”
She nodded slowly. “And you ended up back there again, too.”
“I know that, but not before we did what needed to be done. Now look. This is important to me. It really is. Tell your husband there that I’ll check myself into his goddamn hospital at 8 A.M. sharp, Monday morning. Then he can do whatever he wants. Brain transplant, fiberglass hip joints-hell, I don’t care.” I lowered my voice even more. “I just figured something out about Vanessa Davila.”
I sat back and Estelle mused at the expression of satisfaction on my face. “What’s that, sir?”
“She’ll talk to us now.”
“You think so?”
I nodded vigorously. “She didn’t before because she had plans.” I held up my right hand and made a pistol with thumb and index finger. “She was after someone. She decided to go get them…him…whoever…in her own way. We arrest her tonight and even she has to know that she isn’t ever going to get to do that.”
“On the way over, there’s something else I want to tell you, sir. Something that I found out this afternoon.”
My smile was like the Cheshire cat’s as I got up from the table. “But one thing, sir,” Estelle added, reaching across and putting her hand over mine. “No going solo.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you don’t drive yourself, you don’t chase, and if there’s a medication that Francis wants to give you to even the odds a little, you’ll take it. Deal?”
At that point, I would have agreed to anything.
35
“We can’t let an off-balance teenager walk around with a loaded firearm just to make it convenient for us to find out who she wants to kill,” I said, and Officer Tom Pasquale nodded as if he’d thought the same thing, even though seconds before he had suggested that we let Vanessa Davila go about her business, leading us to her intended target.
If Vanessa had looked out the curtained window of her trailer, she would have seen a fair-sized convocation. We waited in the darkness for fifteen minutes while elsewhere in Posadas Judge Lester Hobart scribbled his signature on an appropriate warrant. When the paperwork arrived via Deputy Eddie Mitchell, we kept the performance low-key. No lights, no sirens, nothing to disturb the neighbors from their dinner tables.
Vanessa never looked out, and her mother appeared genuinely surprised when she opened the door. Sergeant Bob Torrez was so tall he nearly had to duck going in, but he didn’t wait for an invitation.
He snicked a set of handcuffs on an already blubbering Vanessa and helped her to the living room sofa. Her mother stood in the kitchen, wringing her hands. If I had been in a worse mood, I would have suggested snapping a set of cuffs on her, too. But it had been Vanessa who had done the burglary, and I fervently hoped that the awful sound of handcuffs would frighten her out of any last resolve.
“Vanessa,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, “where’s the gun?”
“I ain’t got no gun,” she said, and it was the first time I had heard her voice-low, husky, and really quite pleasant. She would have made a good announcer for an airline.
“You were observed breaking into a residence on Escondido just a few minutes ago,” Estelle said. She sat on the sofa beside the cuffed Vanessa, and she was just about half Vanessa’s size.
“Just a few minutes ago,” she repeated. “Do you understand that you will be charged for breaking and entering and for aggravated burglary? When you broke into that house and then armed yourself with a stolen weapon, you got yourself in considerable trouble.” Vanessa Davila didn’t react with any great contrition, but I got the impression that Estelle made the speech more for the mother’s benefit.
“I didn’t,” Vanessa said.
“We got you on video,” Tom Pasquale said from the doorway, and I turned, surprised to see him holding one of those small video cameras that’s not much bigger than a sandwich. I tried to keep the surprise off my face.
“Well, I didn’t take nothin’.”
“We saw you remove a handgun from the premises, Vanessa. Now before you get into more trouble, play it smart,” I said.
Vanessa shook her head, still crying.
Estelle took a deep breath. “Mrs. Davila, do you know anything about your daughter’s activities?”
“What?” Mrs. Davila said, and Estelle glanced at me and then heavenward. She stood up.
“All right. Begin with the girl’s room,” Estelle said. Torrez, Mitchell, and Pasquale clumped down the narrow hallway, back into the dark confines of the trailer. Estelle turned back to the women.
“Do you understand that if we find stolen items in a search the penalties are more severe than if you cooperate?” she said, but Vanessa was playing her last cards, figuring that maybe we’d go away.
But we didn’t go away. It took ten minutes before I heard Bob Torrez say, “Okay, here we go.”
He walked out into the living room holding an enormous stuffed kangaroo. In its pouch, a small stuffed joey snuggled up beside a semiautomatic pistol. By this time, Mrs. Davila had made her way over to the couch, where she sat on one of its arms and hugged her daughter.
“Oh, Vanessa,” she said. That about covered it.
Sergeant Torrez slipped his pen into the weapon’s barrel and lifted the gun out of the pouch. Thomas Pasquale was at his elbow, holding a large evidence bag. “The cocking indicator says it’s hot, so handle it gently until we get prints off it,” Torrez said, and Pasquale nodded as if he’d thought of that, too.
By this time, Vanessa had sagged sideways into her mother’s arms and rocked and quaked with sobs. Estelle reached out a hand and put it on top of Vanessa’s, just holding it, a slight contact that told the girl she was there.
“Vanessa,” she said finally, “did you take anything else from your cousin’s house?” It was the first time I’d heard that connection, but it didn’t surprise me. Half of Posadas was related in some fashion to the other half. Vanessa shook her head and for the first time turned and looked squarely at Estelle. I saw the muscles of Estelle’s forearm flex as she squeezed the girl’s hand and said, “You took just the gun?” Vanessa nodded, and Estelle turned to look up at Bob Torrez.
“Would you please uncuff her now?” Estelle had a handcuff key somewhere on her person, but Vanessa didn’t know that. Torrez nodded and bent over, removing the cuffs none too gently. That helped, too. Estelle kept her hand on Vanessa’s.
“Let us talk for a while, Officers,” she said, and Torrez nodded, ushering Tom Pasquale toward the door. Deputy Mitchell followed, the ghost of a smile crinkling around his eyes when he glanced at me as he went by. I closed the door and made my way toward a chair that looked like it would hold me.