CHAPTER 14

Working cases from behind a desk, while some might consider it an art form, requiring as it does the carefully orchestrated ferrying of witnesses back and forth, the adept use of fax and phone – not to mention a comfortable chair with adjustable lumbar support – has never been my style. Task force headquarters is starting to resemble a teenager’s bedroom, paperwork and debris stacking up on every available surface, including a tower of mostly empty pizza boxes from I don’t know when. Cavallo and I have staked out a corner, but even here the chairs aren’t comfortable and the white noise of nonstop conversation grows increasingly difficult to tune out.

I’m ready to get out on the street, to go anywhere for almost any reason, but my partner seems glued to the interviews. She hunches over her dwindling stack, head propped on hand, her face veiled behind a curtain of hair. She stares at the page, but I’m pretty sure her eyes don’t move.

“Cavallo,” I say. “Are you even reading those things?”

She flips the page, ignoring me.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“And go where?”

“How about the school?” I throw it out there, a random suggestion, the first thing that comes to mind. “We could re-interview some of these people. Instead of just rereading the original notes.”

“Something’s here,” she says. “We just need to keep looking.”

“No, what we need is to shake things up.”

She leans back in her chair, throwing her arms into a leonine stretch. “What we need,” she says, “is more coffee. It’s your turn.”

At the far end of what we’re jokingly calling the catering table, two chrome vats of lukewarm coffee beckon, the constantly diminishing regular and the untouched decaf. While decanting the leaded version into Cavallo’s styrofoam cup, I glance through the open door of Wanda Mosser’s temporary office, a converted conference room. She and Villanueva watch Nancy Grace on a portable television, volume muted, while a series of angry voices on the other side of the speakerphone carry on an indecipherable argument.

Noticing me, Wanda slips out for a refill, not mentioning her departure to the superiors downtown. Behind her, Villanueva mimes a cup with one hand, pointing with the other for emphasis. I give him a nod and pull a fresh foam vessel from the nearby stack.

“How’s it going, cowboy?” Wanda asks.

“I’m gonna hang myself if I don’t get out of here soon. My new partner thinks they’re handing out toy surprises for whoever gets through the most paperwork.”

She laughs. “I told you she was uptight. And those interviews aren’t the only thing she’s been reading.”

“You mean The Kingwood Killing? I already know.”

“She was asking me all kinds of questions this morning.”

“Spare me,” I say. “Though come to think of it, I’d rather she ask you than me.”

I refill her cup, then hand it over along with the one for Villanueva, who still listens silently to the squawking phone. Before I can make good my escape, though, she steps closer.

“You know something, Roland? It’s nice to see you putting your heart into the work again.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Looks that way to me.”

She goes back to her crisis management meeting, leaving me to ponder her words. If this is my heart in the work, I have to admit it doesn’t feel much different. Rather than an increase of passion, or a single-minded focus, what I’m left with is more frustration spread thin along a wider front. The Morales killing, Hannah Mayhew, Thomson’s pending defection, all of it promising enough, but so far nothing has actually delivered. Charlotte’s unexpected announcement yesterday morning, her declared aims for our future relationship, pending apparently on a solution to the tenant crisis – a problem which, after Tommy’s assist at the Paragon the other night, I’m reluctant to even address. No, if this is my heart in the work, I’d just as soon keep it out.

Cavallo accepts her coffee in both hands, as if they need warming in spite of the temperature outside, which is threatening to creep into the lower nineties, with a heaping side order of humidity. She sips while giving me an interested look, like her off-duty reading is coming back to her.

“March,” she says, “can I ask you something?”

I fumble for a response, but then the ringing in my pocket saves me. With an apologetic shrug, I flip the phone open and press it to my ear.

“Detective March,” I say.

“You the one assigned to Octavio Morales?” The words are precise, though heavily accented, a male speaker probably in his twenties, I’m guessing.

“That’s right.”

“I got some information for you, okay?”

“May I ask who’s speaking?”

My tone arouses Cavallo’s interest. She puts her cup down and leans forward, eyebrows raised. I motion for a pen.

“You want the information or not?” he asks.

“Go ahead. I’m just getting something to write with.”

He gives me an address on Fondren not far from the Sharpstown Plaza shopping center. “I’ll be on the side of the road with a red bandanna. You pick me up. And come alone or I’ll just walk, okay?”

“When?” I ask.

“Now, dude.” Then he abruptly hangs up.

Cavallo asks for the incoming number, then walks it over to one of the support staffers to run a computer search, which comes back with the news that my caller used a public phone at Sharpstown Mall.

“The phones still work there?”

She smirks. “Anyway, this sounds kind of cloak-and-dagger.”

“I called in a favor yesterday hoping for some street-level intel, and I guess it paid off.”

Frankly, I wasn’t expecting Salazar to follow through on his promise, not after the awkward confrontation with his boss. Wilcox hadn’t seemed very impressed with him, but it looks like Salazar is a stand-up guy after all.

“Are you really going to meet this informant alone?” Cavallo asks. “Don’t you have protocols for this kind of thing in Homicide?”

“I’m not in Homicide,” I say.

“Maybe I should tag along.”

Eager as she sounds, the last thing I want is Cavallo’s company on this errand. The drive to Sharpstown would give her plenty of time to ask whatever questions her reading The Kingwood Killing has raised. I hate that book. I’d only agreed to be interviewed as a favor to Brad Templeton, a former Houston Post reporter turned true-crime writer, never realizing he’d turn the case into a lurid movie-of-the-week thriller, complete with me in the role of hero, something I’ve been trying to live down ever since.

“You know, I think those interviews need another going over.”

“What, I’m not good enough backup for you?” She frowns. “Should I mention this to Wanda, considering it has absolutely nothing to do with the case?”

“I think it does,” I say. “And when those test results come back, you’ll think so, too. In the meantime, I have a friend down there who can lend me a hand. Ever heard of Sergeant Ed Nixon?”

As I gather my things and prepare to go, Cavallo stands there, arms crossed, like a disappointed mother watching as her teen gets ready to run away. But to her credit, she doesn’t tattle to Wanda or even wag a finger at me as I leave. Pulling out of the parking lot, I check the rearview to be sure she’s not following. She isn’t. Cavallo knows better. She’s probably back at her interviews, hoping that on the next read-through the words on the page will change.

Sharpstown Plaza, just across Bellaire from Sharpstown Mall, boasts a strip of mostly vacated retail spaces and an empty swath of yellow-lined parking reminiscent of the oil bust back in the eighties, which left so much real estate unoccupied. They used to say back then that the difference between a Texas oilman and a pigeon was that one of them could still put a deposit on a Mercedes.

Although the signs are now gone, I can still tell from the color-coded facades which chains used to operate here – pretty much the same ones that operate everywhere else. I pass by on the Southwest Freeway feeder, taking a right on Fondren as directed.