Chapter Two

Before Andy started spilling his story, I got up and told Scotty I needed more than fifteen minutes. When Monday night football was over, it wasn’t yet baseball season, and the Phoenix Suns weren’t playing, Mondays were slow, so leaving Scotty to handle the bar wasn’t a problem. Plus, it was cold. Arizonans didn’t like going out in the cold. Most didn’t own warm coats, just windbreakers and sweatshirts. Yes, it can get very cold in Arizona. People only think about the heat of the summers and the comfortably warm days of baseball spring training, but December and January could bite your ass with sub thirty-degree mornings and sunny days that didn’t top fifty. Phoenix was in the middle of a desert. Sometimes, I wondered what people thought when they decided to settle in this valley—did they enjoy battling mother nature? Freezing in January and roasting in August?

Then I would jog into a sunrise bursting with color as it ascended the mountains, or sit outside with friends and a beer to witness a crimson sunset setting the desert aglow, and I knew why. People who didn’t live here couldn’t understand that with the bad came the good. Phoenix wasn’t perfect—no place that topped 120 degrees in the summer for weeks on end could be perfect—but the Valley of the Sun was unique. I never saw myself leaving again. After six years in the Army, away from home, I realized how much I loved and missed my hometown—and my family.

I poured a cup of coffee for myself and walked back to Andy. I sat down and said, “Lay it on me.”

“Two weeks ago, a convenience store off Camelback near 19th was robbed, the clerk shot and killed. In the process of canvassing the scene, pulling security footage, talking to witnesses, police questioned Sergio Diaz, a nineteen-year-old who works at a fast-food restaurant two blocks from the scene. The Taco House.”

“I know it,” I said. “Best street tacos in Phoenix. My cousin Millie knows the owner.”

“Millie knows everyone,” Andy said.

True, I thought. “Why’d they question Sergio?”

“He’s known to stop there after work, and he has had words with one of the clerks. Not the one who was killed, but a part-time clerk who told police that the week before the robbery, Sergio came in and was short two dollars. When the clerk refused to extend credit, Sergio threw the items back at him, then kicked a display rack on his way out.”

“That might be motive to shoot that clerk,” I said, though it seemed weak.

“It was enough for the police to talk to him. They asked him to come in, he did willingly, didn’t ask for a lawyer. He denied ever kicking a display rack, though admitted he walked out when he realized he was short on funds.”

“Is there video?”

“They record over the old footage every couple of days. The system is ancient with limited storage.”

“So the police talk to Sergio and he just says yeah, I killed the guy?”

Andy shook his head. “Not at first. He claimed he was home by 11:30. Police confirmed that he left work at 11:10 and it’s a fifteen-to twenty-minute walk to his apartment along the route that passes the store. Though the robbery occurred around 11:45, no one saw Sergio enter his apartment when he said he arrived home. They really went at him, he didn’t budge, and they had no hard physical evidence. The weapon hasn’t been found. They let him go.”

“What about the camera? You said it was an old system, but they must have something.”

Andy nodded. “It’s black-and-white, poor quality. Two young white, possibly Hispanic males entered at 11:40 wearing ball caps, brims low. There’s no clear view of their faces. They walked to the back of the store, off-camera, and the clerk appeared to watch them in the mirrors mounted in each corner of the store.

“About a minute later, the third suspect—the shooter—entered. He wore a hoodie with a face mask over his nose and mouth. The clerk immediately went on alert, made a move for the shotgun under the counter, but the suspect pulled a weapon and the clerk froze. Words were exchanged and the clerk opened the register. The suspect took the cash, estimated to be a hundred and twenty dollars.

“The two young men who had entered first came from the back of the store and while in view of the camera, one went over the counter and stole cigarettes and alcohol and the other grabbed junk food. The three left together and the clerk was yelling at them. The one in the mask turned around and shot the clerk twice in the chest.”

“Let me guess. Sergio resembles the shooter, even though the video is indistinct.”

Andy nodded, drained the rest of his beer. “The shooter is five foot nine to five foot ten—Sergio is just over five foot nine.”

“Like half the men in the state,” I muttered.

“After the first interview, the police were leaning away from Sergio, even with the basic physical resemblance. Sergio was polite and forthcoming, expressed concern for the neighborhood and worry about his employer and co-workers.

“Then a couple days later, the lead detective came by his work with follow-up questions. At first, Sergio was polite. He came out, pulled on a hoodie—a similar hoodie to the one in the video. The detective—Tina Barrios—asked about it. He said that it was his hoodie. She asked him to come to the station. He wanted to know why, and she said that his hoodie matched that of their suspect. He refused, began to act belligerent, and she made the call to arrest him because she feared he would destroy the sweatshirt. They kept him in lockup for twenty-four hours and rushed the tests. The pocket of the hoodie tested positive for gunshot residue.”

“And that was it?” I wasn’t a cop, but I’d been in the military police for half my time in the Army. Generally evidence was important, even with a confession.

“After he was shown the GSR test results and the video of the shooting, Sergio confessed. He claimed that he needed the money and didn’t mean to kill the clerk, then asked for a lawyer. I watched the two interviews—they were night and day.”

“What about the things he stole?”

“He personally didn’t take anything other than the cash, and he said he spent it.”

“Could be.” A hundred twenty bucks wasn’t a fortune. “But you and I both know that a confession without something solid isn’t going to put him in prison. No record, no real motive. It’s not—” I said when Andy cut in.

“Maybe not. But the confession plus the evidence from his clothing? And he has a juvie record. Minor stuff, mostly petty theft, nothing we’d even look at except it would come out in a trial.”

“His attorney might be able to get it suppressed.”

“Not if he negotiates a plea. The county attorney is satisfied with the outcome. The confession is going to save the time and expense of a trial.”

“Did police search his apartment?”

Andy nodded, finished the last of his beer. “Nothing there. No evidence of the crime, no cigarettes or even beer in the refrigerator. Sergio claimed he dumped the gun in the canal south of West Campbell. He could have. It’s out of his usual stomping grounds, but not that far.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” I said.

Andy looked pained, and I could see the lack of sleep in his eyes. He was wrestling with his conscience. I knew how that felt.

“The county attorney handed this to me,” Andy continued. “Told me to negotiate the plea, work it through the system. Suggested thirty years, but I could go down to twenty if he gave up the other two. The kid won’t budge. I’ve been a prosecutor for three years—I know that doesn’t seem very long, but I’ve sat down across from dozens of killers, hundreds of thugs who wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone. But Sergio—he’s polite, he’s intelligent, he’s respectful, he’s worked at the same job for three years. He doesn’t fit all the slots, not for me. Maybe—maybe it was the look in his eyes. He seems lost, worried, defeated.”

“Guilt?” I suggested.

“Maybe. We both know the weight of Catholic guilt.” He tried for a smile at his light joke, but it barely made his lips twitch. “Anyway, I wanted to go back to Barrios and ask her to reopen the case, see if there’s something more to it, but my boss wants the plea—it looks good on his numbers. A confession with no hint of police coercion.”

“You don’t like Hawkins?” George Hawkins was the county attorney and had been endorsed by cops, lawyers, council members on both sides of the aisle. Even my mother, who was the outgoing county attorney three years ago, gave her blessing when Hawkins ran for the office.

Andy didn’t say anything.

“I’m not going to gossip about it,” I assured him. “Who would I tell?”

“It’s not that I don’t like George—he’s a good boss for the most part, fair and evenhanded. I just think he’s wrong about this. He has big shoes to fill, I don’t have to tell you that, and his numbers haven’t been as strong as the previous county attorney.”

My mother definitely had very big shoes. Sometimes just being Ava Morales Angelhart’s daughter was daunting, so I could just imagine taking over a position she’d held with esteem.

“Why me?” I asked bluntly.

“Three reasons. First, I know you.”

“I’m sure you know a lot of private investigators.”

“None I can use. They all contract with either my office or the public defender’s office. Second, your ethics and reputation. I know your family.” True, Andy even came to my grandfather’s retirement party last year, when he left the bench. He continued, “I trust you to find the truth as well as be discreet. George can’t know I’m doing this behind his back. I made my case, he disagreed, and I have to start working on the plea deal. I have to get it signed, sealed, and delivered by next Monday.”

“Even if I get the kid to tell me he’s innocent, that isn’t going to mean squat to the cops or your office. I know killers who confess and are one hundred percent guilty, then backtrack when their lawyer tells them they were idiots to confess because the case was weak.”

“You’ll have to prove it, and I don’t think Sergio is going to be a big help in that.”

“You said three reasons,” I noted.

“Do you remember when Doug Johnson was accused of stealing the money my class raised during spring break to pay for the prom?”

“Sure, but that was a long time ago.”

“You believed him. You were the only person who believed that he didn’t do it.”

“Doug didn’t do himself any favors when he lied about where he was when the money went missing.”

“You convinced him to tell the truth, even though he didn’t want to.”

“Because,” I reminded him, “he was making out with someone else’s girlfriend.”

“Not only did you find the truth, but you found out what happened to the money.”

“It wasn’t difficult. It was a matter of retracing everyone’s steps and then realizing that it was misplaced, not stolen.”

“Everyone was angry and divided, and Doug was nearly expelled.”

The accusation had torn the school apart and caused a lot of friction, but in the end, all was well.

“What does that have to do with this?”

“If you believe that Sergio is innocent, you won’t stop until you find the truth. No matter how many hurdles Sergio puts up. And if you tell me he’s guilty as sin and I’m a bleeding heart for wanting him to be innocent, I’ll believe you.”

Andy knew me better than I thought he did.

“What’s your theory about the hoodie?” I asked. “Was the test flawed? Inconclusive?”

“I think,” he said quietly, “that he knows the killer. That he knows the killer had worn his hoodie. He didn’t think about it until he saw the picture of our suspect. He’s protecting the killer. Maybe a close friend? Someone he works with? I don’t know. I can’t imagine confessing to a murder I didn’t do even if it was to protect my mom, and I’d do nearly anything for my mom.”

“Okay,” I finally said after thinking about everything Andy had told me. “I’ll do it. I’ll find the truth. And if it’s not what you want to hear, you’ll have to live with it.”

“I appreciate your honesty, Margo,” he said. “Here’s a copy of everything I have about the case and Sergio’s life.”

I took the file folder. It was thin and wouldn’t take me long to read.

Andy continued. “We’ll have to be a little...sneaky. Sergio’s public defender is Cheryl Osterman. She won’t let me talk to him without her being present, and if Cheryl knows that I’m questioning the confession, she won’t keep it to herself, which will put my job on the line.”

I wondered if Andy had considered his job would be on the line if I proved Sergio Diaz was innocent. I’d learned in my quarter century on the planet that secrets had a way of getting out when you least expected.

“I know what to do,” I said.

“You do?”

“I am the PI, aren’t I?”

He looked skeptical.

“You just said you trusted me,” I said. “So trust me.”

“Okay,” Andy said with a sigh.

I hoped Andy was right and that Sergio was innocent, but I doubted it. Weak alibi, beef with the store, juvie record—sure, it was a big step going from petty theft to robbery-homicide, but most crimes were stepping stones.

“I need to see the security footage.”

Andy frowned.

“You’ll have to show it to the defense eventually.”

“He confessed. There is no need.”

I stared at him.

“Okay. Tomorrow. But—you can’t come in as a PI or anything. Maybe pretend you’re dropping something off from my parents. I’m sure people in my office know you.”

“I’ll be discreet,” I said.

“Thanks, Margo. I really appreciate your help.” He smiled, reminding me how handsome Andy Flannigan was. Too bad there was no spark, because he was a good guy.

I’m not picky, though my sister Tess certainly thought I was. I just know what I want and what I like and don’t want to waste time with someone who could be my best friend, but didn’t give me butterflies in my stomach.

I wanted a marriage that lasted. Like my grandparents. Like my parents.

I might be single for the rest of my life.