Then I was shoving Mike out of the noxious fumes, trying to roll him into cleaner air, as his face turned bright red, his eyes swelled shut, and his lips turned ominously blue. All the strength of the pepper spray straight into the lungs. Mike started to gasp, then convulse, his heart already fluttering like a trapped bird against his rib cage as I searched for a pulse.
Roxanna Baez lowered the can. She stood alone as D.D. jumped up onto the stage and joined me in starting CPR.
“Fucking losers,” Anya Seton said. Too late, I realized she’d crawled across the stage and now had her hands on Roxy’s original firearm. Anya raised her bound arms triumphantly. Pointed the gun straight at Roxy.
We were too far away. Nothing we could do.
Anya pulled the trigger.
Click.
Anya frowned. Pulled the trigger again. Click, click, click.
“It’s a prop gun,” Roxy said simply as Anya hurled the weapon across the stage, then sat back on her heels with a howl of frustration. “Mike and I worked with them before, as part of set detail. I knew where the good one was kept, the nearly perfect-looking model used for show nights.” She stared at Anya. “I just wanted to scare you into talking, to finally confess, on the record, everything you’d done.” Roxy motioned vaguely to the side of the stage, where I now saw her phone recording away. “You and Roberto always got away with it. You didn’t just bully the kids into silence, but the adults as well. This time, I wanted it to be different. I thought you’d killed my family. And I was going to make you admit to every single gruesome detail. Then I was going to give the recording to my friend Mike, who would take it to the police. He would finally feel vindicated, too.”
Roxy glanced down at her gasping friend. Her next words sounded far away.
“Besides, Flora told me to stay away from real guns. She said it took courage to pull the trigger, and not everyone could do it. She told me it was safer to stick to products I understood, like pepper spray. She taught me that with the simplest things, I could be dangerous enough.”
She gazed at Mike, whose eyes had now swollen shut, whose arms and limbs convulsed against the floor.
“I am dangerous enough,” she said.
Then she wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, and wept.
Chapter 40
FLORA DANE WAS RIGHT, D.D. thought; she should surrender her detective’s shield and turn vigilante just to avoid doing any more paperwork.
In the days following the showdown at the theater, it felt like she was drowning in reports. Evidence lists of all the items seized from Doug de Vries’s house. Computers, cameras, and, yes, caches of digital photos featuring underage girls. Some Doug had apparently taken himself at the theater. But many more had clearly been provided by Roberto Faillon, as various rooms in Mother Del’s house appeared in the background. De Vries had been taken into custody. His wife, as well, once they’d determined she’d not only been handling the financial end of operations, but skimming off her husband’s ill-gotten gains in order to set up an offshore account of her own.
According to Mrs. de Vries, it was only a matter of time before her cheating husband ran away with one of his starlets. No way was she gonna be left with nothing.
Mother Del swore up and down she’d never seen the photos before, had no idea Roberto had taken any, let alone been selling them to some pervert at the community theater. The fraud squad turned her books upside down and sideways without finding any evidence of financial gain. But the real truth, in D.D.’s mind, came from watching the woman view the photos for the first time. Her face had paled. Her three chins had quivered. She was horrified. She was heartbroken. And if D.D. wasn’t mistaken, she was traumatized by being presented with images too close to a personal history the woman would never tell.
Mother Del was put on probation, her waivers rescinded, several children plus the babies removed. She had two foster kids now, younger boys who got along. They didn’t seem to know what to do with entire bedrooms to themselves and meals that now involved meat and fresh fruit and vegetables. Maybe this would help them. Maybe Mother Del would do better. But D.D. couldn’t help thinking of the kids who’d been taken away to be placed . . . where? The system remained overstretched. Today’s solution merely tomorrow’s problem.
Anya Seton had received medical treatment for her shoulder. The gunshot wound had not been severe. She’d been in and out of the ER in a matter of hours. D.D. had dragged her down to HQ for several more days of questioning. But in the end, they couldn’t prove Anya knew that Roberto was wheeling and dealing in pornographic photos, particularly given that Mike Davis had smashed Roberto’s phone, destroying a key piece of evidence. D.D. was also willing to bet Anya had helped herself to Roberto’s share of the illicit-photo profits after his death, but they couldn’t find any trail of funds. Most likely, Roberto had dealt in cash, which Anya had then converted into head shots, acting lessons, wardrobe . . . whatever it took to advance her future Broadway career.
After much consideration, D.D. charged the girl with attempted murder of Roxanna Baez. Law was based on mens rea, meaning what mattered was the intent to commit a crime. So while the gun might have turned out to be a prop gun, Anya hadn’t known that when she’d pulled the trigger. Her intent in that moment had been to shoot Roxy Baez; the lack of a real handgun had merely thwarted her best efforts.
D.D. felt good about the charge, though in reality, given that Anya had been attacked and forcibly restrained by Roxy in the moments leading up to the would-be shooting, a good public defender would argue self-defense, and most likely get Anya cleared on all counts. Basically, the only thing they could definitively prove was that the girl was a bitch. Sadly, that was not an offense punishable by law, so D.D. had no choice but to file what charges she could file, then move on.
Roxanna was the tougher case. She had not murdered her family. Or shot at Hector Alvalos or Las Ni?as Diablas. In the end, they even found video of Roxy buying the red scarf, as she had claimed, in the minutes after Hector went down.
But she did assault Mike Davis, Doug de Vries, and Anya Seton with bear spray, which, as the warning on all the aerosol cans clearly stated, was a criminal offense in the state of Massachusetts. While the acts against Doug de Vries and Anya Seton could be minimized as first-time incidents, Mike Davis had died from the assault, warranting serious consideration.
Self-defense was one of those gray areas of the law. Did Roxanna Baez have compelling reason to believe her life was in imminent jeopardy? Mike Davis had been pointing the gun for a good ten minutes without pulling the trigger. Then again, he’d used that time to confess to the murder of four other people. Of course, his self-proclaimed target was Anya, not Roxy. But he’d been looking straight at Roxy, not Anya, by the end. Meaning Roxanna could’ve believed herself in harm’s way . . .
This is where paperwork mattered. A savvy detective writing up her report. While also including a corroborating witness statement from her new CI.
As she explained to Alex that night, Jack finally tucked into bed, Kiko dancing at their feet in the backyard.
“You know when policing drifts into murky terrain? There’s what happened in the eyes of the law and yet what matters for the sake of justice?”
Alex nodded, hefted back his arm, let the tennis ball fly. He threw like a major-league pitcher. D.D. was already jealous.
“So, Flora Dane and I are two very different people. And yet just today, we managed to deliver two accounts of the events leading up to Mike Davis’s death, prepared individually and independently, which both included all the right words to help the ADA reach the same conclusion: Roxanna Baez was acting to save her own life when firing the pepper spray. In fact, Mike Davis had thrown himself into the stream of chemicals, deliberately inhaling the capsaicin into his lungs to increase the damage.”