Unbridled

There was a loud buzz. He grimaced and pulled his cell phone out of a leather holder on his belt. He noted the caller and answered it. “Ruiz,” he said, suddenly all business. “Yeah. When? Right now? Give me five minutes.” He paused and laughed. “I’ll make sure I hit all the lights green. No more tickets. Honest. Sure.” He hung up. “A new case. I gotta go. See you, rubia.”

She smiled shyly. Her heart felt lighter than air. “See you.”

He cocked his head. “Go home and find something to watch on TV. There’s a rerun of Scrooged,” he added, referring to a Bill Murray movie that had become something of a cult classic around the holidays.

She laughed. “I think I have it memorized already.”

“Me, too. It’s a great film.”

“Yes, it is.”

He searched her eyes slowly, watching her flush. She acted like a green girl. Why hadn’t he noticed that at the party? She was shy. It made him feel oddly protective. She drew him, when he hadn’t paid attention to women in years, not since he’d lost Maria. He wondered what it was about her that made him feel hungry. She wasn’t beautiful. She was small breasted and tall, almost elegant. But that hair, that gorgeous, beautiful, sexy hair, made her far more attractive than she realized.

“Well, see you,” he said, and forced himself to smile and walk away.

Before she could reply, he was headed out the door onto the street.

* * *

She thought about him when she got home and turned on the television. What a strange coincidence, running into him in a church unexpectedly. Someone had told him what she said about him. She flushed and then laughed, self-consciously. It had been a little embarrassing, but he was so uninhibited. It hadn’t bothered him at all. She ground her teeth at the memory of how he’d taken her shy withdrawal. It was probably just as well that he knew the truth, even if it made her squirm. She’d found him devastating. And she didn’t prefer men with a paler complexion, she mused. He was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Was he married? She wanted to know more about him. But if she started asking questions, it would get back to him, just as her embarrassing disclosure had. Maybe someone who knew him would talk about him and she could eavesdrop. Or maybe, she thought, and her heart raced, she might see him again.

That possibility made her warm all over. He was strong and handsome and he made her feel things she’d never felt.

She hoped that he wasn’t married. But as she thought it, she withdrew mentally from any hope of romance. She couldn’t tell him why she spent her life alone, why she discouraged men from even asking her out.

She couldn’t tell him that she wasn’t what she seemed to be at all. The humiliation would be too much to bear.

No. Better to be alone than to have him back away from her. She could never tell him the truth. It broke her heart to realize that the attraction she felt had no future. She didn’t dare get involved with anyone.

She got ready for bed and thought again of little Bess and the tragedy that had sent her to the cathedral for comfort. Poor Bess. Her poor mother. Tears trailed down her cheeks as she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

TWO (#u1f2e441c-79a1-51cc-8319-27447725cbdb)

“What have we got?” John asked the San Antonio policeman he knew who’d phoned him for assistance. John was a specialist in gang warfare.

“A mess,” the patrolman sighed as he indicated the body of a boy. “Looks like it might be the beginning of a gang war.”

John went down on one knee beside the body and narrowed his eyes. He noted the tattoos on both arms and the neck of the dead male, who’d been shot neatly through the chest, twice.

“Tats,” he murmured, noting the cobra’s head on both arms and a small one on his neck.

“Yes. And you know who those belong to,” the officer said with a resigned sigh.

“Los Serpientes.” John nodded, his black eyes flashing. “They’re recruiting them younger and younger. This kid looks no older than twelve. Maybe thirteen.” It set him off, because his own son, Tonio, was eleven, not much younger than the victim.

John’s keen eyes noted a small chalk drawing just at the top of the boy’s head, on the pavement. It was a wolf’s head.

“Los Diablos Lobitos,” he murmured. “A warning to the rival gang not to trespass.” He looked up. “Los Lobitos are trying to take over Los Serpientes’ territory.” He knew that Los Lobitos operated in the alternative school where Tonio was a student, near the hospital where his cousin worked.

“They’re getting bolder. Going against Los Serpientes with a vengeance. This is simple retribution, warning Los Serpientes to back off from the territory, I’d bet my badge on it. They’re making an example of this kid to show that they mean business.” He looked at John. “This is not going to end well, if we wind up with a gang war.”

“Tell me about it.” John’s keen eyes were scanning the body for anything out of place, for any clue that might indicate the assailant. “He isn’t wearing a coat. Not even a hoodie.”

“I noticed that.” The officer stood up. “It’s damned cold out here. I’d say he couldn’t afford a coat, but he’s wearing about a thousand dollars’ worth of gold. Maybe a coat wasn’t a priority.”

He was, indeed, wearing his wealth, in the form of rings and a watch and layers of thick gold chains around his neck. The pattern was recognizable, and they were eighteen-karat gold. Some were twenty-four karat. Very expensive. John didn’t mention that to the officer. He wasn’t comfortable telling anyone how he could recognize high-ticket items. He kept his private life quiet.

“Los Diablos Lobitos,” John muttered. “Little wolf devils. They are, too. This is just their latest victim. Your department nabbed one of them last month for the rape and murder of an eighty-year-old woman.” His face mirrored his distaste. “An initiation. The would-be gang member responsible will do time. A lot of time.”

“He sure will. He took the woman out of her own home and transported her to a deserted parking lot. That’s kidnapping. Federal charges. And they tried him as an adult, because of the nature of the crime.”

“I have to confess that I was glad the feds took over the case. I understand that Senior FBI Agent Jon Blackhawk taught the crime unit guys some brand-new words when he saw the victim.”

“His mother is elderly,” John replied. “The crime would have outraged him on that basis alone.”

“The crime unit should have already been here,” the officer remarked, looking around. He looked down at the body again. “I hate having to leave DBs out here like this,” he added. “It seems vaguely indecent.”

“But if we cover them up before the crime unit does its job, we contaminate the crime scene. And then some brilliant defense attorney puts us through a sausage grinder on the stand and saves his poor, sad client from the criminal justice system.”

The officer made a sound deep in his throat. “If you ask me, it’s the honest citizens who need saving from the poor, oppressed criminals.”

“Shhh,” John said with twinkling eyes. “The thought police will come and arrest you for hate speech.”

That brought a smile from the younger man. “I hate political correctness.”

“I do, as well, but we can’t turn back time. We have to live in the society that’s being warped around us.” He shook his head. “I asked my son how he liked studying about the second world war in his history section. His teacher’s course of study was so broad that he couldn’t name me a single individual European general who commanded an army.”

“Santayana said that those who don’t study history and learn the lessons it teaches will be condemned to repeat it,” the officer said quietly, loosely quoting a philosopher from the past.

“And those of us who only serve will suffer right along with the people who make the big decisions,” John chuckled. “But by then, we may be hit by a giant asteroid or a comet or an EMP, or a coronal mass ejection...”

“Stop!” the officer groaned. “I get enough anxiety just watching the national news.”

“I stopped years ago,” John confessed. “I get so much stress on the job that I couldn’t handle any more. It helps to remember that the news is news because what they report is the exception, not the rule. Dog bites man, who cares. But man bites dog, then you have a story.”

“I see what you mean.”

“And there they are,” John remarked, standing to watch a white van pull up in the parking lot beside them.

A tall brunette with short hair and blue eyes gave them a wry look. “And here we are again, Ruiz,” Alice Mayfield Jones Fowler teased. “We were just together last week on another homicide. We really have to stop meeting like this. My husband thinks I have a secret yen for you.”

“You tell gang members to stop killing other gang members in my jurisdiction, and I’ll be happy to wave you goodbye,” John chuckled.

“That’s never going to happen.” She slipped on latex gloves and put booties over her shoes. She went to kneel by the victim.

“How long dead?” John asked.