He said, “It gets worse, Malcolm. We found your fingerprints all over the scene.”

“I visited that house recently. The fingerprints are from then.”

“We know about that visit. But we found your prints in Mrs. Montes’s bedroom. She and her assistant both say you never went in there.”

“Means nothing. I touched a few things in the living room. A glass. A magazine, I think. Probably a lot of other stuff. Things get moved from room to room. And fingerprints can be transferred. Anybody with an Internet connection can learn to do it in five minutes.”

He went on as if I hadn’t said a word. “We also know the reason for your visit. You’ve been working for this Guatemalan group, the URNG. The same ones who kidnapped Mrs. Montes and murdered her first husband.”

“Allegedly kidnapped and allegedly murdered.”

Harper sighed. “Malcolm, the dead guy Castro is a known member of a former terrorist organization, which you already told the victims you’re working for. Your weapon was discharged and found at the scene. Mrs. Montes says there were two other men and a woman. They came into her bedroom. She heard them coming while they were still outside, so she managed to get to a revolver in her bedside table drawer and shoot Castro. The others ran away.

“Your fingerprints were on the front door handles, inside and out. The print guys say you had to be the last person who touched the handle. Sure, prints can be transferred, but it’s delicate work and it takes time. Good luck convincing a jury that’s what happened. And you really think a jury would believe somebody planted your gun? Especially when you’re already on record as working for Castro’s organization? We have a serious problem here, buddy. Help me find a solution.”

“Was Doña Elena hurt?”

“She’s a nervous wreck but otherwise okay.”

“How about the congressman? Or Olivia Soto?”

“It was the middle of the night, Malcolm. The Soto woman wasn’t there. And the congressman is out of town.”

“You said Doña Elena isn’t claiming I’m one of the men, but I was there just a couple of weeks ago If I had been there, she would have recognized me.”

“Mrs. Montes never got a good look at the guys, and she says they didn’t speak. I asked if one of them might have been you. All she can say is it’s possible, but she isn’t sure.”

“In that case, everything you have is circumstantial. Let me go.”

“I wish I could. You know I do. But what with the gun at the scene and the fingerprints and the fact that you’ve admitted to working for the suspects in Mrs. Montes’s kidnapping, the DA wants you charged. It’s a congressman, Malcolm. The DA wants this thing open and shut.” Harper went to open the door. He paused and said, “I’m really sorry, buddy.” He stepped into the hall.

I thought about the woman Doña Elena saw, as well as the facts that Olivia Soto didn’t live at the Montes’s estate and she had shown a definite interest in my investigation all along. It occurred to me the home invasion might have been an inside job, like the Doña Elena kidnapping seven years before.

As the door began to swing shut behind I said, “Harper.”

He stopped and looked back in.

“You said Doña Elena couldn’t ID the two men, but what about the woman?”

“Matter of fact, Mrs. Montes got a real good look at her.” Harper watched my face closely. “She says, no doubt about it, the woman was Alejandra Delarosa.”

31

In the bunk above me was a bodybuilder who called himself Flaco. He had tattoos everywhere, including teardrops at the corners of his eyes. On the bunk across the narrow aisle beside me lay another inmate named Chuy, who seemed to suffer from chronic flatulence. I didn’t know the name of the guy who was lying on the third bunk above Flaco, or the two guys above Chuy, or the guys in the bunks on either side of mine and Flaco’s, or the guys on either side of Chuy. There were a lot of guys I hadn’t met that day, six rows with three sets of bunks in the dormitory where I was, fifty-four beds and sixty-one inmates, seven of whom were sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor.

I wore the orange jumpsuit they had given me when I was booked. On the concrete beside my bunk were the cloth slippers they had given me when I gave up my shoes. I lay on a thin mattress, staring at the putty-colored steel under the mattress of the bunk above me. I was thinking about history. It is often said to repeat itself, and this was no exception.

I had been in jail before, in a Serbian-controlled village outside Sarajevo when my fire team had been overwhelmed after nearly three weeks in country, directing air strikes against Ratko Mladić’s artillery and mortar positions. The Serbs had been very unhappy with us. Compared to their accommodations, the Orange County Men’s Jail in Santa Ana was a five-star hotel. The snoring and occasional shouts and slamming doors made it tough to sleep. So did the fluorescent lights shining in my eyes from the corridor, but at least nobody was getting tortured down the hall, and my elbows weren’t wired together behind my back.

I also thought about other people’s history. Doña Elena’s, for example. Kidnapped before, and almost kidnapped again, if that had been their intention. It wasn’t surprising that she had managed to kill Castro. After the first kidnapping, it would have been much more surprising if she hadn’t begun to keep a weapon by her bed, and if she hadn’t learned to use it. But Alejandra Delarosa suddenly attacking her again after so many years… I hadn’t seen that one coming.

What had drawn Delarosa out of hiding?

The answer, I realized, might have been me. Me, asking all those questions up in Pico-Union.

I thought about Valentín Vega, setting me on Delarosa’s trail, and Castro, dead set against it. I remembered what Doña Elena had said about the other voices she had heard while Delarosa held her captive, men’s voices talking about the URNG. I wondered just how good a handle Vega had on his own operation. Was it possible a splinter group had been behind the kidnapping without his knowledge?

Or had Valentín Vega known that all along?

Maybe Vega had played me from the start, used me to stir the pot a little, make it hot for Delarosa and her confederates—Castro and whoever the other two men were. Maybe Vega had used me to get Delarosa to come out of hiding and to get Castro to show his true colors.

But even if Castro had been in on the kidnapping with Delarosa, why would they go after Doña Elena again? If the goal was to finish what they started, why wait so many years?

Maybe it wasn’t about the kidnapping. Maybe there was something else going on, something I hadn’t yet begun to uncover. For example, who were those two guys who had tried to kill me? Were they really with the Guatemalan junta, as I’d assumed? Were they actually allied with Castro in some scheme? Were they the two men Doña Elena had seen with him and Delarosa in her home? And if so, what was their interest in the situation?

I felt like a tourist from a far-off country wandering through a town where nobody spoke my language. Now and then I caught a word or two or saw a facial expression or a gesture that made sense, but mostly I had no idea what anyone was saying.

A guy passed my bunk, making for the head. A few minutes later, he came back. This time he stopped. He turned to face my bunk. He put his hand on his groin. I sighed. He was hidden from the stomach up by Flaco’s bunk above me, but I could tell he had to be at least six and a half feet tall. The big ones always overestimated their abilities.