Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) Read online

  The Church of St. Augustine, established in 1908, and its associated parochial school, St. John’s, were located just west of downtown. Luis had been in his fifth year at the St. Robert Bellarmine Seminary in upstate New York when he learned St. Augustine’s was ready for him. Though they gave him the opportunity to stay at St. Bellarmine for up to another year, he made the move in six weeks.

  “Is he in?” Luis asked as he entered the church’s administrative office.

  The church secretary, a seventy-year-old laywoman named Erna Dahlstrang, glanced up from the papers strewn across her desk to smile at Luis. He handed over boxes of church bulletins he’d picked up from the printer before heading to the breakfast.

  “He is!” Erna said. “How’d it go?”

  “I was a prop,” Luis replied.

  “They already called to see if you could come back next month.”

  Luis was about to offer a sarcastic response when a voice bellowed from the inner office.

  “What, in ill thoughts again?” the voice said. “Men must endure. Their going hence, even as their coming hither.”

  Erna chuckled as she indicated the office door behind her.

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  Pastor Whillans’s office was small, windowless, and ringed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Luis used to believe the pastor was making a point in having such a humble space in which to greet guests. Then he saw Whillans only took meetings in the garden or the nave. The office was his sanctuary.

  “Matthew 10:22?” Luis asked.

  “King Lear, act five, scene two,” the pastor replied, rising to his feet. “How are you, Father?”

  Gregory Hamish Whillans was tall with broad shoulders, but the dimensions of the room made him seem downright giant. He was pale, with a few strands of red hair clinging to a mostly bald pate.

  “If you’re bothered about this morning,” Whillans said when Luis remained silent, “let me assure you it wasn’t my decision to send you. They’re major donors and good friends of the archdiocese.”

  “They just want their picture in our bulletin. I didn’t know access like that was for sale.”

  “If it keeps afloat our after-school meals programs, then yes, yes, it is,” Whillans said. “It’s hardly selling indulgences.”

  “You’re right,” Luis charged. “With indulgences, the only thing poisoned were the souls of the sinners who thought they could buy their way into heaven and the priests who took advantage. Here we’ve taken a more active role.”

  Whillans sank into his chair, clearly bemused by Luis’s comparison.

  “If you’re judging the sinner and not seeing the man, maybe God really did have a reason to send you out there,” Whillans suggested. “I’ll pray on this and ask you do the same. Then we’ll speak further. Good?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Before Whillans could dismiss him, there came a frantic knock on the door.

  “It’s one of the boys from the baseball team,” Erna called out. “Says we need to call an ambulance immediately.”

  “Is one of the boys hurt?” Whillans asked, springing to his feet.

  “No, but there’s an injured woman in the dugout. They think she’s been shot!”

  III

  Boys in their blue St. John’s T-shirts and shorts ringed the visitor’s dugout as their coach, Father Sigfrido Territo, squatted inside. The woman was propped up on the bench. Though she’d attempted to hide it with a blanket, Luis saw that the left side of her shirt was stained with blood. She looked pale.

  “The field’s at the back of the school,” Whillans said into his cell phone as he jogged over. “Best access is on West Adams. You can enter through the parking lot.”

  He hung up and pushed his way through the students.

  “An ambulance is on the way,” he announced. “How is she?”

  “Not sure,” Father Territo replied. “I think she was asleep. When one of the boys woke her up, she started ranting in some other language. She’s disoriented.”

  “It was Zapotec,” one of the boys said. “My grandma speaks it.”

  Luis eyed the young woman. She was in her late teens or early twenties. Though she looked as if she’d spent the night on the streets, he didn’t think she was homeless. Her clothes, while simple, were recently purchased. He checked her eyes for indications she might be an addict. The tough feral eyes that stared back showed no signs.

  “I speak Zapotec,” Luis said to Whillans. “My mother was from Ixtlan.”

  “Ixtlan?” Whillans asked.

  “Southern Mexico. Still has a heavy Zapotec Indian population.”

  The woman looked up, recognizing the word.

  “I’m Father Chavez,” Luis said, shifting to his mother’s native tongue. “You’re at St. Augustine’s Church in Los Angeles. Where are you hurt?”

  She was reluctant to show him. He thought she was being modest. Then she leaned close and spoke in a whisper.

  “No police,” she said in Zapotec. “Please. No police.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. She moved the towel aside. The wound was only superficial but no less ugly. The bullet had grazed her shoulder, leaving a four-inch-long red and black furrow in its wake. The blood around it and down her arm had dried, but more still seeped from the wound.

  “It needs to be stitched,” Luis said. “How’d you get this?”

  “I fell.”

  “No,” Luis whispered. “I can see the burn markings. The paramedics will be obligated to call the police. If you need our help, you’ll need to tell them something different. Do you understand?”

  She agreed she did.

  “All right. Let’s get you inside.”

  She said her name was Odilia Garanzuay and she was originally from Santa Lucía del Camino. She’d been in the States for around eighteen months. She avoided Luis’s question as to whether she was involved in a crime but reiterated that she didn’t want to speak to the police. She also admitted she was undocumented.

  Luis was selective in what he translated to Pastor Whillans. In the six months he’d been at St. Augustine’s, he’d witnessed several incidents involving the vast community of undocumented aliens living and working in the city. These people—some parishioners, some not—saw the church as a place they could turn when going to the police could mean deportation. Luis understood this. In a new country, sometimes the only familiar topographical landmark was a church steeple.

  Whillans’s first call after the paramedics was to the archdiocese’s Bureau of Hispanic Affairs. They handled most issues within the undocumented community by handing the person off to what they hoped was the right faith-based nonprofit organization. If the individual was looking for the church to take a more active position, they were reminded that the archdiocese would not take part in anything even tangentially illegal.

  The paramedics arrived. Odilia told them she’d brushed into an electrified fence. After a questioning glance to Luis and determining that the patient would refuse treatment if they insisted on taking her to a hospital, they stitched her up without a word. They established that Odilia was also dehydrated and possibly a little malnourished, but she wouldn’t let them check her out further. When they left, the priests brought Odilia to the rectory to await the arrival of the Bureau rep.

  “Where did you come from?” Luis asked, resuming his questioning.

  “Oaxaca.”

  “Most recently, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied.

  “Can you give me an idea?” Luis pressed. “I want to help you, but I can’t do that without more information.”

  Odilia hesitated.

  “Why help me?”

  “God brought you here. It’s what we do.”

  “God?” she sniffed. “A truck brought me here.”

  “Maybe a truck brought you
to Los Angeles, but God led you to probably one of the only priests in the city who speaks your language. Doesn’t that mean something?”

  She thought about this.

  “My friend, she told the city lawyer that Santiago was missing,” Odilia said. “She went out the door, and I heard shots. I went to the window and saw she was dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Annie Whittaker.”

  “And who’s Santiago?” Luis asked.

  “A . . . friend,” she said.

  “Start at the beginning. Where were you?”

  “Annie’s house. We were waiting to hear from the lawyer that Santiago was safe. Then he disappeared. Annie went to look for him, but she was shot in her driveway.”

  “Did you see who shot her?”

  “No. She was against the car, shot in the back of the head. No one was there. I got scared and ran out the back door. Somebody shot at me as well, but I got away. I kept running until I got to the highway. I met a truck driver at a gas station. I begged for a ride. He said he could take me as far as the city. He dropped me off nearby.” She indicated over her shoulder. “I didn’t know where to go. I saw the church and thought I’d be safe.”

  “Why no police?”

  “Police? They killed Annie.”

  This was a shocker. Luis had met several immigrants who took the corruption of law enforcement for granted. But there was certainty in Odilia’s voice. True or not, she believed it.

  Before Luis could continue, voices came in from the hall. Luis recognized the tremulous baritone of Bishop Eloy Duenas, the elderly head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Bureau of Hispanic Affairs.

  “I was on a home visit in Silver Lake when I got your call,” Duenas was telling Pastor Whillans. “You know Bishop Osorio.”

  “Of course.”

  “Caught him on a good day. He’s still all fire and brimstone. This is blasphemy, that smacks of polytheism.”

  They reached the doorway. Whillans indicated Luis.

  “Bishop Duenas, this is Father Chavez. He comes to us from the St. Robert Bellarmine Seminary in New York.”

  “But from here, correct?” Duenas asked, already looking past Luis to Odilia.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” replied Luis.

  “When I told Bishop Osorio I was coming to St. Augustine’s, he said I should meet you,” Duenas noted.

  “He was my mentor before I went to divinity school.”

  “Small world,” Duenas said, nodding. He turned to Odilia and switched to Spanish. “You seek sanctuary?”

  Luis began to translate the question into Zapotec. Duenas raised a hand.

  “I’m a little rusty, but I think it helps to do these interviews one-on-one,” the bishop said authoritatively.

  He switched to poorly accented Zapotec and repeated his question. Odilia nodded. Duenas shot Luis a look that told him he was dismissed and closed the door after him.

  It took Luis thirty seconds to find multiple articles about a shooting in Ventura County on Erna’s computer. As Odilia had stated, the woman, Anne Whittaker, had been shot twice in her driveway at point-blank range by a large caliber pistol in what was believed to be a robbery gone bad. Her purse was missing and her car stolen, though it had already been located in a Walgreens parking lot in Oakland.

  Whittaker was described as a fifth-year associate at the Santa Barbara–based law firm of Shughart & Hofmeier. There was no mention of a Santiago, a Los Angeles city attorney, or the possibility that anyone else was in Whittaker’s house at the time.

  Luis went to his room on the second floor of the rectory. It was about the size of a university dorm room. Designed for efficiency—with cherrywood paneling, cheap commercial carpet, and a window that looked out over the church courtyard—it reminded him of a train compartment on good days, of a cell in the county jail on others.

  Luis considered the differences between Odilia’s description of the shooting and what he’d read online. She said she’d heard the shots, looked out the window, and seen her dead friend slumped against the car, but no shooter. He didn’t know the geography of the neighborhood, but for her to exit a back gate and be shot at from behind the house by someone who’d just killed a woman in the driveway didn’t make sense.

  How could the shooter get around the house that fast? If the goal was the car or the purse, why the killing? If, as Odilia suggested, Annie was simply shot in the back of the head, had there even been time for a struggle?

  Luis had been around his share of crime. This sounded like murder, not robbery.

  The drive from Los Angeles to the Ventura County Medical Examiner’s Office was the longest of Michael Story’s life. He hadn’t slept, having stayed in his office at the Criminal Justice Center until well past sunrise, waiting to hear back from Annie. When his phone finally rang, Annie’s cell number on the caller ID, he was surprised to hear a man’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Who is this?” Michael asked.

  “Camarillo Police Detective Lawrence Fisher. Who am I speaking to?”

  “LA Deputy District Attorney Michael Story. Why do you have Annie Whittaker’s phone?”

  Before he got to the end of his question, his heart sank. He called down to the bailiff and asked that the day’s proceedings get pushed to the afternoon.

  Though he was going to Ventura County to identify the body, the mention of an armed robbery had given rise to several questions of his own. Annie didn’t live in the big city. He didn’t know the crime statistics of her neighborhood but imagined they were more along the lines of noise complaints and the occasional report of teen vandalism than murder and attempted carjacking.

  The media had the story before he was outside the city limits. Another hour and they had police quotes to go with it. A random homicide with the hook that the victim was a young white woman in an upscale neighborhood.

  He’d warned Annie. The stakes were high. Even so, he hadn’t believed he’d one day be standing over her ruined body, nodding to a detective and a coroner’s assistant who hadn’t quite mastered a look of solemn concern.

  “For the record, you’re identifying this person as Anne Whittaker?” Fisher asked.

  “I am,” he agreed, glancing away as quickly as he could.

  “Looks fishy, right?” Michael said when he and the detective stepped into the hall to compare notes.

  “How do you mean?”

  “A carjacker just happened to be in her neighborhood that time of night?”

  “We’re operating on the theory that it was a day laborer. They’ve got those fields across the highway. It’s the peak of the season. All it takes is one guy to get high and go looking for trouble.”

  “Has anything like this happened before?” Michael asked.

  “Not a murder, but there’s been drunk driving, fights, burglary. You’d better believe I’ll be spending the next few weeks getting all kinds of calls from the upstanding white people of this city asking what’s being done about the illegals who they rely on the other fifty weeks of the year.”

  “Did you find the gun?”

  “No, but we’re hopeful. The bullets were pistol rounds, which was how we figured it was close range. Markings suggested an automatic. We’re not looking for a decades-old revolver in a haystack for once.”

  Fisher hit Michael with a few more questions. Michael asked, as a professional courtesy, to be kept in the loop. Then they went their separate ways.

  As he got back into his car, Michael checked his phone. Annie’s law firm had returned his call to say that they’d contacted Annie’s sister out in Florida. Michael’s wife, Helen, had called as well, knowing something about her husband’s evening plans hadn’t gone right. He stopped the message and tossed the phone aside.

  This case was supposed to be the stepping stone that would take him to the next level. How the hell coul
d it have gone so wrong?

  IV

  Growing up, Ernesto Quintanilla hated cops. They rolled through his hood staring through those mirrored shades, daring anyone for a reason to get out of the car. You knew a beatdown would make their day.

  Come on, muchacho. You know you’ll end up in the back of my car one day. Why not make it today?

  But Ernesto kept his eyes down, moved along, and stayed out of trouble. When he graduated community college with a degree in criminal justice, he didn’t wait before applying to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He flew through twenty weeks of departmental training and a few weeks later was a Los Angeles County sheriff.

  Now with his own squad car, he never put on shades, never treated anyone with condescension, and introduced himself to residents and business owners, addressing them as “sir” and “ma’am.”

  You want respect? Treat others with respect.

  At six foot four, he was an imposing presence. He was fair but by the book. The one law enforcement officer in the city who didn’t talk on his cell while driving. His stony gaze alone ended arguments and turned liars into truth tellers.

  “Sir?” the pharmacist said. “There’s a problem.”

  The pharmacist eyed Ernesto as if fearing this news might lead to trouble.

  “What’s that?” Ernesto asked, putting his hands on the counter.

  “Your father’s insurance covers three refills, but he needs to go back to the doctor to re-up.”

  “Can’t they call it in? It’s hard for him to leave the house.”

  “No, it’s a requirement of his provider.”

  Ernesto scanned the man’s face for signs he was looking to fuck with a cop. Not seeing any, he paid for the other prescriptions and left.

  Traffic was light out to Downey. He parked in front of his old man’s apartment complex and headed in.