She had Roxanna Baez’s blue folder open, and had already skimmed through the entire essay series. Now, she started back at the beginning, reading more carefully. According to Roxy, she’d only submitted the first two essays, describing the removal of her and her siblings from her mother’s custody, followed by their arrival at Mother Del’s.
Roxanna had used real names, including those of Roberto, Anya, and her soon-to-be ally, Mike Davis. The second essay ended on a cliff-hanger: Roxy squaring off against Roberto and Anya at Mother Del’s. Nothing explicitly criminal and evil. And yet . . .
D.D. understood why Roxanna’s writing teacher had grown concerned after reading the essays. She wondered if Juanita Baez had seen either piece. If she knew the toll her drinking had really taken on her children . . .
No such thing as a perfect family, as Roxy had written. They all had to be made.
Did Roxy view her family as a success? Even after reading the entire series, D.D. remained uncertain. Clearly, Juanita had fought for her sobriety. She’d worked hard to get her children back. Which for Roxanna and Lola had meant finally leaving Mother Del’s and being reunited with their mother and younger brother. One step closer to perfection, all things considered.
Except then Juanita had gone and fallen in love with a contractor who lived in Brighton, putting her children back within reach of their former tormentors.
D.D. found the community theater piece interesting. So it had all started as Roxy’s idea—good thinking, too, to keep her, Lola, and then Mike out of Mother Del’s house for as long as possible. Except Roberto and Anya had hijacked that and, apparently, had never given it up. Anya was now the community theater’s star performer, while Roberto had died there—maybe after a drunken bender brought on by his distress over how close his girlfriend had grown to the director, Doug de Vries?
So many players five years ago. All brought back together by Juanita’s move into Charlie the contractor’s house. D.D. sipped more coffee, perused the essays a third time. The pieces were there. She could feel it. Five years ago, these past few months. Everything full circle. A family ripped apart. A family put back together. A family destroyed once and for all.
By one of the people in these pages. She was sure of it.
Her cell rang. Her other reporting detective Neil.
“How’s the dog?” he asked.
“Spotted.”
“Jack in orbit?”
“Jack’s happiness is beyond the moon and the stars.”
“Worth how many pairs of shoes?”
“More than I’ll ever admit.”
“Phil asked me to follow up with latent prints and Ben Whitely. Guess you’ve been keeping him and them hopping?”
“Jumping is good for the soul.”
“So,” Neil continued, “what do you want first, the confusing news or the more confusing news?”
“Hmm, I’ll go with confusing.”
“Latent prints, who were a little cranky about being dragged in on a sunny Sunday afternoon, had no problem processing the digital photos sent over by the Brighton field office. Unfortunately, no match.”
“Did they have enough points to work with? The whiskey bottle looked like it had a clear print, but I was less certain about the shell casing.”
“I’m told that by combining two different camera angles, they were able to ‘unroll’ a fairly complete image of a right index finger from the brass. Which matched the print recovered from the fifth of whiskey. So quality isn’t the issue. Most likely, the person isn’t in the system. Meaning the print on both the shell casing and the whiskey bottle belongs to someone who’s never been arrested, applied for a security clearance, or been in the military.”
“Wait—I thought Roberto had a whole criminal file. Hooligan in the making. Surely his prints are in the system.”
“His prints are,” Neil assured her.
D.D. got it. “It’s not his print on the whiskey bottle or the brass. Meaning, even if his prints were on the gun, he wasn’t the one who loaded the weapon. Now, you could argue Roberto bought the gun already loaded, or it was set up a while ago. But what are the odds that the person who fed the bullets into the suicide weapon was also the same person who supplied the fifth of whiskey? That sounds less and less like a suicide to me, and more like a staged event.”
“I would agree. Who loaded the gun, brought the booze, however, we don’t know.”
“What about Lola and Roxy Baez?”
“No fingerprints on file. I checked.”
D.D. thought about it. Meaning Roxy or Lola could’ve done it. Or . . . Her gaze returned to the pile of essays on her lap. “What about Juanita Baez?” she asked slowly. Could it be that simple? Upon learning what had happened to her two daughters, Juanita had decided to take matters into her own hands?
“Juanita is in the system. Print isn’t hers.”
“So maybe the girls, but not the mom,” D.D. murmured. She scowled, took another sip of heavily sweetened coffee. Pieces, so many pieces of the puzzle. She tried to re-sort the cast of characters in her mind, but still came up empty.
Someone else had been behind Roberto’s suicide; ironically enough, Anya had been right about that. The questions remained: who, and how did that person—event?—fit into the string of carnage that had followed? Had one person done it all? Or had one person killed Roberto, setting off the shooting of the Boyd-Baez family, Hector, etc., as acts of retaliation by a second perpetrator? Which brought her to:
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go with the more confusing news.”
“Ben said he’d let you know there was evidence that Lola had had sex before her death.”
“Yes.”
“He got a DNA match from the recovered hair: Doug de Vries.”
“The community theater director?” D.D. asked in genuine shock. “Anya’s new sugar daddy and ticket to Broadway success?”
“If you say so. De Vries does have a record, hence his DNA is in the system. Turns out, Anya isn’t his first starlet.”
“Creep! Wait a minute: According to the detective who worked Roberto’s shooting, Roberto had been fighting with Anya over her relationship with Doug de Vries. Which would give the theater director motive to eliminate his younger rival, Roberto. But you’re saying Doug’s vitals are in the system. Meaning if it had been his fingerprint on the shell casing . . .”
“Doug was not the one who handled the gun.”
“But he did have sex with Lola?”
“Exactly. Probably within twenty-four hours of her death.”
D.D. sighed, rubbed her forehead. “Roxy said Lola was trying to get back into the theater program. She’d set her sights on taking down Anya. Meaning what? The thirteen-year-old got Roberto drunk, then staged his suicide? Then destroyed Anya’s new partnership with Doug de Vries by seducing the director herself?”
“Who probably didn’t put up much resistance,” Neil quipped.
“Double creep.” She took a long pull of her coffee. How much caffeine did it take to be recognized as an addict? Most likely, she was already there. “Let’s take this from the top. Roberto’s suicide probably wasn’t a suicide. Our mystery fingerprint person supplied a fifth of whiskey to an already angry and volatile young man. Then—when Roberto was nearly passed out?—he or she wrapped Roberto’s hand around the gun, positioned it at his temple, and pulled the trigger.”
“Motive?” Neil asked.
“Plenty to go around. Doug de Vries would qualify under jealousy—”
“Except it wasn’t him.”
“Bringing us to Lola, Roxy, and any kid who’s ever been at Mother Del’s. All of whom were victims of Roberto at one time.”
“Vengeance. I like it.”
“Or self-defense. There’s also Roberto’s missing cell phone, which has been linked to at least one inappropriate photo. According to the Brighton detective, they never found the phone at the scene. Their best guess: Anya took it and hid it somewhere in the theater.”