Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-One
Leanne showed up at Fort Stockton PD and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
The officer who had arrested Valeria Reyes wasn’t on duty today, but Leanne refused to leave until they let her talk to someone who was at least peripherally involved—which was how she ended up behind the Super Suds car wash in the back seat of an undercover police SUV with tinted windows and a broken heater.
“You doing okay back there?” The young detective met her gaze in the rearview mirror.
“I’m fine.”
“Sorry about the heater. I put in a request, but you know how that is.”
“No worries.”
Leanne fisted her hands inside her jacket pockets.
She wasn’t about to complain, even though her extremities were frozen and she still had a raging hangover.
She looked like roadkill today. And just in case she didn’t feel crappy enough already, the young detective she was shadowing was not only beautiful and bilingual, she was perfectly made-up, too, from her impossibly long eyelashes to her glossy red fingernails.
At a mere twenty-eight years old, Sandra Torres had made detective and been placed in charge of her department’s vice unit, which was one of the best in the region.
“She should be here soon.” Sandra checked her watch. “Any minute now.”
Leanne looked out the window at the truck stop across the street.
Another eighteen-wheeler pulled into the lot and rolled to a stop with a loud hiss of brakes.
The busy compound included two dozen gas pumps, a grocery store, a restaurant, a bar, and a locker room with paid showers.
Six months ago, Sandra had participated in a sting operation targeting store clerks who were dealing meth from inside the building.
Several young sex workers, including Valeria Reyes, had gotten swept up in the bust. In exchange for leniency, one of those women had become a confidential informant.
“She isn’t the only one, you know,” Sandra said.
“Who?”
“Valeria. Girls have gone missing before, maybe ended up dead.” Sandra sighed. “There was someone last summer. I was trying to talk to her, get her to be a CI for us. Then she disappeared one day.”
“Name?”
“Ana Ortiz. Nineteen.”
“Any chance she just took off?”
“It’s possible. I asked around, but none of her friends knew anything. At least nothing they told me.”
Leanne’s stomach knotted as she thought of Patty Paulson’s words.
If victims had a hierarchy, these women were at rock bottom. Some of them weren’t even women—barely older than kids. Leanne watched Sandra in the mirror. She didn’t detect any resentment or cynicism—just a flat recognition of reality.
“Did anyone file a report on her?” Leanne asked.
“Doubtful. Not that I heard of, anyway. Girls like that aren’t the kind of cases you hear about. They’re not some white college student.”
“But why—”
“Okay, here she comes,” Sandra cut in.
Leanne eyed the side mirror as a young woman approached. Tall, short black skirt, long blond hair that looked like a wig.
“Is she reliable?” Leanne asked.
“It’s been a while since she gave us anything useful.”
The woman cast a furtive look over her shoulder before reaching for the door. Sandra started the engine as she slid into the front passenger seat.
“I don’t have much time,” the woman said, glancing back at Leanne. “Who is she?”
“A friend.” Sandra reached for the McDonald’s bag at the woman’s feet and handed it to her. “I got you a Happy Meal.”
“Nice.” She opened the bag, and the scent of French fries filled the car, making Leanne’s stomach growl.
“Jordan, this is Detective Everhart.” Sandra glanced back at her. “Detective Everhart, this is Jordan Maleski.”
Jordan shot Sandra a sharp look as she grabbed a wad of fries. “You told her my real name?”
“She needs to know it.”
Sandra drove around to the car wash entrance and fed a plastic card into the machine. The arm swung up, and she eased through the gate.
“Why does she need to know it?” Jordan asked around a mouthful of fries.
Leanne sat forward. “Jordan, I’m glad to meet you. And I’m hoping you can help me with a case I’m working on.”
Jordan shot another hostile look at Sandra.
“Don’t worry, she’s cool,” Sandra said.
Leanne felt grateful that Sandra was willing to vouch for her, even though they’d met barely an hour ago. Leanne definitely owed this detective a favor now.
Sandra entered the car wash tunnel and shifted into neutral. She glanced back at Leanne.
“Okay, I got the deluxe wash, but you need to talk fast.” She looked at Jordan. “This detective has some questions for you.”
“About what?”
Leanne held up the copy of the driver’s license photo she’d printed out. “Jordan, do you know this woman?”
She stopped chewing. Fear filled her eyes. “That’s Val.”
“Valeria Reyes?”
“Yeah. Why?” She swallowed. “Is she okay?”
“No. I’m sorry to tell you that she was murdered.”
“Oh my God.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Oh my God.” She bent forward, hiding her face in her hands. “I can’t believe this.”
Jordan sat back, and Sandra passed her a napkin. Sniffles filled the car as Jordan held the napkin over her face. After a moment, she dabbed her eyes.
“What happened?” she asked tearfully. “I haven’t seen her in a while, and I was getting worried. Shit.”
“Do you mind if I record this, Jordan?”
She shook her head.
Leanne activated the recorder on her phone and perched it on the console. Rainbow-colored suds rained down on the windshield as Leanne stated the date and time for the record.
“When was the last time you saw Valeria?” she asked.
Jordan said something into the napkin.
“Sorry?”
“She goes by Val. Everyone calls her that.” She dabbed the napkin under her nose.
They moved through the car wash, and Leanne watched Jordan wipe her makeup and try to pull herself together as they went through the noisy blowers. Finally, they exited, and Sandra pulled up to a row of vacuum hoses.
“You two talk.” Sandra looked at Leanne. “You’ve got about five more minutes.”
“Thanks.”
Sandra got out of the car and went to the kiosk to collect a scrub brush for the hubcaps.
Jordan wadded her napkin. “Sorry. I wasn’t expecting this.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, tell me what happened.”
“When was the last time you saw Val?” Leanne asked again.
Another deep breath. “A while ago. Last Thursday or Friday, I think.”
Leanne’s pulse picked up. According to the ME, the murder likely happened last Friday night.
“Could you pin that down?”
She bit her lip. “It was Friday. I remember because we were busy here. The jackpot had just hit a hundred million, and everyone was stopping in for tickets.”
“Lotto tickets?”
“Yeah.”
“You know where Val was living?”
“I don’t know, really. She got kicked out of her place before Christmas.”
“Was that an apartment?”
“I think for a while she was in a trailer with someone? After that, she was just, you know, crashing wherever she could.”
“Okay. So, you saw Val last Friday?”
She nodded. “That evening. We usually work nights.”
“Walk me through that.”
She paused, seeming to collect herself, and Leanne figured she was editing out parts of it.
“We usually hang out between the diner and the bar. Sometimes the grocery store if things are slow. We wait for singles to come in and that’s how we meet people.”
“Single men?”
“Yeah, you know, guys traveling alone. Some of them come in groups, but we look for the loners. See if they want company. Usually, they buy us a drink.”
Leanne could infer the rest. They probably went back to the guy’s rig or checked into a cheap motel. There were several nearby, right off the interstate.
“So, do you remember anyone Val talked to that night?” Leanne asked.
“Yeah. It was early.” She took a deep breath. “The diner wasn’t too busy, so we were mainly hanging out by the front of the store, seeing who walked in.” She paused. “I remember this one guy…” A pained look crossed her face. “Oh God. I bet it was him.”
“Who?”
She turned in her seat, fully facing Leanne.
“He was weird. I knew it. I even told her, ‘Val, wait. Don’t go with him.’ ”
“What kind of vehicle was he in?”
“No vehicle. He was on foot.”
Leanne’s heart sank. She’d been hoping for a vehicle description.
“What did he look like?” Leanne asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Was he white? Black? Tall? Short?”
Jordan shook her head. “I don’t know. I only really saw him from a distance.”
She tried to hide her frustration. “Can you remember his race, at least?”
“He was a white guy. And he was maybe tall, I think.”
“What was he wearing? And why did you think he seemed ‘weird’?”
She shook her head again. “He just was, you know? The way he looked at us. He stood across the street and just watched us. For like a hour.”
“Across the street where exactly?”
The truck stop had several security cameras, and Leanne could get the footage if she needed to.
“Over there.” Jordan turned around. “There by the taco place? He was behind the drive-through line near that dumpster. He just stood there staring at us for a long time, and then he waved her over.”
“So…you didn’t see him up close?”
“No. But still…I could tell he was off, and I told her, wait for another one. It’s early. But she didn’t listen. Oh my God.” She covered her eyes.
Leanne watched Jordan, hoping for some additional details, but she simply sat there.
“What was this guy wearing?” Leanne asked. “Do you remember that?”
She rubbed her nose with a wadded napkin and shook her head. “I don’t know. Jeans, I think? Maybe a jacket or something?”
“How about his face? Do you think you could describe him to someone, such as maybe a sketch artist?”
Her eyes widened. “A police artist? No. Anyway, I didn’t really see him. He was wearing, like, a baseball cap, and his face was in shadow.”
“A baseball cap? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the color or the logo on it?”
She shook her head.
“Did he have any tattoos you could see? Or anything about his clothes you noticed? Or maybe he was smoking?”
Another head shake.
Leanne watched her, silently cursing herself. She’d made a rookie mistake. She should have elicited more detail from this witness before mentioning the sketch artist. Now she didn’t know whether Jordan really hadn’t seen the guy well, or she wanted to avoid getting mixed up with a police artist.
The driver’s-side door opened, and Sandra slid behind the wheel.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“Good. We’re making progress.”
Leanne watched Jordan, but she could tell she was on her guard now.
“So…if you didn’t really get a good look at him,” Leanne asked, “what was it about him that made you think Val shouldn’t go with him?”
Jordan shook her head.
“Was there something about his clothes or his body language?”
“He just had this look. He seemed off. The way he watched us all that time from a distance.”
“Off how?”
“Just off, you know? Like he was into some weird kink. The kind of guy that wants to cut you.”