Call Of The Witch (25 page)

“
I don’t know. I didn’t
even drive my van yesterday. I was wacked out on coke all day. I
don’t drive when I’m high.”

“
So you’re a real
law-abiding citizen now, eh?”

“
That’s what I’m
saying.”

“
Then how did the sock get
in your van?”

“
Why don’t you ask Raul?
He’s the one with the fetish for little girls. He likes to go
around stealing their panties and sniffing their little
crotches.”

“
YOU BASTARD!” Dominic
squalled. I put my arm out, but was unable to stop him from flying
across the table and latching onto Santana’s neck. Santana’s chair
fell over backwards. He went down with Spinelli on top. Both began
rolling on the floor, kicking, screaming and punching.

Carlos and I leapt from out seats and came
around the table from opposite ends. He grabbed Spinelli. I grabbed
Santana. The two were still clawing at each other’s necks when we
pulled them apart. I pointed to the door and yelled for Carlos to
get Spinelli the hell out of there.

“
I’m suing!” Santana
cried. “Police brutality! I’m fuckin` suing!”

It took a couple of minutes to get Santana to
sit in his chair and stay there long enough for me to get out into
the hall and have a word with Dominic. I caught up with him by the
water cooler. Carlos was with him, and was probably the reason
Dominic hadn’t gone busting up the place. He was still that upset.
I came up behind him and put my arm around his shoulder.

“
Dominic, tell me what the
hell just happened in there?”

He was staring at the ground and shaking his
head. His hands were still trembling. Sweat dripped from his
forehead and temples as though he had just run a marathon.

“
I’m sorry,” he said, and
I was happy to hear the conciliatory tone in his voice. “I don’t
know what came over me. It’s just that….” He broke off. I could
hear his voice cracking, but he kept it together. He took a deep
breath, steadied himself and continued. “He’s just so damn smug
about it, Tony. I just snapped. I know he knows what happened to
Kelly. You know I wanted to.…” I saw him clench his fists tightly.
“I swear I just wanted to beat the crap out of him.”

“
I know you did,” I said,
though I found it odd because Dominic is usually the level-headed
one in the group. I still had my arm around his shoulder. Pulling
him in closer, I could feel his entire body shaking.

“
Dominic, you have to let
it go. I wanted to beat the crap out of him too, but we can’t do
that. We can’t let it get personal.”

He shook his head and shrugged my arm off his
shoulder. “I know that. Look, I said I’m sorry. Can we move
on?”

“
We can, but you
understand I can’t let you back in there.”

“
I don’t want to go back
in there.”

“
All right then. Do you
want to go back to the garage and see how they’re doing with the
van? Maybe there’s a clue there we’re still missing.”

“
Yeah, I’ll do that.” He
wiped his cheeks with the backs of his hands, though there were no
tear tracks there that I could see. “You know there’s something
else I almost forgot to tell you.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Those cell towers I
mentioned before, the ones that carried the calls from Kelly’s
phone.”

“
Yes?”

“
Remember how I said they
were all over the place?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
Okay you see I did a
little more checking, and there’s a curious thing about
them.”

“
How do you
mean?”

“
They’re spread out all
right, but they’re also all located along major truck
routes.”

“
Interesting.”

“
Yeah, none of the towers
are off the beaten path. I’m not sure how significant that is,
though.”

“
Me neither, but it could
be helpful. Truck stops usually have restaurants nearby, and both
often have security cameras inside and out. We know we can isolate
the exact times of the calls. Maybe we can get our hands on some
video that’ll place Hector or his van at the right spot and at the
right time.”

Spinelli smiled at that. He pointed his
finger at me and gave it a jab. “I’m on it.”

He started away when I snatched his sleeve
and pulled him back. “Dominic.”

He turned back. “Yeah?”

“
How’s Ursula
doing?”

He gestured ambiguously. “Good, I guess. She
hasn’t thrown up today. Lilith’s been monitoring her blood
pressure. It’s still edging up a bit; not as much as we’d like to
see, but she’s resting comfortably.”

“
That’s great. So tell me,
have you two picked out a name yet?”

He smiled at that. “No. I asked Ursula if we
could name her Daddy’s little girl. She said she’d think about it.
Can you imagine that? I think she’d let me do it if I really wanted
to. She’s wonderful. Isn’t she?”

“
She is special,” I said.
I smiled back warmly and gave him a pat on the shoulder. He turned,
headed down the hall and disappeared around the corner.

I went back into the interrogation room.
Carlos was sitting across from Hector, his hands folded neatly on
the table in front of him.

“
Everything all right?” I
asked.

“
Fine,” he answered.
“We’re ready to start recording whenever you are.”

“
Ready?” I looked up in
the corner at the camera. The red light was off.

“
We had some technical
difficulties.”

“
Oh?”

“
With the recording
equipment.”

“
I see.”

“
Bullshit!” Hector
protested. He looked up at me in a perpetual sneer; his right eye
now swollen shut, his bruised cheek a brilliant strawberry red.
“That camera caught your man attacking me. I want a copy of the
tape. I’m gonna sue you!”

“
Sure,” said Carlos. “You
mean the tape of you falling down the stairwell on your way to
booking?”

“
Stairwell? I didn’t…. Oh,
I get it. This is how you’re gonna play it, huh? You’re gonna
pretend like I fell down the stairs?”

“
Pretend?” said Carlos. He
looked up at me and laughed. “He thinks we’re going to
pretend.”

I smiled back. “Are you talking about the
camera in stairwell-B that only sees the bottom of the stairs?”

“
Yeah, that’s
it.”

I said to Hector. “He won’t be pretending.
Just say the word and we’ll get you that footage.”

I watched the sneer on Hector’s face reduce
to a crooked grin. He rolled his head back, stretched the kink out
of his neck and shoulders and then settled in against the back of
his seat. “I see how this works,” he said. “You know I don’t have
to say nothing.”

“
That’s right,” I told
him. “You don’t have to say anything and we don’t have to let you
go.”

“
You said I’m not under
arrest.”

“
Did I?” I looked to
Carlos. “You want to tell him?”

“
No. Wait.” Hector slid
forward to the edge of his seat. “I’ll answer your questions. Go
ahead and ask me.”

I glanced into the two-way mirror and gave a
nod. The light on the camera up in the corner of the room ticked
on. “All right, then, tell us what you know about Kelly Brewbaker’s
kidnapping.”

“
I don’t know
nothing.”

Carlos said, “Let me have him, Tony, just
five minutes outside.”

Hector Santana put his hands up and spread
them in a defensive gesture as far as his cuffs and chain would
allow. “No! I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know nothing` `bout
that little girl. But I will tell you that someone else had my van
all day yesterday. And I know for a fact that when I gave it to
him, that key and that sock wasn’t in there. I know because I just
had the van vacuumed out at the car wash.”

“
Who had your van
yesterday?”

“
Raul
Martinez.”

“
Do you know where we can
find him now?”

He looked up at the clock on the wall and
gave a passive shrug. “It’s 3:30. Happy hour at Mike’s.”

“
Mike’s Pub?”

“
That’s right. If he ain’t
there, it’s only `cause he’s dead or Mike’s is closed.”

I looked at Carlos. He looked at me. That’s
all we needed to hear. I motioned to the mirror for one of the
officers outside the room to come in. Officer Burke entered.

“
Bruce,” I said. “Mister
Santana’s been read his rights already. Will you take him down to
booking and process him?”

“
Charging him with
kidnapping?”

“
Yeah, we’ll start with
that.”

“
Hey!” said Hector. “I
thought you weren’t going to arrest me.”

“
Who said
that?”

“
You did.”

I looked at Carlos again. “Did I say
that?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t hear you say
that.”

We headed out, and for the entire walk down
the hall, we could hear Hector cussing our names. I elbowed Carlos
in the side. “Feel better now?”

“
You know I do,” he said.
“Strangely, I feel much better now.”

We arrived at Mike’s Pub around three-thirty.
It seemed a lot busier than one might expect on a mid-Sunday
afternoon. I counted a dozen people in all: six at the bar, two at
a booth in the corner by the jukebox, and four more playing pool on
the two tables closest to the bandstand. No sign of Raul Martinez
anywhere.

We stood at the door just long enough for our
eyes to adjust to the dim light before heading over to the bar. I
took my ID and badge out and showed it to the barkeep.”

“
Remember us?” I
said.

He acknowledged me with barely a glance. “I
remember you,” he said, and he continued wiping a spot on the bar
that didn’t seem to need it.

“
We’re looking for Raul
Martinez.”

He shook his head faintly. “Haven’t seen
him.”

“
You mean
today?”

“
Today. Tomorrow.
Yesterday. Take your pick.”

Carlos said, “That’s not a very helpful
attitude. You know we can bust you for having that sawed-off
shotgun behind the bar there.”

He looked at Carlos with eyelids squeezed to
dime-sized slits. “If you’re gonna bust me, bust me. Otherwise,
take a hike. You’re bad for business.”

He tossed the bar rag over his shoulder and
walked away. A couple of stools down, a burly-looking guy in a
leather vest with cut-off sleeves cleared his throat and coughed
into his fist. Carlos and I looked over at him. I gave the guy a
nod and mouthed the word, “Hey.”

He glanced down at a beer bottle on the bar,
in front of an empty seat to his right. Carlos was standing beside
me, furthest from the man, but he saw it too. He leaned in and
whispered. “He’s gonna go for the bottle, Tony.”

“
No,” I said under my
breath. “He’s telling us that someone’s sitting there.”

I looked at the bottle and then back at the
man. He flexed his tattooed arm and hiked his thumb up over his
shoulder. I said to Carlos. “Raul’s in the men’s room. Come
on.”

We headed toward the back of the building
where Carlos literally bumped chests with Raul as he came out of
the rest room.

“
Whoa!” he said. “What’s
your hurry, Martinez?”

Raul put his hand out to push Carlos away.
Carlos grabbed his wrist and gave it a twist, forcing Raul onto his
knees. I came around him, grabbed his other wrist and cuffed them
both behind his back.

“
What the fuck!” He cried.
“You cops got nothing on me. I told you I don’t know nothing `bout
that little bitch’s disappearance.”

“
I think you do,” Carlos
said. “But right now we’re arresting you on charges of possessing
and distributing kiddy porn.”

“
Kiddy porn? No fuckin`
way asshole. Let’s see you prove that shit’s mine.”

“
Oh? Are you telling us
that’s your mother’s computer we found down in your
basement.”

“
Hey, it’s her house.
Possession’s nine-tenths of the law, ain’t it?”

“
You sick bastard.” Carlos
wrapped his hand around the back of Raul’s collar and jerked him to
his feet. “Let me take him around back, Tony. I’ll get him to tell
us what we want to know.”

“
No, Carlos,” I said, as
much as I liked the idea. “The last thing we need is another
suspect with bruises on his face. The Captain might start asking
questions.”

“
A couple of kidney
punches, man. That’ll do it. It won’t leave a mark.”

I honestly thought he was kidding. I mean,
that’s not Carlos. He doesn’t man-handle suspects to get them to
cooperate. Usually. But after the episode between him and Raul out
back the last time, I didn’t want to take the chance. We hauled him
outside, tossed him in the back seat of the cruiser and took him
downtown.

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in
Interrogation Room One. This time Spinelli was not in attendance.
Carlos asked if he could take the lead in the questioning. I
figured he might as well. After all, it was technically his collar.
He started by tossing a photo of Kelly Brewbaker down on the table
in front of Martinez.

“
Where is she?”