Mission Road Page 0,1

were rough. He smelled of patchouli.

Ralph cradled the baby against one shoulder and slung the travel bag over the other. He stuffed an extra clip of ammunition in his pocket.

The kitchen door swung shut behind him, winter air gusting into the room.

Ana listened to his footsteps crunch down the gravel walkway. He was calling Lucia his little nina, singing her a Spanish carol, "Los Animales," as he strapped her into the car seat.

His headlights swept across the kitchen, illuminating the Christmas ristra and the empty high chair, then disappeared down Ruiz Street.

ANA SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM, trying to formulate a plan.

He would be here in fifteen minutes.

There had to be a way - something to make him come clean. Their earlier conversation gave her little hope he would listen to reason, but she had to try. She owed him that much.

On the coffee table, a photograph of her mother stared back at her - Lucia DeLeon Sr., twenty-nine years old, in dress uniform, 1975, the day she received the Medal of Valor.

Her mother's face was a patchwork of yellow bruises, her arm in a sling, but her posture radiated quiet confidence, black eyebrows knit as if she didn't quite understand all the fuss. She'd saved three officers' lives, become the first female cop in SAPD history to use deadly force. What was the big deal?

Ana liked to remember her mother that way - self-assured, indomitable, always firm and fair. But over the years, the photograph had lost some of its magic. It could no longer quite exorcise that other memory - her mother fifteen years older, slumped in bed with the drapes drawn, a glass of wine at her lips, skin sickly blue in the light of an afternoon soap opera.

Come back when you don't feel like preaching, mijita.

Ana put her face in her hands. A sob was building in her chest, but she couldn't give in to that. She had to think.

If her mother - the Lucia DeLeon of 1975 - had been handed Ana's problem, what would she have done?

Ana pulled her laptop out of her briefcase. She booted it up, typed in her password. She reviewed her case notes, the crime scene photos. Poor-quality scans of pre-digital black-and-whites, but Ana could still get the feel. She'd been to the scene many times.

Ana imagined herself as the killer.

It was a little before 10:00 P.M., midsummer, on the rural South Side. She was standing on the shoulder of Mission Road, arguing with the young man she was about to murder.

A warm rain had just pushed through, leaving the air like steam engine smoke, scented with wild garlic. In the woods, cicadas chirred.

Ana and the young man had both pulled over their cars - possibly a prearranged rendezvous, though why the young man would've agreed to it, Ana didn't know. There was nothing for miles except barbed wire fence, railroad tracks and old mission lands overgrown with cactus and chinaberry.

The road was an ancient trail connecting the five Spanish missions of San Antonio. It was also a popular dumping ground for corpses - isolated and dark, yet easy to get to. Homicide department trivia: The first recorded murder along Mission Road had been in 1732. According to the diary of a Franciscan friar, a Coahuiltecan Indian girl was found strangled in the fields of maize. Not much had changed over the centuries.

On the night Ana was thinking about, the victim was a young Anglo, six-one, thickset, dressed in khakis and a white linen shirt. He wore a platinum Rolex that would still be on his wrist when the police found his body. He had shoulder-length blond hair, parted in the middle, feathered in that unfortunate Eighties style. He was handsome enough, the way a young bull groomed for auction is handsome, but his expression was arrogant - a natural disdain that came from being born rich, well-connected, absolutely untouchable.

She and the victim argued. There was probably name-calling. Some pushing. At some point - and this was critical - he grabbed her arm. When she yanked away, his fingernails drew blood. He turned away, probably thinking the fight was over. He started back to his car - a silver Mercedes convertible just a few yards away.

But the fight was not over for her. She grasped the murder weapon - a blunt object, shorter than a baseball bat. She imagined herself striking from behind, cracking the side of the young man's skull. He went down, crumpling before her, but she wasn't