Innocence Read online

  Finn raised his eyebrows. “Sounds like you knew her pretty well.”

  “We were friends.”

  “Friends?”

  Kozlowski glared at him. “Just friends.”

  “Okay. So what do you want me to do?”

  “Like I said, it’s not my call.”

  Finn pulled the little car into a parking space in front of a small two-story brick structure on Warren Street. The pointing was chipping away between the clay squares, and the entire building listed uneasily to one side. A small Historical Society plaque on the bottom corner near the doorway read circa 1769; a larger sign to the side of the entryway advertised scott t. finn, attorney at law, and below that, kozlowski investigations.

  Finn pulled up on the hand brake and looked at Kozlowski again. “That’s bullshit, Koz, and you know it. I don’t have a dog in this fight—not yet. Could be an interesting case; lucrative, too, if Salazar’s actually innocent. But I can walk away just as easily. I’ve got no interest in pissing you off, particularly when I’d probably need your help with the legwork on the case if I take it. So you tell me, what should I do?”

  Kozlowski opened the door and got out; Finn did the same. The older man leaned against the car’s top, and Finn worried briefly that it would collapse. “Meet the man,” Kozlowski said after a moment. “See what you think.”

  Finn looked long and hard at Kozlowski, trying to read him. “You think I should talk to him?”

  Kozlowski nodded. “Just one thing.”

  Finn listened for the sound of the other shoe hitting the cobblestone. “What’s that?”

  “I want to meet the man, too.”

  z

  Finn opened the door to his apartment, stepped in, and dropped his briefcase on the floor. It landed with a weary thud. As was his custom, he debated leaving the lights off and stumbling his way to bed in the dark. He had no plans to eat anything, and the thought of facing the apartment depressed him. He knew, though, that living in a world of denial and avoidance depressed him more.

  The lights came on eagerly as he flipped the switch, as though they’d been waiting to torment him. They threw shadows off those items that hurt him most: the couch he had purchased with her and struggled to cram up the narrow staircase and into the apartment, laughing through the entire ordeal; the antique globe she’d had since college, on which they’d traced the paths of all the trips they’d planned to take together; the watercolor she’d bought on their first vacation together down on the Cape. He faced them all as adversaries now, with the respect and grim determination owed worthy opponents. He’d considered getting rid of them, taking them to Goodwill or putting them out on the street . . . or burning them. But that would constitute an admission that it was over, and he refused to wave that white flag.

  The sharp metallic cry of the phone on the wall interrupted his internal tug-of-war, and he turned to regard it with suspicion. He knew who it was without checking the caller ID. Somehow it rang differently when it was her.

  After the fourth ring, his ancient answering machine picked up. The greeting finished and the tone sounded. Finn held his breath, wondering whether she would leave a message. His apartment was quiet for several seconds, and he thought she might have hung up. Then, finally, she spoke.

  “Finn? It’s Linda.” There was another stretch of silence. “Finn, please pick up. I want to talk to you.”

  Chapter Four

  Tuesday, December 11, 2007

  The Billerica House of Correction lay in uneven humps of brick and concrete, like architectural roadkill by the side of a dead-end offshoot near Route 3 in a secluded part of the suburban enclave twenty miles northwest of Boston. Originally built in the 1920s to house three hundred inmates, it was one of Massachusetts’s oldest prisons, now home to nearly twelve hundred convicts. Those unfortunate enough to become well acquainted with the correctional system regarded Billerica as one of the worst places to be sent following conviction, and its buildings sprawled brown and red and seemingly lifeless across several acres well removed from the eyesight of what was, otherwise, a picturesque middle-class New England town. The locals had grown accustomed to their nervous disregard of the prison, acknowledging the institution only when pressed. It was the uneasy trade all prison towns made in exchange for good jobs and state funding.

  Dobson led Finn and Kozlowski through the security check. The process was eased somewhat by the fact that both Dobson and Finn carried state bar cards identifying them as attorneys, and Kozlowski carried the ID of a retired detective. A trip through a metal detector and a brief pat-down were all that was required, and because Kozlowski had locked his gun in the glove compartment, there was no trouble.

  The visiting room was large and crowded, with prisoners and their families sitting at open tables, watched over by several guards around the room. There before him, Finn saw a panoply of human emotions played out on a dim concrete palette. Wives and girlfriends leaned across tables to touch the hands of men in prison garb, holding on with all their might to tamp down their desperation, and anger, and loneliness. Children, some shy, some scared, some seemingly carefree, sat on the laps of the fathers they saw only on rare occasions, and only under the careful eyes of armed guards. Parents and grandparents of the incarcerated forced small talk, trying to feign normalcy with the grown children they would always love, regardless of their transgressions.

  “He’s over there,” Dobson said, pointing to the far corner of the room.

  Finn looked over and saw him. At first glance, there was little to set him apart from most of the other prisoners. His long black hair was better kept than most, brushed back from a severe widow’s peak at the top of his almond-brown forehead, and the shirttail of his prison fatigues was tucked in neatly, but other than that, he appeared to blend in. With a longer look, though, a sense of strength and confidence emanated from the man. Finn couldn’t put his finger on what it was about him, but there was something in the set of his shoulders, or in his posture, that was compelling.

  Beside him, a teenage girl was leaning in toward him as they spoke. On the other side of the table, an older woman, heavier in both carriage and countenance than her two companions, sat watching quietly as Salazar talked with the young girl.

  Finn took a step toward the table, but Dobson put a hand in front of him, holding him back. “It’s his mother and his daughter,” he said. “He gets only forty-five minutes with them each month. As his attorneys, we can stay later. Let’s give him a few more minutes.”

  “I’m not his attorney yet,” Finn pointed out, and then regretted it.

  Dobson scowled at him. “Just a few more minutes.”

  Finn looked at Kozlowski, who nodded, and the three of them eased their backs against the wall to wait. From that spot, Finn watched the ongoing exchange between Salazar and his daughter. Finn easily saw that, young though she was, she would soon be a beautiful woman. She was still caught in the awkward shadow of adolescence, and she held her head low, at an angle that made her look painfully shy and disinterested, but her face had a refined Spanish grace to it, and her features were nearly flawless. Once she gained the confidence to meet the world with greater poise, he thought, there would be few young men who would be able to resist her looks.

  After a few more moments of observation, Finn realized that his initial impressions were off. It wasn’t awkwardness in her he had noted; it was something else, something more defined. Her movements were cautious and narrow, and she seemed disconnected from everything around her except her father.

  Finn frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”

  Dobson looked Finn over carefully. Then he turned back to the table where three generations of the Salazar family sat in the one conversation they would have that month, caught in an awkward, synthetic, longing moment. Finn looked back also, and as he turned his attention to Salazar, the only thing that seemed clear about the man was the love and tenderness he expressed for his daughter in every movement he made.

  Dobs
on let Finn watch for another moment before he answered. “She’s blind.”

  z

  “My wife, Maria, was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  Salazar spoke English better than most of the lawyers Finn dealt with on a regular basis. He carried only a slight accent, and it gave him an air more of continental sophistication than of second-language hesitation.

  “When she smiled at me, or when I looked into her eyes, it felt as though everything made sense—as if my life had purpose and meaning, because she was in it.” He sat up in his chair, gathering himself back from the moment of introspection before continuing.

  “Her family was part of the elite in El Salvador—the ruling oligarchy—that traced its lineage back to the first wave of Europeans who conquered the natives and settled on their land. Land has always been the central resource in my country. I was the son of a prominent merchant who had done well in the fifties and sixties, exporting coffee and timber. But my lineage traced back to the conquered. For all the education my parents were able to give me, I would never be accepted by Maria’s family or their peers, and our romance was a scandal for them. I was a doctor, and I thought that might help, but it didn’t. Still, she was stubborn and in love, and she agreed to marry me when I asked. Her father, one of the wealthiest landowners in the country, agreed reluctantly, only because he knew it was pointless to argue with his daughter. He threw us a fine wedding and even provided a dowry of sorts—a new house in a respectable neighborhood a comfortable distance from them—but made clear that we would be largely cut off from the family and its money thereafter.”

  “Nice in-laws,” Finn commented.

  Salazar shook his head. “It made sense,” he said. “And I expected nothing more. You wouldn’t understand, but El Salvador is still largely a segregated country at the highest levels, both socially and racially. Besides, it wasn’t a hardship. I was happy to be spared the whispers I would have been subjected to if I’d been allowed into her family’s clubs. I was a young doctor, and I was making a decent living. Maria and I were together, and she said that was all she cared about—that was enough for me.”

  “If it was so good, why did you leave?” The question came from Kozlowski, and there was an air of challenge to it.

  “In my country, all happiness is an illusion.”

  “The war?” Finn asked.

  “The war,” Salazar confirmed. “I was never political, but I was a doctor. I treated the sick. I treated the injured. I never asked my patients about their political affiliations. I thought I was uninvolved; I was naive.”

  “You treated the wrong people?”

  “I treated all people. There were no right or wrong people, as far as I was concerned.” Salazar’s gaze grew intense as he spoke, and Finn could feel, for the first time, a hint of anger in his tone. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the resentment was gone. “I never turned anyone away, and that meant I was treating partisans on both sides.” He looked at Finn. “How much do you know about the war in my country?”

  Finn considered the question. “Not much, really,” he admitted. In fact, he realized as he thought about it, he knew very little. His head was filled with vague recollections of headlines but little actual information.

  “In the eighties, the government was effectively controlled by a combination of the military and the wealthy elite. There were attempts at the time to prop up a government operating under the pretense of reform, but it was always a facade.”

  “Another illusion?” Finn asked.

  “Exactly so. The rebels were Marxist Communists, supported largely by the rural peasants and the small educated middle class. They lacked the resources to mount a coherent frontal attack, so they relied on kidnappings and sporadic brutal attacks, aimed largely at the elites in the urban areas like San Salvador to make their point.”

  “Terrorism,” Kozlowski grunted derisively.

  “Yes, terrorism,” Salazar readily concurred. He looked directly at Kozlowski for the first time. “I neither excuse nor condone the tactics employed by both sides in the war. I merely tried to save those who were injured.”

  Finn inserted himself back into the conversation, sensing the tension between Salazar and Kozlowski. “I assume the military was particularly brutal in putting down the insurgency?”

  Salazar continued to stare at Kozlowski. “Somewhat,” he said at last. “Though the government tried to keep as low a profile as possible in going after the leftists. You see, the vast majority of the El Salvadoran population lived in poverty—over ninety percent—and many of them harbored sympathy for the rebellion. The government recognized that it was sitting on a powder keg, and it understood that it always ran a significant risk of lighting a match that would blow apart everything those with wealth and power were working to preserve. To avoid that, the government farmed out much of its dirty work.”

  “To who?” Finn asked, genuinely interested now.

  “To the death squads.”

  “Death squads?”

  Salazar nodded. “Small paramilitary groups—mercenaries, thugs, and common criminals—recruited for the grimmest tasks. They were directed by the military and funded by the wealthy landowners: the elites who wanted to keep the leftist insurgents from gaining a stronghold.”

  “I remember reading something about them,” Finn commented.

  “You would have. In 1980 they killed three American nuns who were working with relief efforts in the countryside. It caused a great deal of trouble for the American government, because the administration was supporting the government that everyone knew was allied with the death squads.”

  “Nuns?” Finn was repulsed. “Why would they kill nuns?”

  Salazar’s laugh was humorless. “You can’t be that sheltered, can you, Mr. Finn? War knows no decency, even in dealing with the devout. Besides, the Catholic Church in El Salvador supported the insurgents, or at least significant reform. Many of those who came to do missionary work recognized that reform—or even revolution—was the only way to raise the vast majority of the population out of squalor. Even the archbishop of San Salvador was an outspoken critic of the government, pushing for real reform—until he was assassinated.” Finn realized that his face must have betrayed his horror. “Yes, Mr. Finn; you see, this was El Salvador, and no one was beyond death.”

  “So what happened to you?” Kozlowski asked, sounding unimpressed.

  “One night there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, I found an old friend of mine, Alberto Duerte, leaning against my entryway. There was a stream of blood running from his shoulder. He said he’d been mugged and he needed help. I knew he was lying, but I asked no questions, as was my practice. I took him to my clinic, and I treated his wounds. He left that night, and I never saw him again.”

  “And?” Finn prodded.

  “I found out later he’d been injured in a bombing—a terrorist bombing, as I’m sure your friend will point out,” Salazar said, motioning to Kozlowski. “Alberto was the one who planted the bomb that killed a wealthy industrialist and his wife. He miscalculated, though, and was not far enough away from the blast to avoid catching some shrapnel. The death squads tracked him down within the week.”

  “That couldn’t have been pleasant for him,” Kozlowski observed.

  “No, Mr. Kozlowski, I’m sure it wasn’t.” Salazar turned back to Finn. “A few days later, my father-in-law appeared at my clinic. I hadn’t seen him in several months, so I knew something was wrong when I saw him. He told me to go home, get his daughter, pack a few things, and leave. He told me that Alberto had been tortured before he’d been killed, and he’d given up the names of many of the people he’d worked with. He’d also told them that I was the one who had treated his wounds. As a result, I had been targeted by the death squads—they were coming

  that night.”

  “What did you do?” Finn asked.

  “First I tried to explain to my father-in-law that I knew nothing of Alberto’s activities—that
I wasn’t interested in politics. I think he understood, but he told me he was powerless to intervene. To do so would put the rest of his family in danger. He told me that his only concern was for his daughter, and he had arranged for us to get out of the country.”

  “How could he do that if the government knew that you were targeted?” Kozlowski pressed.

  Salazar shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult. My father-in-law knew people who could help. In the early eighties, when the gangs in Los Angeles were at their height—the Crips and the Bloods—a new criminal organization was born in an East L.A. neighborhood populated largely by El Salvadoran refugees—many of them former members of the death squads. It was called Venganza del Salvadoran, and while it was smaller than some of the other gangs, it quickly developed a reputation as the most vicious of all the groups. Over time, some of the members were deported back to El Salvador, and once there, they formed an affiliate gang in my old country. They recruited new members and continued doing work for the death squads. As they became more sophisticated, they started branching out into other areas. Drug production and smuggling; weapons; extortion, both here and in other countries. They used their gang connections in the United States to establish a pipeline to run drugs from El Salvador and other countries through Central America and Mexico to America. My father-in-law knew these people, and he knew that they would do anything for money—their motivation was never politically based. He paid them well to get me and Maria out of the country and safely to America.”

  “Illegally,” Kozlowski noted.

  “Yes,” Salazar agreed. “Did I have a choice? What would you have done?”

  “And once you got here, you figured you were safe,” Finn said.

  “I did.” Salazar sat up and looked around. Then he hung his head and sighed heavily. “I was wrong.”

  z

  Josiah “Mac” Macintyre sat at his desk on the third floor of the Boston Police Headquarters building in Roxbury. The building, which had been completed in 1997, was a monument to modern police practices, with a computer infrastructure that put those of most police departments to shame, and offices for psychologists and sociologists to aid them in solving crimes and dealing with the impact.