When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (8 page)

“Get to the point, Tommy.”

“I was wondering, boss—did you go to that fire last night? The photographer said she saw you there.”

“First of all, Tommy, I’m not your boss anymore,” she said. “Second, you know I can’t talk to you about any emergency calls I go on.”

“So, you were there?” he said. “I heard they found some dead bodies.”

“No comment,” she said. “Now, can you close the door behind you so I can get a nap? I need to rest up for the
bizcochito
bake off later.”

*   *   *

From the Rio Grande Valley floor, which had only a scattering of piñon and juniper trees, to the top of Pajarito Mesa, which was covered in ponderosa pine and Gambel oak, there was almost a two-thousand-foot change in elevation. Los Alamos, built on top of Pajarito Mesa, looked out over the entire valley. As Gil followed the state highway to the mesa top, the road hugged white cliffs of soft rock made of tuff—a hardened volcanic ash into which Anasazi Indians were able to carve entire cliffside villages such as at Bandelier National Monument, just a few miles away. Where the cliffs of Pajarito Mesa met the flat mesa top, it looked like one giant step led up to the Jemez Mountains’ eastern slopes, where the highest peak reached more than 11,500 feet. On top of the mesa, where the trees became much taller and the snow a foot deeper, there was the city of Los Alamos, which surrounded the lab like a protective coat. The lab itself had been safely built miles away from the mesa edge, in the crook of the steep Jemez Mountain slopes to the west. As the town of Los Alamos grew up around the lab, it had nowhere to go but closer and closer to the top of the steep cliffs to the east. Now it looked like half the city would go tumbling down the mesa edge with the next strong gust of wind.

When Robert Oppenheimer was looking for a place to build the lab in 1944, he picked Los Alamos for several reasons. The main one being that access to the site could be easily controlled should the Germans or Japanese invade. Its location on the mesa meant there were only two roads in, both of which had cement guard stations to keep watch. State Highway 4 came down from the Jemez Mountains and into Los Alamos from the west, while State Highway 502 came into town from the valley below to the east. Oppenheimer knew what the Pueblo and Anasazi tribes knew before him: mesas make for good defensible positions.

Unlike the rest of Northern New Mexico, the houses in Los Alamos were not built in the flat-topped Santa Fe style. Instead, they were the type you might see back east, with pitched roofs and more than one story. And almost no houses were painted any shade of beige, but were white or yellow with neat trim. Many were ranch-style from the 1970s, when the lab had started to grow. The trees here were different from Santa Fe as well. The high elevation allowed for more precipitation and thus more variety. There were elm, tulip trees, and even some weeping willows with branches straining under a heavy layer of snow. All of the houses were well maintained; no foliage overhung the sidewalks. Every now and then, through a hole between houses, Gil could see down to tribal land of San Ildefonso Pueblo in the valley a thousand feet below. When it came to household income, Los Alamos County was the fifth wealthiest in the country, whereas almost a quarter of the people in San Ildefonso Pueblo lived below the poverty line.

Gil drove through a manned gate that looked more like a bunker, past a sign welcoming them to a place W
HERE
D
ISCOVERIES
A
RE
M
ADE.
The gates looked like they had been built in the 1950s, but Gil knew they were outfitted with state-of-the-art radiation detectors and surveillance equipment. The town likely was under twenty-four-hour watch by a host of satellites.

“They have you go through a guard post just to get into town?” Joe asked after being waved through by an armed officer. “We’re not even at the lab yet.”

“Welcome to Los Alamos,” Gil said. The town of Los Alamos within the county of Los Alamos was supposedly separate from Los Alamos National Laboratory, but with almost ten thousand employees, everyone within a twenty-mile radius—with the exception of Pueblo tribal members—was connected to the lab in one way or another.

They passed through another gate to get into Los Alamos lab proper, showing their ID and badges to another security guard. He directed them to the correct building and sent them off with a brisk wave.

“I think I should warn you that they do things differently up here,” Gil said.

“How so?” Joe asked.

Gil hesitated, not sure how to explain. The lab was one of the largest scientific centers ever created and one of only two places in the country where nuclear weapons were designed. By necessity, that made it one of the most secure places in the world. It also made everyone who worked there justifiably paranoid. “They are a federal organization,” Gil said. “They don’t really have to cooperate with us. They operate according to their own set of rules.”

“Are you saying these are the guys who come for you in the black helicopters?”

“No. I’m saying these are the guys who built the black helicopters and trained the pilots.”

“Meaning we need to shut up, smile, and don’t ask questions,” Joe said. “I know exactly how to do that. I was a soldier after all.”

They parked between a pair of dark SUVs, just two of more than a dozen in the lot, and went to the reception center—a steel-and-brick building that looked new and angular. A minute later, they were shaking hands with assistant security chief Chip Davis. He had close-cropped blond hair with some gray in it and was wearing a red golf shirt and khaki pants with an ironed-in crease. When he talked, Gil thought he heard the ghost of an East Texas accent.

“We’ve got an interview room all ready for you,” he said, leading them to a set of elevators that opened with a swipe of his security card. “We have notified Dr. Price’s immediate supervisor about the situation. She is being brought up to talk with you.”

They got out in a hallway lined with identical doors and went in the third one on the left. Inside was a wall of sound and camera equipment with a video monitor showing an interview room decorated like a funeral home: beige carpet, pastel blue walls, and several watercolor paintings of mountains.

Gil and Joe put their guns into a locker and went into the interview room with Davis, where all three of them took a seat. What Davis didn’t need to explain was his presence there. Gil and Joe would not be allowed to talk to any employee without a security member present.

Davis slid a green folder across the table to Gil, saying, “We have Dr. Price leaving his workstation at 5:34
P.M
. the day before yesterday and passing through all the checkpoints within a few minutes after that.” Gil flipped open the folder, which had a picture with a time stamp that showed Price getting into his car and another of him driving his car through town. “We have confirmation of him leaving the city limits at 5:47
P.M
.,” Davis said. “Do you have any reason to believe that this is related to his work?”

“No,” Gil said. “Not at this time. You’ve looked over our reports?”

“They have our reports?” Joe asked before Davis could answer.

“Your office sent them,” Davis said. “I read the incident report and some of the scene information. It doesn’t seem to involve us. But we’ll keep up-to-date on it.”

“I know you keep pretty close tabs on your employees,” Gil said. “There must have been some red flag when Dr. Price wasn’t at work yesterday.”

“According to our records, he had requested the day off,” Davis said.

“Do you know why?”

“No,” Davis said. “He wasn’t required to give a reason on the paperwork he filled out.”

Someone knocked, then opened the door a crack. Davis got up to speak in low tones with a person on the other side, then came to sit back down, saying, “Dr. Goodwin is ready. Before she comes in, just keep in mind you cannot ask in any way about her work. I’ll conduct the interview, and you will be allowed to ask questions at the end.” Another security officer escorted a small woman with blond hair into the interview room.

“Begin recording,” Davis said. “The date is December twenty-first. Present is myself, assistant security director Chip Davis; Santa Fe police detectives Gil Montoya and Joe Phillips, and Dr. Laura Goodwin. We are meeting to discuss any information regarding an incident involving Dr. Jim Price. Dr. Goodwin, could you state your full name and where you work?”

“I am Dr. Laura Goodwin,” she said without inflection. “I am group director for the Primary Structural Biosystems department at Los Alamos National Laboratory.”

“And you are Dr. Jim Price’s immediate supervisor?” Davis asked.

“Yes.”

“When did you last see him?’

“At a group meeting last week.” Her answer surprised Gil. He saw his co-workers several times a day. To not see someone in a week usually meant that person had gone on vacation.

“And how did he seem?” Davis asked.

“Fine.”

“Who in your lab would have had more contact with him over the last few days?”

“I wouldn’t know. My office is on a separate floor of the building.”

“Is he friendly with anyone in your department?”

“He is fairly new to our group. He transferred in a year ago from the Bio Tech department to fill an opening due to a retirement.”

“Did he have any problems with anyone in your department?”

“Not that I know of.”

Davis leaned back. “Detectives, do you have any more questions for Dr. Goodwin?”

“You hadn’t seen Dr. Price in a week?” Gil asked. “Was that normal?”

“Yes,” she said. “We each have our own labs and offices. And, as I said, I work on a different floor.”

“You didn’t run into him in the hallway or the break room?”

She raised her eyebrows at the last part of the sentence. “We don’t have break rooms,” she said.

“He wasn’t required to check in with you or anyone else?”

“We’re all PhDs,” she said, as if that explained it.

“Doctor, did anyone have an issue with Dr. Price being gay?”

“He was gay?”

“Yes,” Joe said slowly. “He lived with his partner.”

“I had no knowledge of it.”

Gil leaned back and thought. Normally, they would get much more information about a subject from his work environment. People spent as much time with their co-workers as they did with their family. The natural consequence of that was co-workers often had valuable information about the subject the family either didn’t know or didn’t want to reveal. Office mates sometimes knew when a person had problems at home or financial trouble. But the distance kept between Dr. Price and his co-workers meant there was little more Dr. Goodwin could tell them.

Gil and Joe had no other questions, so Davis told Dr. Goodwin thank you, and she was escorted out of the room.

“Well, that was a bust,” Joe said as soon as the door closed behind her. “The cashier at the liquor store knows more about me than she did about Price.”

“That’s pretty typical,” Davis said. “Most scientists are ultracompetitive. You have to remember that these are some of the smartest people in the entire country. They are used to being treated differently. And they aren’t very good at teamwork.” Gil nodded. He had heard rumors about lab employees poisoning co-workers or framing them for espionage, all over who got their name on a scientific research paper or credit with the Nobel Prize committee.

“Honestly,” Davis continued, “usually the cleaning crews and security guards are the only people the scientists might have had a social conversation with.”

“Did Dr. Price interact with any of them?” Gil asked.

“Maybe one of the security guards assigned to his unit,” Davis said. “Let me find out.”

Davis got on his walkie-talkie and stood off to the side of the room, while Joe tried to get Gil’s attention by tapping on the table. Gil glanced at him, and Joe mouthed the words, “What the hell?” Gil ignored him. Davis came back over to them, saying, “Dr. Price was friendly with the day-shift security officer Chad Saunders. He’s on his way here.”

Saunders came in a few minutes later wearing what seemed to be the lab security uniform: khaki pants and a golf shirt. He had ruler-straight buzzed hair and held himself with his center of gravity shifted slightly lower than normal. Gil had seen mixed martial arts fighters develop the same stance over years of training. The men sat down, and Davis gave the same introduction as earlier, before asking Saunders, “When did you last see Dr. Price?”

“I saw him around seventeen-thirty hours the day before yesterday,” Saunders said. “When I went to his office to drop off some Tupperware.”

“Tupperware?” Joe asked.

“He and Alex made chicken cordon bleu from a recipe I gave them, and he brought me some leftovers. I was just returning the Tupperware he brought the chicken in.”

“Alex?” Gil asked. “So you knew Dr. Price’s partner?”

“I had never met him,” Saunders said. “But Dr. Price talked about him a lot.”

“Do you know what their plans were for Christmas?” Gil asked

“They were just going to do what they always do—go to the
Farolito
Walk, then watch a couple of Pueblo dances and hang out with friends.”

“Did he mention any houseguests?” Gil asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“Had he been having any problems lately?” Joe asked.

“No,” he said. “His biggest concern was what to get Alex for Christmas.”

“Do you know why he took that day off yesterday?” Gil asked.

“He just wanted time to wrap presents,” Saunders said. “Plus, he was going to watch Alex perform. He plays the devil every year at Las Posadas. He’s the one that wears the red paint with the sheep horns.”

*   *   *

Lucy walked into the conference room where the chairs had been pushed against the walls, leaving a huge oblong table in the middle of the room. On the table were platters of cookies—fifty-two platters in all. That’s how many readers had baked cookies for the Best
Bizcochito
Bake Off. In almost every household in Northern New Mexico, the Christmas season officially started with the first batch of
bizcochitos
, which was how it got named the New Mexico state cookie. Lucy had heard many arguments about what made the perfect
bizcochito.
Some said it was anise; others said vanilla. Some said it depended on the lard used—it had to be Snowflake brand—while others insisted it was the right consistency of butter. The newspaper had been advertising the contest since Thanksgiving, telling readers it would determine “once and for all, what makes the perfect
bizcochito.
” The bakers were not allowed to be present while select members of the newspaper staff judged the cookies.