Missing in Precinct Puerto Rico - Hardcover

Torres, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312321112 ISBN 13: 9780312321116

Verlag: Minotaur Books,US, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Angustias, Puerto Rico, 1982

Even a tropical paradise can have its little murders...

 

In the early morning hours, a neighbor named Tomas Villareal knocks on the door of the home of Luis Gonzalo, the sheriff of Angustias, a small town in the mountains of Puerto Rico. Tomas reports that his son is missing, and the sheriff agrees to help search for the boy. Gonzalo is certain there is a simple explanation--that the child has just wandered off to visit a friend or fallen asleep in a field.

 

But then a second child is reported missing, and there are no clues to her whereabouts either. Soon the sheriff, the parents, and the entire town are searching frantically, but the horrors have only just begun. Gonzalo begins to suspect an organized plot to harm the children of Angustias, and he races against the clock to prevent the town's children from disappearing one by one.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Steven Torres teaches at Manchester Community College.

Steven Torres was born in the Bronx, New York, but lived part of his childhood in a small town in Puerto Rico. He is a graduate of the City University of New York Graduate Center. Steven teaches at Manchester Community College and lives in Conneticut with his wife, Damaris.

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Praise for Steven Torres and the Precinct Puerto Rico Series

"Fast-paced, nonstop action."

- Publishers Weekly on Death in Precinct Puerto Rico: Book Two

"This is a most promising start to a new procedural series that stars a dedicated, sensible 'hero' in an almost quaint but decidedly unique locale. Strongly recommended."

- Library Journal (starred review) on Precinct Puerto Rico: Book One

"A top-notch police procedural whose engrossing details create an authentic feel. Terse, deadpan prose, believable characters, and an offbeat setting add up to a promising series kickoff."

- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) on Precinct Puerto Rico: Book One

"Fascinating and satisfying. Torres's characters are authentic and his story is absorbing...the bonus is the window he offers into rurual Puerto Rico."

- S. J. Rozan, author of Absent Friends

"Accurate and well-crafted...Torres's work is in the tradition of popular literature that teaches us even as it intrigues and excites us."

- Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and president of Univision, on Burning Precinct Puerto Rico: Book Three

"An excellent series...a gritty, street-smart procedural."

- Booklist on Burning in Precinct Puerto Rico: Book Three

"Atmospheric...comparable to what Tony Hillerman does for the Southwest, Steve Hamilton for Upper Michigan, and James W. Hall for Florida."

- South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Burning in Precinct Puerto Rico: Book Three

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

MISSING IN PRECINCT PUERTO RICO

CHAPTER ONE

There was a time, when the Spaniards still ruled Puerto Rico, that the hill town of Angustias had nearly twelve thousand souls counted. This included men, women, children, and eighteen slaves. There were a little more than nine thousand citizens in the Angustias of 1982. The drop-off in population could be traced back to many factors--fewer farms needing fewer workers, the unforgiving mountainous geography, and the lure of far-off places like New York and Miami with promises of better jobs and futures that didn't include the daily wrestling with Mother Nature for the sake of a few dollars on which to live. Also, in the modern age, people simply had fewer children. Contraceptives were available in Angustias, as elsewhere on the island, and most, Catholic or not, used them. Gonewere the days of twelve children in a family. Now, even a half-dozen raised eyebrows.

Luis Gonzalo, sheriff of Angustias since 1964 when he took the job at the age of twenty-two, had been part of a small family himself, his father having died young and his mother never remarrying. He had been born and raised in town. He had seen the best and brightest go off to college in some larger town and only ever come back for Christmas, New Year's, and Three Kings' Day. He had sent several of los Angustiados, citizens of Angustias, to prison. He had put one in the grave. When the last census announced that the town's population had fallen for the fourth straight decade, Gonzalo thought of the family he had formed in Angustias--two teenaged daughters and a daughter born just the year before. They would get the best educations he could afford for them. Chances were low that they would come back after college. And there was nothing he could say that would change that. Even if there were, he wouldn't say it. Children had to live their lives, and if they thought it would be better to live it elsewhere, he wasn't the one to stop them.

Almost every afternoon for the first few years he was sheriff, Gonzalo toured the stops to watch the children as they climbed onto the school bus in the morning and then as they got on at the school to go home in the afternoon. This was a task he enjoyed, but one he now shared with his two deputies.

On this afternoon, there was only one small problem as the children of the elementary school waited for the bus, and Gonzalo was there to tend to it. Two boys, part of a group playing with marbles, got into an argument. To end the argument, one of the boys, a nine-year-old, picked up an aggie and tossed it into the woods. The aggie owner thought this deserved a punch in the nose and gave it to him. Gonzalo left his conversation with the school principal to break upthe scrabble before a crowd had formed. He held each boy by the collar, pulled them apart, but one tried for a final kick, which landed on Gonzalo's shin. Had he not been involved in this disturbance, he would have noticed a dark-skinned man in a big American car, who parked in front of the school for a minute, wrote down a few notes, made a three-point turn, and drove off. Gonzalo didn't see this, nor did the principal. The children who noticed it, said nothing.

 

 

So much passes beneath the eyes of the local police. So much that they want to do something about, but can't. When, for instance, a woman of the town, a respected woman with children, begins to go out at night with another man from another town. Or when a man has lost his job and begins to drink more than he can hold. Or when a young girl, falling in love for the first time, falls for the wrong young man. What can the officer do? Even when he has been friends with the man for many years, and has a good relationship with the wife in question, he is powerless to do more than talk to them as a friend and as an acquaintance. Drunkenness is only illegal when it's public, no matter how much damage it may cause in private. As for a woman leaving the house when her husband is away and finding comfort from some other man, there are no laws broken there either, no matter how tragically things may turn if the husband finds out. As for the daughter of the family, the one falling for a boy with a police record that, however slight the offenses, can't just be ignored, there is even less that can be said to her. Even if she is the goddaughter of the sheriff of Angustias, Luis Gonzalo, the boy's records are sealed by the court and an officer can't just blurt out this type of information.

After advice, the best an officer can do is watch the family dramaunfold, ready to step in with the force of law at the first sign of trouble.

The family in question, the Cruz family, had come close to requiring Gonzalo's intervention in the past few weeks. There had been arguments that the neighbors had complained about. Gonzalo had gotten there as quickly as he could, but the fights were over each time, Guillermo Cruz sitting in his La-Z-Boy, Amelia washing dishes, before Gonzalo knocked on the door. There had also been a call to the station house to say that Giselle Cruz, the daughter, wasn't home yet though it was nearing eight at night and school had been over for hours. By the time Gonzalo drove to the house to get a more complete report, the girl had arrived and locked herself into her room.

Today was Giselle's quinceañera--her fifteenth birthday--a cause for celebration much like the sixteenth birthday is celebrated for young ladies in other countries. Amelia and Guillermo were determined to make the party one that Giselle would remember with fondness for the decades that were to come. Between the drinking, the paramour, and the boyfriend that didn't quite measure up, Gonzalo felt certain the night would be remembered. He wasn't sure about the fondness.

He thought of all of this as he made himself a cup of coffee, straining the grounds through a colador. He was dressed in his best civilian clothes and didn't want to spill a drop on himself. He heard Mari coming toward the kitchen in her slippers and started to move faster and think less.

"You're still not done making that coffee?" she asked. "We're going to be late."

"We have half an hour before it starts," Gonzalo answered. "Besides, it's a quinceañera. It'll last for five hours or more."

"Yes, and we're the godparents. We have to be there for the whole thing."

Gonzalo rolled his eyes at the thought of trying to find that many hours of interesting conversation at a young girl's party where the attendants were either children or adults trying to duck out as soon as the food and the liquor were gone. And he had seen the amount of liquor Guillermo had packed away into the back of his station wagon a few days earlier. It would last a while.

"You know how this night is going to end, right?" Gonzalo asked his wife as she took a long sip from his cup of coffee. She twitched her nose, a sign that she waited to be enlightened.

"I'm going to be driving people home, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, there'll be a fight or two for me to break up."

"It'll be nice," Mari said. She handed him his cup, half-finished, and left him to drink down the rest.

On the Cruz family's wide front lawn, a white canopy had been set up, musicians were tuning instruments, there was a giant cake on a center table, several long tables held a buffet, another table held the sodas and juices, and another one held the liquors. To the left of the house, there was an entire pig being turned on a spit by a man Gonzalo didn't know. The man's shirt was open, and he had a beer and a knife on a little table standing next to him. The band played the opening notes of a popular salsa song, then stopped. Apparently, this was a sound check. Mari and Gonzalo...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Minotaur Books,US
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312321112
• ISBN 13: 9780312321116
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar