Angel Among Us (3 page)

That was my town for you. There were the men who were elected and served in obvious seats of power. And then there were the men who knew better than to run for office, who understood they could hold power longer if they simply controlled those who did. Mayor Gallagher was the latest in a long line of local leaders controlled by men in my town who, I suspected, live here so that they can launder money for even scarier men who lived a few states north. No one who wanted to keep their job ever voiced this theory out loud. But when I was alive, everyone on the force had understood that if certain cases involved certain men, you didn't look into them with the kind of obsessiveness that had gotten you your detective badge. Of course, doing a half-assed job had come naturally to me and my partner. We had been given more than our share of the hands-off cases simply because assigning them to us was extra insurance that they would never be solved.

How had a loud, aggressive man like Mayor Gallagher fathered the lanky, quiet farmer I had seen a few nights before tenderly serving his pregnant wife dinner in bed?

‘This is above my pay grade,' the older cop decided. He shut his notebook and stored it in his breast pocket. ‘You should have called this in sooner.'

The principal looked ashamed. Mrs Trafton looked grim. ‘We didn't want to think the worst. There isn't a teacher more loved by her students,' she said. ‘They are all so excited about the baby.'

The cops looked startled. ‘She's pregnant?' the younger one stammered.

The principal and his secretary nodded in unison.

‘Don't move,' the older one warned them. ‘We're going to call this in and I can guarantee you they are going to send someone with a gold shield down to question you. And don't warn the husband.'

Neither the principal nor his secretary admitted that they had already tried to contact her husband – and that he could not be found.

There are at least eight senior detectives in my town, men who have served for decades and would understand the minefield this case represented. But I knew that our commander, a natural-born politician named Gonzales, would not send any of them. A missing pregnant schoolteacher married to the mayor's son? Gonzales would be intent on presenting a façade of professional independence while simultaneously doing god-knows-what maneuverings behind the scenes. There was only one person he would trust with a case this tricky – Maggie, my replacement on the force. Sure, she came with a partner Gonzales absolutely loathed, but Maggie Gunn had turned Adrian Calvano into a pretty decent detective. At least if she kept a close eye on him.

Sure enough, they arrived within the hour: Maggie, with her square muscled body and plain face made beautiful by her insanely good health, and Adrian Calvano, with his lanky frame, expensive suits and maddeningly thick black hair. He drove me nuts, but apparently Maggie saw something genuinely worthwhile in him and I trusted her judgment.

Maggie and Calvano questioned the principal and his secretary about the missing teacher's reliability, her past record of absences, any rumors they had heard about her marriage and what they knew about her husband. Eventually they came to the same conclusion I had come to – that Arcelia Gallagher was a very private woman, who had not disclosed a single personal detail about herself to any of her co-workers. All anyone really knew was that she was married to Danny Gallagher, the mayor's only son, and that she lived on a farm outside of town, where her husband worked long hours to grow organic produce that he sold to local restaurants. Arcelia had helped him in the fields after school until she had grown too pregnant to be much use. Other than that, no one knew where Arcelia had been born, how she had met and married her husband, if she had any other family, where she went on her vacations or, indeed, where she went during the summer when school was out for three months. All anyone really knew about her was that she was very sweet-natured and the children loved her.

Maggie and Calvano looked grim – they had learned little of use.

‘She goes to St Raphael's,' the secretary offered meekly. ‘I noticed her saying the rosary last Wednesday and I asked her if she was Catholic. She told me she was and that she went to St Raphael's.'

‘No kidding?' Calvano said. ‘I went there as a kid. I was an altar boy. I still go there now and then.'

No one in the room seemed impressed.

‘Good,' Maggie told him. ‘You can go talk to the priest there while I go talk to her husband.'

‘No way,' Calvano protested. ‘For all we know, he's the reason she never showed up for work. I'm not letting you go out there alone.'

Maggie looked insulted. The principal looked like he might have a stroke. The secretary looked relieved.

‘Seriously?' Maggie asked her partner. ‘Did you seriously just say that?'

‘I mean it,' Calvano said. ‘I know Danny Gallagher. He lived in my neighborhood when we were kids. He's bad news. He always had a temper and people don't change that much.'

I found that hard to believe about Danny Gallagher. I had watched him in the privacy of his own home, a place where people are always themselves. He had seemed to be a content and gentle man. Calvano was just being an ass. He did that quite well.

‘If you know him, then you are not going out there to question him, either,' Maggie decided. ‘The last thing we need is for someone to claim favoritism.'

‘No one has to come out to question me,' a voice said quietly from the doorway.

I was as startled as everyone else to see Danny Gallagher standing at the edge of the room, staring down at his muddy work boots. ‘What's this about? Where is my wife? She should have been home an hour ago. She's not answering her phone.'

When they told him his wife had not shown up for school that day, he collapsed. All six foot three of him froze in what I was pretty sure was pure terror, then he slid slowly to the floor and put his face in his hands. A shocked silence filled the room.

Maggie was the first to break it. ‘What is it?' she asked him. ‘What do you think has happened to your wife?'

‘They've got her,' he whispered. ‘She always said they'd come for her.'

Maggie and Calvano looked grim at this news. They knew that no one was that good an actor. Chances were good that Arcelia Gallagher was in real trouble.

As if he could read their minds, the husband let out a sound that stopped just short of a scream. I could feel him fading into the darkness. As the others watched in disbelief, he gave himself up to his fear and slipped to the floor unconscious.

Maggie and Calvano stared at him, unsure of what to think.

Once again, it was the school secretary who finally acted.

‘For God sakes,' she commanded the principal. ‘Call an ambulance.'

I
had been a professional disaster when I was alive and a detective on the force. I had bungled nearly every case, seldom finishing an assignment and pretty much living in the bottom of a bottle. Having a partner just like me had not helped. We had gone down in a blaze of infamous glory. But even on my worst days, those days when I was still drunk from the night before and smelled like the bottom of a bar's bathroom floor, I still had the wherewithal to be terrified of Commander Gonzales.

He was the perfect police commander. Tall, urbane, impeccably dressed and of Latino heritage – which was no small advantage when our little Delaware town was rapidly filling up with immigrants in search a better life for their families. Many of them had drifted down our way after trying New York and finding it too large for their tastes. Enough of them were voters that the traditional Irish and Italian power brokers in town had anointed Gonzales as their golden boy.

In truth, Gonzales had as little in common with the Mexican and Central American newcomers as I did. He shared their skin color, but that was it. Rumor had it that his grandfather had owned most of some Mexican state once upon a time. Certainly, he lived in the wealthiest neighborhood in town and knew how to move among the most powerful circles. He also knew when to deliver a favor.

He had scared the crap out of me. Anger fueled him and he needed someone to blame whenever things did not go as he planned. He liked to choose a whipping boy and go after him unmercifully until the poor bastard crumpled.

Right now, it was Adrian Calvano who was feeling his wrath. I hated feeling sorry for Calvano. He annoyed me to no end. But there you have it – I could not help but empathize with him. Gonzales was staring at him with utter contempt, his eyes flickering over every inch of Calvano's frame as if he were seeking a soft spot so he could go in for the kill. I had been shredded by Gonzales on many occasions and I knew how it felt. I did not wish that on anyone, not even Adrian Calvano.

‘
Where
did you take him?' Gonzales was asking in disbelief.

‘The hospital,' Calvano said defensively. ‘What else were we supposed to do? The guy totally collapsed. He was in a catatonic state. The principal called the ambulance before we could stop him and then, well . . .'

‘Things got out of control?' Gonzales suggested sarcastically.

Maggie took over. ‘Sir,' she said. ‘I don't know if the husband is faking it. But I do know that we were not going to get anything out of him at the scene.'

Gonzales stared at them both. I was impressed at how unflappable Maggie seemed. She was his favorite on the force, in no small part because Gonzales had known her since she was a little girl and her father had once been his mentor. As such, Maggie was not used to his disapproval. She was feeling it now, but she was taking it well.

‘If the press gets wind of this situation,' Gonzales warned them, ‘this town is going to turn into a circus. Again. I won't have it. The two of you are on this case until it is over and I don't want you to so much as eat lunch until you find out where Arcelia Gallagher is and if someone took her.'

‘And if it turns out it's her husband?' Maggie asked. ‘Which we all know is the most likely answer?'

Gonzales knew she was really asking what the hell they were supposed to do if it turned out that the son of the mayor, Gonzales's biggest political backer, had killed his wife.

‘If you start uncovering evidence that leads to him,' Gonzales said, ‘I want to know it by the end of the day and I will expect hourly updates after that. Is that clear?'

‘Oh, he did it,' Calvano predicted. ‘I knew Danny Gallagher when he was a kid and he was a bad one.'

Maggie flashed him a look that meant, ‘Shut your mouth or I will strangle you.' It usually rolled off him like oil and this time was no different.

Gonzales looked mildly interested. ‘How long did you know him?' he asked.

Calvano looked nervous. He was not used to Gonzales actually paying him attention. ‘We grew up on the same block for the first nine years of our lives,' Calvano explained. ‘But his parents got divorced and he moved away, I think to live at his grandfather's house.'

‘When he was ten, he went to live with his mother and grandfather on the family farm,' Maggie explained calmly. ‘It's the same farm he owns and works now. Apparently, he is a highly respected organic farmer who is some sort of leader in something called the farm-to-table movement. It's embraced by restaurants that believe in only using local produce.' Maggie was smart enough to have already done some background checking.

Gonzales looked mollified that Maggie was on the case. ‘Where is the mother now?' he asked, knowing that the mayor's ex-wife was a clear candidate for the ‘most likely to throw a wrench into our cog' award.

‘She's dead,' Maggie said. ‘She died about two years ago of cancer and left the farm to her son. He'd already been living there and, apparently, working it pretty hard for years until about two and a half years ago, when he disappeared for a month and came back with his wife. No one quite seems to know where he went to get her, or how he knew her, or what the situation was.'

‘How do you know all this?' Calvano asked, sounding annoyed. As hard as he tried, he could never catch up with Maggie and there were days when it really bothered him.

‘My father,' Maggie said, with a glance at Gonzales. They both knew that if Colin Gunn had provided the information, then it was true. Colin had been on the force for over forty years before he retired and he knew the importance of reliable information.

‘How does Colin know the family?' Gonzales asked. He was always on the lookout for potential problems and a conflict of interest was a big one.

‘He knew the mayor's first wife, Danny's mother, from growing up,' Maggie explained. She hesitated, not sure of how much to share. ‘They were friends, and maybe even more than that when they were young. I think they kept in touch, especially after my mother died. But then she got sick and passed soon after. It was a lot for my father to take.'

Gonzales nodded thoughtfully. He had thought he knew all the players in what was sure to be a tricky situation, but now he was calculating even more possibilities, thinking up ways to head off potential trouble.

‘I want you both to go talk to the husband,' he finally decided. ‘Find out where he met his wife and see if you can uncover a reason why she was so afraid. So far, all I'm hearing are a bunch of rumors from the teacher's break room at an elementary school. That's not good enough for me. We have to be very, very careful here. I don't have to tell you what would happen if Terrence Gallagher lost the mayor's race to some immigrant rights candidate next year because we offended the Latino community.'

No, he didn't have to tell Maggie or Calvano what would happen. They all knew it would mean drastic budget cuts and a lot of new paperwork for justifying the frequent stop-and-searches they all knew the front line of the force was getting away with at the moment. And they wanted those traffic stops to stay. No one in our town wanted it to become part of the drug highway that led from New York City straight south down I-95 into Florida. It was not uncommon for any driver who looked like a stranger – never mind what their skin color was – to be stopped on some pretense if they lingered too long in town. And a stop was almost always followed by a search of their car. It bordered on the illegal, hell, it was illegal, but the policy had inspired the drug trade to give our town a wide berth and helped preserve its almost eerily wholesome nature, at least if you lived in the right neighborhoods.