Capitol Rookie: Dead by the Pool, Secrets in the Warehouse
Part 9: A concussed journalist wakes up next to a corpse, stumbles into a family conspiracy, and learns the hard way that betrayal wears a familiar face.
Capitol Rookie is an 11-part crime fiction noir set in 2004 in Sacramento, California.
By Vince Wetzel
The pain was relentless and pulled me out of unconsciousness. Which, quite frankly, was rude. I was enjoying the break from reality. A voice followed.
“Alex, wake up? Alex, come on, man. Wake up?”
I opened my eyes. What was once black was now a blurry gray. But I looked around. There were the palm trees, the outdoor kitchen, the gazebo, and yes, the pool. I quickly turned my head. There was the wet, dead body of Jaime Villalobos. Finally, I focused on the voice. It was Doug. What was he doing here? He was as qualified to provide me care as the Fresno State mascot, unless the Bulldog had unexpectedly become a CMT.
“Oh my god, Alex,” Doug said. “Are you ok? When I came back here, saw you and Jaime lying next to the pool together, I thought the worst.”
“Jaime’s dead,” I said. I sat up, my hand instinctively rubbing the back of my head.
“I know. I thought you were too. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” my mind was about as foggy as the sky, and I was having trouble focusing. “I was just looking to ask him some questions. I came looking for him. And he was right there.”
“Oh god,” Doug said. “She’s tying up loose ends. This must be why she took her.”
Even with a clear mind, I was unclear if I understood what Doug was saying. He was panicked, almost frantic. He was pacing around the pool.
“What are you talking about, Doug?”
“Florez. She’s got Anna. And she is willing to kill,” he said.
I looked back at the body, then remembered what I saw before I went into the house. Had I missed everything just sitting in my car? How did I just stand by while a man was killed?
“Santino,” I said. “Florez’s bodyguard. I saw him go into the side yard, then come out a few minutes later. He was soaking wet and panicked. And you say that Florez has got Anna? How do you know?”
I struggled to get to my feet. There were still moths buzzing around inside my head. Doug steadied me as we stood and surveyed the situation before us.
“I got a call this morning from Florez saying to get you and bring you to the warehouse,” he said. “She said you were probably going to be here because you’d want to talk to Villalobos. When the door was open and I walked through and saw you both here, I thought the worst.”
“Why does she want me?” I asked. “And what are we going to do about Villalobos? We need to call the police.”
“There’s no time,” Doug said. I thought I was being reasonable. Doug looked at me like I still believed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction or that Nickelback deserved a Grammy. “We’ve got to get Anna. And Florez knows you can blow the story up. She wants to apply pressure to you not to print anything.”
“Tough shit,” I said. “That’s why we have to go to the police. They can go to the warehouse and get out, Anna.”
“No,” Doug said. “You don’t understand. She’ll kill Anna on the spot if any police show up. And I’m not going to let you sacrifice her so that you can get your story.”
None of this felt right. My mind was doing somersaults, which was impressive, considering it had been used as a piñata an hour earlier. The right idea would be to call the police, let them properly investigate Villalobos’ murder, tell them about Anna and Florez, and let them push forward with me following behind, documenting everything. But if the cops were under Senator Florez’s influence, would there be a cover-up? Would justice be done? And what kind of story would I have then? Whether it was the ambiguity of what happened next or my clearing concussion, I allowed Doug to push me out the front door and toward his car.
“We’re just going to leave Villalobos there?”
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Villalobos’s face flashed across my mind. It was the last thing I saw before I was knocked out. I looked over to Doug, who was focused on the road, weaving in and out of traffic.
“Are you and Villalobos related?” I asked. “You look exactly alike.”
While Villalobos was clean-shaven and Doug had a dark black beard, they could be twins. Since it was the first time I’d seen Villalobos, the possibility never entered my mind. Doug’s chin clinched.
“He’s my half-brother,” Doug said. “We both have the same father.”
Of course, and somewhere a soap opera writer just earned its wings.
“But I thought that Juan Villalobos died while Florez was pregnant with Jaime.”
“No, she was pregnant with me.”
In a moment of clarity, every piece clicked into place. I remember Doug telling me he was adopted in college. Senator Florez was initially flustered when I told her about her pregnancy, but when I mentioned Jaime, she revealed the truth. Jaime was Juan Villalobos’s other son. I just hadn’t dug deeper. I had taken Doug’s word for it. Doug covered it up.
“You lied to me,” I said. “You said James was her son.”
“Nope, I just said that she gave up a child. You assumed it was Jaime.”
“Is that why you’ve been suppressing these stories in the paper? To protect your mom?”
Doug kept looking forward, keeping his eyes on the road. The dull headache was beginning to crescendo, caused by either the trauma, the quick jerks to the car as Doug weaved in and out of traffic, like he was Vin Diesel racing Paul Walker. I was having trouble making sense of what was happening. I closed my eyes to dull the pain.
“Short answer, yes,” he said. “She gave me up for adoption, and I was given to a family right up the road in Clovis. They raised me as their own. Everything I told you about them in college was true. You met them. They were well off. And gave me all that I wanted. They told me I was adopted on my fifth birthday. I understood I was different early. I was Latino. They were white. It’s easy to see, but I only knew them as my parents, and that was it.
“It wasn’t until I came home from college that I wanted to know who my parents were,” he continued. “I found my birth certificate and my adoption papers. I found out that my birth mother was Senator Florez. I also found out that my half-brother, Jaime Villalobos, was leading a gang.
Doug pulled up to an industrial complex next to a large nondescript building. As he got out, instead of becoming more frantic and anxious, he was calm. Perhaps he had realized that this confrontation was inevitable, and now that it had arrived, he knew what was to come. Meanwhile, my headache had subsided, but my anxiety was peaking.
“They were my kin,” Doug said. “I had to protect my interests.”
I raised my eyebrow at his statement. His interests? We moved to the front of the building. The front door read 'Valley Health Foundation' and displayed the suite number. He pulled a key out and unlocked the door. How did he have a key? Was it Anna’s? Doug led me inside, through the office, and into the warehouse.
Inside, Senator Florez was sitting in an office chair. She had been crying. Her makeup was smeared, and she had bruises on her face. Her eye was swollen. About fifteen feet away in another office chair sat Anna, who was pointing a gun at Florez.
“Oh wow. Anna. You’re safe. All right. What a relief.”
I smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. At least something was going right, which should have been my cue to duck. Doug let out a belly laugh, and I felt something hard and cold in my back. Either it was a gun, or he was awful at massage.
“So oblivious,” Doug said. I turned around and saw him holding a gun to me. “Mom isn’t the one tying up loose ends. I am. Now stand next to her. You’re going to need to listen slowly if you want to get out of this alive.”
Side of Mustard
Website redesign.
Check out the new website at www.vincewetzel.com. It’s streamlined. It’s easy to navigate on the phone. And it’s an effort to bring my Instagram, Facebook, and new TikTok together.
As I strive to make my writing more prominent, I want to create dedicated spaces for this part of my life. The new website helps unify these different channels.