Chapter 6: Two O'Clock
At 1:15 the next afternoon, a gray sedan parked two houses down.
I watched it from the front window.
Two people got out — a man and a woman, both in ordinary clothes, nothing that would read as police from the street.
They didnted look at the house.
They walked slowly in opposite directions and disappeared from my line of sight.
Detective Garza had texted at noon: *In position by 1:30.
You won't see us clearly.
That's intentional.*
At 1:40, I brought Abuela Rosa a cup of tea and told her I needed her to stay in the back of the house for a little while.
"Why?" she said.
"I'm handling something.
I'll explain after."
She looked at me over her tea.
"The man is coming."
"Yes."
"You called the police."
"Yes."
She nodded.
"Good," she said, for the second time in two days.
She picked up her rosary and went to her bedroom and closed the door.
At 1:58, a white pickup truck rolled slowly down the street and parked in front of the house.
The man who got out was perhaps fifty, broad-shouldered, wearing a blue collared shirt and carrying a clipboard.
He had a laminated badge on a lanyard.
He walked up the front path with the ease of someone who had done this many times before in many different neighborhoods, in front of many different doors.
He knocked.
I opened it.
His expression was professional and pleasant.
"Good afternoon.
I'm following up on the compliance matter for this property.
I believe we spoke yesterday."
"We did," I said.
"Come in."
He stepped inside.
I closed the door behind him.
"Do you have the payment ready?" he said.
"Twelve hundred, as discussed."
"I have some questions first," I said.
Something shifted in his face — not alarm, not yet, just a small recalibration.
"Of course.
What questions?"
"This form you gave my grandmother." I held up the printed paper.
"Can you show me where this lien appears in the Bexar County public records?"
A beat.
"That information is in our internal system—"
"The county's records are public.
I looked yesterday.
There's no lien on this property.
There hasn't been one for eleven years."
Another beat.
Longer.
"There may be a processing delay—"
"And this card." I held up the white business card.
"Property Compliance Division.
That office doesn't exist.
I called the county directly.
They've never heard of it."
His clipboard lowered slightly.
His eyes moved to the front door behind me.
"I think," he said, quietly, "there may have been some miscommunication—"
The front door opened.
The two plain-clothes officers came in.
The woman held up her badge.
"Sir, we need you to step outside with us."
He turned.
He looked at the badge.
He looked at me.
"You set this up," he said.
"My grandmother is seventy-two years old," I said.
"She gave you her medication money."
He didn't answer.
His jaw moved once like he was going to say something else, but the male officer had already taken the clipboard from his hands and the woman was guiding him toward the door with a hand on his arm.
At the threshold, he stopped.
He turned back once.
"I've got three more visits scheduled today," he said.
It wasn't a confession or an apology.
He said it like he wanted me to understand the scale of something, like he was proud of the architecture of it even now.
"You had three more visits scheduled," I said.
The door closed.
I stood in the front hallway for a moment.
The house was completely quiet.
Then Abuela Rosa's bedroom door opened, and she came down the hall in her slippers, rosary in hand, and she stood at the edge of the entryway and looked at the closed front door.
"Is it done?" she said.
"It's done."
She looked at the door a moment longer.
May you like
Then she turned and walked back toward the kitchen.
"I'll make lunch," she said.
