LITMIR.BIZ

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      Five

      Kelly gazed through the glass wall of the observation room. Four MS-13 gang members were arrested in the house raid. Despite the fact they’d been armed to the teeth, SWAT managed to extract them without any bloodshed. Kelly pictured the four of them scattered through the house, three on the couch, one in the kitchen making nachos in a surprisingly domestic gesture. The confusion and disarray as flash bang grenades followed battering rams through both front and back doors. The four of them on the ground, eyes blinded, ears ringing, hands being cuffed. She almost envied the SWAT team. Their goal was simple: get in, get your guys, get out. What she dealt with was much messier.

      She examined the putative leader of the gang, Marco Guzman. He was older than she’d expected, maybe late twenties, a testament to his survival skills. Gang tats rode up his neck and down his arms, framing a carefully buttoned blue-and-white shirt. Close-cropped hair and a face marked by a trim goatee and hooded eyes. Clearly Guzman was no stranger to interrogation rooms, he looked right at home.

      His lawyer sat beside him. Despite the fact that he looked like a teenager, according to the local cops he’d developed a reputation for himself as the local MS-13 consigliere.

      Kelly gathered herself. A successful outcome for this interview was highly unlikely. She was dealing with a seasoned criminal and an adept lawyer. Three hours of grilling by Phoenix P.D., and Guzman had only admitted to knowing there were steak knives in the house. The stacks of guns had apparently escaped his attention. Still, she had to give it a shot.

      She entered with Rodriguez at her heels. She wasn’t crazy about having him sit in, but he spoke Spanish, which would come in handy.

      “Good evening, Mr. Guzman.”

      “Call me Psycho,” he said. His voice was different from what she’d been expecting, smooth with a slight trace of an accent.

      Rodriguez rattled something off in Spanish. Guzman leered at him and shot back a response.

      “Let’s stick to one language, shall we?” Kelly said.

      “He was asking what my momma was thinking, naming me that,” Guzman said, smiling at her. He had probing eyes, and Kelly leveled her gaze to meet his. “I warned him not to mention my momma again, or—”

      The lawyer said something sharp. Guzman clammed up, sucking his teeth loudly.

      “It says here your momma named you Marco,” Kelly said, one eyebrow raised. “Seems like a perfectly good name.”

      Guzman shrugged. “So call me that. Don’t make no difference to me, Roja.”

      Kelly fought a flush over his reference to her red hair. “I’m FBI Special Agent Jones, this is Agent Rodriguez. We have some questions about one of the items found in your house.”

      Guzman shrugged. “Not my house, Agent Jones.”

      Without glancing up from his BlackBerry the lawyer said, “As my client informed the police, he was visiting that house today solely to watch a baseball game. He has no knowledge of any weapons being stored there.”

      “No? Hard to believe, when there were handguns on the table behind him in the living room.”

      “You know what’s psycho, is you showing up,” Guzman said. His lawyer threw him a hard glance, but he ignored it. “ATF, sure, but you got no business with guns.”

      “This one, we do.” Kelly slid a photo of Duke Morris’s gun across the table.

      He glanced at it. “Looks like a chica’s. Yours?”

      Kelly shook her head. “No, Mr. Guzman. That gun belonged to a murder victim.”

      He shoved the photo back across the table. “Never seen it.”

      “You sure? Because it was used to kill a U.S. senator this morning,” Rodriguez said.

      The lawyer’s head snapped up, as if he were a retriever who had just caught a scent.

      Kelly tried to conceal her irritation. She had hoped to lull Guzman into complacency, so he might slip up and say more than he should. Now that Rodriguez had revealed their endgame, there was no way he would give them anything. “Got your attention now?” Kelly asked.

      “I’d like a minute to confer with my client.” The lawyer said with finality.

      She tried anyway. “Mr. Guzman, Senator Duke Morris was murdered late last night. Ballistics indicate that his own gun, this gun, was used in the killing. And then it turned up in your stash house.”

      Guzman just shook his head. His eyes had cloaked over, dark and impenetrable. Shark eyes. “Don’t know what you’re on about, Roja. I was watching a game.”

      “MS-13 likes to use machetes, don’t they, Marco? That’s your calling card. Morris was hacked to bits—”

      “This interview is officially over.” The young lawyer stood, pushing his chair back so violently it tipped over. The noise was loud in the small room.

      Kelly and Rodriguez exchanged a glance. The lawyer couldn’t force them to leave, but chances were he’d put a muzzle on his client and they wouldn’t get anything regardless. Kelly gathered up the file and motioned for Rodriguez to follow her.

      “Well, that was a waste of time,” he grunted as the door closed behind them.

      Kelly threw him a look. She wouldn’t chew Rodriguez out with a suspect in hearing range, but once they were alone he was in for it. She shrugged and said, “I wasn’t expecting much.”

      “Shame they couldn’t pull any prints off the weapon.”

      Kelly didn’t answer, her eyes still fixed on the door. The lack of forensic evidence bothered her. She didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with gangs, but assumed they weren’t generally known for their attention to detail. “Did they track the tip about the stash house?”

      Rodriguez cocked his head. “I don’t know. Why would they?”

      “It would be good to know if it came in from a concerned citizen, a rival gang, or someone else. Maybe even a former member who’s currently on the outs. Someone like that could prove helpful.”

      “Yeah, maybe.” Rodriguez looked dubious. “I heard the only way out of MS-13 is a casket. But I could ask around.”

      “Great.” Kelly looked at him pointedly. “The sooner the better, I’m thinking.”

      “What, now?”

      “No time like the present.”

      “What about this?” He jerked his head toward the interview room.

      “I’ve got this under control,” Kelly said. “Like you said, not much here anyway.”

      “All right,” Rodriguez grumbled. “I’ll try to track it down.”

      “Keep me posted.” She watched Rodriguez slump away. Kelly had worked with a motley assortment of partners over the years. Based on his bad attitude and lack of initiative, she was consigning Rodriguez firmly to the bottom of the pile.

      Of course, when they first worked together it took time for Kelly to trust Jake, so maybe there was hope for Rodriguez yet. Although Jake’s weakness was a cavalier attitude coupled with reckless disregard for authority. Rodriguez seemed just plain lazy.

      Kelly realized she was fingering her engagement ring. She bit back a smile, picturing Jake on one knee in their hotel room, cobbling together a proposal after she accidentally discovered the ring. She hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. He was busy moving into his new office space, and she’d been tied up by a case in Florida. If this lead panned out, they might be able to spend the holiday weekend together. Kelly spun the ring around her finger with her thumb. It still felt oddly heavy, strange that after ten months she hadn’t adjusted to the weight of it.

      The

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