State's Evidence: A Beverly Mendoza Legal Thriller (32 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Two days later Stone walked into an
interrogation room at the county jail. A handcuffed and shackled
Manuel Gonzalez was sitting at the table accompanied by a burly,
mean looking guard. Gonzalez was wearing the standard inmate orange
garb. Unlike the night of the arrest, the crackhead appeared calm,
almost content.

He nodded at the guard, who then left, and
glanced at the one-way mirror. On the other side Lieutenant Kramer
and Chang watched.

“You’re in a lot of trouble, Manuel,” Stone
told him, playing the good guy before the
bad
ones came in.
He put a tape recorder on the table, turning it on.

“Think I care?” Manuel snorted.

“Not really. But
I do
.” Stone narrowed
his eyes. “And the family members of the women you killed care,
too.”

Manuel said nothing, staring straight ahead,
as if in a trance. He had waived his right to an attorney during
questioning, but Stone knew this could change at any time, so he
had to try to get as much out of him as he could.

“Let’s talk about Adrienne Murray.” Stone
turned a chair backwards and sat across from the suspect. “You
remember her, don’t you? You waited for her outside her office
building—the same office where your girlfriend Claudia Sosa
worked—”

He detected a bit of remorse in Manuel’s
brown eyes for killing his girlfriend, if not Adrienne.

“Then you raped and sodomized Adrienne
Murray, stabbed her repeatedly, and dumped her body in the lake!”
Stone’s voice grew rancorous. “Does
that
ring a bell?”

Manuel sneered. “Yeah, so I did it, man,
okay!”

“No, it’s
not
okay,
man
!” Stone
said, as though speaking to a nine-year-old. But it was an
important first step, as he was confessing to the crime after being
read his rights. “It’s
never
going to be
okay
! Not
for her husband, Chuck Murray, who loved Adrienne more than life
itself—”

Stone watched him react to this as he hoped
Gonzalez would.

“You knew Chuck Murray, didn’t you?” he
asked. “He visited the building where his wife worked almost as
much as you did.”

Manuel laughed snidely. “Yeah, I knew him. So
what?”

“Were you friends?”

“Yeah. Right.” Manuel paused, rolling his
eyes. “All right, I did it for him—”

“Did what?” Stone glanced at the tape
recorder, then the one-way mirror.

“I offed his old lady,” Manuel declared
bluntly.

Stone peered at him. “Are you saying Chuck
Murray hired you to kill his wife?”

“Yeah, man.” Manuel swallowed. “That’s what
I’m sayin’.”

Stone inhaled a deep breath and leaned
forward. “Now why would Chuck Murray pay you to
sexually
assault
and kill his wife?” he asked with some skepticism.

Manuel turned hard eyes on him. “To teach her
a lesson, man. He said she was messin’ around on him and playing
with his head. He was afraid she was gonna leave him. He wanted her
dead, but not before I treated her like the whore he thought she
was—”

Stone’s palms grew sweaty. Part of him had
wanted to believe Chuck was innocent of any wrongdoing. The other
part had seriously doubted that was the case. He’d obviously been
obsessed with his wife. But had that really lead to a
murder-for-hire?

They needed more than this asshole’s words of
complicity on Murray’s part. Especially when Gonzalez would say
anything if he thought it might help him down the line.

“Why would you agree to kill Adrienne
Murray?” Stone’s lips were a straight line.

“Why not?” Manuel shrugged without
emotion.

“That won’t cut it, Manuel!” Stone glowered
at the suspect. “Unless you’re straight with me, you’re going down
on this one all by your lonesome—”

Manuel lifted his cuffed hands and scratched
his face vigorously. “I owed him money, man,” he said unevenly.

Stone reacted. “Money for what?”

“He was a dealer.”

“You mean he dealt in illicit drugs?” Stone
wanted to confirm.

“Yeah—crack, heroin, weed, you name it,”
Manuel said. “I owed him. This was a way to wipe the slate clean. I
got what I wanted...he got what he wanted. Simple as that.”

Stone could almost see his colleagues in the
other room with their heads spinning. Chuck Murray a drug dealer?
And a conspirator in the rape and murder of his wife?

It seemed almost too good to be true. Except
for the fact that Stone had sensed all along that Chuck Murray had
it in for his wife. And he’d used a crack addict to do his dirty
work for him.

But he still needed more than just words and
gut instincts to go after Murray.

“Do you have any proof to back up these
claims?” Stone asked.

Manuel showed his dingy teeth. “He didn’t
give me no receipt, if that’s what you’re askin’, man. Why would I
lie?”

“Good question. Why don’t you tell me,
Manuel?” Stone fixed his face. Since there was never any talk of a
deal being offered and little likelihood that would change any time
soon, there seemed to be little gained at this point by implicating
Chuck Murray just for the hell of it.

“He showed up in the hood,” claimed Manuel,
“with some cheap crack. Ask around. They knew him as the white
amigo ‘cause he like stood out from Latinos with his chalky white
skin—”

Stone pondered that. “What about Penelope
Grijalva? Are you saying Chuck was involved in her murder,
too?”

Manuel lowered his eyes. “I ain’t gonna lie
about it,” he said flatly. “That bitch I did myself. She got what
she wanted. It felt real good killing her. You know, like the
feeling you get when gettin’ yourself off—”

A real psycho asshole, mused Stone,
distressed that he even had to give him the time of day.

He set his jaw. “Did it also feel good when
you stabbed your girlfriend twelve times?”

Manuel gazed bleakly at him. “Hey, she left
me no choice,” he asserted. “I was high...scared. I panicked,
man—”

Strangely, Stone believed that something
inside Gonzalez made him regret having to kill her. Claudia Sosa
was probably the one person in the world who actually cared about
Manuel Gonzalez and this was how she was rewarded? With three women
dead, the man was facing a sure death sentence himself as surely as
the death sentence he had given them.

And, if Gonzalez’s allegations turned out to
be true, Chuck Murray would be next in line for a lethal
injection.

* * *

Street snitches confirmed that Chuck—alias
the white amigo—was indeed a major cocaine dealer in and out of the
Latino hood. That and Manuel Gonzalez’s taped statement were enough
to get an arrest warrant issued for Chuck Murray on suspicion of
conspiring to murder Adrienne Murray.

Murray’s attorney was notified that the
arrest was imminent, agreeing to bring his client in. When that
didn’t happen on schedule, Stone, Chang, and a few Sheriff’s
deputies were dispatched to Chuck’s house.

Stone arrived, feeling depressed and
disappointed. He had listened to this man profess his innocence.
Now it turned out Chuck Murray had been guilty of far more than
they had imagined. Putting crack out on the streets of Eagles
Landing would undoubtedly cause more deaths, pain, and misery. And
maybe spawn a new era of Manuel Gonzalezes who would be willing to
kill to support a habit.

The house was surrounded and Murray was
ordered to come out with his hands up. When there was no indication
that he was prepared to do this, his attorney intervened, hoping to
get him to surrender before force was used.

Jonathan Hutchinson emerged from the house
within moments, his fleshy countenance looking weary. “He’s dead,”
the attorney announced unceremoniously. “Looks like he killed
himself—”

Inside, Stone found Chuck Murray crumpled on
the bedroom floor like a collapsed skyscraper. Blood oozed from a
gaping gunshot wound in his temple. He had apparently committed
suicide. By his side lay a .357 Magnum.

A hastily scribbled note on the dresser
read:

I never wanted to hurt Adrienne. But I was
hurting, too. I was always afraid of losing her. Now we can always
be together and no one can take her away.

Chuck.

The note was bagged as evidence.

Stone was satisfied that Chuck Murray had
indeed solicited Manuel Gonzalez to violate and murder his wife in
order to humiliate her and rid himself of his constant insecurity
about their relationship. He had chosen the perfect patsy and
killer in Gonzalez, who found killing to be as addictive as crack
cocaine.

An unsettled feeling remained in Stone’s
stomach like indigestion long after the body had been carted off
and the house sealed pending completion of the investigation.

It wasn’t over yet, he told himself that
night in bed. For his part, Manuel Gonzalez still had to be held
accountable for Adrienne Murray’s death.

And at least two other murders.

Then there was the attempted kidnapping of
Beverly Mendoza. The Assistant D.A. had likely been minutes away
from being driven to her grave had luck not stepped in and Gonzalez
spotted.

The thought comforted Stone. The last thing
they needed was to have a dead prosecutor on their hands with a
lunatic still on the loose.

Now everyone could rest a little easier—at
least for tonight.

He held his wife, settling against her warm
body and appreciating the fact that she was there as solace to the
hard, cold realities of the world out there.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Beverly watched through the one-way glass
with interest as detectives grilled Manuel Gonzalez. He had been
charged with the murders of three women, including the woman he
lived with. Two had been strangled and one sexually assaulted. All
had been stabbed repeatedly—apparently by the same knife he had
held to her throat.

Beverly felt chilled at the frightening
actuality that she had been slated to become Gonzalez’s next
victim. For this, he also faced charges of attempted kidnapping and
assault. She had evidently been targeted strictly at random rather
than for her position as an Assistant D.A. or anything to do with
the Santiago case.

Beverly had been given extra reason to give
thanks on Thanksgiving Day. If she hadn’t known it before, she did
now. She had every reason in the world to be grateful for all the
things in her life, for it could have all been taken away in an
instant with no chance to get it back.

Her eyes latched onto Gonzalez through the
window. If Beverly hadn’t known better, she would have thought he
was looking right at her. Laughing at her. Telling her that this
wasn’t over yet. That she had still better watch over her shoulder,
for the grim reaper just might abduct her yet and do horrifying,
unimaginable things to her.

And there was not a damned thing she could do
about it except wait in terror until he came calling for her when
she least expected it.

The truth was Beverly knew Manuel Gonzalez,
for all his smugness and seemingly cool detachment, was no longer a
threat to her. Or any other woman in Eagles Landing. With Stone
Palmer insisting they had a strong case against him on all counts,
there was little chance he would ever taste freedom again.

But what piqued Beverly more was Manuel
Gonzalez’s striking resemblance to Rafael Santiago. She honestly
wondered if Maxine Crawford would be able to tell the two apart.
Not that she needed to.

From what Beverly knew, the similarities
between Gonzalez and Santiago were strictly superficial and
happenstance. Though the same age, one man was Mexican-American.
The other Cuban. Their hair was cut differently, albeit the same
jet-black. Both were career criminals.

But the differences were even more telling.
One had killed with a handgun. The other preferred his bare hands
or a switchblade as his choice of murder weapons.

Manuel Gonzalez had never been in Judge
Crawford’s courtroom, by all accounts, virtually eliminating him as
a suspect in the judge’s death by way of motive. Then there was the
fact that his DNA was not found at the scene of Sheldon Crawford’s
murder.

It was just the opposite for Rafael Santiago,
who had the motive, means, and the DNA evidence, along with the
victim identification to support his guilt in the slaying of Judge
Crawford and the sexual assault of his wife Maxine.

Still, Beverly remained troubled. There was
something about Manuel Gonzalez that made her believe he was
somehow connected to Rafael Santiago.

But did that connect him in any way to Judge
Crawford’s death? Or to Maxine Crawford’s sexual attack?

* * *

Stone and Eagles Landing Police Department
Homicide Detective Joe O’Dell sat in on Beverly’s interview with
Manuel Gonzalez. “The Assistant D.A. needs to ask you a few
questions,” O’Dell told the prisoner in a gruff voice.

“So let her ask.” Manuel fixed Beverly
lewdly.

She sat at the side of the metal table
directly across from the prisoner who was flanked by O’Dell and
Stone, almost as if it was Gonzalez who needed to be protected from
her. Beverly recalled how her ordeal with him had ended, by ramming
her foot into his leg.

Holding the gaze of Manuel Gonzalez, she
asked without sympathy, “How’s the leg?”

He grinned halfway. “I’m still walkin’,” he
said toughly. “Maybe next time you try a little bit harder, huh,
Beverly?”

She sneered at him. “There won’t be a next
time! You had your one big chance and you blew it!”

Manuel leered. “Never say never, Ms.
Assistant District Attorney,” he said, as if having some extra
insight. “We just might be able to go at it again someday.”

If they ever did, the next time she would be
ready for him. Beverly envisioned aiming her Glock right between
his eyes and pulling the trigger.