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Chavez slugged back the liquid in one long, neat swallow and then exhaled noisily. “So what you gonna do about it?”
No facial reaction. No emotion. Maybe a faint challenge in the words.
Alex rocked on the balls of his feet. “First I’ll ask you some questions. Then I’ll find a killer and put him in jail. Somebody took a blunt object and crushed your daughter’s skull five years ago—about the time your wife and children disappeared. I want to know everything you know about their disappearance.”
Chavez slapped the empty glass on the coffee table. It teetered on the edge and fell on the carpet. He didn’t retrieve it. “I told you before. I came home. They were gone. I figured she took all five of them. I had no reason to think otherwise.”
Alex studied the man’s face. He could be telling the truth, or he could be an accomplished liar. Nothing in his face gave him away. “Tell me about your wife.”
Chavez shrugged. “Nice rack—at least when I met her—but not much upstairs, if you know what I mean.”
He grinned a little. Alex didn’t smile back. The grin disappeared. “What do you want to know about her?”
“How long had you known her when you married her?”
“Six months, eight months—I dunno—something like that. She was waitressing in a bar on Fredericksburg Road. I liked the way she looked. I guess she liked what she saw, too. It wasn’t no big deal, until she came crying to me that she was knocked up. I’m a man. I take care of my obligations. I married her.”
“Did she ever talk about her life before you got together? Did she say anything about being married before?”
Chavez’s eyes narrowed, and his thin lips turned down. “What are you talking about? She said she’d never been married before.”
Alex watched his face closely. No hesitation in the words. Only a sort of belligerent confusion. “She told you that?”
“Yeah, she said the right man never come along. I was it for her.”
“So if I said I’d seen a marriage certificate showing she married when she was sixteen years old, you’d say I was crazy.”
“Loco. Yeah, I’d say you wereloco. My wife wouldn’t lie to me about something like that.”
“Your wife wasn’t your wife. Maybe you found out and she ran because she knew what you were capable of doing after she saw what you did to Nina.”
The string of curse words that emanated from Chavez would’ve made Alex’s dad proud. The man swiped the glass from the floor, stood, and stomped into the kitchen. More cussing and glass clinking. A few seconds passed and Chavez returned, his glass full to the rim this time. He looked genuinely shocked. Or he was a very good actor. “No way. You saying I was never married to that—”
“Never.”
“I don’t believe you. How did you find out?”
“The PI you hired.”
“Phillips? His partner said he never found her. He retired in the middle of the job. I got my money back.”
“He never found her—as far as we know. But he did discover she was married to a guy named Ezra Dodge long before she married you.”
“And she ran back to him.” Chavez stood so suddenly he knocked the coffee table over. Alex slapped his hand on his holster and ducked as the glass sailed over his head and shattered against a wall. “Unless you’re here to arrest me for something, get out of my house.”
“We don’t know whether your—whether Clarisse went home, but we’ll find out, Mr. Chavez. In the meantime, I have to ask, are you more upset about your wife’s past or your daughter’s death?”
Chavez advanced toward him. Alex held his ground, his fingers tight on the butt of his weapon. Chavez stopped a foot away. “Both.”
The look on his face belied the response. He seemed more upset about revelation of his wife’s previous marriage than Nina’s death. Maybe because the murder was not a surprise. The marriage was. Alex worked to maintain a relaxed stance as the man moved a step closer. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Chavez. I just want you to know I’ll do everything possible to find whoever murdered your daughter. And when I do, I’ll lock that sorry excuse for a human being in jail. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Chavez halted, his face inches away, his dark gaze fierce. “You didn’t just threaten a grieving father, did you?”
Alex smiled and strode to the door. He paused, one hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be back . . . one way or the other, Mr. Chavez, that you can count on.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Benny shifted on the mattress, trying to get comfortable. Juice had locked him in a bedroom. It smelled musty, like somebody had wet the bed and left the sheet on the mattress. A cockroach scuttled across the foot of the mattress, another followed. At first, they had scared him, but now they almost seemed like company.
