A Hand in Murder

“After your cousin chopped off the guy’s hand, the guy ran away, bled out, and died,” my mother said.

Your cousin. That’s what she called Marcus when he did something wrong, like getting arrested for disorderly conduct. When he did something right, like graduating from high school, she hailed him as my nephew.

I shook my head in disbelief. Marcus and I had grown up together. Over the last two years we’d become drinking buddies. Suddenly I felt hot, and sipped the ice-cold lemonade Mom had poured me. As the ice cubes clinked together I realized my hand was shaking. I placed the drink on the legal textbook I’d been reading, and buried my hands in my lap. I said, “Start over from the beginning.”

She set down the pitcher of lemonade and scooped up the Sunday paper from the patio table in the sunporch where we were talking. As she paced around, she explained that on Friday night Marcus and his wife, Larisa, had been at home watching TV. They heard a crash. Through the window they saw a Jeep Renegade where their child’s playhouse had stood. Two men got out, and Marcus dashed outside to yell at them. They’d nearly smoothed things over by offering Marcus cash, when Larisa ran out and got all Chicana (Mom’s words), screaming at the men in Spanish. “She threw the money back in their faces!” As Mom said this, she thwacked the newspaper on the table.

“Sit down, Mom. You’re circling like a buzzard.” I tugged the collar of my shirt and wiped my brow.

She rolled her eyes, but took a seat. She said that Larisa ran inside and fetched one of Marcus’s toys. Mom pointed to a snapshot on A6 of the Sierra Vista Herald. The “toy” was Marcus’s bat’leth, a huge curved sword from Star Trek, part of his collection of weapons based on sci-fi series and comic books. According to Mom, who learned the story not just from the paper but from Marcus’s mother, Larisa put the bat’leth in Marcus’s hands, egging him on, and when the Jeep’s driver waved his hand to get Larisa out of his face, Marcus cut it off.

“Jesus Christ!” I said. I felt bad for the victim, but my stomach clinched even tighter thinking about Marcus. There had to be extenuating circumstances. “Didn’t they call the police? Or an ambulance?”

Mom shrugged. “Somebody did call an ambulance, but the driver ran away and the paramedics couldn’t find him. In the morning the police found the body where Sage Street dead-ends. He’d crawled into the bushes.” She shot me a glance colder and sourer than the lemonade. “I told you to stay away from Marcus and Larisa. They’re bad news.”

 

Mom’s I-told-you-so shocked me less than the story itself. Forty-five thousand people lived in Sierra Vista. The police and neighbors looked out for each other. It wasn’t a community where people died in the bushes with nobody noticing.

Plus the story made no sense. A demolished playhouse struck me as insufficient motivation for a murder. Could the altercation have been drug or gang-related?

Marcus was an unlikely murderer, but not an impossible killer. He was short, pudgy, and usually mild-mannered. But he was also loyal, quick to defend his friends.

I remembered how he had stuck up for me at O’Brien’s Pub when I was home last summer. While celebrating my completion of the LSAT, I drank too much and made a pass at a soldier girl from Fort Huachuca. One of the guys from her unit didn’t appreciate it, and put his finger in my face. I smacked his hand away, and the guy kicked my barstool out from under me. Before I stood up, Marcus slugged the guy, which ignited a brawl. Marcus could throw a punch as fast as Floyd Mayweather. His reward for intervening was a night in jail for disorderly conduct. I didn’t tell Mom, and Marcus didn’t tell the police that I was the one who lit the barfight’s fuse.

“Where is he now?” I asked my mother, guessing that Marcus was once again at the Cochise County Jail.

“Why? You wouldn’t dare visit him.” Mom lifted the newspaper off the table and flapped it to cool herself. Facing me was the headline, “Man Arrested in Sci-Fi Sword Slaying.”

“I can help him get a lawyer.” I owed him that much. I’d just graduated from Arizona State in Tempe and would begin law school in the fall. I knew enough to get a referral to a criminal defense attorney.

“Erik, no,” she said. “Getting mixed up in this will come back to bite you when you run for office.”

I should never have told her about my political ambitions. City council after law school and a couple of years with a firm. Eventually, governor. Mom was my staunchest supporter.

I scratched my chin. “It’ll bite me worse if he’s convicted.”

Mom folded the newspaper, threw it to the floorboards, and sprang out of her seat. “They’ll say you met with a killer. They’ll run a commercial with a picture of you and Marcus on one side and his mugshot on the other, above today’s headline.” She raised her palms theatrically, pantomiming where the photos would appear on her imaginary TV screen.

I worried that she was right, but I needed to help my cousin. I affected a breezy tone. “I’ll say it was part of my legal education. Besides, we don’t know it’s murder. Either Marcus didn’t mean to kill the guy and it’s manslaughter, or they were threatening him and it’s self-defense.”

She groaned in exasperation. “The dead man’s name was Bo Miller, by the way. If you’re determined to help your cousin, at least go to the man’s funeral to show that you care about victims more than criminals.”

I doubted the guy’s loved ones would welcome Marcus’s family there, but she had a point. Besides, I was living with her rent-free this summer, so I could meet her part way. “Fine, I’ll go. When’s the funeral?”

But she hadn’t finished dictating terms. “When you go, sign the book and keep a program as proof you went.”

I nodded, but I had plenty of work to do before the funeral. My task was clear: if Marcus swung the sword himself, the question was why. The answer would be the key to his defense.

#

Marcus looked more washed out than a storm drain rat after a thundershower. His greasy hair was matted on his forehead. The harsh light of the jail’s visiting room illuminated his pink and puffy eyes and his patchy beard. He wore an orange V-neck jumpsuit with short sleeves that revealed the tattoo of his son’s name, Carlos, on his forearm.

“Maybe his friend, the passenger, is the one who killed him, and he blamed you?” I said.

“No,” Marcus said, avoiding my gaze.

“Did Bo Miller threaten you? Was it self-defense?”

Stone-faced, Marcus stared down at the table separating us and said nothing.

I pressed on. “Did he threaten Larisa? Give me something to work with.”

He finally looked up. “This isn’t about you, Erik.”

“No, of course not.” I shifted in my seat.

A thin smile of recognition spread across his face. “You’re trying to make up for O’Brien’s, aren’t you?”

I inched back in my seat. He was exactly right. Clearing his name to protect my political future would be a bonus. But he didn’t need to know all my reasons. “The better I understand your case,” I said, “the better lawyer I can find.”

“I told you, I don’t need a lawyer. I’m pleading guilty.”

He’d been charged with second-degree murder. I told him that since the death was accidental, it was crazy to plead guilty to murder. “Your sentence could be cut short.”

Marcus gave me an eat-shit look.

“Sorry. I mean, shortened,” I said.

Marcus said he couldn’t afford a lawyer, but I told him I could find one willing to offer a discount. During my undergraduate courses I’d taken two law-related classes. I had already called one of my professors who said he’d get back to me with a referral.

Marcus kept brushing aside my attempts to help him.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “You’re acting like you want to be convicted.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” said Marcus. “I’m the one who killed him.”

I shushed him, worried that the jail’s surveillance system was recording. “Marcus, you’re tired. I’m not sure you understand what you’re saying. The stress of jail is getting to you.”

“Accept it, Erik. I killed him. Stop trying to find another explanation.”

“Was it Larisa? Did she kill him?”

Marcus sprang from his seat. “Fuck you, Erik!”

From the back of the room a guard emerged. Marcus spat out the words, “That’s my wife you’re talking about!” as the guard led him away.

#

I opened the creaky screen door and rapped the peeling paint of the front door. Larisa’s mother gave me an icy glare. She shouted, “Otro hombre,” down the hall, then pointed to a dinette chair. “Siéntate,” she said, instructing me to sit.

Marcus had told me he never liked Larisa’s mother, and that the feeling was mutual. I exhaled in relief that the woman didn’t recognize me.

The dinette smelled vaguely of cologne—a masculine aroma that was out of place in an otherwise matronly house filled with knickknacks, small pastel paintings of beaches and seashells, and a sewing machine planted in front of the TV.

Marcus and Larisa’s kid sat on the floor, putting the last touches on a Lego space shuttle, as if perfectly content and unaware that his father was in jail. Because I had been away at college, I didn’t know the boy well enough to say whether he was in better or worse spirits than usual. But envisioning him without a steady male presence during a potentially lengthy prison sentence strengthened my resolve to clear Marcus’s name.

I heard soft footsteps coming down the hall. An olive-skinned woman sashayed out in a white tank top, no bra, and jeans shorts ending well short of mid-thigh. The curves of her legs threatened to burst the seams of her cut-offs. She had a sultry voice and worked part-time as a lounge singer at Emilio’s Cantina. A Mexican-American Jessica Rabbit. I stood up to hug Larisa and comfort her, but when she saw me, the come-hither smile faded from her lips. “What do you want, Erik?”

She sat down and I noticed a bruise around her eye and cheek. I asked her what happened and she said Marcus was in jail. I said, “I know about that, but what happened to your face?”

“The driver of the Jeep swung at me and I slipped when I dodged him. I landed on my face, then looked up to see Marcus swing that silly sword.”

My eyes lit up. “Marcus thought you were in danger?”

“I guess.”

I told her it sounded like there was a case for self-defense. “I can get you an affordable lawyer. One of my college professors went to law school with a good defense attorney practicing in Tucson: Sebastian Richards. His secretary is scheduling a phone call as soon as—”

She shook her head. “The public defender will do fine.”

I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want help. Though perhaps she was just being true to form—she’d always been disagreeable.

The last time I’d seen Larisa was at Emilio’s Cantina on Christmas Eve while I was home for winter break a year and a half ago. Normally she sang hits by women like Ana Gabriel, Linda Ronstadt, and Selena, the slain queen of Tejano music. Larisa had been furious that night because, first, it was her birthday, and she hated working on her birthday, and second, because Emilio made her sing “Feliz Navidad,” which she had called Puerto Potty music, because a Puerto Rican had written it. Larisa had always maintained some petty ethnic attitudes.

I explained to her that public defenders have too many cases and no money to hire a private investigator or pay for expert witnesses.

She looked down her nose. “What are you, a lawyer already?”

“I start law school in the fall.”

For the first time since I’d arrived, she made eye contact with me. “Where?”

“Phoenix.”

She stood up and pulled the gauzy curtain away from the dinette window. “Phoenix?” she said as she squinted at the window, as if she could see two hundred miles to the capital.

Marcus had told me that Larisa wanted to move to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, or at least Phoenix, to advance her career. But because of the disorderly conduct charge from O’Brien’s and another incident on his record, he was worried that employers outside of Southern Arizona, where we had deep roots, would never offer him a good job. Maybe she was holding my involvement in the O’Brien’s incident against me. Did she believe I had a hand in her entrapment in Sierra Vista?

Carlos interrupted his mother’s wistfulness with an announcement in a boy’s best baritone. “Houston, we have a problem.” He was holding up the space shuttle, and suddenly hurtled it at the wall, where it smashed into a hundred pieces. He sputtered his lips to imitate the explosion.

Larisa sighed and told him to go outside before his grandmother made him. The boy hesitated a moment too long, and Larisa’s mother trundled into the living room, hands on her sturdy hips. She pointed to the back door. “Afuera!”

As Carlos left the room, I noticed a big red scab on his knee.

Larisa saw me looking and said, “Kids skin their knees.”

Had he fallen and skinned his knee, or had his father pushed him? The bruise on her face, their apparent comfort in her mother’s home . . . It occurred to me that Marcus could have been abusing them, and that she was happy for him to rot in jail. He wasn’t the type to beat his wife, I didn’t think, but it would explain Larisa’s nonchalance about her husband’s legal defense.

She looked at her watch. “I have to get ready for rehearsal with my band. I’ll walk you out.” We walked down the front porch and stood between my Toyota Corolla and the Ford Ranger pickup truck that the couple shared.

I was glad Carlos was in the backyard, out of earshot. I told Larisa that, before I left, I had a couple of questions about the Jeep’s driver. “Did you know him?”

“No,” she said.

I was perplexed by my mother’s story, that the driver had fled after having his hand cut off. I asked, “Why didn’t he go to the police? Or an emergency room? Why hide in the bushes?”

“I told him that Marcus would cut off his balls next.”

For a moment my knees drew together reflexively and I cleared my throat. “But he could have called somebody for help.”

“Who says he didn’t?”

“If he had called an ambulance, it would have found him.” I shook my head and scowled. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Larisa turned, nostrils flaring. “And you never apologized for what happened at O’Brien’s!” She smacked me. Her hand landed flat and hard, ringing out like a small thunderclap.

I massaged my cheek, trying to rub the sting out of it. “I never apologized because you wouldn’t speak to me.”

She crossed her arms and pouted her lips as though waiting for an apology.

“Of course I’m sorry about O’Brien’s,” I said. “I felt rotten about the whole thing. Why do you think I’m trying to help him now?”

She stared at me, blinking slowly. She began nodding and exhaled a big breath. “When Bo ran away, Marcus got in the truck,” she said, pounding the side of the Ranger. “Marcus went to find him.”

“To help him? Or to finish the job?”

“You really are going to be a lawyer,” she said, batting her eyelashes, and she tacked on a question of her own: “In Phoenix?”

I got the feeling she was flirting with me, which, like her story, made little sense. “A law student, yes,” I said, then changed the subject back to the night of the crime. I suggested that Bo’s friend could have driven them to safety.

Larisa explained that during the ruckus a neighbor phoned the police. After Marcus chopped off Bo’s hand, the passenger of the Jeep threw a punch at Marcus. Marcus counterpunched and knocked the guy out. He didn’t come to until the police arrived. He said he could take the Jeep, but the cops wouldn’t let him because he had a suspended license and appeared woozy. A policeman drove the Jeep off their lawn and a tow truck took it to the impound lot. The police took the bat’leth as evidence. They patrolled the neighborhood; they found Marcus but not Bo.

She looked at her watch again, said she really had to get going, and kissed me goodbye on the cheek she’d just smacked.

I left feeling discomfited by Larisa’s version of events as well as her hot-and-cold attitude. She had given me no information that would help exonerate Marcus—if anything she made him sound even guiltier. My last resort was to inspect the scene myself.

#

The Arizona ash sapling that I had bought as a housewarming present was uprooted and blood splattered. I had forgotten about the little tree until I saw it there, its trunk cracked like a karate pine board. The sight angered me, and I wondered whether the police had even bothered to investigate the car accident that led up to the tragedy. Heading toward the playhouse, I snapped a few pictures of the deep wheel ruts the Jeep had made.

The yellow tape around the yard was gone, the police having abandoned the crime scene days ago. Carlos’s playhouse was obliterated. Shards of white and brown plastic littered the lawn. No wonder Larisa and Marcus had gone berserk.

The coarse, short blades of midiron grass, well mowed by Marcus, were soaked with blood, making a path from the center of the lawn to the curb. Even the gravelly curb was stained reddish brown. It was like Marcus had a sprinkler system drawing on a tank of blood. It no longer surprised me that Bo Miller had died from blood loss. I felt a pang of guilt for having been irritated by the broken sapling when a man had lost his life. Later, when I told Mom about the scene, she said, “Of course Larisa hasn’t bothered to clean up. Not very nice for the neighbors.”

I followed the sidewalk’s trail of blood drops until they dissipated. I headed along the route Bo would have taken to Sage Street. A quarter mile down the sidewalk I passed a woman walking a chihuahua. The micro-dog was pulling on the leash like a husky pulls a sled.

“Leave it, Mia!” she said. “That’s where the guy died.”

Spiky clumps of deer grass guarded a palo verde tree. The dog walker left and I crept nearer to the deer grass. I saw disturbed gravel and more dried blood. The largest area of disturbed earth was behind one of the tallgrass clumps under the tree’s canopy. Was this where a man died, in the moon shadow of the palo verde? I snapped more pictures on my phone. I knocked on the homeowner’s door, hoping for information, but nobody answered.

I began walking back to Marcus’s. Lost in my thoughts about the gruesomeness of what I had seen, I almost didn’t notice a small patch of dried blood on the sidewalk. The victim must have stumbled there. In the corner of my eye, the sun glinted off something, well off the edge of a sidewalk, in the front yard of a vacant house. I stooped to the base of a butterfly bush to discover a mobile phone. I picked up the Android; its owner had set up a passcode. I tried 1-2-3-4, but no luck.

I felt something on the back of the phone and turned it over. It was a self-adhesive silicon credit card holder. I slowly pulled out the edge of a red card and a crisply folded hundred slid out along with it. The red card turned out to be a loyalty card for Safeway. There was no name on it, but I assumed that the cardholder could be identified if the card had been registered.

It was within fifty feet of where the man had died. If he was a drug dealer, it wouldn’t be unusual for him to carry around cash only. I had to turn the phone over to the police.

Or better yet, to a defense lawyer.

I’d already spoken to Sebastian Richards, the lawyer I’d tried to tell Larissa about. He said that once Marcus consented and I transmitted the initial fee, he’d start work.

I had tried to persuade Mom to cover the fee by arguing that it would look better for us if Marcus was found not guilty. I even offered to re-landscape her front yard. She said that wasn’t enough. Which prompted me to get the money from Dad, who lived on the other side of town. When I told Dad that Mom wanted me to stay off the case, he chuckled, and asked, “How much?”

But since sending Sebastian the money yesterday I’d heard nothing from his office. This potential evidence of Bo’s phone would give me the leverage I needed to meet the lawyer face-to-face.

 

I met with Sebastian halfway, in Benson, over a piping hot cup of coffee at the Horseshoe Café. “Best cup of coffee in Benson,” Sebastian said, exuding confidence that he was familiar with the best cups of coffee in every town in Southern Arizona.

I told him what I’d gleaned from Larisa and the visit to Marcus’s house. Sebastian clucked in disapproval over my involvement in the case. He drained his cup, and left enough cash on the table to cover our tab. As he stood to leave, he advised me to stay home and hit the books to prepare for my first year of law school, which he said would be the hardest year. He thanked me for the phone and the hundred-dollar bill, shook my hand, and said, “I’ll take it from here, son.”

#

Bo Miller’s funeral was that Thursday. I attended like my mother suggested, and legibly signed the guestbook.

An usher handed me a program. I walked into the sanctuary and almost straight into Bo. Or his casket anyway, which was open. Even in death he was handsome, five or ten years older than me. He wore a plain navy blazer which somebody had spruced up with a desert wildflower boutonniere of sea holly and eucalyptus. A blanket covered him from the elbows down. I shuddered. Was his hand was being buried with him?

Remorse coursed through my veins. Here lay a man, his life cut short by a member of my family—my own flesh and blood. Was I wrong to try to prove Marcus’s innocence? With his unpredictable temper, perhaps Sierra Vista was a safer place with him behind bars. I said a short prayer and slinked to the back of the sanctuary.

The Herald hadn’t named Bo’s passenger from that night, but during the funeral I found out his name was Grady. Pictures of Bo and Grady together were among the photos scrolling from a projector during the service.

I noticed that two of the scrolling photos seemed oddly cropped. In each of them, I could see Bo’s beaming face and solid torso, but the picture margin cut off at his raised shoulder, like his arm was around somebody off camera. Whom had the family cropped out? I wondered if it could have been a man, and the family was embarrassed if Bo was gay.

The pastor of the church led the mourners in prayer. This was followed by a dreamy ballad on the piano. The tune was familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint it, and the program only said Piano Solo. I didn’t think the song was religious; more like “Crying” by Roy Orbison, an old number my grandfather used to play.

Next, to my surprise, a prison chaplain delivered the eulogy. Evidently Bo had previously been incarcerated. It was a eulogy about unrealized potential. Similar to my cousin’s wife, Bo had dreams of moving to Phoenix or beyond, as soon as the terms of his probation would allow him.

The tearful family offered a light repast after the service, and I stuck around to mingle. I nursed an iced tea and thought about Sebastian’s admonition to stay off the case. He was right of course, but as I finished the tea, I noticed Grady alone. He was here at the funeral, but where was he when Bo was bleeding under the palo verde? Had Grady let his friend down somehow that night? And if I ended my involvement in the case without exonerating Marcus, would I be any different from Grady? Standing by respectfully but doing nothing while a friend’s life was ruined.

I walked in Grady’s direction, but he ducked outside for a smoke break. I followed him. I stood near the same ash can and lit up. It wouldn’t help to identify myself as Marcus’s cousin. I took a drag and said, “Horrible what happened.”

“Yeah, that shit was messed up.” Grady’s eyes were red and glassy, and his cheek had a faded bruise that Marcus must have given him. “You knew Bo?”

I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t reveal too much either. “Nah. Just showing my support.”

Grady thanked me. I told him my first name; we shook hands and I caught a whiff of alcohol, though it was only noon.

“They got the guy who did it, right?” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Grady cocked an eyebrow; I worried that I’d put him on guard. But then he nodded, slow and cool. “Yeah, they got him. But they gave him some bullshit charge like manslaughter or second-degree murder.”

“Should’ve been first-degree?” I said between drags, trying to keep the conversation alight.

“Yeah.”

“You knew the guy who killed him?”

“Yeah, I’ve met that pansy-assed Marcus before. Him and that Mexican slut he calls a wife.”

Both Marcus and Larisa had denied knowing the men who plowed into their front yard. “You think the guy, Marcus, planned it?”

“Sure, he’s the one who called us over. Marcus wanted to buy something Bo was selling. But that was just a ploy so Marcus could kill him.”

Why would Marcus want to kill Bo, I wanted to ask, but something told me not to be so direct. I cupped my ear with my hand as though I hadn’t heard him. “You said he wanted to buy something Bo was selling?”

“What’s it to you?” Grady said. “You a narc?”

“No.”

“A reporter?”

“I’m a student. Just curious.”

I supposed I looked young and trustworthy enough to convince him.

“I’m not sure what Marcus was buying. Probably his usual. Weed and knock-off Viagra.”

“Viagra?” I almost shouted it. “Why? He was a young guy, right?”

“In addition to being a murderer, Marcus had a problem downstairs,” Grady said, pointing toward his crotch, as though I needed a visual. “A case of early-onset limp dick.”

When I opened my mouth to ask something else, Grady said, “I hate to interrupt this game of twenty questions, but I’m going back inside.”

“Okay,” I said, but I felt a tickle somewhere in my brain. “Before you go . . . about that piano solo inside. What was that? ‘Crying?’”

Grady spun around and looked at me like I was stupid. “No. It’s a song that’s been stuck in Bo’s head for months.” Grady cleared his throat and sang a few bars in a voice that was surprisingly high and clear for a smoker. He stopped in the middle of one measure, his lips shutting and eyebrows rising, prompting me to finish the lyrics.

“Um.” Grady’s words helped as the title finally dawned on me. “Blue Bayou?”

“You’re a smart guy after all. I knew you could figure it out.” And he disappeared.

His story about Marcus calling Bo would explain why Marcus had been charged with murder. Based on Grady’s statements, the police had means, motive, and opportunity, which, if true, disproved the possibility that it had been an accident.

But I still couldn’t see Marcus taking a break from playing video games to plot a murder, summon a drug dealer, and sharpen his bat’leth while he waited. No. After talking with Grady, I knew there was a different explanation. As I put together a theory in my mind, I felt a weight lifting from my heart.

I dialed Sebastian’s office from the church parking lot. Since I had turned over the unidentified phone he’d been impossible to reach. The receptionist started giving me some boilerplate that she would “check if Mr. Richards is available.”

Before she could place me on hold, I said, “Tell him I’ve got the PIN for the phone.”

Within thirty seconds she transferred me.

“Erik Torvald.” Sebastian said my name like we were long separated friends, before settling into a more pedantic tone. “I thought I told you to stay off the case. I’ve had my IT guy look at the phone and we’re researching birthdates of Bo’s family members to try those. We’ve also got a request in with Safeway—”

“Do you want the passcode or not?”

There was a brief silence on the line. “Tell it to me.”

“On one condition. If it works, you meet me in Sierra Vista to discuss the case.”

Sebastian described his busy schedule and offered a phone appointment instead.

“Everything will make more sense in person,” I said. “If I’m right about the passcode, I’m pretty sure the call logs will show that the prosecution’s star witness is all wet.”

“Star witness? The Grady guy?” Sebastian grilled me with a dozen questions to make sure I hadn’t tried to influence a witness. Once he realized I hadn’t said anything improper, he settled down. He said that I “drive a hard bargain” and waited for the code.

“One-two-two-four.”

Silence was broken by the faintest gasp. “We’re in.”

#

I nursed a sugary margarita while I waited for Sebastian to arrive. I took in the familiar, kitschy surroundings. A non-functional indoor fountain. A buffalo bull’s head mounted on the wall. Not a blanched skull—the whole head, woolly fur and all. The otherwise stark, long ranch house, which had been converted to a restaurant years ago, was never fully occupied.

A mariachi’s trumpet sounded throughout the humble surroundings as the lights dimmed. From the shadows of the kitchen doorway emerged a woman in a shimmering sequined getup. I presumed she’d be in a cocktail dress—something short without sleeves and a micro-mini skirt. But once Larisa stepped into the tepid limelight of Emilio’s Cantina, I could see she was wearing a traditional long-sleeved bolero jacket with rhinestoned cuffs that matched her belt—all surprisingly conservative. But, not unhappily, I had predicted the length of her skirt accurately.

She opened with “Sway.” Popularized by Italians, the song, as Larisa had long reminded anybody who would listen, was originally written by a Mexican.

The sway of her hips would have swayed even the most happily married men in her direction. But as I looked around the room I felt bad for her. In the cavernous space there weren’t more than a dozen people, mostly couples over the age of fifty. All her glitz and talent were going to waste.

A few years ago she had competed in an American Idol audition in Tucson. All the locals agreed that she had been robbed when she didn’t make it to Hollywood.

Halfway through her rendition of Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” I ordered food without waiting for Sebastian.

He arrived just after Larisa’s band had taken five. Our waitress appeared immediately to take the order of the dapper, middle-aged lawyer in a business suit. Sebastian ordered a sangria and the number-one combo.

I said, “You haven’t even looked at the menu.”

“I get the number-one combo at every Mexican restaurant.”

I nodded approvingly at the man’s efficiency and wisdom.

Sebastian placed his briefcase on the table and smacked the black leather. “You know what’s in here?”

“The call logs?”

“I knew from the start that you were bright.” He sprang the latches.

I held up my hand. “Wait. I have another deal for you.”

Sebastian leaned back in his chair.

“I’ll tell you what I think you found in the call history. If I’m right, you give me an internship next summer.”

He snorted. “I don’t need you to tell me what I found in the phone records. I already know what’s in them.”

“In future cases you might not have a phone as evidence. But you’ll have me.”

“We get a pile of students to choose from every year.”

“Any of them save your client from a murder indictment?”

Sebastian steepled his hands. “If you correctly guess what the call logs show and what the logs mean, and you get straight A’s during your first year, the internship is yours.”

I restrained a smile. “Two B’s. I can get up to two B’s.”

“One B! And if you’re wrong, dinner is on you.”

We shook on it. The waitress brought Sebastian his sangria and he took a deep gulp. “Where’d you learn to negotiate anyway?”

“From my mother.” I cleared my throat and began reciting my version of events, as if delivering the opening arguments at a trial. “I believe the record will show that there were no calls from our client to Bo Miller in the past month. This evidence will disprove Grady’s assertion that Marcus called Bo over for drugs. But there were repeated calls or text messages from Bo to one number in particular. Am I right?”

Sebastian frowned and said, “So far.”

“And the evidence will further show that there were no calls from that number back to Bo. At least not in the past few weeks.”

Sebastian chewed on a piece of fruit from his glass and squinted at me. “But whose number is it, and how did you know that? And how did you know the passcode?”

The lights dimmed again. Sebastian looked toward the front of the room and his jaw literally dropped. Larisa strutted center stage, singing “Blue Bayou,” Linda Ronstadt’s classic. The song was dated, but Larisa idolized the Mexican-American crooner and never failed to sing it. Sebastian swallowed and cleared his throat.

I chuckled and pointed my thumb her way. “She’s how I knew. She’s who Bo was calling. He’d fallen hard for her, but she was finished with him. That’s Marcus’s wife. Her birthday is Christmas Eve. Twelve twenty-four. One-two-two-four. The same numbers as the PIN.”

Sebastian’s typical expression of harried irritation gave way to a proud smile. “You’re right, more or less. There were text messages back and forth between the two lovebirds until a few weeks ago. Lately he texted her repeatedly, but she never replied.”

I fist-pumped and said, “Nailed it!” I was happy to be right, but even happier that Marcus hadn’t planned the crime. “Yet Grady is telling everybody that Marcus called them over.”

“And why would Grady say that?” Sebastian said.

“You want me to tie up everything for you with a nice little bow?” I said. “Surely, I’ve earned the internship already.”

“Humor me.”

“We haven’t discussed what my wages will be.”

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed and he looked like he wanted to choke me.

“Sheesh, can’t you take a joke?” I said. “The best I can figure is that Bo concocted the phone call from Marcus so Grady would go with him. What he needed was backup in case things went south. Grady believed they were going over for a drug deal.”

Sebastian finished my train of thought by saying, “Then Bo makes it personal and ends up a hand short and a dollar late. Grady was too drunk to help. Bo couldn’t drive the Jeep—a stick shift—with one hand. And I figured out why Bo didn’t go to the police that night. He already had a felony under his belt and a stash of opioids in the Jeep.”

The opioids were news to me. I felt like one-upping Sebastian by telling him my full theory. “It all started out months ago when Marcus and Larisa began buying drugs from Bo. She hooked up with Bo, and he fell for her. Started coming to her show and getting her songs stuck in his mind. She thought he was her meal ticket out of Sierra Vista. But when she found out that he was stuck here because of the terms of his probation, she dumped him. Bo wanted to teach her a lesson, and plowed into their son’s playhouse as a warning. He didn’t count on Marcus sticking up for himself.”

“Which proves that it wasn’t premeditated, and we can plea the charges down to reckless endangerment. Your cousin will be out of prison in nine months instead of ten to twenty-two years. But it doesn’t explain why Marcus didn’t want my help,” Sebastian said.

“He doesn’t want the truth about Larisa’s sex life to come out. He’s embarrassed that he can’t make her happy. And she was ambivalent about getting a good lawyer because if he stays in prison, she’s free to leave Southern Arizona and pursue her career.”

Our meals came out, but Sebastian was too entranced to lift his fork. Larisa noticed his sharp business suit, and stared right at him during the climax of “Blue Bayou.” She’d be disappointed to learn that Sebastian didn’t live farther away.