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“You will when you hear the story.”
I laughed. “When did you become a psychic?”
“You’re an Angelhart,” he said, as if that explained everything. The weight of my name wasn’t lost on me. A lot was expected from Angelharts.
Andy continued. “It’s about a nineteen-year-old kid who was arrested for armed robbery and murder. He confessed. It’s a slam dunk case. The problem? He didn’t do it.”
Two
Before Andy started spilling his story, I got up and told Scotty I needed more than fifteen minutes. When Monday night football was over, it wasn’t yet baseball season, and the Phoenix Suns weren’t playing, Mondays were slow, so leaving Scotty to handle the bar wasn’t a problem. Plus, it was cold. Arizonans didn’t like going out in the cold. Most didn’t own warm coats, just windbreakers and sweatshirts. Yes, it can get very cold in Arizona. People only think about the heat of the summers and the comfortably warm days of baseball spring training, but December and January could bite your ass with sub thirty-degree mornings and sunny days that didn’t top fifty. Phoenix was in the middle of a desert. Sometimes, I wondered what people thought when they decided to settle in this valley—did they enjoy battling mother nature? Freezing in January and roasting in August?
Then I would jog into a sunrise bursting with color as it ascended the mountains, or sit outside with friends and a beer to witness a crimson sunset setting the desert aglow, and I knew why. People who didn’t live here couldn’t understand that with the bad came the good. Phoenix wasn’t perfect—no place that topped 120 degrees in the summer for weeks on end could be perfect—but the Valley of the Sun was unique. I never saw myself leaving again. After six years in the Army, away from home, I realized how much I loved and missed my hometown—and my family.
I poured a cup of coffee for myself and walked back to Andy. I sat down and said, “Lay it on me.”
“Two weeks ago, a convenience store off Camelback near 19th was robbed, the clerk shot and killed. In the process of canvassing the scene, pulling security footage, talking to witnesses, police questioned Sergio Diaz, a nineteen-year-old who works at a fast-food restaurant two blocks from the scene. The Taco House.”
“I know it,” I said. “Best street tacos in Phoenix. My cousin Millie knows the owner.”
“Millie knows everyone,” Andy said.
True, I thought. “Why’d they question Sergio?”
“He’s known to stop there after work, and he has had words with one of the clerks. Not the one who was killed, but a part-time clerk who told police that the week before the robbery, Sergio came in and was short two dollars. When the clerk refused to extend credit, Sergio threw the items back at him, then kicked a display rack on his way out.”
“That might be motive to shoot that clerk,” I said, though it seemed weak.
“It was enough for the police to talk to him. They asked him to come in, he did willingly, didn’t ask for a lawyer. He denied ever kicking a display rack, though admitted he walked out when he realized he was short on funds.”
“Is there video?”
“They record over the old footage every couple of days. The system is ancient with limited storage.”
“So the police talk to Sergio and he just says yeah, I killed the guy?”
Andy shook his head. “Not at first. He claimed he was home by 11:30. Police confirmed that he left work at 11:10 and it’s a fifteen-to twenty-minute walk to his apartment along the route that passes the store. Though the robbery occurred around 11:45, no one saw Sergio enter his apartment when he said he arrived home. They really went at him, he didn’t budge, and they had no hard physical evidence. The weapon hasn’t been found. They let him go.”
“What about the camera? You said it was an old system, but they must have something.”
Andy nodded. “It’s black-and-white, poor quality. Two young white, possibly Hispanic males entered at 11:40 wearing ball caps, brims low. There’s no clear view of their faces. They walked to the back of the store, off-camera, and the clerk appeared to watch them in the mirrors mounted in each corner of the store.
“About a minute later, the third suspect—the shooter—entered. He wore a hoodie with a face mask over his nose and mouth. The clerk immediately went on alert, made a move for the shotgun under the counter, but the suspect pulled a weapon and the clerk froze. Words were exchanged and the clerk opened the register. The suspect took the cash, estimated to be a hundred and twenty dollars.
“The two young men who had entered first came from the back of the store and while in view of the camera, one went over the counter and stole cigarettes and alcohol and the other grabbed junk food. The three left together and the clerk was yelling at them. The one in the mask turned around and shot the clerk twice in the chest.”
“Let me guess. Sergio resembles the shooter, even though the video is indistinct.”
Andy nodded, drained the rest of his beer. “The shooter is five foot nine to five foot ten—Sergio is just over five foot nine.”
“Like half the men in the state,” I muttered.
“After the first interview, the police were leaning away from Sergio, even with the basic physical resemblance. Sergio was polite and forthcoming, expressed concern for the neighborhood and worry about his employer and co-workers.
“Then a couple days later, the lead detective came by his work with follow-up questions. At first, Sergio was polite. He came out, pulled on a hoodie—a similar hoodie to the one in the video. The detective—Tina Barrios—asked about it. He said that it was his hoodie. She asked him to come to the station. He wanted to know why, and she said that his hoodie matched that of their suspect. He refused, began to act belligerent, and she made the call to arrest him because she feared he would destroy the sweatshirt. They kept him in lockup for twenty-four hours and rushed the tests. The pocket of the hoodie tested positive for gunshot residue.”
“And that was it?” I wasn’t a cop, but I’d been in the military police for half my time in the Army. Generally evidence was important, even with a confession.
“After he was shown the GSR test results and the video of the shooting, Sergio confessed. He claimed that he needed the money and didn’t mean to kill the clerk, then asked for a lawyer. I watched the two interviews—they were night and day.”
