Employee of the Year

Chapter 13 - The Money Changers

Wednesday, June 22. Eight days after the murder.

Seeing Lenny with Melanie Caldwell stirred up more fears inside of me. I knew my former boss had a credible witness who could place him away from the scene of Roland’s killing. Ned Santini, another earlier suspect, could prove he was with his wife and daughter’s family way out in San Bernardino that night.

It seemed like I was the only person from the call center who didn’t have an airtight alibi. I’d gone into work early the morning of the murder while Suzy was still asleep. It was still dark out when I filled up my gas tank on the corner of Normandie and 190th Street. Then I drove into work and found the body. For at least thirty to forty minutes around the time of the murder, no one I knew could identify me.

That night I had nightmares, visions of getting arrested, going on trial, being marched off in a jumpsuit before I could even see my daughter born. I imagined myself in prison, watching my daughter grow from infant to toddler to young lady behind the bulletproof glass of the visiting room. How would Suzy react? I knew she would stand by me at first. She wouldn’t write me off that easily. But to have her husband, her baby’s father, locked away behind bars for years or even decades? That would be too much strain for any marriage. I couldn’t ask her to stand by me through something like that. It wouldn’t be fair.

When I woke up the next morning, the first rays of sunshine reminded me of a time when I was a little boy. Once or twice a month on Sunday morning, my mother would take me to mass at Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles, Our Lady the Queen of the Angels, the old Spanish mission-style church near Olvera Street. One Sunday, when I was seven or eight years old, the Mexican priest gave a sermon on the Virgin of Guadalupe. It was the story of the poor Indian peasant Juan Diego. The Virgin Mary visited Juan Diego in a vision and instructed him to build her a church on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico. When Juan Diego told the Spanish priests what happened, they did not believe him. Surely the Virgin would not choose someone like Juan Diego to carry her message. Surely she would not reveal herself to a low-class, illiterate heathen. It was not until the Virgin performed the Miracle of the Roses that the priests came to believe Juan Diego. The miracle proved that Mary had chosen the peasant.

“She is watching you, Cuauhtemoc,” my mother explained as we waited at the bus stop on Main Street after the sermon. “She is watching all of us. She doesn’t care whether you are rich or poor. She only cares that your heart is pure, like Juan Diego’s. Always be a good boy, Cuautehmoc, no matter what everyone else is doing. You do that and the angels will take care of you. They will help you find your way.”

The memory moved me. I covered my face and started to cry, muffling the sound with my pillow. Suzy was still sleeping and I didn’t want her to see me like this. Tears ran through my fingers, soaking my pillow case.

Something had happened to me since I joined Passion, since I entered the Employee of the Year contest. My mother kept her heart pure to the very end. I was trying, but it wasn’t easy. Something was trying to corrupt my heart and poison my spirit.

The worst part of this police investigation was how everything was getting inside my head. A strange guilt was growing in me like a cancer. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d committed some crime, even if I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t guilty of killing Roland of course, but it felt like I was guilty of something else, something more subtle and mysterious. This was a feeling that had haunted me many times before.

“What’s going on?” Suzy was awake. She grabbed a tissue from the nightstand and dabbed my cheeks. “I know something is eating away at you, even more than usual. You working odd hours. You hardly sleeping. Tell me what it is.”

“It’s what happened at work. The call agent Roland getting shot. I just can’t get it out of my mind.”

I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s been all over the news. It must have been awful to see him like that.”