When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (25 page)

“We can protect them, George,” Gil said. “I know you’re worried about them. I saw what Hoffman did at the house up in Montaña Verde. I saw how he tortured those men and what he did to Pat Abetya.”

“Who?” Gonzales said, turning to look at Gil, a slight frown in his forehead.

*   *   *

Kristen Valdez pulled her car off Old Pecos Trail and onto an unnamed dirt road that curved toward the mesas to the north. She knew where she was going but still kept count of the number of dirt roads she passed anyway, just to be certain she didn’t make a wrong turn. She took a left and went over the washboard ruts, her little car jumping like a kid’s bouncy inflatable castle at a carnival. The two Labrador-mix dogs came running out, barking and chasing her car. She pulled up in front of the old mobile home and put her gun belt on before going up the three metal steps to the front door and knocking. She didn’t expect anyone to answer. There were still no cars in the driveway of the trailer, but she saw an old truck parked nearer to the house. She went down the steps and headed over to the old adobe home, the dogs at her heels. She walked past the cemetery and got to the house. She knocked, not really expecting anyone to answer. But this time someone did.

*   *   *

“So,” Joe said slowly to Gil, who was back in the observation room looking at his notebook. “I think now is as good a time as any to bring up what is sure to be an unpopular topic.”

“Which is what?”

“Do we still think that Abetya is involved?” Joe asked. He continued quickly, before Gil could interrupt. “Maybe he’s not Mr. Burns. You saw Gonzales’s face when you said his name. He had no idea who you were talking about.”

“He was probably faking it,” Gil said, still staring at his notebook, trying to figure out where to go next in the interview.

“But I think … I just don’t feel like we are considering all the options,” Joe said.

“How so?” Gil asked, flipping the page, debating whether to tell Gonzales about Dr. Mazer’s identification of him as the shooter. Gil hadn’t wanted to do that for the same reason he didn’t want to mention the gun or blood—he needed a rapport with Gonzales, which he wouldn’t get if he accused him of attempted murder.

“We started looking at Abetya because he, Jacobson, and Ivanov all worked on the movie set,” Joe said. “And we thought that was how Hoffman and his crew were finding their victims. But now we know that all the victims are from the lab; it might not have anything to do with the movie. Plus, Gonzales has no idea who Abetya is. Maybe Abetya isn’t involved.”

“We aren’t at a point to make that decision,” Gil said as he flipped to another page.

“We still have a car outside Abetya’s house,” Joe said. “We could at least consider…”

Gil turned to look at Joe, and said in a low voice, “He had his cousin go threaten my mother with a gun to stop my dad from prosecuting him.”

“Okay, I didn’t know that,” Joe said, speaking more slowly. “He’s definitely a son of a bitch, and if we can send him to hell, I’m all for it. But, look, that girl Melody, on the film, texted me back. She’s never heard of Natalie Martin, her husband, or Mazer. It’s just really unlikely that Abetya’s involved.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Gil said. He had turned back to his notebook.

“You said it yourself, Santa Fe is a small town,” Joe said. “People’s lives overlap again and again. Maybe this is just an overlap that doesn’t matter.”

“You need to drop this,” Gil said. He tried to say it as casually as he could, but it still sounded like a threat.

“Okay,” Joe said. “Okay. No problem. Sorry.”

They sat in silence. Joe tapped his hand against his leg, while Gil kept going over his notes.

Joe lasted only a minute before saying, “What if we just talk in generalities about how Abetya fits in the whole thing? Is that okay?”

Gil rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”

“Just listen for one second,” Joe said. “So Tyler James Hoffman, Lupe Escobar, Pat Abetya, and George Gonzales somehow meet up with one another and say, ‘Hey, you’re evil. Let’s do crime together.’ Then they somehow get the addresses of all the laboratory employees who work in the Primary Structural Biosystems department and decide to kill them off one by one.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds like they were working from a hit list rather than finding houses to rob,” Gil said.

“Okay, that wasn’t my point at all,” Joe said. “I was trying to draw your attention to the fact that we don’t know how all these bad people met each other.”

*   *   *

The woman who opened the door was in her late sixties. She wore polyester pants with a floral blouse and her long gray hair pulled back in a bun. She stepped out onto the porch and shooed at the dogs while Kristen Valdez identified herself.

“I have a driver’s license from George Gonzales, and it lists this as his address,” Kristen said.

“Oh, George hasn’t lived here in years,” the woman said.

“He lived with you?”

“No, he lived in the trailer over there, with Johnny,” she said. “They moved in together for a little while after high school.” Kristen knew she looked confused, mainly because she hadn’t expected to find anything here, least of all that George Gonzales had once lived with Lupe Escobar’s drug dealer. Both men had Camino Dulce listed as their addresses, but Johnny Rivera’s records had him living at 1241 Camino Dulce, while George Gonzales was at 1267. At first glance, it had seemed to Kristen that the different numbers would obviously belong to different houses. But the Rivera family likely owned the only property on the road, so any number combination listed as being on the street “Camino Dulce” would have ended up in their mailbox. When it came to deciding on addresses in the rural areas of the state, it often came down to guesstimating, leaving the mailman to deliver mail based more on the receiver’s name than anything else.

“They went to St. Catherine’s together?” Kristen asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “Well, mostly. Johnny got suspended his senior year, but he and George stayed friends. Johnny’s mom had Santa Clara Pueblo blood, which is how he could go to an Indian school.”

“So, are you related to Johnny?” Kristen asked.

“I’m Mrs. Rivera,” she said. “His grandmother.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Kristen asked.

“Oh, let’s see,” she said. “He borrowed my car about a week ago, when his friends came over.”

“Do you remember exactly what day that was?” Kristen asked, trying not to rush the words out.

“Let’s see, it had to have been December nineteenth,” she said. “I remember thinking it was my older sister’s birthday. She’s passed away now.”

“I’m sorry,” Kristen said automatically before asking, “Did you see his friends?”

“I only saw them from a distance as they got into the car,” she said.

“How many people were there?”

“It was hard to tell,” she said. “I think four. One of them was a girl. I heard her laugh. That kind of sound always carries. It made the dogs bark.”

“Could one of the other friends have been George?”

“I guess,” she said. “Although it would have been nice if he’d come over to say hello.”

Kristen got a description of the vehicle—a 1998 Honda Civic—and wrote it down in a small notebook she’d fished out of her pocket. She thanked Mrs. Rivera and hurried back to her vehicle to call Joe, the dogs following along. She was about to open her car door when she turned to look at the graveyard. Tall brown weeds poked up from under patches of snow, and a few fake flowers, bleached almost white, were twisted among the fences around the graves. She put her keys back in her pocket and walked toward the cemetery. As she got close, she stopped to look at the egg-sized rocks that had been placed on the headstones. Kristen had never known anyone who wasn’t Catholic. In grade school, high school, and even at the police academy, everyone she knew was a member of the Church. But she had seen
Schindler’s List
and she remembered how, at the end of the movie, the Jewish families put small rocks on Oskar Schindler’s grave. Her mother had said it was a Jewish custom, a way to remember and honor the dead. Kristen stopped next to the nearest headstone, which was a stone cross with two small rocks balancing on top of it. Hand-carved into it were the years 1885–1942 and the name Adonay Moises Rivera. She walked through the snow to the next tombstone and looked at the inscription: B
ELOVED
W
IFE AND
M
OTHER
Y
SAAC
R
IVERA
. Below the name, a cross had been carved into the stone, and on either side was etched a faint Star of David.

*   *   *

Gil sat across from George Gonzales. He held his notebook in his hand, but it was closed. Next to him on the floor was a covered file box with Gonzales’s name on it. In front of him, between his chair and Gonzales’s, was another box. This one was empty and uncovered. Since getting Kristen’s call, Gil had stopped trying to figure out an interview strategy. Joe had been wise enough not to say “I told you so” within Gil’s hearing afterward, but that didn’t stop Gil from feeling momentarily adrift. He started to doubt his motives in pursuing Abetya, wondering if all he had been after was old-fashioned revenge, but he stopped himself midguilt. There would be time for that later. Now his only priority was finding Hoffman before he moved on to his next target.

Kristen’s phone call had crystallized everything for Gil. He had all the pieces he needed. That meant he could do a soft interrogation. It was the method preferred by security firms when interviewing employees suspected of stealing. But it worked only when a strict time line of the crime could be established. It was simple enough: the interrogator presents all the evidence without asking the suspect for input or even allowing him to talk. The interrogator makes it clear that the investigation is wrapped up and that the person is completely guilty. This puts the suspect on the defensive and ready to listen.

“George, we are almost done,” Gil said. “We have all the information we need to make our case. We know that you, along with three accomplices, committed four home invasions within the last week. I can guarantee you, George, that our investigation will uncover all the details regarding these cases. In light of that, if you know anything about it, you should tell me now.”

Gil didn’t wait for Gonzales to respond. He was done playing games. “On December nineteenth, you, Tyler Hoffman, Guadalupe Escobar, and Johnny Rivera met at Rivera’s house to plan a series of home invasions.” He spoke matter-of-factly, with little intonation, as if he were reading the weather report on the radio. “At some point that day, you went to the store and, using a list that Ms. Escobar had written out, bought the following items.” Gil took the cover off the closed box and took out an evidence bag containing the handwritten murder list. He read out loud: “Beer, box cutters, duct tape, trash bags, pads, and Tampax.” Gil took the evidence bag and threw it in the empty box in front of him. It wasn’t the real list. That one was still down with Liz, in the Albuquerque crime lab, in an evidence locker where it would stay until the trial. This one had been written by Joe, who had forged it as best he could.

“On December twentieth you went to the house of James Price and Alexander Jacobson. Both men were tortured. Someone cut off Alexander Jacobson’s genitals and put them into James Price’s mouth. My guess is that was Tyler Hoffman, and he also was the one who carved the letter
T
into Alexander Jacobson’s chest.” Gil pulled an evidence bag containing the slightly bloody duct tape that had been used to tie down Dr. Price and looked at it a moment before throwing it into the empty box.

This duct tape had actually come from Gil’s desk drawer. Joe had dripped some ketchup over it then dried it using the hand dryer in the men’s restroom. Gil would never have used the real evidence in an interrogation. There was too much of a chance it would get damaged. Plus, the more people who handled the evidence, the more likely a defense lawyer could get it thrown out for contamination.

“At some point, Johnny Rivera was tied up and hung from the ceiling in the back bedroom, where he was tortured and then burned. We know it was him because genetic testing matched the body to someone of his ancestry.” Gil pulled out an evidence bag with some ash in it. He wasn’t sure what Joe intended the ash to be. In actuality, it was just some burned paper and white pieces of broken plastic. Gil thought maybe Joe had intended it to look like human flesh and bone. “On December twenty-first, you went to Stanley Ivanov’s house. Mr. Ivanov was tortured as well, and someone carved an
L
into his chest. I am assuming that was Ms. Escobar.” Without waiting for Gonzales to respond or defend himself, Gil continued, “On December twenty-second, you went to the Martins’ house, where you tied up Natalie and Nick Martin. You tried to get the keys for their Pontiac Tempest, but before you could, Natalie Martin was able to get away. As you were leaving, someone shot Nick Martin in the head. I am going to assume that was you,” Gil said, as he took out an evidence bag containing a generic car key—Joe’s, actually—and threw it in the box.

For the first time, Gonzales started to speak, “Wait that wasn’t—” Gil could see the glint of sweat on his forehead.

Gil continued, ignoring him. “That brings us to today, when you went to Brian Mazer’s house and beat him up. At some point, Brian Mazer was shot. And this time we know it was you who shot him because he identified you before he went into surgery, and we found the gun on you.” Gil reached into the box next to him and took a picture of the Browning he had printed out, throwing it into the box in front of him.

“Hold on—”

“Just as I was coming back here to talk with you, I got a text from my partner.” Gil took out his phone and read the text from Joe. “Brian Mazer pronounced dead at 1430 hours.” Gil held up the phone so Gonzales could see the text. “So that means you will be charged with murder.” Gil put his notebook into one of the boxes and started to pack them up.

“Wait … wait,” Gonzales said, trying to stop Gil from leaving. “I didn’t murder him. It was self-defense. I swear.”