Chapter Eighteen

Detective Tina Barrios sat in her police issue sedan outside of the Edgar home and swore a blue streak.

She hadn’t thought Sergio Diaz was the killer until he confessed. After, she was still skeptical until she learned the hoodie had tested positive for GSR and his statement was consistent with the facts.

Now, she wasn’t sure what to believe. She had asked him to name his accomplices and he refused. It would make sense that he would protect his brother, that he didn’t want the younger kid to get in trouble. And while Sophia Diaz had sounded sincere, she was basing her statement on what she claimed her brother had said.

Yet, Tina knew that this jewelry was the real thing. Where would a seventeen-year-old punk like Javier Escobar get an emerald rock like this?

Tina wasn’t positive that Sergio wasn’t involved. They could all have been, or maybe Sophia was right. That Sergio didn’t know until after the fact. Or she was trying to confuse the situation because her brothers were criminals.

This case had gone from straightforward to a fucking mess in the last thirty minutes.

Tina wished she had talked to both Henry and Sophia after Sergio’s confession. Maybe something would have come out then. But the county attorney was happy with the case, and she had sixteen open cases on her desk including a drug-related double homicide that had landed on her yesterday. A signed confession was as good as a conviction, and she didn’t have time to waste.

She didn’t want to believe that Sergio wasn’t the killer, but her earlier doubts rose to the surface and she looked down at her notes.

Javier Escobar, 17. Henry Diaz, 14. Bruno Martin, 14.

All lived together in a foster home that Javier’s mother, Brenda Oliver, operated.

Could be that Sergio was somehow involved, but there had been no hint that he was associated with a gang, and his employer said he was a diligent, hardworking employee. No marks on his record since he was sixteen.

Did a kid who was clean for three years just walk into a store and kill a man?

Or maybe, he just hadn’t been caught before?

Dammit. She called her supervisor and told him what she had learned.

“Get that box into evidence, then talk to the kids. See what you think after that,” her supervisor said. “But Sergio Diaz confessed. Unless you find clear and convincing evidence of his innocence, I don’t see the county dropping the charges.”