Accustomed to the Dark (11 page)

“I think that a woman named Sylvia Miller was the one who brought the gun into the pen for Lucero. Before that, she was bringing in dope for him, and delivering it to her brother, Ronny.”

Watching me, Mrs. Rudolph frowned. She looked down at the garbage spread out along the black plastic, at the small yellow bird lying on the grass.

Hector asked me, “Where are you getting all this?”

“You want me to go on?” I said.

He sighed. “Right,” he said. “Go on.”

“She's gone now, and I think she's gone for good. But a couple of weeks ago she bought herself a Colt Python and a twenty-two Beretta.”

A pause. “Yeah?”

“She also bought a used RV.”

“An RV,” he repeated.

“If she had it modified, she could've hidden both of them in there. Lucero and Martinez. Under the seats, under the floor.”

“And with a woman,” he said, “maybe some of the uniforms wouldn't search as carefully at the roadblocks.”

“Maybe.”

“You got the make and model?”

“No.”

“Okay. I'll get it from Motor Vehicles.”

“You may have a problem.”

“How's that?”

“She's tossed her driver's license. And her credit cards. I think that maybe she picked up new papers and a new name. The RV may be registered to that one.”

“This woman would know how to get new papers?”

“Lucero might.”

“Shit. Right. What else you got?”

I looked down at the phone number in my hand and for a brief moment I considered not giving it to him. But I was hours away from Denver. If that had been Sylvia who answered the phone, I had alerted her.

“A Denver phone number.” I read it to him. “I just called it and a woman answered. Could've been Sylvia, could've been someone else. Whoever it was, she hung up.”

“You already called?” His voice had tightened. “You check to see who owned it first?”

“No. Could be someone named Lyle.”

“Lyle. Terrific. What else?”

“A possibility.”

“These are
all
possibilities, sounds like.”

“Another one, then. Sylvia worked at the First National here. She was the head teller. She had access to the bank's money.”

A few feet away, Mrs. Rudolph started. She looked at me with her eyebrows lowered, her mouth set in disapproval.

“You're telling me,” Hector said, “that she dipped into the till?”

“It looks like she's burned all her bridges, Hector. She might have burned that one, too. She told them at the bank that she was going on vacation last Friday. Today's Monday. Maybe it's a slow day. Maybe they haven't checked the vaults. Maybe they should.”

“Okay, yeah, I'll make a call. That it?”

“I don't think she kept her personal records here at the house. She may have a safe deposit box somewhere. At her own bank, maybe at another one.”

“Okay. You're at the house now?”

“No,” I said. “I'm gone, Hector.”

“Hold on. I'm gonna call the Las Vegas cops, bring them in.”

“Give me fifteen minutes. The house'll still be here.”

“Shit.”

“Hector, I'm the one who found her. And I didn't have to call this in.”

“Shit, shit,
shit
.”

“Is that a yes?”

I heard him take a deep breath. “Fifteen minutes. Don't screw around with the evidence.”

“Thanks, Hector.”

“They must've given you a special plaque when you graduated from the Asshole Academy.”

“I keep it with the bowling trophies.”

“I know a better place for you to keep it.” He hung up.

I flipped the phone shut, slipped it back in my pocket.

“You had no reason to say that,” Mrs. Rudolph told me sternly. “About Sylvia and the money at the bank.”

“I may be wrong,” I admitted. “But like I told my friend, I think that Sylvia's left for good. Maybe all that money was a temptation.”

“But you don't know Sylvia. You
could
be wrong about everything you've said. It's all … conjecture, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it is. Mrs. Rudolph, I'm sorry, but I have to leave. The police'll be here any minute, and there are things I need to do. If you want to stay out of this, you should probably—”

“I'll wait for them.” She lifted her chin again. “Here. Someone has to look out for Sylvia.”

I nodded. “Why don't you give them these?” I handed over the receipt, the slip of paper, the license. I could get a copy of the license from Motor Vehicles.

She took them, looked down at them unhappily.

“Thank you for your help,” I said. “I apologize for getting you involved in all this.”

She took a breath. “I suppose,” she said sadly, and looked around her, at the house, the yard, the hedge of juniper, “that I've always been involved in all this.”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Rudolph.”

“Yes,” she said, and then once again she looked down at the garbage scattered across the black plastic bags.

I turned to leave.

“Mr. Croft?”

I turned back.

“Would you let me know what happens? If you find her. Would you call me?”

“I'll call you,” I said.

I drove back onto the Interstate, heading north again, toward Denver. I phoned the hospital and learned, once again, that there had been no change.

For a while, I kept my eye cocked toward the rearview mirror. After half an hour, when no one had stopped me, I let myself relax a bit. There had been a possibility that the state police would want to talk to me. Hector had evidently headed them off.

I passed the turnoffs for Watrous and Valmora. Horse and cattle country on either side of me now, bright green and empty.

I thought about Sylvia Miller.

“
She brings the gun into the penitentiary somehow,” I said. “She hands it over to Ronny. Ronny gives it to Lucero. On Saturday night, Lucero and Martinez organize the breakout. Outside, they dump the other four men—decoys, like Hernandez said—and they head for the R V, where Sylvia is waiting. They hide inside it. Sylvia drives them into town
.”

“
To Airport Road?” Rita asked me. The sunlight sparkled off the small cross at her throat. “To the house of Robert and Rosa Theissen? Or do you think they dropped her off first, at some motel, on some neutral ground?
”

“
They needed Sylvia,” I said. “She was their passport. Driving the van themselves would be too dangerous
.”

“
So. What did Sylvia do while Martinez and Lucero walked into Four-thirty-three Acequia Court? While they were in there, shooting Robert Theissen, then abusing and shooting Rosa?
”

“
Maybe she came inside and joined the fun
.”

Rita frowned
.

Sylvia Miller. A quiet, reserved woman who had taken care of her father until he died. Who worked at the same place for nearly twenty years. Who was responsible. Polite, well spoken.

Who looked like a librarian, Jimmy McBride had said.

But I had seen the inside of Sylvia Miller's house. I had seen that razor and brush carefully positioned on the bathroom counter, in memory of a dead, and probably brutal, father. I had seen her own room and its filth. If the condition of our surroundings reflects the condition of our souls, then Sylvia Miller had possessed a very troubled soul.

13

I
WAS APPROACHING
Raton, green mountains crowding the sky ahead, when the telephone began to chirp from the passenger seat. There had been three more calls since I left Las Vegas. Two of them were from other friends, with more condolences, more offers of help. The third was another hang-up.

I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Well, Sherlock, you really opened up a can of worms.” Hector.

“How so?”

“First off, that phone number you gave me.”

“Yeah?”

“Belongs to a guy named Lyle Monroe. Well,
belonged
is probably a better way to put it, because Lyle's dead. He was shot. The Denver cops found him in the basement of the house.”

“When was he shot?”

“Sometime today. Not more than an hour or two before they found him.”

“They were there. Lucero and Martinez. And Sylvia Miller. That was her on the phone.”

“Yeah. Prints all over the place, Lucero's and Martinez's. The Denver cops say it looks like they took off in a hurry. Probably right after your call. The cops were there fifteen minutes after I called them.”

He waited a few seconds for me to figure it out. I didn't need a few seconds. “I screwed up,” I said.

“Looks that way.”

I made him an offering: “If the cops up there can locate that RV, they can bring all three of them in.”

“That's the second thing. You were right about the bank.”

“Yeah? How much right was I?”

The prairie had fallen away behind me and now the Jeep and I were climbing up toward Raton Pass, into the pine trees. Big pine trees, ponderosas, looking primeval and indestructible, like they'd been here forever and would be here forever. They hadn't, of course, and they wouldn't.

Hector said, “Sixty-eight thousand dollars, they figure.”

“Pretty big money for a small town bank.”

“Friday, payday, they carry a surplus. I called the honcho at the bank right after I talked to you. Like you said, Monday was slow, no need to check the vaults. He called me back about a half an hour ago. Not a happy camper. But he sounded less angry about the money being gone than he was about Miller taking it. A huge betrayal of trust, is the way he put it.”

“The money was insured. His self-esteem wasn't.”

“Sixty-eight grand, that could take a pretty big chunk out of your self-esteem. Something else.”

“What?”

“Sylvia's personal account. She's been depositing some hefty checks lately. Hold on.” I heard the rattle of paper. “Five thousand last week, seven thousand the week before. A total of twenty-three thousand over the past month and a half.”

“Who signed the checks?”

“Different name every time. But they were all drawn on Denver banks.”

“Lucero's been running his money through her account.”

“Or maybe she's been selling Mary Kay.”

“Did she clean it out before she left?”

“What do you think?”

“What about a safety-deposit box?”

“She's got one, there at the bank, but the Staties need a court order to open it. Won't take them long to get it, I figure. Anyway, Lucero and Martinez have probably dumped the RV. That much cash on hand, they can buy themselves a couple new cars.”

“Maybe they already had one lined up.”

“Maybe. Looks like they thought this thing through. So when are you getting back here?”

“When Lucero and Martinez are on ice.”

“Come on, Josh. The FBI is working on this. We're working on it, down here. And now the Denver cops are working on it. You think you can get something that everybody else can't? Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to. Look, you're on your way to Denver?”

The road kept climbing and climbing, winding higher and higher into the trees as though it wouldn't stop until it had left them and pierced the faraway blue film of sky.

“Yeah.”

“Guy to see up there is a Sergeant Labbady. He's expecting you. Says he can't wait to talk to the hotshot private detective. Your reputation precedes you, it seems.”

“Okay, Hector. Thanks.”

“You know she's still the same? Rita?”

“I called a little while ago. And the hospital has my number.”

“All right. Listen. Keep in touch.”

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

I flipped the phone shut, tossed it to the seat.

A good cop, Hector. And a good man. Over the years he'd been a better friend than any private detective had a right to. Not too long ago I had shot a man. The man hadn't given me much choice, and he had survived, but for a while I had felt the weight of his life, and his death, on my soul. Hector had walked me through it.

I looked around. The forest was dark and thick, impenetrable. Not just pine trees now but oaks and elms. It was as though I had entered not only a different landscape but a different planet.

I remembered the first time I'd driven the Raton Pass. It was in September and I'd been coming from the other direction, riding down the long slide of the slope through the lush green forest when suddenly the flat brown prairie opened up like an enormous fan beneath me, stretching off to the edge of the world. I had been on my way to Santa Fe then. To live there this time, and not merely visit.

When I arrived in town after I got myself a room at the De Vargas Hotel, downtown, Hector had been one of the first people I'd spoken to.

“Croft, right. I got a phone call from my cousin,” he'd said.

I nodded. “Bernie said he'd call.”

“Sit down.”

I sat.

We were in Hector's old cubicle in the Violent Crimes Division. This was back when the police station was on Washington and Marcy, where the public library is now.

The man sitting on the far side of the worn wooden desk was squat and muscular. His jet black hair was short and curly and combed back from a blunt widow's peak. His dark, hooded eyes and his drooping mustache made him look a bit like the Frito Bandito. I decided not to mention this.

He wore a pulled-down blue silk tie at his opened collar, and a white-on-white striped cotton shirt that had been cut to display the clean line of powerful pectorals. The sleeves were rolled back, maybe to display the clean line of powerful forearms. Bodybuilding is hard work, painful and tedious, and sometimes the people who do it like to show off what they've accomplished.

“Bernie says you used to be a cop,” Hector said.