Chapter Fifteen
Hallie was at her desk when the video call came in from the latent print comparative section. She accepted the call and a lab technician appeared on her laptop.
“Hi,” Hallie said, sensing something positive was coming relative to her current investigation that had now stretched into two carjackings and a home invasion—with two people dead and an elderly woman victimized.
Agnes Tsuji, a certified latent print examiner, was in her late thirties and slim, with raven hair in a chin-length blunt bob and brown eyes. She flashed a serious look. “We were able to get a latent print from a dresser drawer in Eleanor Palakiko’s bedroom.”
“Well, that’s good,” Hallie uttered with bated breath in anticipation for more.
“It’s even better than that,” Agnes said with a catch to her voice. “After entering it into the state Automated Fingerprint Identification System and the FBI’s national Next Generation Identification databases, we got a hit!”
Hallie exhaled. “Who’s the unlucky unsub?”
“His name is Darren Fonseca,” she responded. “He’s forty-one, white, and has spent time behind bars for assault and armed robbery.”
Hmm…that seems to fit the pattern of the carjackers and home invaders, Hallie told herself. “Do you have an address for Fonseca?” she asked.
“I do.” Agnes gave her the suspect’s last known address in the city. “Hope you track him down and see if he can explain how his print ended up in the victim’s bedroom,” she said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll have an explanation that will let him off the hook.
” Hallie seriously doubted that. On the contrary, the home invasion suspect was also suspected of being one of the perpetrators in two lethal carjackings.
She also believed that he and his crony had stolen Eleanor’s vehicle—which was still missing—and were driving the black Ford Explorer seen on surveillance video as the perps’ getaway car.
A license plate reader had locked in on the vehicle and determined that it had stolen plates.
Following the video chat, Hallie pulled up the suspect’s rap sheet—studying the various times he’d been in trouble with the law over the years—and looked at his mug shot.
Comparatively speaking, he bore a fair resemblance to the heavier one of the two home invasion suspects as described by Eleanor Palakiko to a sketch artist.
We’ve got you now, Hallie thought confidently. She phoned Cooper with the breakthrough, then set things in motion, believing there was more than enough probable cause for securing arrest and search warrants in pursuit of Darren Fonseca and his as-yet-unidentified partner.
The open question still needed answered about who the mastermind was behind the fatal carjackings—if in fact the suspects hadn’t acted alone, as the elements of the case seemed to indicate.
COOPER WAS AT the field office when the word came down that a solid suspect had been identified in the home invasion at Eleanor’s residence.
Elated with the news, he believed that at the very least it would give Lexi’s neighbor and his support group friend peace of mind once they had both suspects in custody.
Beyond that, there was linking the two home invaders to the deadly carjackings as part of the public corruption probe the Bureau was undertaking.
My gut tells me that the cases are inexorably connected and will start to unravel in a hurry when we can get the suspects to start talking, Cooper told himself, as he learned that the black Ford Explorer SUV with the stolen license plates had been spotted outside the suspect’s house on East La Puente Avenue.
Cooper coordinated with Hallie and the Phoenix PD’s Property Crimes Bureau, in conjunction with its assaults, homicide and K-9 units—in the use of FBI SWAT agents, who were armed with Rock River Arms LAR-15M .
17 HMR assault rifles, a tactical helicopter and operational technology in the takedown operation.
Arriving near the suspect’s single-story residence, Cooper was wearing his FBI jacket and a bulletproof vest, with his Sig Sauer P239 pistol holstered, when he met up with Hallie and Frank Magistretti and the rest of the team.
Frank acknowledged him and told the group, “We think Darren Fonseca’s inside the house…and maybe the other suspect as well.”
Hallie added, “That’s definitely the same Ford Explorer one of the suspects used in the home invasion of Lexi’s next-door neighbor. Looks like some of the stolen items are still inside it.”
Cooper sighed, while looking forward to returning to Eleanor as many stolen items as they could. He thought about the strong likelihood that they were also looking at the carjackers who took two lives. “Okay, let’s go get Fonseca.”
Within moments, they had forced their way into the house—with the help of a battering ram and an M84 flash-bang stun grenade to distract and disorient anyone inside.
“Darren Fonseca?” Cooper asked, furrowing his brow at the suspect, whom he recognized from his mug shot and Eleanor’s description.
Fonseca, who was brawny, had brownish-blond hair in a pompadour, a corporate beard and blue eyes. He had been half dressed and standing barefoot in the small kitchen, a beer in hand, when they approached him with guns drawn.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Fonseca admitted.
“Thought so,” Cooper said, glaring at him.
“Put the beer down and your hands up!” Frank ordered.
“All right, all right,” the suspect said, cooperating in raising his hands. “You’ve got me.”
As he was being restrained by Frank with zip cuffs, Hallie identified herself, then told him tartly, “Darren Fonseca, we have a warrant for your arrest on suspicion of committing a home invasion—for starters.”
After she read him his rights, Cooper walked up to the suspect and asked, “Is there anyone else in the house?”
Fonseca sneered. “Just me.”
They didn’t take his word on that—fanning out across the tile flooring to search every room amid the ranch-style furnishings in the house, before establishing that no one else was present.
Cooper presented the suspect with a search warrant, giving them the means to seek evidence that could tie the suspect to both the home invasion and the carjacking-related homicides.
“I’ve got something,” Frank told Cooper after emerging from a bedroom and holding in his hand, covered by a latex glove, a firearm with a silencer.
Cooper regarded the weapon, recognizing it as a Korth 2.75-inch Carry Special .357 Magnum revolver—or the same type of weapon linked to the murders of Horace Eckhart and Neal Zapponi.
“Looks like we just might have the smoking gun, no pun intended,” Cooper said wryly.
Frank nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
Now we need to find Fonseca’s partner in crimes, with or without his help, Cooper told himself, as he zeroed in on the suspect.
HALF AN HOUR LATER, they descended upon the Cactus Creekside Apartments on West McDowell Road, after Eleanor’s Acura Integra was picked up by an automated license plate reader entering the complex’s parking lot.
It was believed to have been driven by the second suspect in the home invasion, identified as thirty-four-year-old Lonnie Saldana. He and Fonseca were described as close friends, whom Fonseca claimed he had met while doing drugs at a party.
Inside his Dodge Durango, Cooper had looked up Saldana’s criminal history on his laptop. He discovered that his rap sheet included drug offenses, burglary and identity theft. Like Saldana’s partner in crime, they considered him to be armed and dangerous—till he could be apprehended.
I’d much rather have the suspect alive than dead, Cooper mused, believing that between Saldana and Fonseca, there was much they could learn about multiple crimes and who—if anyone—was pulling the strings.
When Saldana exited the stolen vehicle, he seemed completely unaware that he had been followed. This played to their advantage as, by the time he realized he was surrounded, it was too late to make a run for it.
“FBI!” Cooper barked at him, with other law enforcement aiming guns squarely at the tall and well-built Hispanic suspect. “Put your hands up!”
Lonnie Saldana, who had cropped black hair with a mid-fade, glared at him through brown eyes, seeming to size up the situation.
When he started to reach inside the pocket of his denim jacket, someone yelled, “He’s got a gun!”
“Don’t shoot!” Cooper ordered. Instead, he tackled the suspect—slamming him onto the asphalt—catching him off guard, before Saldana had a chance to remove his weapon.
Cooper twisted the suspect’s arms behind his back and cuffed him.
Only then did Frank help to drag Saldana back to his feet, where a firearm was removed from the suspect’s jacket pocket.
Cooper recognized it as an EAA Girsan Witness2311 Brat pistol.
He narrowed his eyes at the second person suspected in the home invasion and deadly carjackings and told him, “Lonnie Saldana, you’re under arrest for car theft, a home invasion, and suspicion of armed carjackings and murder—”
THE CSI SEARCH of Eleanor’s vehicle found the ski mask worn by the home invader and car thief suspect Lonnie Saldana. Similarly, a ski mask used by suspect Darren Fonseca was retrieved from the Ford Explorer getaway vehicle he drove after the home invasion.
A search warrant of Saldana’s apartment produced stolen items from Eleanor’s residence, along with illegal weapons and illicit drugs. This coincided with comparable evidence removed from Fonseca’s house—all of which had both suspects in hot water.
But, satisfied as Cooper was that the two perps would go down for violently breaking into Eleanor’s house and forever shattering her sense of security, he needed more to make the case for Fonseca and Saldana as deadly carjackers. Not to mention exposing the mastermind behind the homicides.
A couple of hours later, Cooper accompanied Hallie to the police department’s Crime Lab’s firearms section.
After analyzing the Korth 2.75-inch Carry Special .357 Magnum revolver and ammunition taken from Fonseca’s residence, lab tech Iisha Mínguez declared, “We have ourselves a match!”
“We do?” Cooper regarded her for confirmation.
Iisha grinned at him. “Yes. When tested, the Korth Carry Special and unused ammo proved to be a perfect match for the bullets and spent shell casings that went together and were fired from this gun’s barrel with five lands and grooves and a right-hand twist that was used to shoot and kill Horace Eckhart and Neal Zapponi. ”
Hallie nodded. “That pretty much cinches it, in tying those homicides to the suspects.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Iisha said, eyeing them.
“I agree,” Cooper stated, “pretty much.” He wanted just a bit more to seal the deal, as they headed over to the forensic DNA section, where both suspects’ DNA was being analyzed in relation to the investigations.
The DNA interpretation analyst, Yolande Erlick—who was slender and in her late twenties with long blond hair in a V-cut and aquamarine eyes—regarded them and stated confidently, “In analyzing the spent shell casings for DNA from both shootings, we were able to recover a DNA profile that belonged to Darren Fonseca, but not Lonnie Saldana…”
Cooper reacted to this. “So, Fonseca was the actual shooter?” he ascertained, while considering that Saldana could have still fired the shots at one or the other victim without having loaded the weapon.
“That’s likely the case,” Yolande said.
Hallie peered at her. “What about other DNA evidence?”
“There’s that, too,” the DNA interpretation analyst replied, perking up.
“We found DNA from both suspects in the Ford Explorer and on stolen items believed to belong to the victim of the home invasion—collected from their residences—in addition to Saldana’s DNA found on and inside Eleanor Palakiko’s stolen vehicle. ”
As far as Cooper was concerned, this was more than enough to try to put the squeeze on Darren Fonseca and Lonnie Saldana in getting them to turn on whomever they were employed by for targeting not only Horace Eckhart and Neal Zapponi—but Lexi as well.