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“Then maybe their brother shouldn’t have confessed to murder.”
She opened her mouth, shut it.
“Look,” I said, “I just want to find the truth. There is little physical evidence against Sergio. The only thing that connects him to the crime is a white hoodie with a black front pocket. He was wearing it when the police went to interview him the second time, and it tested positive for GSR. The hoodie appears to be the same as the shooter’s in the video. So it seems like a slam dunk case, especially since he confessed. Either he’s guilty and his conscience got the better of him, or he’s innocent and pled to protect someone he cares about. From those I’ve talked to—” which implied more people than I’d actually spoken with “—he cares most about his family, Sophia and Henry. Why would Sergio, who has been fighting to gain custody of his siblings, kill a man for a hundred bucks?”
“I don’t know,” Faith said quietly.
“Do you believe Sergio killed the clerk?”
She shook her head, said, “I tried to see him in jail on Sunday. Jumped through every hoop, got a visitor’s pass, waited. And he wouldn’t even come to the visiting area. Wouldn’t even talk to me. Sergio is stupid proud. He doesn’t take help from anyone. Except, I was helping him with the paperwork.”
“For?”
“For custody of Sophia and Henry. Sergio did okay in school, but he’s dyslexic, and the legal paperwork can be complicated. He had an attorney helping, but honestly, she was an idiot. I was the one who found out that Sergio could apply for Kinship Caregiver—because he’s actual family. Why didn’t the attorney know that? It’s a streamlined process. So we did it ourselves, and there is still so much paperwork and rules. The big one was Sergio needed a two-bedroom apartment for Sophia. I get it, but honestly? I know families who live in crappier buildings with multiple siblings in one room and no one gives a shit. They would be better with Sergio than in foster care and all the crap they have to deal with there. Especially Henry, who is living in a crap house with crap foster parents.”
I agreed with Faith in principle. Sometimes it was safer for kids to be removed from their homes, and sometimes they had no option—their parents were in prison or dead and they had no one else. But the system was flawed and overwhelmed and so many kids slipped through or barely hung on. The system should make it easier—and cheaper—for a family member to gain custody of kids so they didn’t have to live in foster care. If they had a job, a roof, and no criminal record, what was the holdup?
“Where was Sergio in the process?” I asked.
“Waiting for the home visit. The same woman who rejected his apartment last year. She canceled on him before Christmas, and he was really upset—he wanted them together for Christmas. She rescheduled then canceled again on Thursday. It’s the last hurdle and he was more defeated than angry. He’d promised Henry and Sophia that it was happening and now, more waiting. She rescheduled for end of February! And now this? I don’t know that he’ll ever get them.”
Not by confessing to murder.
And that was the thing—why Greg Rodriguez? Why that Cactus Stop? And if Sergio was one of the three young men caught on tape, who were the other two?
“I asked him about his tattoo,” I said. “He said Maria is his aunt. Do you know her?”
“Never met her, but Aunt Maria was his grandmother’s sister. She raised his mom, then died a couple years before his mom went to prison. He was fourteen, I think. It nearly broke him. Maria had been trying to gain guardianship of them after their mom lost their house because of her drug habit.”
That explained the tattoo. I had wished Maria was still alive to give me someone to talk to, someone Sergio might listen to.
Faith said, “I don’t know how I can help, but I’ll give you my number. I want to help, even if Sergio is too fucking stubborn to accept it.”
I put her phone number in my contacts.
“Did he ever loan his hoodie to anyone?”
A flicker across her face, then it was gone.
“Faith, this is important.”
“He got that hoodie for Christmas, from Sophia. He loved it. He’d never let just anyone borrow it.”
She wasn’t telling me something, but I didn’t push.
When I learned more, I would.
Nine
I walked into my parents’ house off Central Avenue at six thirty Tuesday night. I loved the house I grew up in, on a short cul-de-sac with a wide lawn. Our house had always been filled with friends and family coming and going. Mom and Dad believed that if our friends were welcome here, we were less likely to get in trouble elsewhere. It worked, I supposed, because none of us had gotten into serious trouble.
Nico was getting out of his car as I pulled up. He waited for me and I gave him a hug. We were Irish twins, as they say—eleven months apart. He would be twenty-five in April, and I would be twenty-six in May. We’d been close growing up—honestly, I was close to all my siblings except maybe Luisa. Lulu was nearly eight years younger than me. Jack, Tess, Nico, and I had all been born in a five-year span.
“How’s the crime lab?” I said as we walked into the house. “Solve any cool cases?”
“It’s good. Not quite as glamorous as being a CSI on television, but I did match up prints on a serial burglar in Paradise Valley.”
“Catch him?”
