When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (17 page)

*   *   *

Lucy knew she could go home. There was really nothing for her to do at work, yet she stayed at her desk. She cleaned the computer monitor and keyboard and was now trying to hunt down a mouse pad. She was considering stealing one. She went into the newsroom, which was still empty, and started looking in drawers to find a mouse pad and any other office supplies she might need. The police scanner on top of her old desk jumped on and Dispatch called Pecos ambulance out to an Echo call, which meant it was bad. The dispatch system used codes to let the responding EMS crews know how serious the call was. Alpha meant it was minor. Delta meant it was major. Echo meant the patient was dead. She listened to the Pecos crew call into service. She wished there was a way for her to do a column about being an EMT. It would be a great excuse for her to constantly be out in the field. But that would never happen. Strict federal law would prohibit her from revealing anything about a medical call—except maybe in the case of a dead patient. Lucy wondered about that. Maybe there was a way for her to combine both funeral announcements and a column. She could do an obituary on a dead person then interview the EMT or police officer who’d responded. It could show how interconnected everyone was, even in death, that when a community member fell, there was someone there to catch him. And how a person who died impacted the person who found him without the two people ever knowing each other.

The more Lucy thought about the idea, the more she liked it. But she knew it would be a hard sell, both to her editor and to the Santa Fe County Fire Department. She would be walking a fine line, but it was a line she had been walking since she joined the fire department. She didn’t walk the line well—in fact, she stumbled often—but she always tried to do what was right by both sides. Maybe, just maybe, this column would be a way for her to finally merge both parts of her life. She might have to make some journalistic concessions that could be potentially problematic, such as keeping the name of the EMT or victim anonymous. She wasn’t sure it could be done, but if it worked, she might finally be free of the constant moral dilemma that was her life. As the saying went, a person cannot serve two masters. But she had been doing just that since she joined the department almost a year ago.

She would have to have a sample column to show both Lopez and the Santa Fe County fire chief. Luckily she had just run a call where she’d found a dead patient. For her sample column, she could do an obituary on Dr. Price and write about her own experience in the fire. Her sample column would never go in the paper, mainly because it was a conflict of interest, but it would show Lopez and the fire department what she was hoping to do.

That was enough to make her pick up the phone and call Los Alamos National Laboratory, hoping to talk to Dr. Price’s co-workers. She talked with two public information officers, explaining what she wanted. They both told her the same thing: she needed permission for an interview. There had to be forms signed and approvals made. One of the PIOs said he would get back to her.

She waited by the phone for a half hour. The longer she waited, the more convinced she became that the PIO would use the excuse of tomorrow being Christmas Eve to stonewall her. She was getting anxious. She called the hospital to check on her mom, but the charge nurse wouldn’t put her call through, saying her mother needed rest. She tried to call her brother, but it went to voice mail. What Lucy needed was to get out of the office. She could go over to the hospital to pick up the birth announcements from this week and e-mail the names to Gil. At the same time, she could introduce herself to the maternity ward staff, maybe bring them doughnuts. She needed to be in their good graces since she’d have to rely on them to pass out the baby notice forms to the new parents. The parents were not required to fill out the forms that gave the newspaper permission to print the names, but the vast majority did. In the past, it had been known to happen that if the nurses didn’t like the reporter doing the birth announcements, the forms didn’t get passed out. She was out the door a minute later.

*   *   *

Gil and Joe sat in their white marked SUV in the snow outside a two-story brown apartment building with a blanket hanging from one of the bottom windows in an effort to keep out the cold. They had already gone to knock on the Escobars’ door and that of the neighbors, but no one had answered. They now were waiting for a call back from the district attorney to see if they could enter the premises. Their evidence was no slam dunk, based as it was on Natalie Martin’s account of hearing a baby cry and some fairly loose ties to a birth announcement, but it might be enough for a warrant, given the severity of the crimes. In the meantime, Joe called Kristen Valdez, asking her to check on the whereabouts of the drug dealer whom Lupe Escobar had been arrested with. With that done, he used his phone to look through the e-mail they had been sent by the film’s assistant preproduction manager. He was checking a list of names of extras, cameramen, and work crew members against the police database, while keeping up a running commentary on the pictures the manager had attached. He nicknamed one man with a thick mustache “70s porno movie guy” and a tough-looking bald man “Mr. Clean Goes Ghetto.” Joe let out a yell when he found Alexander Jacobson’s last name.

“It looks like Jacobson was hired to do makeup,” Joe said. “Specifically, he was going to do the fake prison tattoos on the extras. Hey, it looks like there’s a link to photos of some of his practice work.” Up popped pictures of arms, backs, and necks etched with intricate fake prison tattoos.

“Jacobson really knows his stuff,” Joe said. “Some of these tattoos look totally real.” He handed his phone to Gil, who flipped through the pictures.

Gil stopped on one photo of a man’s arm. The predominant tattoo was a circle in blue ink, drawn like the Zia sun. Inside the circle was a large
S
with a smaller
n
and
m
nestled in its hooks. Something about it was bothering him.

“You staring so hard at…?” Joe asked.

“This tattoo,” Gil said. “It’s from the New Mexico Syndicate.”

The New Mexico Syndicate was the biggest and most violent prison gang in the state. It was a Hispanic and Native American group. The most respected inmates in the gang formed the “Panel,” who handed down orders to generals and lieutenants on the outside about what actions to take and whom to kill. They were mostly into the drug trade. When a gang member was released, he was expected to go back into his district to make sure the local drug dealer gave the gang a percentage of the cut. The syndicate was currently at war with the Barrio Azteca gang in southern New Mexico over the methamphetamine trade.

“But why is the tattoo making your face constipated?” Joe asked, looking at Gil’s expression.

“The inmates started the syndicate as a result of the state pen riot,” Gil said. “They said the riot proved that the only true protection in prison was to be part of a gang.”

Joe seemed to get his meaning. “So if the movie is trying to be true to life, then that tattoo needs to go,” he said. “What about—hold on. You think this tattoo is real?”

“It could be,” Gil said. “And it makes me wonder why a member of the New Mexico Syndicate would be working on a movie set.”

*   *   *

When Joe called, Kristen Valdez had been on her way back to the station, already looking forward to getting out of her uniform and off to the dances. She listened while he told her about their suspect, Guadalupe Escobar, and that they needed someone to check out a drug dealer’s house where she had been arrested smoking pot. For a change, Kristen had started to say no. She was just coming off her overnight shift, and there was no foreseeable sleep in her future. She was simply too tired. But before she could object, Joe said, “Just drive by and see if the drug dealer or, even better, Escobar is there. If he is, call us and we’ll do the heavy lifting.” She hesitated, which Joe heard, so he added, “I am bored out of my skull just sitting here in front of Escobar’s house waiting for her to show up. I would so much rather be shaking down her drug dealer. Please, please, please.”

He gave her the address, 1241 Camino Dulce, and said she was looking for Johnny Rivera, which Joe said sounded like a 1950s gangster name. Kristen got the impression she was supposed to laugh, but she didn’t. She was just too tired.

Now she was driving out toward the city limits, where the map book indicated she would find Camino Dulce. She pulled off Old Pecos Trail and onto a dirt road that curved toward the mesas to the north. The road itself didn’t have any signs giving its name, and there were no mailboxes or house numbers—or even any houses to see, for that matter. She passed two more nameless dirt turnoffs that could have been either roads or long driveways. She guessed by the map book that she needed to turn down the third dirt road on the left. She drove her patrol car over the washboard ruts, bouncing and jarring with every turn of her tires.

Two dogs—both medium-sized Labradors combined with at least two other breeds—came running out from some bushes, barking and chasing her car. She took the dogs as a sign that there was a house ahead.

She pulled up in front of an old mobile home and called into Dispatch, telling them her location, as was procedure. She got out of the car and pushed her gun belt down, which always rode up as she sat in the car. The two dogs had stopped barking and, instead, came up to her, tails wagging and tongues hanging out. She let them sniff her hand before they went trotting off toward an old flat-topped adobe house about sixty yards away. She went up three metal steps to the front door of the trailer and knocked.

As she waited for someone to answer, she looked around. From her perch slightly above the ground, she could see there was no car in either the driveway for the trailer or the dirt area nearer the house. Between the trailer and the house, she could see a few family graves, the tombstones sticking out of the snow.

She knocked again, but it was quiet. She could hear the wind but nothing else. She tried to look in the window next to her, but all she could see was the reflection of the sky behind her. She went down the steps and headed over to the house, and the dogs appeared again, to escort her. She looked off toward the mesas, which served as a backdrop for the family cemetery, just off the road. She noticed that some of the burial plots had foot-tall wrought-iron fences around them with plastic flowers intertwined between the bars. On other grave markers were placed a few egg-sized rocks.

She got to the house and knocked, not really expecting anyone to answer. She wasn’t disappointed. She waited another minute before she walked back out toward the road, the dogs keeping her company. She went to the mailbox and checked a few bills inside to make sure she had the right address. Then she got back into her cruiser and called Joe, telling him that no one was home.

*   *   *

Holding tight to a box of doughnuts and holding tighter to the coat wrapped around her, Lucy tried to make her way through the hospital parking lot without slipping on the ice. The sun had melted much of the snow from the storm last night, leaving only slippery patches behind. She walked past a Ford F-150 that looked just like Tommy Martinez’s truck and even had a
Capital Tribune
parking pass hanging from the rearview mirror. She dialed him as soon as she got inside.

“Are you at the hospital?” she asked, purposely not mentioning their last tension-filled conversation.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m in the ER. There was another home invasion last night. A family was taken hostage, and the dad got shot in the head.”

“That’s awful.”

“I know, and they have two little twin boys,” he said. “From my count, that makes three home invasions in the last few days.”

“Really?” Lucy asked.

“There was the one last night, one out in La Cieneguilla,” he said. “And the one you went to with the fire department.”

“Stop fishing, Tommy,” she said. “I’m serious.”

She hit the button for the elevator, trying to balance the box of doughnuts in one hand while taking off her coat and cradling the phone between her cheek and shoulder. She decided something had to give.

“I have to go,” she said, “or I’ll twist my neck off.”

She got out of the elevator at the maternity ward. In the waiting room were groups of people: stressed spouses, screaming siblings, sleeping grandparents. There was no way to tell if they were all related or waiting for the arrival of different babies. Over the loudspeaker came the chiming of a bell. Either an angel had just gotten its wings or a new baby had arrived in the world. Some greeting cards might say they were one and the same. When Lucy had first visited the hospital, she had no idea the chimes meant a baby had been born. She thought maybe the chimes were a stealthy yet relaxing way for administration to communicate with the security guards. One chime meant a stabbing in the ER. Two chimes meant a body dumped at the front door.

Lucy went over to the front desk and waved to a woman on the phone, making sure the nurse saw her leave the doughnuts on the countertop. Not that Lucy was bribing the nurses. She went over to a basket labeled
BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR NEWSPAPER
and took out a stack of forms, filled out by the proud parents. She waved good-bye to the nurse, who was still on the phone.

She went back into the waiting room and took a seat, wanting to go through the announcements right then and there, in case one of them might be of help to Gil. Next to her, a family was celebrating its newest addition. The grandfather was handing out plastic cups to everyone in the waiting room, while an uncle popped a bottle of champagne. The grandfather tried to give Lucy a cup. She started to say no, but the uncle was there, pouring champagne into her cup.

“Attention, everyone,” the grandfather said to the room. “Let’s all raise our glasses to my daughter and my beautiful new granddaughter, Emma Victoria Romero.” They all drank, except Lucy, who went as quickly as she could to the elevators, still holding her cup. She dumped it in the trash, not caring if the family saw her, only feeling the need to get it out of her hand.