The Witness, page 11
part #1 of Felipe Santos Series
Chance nodded, though he did not look convinced by his words. Felipe did not want him to think that he regretted last night. He went over to Chance’s side of the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, leaning over and kissing him on the mouth. Chance’s hands slid up his neck, tousled his hair.
Felipe felt himself stirring and quickly pulled away.
“I can’t,” he said.
Chance nodded in understanding, looking more at ease now.
“Will you come and sign your statement today?” Felipe asked.
“Of course,” Chance nodded. “Any excuse to come and see you in uniform.”
They both laughed. Chance took his phone from him and typed in his number. Felipe finished dressing, kissed Chance goodbye, and left the suite. He was surprised that he had the strength to leave him lying naked in bed, when he wanted to climb back under the sheets and join him.
He took the elevator down to the carpark, avoiding Carmen and her supervisor. He was early enough to miss some of the traffic as he drove back home. Abuela was in the kitchen fixing herself a coffee in her nightdress when he crept through the front door.
Felipe hurried past the kitchen doorway and down the corridor to the bathroom before she could see he was wearing the same clothes as he had left in last night. The thought of her knowing what he had spent last night doing with Chance made him hot with nerves.
He showered, remembering Chance’s fingertips on his skin, and then dressed quickly in his fatigues and combat uniform. Abuela’s eyes were on him as soon as he set foot out of his bedroom.
“Were you out all night?” Abuela asked.
“I was working late,” Felipe lied. He hated lying to her, and Abuela saw through it anyway. She pulled a face at him, showing that she did not believe a word of it.
He waved goodbye and was out the door, aware that the traffic would be bad now. He was right. The street outside his apartment was gridlocked. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently. Even remembering last night only lifted his mood temporarily, quickly souring when he thought of spending the day with Luisa again.
His mood was bad when he finally made it to his desk after forty minutes stuck in traffic. Henrique was already on the phone. Luisa was, thankfully, nowhere to be found.
“Is she not coming today?” Felipe asked, when Henrique ended his call.
“Haven’t heard from her,” he shrugged. He let out a long sigh. “I have some bad news.”
Felipe gritted his teeth but nodded for him to continue.
“The gun,” Henrique said. Felipe crossed his fingers. “It’s gone.”
“Gone where? For testing? To the lab?”
“No, it’s gone,” Henrique said. “Gone missing.”
Felipe cursed under his breath.
“How?” he demanded.
“I’m trying to figure that out,” Henrique said. “The lab is blaming the courier. The courier is blaming the lab. Whoever’s fault it is, it’s gone.”
Felipe wondered if this was deliberate. It was not unheard of. Evidence went missing all the time, from the police station, from the laboratories, from the crime scene itself. He wondered if Carlos Herrera had a man on the inside, with ties to the investigation, or perhaps he had paid off one of the forensics team or the courier.
If that was the case, there would be little to no way to trace it.
The gun was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Teo was a model student,” Señora Soto said as she guided Felipe into her classroom. The students were gone for the day, but the chalkboard was full of the lesson’s notes and her desk was piled with papers to mark. “I can’t understand why anybody would want to hurt him.”
Felipe had spoken to a few of Señora Soto’s colleagues at Teo Silva’s school and they had all said the same thing. She was his form tutor. She saw him more than any of the other teachers. If she did not know anything, there was nothing to know, he thought.
“Did he seem to change at all over the last few months?” Felipe asked her. Señora Soto wore a faded pink cardigan and billowy white summer dress. She was round and plump and smiley, the epitome of a schoolteacher. “His mother said that he had started acting differently. She thought maybe he had a girlfriend.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Señora Soto said wistfully. “As close as I like to think I am with my students, I’d never presume to think that they’d share things like that with me.”
Felipe nodded, feeling disappointed.
“There was something curious though,” she said. Felipe looked at her, hopeful. “He used to stay and do his homework at the library, or in my classroom. I suppose he was a bit of a teacher’s pet in that respect. Until about six months ago. He started clock-watching. I noticed, because I can’t stand when students stare at the clocking counting down the seconds, and I was surprised that he’d started.”
“Do you know why?” Felipe asked.
“Oh goodness me no, he’d have never told me,” Señora Soto laughed him off. “But he started darting for the door the second the bell rang at the end of the day. He was eager to be somewhere, of that I’m certain.”
“And you have no idea where?”
Señora Soto thought deeply about it for a long moment. She let out a long breath.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I happened to see him from the window one afternoon, purely by chance, getting into a blue car at the school gates. He’d practically run out of the classroom that day. I don’t know who he was meeting though.”
“It happened often though?”
“Every day, or every other day at the least,” Señora Soto nodded. “I suppose he could’ve had a girlfriend then. He certainly preferred whoever it was than doing his homework.”
Felipe thanked her for her time and saw himself out of the classroom. He did not know if what she had told him was helpful. He had started meeting someone over the last six months. Could he have been dealing drugs? He wondered if he was working for Leon or Martin or another Sanguinito and had perhaps tried to stop himself getting any deeper into trouble, and that was why he was dead. Or maybe he had worked for a rival gang and Leon or someone else had known that.
It did not explain why Teo had been so keen to leave school each day, unless he was running from something. Felipe walked down the school corridor, trying to imagine what Teo had been keeping to himself.
He had contacted the police department in Queretaro to talk to Cristopher and see if he knew any more about what had been going on with his brother. He was waiting to hear back from them. He had questioned two of Teo’s friends, but neither of them had been willing to expose his secrets, if indeed they knew anything.
“He stopped hanging around with us,” one of his friends had said. “He didn’t tell us anything.”
“Yeah, he dropped us,” the second friend had agreed. “Like we’d never been friends at all.”
Felipe wanted to know what Teo had started doing in the last six months that had led to him dropping his school friends and had him running out of class the second the bell rang. He hoped that Cristopher would have some of those answers.
His phone vibrated on his belt and he answered Henrique’s call.
“Chance King is here to sign his statement,” Henrique told him. “He was asking for you.”
“Shit,” Felipe cursed. He had been at the school longer than he had realised. “Just get him to sign his statement, see if he can identify Leon’s photograph. You don’t need me there.”
“Okay,” Henrique murmured, and he was gone.
Felipe wondered if Chance would be disappointed not to have seen him. He thought that it was probably better that he had missed him. The last thing he wanted was for Henrique or Luisa, or God forbid, the jefe, to realise that something had happened between him and a witness.
The jefe was a conservative man, and he would not understand. He did not know how Henrique or Luisa would react to such a realisation. Luisa, he imagined, would not take it well given that they had been sleeping together until a few months ago.
No, it was probably for the best, he thought. He had Chance’s number, anyway, if he needed to contact him. He reminded himself that Chance was engaged. He was here for just two more weeks and then he would be flying down to Brazil and then God knew what his plans were.
On the drive back, Felipe considered taking a detour to visit Leon’s girlfriend Amarissa, but he decided against it. He did not want to run the risk of Leon himself answering the door. He recalled Leon’s record, the domestic violence call, in particular, and did not want to put Amarissa in danger if Leon were to find out he had spoken to her.
When Felipe returned to the police station, Chance was gone.
“He identified Leon,” Henrique recounted. “He signed his statement. No problems there.”
Felipe nodded, feeling a flash of heat at the memory of being with Chance, their bodies woven together beneath the sheets, at the guttural cries they had let out.
“You okay?” Henrique asked.
Felipe blushed and quickly nodded, dropping into his seat before his partner could read any further into whatever look had crossed his face.
Henrique watched him from the corner of his eye, apparently disturbed by whatever he had seen. Felipe tried to focus on the computer screen, to lose his interest. The phone rang on his desk and Felipe snatched it up, grateful for the distraction.
It was a policía from Queretaro.
“Did you speak with Cristopher?” Felipe asked him.
“No, señor,” the policía said. “We went to his accommodation and spoke to the students who lived there. They had never heard his name before.”
“What do you mean?”
“We checked with a clerk at the university,” the policía continued. “She checked their records. Cristopher Silva is not a student there. He never has been. He doesn’t study here in Queretaro, and he doesn’t live here. As far as I can tell, Cristopher Silva never left Mexico City.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Prosecutor’s Office refused to allow criminal charges against Leon Herrera or Martin Fonseca to be filed even with the signed witness statements.
Felipe growled upon hearing the news, and even the jefe appeared to share in his frustration.
“They don’t want to go up against Los Sanguinitos, not without an airtight case,” the jefe sighed, patting Felipe on the shoulder. “We’re already being crucified in the media.”
“Sí, for doing nothing,” Felipe protested.
He wanted to point out that the papers were vilifying them for exactly this. Irene Fierro was asserting that they were in the pockets of the cartels and this was only lending more credence to her fabrications. Perhaps, Felipe wondered, Irene knew more than he did. Maybe the Prosecutor’s Office had fallen under the cartel’s influence, either through bribery or blackmail, or some other coercion. If Luisa had suspected it, she had not brought any concerns to is attention.
“I’m sorry,” the jefe said, bringing their discussion to a close.
Felipe felt disappointed. The gun was missing, vanished like the missing witnesses. Not that another three witness statements would make any difference, given how the prosecutors did not want to proceed with eight eyewitnesses and security footage.
He was at his desk when Luisa approached him. She wore a defensive look, perhaps readying herself for his protests that her office was not going to allow charges even now.
“I’m sorry,” she said at once. “It wasn’t my decision. Guevera and Morales don’t want to throw resources at Leon Herrera. He’s a small fish. He’s nothing. If they go up against Los Sanguinitos, they want big results. Rivera has been pushing to drop the whole thing from the start.”
“What about justice for Teo Silva?” Felipe demanded.
Luisa shrugged.
“Like I said, I tried to get them onside,” she said. “Word is Rivera wants a promotion. He won’t get one if he gets into a long, drawn out battle against Los Sanguinitos. Better to not try, than to try and fail, in his eyes.”
Felipe did not press the point. He wondered if Rivera, Guevera or Morales were under the cartel’s influence. Rivera wanted a promotion, which didn’t necessarily mean anything. Guevera was stoically anti-cartel so he could not imagine that he was. He had prosecuted cases against other cartel affiliates before. Felipe did not know much about Morales, but even if he was corrupt, he surely did not have such influence over the rest of the Prosecutor’s Office.
Felipe left the office early, his mind wandering and unable to get any satisfaction from his work knowing that a prosecution was unlikely. He wondered how Hugo and Rita Silva would feel, knowing that their son’s killer might never be brought to justice.
He got caught in the rush hour traffic on the way home. He found his mind drifting to Cristopher Silva. He had done some digging of his own and found that the policía in Queretaro was right. Cristopher did not attend the university. Felipe could not understand why he would lie to his family. He recalled Rita’s assertions that her eldest son had put his troubles behind him. Maybe Cristopher just wanted his parents to believe that.
He wondered whether Teo had known about the deception. He had looked deeper into Cristopher’s background and found he had been arrested for possessing cannabis. He had not been charged. The evidence had disappeared and the policía had not deemed fit to charge him. Perhaps the policía had taken the drugs and smoked them for himself, Felipe thought.
Felipe took a detour, trying to avoid the traffic. He thought about Chance. He pulled his phone from his belt and found his name in his list of contacts.
He was engaged, Felipe reminded himself. He was just a tourist.
Perhaps that was why he wanted to see him again. There would be no complications, he reasoned. Not like Luisa, where he still had to work with her. Not like Constanza, who had broken his heart and yet had somehow wounded up back in his life.
With Chance it was different. They could spend the whole two weeks of his trip together if they wanted, and then Chance would fly away to his fiancé and his life in Brazil, and Felipe could move on and forget about him.
He dialled his number before he changed his mind. The phone rang and rang. No answer.
Felipe tried not to feel disappointed as he locked his phone and lurched forward in the traffic. He wondered if Chance was back in Zona Rosa, or if he was with someone else even now, but he did not think so. Chance had said he did not meet people often. Felipe felt privileged and he had not got the impression that Chance was lying.
When he reached home, Abuela was in the kitchen cooking. Felipe’s stomach rumbled but he did not go to the stove for a taste, retreating to the bathroom instead, where he stripped down and stood under the running water until he had almost used up all of the hot water.
Under the water, he felt his mind begin to clear. He did not want to think about Teo Silva or the Prosecutor’s Office, or jefe or Luisa. He wanted a respite from the case, from feeling like he was fighting a losing battle to bring a case against Leon Herrera and Martin Fonseca.
He let his mind fill with images from last night, of Chance’s touch, his soft cries, the feel of his body against his.
When he shut of the shower and went into his bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist, leaving damp footprints along the landing, he saw a missed call on his phone.
It was from Chance. Felipe was about to call him back, when his phone flashed with an incoming call. This time it was not him.
“We have a problem,” Henrique said when Felipe answered. “One of the witnesses, Bianca Villegas.”
Felipe remembered her. The young blonde girl.
“What about her?”
“She’s been posting about the murder online,” Henrique said. “The news channels have picked up on her name.”
“What’s she playing at?” Felipe hissed.
Most witnesses were terrified at the prospect of being identified, especially if they had given a statement against someone in a violent cartel. Bianca seemed to think she was immune. Felipe hung up and switched on the small television that hung on the wall across from his bed.
He flicked through the channels until he stopped on Valentina Vasquez, a newscaster, who was giving her report stood outside a judicial building, for dramatic effect, Felipe assumed. Her dark hair whipped around her blue-blazer clad shoulders as she shouted into the microphone so as to be heard over the wind.
“One of the witnesses to Teo Silva’s brutal murder took to social media earlier today to express her disappointment at the delays in bringing the gunmen to justice, and to offer her condolences to the victim’s family,” Valentina was saying. The screen was filled with screenshots of Bianca’s various posts across her social media accounts. “Bianca Villegas, a fashion blogger and Instagram influencer, witnessed the gang slaying at Metro Polanco station with her boyfriend Tomas. She is yet to confirm whether she believes the policía are orchestrating an attempt to shield the gunmen from justice, but she has posted the mugshot of Leon Herrera, the suspected gunman, with a caption stating Yes he did it,” Valentina continued, as a screenshot of her post filled the screen.
Felipe could hardly believe what he was seeing.
“Her posts bring the policía under further scrutiny tonight,” Valentina continued, “As the victim’s family and friends demand justice, which the government seems unwilling, or incapable, of providing.”
Felipe switched off the television. He cursed Valentina Vasquez, and Irene Fierro for starting the story, as he wondered if Bianca Villegas realised the danger that she had put herself in.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With Godfredo asleep in the bedroom, Constanza tidied the kitchen, washing the plate that her husband had used to eat the leftovers when he had finished his shift. She did not turn on the radio, worried that she would hear a story about Teo Silva.
Even without hearing the news, she could not stop thinking about it. She should have known that the station would have security cameras, but she had convinced herself that she was just being paranoid, that nobody would recognise her.
