Death in Precinct Puerto Rico by Steven Torres

Author:Steven Torres
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2003-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Gonzalo followed his three deputies into town. They all drove at a leisurely pace, as though there was nothing peculiar about the two men in handcuffs. As though the two men were under arrest for nothing worse than talking back to an officer or stealing a goat.

When they arrived in town, no one took any special notice of them. They parked in front of the precinct, and Gonzalo stepped around to lead the prisoners out of the car. Hector and Anibal headed into the station house.

“Get Marrero ready to move,” Gonzalo called after them.

Hector nodded and went in.

Deputy Vargas led Carlos Tejada into the precinct, and Gonzalo was leading his taller brother in, holding him by the left elbow. As he reached the threshold, Pedro gave a jerk, pulled away from Gonzalo, stooped over and dug his shoulder into Gonzalo’s gut, knocking him over.

Gonzalo scrambled to his feet, but Pedro was already twenty feet away by then and headed for the town plaza. Gonzalo turned the corner just in time to see Pedro sprawl onto the plaza pavement as he tried to run past the bench where Don Justino sat. The old man had put out the crook of his cane to catch the handcuffed suspect. Pedro had jumped over the cane, never touching it. But he had twisted his ankle on landing and fallen hard.

Pedro struggled to push himself up to his feet again, but Don Justino rose from his bench and brought his cane down hard on the fugitive’s hands, causing him to topple back to the ground in pain.

Don Justino held the cane over his head.

“¡Quedate ai, criminal, si te quieres pa’ algo!” the old man yelled. “Stay there if you love yourself!”

Gonzalo came up quickly and jerked Pedro to his feet.

“Thanks for the help,” he told Don Justino.

“Soon you’re going to have to put me on the police force if you keep going like this,” Don Justino responded as he took his seat again.

There were no more troubles in transporting the prisoner. Officer Vargas was given the task of moving Marrero out of the precinct temporarily. Marrero was moved to the offices of the mayor, where Vargas handcuffed him to a wooden chair and watched him. Marrero had nothing to say and promptly fell asleep.

At the station house, Gonzalo sat at his desk for a few minutes trying to figure out how best to conduct an interview of two suspects when the station house had no separate conference rooms. He prided himself on being able to trip up any suspect. He got a great number of confessions when prisoners got tired of trying to remember their lies. In fact, some habitual criminals have said over the years that they preferred being interrogated by Sheriff Molina in Comerio, a man who thought nothing of beating the truth out of a prisoner with a chair leg. At least Molina’s questions didn’t make them dizzy.

When he had formulated a strategy, he started.

“Hector, bring the short one over here.”

Hector brought the shorter one to the sheriff, and Gonzalo got out of his chair.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.