Out of the Blue: A Pengram Mystery by Scarlett Castrilli Page B

first home in Vallejo, which would cut down on his commute to work. They almost had enough for a down payment.
    Now it would be going to funeral costs.
    His company was night picking in vineyards belonging to several different wineries, and he had left the house a little before midnight. The plan was to catch a ride with another Dalezo employee for a pick scheduled to start at half past one north of Napa. Usually he took the family car to work, but his wife needed it to take their child to the doctor for a persistent cold. Francisco was supposed to walk the five blocks to the corner of Mission Road, and wait there to be picked up.
    The coworker had been running a little behind. Night picking was hard work, trying to sleep through the day was harder, and the guy had overslept his alarm. He rushed through getting ready and ran out to his car, but when he arrived at the corner, it was empty.
    No one answered when he called Francisco’s cell phone. He sat there for five minutes, waiting for Francisco to appear and repeatedly calling. Not wanting to be late, and assuming that Francisco had taken the family car after all, he then went on to work alone. Everyone in the crew was surprised and worried when Francisco failed to appear over the next hours. It was not like him to miss work. Someone else came to cover his duties. Dalezo’s main office wasn’t open in the night, so they could not get his wife’s number on his emergency contact form to see what was going on. But she could not have given them answers. Waking up around four to check on their child, she had seen that her husband was gone and thought nothing of it. She naturally assumed he was at work.
    Francisco Hernandez had had no enemies. He had received no strange or threatening communications. His parents and siblings lived in Darby and the surrounding cities, a close family who all worked in various parts of the wine industry and hospitality as well.  Married for eight years, Francisco and Rosario both had fertility issues that made conceiving unlikely without reproductive assistance, which they had no chance of affording. Their son had come as a complete surprise. They considered him a miracle.
    As for trouble with the law, Francisco had never had any except for parking tickets in his teenage years. I spoke to members of his extended family, his boss and coworkers and neighbors, and by all accounts he had been a hardworking, peaceable, and well-liked man. Proud , his brother said. We called him the little rooster even as a boy. He was never tall, but as tall as a mountain with his pride.
    Serum tests had come back positive for Quell. It was delivered to him in coffee. As to where he had gotten the coffee from, it was either a food truck on Mission, or the perp himself. Francisco hadn’t made coffee at home before he left, not wanting to wake up his wife and son. Halloran had gotten the names of the food trucks to service Mission and was chasing them down. They were plentiful along this stretch of the road, setting up shop in parking lots and serving customers all night long. Especially with harvest underway, there were always hungry people around.
    I thought it more likely that the perp had prepared the coffee himself. Prepared it and carried it around with him as he went prowling for a victim. And then he came across Francisco walking alone down the roads of his neighborhood to get to his pick-up. What had the perp done? Joined him on the walk, queried for directions or pretended to be working the grape harvest too, and asked if he wanted some coffee?
    Night picking had been going on for more than a month now, and everyone was tired. The perp must have come across as normal for that brief interaction, Francisco feeling no qualms about accepting the coffee. There were no signs on his body that it had been forced on him. I was curious if Francisco was the first attempt the killer had made that night for a victim, or if he had had to troll for some time to find a