“Maybe you should park the truck by Rob’s unit,” I said. “We can always say we came to visit him.”
“Not that we’ll fool anyone,” Michael said. “Like, say, the chief, if he asks us what the blazes we’re doing here.”
But the chief wasn’t visible. I assumed that he and most of his officers were inside. The only one I could see was Sammy, who was outside arguing with Ainsley Werzel.
Sammy wasn’t really doing much arguing—just standing in front of the entrance with his arms crossed, shaking his head, and saying a few words now and again. Werzel was yelling and gesturing histrionically, like a coach disputing an umpire’s bad call in the World Series.
I spotted Jorge Soto in the crowd. Had Horace tested the sweatshirt yet, I wondered. Surely the stains would only turn out to be chocolate. Or maybe barbecue sauce. Or—
Jorge saw me looking his way, left the group he was standing with, and came over. I moved a little closer to Michael.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Burglary, we think,” he said. “We heard sirens, and then all the cops in the county showed up. There’s a humongous truck parked on the other side of the Spare Attic—you can’t see it from here. We figured someone must have tried to break in. Stupid thing to do. Like there’s any doubt that it’s related to Doleson’s murder.”
“Related how?” Michael asked.
“If they catch the burglar, isn’t it almost certain they’ll have the killer?”
“Maybe someone just tried to take advantage of Doleson’s death to burgle the place for some reason unrelated to the murder?”
Jorge shrugged.
“Maybe,” he said. “I guess there could be more than one person wanting to break in there. After all, that’s obviously where he keeps the dirt.”
“Dirt?” I echoed.
“Stuff he was blackmailing people with.”
“Doleson was a blackmailer?” I asked. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
“He was a blackmailer, yeah,” Jorge said. “And I’m very sure, because he tried to blackmail me.”
“About what?” I asked. “Sorry—maybe I shouldn’t ask but—”
“He threatened to turn me over to Immigration if I didn’t pay up.”
Oh, dear. Was Jorge illegal? Not only did I like him, but he was a key employee at Mutant Wizards. Could the company get in trouble for having him on staff? Even though he’d passed a background check before hiring? Would the police scrutiny surrounding the murder cause a problem for him? Could Rob somehow arrange to sponsor him legally? It would be a small disaster if the company lost him. Then again, if he’d lied about his immigration status . . . and there was that damned sweatshirt.
He must have guessed from my face some of what was going through my mind.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m legal,” he said. “Got my green card, working toward naturalization.”
“That’s a relief,” I said.
“But I figure Doleson snooped around in my room—we all know he does it—and found some of the papers I had there. In my spare time, I do volunteer work at the Latino Community Center, helping people cope with the ice.”
“The ice?” I repeated, looking down at the snow, slush, and ice at our feet. Surely immigrants had bigger problems to cope with than adjusting to the normally mild Virginia winters.
“Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE,” he explained. “We don’t get many illegals at the center, but even people who are legal need help dealing with the bureaucracy—it’s hard enough to do if English is your first language. People who need help getting their working permits renewed. People who are legal but want to apply for citizenship. People in danger of losing their green cards over some minor brush with the law, like a traffic offense. My English is good enough to decipher the forms. And I’m no lawyer, but I know when to call one in.”
“That’s great,” I said. And I meant it; particularly since, given how busy the programmers at Mutant Wizards were, he didn’t have all that much spare time to begin with. I hoped I was suspecting him unjustly.
“You pay it forward,” he said, with a shrug. “Anyway, I guess when he saw all the immigration information I had, he jumped to the conclusion I was illegal, and thought he’d try to squeeze me.”
“Did you report him?”
“I thought of it,” he said. “But he was a real vindictive guy. Might try to do something to get back at me.”
“What could he possibly do?”
Jorge looked uncomfortable. I saw him glance over to where Werzel was still pacing back and forth like a caged tiger in front of Sammy’s guard post. Yeah, smart to make sure the press was out of earshot before talking about blackmailable secrets.