The Bone Fire: A Mystery (34 page)

By the time Brianna turned a year old, her father was getting more insistent. More needy. He called Brianna his little angel and kissed her constantly, even though his scruffy beard scratched her soft baby skin. For her first birthday, he bought Brianna some Bonne Bell lip gloss, “to make her look sexy,” he said.

That was when Ashley called the phone number Judge Otero had given her. It took a few more months, but suddenly Brianna was gone. Ashley had her life back.

And her daughter was safe.

Lucy was helping Manny get out of his chair, so they could leave, when Nathan came over to them.

“So, are you taking off?” he asked solemnly.

“Yeah, we got places to go, people to see,” she said, trying to brush past him.

“Here’s the thing,” Nathan said slowly. “I can’t let you drive. I’ve seen you drink four beers.”

“I’m not driving,” she said. “Manny here is.” He swayed slightly at the mention of his name. She realized just how ridiculous that sounded as she looked at Manny in his drunken stupor. She clearly hadn’t thought this through.

“Okay, I see your point. I guess we need to call a cab,” she said.

“Well, if you want to wait, I’ll get off in fifteen minutes,” he said. “I can take you both home.”

Lucy sighed. She sat Manny back down in his chair as she retook her own.

Twenty-five minutes later, Nathan appeared, sans apron, and the trio of them walked outside to his car.

“So, can I get my car keys?” Nathan asked, looking at Lucy expectantly as Manny leaned against the car for support.

“I don’t have them,” she said, confused. “I never found them. I thought you’d have your extra set with you.”

“Why would I carry around my spare keys when my car was at your house?” Nathan said.

“All right, fine. Whatever,” she said, getting annoyed. Nothing with Nathan was simple. “We’ll just get a cab, unless you can drive a tow truck.”

“Yeah, of course I can,” Nathan said. “I worked one summer as a heavy equipment operator for the Forest Service, remember?”

Nathan got the keys from Manny and opened the truck up. Lucy climbed into the passenger seat and started clearing out the papers and other junk so all three of them could sit in the cab. She threw the stun gun, crowbar, and wire hangers on the floor, but her OCD took over when it came to the mess of papers, which looked to be mostly invoices and other towing-related documents. She gathered them up into a bundle and then straightened them into a neat pile, which she held on her lap as she sat in the middle of the seat. Nathan helped Manny into the passenger side, then got into the driver’s seat, saying, “Where are we going?”

“Well,” Lucy said, “I guess we’ll take Manny home, and then you can drop me off at my house—”

“We can’t do that,” Manny said. “Alex will kill me if I let someone else drive his truck when I’m not there.”

“How about we go to my house and get my car keys,” Nathan said. “Then we can come back to get my car, leave the tow truck here, and then I can drop you both off at home.”

“This is making my head hurt,” Lucy said. “I guess that’s the best plan. Then Manny will have to get a ride tomorrow to pick up the tow truck.”

That settled, they pulled away from the bar. Manny fell asleep during the ten-minute drive, while all Nathan wanted to do was make small talk. She tried to keep her answers to one or two words until they pulled up in front of a house that seemed slightly run-down, although it was hard for Lucy to make anything out in the darkness without the punctuation of streetlights.

“I’m not really sure where my extra set of car keys is,” Nathan said, as he started to get out. “This might take a minute.”

Lucy sighed as she watched Nathan go into his house. She looked over at Manny, who was happily passed out leaning against the glass of the passenger-side window. She switched on the overhead light and dug around in her purse for her cell phone, to see if she had any messages. No one had called. Bored, she started to look over the stack of papers in her lap. Most of them were invoices and other records for work Alex Stevens had done with banks, which were trying to recoup their losses on defaulted loans by repossessing their cars.

She flipped through the records and realized some went back two or three years. Did Alex never clean out his truck? She started looking at the pages, thinking maybe she’d find something devious, like some evidence of fraud against one of the banks. As she searched, she checked the dates closely. She found some from last year and a few from the month of July. The month Brianna went missing. That made her stop. Maybe the papers might reveal some suspicious behavior patterns in the days after Brianna disappeared. Maybe they would show that Alex was back at work the next day, making him seem nonchalant about the lost little girl.

She didn’t expect to find what she did.

A paper from New Mexico Savings Bank confirming the delivery of a Chevy Tahoe to Socorro on July 18 at 1:43
P.M.
The day Brianna disappeared.

Lucy’s brain worked as fast as it could under the influence of four beers. Socorro, in the southern part of New Mexico, was at least two hours away. If Alex Stevens was in Socorro at 1:43
P.M.
, he would have had to leave Santa Fe at noon and would have arrived back at 4:00
P.M.
Lucy tried to remember what time of day Brianna went missing, but it wouldn’t come to her. She slid out of the truck through
the driver’s door, still holding the document. She went up to Nathan’s house, his dark yard now haphazardly illuminated by the chunky pieces of light that came through the large front windows. She walked in without knocking and quickly took in the shabby furniture before yelling to him, “Hey, do you have today’s newspaper?”

“No,” he said, coming into the living room, “but go check the neighbors’ recycling bin on their porch. I just steal it from there.”

She went back outside without asking him how his search for the keys was going, then realized he hadn’t told her which neighbor to steal from. She surveyed the nearest houses as best she could using just the light thrown from Nathan’s house, looking for one with a porch. The next-door neighbor had a small porch with the dark lump of what could have been a couch on it. She went back to the tow truck, grabbed her purse off the seat, and fished out her flashlight. She glanced over at Manny, who was still sleeping, then closed the driver’s-side door quietly. She switched on her flashlight and crept up to the neighbor’s porch. On it was a green recycling bin. She pushed past a few empty cans of cat food and pulled out that day’s
Capital Tribune.
She scanned the front page quickly by the light of her flashlight. She knew Tommy had mentioned in his story what time of day Brianna disappeared. She opened the newspaper to the jump page. There in black and white it said, “It was 2:00
P.M.
when the family said they first noticed Brianna was missing.” Lucy felt a surge of vindication. She said, “Gotcha,” to no one.

The light from Nathan’s house flashed off, and the street was in the dark once more. She tucked the newspaper under her arm, along with the bank document, as Nathan came out of the house. Turning off her flashlight, she made her way over to him in the dark.

“We’re going to the police station,” she said to him as they met at the truck door.

Gil was still in front of his computer, looking over the adoption paperwork he’d gotten from Donna Henshaw, when three people walked in the side door with a patrol officer, who said, “I met these guys in the parking lot looking for you.”

The tallest one, an Anglo man, had on a spiked collar and was
dressed in black; the only skin visible that was not covered in tattoos was his face. A smaller man who was darker and looked Latino had a mustache and was wearing a dirty gray T-shirt and jeans. It was Lucy who stood out. She sparkled in a sequined top and tight jeans. Her hair and face were done up as Gil had never seen them.

“Hey, Montoya,” Lucy said, coming over to his desk. “This is Manny. He sometimes works for Alex Stevens as a tow truck driver. I got a ride with him tonight and found this in Alex’s truck.” She slapped a piece of paper down on the desk in front of Gil. “This is solid proof that Alex Stevens is a liar. Now, as a bonus prize, Manny here will tell you all about another crime involving Ultimate Towing. Just give him a ride home when you’re done.”

With an angry look at Gil, she started to walk out, but turned back to them and said, “Oh, and one more thing . . . I fucking told you so.” She smiled smugly and left with the man in the studs following her, while Manny stared fearfully at Gil and Joe.

Gil, his shirtsleeves rolled up, was at his desk early. He had already checked in with everyone. Ashley was still in labor. David Geisler still hadn’t had his medical evaluation. Liz and Adam had no new information. Liz asked, “When are you going to give me DNA from Brianna’s dad?” Gil had no answer for her. He then called his mom, who immediately started talking about Aunt Yolanda’s party yesterday.

He had stayed at the office until 11:00
P.M.
last night interviewing Manny, whose full name was Manny Luis Reyes. It had taken a while for Manny to open up, mainly because it appeared that Lucy hadn’t asked him if he wanted to talk to the police. Instead, she had technically kidnapped him and brought him to the station. He finally got Manny to talk about Ultimate Towing, but quickly realized it was a case for the major crimes division. Gil turned the investigation and Manny over to the detective in charge of that unit.

Gil had called Alex Stevens last night, politely asking
him to come to the station, without telling him what it was about. At first, Stevens protested, saying that Ashley was still in labor, but Gil insisted. Finally, Stevens said he would meet them at the office at 8:45
A.M.
the next morning. Not that night. Gil relented. Stevens would be easier to interview if he came in on his own terms.

Gil was using the last few minutes before Stevens arrived to take a look over the paper in his hand. It was the one Lucy had slammed down on his desk. He had a call in to the New Mexico Savings Bank to see if they had any more information about the situation surrounding the car Stevens had repossessed. Gil had already talked to the car’s former owner, waking him up. The man confirmed that a tow truck driver who matched Alex Stevens’s general description had been at his house about noon on July 18 of last year and taken his Chevy Tahoe.

Now they were just waiting for Stevens. Joe sat across from Gil, texting away on his phone.

Gil pulled down his shirtsleeves and put his suit jacket back on. He took a bolo tie out of his desk drawer. It had been his father’s tie and was made of a large piece of turquoise and some coral set in silver. In New Mexico, a bolo tie was considered as formal as a necktie; it was even the state’s official neckwear.

Joe, who had been watching Gil, said, “What’s the deal?”

“We have to get ready for the interrogation,” Gil said, taking his paddle holster off and putting it in his desk drawer.

“Wait, you said, ‘We have to get ready.’ That implies that we’re both doing the interrogation. Not just that you’re doing the interrogation.”

“That’s right,” Gil said.

Joe nodded to himself, looking pleased. “You think if you look all professional this guy is going to be more convinced to talk? Is that what all your books tell you?”

“Pretty much.”

“Cool.” Joe stood up, tucked his T-shirt into his pants, and locked his gun in his desk drawer. “I guess I need to start leaving a tie and dress shirt here, huh? This T-shirt just makes me look like your schlubby sidekick.”

Gil ignored the comment and asked, “So what should we think about before we get started with the interrogation?”

“That we are cool as shit?”

“Besides that,” Gil said. “Remember to always look for the good qualities in the person. Everyone has something decent in them.”

“So you find that decent thing and then exploit it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Anything to get a confession, huh, Gil?”

“Almost anything,” Gil said, thinking back to his interrogation of Rudy Rodriguez. The decent thing he had exploited in Rodriguez was his love of Ashley, even though it was love that was twisted beyond recognition. He sighed and then tried to get his head back into teaching mode. He wanted Joe to be able to get some experience out of all this mess. “So what should we take into account before we go in there?”

“The guy’s got no real experience with the system, which gives us a much better chance.”

“Why?” Gil asked.

“Because he won’t know our games,” Joe said. “He won’t know what to expect. If he’s had a lot of priors and been interrogated about other crimes, he’d know exactly what to say and not say.”

“Exactly,” Gil said.

“However, I do want to point out that Fisher interviewed the guy a dozen times,” Joe said.

“That could definitely impact this interrogation,” Gil said. “Do you have a baseline on him? I’ve only met him twice, and I wasn’t really concentrating on gauging his responses.” Gil kicked himself for that now. Maybe if he had been paying more attention yesterday during Alex Stevens’s ID of David Geisler, he might have caught something. Getting a baseline was really one of the fundamental rules of interrogation. The idea was to just talk to suspects about inconsequential things and see how they respond. Judge their eye movements and posture. Then, when you are interrogating them later and they deviate from their baseline, you know that you just asked a question that was not inconsequential to them.