When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (15 page)

“And you aren’t suggesting this because every model and actress within a hundred-mile radius will be there trying to get a job as an extra, right?” Gil asked

“That never even crossed my mind,” Joe said.

When they arrived, Joe was disappointed to realize that a movie completely taking place in a male prison meant that very few female actors would be involved. Instead, he was surrounded by large men with tattoos.

Now they were waiting for the assistant preproduction manager to get out of a meeting. Ten minutes later, a blond woman wearing snug jeans with knee-high boots and carrying a clipboard came over. She introduced herself as Melody Lithwick.

Not surprisingly, Joe spoke up first, “How are you today?” He got a murmured response of “Fine, thank you,” while she watched the workers maneuver the lights.

“How’s the movie coming?” Joe asked.

“We aren’t making a movie yet,” she said. “We’re still in preproduction. The assistant director hasn’t even finished the shooting schedule.”

“Okay, well, I was hoping you could help us,” Joe said. “We’re detectives with the city…”

“Hey, Carl,” Melody suddenly yelled across the room, “That fill light is filtering out the shadow from the key light. Move it about a foot to the left.”

“Okay,” Joe said to her in an overly relaxed tone, trying to get her attention again. “I can tell you’re busy, so we’ll cut to the chase.”

“Sorry, I get too focused sometimes,” she said, smiling at Joe, who smiled back at her.

Gil decided to interrupt. “Do you know Alexander Jacobson or Stanley Ivanov?”

“I certainly know Stanley Ivanov,” she said. “He gets props for us. He found me most of the old guns and furniture I’m using.”

“When was the last time you spoke with him?” Gil asked.

“Let’s see … about a week ago,” she said.

“Did he mention any problems?”

“No,” she said. “He was all business.”

“And the other gentleman?” Gil asked.

“What was his name again?” she asked. Gil told her, and she said, “I can’t say for sure. I’ve hired about a hundred people within the last day. How about I have my assistant send you a list of people connected to the set? That’s probably the best I can do.”

“That will be plenty,” Joe said, handing her his business card and smiling again. “That’s my personal cell phone number there at the bottom,” he added. “Feel free to call day or night. Especially night.” Gil walked away, shaking his head, but Joe stayed right where he was.

*   *   *

The men did nothing but yell at them for the first few minutes. Natalie Martin was straining to listen for the twins, but they were silent. She tried to keep her eyes on the three people, watching them move from room to room, but with her hands and arms bound to the chair, she had limited visibility. Instead, she tried to rely on noise, listening to them trample though the kitchen and den. They hadn’t yet gone back to the boys’ bedroom. She wondered for a moment why they hadn’t taped her mouth shut. She could start screaming—but she wouldn’t. The twins were silent, and she wanted them to stay that way. She wanted them invisible. Maybe the intruders wouldn’t even notice the toys that littered the room.

As soon as they’d smashed their way through the front door, they had started to punch Nick. One of the men, who had light hair, had hit Nick across his knees with a crowbar, making him stumble to the ground. Natalie had tried to run, but one of them grabbed her around the waist and slammed her to the floor. The light-haired one dragged her over to a dining room chair—part of an antique set that had been her grandmother’s—and pushed her into a seat. He grabbed a roll of duct tape out of a pocket and, after ripping off sections with his teeth, wrapped it around her, securing her to the chair.

“You’re just like a Christmas present,” he said to her, smiling. “All we need is a bow.” He went over to the Christmas tree, ripped off a bow, and stuck it to her head. “I can’t wait to unwrap you,” he said, inches from her ear.

From the kitchen, one of them yelled, “I found the keys to the shed,” which made the light-haired man leave the room.

She tried to move, but when she did, the tape only seemed to get tighter.

Nick was seated on a chair next to her. His eyes were closed, his chin on his chest. He looked unconscious. There was blood running down his face. “Honey,” she whispered. “Please, honey, look at me.” He didn’t move.

One of the men came back into the dining room talking on a cell phone, speaking in Spanish. He kicked her chair, saying, “Shut up.” The intruders were all dressed in jeans and dark hoodies, but had made no attempt to hide their faces. This worried her. It made her think they were going to kill her.

The light-haired man came back into the room dangling the keys to the storage shed from one finger. “I have the keys to get to the Tempest,” he said, putting his face close to hers. “Now I just need the keys to drive the Tempest.”

“I don’t—” she started to say, but before she could finish, he put his foot on Nick’s knee and pressed down, making Nick scream in pain.

“All I want to know is where to find the keys,” the lighthaired man said, taking his foot off. Nick stopped screaming, but there was a new noise. It was coming from the back bedroom. It was the twins. They had woken up.

*   *   *

Gil was standing off to the side, waiting for Joe to stop flirting with the assistant preproduction manager, when his phone rang. It was Susan.

“What time do you think you’ll be getting home?” she asked.

“Honey, I’m working.”

“They just said on the radio that the city is sending home nonessential personnel because of the storm,” she said.

Gil looked out a window. The snow had gotten so heavy he couldn’t see the cars in the parking lot. “I haven’t heard anything,” he said, while walking over to Joe as he talked. “How bad is it supposed to get?”

“They say at least eight inches,” she said. “But the roads are already icy. My mom said she saw three accidents on Cerrillos Road.”

“I’ll try to leave here in a few minutes.”

“Good,” she said. “Can you stop at Walgreens on the way home? I need more tape and some boxes to wrap presents.” Gil hung up and grabbed Joe’s elbow, saying, “Sorry to interrupt, but the city is sending home all nonessential personnel.”

“We’re nonessential? I feel pretty essential,” Joe said. Gil was sure that comment was more to keep the assistant preproduction manager smiling than to entertain him.

*   *   *

The twins had gone quiet as she walked toward their room with two of the intruders following her. Natalie went over in her head what she was about to do. They reached the door and she took a breath, knowing that if this didn’t work … but she couldn’t finish the thought. It had to work. She reached for the doorknob, bracing herself. She turned the knob—and the alarm she had put on the inside of the boys’ door the night before started going off. She had set it to “lullaby” so as not to upset the kids, meaning the noise was soft and singsong; it wasn’t loud or intimidating. But she took the opportunity of the men’s slight surprise to throw the boys’ bedroom door open and slide inside the room. She slammed the door behind her before the men could react. Devon was standing up in his crib looking at her. She pushed the bookshelf in front of the door, so it blocked the doorway, sending books falling to the floor. She could hear the men on the other side of the door, kicking and yelling. She fought with the plastic childproof cover over the doorknob and finally broke it, clicking the lock on the doorknob shut.

“Let’s all yell,” she called over to the boys. “Come on, yell. Please.” They just kept looking at her. She let out a scream and watched as Deacon’s eyes started to water. He started to cry. Devon joined in a second later.

She wanted them to make noise. She was counting on it. She grabbed the alarm off the door and switched the setting to “siren” and the volume to high. The sound was a painful screech, drowning out the boys’ screams. Maybe if there were enough noise, one of the neighbors would hear it. The men were still pounding on the door, which meant they weren’t checking the outside of the house to see if she had escaped. She used a
Dora the Explorer
book to break out the glass in the window, then looked out to the ground below. The distance was five feet at most. She could drop the boys out first, into the soft snow, then follow behind. She started to gather up nearby blankets to wrap around the boys to protect them from broken window glass. She had just dropped Deacon gently into the snow when she heard a gunshot come from the dining room.

CHAPTER TWELVE

December 23

The storm had dumped almost a foot of snow by the time Gil went outside just after 4:00
A.M
. The sky was a clear dark navy blue with a dotting of stars. He waded toward the street, the snow pushing its way over the tops of his combat boots with each step. He didn’t have time to shovel the walk or driveway for Susan and the girls. They might be snowbound for the day. He got to the curb, where Joe had pulled up in a white Ford Explorer with S
ANTA
F
E
P
OLICE
written on the side in big red letters. They wouldn’t be going anywhere undercover today.

While they talked on the phone a half hour ago, it was Joe who had pointed out that the Crown Victoria couldn’t make it through the snowy streets. They would need something with higher clearance, since most of the streets, with the exception of the main roads, wouldn’t be plowed. Instead, everyone would wait for the inevitable sunshine to melt the snow, clearing the roads within a day or two. Most people didn’t even own a snow shovel, since the sun usually did the job for them.

Gil got in the passenger seat, and Joe pulled away from the curb. The streets were unplowed, but he didn’t drive slowly.

“There’s one good thing about this storm,” Joe said. “I finally get to show you how to drive.”

They went the rest of the way without talking. The only noise was the police scanner, calling out EMS teams to respond to accidents around town. The streets were dark. The lights from the city bounced back off the new snow, giving everything a soft orange glow.

Joe pulled up in front of a house while Gil called into dispatch, telling them that they were on scene. There were three patrol cars out front, where Kristen Valdez stood backlit by the house. The home itself was the usual Santa Fe family residence with beige stucco exterior and set fairly close to the street. It looked to have been built in the 1940s but had been renovated in the last few years. The neighboring homes were close by. A snowman left over from a previous storm watched them from the yard next door. It was the new snow that had kept Gil and Joe from arriving on-scene sooner. The first ambulance sent to the house more than six hours ago had slid off the road, and a second sent immediately after had almost followed suit. Across town, a patrol car responding to a different call slammed into a telephone pole, sending that officer to the hospital in yet another ambulance that almost crashed. It was enough for the 911 Dispatch Center, which served both the city and county of Santa Fe, to stop all unnecessary law enforcement road travel until the snow stopped falling. It was 3:30
A.M
. before the blizzard passed and Gil and Joe could get on the road.

They greeted Kristen, and the three of them walked to the front door, which had been smashed in, most likely with a baseball bat. The living room was a modest size, with a red-and-white Christmas tree off to one corner and a slew of toys cluttering most surfaces. In the attached dining room, two chairs sat in the middle of the floor. They were empty, but there were pieces of duct tape on the carpet, along with a dark, blood-colored stain next to one chair.

*   *   *

Gil almost walked by Natalie Martin as she sat in the dark hospital waiting room. Her head was bent low over her lap. Two small children lay sleeping in makeshift beds she had created with pushed-together chairs. Gil could hear the boys breathing the way children do.

“Mrs. Martin?” he said softly.

She looked up and wiped her eyes. She had dark hair pulled back in a mess of ponytail and an almost gray cast to her face. Her lips were dry, and the skin around her eyes was bluish; in the dim light, Gil couldn’t tell if that was due to bruises or exhaustion. She had several small cuts on her lower arms, which were visible where she had pushed up the sleeves of a dark fleece jacket she was wearing. He introduced himself and pulled up a chair next to her.

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I just … they’re still running tests on my husband … they aren’t sure how far the bullet went into his brain…” She started to cry, and one of the boys shifted in his sleep.

“My partner went to see if there is any new information,” Gil said quietly. “Let’s go stand in the hallway so we can talk without waking up your sons. We can keep an eye on them from there.”

In the fluorescent light in the hallway, he could see how exhausted she was. “I know you already talked with Officer Valdez,” he said. “She gave us your statement. I just need to clarify a few points with you, okay?”

She nodded, and he said, “You said there were three people, one Anglo and two Hispanic.” She nodded again, and Gil pulled out a small photo of Tyler James Hoffman and asked, “Was this one of the men?”

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You have a picture of him. You know who he is. That’s good, right?”

“We know this is one of the men, but we are still trying to determine who his accomplices are,” Gil said. “Did they use any names?”

“All they did was yell,” she said. “I don’t think … no, they didn’t.”

“Can you describe the two Hispanic men to me?”

“There was only one Hispanic man,” she said, wiping her eyes again.

Gil frowned. The description he got from Kristen was “two Hispanic suspects,” and she had gotten that information from Mrs. Martin.

“I am sorry,” he said. “With this kind of investigation it’s easy to get some information mixed up. So, to clarify, there were three people who broke into your home. One man matches the photo I showed you and the second man was Hispanic. Can you tell me the ethnicity of the third man?”