“To be interested in Satie one must be disinterested to begin with, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited claptrap.”
John Cage 1958
Miguel knew in order to walk the wire he had to free himself from worries. All tension needed release in order to feel the air, the pole, and the wire through his slippers. Satie should have worked more on his phobias. How could he carry a hammer in his pocket everyday for protection on his long walks through Paris and still have peace to compose.
The yellow police tape along the front of the Cervantes home waved gently in the late morning air. An officer leaning on his police car quickly righted himself when he saw Stevie and Reggie get out of their car and walk up the driveway.
Reggie spotted a bullet hole in the front picture window. The shooter must have seen Pablo through the glass and fired at him. He wondered about the extent of Pablo’s injuries. Only one shot.
He showed his identification badge to the young officer and started walking around towards the back of the house. When he and Stevie had come to deliver the devastating news about Miguel, Reggie had wanted to do a walk through of the house and backyard but felt it inappropriate at the time. He was determined to investigate more throughly this time. He watched Stevie show her badge and move up the front stairs to enter the house. She was much more capable of giving support to the family than he was.
The little house was old but well cared for. In the small backyard a big garden shed, which took up half the space, had both doors open and Reggie heard clanking from inside. He walked over to find another police officer moving around items.
“Find any drug related stuff yet?” Reggie asked.
The startled officer and hit his head on the cabinets coming up.
“Can I help you sir?” He asked.
“Back down. I’m homicide.” Reggie showed his badge again.
“Oh, okay, ah….. there are three locked cabinets over there. I think we need a warrant to get into those.”
“Well, this is the scene of a crime. I think we will have to take a look. See if you can find some wire cutters.” Reggie took out his little notebook and started an inventory of the contents in the shed. “I’m going to make a record of what we see here.”
“Okay, sir.”
Reggie walked the perimeter of the shed. He spotted a collection of umbrellas sitting in a ceramic pot. These were distinctly different than the umbrellas found at the fire in the Boys Club. These were brightly colored and intact. Thick wire cable was wrapped around a large wooden spool. Miguel obviously stored some wire walking equipment in the shed.
“So, what happened here at the Cervantes house?” Reggie asked.
“Well, at approximately 10:15 am a call came in from a distraught woman claiming someone shot her son through their front window. When we arrived just ahead of the aid car we found the boy on the living room floor with a severe gunshot wound in his right thigh. It was probably gang related.”
“Was the bullet lodged in his leg?”
“No, sir. The bullet went clear though. I overheard the medics talk about it went they lifted him onto the stretcher.”
“Did you walk the neighborhood looking for witnesses to the shooting? Anyone see the car?”
“No, sir.” The officer took off his hat and wiped his brow. “The ambulance arrived and we had to make sure they got him to the hospital to prevent him from bleeding out.”
Reggie remembered the other officer leaning on his patrol car when they arrived.
“Ah…I started checking the the perimeter of the house and looked inside here.” The young officer busied himself looking through equipment.
“Will these cut through the locks?”
“Let’s give it a try.”
Reggie anchored the cutter around the padlock and gave an intense squeeze. The metal separated and the door swung open to reveal empty shelves.
“Here. Open the other two. What’s your name?” Reggie handed him the tool.
“Williams, sir. Officer Williams.”
Reggie noticed a white dust on the shelf of the cabinet. He took off his gloves and put his index finger into the powder, then tasted what was on his finger. It was cocaine.
“Nothing in these cabinets, sir. Why do you think they locked up empty cabinets?”
“Well, Williams, I think they sometimes contain some expensive merchandize.”
“This is a gang member’s house right?”
“Anyone check the inside of the house?” Reggie ignored Williams question and did not wait to receive an answer to his.
“I don’t think so, sir.”
Reggie walked back to the front of the house and up the front steps.
Stevie felt her left hand fingers interlaced with Rosa’s right hand. Her grip was tight and constant and Stevie wiggled her fingers a little bit to bring some blood flow back. She looked over at the dark haired woman. Her eyes were cast down and tendrils of hair escaped from a rubber band at the nape of her neck. They were sitting side by side on the couch facing the window where the bullet had careened through the glass and into her son. Stevie had witnessed many loved ones dealing with death. Most of the time she arrived at the scene ready to gather information and detach herself from the drama. She thought back to a recent case where a mother and son found their piano teacher dead in her bed. She was as compassionate as she could be, sitting around the kitchen table interviewing both of them, but in her mind she wanted to start the process of taking apart the crime scene. Being with Rosa felt different. She wanted to be a support to her and interrogating her right now seemed wrong.
The door opened and Reggie stepped inside. She looked at him and a tear dropped from her cheek. Where did this emotion come from? Reggie came and sat on the other side of the couch.
“Mrs. Cervantes? I’m so sorry for your loss. We need to do some examination of this room. I’m looking for the bullet that may still be here somewhere.” Reggie stood and walked to the window. He seemed to be measuring the trajectory of the bullet. Stevie watched him carefully. She should extricate herself from Rosa’s grasp but she didn’t. She saw Reggie bend over the piano behind the couch.
“Mrs. Cervantes? I’m going to have to remove the bullet from your piano with my pocket knife.” Reggie’s voice was low and muffled.
“What did he say?” Rosa asked Stevie.
“Detective Watts has found the bullet lodged in the piano. He needs to remove it.”
“Miguel’s piano? Someone shot Pablo and Miguel’s piano?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry.” Stevie looked over at Reggie who was carving out the hole and removing the bullet. She saw him place it in an evidence bag he carried in his jacket pocket.
“Could I take a look around, Mrs. Cervantes?” He walked around the couch to stand in front of them. “I’d like to take a look in Pablo’s room if I could.”
“All right.” Rosa looked up at Reggie with a weak smile. “His room is at the top of the stairs. Miguel’s is on the right.”
“Thank you.” Reggie gave Stevie a kind smile and turned to go through the living room and up the stairs.
I should go with him, Stevie thought. But Rosa’s grip on her hand was still as tight as before. She would stay.
The door to Pablo’s room was open. Reggie stepped in and immediately noticed the minimalist decor. Nothing on the walls. The bed made, shoes tucked under in a row. One pair of sneakers and one pair of hiking boots. The desk was clean with nothing on it. Reggie opened the closet and saw the pants hanging on one side, shirts on the other. A lightweight jacket hung on a peg on the back of the closet door. He felt inside the right pocket and found what he thought might be car keys. The left pocket had a bigger bulge. Inside that pocket Reggie found a cell phone. He touched the screen and it asked for the 6 digit passcode. He pulled another evidence bag out of his own jacket pocket and dropped the phone inside. He quietly shut the door and turned to the door on the right. It was closed.
The moment Reggie opened the door he was overcome with the pictures on the wall. Every white space was covered. They were organized. One wall was covered with pictures of men from the 1800’s. Some of them were seated at a piano. Reggie guessed they might be composers. On another wall were pictures of gymnastics stars. Men and women in tights were swinging from rings, leaping across the floor, and not surprising, walking on wire. The desk was covered with books and papers. Reggie picked up the book on top entitled, Understanding Gnosticism. He paged through the book and made a quick assessment that it was about an ancient religion. Underneath was a children’s book entitled The Man Who Walked Between The Towers. It had an illustration of a man’s foot on a wire high above a city. Reggie opened the drawer under the desk. A single sheet of white paper lay on top with a handwritten quote by someone named Philippe Petit. “I did not choose wire-walking. It chose me.” Underneath the paper were pictures of Miguel and Jorge. They were in a park, walking on a slack rope, and standing beneath them was George Wessott. Reggie paged through the pictures and stopped to look at one with George Wessott standing by Miguel with his arm around his shoulder.
“Reggie?” Stevie came into Miguel’s room. She stopped and took in the plethora of images. “Wow!”
“Look at these pictures of Miguel and Jorge. George Wessott, the town developer, looks a bit more chummy with these boys than I thought. I want to know what his motivations were towards these boys.”
Stevie was walking around the room looking at the pictures. “Miguel was a bright inquisitive young boy.”
Reggie stepped over to the book on the desk. “What is Gnosticism?”
“Oh, that makes sense.” She looked at Reggie who looked back at her with a furrowed brow. “It’s a tie to Erik Satie, the composer he loved. He wrote three pieces of music entitled Gnossiennes. Scholars have different opinions about what inspired them but I think Satie was enamored with the ancient Gnostics who were a sect stemming from a Judeo Christian tradition. Gnosis means “knowledge” in Greek. Satie may have formed his own religion based on finding an emancipation from the world and a search for a higher knowledge.”
“This kid could easily have gotten messed up mentally by all this weird information.”
“He was just a curious kid. I guess he had a lot more in his life than his cell phone.”
Stevie set the book back on the desk. “Let’s go to the hospital and find out if we can talk to Pablo. I’d like to take Rosa with us. She needs to be with him.”
Reggie scratched his neck. How was he going to tell her that she was too emotionally involved? The Highland Park Police were letting a lot fall through the cracks. He wanted to be thorough.
“We need a forensics team over here to go over the house, especially in the back shed where I found a dusting of cocaine in a cabinet. I suppose taking Pablo’s mother to the hospital would allow a more through search.”
Reggie reached into his pocket and pulled out the evidence bag. “Pablo’s phone. Maybe we can get the name of a dealer. Go ahead and take Rosa to the car. I’ll let the two officers prepare for the Forensics team and instruct them to do door to door canvasing to see if anyone has information about the shooting.”
