The Burnt House (32 page)

Raymond Holmes

It would be appealing to confront Holmes right now, but it would be more profitable to get a partial DNA match. Then they could challenge Holmes with the indisputable forensic information and see how he’d react.

Of course the DNA identification was predicated on Martin Hernandez being Manny Hernandez’s biological father.

Decker’s thoughts pounced upon another idea. He wondered if Holmes had ever been fingerprinted as Ramon Hernandez. If Holmes had been in the prison system in the last fifteen years under any name, his fingerprints would be in AFIS. But since he’d been a model citizen in San Jose for twenty-two years, it was unlikely.

Decker pondered other alternatives. If Holmes had ever been in the military, even under a different name, his prints would be on file with the army. His mind was sprinting past a panoply of ideas when Kruse’s voice interrupted him. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to talk to Martin Hernandez?”

“That would be terrific.”

“You stay right here, sir. I’ll bring in the Dog Whisperer.”

L
ED BY CURLY
on one side and Kruse on the other, Martin Hernandez, in his jail jumpsuit, looked like a walking orange. His girth appeared to measure half his height and his face was grizzled and gray. His gait was a slow shuffle due to age and leg chains. They placed him down on one of the bolted chairs and cuffed an ankle to a table leg. He sat back, crossing his arms in front, his buttocks spread over the seat.

Kruse said, “You gonna behave, Martin, or do I have to put on the handcuffs?”

“I’m gonna be a free man, sir.” His voice was high and raspy. When he smiled, there wasn’t much tooth matter left—a couple of pegs in front and a couple of molars in back. “I’m not gonna do nothing to stop that from happening.”

“Now, that’s thinking smart.”

“Can I trouble you for a smoke, sir?”

Kruse looked at Decker. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Thanks,” Hernandez said to Kruse.

“Thank him,” Kruse said of Decker. “Now, I’m gonna take you at your word, Martin. I’m gonna figure you to behave properly. Am I wrong for thinking that?”

“Not wrong at all, Officer Kruse.”

“This man wants to ask you a few questions. You answer them honestly and to the best of your ability, okay?”

“Okay, I can do that.” When Hernandez spoke, he forced out sound from his throat. “A smoke will help. Maybe a cup of coffee, too. My throat.” He cleared phlegm. “It gets dry when I talk.”

“So why are you smoking, Martin?”

“Man’s gotta have something to do here, sir.”

Kruse laughed again. “That’s true. Okay, I’ll be back with your smoke and coffee.”

Decker regarded the con. A multilane highway of scars ran across the man’s neck, all of them keloid bumpy and shiny white. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had gone wrong with the man’s vocal cords.

Curly told Kruse, “I’m going to get back to my beat. Call me when you need me to take him back.”

The two men walked out together, leaving Decker alone with Hernandez. The man’s face, though speckled with liver spots, had few wrinkles. Several small open sores had rooted at his left temple, looking nasty enough to be the big C. His hands were worn and callused, his nails were yellow and thick and cut way below the tips of his fingers. He was missing part of his right thumb.

“When are you getting out?” Decker asked him.

“Two years, three months, eighteen days, and about sixteen hours. I served my time. I deserve to be a free man. That’s what the law says.”

“Are you going to continue with your work with the dogs?”

“Zactly right.” Hernandez’s head bobbed up and down. “We understand each other. Those dogs that we got…they were one step from the green room, if you know what I mean.”

The green room was the gas chamber. “You saved them from death.”

“Zactly right. The program over here…it was their last chance. We train them so they can be adopted out.”

“That’s nice.”

“It was their last chance…I was.”

“You identify with the dogs?”

“Zactly right. Everybody deserves a second chance. They’re not bad dogs. No one understands them. That’s the problem. They bite ’cause they’re scared. They bite ’cause they’re lonely. They bite ’cause they don’t got anyone who loves them.”

“They also bite because they’re not trained and disciplined.”

Hernandez smacked his lips together. “But there’s discipline and then there’s just plain meanness. Yeah, you gotta be sure of yourself if you work with untrained dogs, but you don’t crack a stick over the dog’s head to just get him to listen.”

“But the animals have to be taught to respect your authority.”

“Zactly right. It’s a good lesson in life…to learn to respect authority. It took me a while ’cause I didn’t have anyone to teach me properly.”

“You had the stick cracked over your head, Mr. Hernandez?”

“Zactly right. My daddy was a mean drunk and he didn’t raise me right. If he’d showed a little mercy and a little less stick cracking, I would have been a better person.”

“Do you have children, Mr. Hernandez?”

“I do.”

“Boys? Girls? Both?”

“Boys.”

“And you raised them with a little mercy?”

“I raised them not to be fools.”

“Were you a stick cracker?”

“I wasn’t much of anything because I’ve been incarcerated for a long time. It’s going on forty-three years. Most of the raising went to my wife, God rest her soul. I miss that woman. She did good, considering what she had.”

Kruse returned with two cups of coffee. He placed a cigarette between his lips. After he lit it, he gave it to Hernandez.

The con took a deep drag. “Ah, this is living.”

“You smoke it slow, Martin, you’re only gonna get one.”

“I will, Officer Kruse, I’ll do just that.”

Kruse said to Decker, “There’s someone monitoring the cameras twenty-four/seven, so you shouldn’t have any problems. Just look up at the videos and call when you need us to take him back.”

“Thanks for all your help.”

“No problem.” Kruse smiled. “Be good, Martin, you don’t have that much longer to go.”

“I know that, sir, I think about that every day.” After Kruse left, he said, “That’s the truth. I do think about it every day.”

“I’m sure you do.” Decker sipped the coffee: as thick as mud and bitter.

“It ain’t easy for an old man to be here,” Martin complained. “The cold in the winter goes right through to the bones. My lungs aren’t too good. I always worry about pneumonia, you know. Then sometimes, I’m glad to be sick because the infirmary is better than the cell block, know what I’m saying?”

“I get it,” Decker answered. “Where are you going to live when you get out?”

“Can’t go back to Santa Fe.” He took another puff on his cigarette. “I’ll get skinned alive. I dropped two people in a robbery. I suppose you know that.”

Decker nodded.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen. But you get all junked up on drugs and adrenaline and someone moves when they ain’t supposed. I had nothing against those two boys, but things just happen when you’re junked up, know what I’m saying?”

“So where are you going to go live when you get out?”

“I’ll go down south—Las Cruces, Silver City, Carlsbad. Places are hotter in the summer but not so cold in the winter.”

“Do you know anyone in those cities?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Don’t know a soul.” He finished off his coffee. “That’s okay. All I need is a good place for the dogs to run around and a nearby watering hole. I’m a friendly sort. I can make friends.”

“You seem like a friendly sort.” Decker watched the old man smile at the compliment. “Have you kept in contact with anyone on the outside?”

“I know a few people, sure.”

Decker saw his eyes narrow slightly, and switched topics. “Your wife used to visit you a lot?”

“Three, four times a week. I told you. She was a good woman.”

“Did she bring the boys in to visit?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you still in contact with your sons, Martin? Do they ever visit you?”

The old man shrugged and smoked. “Once or twice, mebbe.”

The man was a smooth liar, not that Decker expected anything different. But even cons have different capacities for prevarication. Decker waited until Hernandez’s cigarette was down to the butt. Then he looked up at the camera and asked for another smoke.

“That’s kind of you, sir,” Hernandez said.

“I can be a kind person.”

A few minutes later a uniformed guard came in with a lit cigarette. Decker took the smoke and when Hernandez reached over to grab it, Decker pulled his arm back, out of the old man’s reach.

“Your boys ever come visit you?” Hernandez was silent, his eyes on the trail of nicotine smoke. Decker smiled and took a puff on the cigarette. “Your boys ever come visit you?”

Hernandez shrugged. “Guess you checked the logbook.”

“Guess I did.”

“Then you know. So why are you asking me?”

“Because Raymond Holmes isn’t your son’s baptized name.”

“Nope, he changed it.”

“Why did he change it?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“I just might do that. When did he change it?”

“A long time ago. You can ask him that, too.”

“Give me a rough idea when. Twenty years ago? Thirty years ago?”

“I think he changed it ’bout thirty years ago…right after it happened.”

“After what happened?”

Hernandez stared into space. Decker took another puff. “You’re wasting precious tobacco.”

“Well, I don’t know zactly what happened, sir. I wasn’t there.”

“What happened according to Raymond Holmes, your son?”

“Yeah, Ray’s my son.”

“You might as well tell me what happened, Martin. You can tell me Ray’s side of the story.”

“What do you need with my side? Just ask Ray.”

“Ray won’t be as…credible. You’re more credible, Martin. You tell me what he told you.” The old man reached for the cigarette. Decker said, “First you tell me what happened.”

“He didn’t tell me much, sir, and that’s the honest truth. All he said is that it wasn’t supposed to happen. But you know how it is. When you get junked up on drugs and adrenaline, things just happen that weren’t supposed to happen.”

Decker nodded. “I see.” He gave the con the cigarette. “Tell me what he told you. I can’t use what you tell me at a trial because it’s hearsay. Do you know what that is?”

Hernandez took a deep drag on the smoke and didn’t answer.

“I heard what happened from you, Martin, not from Ray. It’s hearsay. That means whatever you tell me, I can’t use it directly against Ray because I didn’t hear it directly from Ray. So
you
tell me what he told you, okay?”

“You’re confusing me. I don’t want to get him into trouble.”

“Martin, the boy is already in trouble. Big trouble. If it wasn’t supposed to happen, tell me what went down.”

“They were arguing.”

“Who are they?”

“Y’know…Beth and Ray were arguing.”

“About what?”

“What do people always argue about?”

“Money?”

“Zactly right. Ray kept telling Beth that it was just a loan and that he was gonna give it back. But she was real mad. She wouldn’t listen. She said if he didn’t pay it back, she was gonna tell on him.”

“Where did Ray get the money from?”

For the first time, Hernandez looked genuinely confused. “I don’t know. All I know is Ray said he borrowed some money and he was gonna pay it back but that damn girl wouldn’t listen.”

“All right. They were arguing. Then what happened?”

“It was all her fault. He was gonna pay it back.”

“So what happened next?”

“I don’t know zactly what happened next, sir. All I know is that Ray said it was an accident. That it wasn’t supposed to happen. But once it did, he knew he was in deep shit.” Hernandez furrowed his brow, conjuring up the memory. “He was planning on paying it back, but Beth was gonna rat him out. It was that damn girl’s fault.”

Decker said, “She was yelling and screaming at Ray, wasn’t she?”

“She was. He didn’t mean to hurt her. He just wanted to shut her up.”

“He did more than just
hurt
her, did he?”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I know that, but it happened anyway.”

Hernandez sighed. “He was gonna pay it back. She just wasn’t giving him a chance.”

“What happened after he hurt her…or should we say after he killed her?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Martin said defiantly. “I’m getting out in a little over two years whether I cooperate or not. You can’t stop me. That’s the law!”

“You’re absolutely right, Martin, I can’t stop you. It is the law.” Decker took in the con’s eyes. “But you know if I put in a good word for you, there is that chance that maybe you can get out sooner.”

That gave Hernandez pause—for about two seconds. He shrugged. “Well, the damn boy’s in trouble anyway. I suppose what I have to say ain’t gonna help him. But it probably won’t hurt him much, either.”

“Exactly right,” Decker said.

Hernandez leaned over, his breath strong with tobacco, his voice an annoying scratch. “It weren’t supposed to happen. It just did.”

“I realize that.”

“The boy was trying to make a clean start! He was trying to do good, to erase the slate and start from the beginning. That’s why he needed the money. To get himself back on his feet. He told me he really was gonna pay it back. The girl was just too damn impatient. She fucked everything up.”

Decker’s head started spinning. Make a clean start? Get himself back on his feet? “Was Manny in jail?”

“No, no.” Now Hernandez was very confused. “No, Manny was never in jail.”

And then he realized what Hernandez was saying.

Manny Hernandez was never in jail.

Belize Hernandez was a different story.

O
VER THE PHONE,
Decker said, “Yes, I still want DNA, but right now we need his fingerprints.”

Over the phone, Oliver replied, “I got to find a surface then. Any suggestions?”

“He’s a contractor. He works with grease and mud. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is getting him to touch something. He has a recycling bin for scrap metal, a recycling bin for wood, and a final bin for broken glass. I’d love to take something, but it’s clear that Ray has no intention of throwing the stuff away. I can’t take a sliver from the ground without asking him. And once I ask, there’s a chance that he’ll get suspicious.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“We can just wait for the DNA,” Oliver said. “I have his discarded coffee cup bagged.”

“Trouble is we don’t have Belize’s DNA on file, just his prints. Surely there’s some kind of garbage over there that you can pocket that might pick up something.”

“Nothing with a clear print, Loo, and that’s a sad fact.”

“What’s he doing now, Scott?”

“I don’t know. I left the house about twenty minutes ago.”

“No, I mean what specific work is he doing on the house?”

“Oh…I think they’re tiling…” Oliver hit his forehead. “I’m an idiot. I’ll go back and ask him for a sample of the kitchen tile to show to my wife.”

“See how easy that was?” Decker said. “Is the tile surface polished or rough?”

“It’s polished. We couldn’t ask for a better surface for latents, except maybe mirror. I wonder if I can ask him if I can bring back a sample of the mirror or do you think that might tweak his antenna?”

“Let’s start with the tile. Like you said, it’s a great surface. When are you coming back to L.A.?”

“I’ll be in the station house between five or six, depending on traffic. What about you?”

“I should be back by then. Right now I’m working with the D.A.’s office, trying to shave some time off the old man’s sentence if he testifies against his son.”

“That’s going to make you real popular with the locals.”

“The old man is going to be released in a couple of years regardless of what anyone does. It’s worth it for me to let Martin go a couple of years early if I can put Beth Devargas’s killer behind bars.” Decker adjusted the headset on his phone. In New Mexico, it was illegal to drive and talk unless it was hands-free. With a seventy-five-mile-per-hour speed limit on some of the interstates, the law made sense. “I’m on my way to the courthouse to talk to some of the people. What’s Marge doing?”

“Trying to figure out where Raymond Holmes lived before coming to San Jose. We got an eight-year gap to fill in.”

“Once we get a fingerprint match, we won’t have any trouble pulling warrants for his paper trail. Hopefully, that’ll bust this case wide, wide open.”

IT WAS AFTER
six by the time Decker pulled in to the station house’s parking lot. He was tired and would be famished as soon as his stomach settled down from the roller-coaster air ride over the Rockies. There were a few souls still doing paperwork in the squad room, but Marge and Oliver were nowhere in sight. He inserted the key into the lock on his office door, when he heard a voice behind him.

“Lieutenant?”

Since Decker was hungry and grumpy and made no attempt to hide it, he figured the brave soul approaching him must have had some breaking news. Anything less would incur his wrath. He turned around and managed a tight smile. “Detective Bontemps. I take it you need to talk to me?”

“I do, sir, and it’s important. I really think you’ll want to hear this.”

“Not a problem at all.” Opening the door, Decker took the key out and turned on the lights. On his desk were a brown bag, a huge plate of chocolate-chip cookies, and a note from Rina.

He peered inside the bag—a roast-beef sandwich with coleslaw and an apple. He brightened considerably as soon as he unwrapped the sandwich. “Sorry to eat in front of you, but I’m starved.”

“Oh, go right ahead, sir.”

“Have a cookie. My daughter baked them.”

“I’ll eat anything home baked. Can I get you some coffee? I’m getting one for myself. Gotta have coffee with cookies.”

“Actually, coffee would be great.” He’d finished half the sandwich when she came back. “Thank you, Wanda, have a seat. What’s up?”

Bontemps’s face was flushed with the excitement that came from discovery. Her hair had been recently cut, exposing a full face softened by natural-looking makeup. Her skin was mocha cream, her lips accentuated by pink lip gloss. She wore a blue blouse, a glen-plaid jacket over chocolate slacks, and oxfords covered her feet. “Lee Wang and I must have canvassed that condo complex three different times. Today the good old Lord was with us. We found someone—someone we interviewed before—but we asked our questions a little different and we got different answers.”

Decker’s head had been so immersed in the Hernandez boys that he had to think a moment about the assignment. Condo-complex canvassing: the Roseanne Dresden case. They had been looking and looking for any witnesses who might have seen Roseanne coming in or going out on the morning of the plane crash. He put his sandwich down and took out his notepad. “Good. Go on.”

Wanda checked her own notes. Her hands were shaking. “The woman’s name is Hermione Cutlass and she’s a nurse. This time we phrased the question differently. We asked, ‘Do you remember where you were the morning of the crash?’ instead of ‘Do you remember seeing Roseanne the morning of the crash?’ We figured if anyone had seen Roseanne that morning, we would have heard about it by now.”

“Okay.”

“So this is what we got.” Wanda cleared her throat. “On the morning of the crash, Hermione Cutlass was scheduled to work the seven
A.M.
-to-three-
P.M.
shift at St. Luke’s in Simi Valley, but she was running late. Her daughter was home sick with the flu, and Hermione had to wait until a babysitter came so she could go off to work. By the time the sitter came, she was real late.”

“What time was that?”

“She thinks it was around seven, when she shoulda been at work already. She remembered running to her car, running through the parking area, not really paying too much attention to what was going on other than getting to her car, when all of a sudden a black Beemer pulled out in front of her and almost crashed into her. She said she had
to jump back to avoid getting hit. She was screaming nasty words at the driver, but she was talking to the air. The car just bolted the hell out of the lot. She was so angry that she wrote down the license plate…”

“She has the
license
number?”

“She said she planned to report it to the condo board when she got back home.”

Decker’s heart started whacking in his chest. “So tell me it was Roseanne’s BMW.”

“Yes, it was, but she didn’t know it at the time.”

“Good Lord!” He smiled genuinely. “And she’s just remembering the car
now
?”

“Y’see, the first time we asked her questions, we asked if she
saw
Roseanne that morning. The answer to that question was no.
This
time we asked her what she
did
that morning.”

“Recalling her morning of the crash jogged her memory about the car.”

“Yes, but she didn’t know it was Roseanne’s car. She just wrote down the license number, worked a long day, and then forgot about the whole thing, especially once she
heard
about the airplane crash. That kinda took the wind out of her sails to be mad at anyone. All she could think about was poor Roseanne.”

“Okay, okay, give me a minute to digest this.” He closed his eyes and opened them. “Does she remember what time the Beemer almost crashed into her?”

“Sometime after seven but before eight.”

“Before flight 1324 crashed.”

“Definitely before the crash, because she heard about the accident at the hospital.” Wanda took in a deep breath and let it out. “When she got home that night, it was all over the condo that Roseanne had died. Everyone felt absolutely sick about it.”

“Did she know Roseanne?”

“Casual acquaintance. You know, they saw each other in the Jacuzzi or the gym or the laundry room. It’s always awful when someone you know dies unnaturally.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I asked her, ‘Are you sure you’re remembering the correct day?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely, positively.’ And then she told me the story. When she got to the part about the car being a BMW, I was holding my breath. I asked her to describe the car and that’s when she remembered she wrote down the license plate.”

“And she still had the number?”

“In the glove compartment, right where she left it. When I asked to see it, she asked me why. I told her I’d tell her as soon as I got off the phone with DMV. When the license plate matched, I told her that Roseanne drove a black BMW. The poor girl just about fainted. She started crying and carrying on, because she told me that it was probably Roseanne rushing to make her flight. And she said some real nasty things to the driver. In some respects, she said she wished the car would have crashed into her because then Roseanne would have stopped and missed the plane.”

Decker nodded. “If it was closer to seven, maybe it was Roseanne rushing off to work. If it was closer to eight, there is no way Roseanne could have made the doomed flight. Can she narrow down the time a little more?”

“No, sir, I tried that. She doesn’t remember beyond sometime between seven and eight.” Wanda raised her eyebrows and licked her pink glossy lips. “And we got one other major problem. It was Roseanne’s car; that is definite because the number she wrote down matched Roseanne’s plates.”

“But she couldn’t see who was driving the car.”

Wanda nodded. “It happened real fast. She was in a rush and she was flustered. And the Beemer was in a rush.”

“Could she tell you
something
about the driver?”

“She said it happened so fast, she couldn’t even see if it was a man or a woman. She thinks there was only one person in the car, but she won’t even swear to that.”

EVEN WITH JUST
a skeleton crew in the squad room, Hannah’s batch of forty-eight cookies was gone. Decker had resorted to picking the crumbs left behind.

“Those were good,” Wanda Bontemps said. “Ask your daughter for the recipe.”

“I think I’m in sugar narcosis,” Marge said. “Can I adopt your daughter?”

“You’ve never seen her before a trig test.”

“I’ve seen my own daughter before a particle-physics test. She can’t be any worse.” Marge’s cell phone rang. She looked at her watch. “Speaking of which…It’s eight o’clock, it must be Vega. Excuse me for a moment.”

Oliver said, “I’m making more coffee. Any takers?”

Four hands went up. Marge covered the cell’s mouthpiece and shouted, “Count me in.” She talked to her daughter for a moment longer then rejoined the group. They had decided to talk in the squad room because the common tables provided more space than Decker’s office. “What did I miss?”

“As it stands right now, the Loo was just saying that it’s unlikely that a judge is going to issue a warrant for the Beemer unless we can implicate the car in a crime.”

“We’re out of luck.” Oliver had returned, balancing coffee cups, cream, and sweetener. “There are no outstanding wants or warrants on the car. Ivan may be a murderer, but he obeys traffic signs.”

Wanda helped him with the coffee. “Are we still thinking about Ivan as his wife’s murderer?”

“What do you mean?”

The newest detective said, “If we get a match for Raymond Holmes as Belize Hernandez, isn’t it likely that Hernandez was Roseanne’s killer? He did it once to his sister-in-law. Why couldn’t he do it again?”

Oliver said, “He could, but something’s still not making sense with that.”

Marge broke in. “Scott and I were talking about this. Why is the man we call Raymond Holmes hanging around, knowing full well that we found his sister-in-law’s body?”

Wang sipped coffee. “Maybe he thinks we can’t identify the body.”

“Maybe, but I know what Scott and Marge are getting at,” Decker said. “There’s something out there that we’re missing and it has something to do with Manny Hernandez. The old man told me that as far as he knows, Manny’s still missing. According to him, Raymond Holmes is Belize, but Martin’s eighty and a con, so everything is suspect until we have evidence to back it up. Until we have a positive on the prints, we don’t know if Ray is Belize or if Ray is Manny.”

“Who’s doing the print comparison?”

“I asked for Zach Spector,” Decker said. “He’ll be in tomorrow at ten. I’ve already contacted Roswell Correctional. A copy of his prints on file should be arriving here by ten-thirty in the morning, providing that FedEx is on time. In the meantime, if we want to speculate, let’s go back to the Roseanne Dresden case. What are we thinking? That her husband stashed her in the trunk while still alive—because she didn’t die in the condo—then carted her off and killed and buried her somewhere?”

“That crossed my mind when Hermione told me the story,” Wanda said. “But why would he do it in daylight? Why not just wait for the cover of night?”

“Ivan is not a cool cookie,” Marge said. “Suppose they got into an argument. Ivan admits that they fought the day before. Maybe she came home early in the morning and they fought again. This time, he got really mad and pushed her. We found her cell under the couch. Maybe she fell backward and hit her head. She gets knocked out cold and he just panicked.”

Wang said, “People fall and hit their head, but usually they don’t die right away. Do you honestly see the guy throwing her in the trunk and then killing her and burying her?”

“Like I said, maybe he panicked. Ivan accidentally or on purpose knocks her out. He wraps her in a blanket, takes her out to her car, and stuffs her in the trunk. He goes out and gets rid of the body. Then, on the way back, he hears about the plane crash and figures he’ll blame her disappearance on the accident. But then people might ask why her car is parked in the condo parking complex and not at the airport. So Ivan drives the Beemer to the airport, leaves it there, takes a cab back to the condo, drives to work, then turns on the faucet, and tells everyone that Roseanne died in the crash.”