Swift Horses Racing Page 12

  Flores handed over his card. “We’re investigating a shooting. One of Mulvaney’s relatives. If you run across any information that might be useful, give me a call.”

  Barb raised her eyebrows and sighed. “I will, Officer Flores. I just hope it doesn’t cost me an employee.”

  Reyna had just finished with her 4 p.m. appointment, her last of the day. She cleaned up her station and peeled the gloves off her hands.

  She checked her phone and saw that Jimmy had called and left a message. She sped through it, but she caught something about coming home a half hour late. That made things easier. She could pick up Jacky and get him settled in to finish his homework, with no need to rush dinner. She had frozen chicken adobo she could heat up.

  She was replacing the polisher, when Tiffany came in unexpectedly. Reyna knew her face showed her displeasure at this visit and she didn’t want to hide it. Don’t slow me down, girl. I want to get out of here.

  Tiffany came into the room and sat down on the chair near the sink.

  “Tiff, what’s up? Need something?”

  Tiffany looked past her, as she watched Rocio tidy up at the front desk, pick up her purse and head for the front door.

  “I want to know what you think you were doing when we were out last night,” she said, her voice lowered.

  “Can you tell me what you’re talking about?” Reyna’s face felt hot. She pumped soap on her hands, rubbed them together thoroughly and rinsed them off in the sink.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Reyna felt her coworker’s eyes boring into the side of her face. “The cop. You were flirting with him. We all saw it. What if Jimmy saw what you were doing? Would you be okay with that?”

  “We were all out to have a good time last night. You were flirting with those guys in the car on Stevens Creek. What’s the difference? I knew the guy, Tiff. It’s not a big deal.”

  Reyna yanked a paper towel out of the dispenser and dried her hands. She wasn’t going to let Tiffany pull her off schedule tonight. She was telling her the truth. Flores was an acquaintance she’d just happened to reconnect with.

  “It wasn’t what you think. I was just meeting up with a friend.”

  Tiffany studied her with an expression somewhere between disgust and pity.

  “Don’t pull this shit on Jimmy. He deserves better.”

  With that, Tiffany stood up and pushed past her. Suddenly Reyna felt deflated.

  She’d gone home last night with a flutter of excitement. A surge of something that felt like joy. It had made her everyday life feel so dull, so lifeless in comparison. It flowed through every part of her body like a chemical. It made her feel alive. Her brother Armando had described what heroin felt like to her once. Just like this.

  Even looking over at Jimmy that night, asleep on the other side of the bed, couldn’t take it away from her. Now that she had this feeling, bubbling up in her, she couldn’t imagine living without it.

  But she wondered how she would keep it.

  29

  Karl Schuler’s journal

  In August of 1943, my life changed completely. It was a beginning. My eyes were being opened. But I was not completely willing to see.

  Much had happened since the successful test of the A4 rocket the previous year. Now the new V rockets were in production. With the might of the weapons we were creating, all of us at Peenemunde assumed Germany had the upper hand in the war now.

  The night was still, and the moon shone silvery bright outside my window. My cousin Walter had been bothering me to play a game, but I had no patience for him. I went to my room and lay on my bed reading. I began to hear a heavy droning. Soon it got closer and heavier. I knew that sound. Bombers. Bombers that weren’t ours.

  I looked outside the window and saw them: wings gleaming like silvery insects in the moonlight. Hundreds.

  The droning finally stopped. The silence seemed oppressive. After something like that, you tense up and wait for it. The blasts began, thunderous and close.

  Later we would find out that two Polish janitors had communicated details of the Peenemunde facility to the Polish Resistance, who had passed them on the British. The RAF had known what to target.

  Now all the Polish at Peenemunde were under suspicion for their part in this horrific act.

  Even Agnieszka.

  The day after the bombing she disappeared.

  30

  Susan Moreland of East Point had given him names of the students Karl Schuler had been working with. It was nearly 5 p.m. by the time he got to Matthew Le’s apartment off Senter Road.

  He made his way up to the wrought iron and concrete stairs to the second story and knocked on unit 24. A teenaged girl in a hoodie answered the door as she pulled an AirPod from one ear.

  “I’m here to talk with Matthew Le.”

  She looked him over with interest, then yelled Matt back into the apartment with the voice of a banshee, before turning back to him as he stood at the door. “Are you the police? Is he in trouble?”

  “I’m Detective Flores.” He liked to think his choice of suit and tie distinguished him from a patrol officer. The young woman’s response made him wonder if the police had been to the apartment before.

  Soon a sturdy, muscular young man appeared behind her. He wore a Pokemon t-shirt that looked like it belonged on an eight-year-old.

  “Got it, Soph.” He nodded at his sister.

  The young woman had continued staring at Flores, but when her brother nudged her, she reluctantly put her AirPod back in her ear and walked off.

  “Come in and have a seat, officer.”

  Matt Le was almost Flores’s height, but sturdy and muscular. He had a cordial smile on his face, but Flores suspected it was the default face he wore around adults. Or when his mother asked him, “Drive your sister to school. Clean your room. Why an A- on your final—why not an A?”

  Matt led Flores into the small living room, with a covered sofa and a coffee table piled with textbooks. A black-and-white poster of a martial artist hung prominently over the couch, next to a framed piece of calligraphy. Hung around the room were family photos. Toddlers, children, teenagers, wedding photos, grandparents.

  “I’m Detective Mario Flores. I’m here to ask you a few questions about Karl Schuler.” Flores took his seat on the couch and turned toward the young man, who stared down at his hands. The polite smile had faded from his face.

  “Do you know why I’m here, Matt?” Flores led with this because it was deliberately vague. It left the door open for Matt Le to say anything he might say out of fear or guilt.

  Matt turned his eyes on Flores and his lower lip trembled. He spoke slowly. “Yeah, I heard what happened to Mr. Schuler. Another kid from the center told me.”

  “How long had you known him?”

  Matt took some time to clear his throat. When he began talking, his voice sounded hoarse. “I’m a senior this year. I started coming to East Point in my sophomore year. He helped me and a couple other kids with physics. I knew I wanted to go into something related to science. I was doing pretty bad in school back then. My mom said I had to go.” As Matt continued, his voice and face became more animated. The excitement burned through his veneer of teenage toughness.

  “Sounds like you didn’t mind going to the center.”

  “The classes were kind of fun. Mr. Schuler talked about how things worked. A group of us built rockets. He did experiments, too. Like he brought in some liquid nitrogen and froze things. He did this thing where he pretended to dip his thumb in the liquid nitrogen. Then he hit it with a hammer and pieces flew around the room. We all screamed. We thought the old guy had shattered his thumb. Then he showed us it was just half a hot dog.”

  Flores laughed. The students probably loved it. He could see where the old man scared Rose, who was perpetually worrying about him, trying to rein him in, keep him out of trouble.

  “Mr. Schuler had you over to his house, didn’t he? Some kind of a Christmas party before schoo
l let out?”

  “The Wednesday group. We all went. We had dinner, then we had a gingerbread house building contest—to see who could make the strongest one. I thought mine was pretty cool. Six stories, with a cantilever roof. But I didn’t win.”

  This would have been a couple of weeks before Schuler’s death.

  “How was Mr. Schuler when you were over at his house?” Flores asked. “Did he act differently than usual? Did he seem nervous or scared?”

  Matt shrugged. “He was in a good mood. Cracking jokes.”

  “He never talked about anyone who was angry with him—or about being in trouble in any way?” Flores asked. “Any problems the night of the party?”

  “Nah. It was maybe ten of us from East Point and Miss Moreland. We all knew each other pretty well. We hung out.”

  “Did Mr. Schuler talk about anything he’d be doing during the holiday break?”

  “He said he had some project he was working on. I thought it was some kind of experiment, because he seemed to do them with us all the time.”

  Flores wondered what Schuler could have been working on and if it was the project that could have gotten him in trouble. He wondered if Schuler would have confided in Duke Sorenson.

  “Can you think of kids at the center who might have a problem with Mr. Schuler? Have a grudge against him?” Matt must have heard the details of the shooting. But if it had been gang-related and Matthew knew any of the people responsible, he wouldn’t speak up about it. Peer pressure was a powerful force in normal teenage life. Add gang connections or illegal activity on top of that, and it would be impossible to pry the info out.

  Then Flores remembered something the donut gang had talked about.

  “Matt—a couple of years ago, there was a student who attacked another student in Mr. Schuler’s group.” He watched as the kid’s face froze. Flores saw a procession of things that looked familiar to him. Panic. The search for a good lie. Then finally, helplessness.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  The kid’s shoulders drew up and he crossed his arms over his chest, as if he wanted to fold himself up into something small.

  “Somebody told you.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, Matt.”

  The kid studied him for a minute. He didn’t have to tell him, but Flores hoped he would.

  “Freshmen year I was hanging out with a bunch of guys I went to middle school with.” The arms crossed tighter across his chest and Matt leaned over, looking down as he talked. “We were friends and everything was cool, you know? In high school, they started hanging out with these older guys, who were into some bad shi—stuff. I stopped hanging with them. So they told lies about me to my friends. I got beat up a few times. The one place I felt safe was Mr. Schuler’s class. Until one day at the beginning of sophomore year. One of the older kids followed me to the class, just to make fun of me in front of Mr. S and the other students. I couldn’t handle it. I had a knife in my jacket—okay, that was dumb, I know. I showed it to the kid, so he’d back off. When he tried to grab it, I stabbed him in the arm.”

  Matt was still hunched over, his head almost on his knees, as if he was trying to keep from passing out. The state the young man was in told Flores he’d spoken the truth. Certainly, he’d been arrested and possibly spent some time in a facility. The older kid who’d taunted him probably didn’t.

  “Thanks for telling me.” Flores waited for the young man to sit up. When he did, Flores looked him in the eye and remembered why he’d gone into police work. He handed Matt a card. “If you have any more trouble like that, let me know, Matt. Or if there’s anything you want to tell me about Mr. Schuler.” Matt picked up the card, looked at it and set it on the coffee table.

  “Matt, let me ask you something. When you first heard about Mr. Schuler’s death.” He watched the young man’s eyes blinking back tears. “What did you think had happened to him?”

  Matt might know more than he was letting on. He might be too afraid to say it now but asking might get him thinking. The young man had trusted him enough to open up about the knife incident.

  Matt Le picked at the frayed edge of his Pokemon shirt with a fingernail. “I don’t think it was random. That’s bullshit. I heard about the shooting—whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted him dead.”

  The teenager brushed tears away with the back of his hand, and he continued, shaking his head.

  “Anybody who actually knew Mr. S and did something like this? They would have to be evil.”

  31

  As the day approached, Ruiz found himself looking forward to Karl Schuler’s memorial service.

  It was a chance to see Schuler as his friends and family saw him. Ruiz was interested in who would show up.

  He was curious to hear what would be said about Karl Schuler. He knew only what Duke had told him about Karl and what he’d googled.

  Since she’d seen the shooting, too, he asked Reyna if she wanted to attend. They would drop Jacky off with Reyna’s parents and go to the service at the church Schuler had attended in South San Jose. Not quite the date night they’d had on New Year’s Eve. He wished it was. It was probably inappropriate to think about it during a funeral, but the tight black dress Reyna was wearing made him want to get her alone.

  When he and Reyna arrived, the parking lot was full. He parked the truck in one of the few spots left on a side street, and they walked a block to the church.

  Rose sat near the front, with a group of what must be family. The donut gang, including the shop owner Mr. Kang, sat farther back, with another group of white and gray heads. Maybe Schuler’s former coworkers.

  He scanned the pews for an open spot for him and Reyna. They slid into a pew on the left side, next to a group of teenaged boys with their thumbs twirling over their phones, looking polished but uncomfortable in buttoned-down shirts.

  The organ began playing classical music, as people continued entering the church, looking for spots among the pews. Ruiz looked up to see Detective Flores on the side, standing against the wall. Ruiz caught his eye and waved him over. Flores looked over at the Schuler family. He waved his hand to indicate he’d stay put. After a few minutes, he came over and took his place in the pew next to Ruiz.

  “Good to see you, Detective Flores.” Reyna leaned forward and smiled.

  Flores nodded curtly at Reyna, unsmiling, then turned back to Ruiz.

  “The mayor and his wife are up front, sitting with Rose.” Flores leaned in and whispered to Ruiz. “The tall guy on the other side of her—that’s her son, Randall. I interviewed him Wednesday. He’s got a record as a juvenile. By his own admission, he stole a teacher’s car and wrecked it. He resented his grandfather big time. Apparently, the old man asked him to help build Habitat for Humanity houses with him.”

  Ruiz grunted. “The nerve of him.”

  “Looks like Mulvaney was at an art gallery party on New Year’s Eve. I need to find out when he left.”

  Ruiz had no illusions that he was on this case, but he was curious.

  “What about Tuan Nguyen? Anything else there?”

  Flores frowned and shook his head quickly as he settled back into the pew.

  The minister walked up to the podium as the music wrapped up. A quiet hung over the room. A baby behind them shrieked and split the silence. Then a wave of coughs. Ruiz realized as he looked around the room that not only were the pews filled, there were people standing along the walls and along the back. He turned around and saw people lined up in the foyer of the church, waiting to get in.

  “We are here today to honor a good man.” The minister’s voice echoed throughout the church. “He was a man who impacted all of us. And left us better people. We are here to honor Karl Schuler. A man who lived to the age of ninety-two. Yet—I think we all agree—he died too young.”

  The pastor gave an overview of Schuler’s life, from his birth in Germany in the 1920s and his parents’ deaths, to his emigration to the United States a
fter the war. The pastor talked about Schuler’s love of aviation, his desire to create things that flew, and his fascination with flight. The hardships of his childhood had given him a compassion for others. A desire to help the hurting and to bring help to anyone who needed it. He’d tried to bring the wonders of science to youth who didn’t have the opportunities to pursue it.

  At that, the teenagers next to Ruiz launched a round of applause, picked up by the rest of the attendees. Ruiz watched the group of boys in uncomfortable formal clothing and a few young women nod. One of the young women wiped away tears as the pastor went on to introduce the next speaker.

  Arnie Tan slid out of his pew and walked up to the podium. He pulled a notecard out of his blazer pocket and began telling the story of how Karl Schuler had helped him right after his wife died. How he’d organized outings for the group to get him out of the house and around people.

  Then Duke Sorenson got up and made his way up to the front. Today Duke had shed the windbreaker for a black sports coat. He looked frailer than when Ruiz had seen him at the donut shop. Farther away, he saw the whole man: a little unsteady on his feet, pale and drawn in his face. He looked to the pastor who stood by and cleared his throat.

  “Karl Schuler was my friend for almost fifty years. We first met at Lockheed, working on the U2 program. We found ourselves staying late at the same time, trying to bargain with our wives for just a little more time before we came home. We weren’t always successful. We both loved what we did.”

  “We got to know each other’s families. I got to see up close what kind of man Karl Schuler was. A man who loved the science of flight more than anyone I knew. A man who loved his fellow human beings more than anyone I knew. There was not a bad bone in his body. Ask anyone here today and they will tell you the same thing. I was privileged to be his friend. He did not deserve to die the way he did.” At this, Duke’s voice grew hoarse. He closed his eyes and waited for a few seconds till he regained his composure.