Dead Wrong

“Her?”

“My mother.”

“That I couldn’t think of anyone who hates your guts.”

“That’s the kind of thing I’d know.”

Travis gestured with the beer bottle. “I’m not so sure. If somebody is targeting women because you loved them, he hates you bad. It’s not like this guy is telling the world what an asshole Will Patton is. This is something that eats at him. Takes the stomach lining, then his soul.”

“I’ve put people away…”

“But you hadn’t, back when Gilly was killed.”

“Mendoza…”

“We’re just supposing.”

“That he didn’t kill her.”

“Or that somebody, somehow, put him up to it. Maybe it took that somebody six years to work up the nerve to do the dirty work himself.”

Will wanted to reject a suggestion so unlikely, but he’d spent enough years in the D.A.’s office to know anything was possible.

“Do you remember that guy who set the fires because he blamed my grandfather for his mom’s death?”

Travis accepted the seeming non sequitor. “I remember.”

The first fire had been set inside a pickup truck chosen because it looked exactly like Police Chief Ed Patton’s. The worst was Aunt Abby’s townhouse. She’d barely escaped with her life. Even Will, just sixteen, had been targeted. His bike, parked outside the grocery store, had been squirted with gasoline and set afire.

He remembered how he’d felt, knowing someone had been watching him, following him, hating him. For a while, until they caught the guy, Will had lived with the heightened perceptions of a soldier in a war zone. He’d searched the faces of people in line at the store or sitting in the bleachers at basketball games, been painfully conscious of anyone walking behind him, of every driver behind the wheel of an approaching car. It was like looking through a magnifying glass, so that his vision was both abnormally sharp and a little skewed. He hadn’t trusted that anything was as it seemed.

If he bought into this theory, he would once again feel like an infantryman walking down the street in Fallujah and realizing he’d forgotten to put on his body armor. The smiles of old friends would look like the veiled faces of Iraqi women whose dark eyes were unreadable to that soldier.

Even with friends, he’d have to wonder what he wasn’t seeing, what he might have done to provoke hatred so virulent.

He didn’t want to revisit that kind of paranoia. Every cell in his body rejected the idea that someone he knew, maybe even someone he’d gone to school with, could do something so hideous.

He unclenched his jaw. “You’re reaching. All of you are reaching. This doesn’t have anything to do with me. It has to do with that sick bastard who murdered Gilly, may he rot in prison until the gates of hell open for him.”

“You may be right.” Travis opened the refrigerator and handed Will another beer as if it were an olive branch. “Let’s just hope we find out before another woman gets murdered.”

“Amen to that,” Will agreed, and popped the lid from the bottle. Goddamn it, but his hand was still shaking.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ONLY MAXIMUM SECURITY prison in Oregon, the penitentiary complex in Salem was sprawling and impressive. Trina had never had reason to visit it before. Even at the county jail, she didn’t like hearing metal doors closing behind her. The idea of being shut in forever gave her the willies. Today, she felt uneasy from the moment she drove in the gates.

She showed her credentials and surrendered her weapon, then allowed herself to be escorted to a glassed-in visitor room, furnished only with a single wood table in the middle and two chairs. Grateful she’d been allowed a “contact” visit and wouldn’t have to attempt to interview Ricardo Mendoza through a telephone and thick glass, she set the tape recorder and her notebook on the table. Then, while waiting for him to be brought, she prowled the room. Trina prayed that Lieutenant Patton was right and he’d be eager to talk to her. She’d feel like a failure if she had to go back and admit she couldn’t get him to open up.

A guard escorted a handcuffed inmate past the windows looking into the hall. The inmate shuffled with head bent, lank blond hair shielding his face. A moment later, a man and woman passed, both carrying briefcases and wearing dark suits. Attorneys.

Trina wondered if Will Patton had come here to see inmates when he was an assistant D.A. in Portland. She’d heard that he was a hotshot there, quickly advancing from prosecuting misdemeanors and doing prelims to Domestic Violence and then Major Crimes. Supposedly he hadn’t lost a trial.

So why on earth would he quit and take a job in Butte County, where half a dozen assistant D.A.s handled the entire caseload? Did he think he could make it to District Attorney faster on his own home turf? Most D.A.s seemed to end up being appointed to the bench. Maybe he wanted to be a judge so bad, he’d grabbed for the fastest route.

Or maybe something had gone wrong and his standing had sunk. Will Patton, she suspected, wasn’t the man to hang his head and accept a demotion to some unit like Consumer Protection or Juvenile Crime. He might have to handle those cases in Butte County—all the D.A.s did—but he’d also get a shot at the big cases. The headliners. The ones that would put his face on the nightly news.

More footsteps in the hall. Why was she thinking about Will Patton? Trina turned to face the door.

She’d seen the photo taken of Ricardo Mendoza when he was booked. Not much more than a kid, he’d stared at the camera with a mix of defiance, fear and feigned indifference. The man who nodded at the guard and stepped into the room had changed in ways that had more to do with being an inmate than with the six years that had passed.

In the blue prison garb, he looked thin and tough. A scar, pale against swarthy skin, curled from his temple onto his cheek. No longer the cocky young man, he was still handsome despite the disfigurement, the complete lack of expression on his face and the lines carved by bitterness. She thought she saw a flicker of interest in his dark eyes as he studied her, but that might be because she was a woman, not because of her mission or her job.

“Mr. Mendoza,” she said. “I’m Detective Giallombardo. Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“It’s not like I have anything else to do.” He went to the chair on the far side of the table, facing the glass wall and the guard who waited outside the room.

Trina sat across from him.

When she didn’t immediately begin, he said, “You here to find out what makes me tick, so you’ll be able to catch other guys like me?”

He was curious after all. She was interested, too, in the irony in his voice.

“I’m actually hoping you’ll tell me about the night Gillian Pappas died.”

His body jerked. Good, she’d surprised him.

“What’s the point of that?”

“I’ve read your testimony. I’m hoping to hear what happened, as well as you can recollect it. Including anything you weren’t able to say in the courtroom.” She held up her hand when he started to speak. “I promise, I’ll tell you why, but I’d like to hear your story first, un-colored by what I have to say.”

She’d thought his face expressionless. Now, for a moment, emotions she could only guess at boiled to the surface. Finally, he gave a jerky nod.

“Like I said, I got nothing better to do.”

“Thank you. Do you mind if I tape the interview?”

He shrugged. “Why would I?”

Trina turned on the recorder and had him repeat his consent. Then she began. “When did you move to Elk Springs?”

He answered her questions, explaining that his father was a migrant worker, but legal, and that he, Ricky, had been born in this country. His parents still followed the harvests: strawberries, peas, apples, even tulip bulbs in Skagit County in Washington State. He had managed to graduate from high school and learn some mechanics along the way. Two years before Gillian Pappas’s murder, Ricardo Mendoza had gotten a job in Elk Springs, at an auto body repair shop.

“They had this bullshit reason for firing me.” Remembered anger roughened his voice. “That’s when I got drunk and stole a car from the shop. I wrecked it on purpose. Yeah, I know. I was a goddamn genius.”

Yeah, he’d shoplifted, too, when he first got to Elk Springs. “I was hungry,” he said with a shrug. And, sure, he’d beaten the crap out of this guy who’d insulted Ricardo’s girlfriend in a bar one night. “I had a temper.”

After plea bargaining, he’d done six months for the auto theft. “Detective Patton actually put in a word for me. She helped me get a job when I got out. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have stayed in Elk Springs.” His laugh was harsh. “Big favor, huh? God, I wish she hadn’t done me any favor.”