initial, brief interview yesterday with Paul Stokes had been direct, an appropriate opening to a serious investigation. His impression was that the undersheriff had been as disturbed as Zach had been by the situation.
The talk he’d had earlier today with Stokes had been different. The undersheriff had been a little more closed off, his questions sharper, as if he was trying to shake Zach. He had suggested they handle this “incident” internally.
Zach now had a pretty good idea who had been leaning on him.
Sheriff Brown had used the word “incident,” too, when he’d made it clear that he wanted it swept under the carpet. Zach was supposed to be the broom.
His disbelief progressed through pissed to full-on fury.
A few minutes ago, as Zach had arrived in answer to the sheriff’s summons, Hayes had swaggered out of the office. As they’d passed within a foot of each other, he’d given Zach a look dark enough to lift the hairs on the back of his neck.
“You’re right,” Zach said calmly now to the sheriff. “My experience is with a considerably larger police force. Professionalism was emphasized.” He paused, watching Sheriff Brown’s eyes narrow. “What I saw yesterday was a deliberate, brutal beating that led to a death. Maybe Deputy Hayes didn’t intend it to go that far. I can’t say. But the fact is, it did. What I heard gives me reason to believe the confrontation was over a personal issue, but Hayes was wearing the uniform when he instigated it, and he used his police baton as part of the beating. As far as I’m concerned, that takes him a step over the line from second-degree murder. He shamed law-enforcement officers everywhere.”
That hard stare never wavered from Zach’s face. Until now, he hadn’t made up his mind about the longtime sheriff. In his sixties, George T. Brown was mostly bald and carried forty or fifty pounds too much. His strength was a folksy, reassuring charm that appealed to voters.
Call him a cynic, but from his initial job interviews, Zach had suspected Brown was a figurehead, with the real decisions being made by Stokes, the undersheriff.
Looking into these shrewd, angry eyes now, Zach changed his mind. Brown was no figurehead. And he had to have been leaning heavily on Paul Stokes.
In his short time with the department, Zach had heard some sexist and racist jokes he didn’t like. There were only a couple of female deputies on this force. He couldn’t help noticing how few Hispanic deputies had been hired, too, considering the county population had to be a third Hispanic. One had risen to sergeant. Otherwise the command structure was Caucasian and male. Ditto for the detectives.
He’d heard the same kind of jokes on his last job, and the hiring of female and ethnic officers had lagged in most police departments. Here in Harris County, part of the problem lay in the fact that so many deputies were long-timers. Change would come, but only as those long-timers retired.
He wondered whether the prevailing attitude might have been a little different if the dead guy had been Caucasian. Say, the son of a local businessman instead of an uneducated farmworker who had turned out to be in this country illegally.
That meant the uncle and brother, presumably also illegals, had disappeared, unable to demand justice for Antonio.
The sheriff’s chair creaked as he leaned back. “Son, I’m going to give you a few days to think about this before you damage the reputation and career of a fellow officer. You go that route, I can’t swear anyone will buy in to what you have to say, anyway. Judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys...they all know and respect Andy Hayes. The man is a sixteen-year veteran of this department. You have any idea how many times he’s testified in court in those years?”
Zach didn’t say a word.
“Nobody knows you.” He gestured, as if holding a weight in each hand. One sank while the other rose. “One thing for sure, I can guarantee you won’t be real popular in this department if you hold on to what looks a lot like a vendetta. You might find yourself deciding to go back to your big-city department.” The last was a drawl barely disguising a sneer.
Zach kept his expression from changing in any way. He held the stare long enough to make it plain he wasn’t intimidated and rose from the chair he’d been offered facing the sheriff’s desk. “Sir,” he said politely, bending his head and walking out of the office.
He knew he was in deep shit, made worse because he was the new guy. A couple other deputies had quietly expressed their support, but a number had urged him to retreat from his “story.” Andy Hayes was a fine officer, a good guy. He wouldn’t have just beaten a man to death for the hell of it. No, sir. Accidents happened. If the fellow’s head hadn’t happened to hit that concrete step... Damnedest thing, him stumbling back and falling in just the wrong place. But when a man went for a police officer’s gun? Well, he was asking for anything.
Zach was ninety-nine-percent sure Antonio Alvarez had not gone for Andy Hayes’s gun. Even if he had, Hayes had dominated the encounter from that moment on. He could have had Alvarez on the ground, cuffed and arrested without breaking a sweat. Zach couldn’t think of an excuse in the world for Hayes to have beaten the shit out of the guy. What’s more, he had a suspicion Alvarez had been dead before he’d hit the concrete. Maybe he’d only lost consciousness, but he’d looked like a dead man from the instant his head snapped back and his body collapsed like a puppet’s with the strings cut.
Nobody wanted to talk about why Hayes had been there in the first place—well out of his patrol sector. They weren’t talking about the results of the autopsy, either—if it had even been done yet. As was common in rural counties, the coroner wasn’t a physician. Zach wanted to believe he wouldn’t cooperate with a cover-up.
No matter at what point Alvarez had died, going for a police officer’s gun was not a crime deserving of the death penalty, not if the officer had the ability to control the situation. Which Hayes unquestionably had.
Zach had no doubt he’d already have been fired if the sheriff hadn’t been afraid of the repercussions. Whatever Stokes thought personally, publicly the undersheriff would have to bow to his boss. Right now, they controlled the contacts Zach could talk to. If they cut him loose, they had to know he’d go straight to the press, the county commissioners, activists representing the Latino community.
The killing of an unarmed Hispanic man by a red-neck white deputy had the potential to explode into a scandal of nationwide proportions. The sheriff and undersheriff had to be seeing Ferguson and Pasco in their nightmares.
Too bad no one had had a camera phone, Zach thought grimly.
The good news was that he hadn’t been the only witness. It was pretty clear the woman hadn’t backed down yet, at least. She hadn’t gone to the press, either, but if they pushed too hard, they couldn’t stop her.
Zach knew her name now. Teresa Granath. Ms. Granath, the detective had said with sarcastic emphasis.
Zach had just come in from patrol. The sheriff’s department couldn’t afford to lose two of them at the same time and, as was standard practice, Hayes had been placed on administrative leave since a man had died during an altercation.
The incident.
Having finally clocked out, Zach had decided to contact Ms. Granath. He’d been careful yesterday once Stokes had arrived at the scene not to make eye contact with her or to try to speak to her. He didn’t want anyone thinking he’d influenced what she had to say. He’d be in trouble if he
