When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (27 page)

“The blood on your shirt was from when you shot the man who’d been tied to the chair?”

“It must have been, yeah.”

*   *   *

Back out in the hallway, Joe was pacing again. “What the hell?” he said to Gil the second he closed the interview room door behind him. “Mazer tried to help Hoffman? What is that about?”

“Maybe Mazer had Stockholm syndrome,” Gil said. “He was kept there for nearly a week, and Hoffman was probably beating him and threatening to kill him. Maybe the only way for him to survive was to convince Hoffman he was on his side. Maybe he bought into his act too much.”

“Maybe,” Joe said. “But no matter how you slice it, that is fucked up. But that isn’t the only thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I started thinking about how EMS just happened to show up at Mazer’s house,” Joe said. “We never did find out who called them.”

“Maybe Mazer did before he went unconscious.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Joe said. “I also was thinking that maybe Mazer told the nine-one-one operator who shot him or something. So I called Dispatch. They’re sending me the audio file of the call.”

A few minutes later, Joe was at his office computer downloading the file. “It looks like the call came from the house phone, so it was probably Mazer. Good. Give me a second.” A moment later, Joe hit the
SPACE
bar on his computer to play the recording.

The operator’s voice said, “This is nine-one-one. What is the nature of your emergency?”

A young male voice said quickly, “He’s having a heart attack.”

“Okay, can you tell me your address?”

“He’s not looking very good. He’s calling me … I have to go.”

Then the line went dead.

*   *   *

Kristen crouched in the snow, her jeans getting wet and cold. She had parked her car down the street from Mazer’s house and gone through the piñon and juniper forest on foot. The nearest neighbor was two acres away, so she was able to skirt easily around the Mazer house and then behind it. The house, like all the neighboring houses, had no landscaping or cultivated yard. Instead, it was just stuck in the middle of the forest, which made for easy cover.

She moved slightly to the north, hoping to get a better glimpse of the driveway, but a small rise and a thick tree stand meant she’d have to get closer. The shining sun made a bright white patchwork mosaic in the snow. Kristen kept out of the light and stayed with the shadow of the trees. She heard a door open somewhere nearby and froze. The deep snow both muffled and deepened the sound, making it hard to determine where it was coming from. She stayed crouched where she was for another few minutes, then carefully made her way up the hill to the driveway, which curved around the back of the house. There was no garage or shed. But in the driveway was a Honda Civic and a dark Lexus SUV. Hoffman was home. Kristen stayed where she was, surveying the one-story house for another few minutes before retracing her steps back down the hill.

*   *   *

After Joe listened to the 911 call, his pacing only got worse. “Was that Hoffman?” he asked. “That sounded like Hoffman.” Gil let Joe keep talking. Interrupting him to point out that they’d met Hoffman only once and that neither of them could remember what his voice sounded like would have been useless. Besides, Gil agreed with Joe: it seemed likely that the voice was Hoffman’s. “Why would Tyler James Hoffman call an ambulance for Mazer?” Joe asked. “Hoffman’s killed, what, a half dozen people, yet he calls the ambulance? For Mazer? What the fuck.”

“He’s a sociopath,” Gil said.

But Joe kept talking. “Does Stockholm syndrome go both ways? Could Hoffman have been feeling all soft and fuzzy for the guy?”

“The only reason he’d have called an ambulance for anyone is if he was going to get something out of it,” Gil said.

But Joe wasn’t done. “Maybe Hoffman is feeling some goodwill-toward-man Christmas crap.”

Gil’s phone rang. It was Natalie Martin calling him back.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “How’s your husband doing?”

“He squeezed my hand when he got out of surgery,” she said. “The doctors said that was a good sign.”

“That’s great news,” Gil said. “I know you probably want to get back to him, but I have a few quick questions for you.”

“Okay.”

“We think that Hoffman got the list of you and your co-workers from Dr. Brian Mazer,” Gil said.

“Brian?” she said, surprised. “We’ve worked together for years. He’s one of the few people who everyone liked.”

“Did he have any problems with you, Dr. Price, or Dr. Ivanov?”

“I’m not sure about Dr. Price,” she said. “But Brian and Dr. Ivanov were friends. They carpooled every day before Dr. Ivanov retired.”

“So Dr. Mazer knew where Dr. Ivanov lived?” Gil asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Actually, come to think of it, there was one little thing between Brian and Dr. Ivanov. Brian wanted to move into Dr. Ivanov’s lab when he retired, but his request was denied. Brian said Dr. Ivanov was the one responsible. They had both been working on the same demethylation protein code sequence for years, and I guess Dr. Ivanov didn’t want Brian to break the code when he hadn’t been able to. At least that’s what Brian said. They weren’t really friends after that. I’d heard that Dr. Price moved into Dr. Ivanov’s lab instead.”

“How was your relationship with Dr. Mazer?”

“Brian was the only person from work who came to my baby shower.”

“And your baby shower, was it held at your house?” Gil asked.

Natalie Martin hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

“So he knew where you lived?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “And Nick showed him the Tempest. They went out to the shed together…” Her voice trailed off.

“Mrs. Martin what else—” Gil started to say, but she interrupted him.

“Brian was the only person who knew I was pregnant,” she said in the same urgent voice of realization. “I didn’t tell anyone else at work, because we didn’t share those kinds of things, but Brian…”

“Mrs. Martin?”

“He was the only one who knew I had cleaned out all my chemicals.” She stopped, but Gil waited for her to continue. When she spoke again, her voice was high. “
He
put the ethidium bromide in the gel. Why would he have done that? Why would he have tried to hurt my babies?”

“Mrs. Martin, I am so sorry.”

“I just saw him three days ago. How could he—and he smiled and he asked about the boys…”

“You saw him three days ago?” Gil asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, it was the day before the attack,” she said. “I bumped into him at Whole Foods.”

“He was shopping?”

“Yes,” she said. “He said he had family over, and he asked me about my Christmas plans.”

“How did he look? Did he act nervous?”

“He seemed fine,” she said. “He had a couple of bruises, but he said that was from slipping on some ice.”

“What time of the day was this?”

“Um, it must have been close to dinnertime. I remember the kids were acting crazy because they were starving. He told me about the Christmas party they’d had that day at work and said he was there buying food for a relative he had staying with him.”

“He’d been at work that day?” Gil asked.

“He must have been,” Natalie said.

CHAPTER TWENTY

December 24

Gil and Joe both sat in the conference room. Gil stared at the white board while Joe rubbed his eyes.

After hanging up with Natalie Martin, Gil had gone back into the room with Gonzales, who mapped out as best he could Mazer’s whereabouts for the past week. After a few minutes, it became clear that Mazer was tied up only on the first day. And Gonzales saw Hoffman hit and cut Mazer only a little, in the beginning. After that, the knife and fists stayed out of it. Gonzales saw Mazer a few more times, and each time he was untied, walking about the house. Gonzales never thought to ask Hoffman why their hostage was being allowed to walk free.

“Gonzales is lying,” Joe said. “He has to be lying.”

“Why would he lie about it?” Gil asked. They were waiting for a call back from Chip Davis at the lab. He was checking to see if any surveillance equipment had caught Mazer at work that day.

“Maybe Mrs. Martin is wrong about the date,” Joe said.

“She seemed pretty sure,” Gil said.

“Maybe Mazer cut a deal with the devil,” Joe said. “He would give Hoffman the names if Hoffman didn’t kill him.”

“That makes the most sense,” Gil said as his phone rang. It was Davis. Gil put the phone on speaker, knowing Joe would just breathe heavily at his ear trying to hear the conversation if he didn’t.

“Dr. Mazer was at work all week,” Davis said. “He left early for the past few days, but it’s almost Christmas, so most people aren’t even at their desks.”

“No one mentioned anything strange about him or saw his bruises?”

“No,” Davis said. “But they all have separate labs and offices. He could easily have come and gone without seeing anyone.”

“You don’t happen to have his personnel file handy, do you?” Gil asked. “The least we can do is tell his relatives that he has been hurt.” The real reason Gil wanted the name of a family member was to ask them about Mazer’s state of mind. But there was something else, something in the back of Gil’s mind. Something he couldn’t quite get at.

“Hang on,” Davis said. Gil heard him typing into a computer. Davis came back on the line. “I don’t really have much. He’s divorced, but it looks like they had a child a while back.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Whoever compiled this information did it before my time. They didn’t follow the same procedures when filling out the forms that we do now. It’s hard to tell. I’ll keep looking though this, but all I can really tell you is that Dr. Mazer hasn’t had any contact with his child or his ex-wife for a long time, otherwise they’d be on our radar.”

“Do you have anything about the ex-wife? Did she remarry? Is there a stepdad in the picture?”

“Hold on … hold on. Yeah, it looks like she remarried. His name is Philip Hoffman.”

*   *   *

As the investigating officers, Gil and Joe needed to be there when Hoffman was arrested. But Hoffman was armed and dangerous. That meant there also needed to be a coordinated assault on the house, which was a SWAT specialty. SWAT would handle the entry and timing of the mission. The schedule had the team arriving at Mazer’s house in twenty-five minutes, since they wanted to make entry before it started to get dark and sunset was in forty-five minutes. It would take Gil and Joe fifteen minutes to get to Mazer’s house in Tesuque from the hospital in order to meet them before the raid. That left exactly ten minutes for Gil and Joe to question Dr. Mazer, who had just gotten out of surgery.

The surgeon warned them that Mazer would be groggy and likely wouldn’t remember any of the conversation, since he’d been given midazolam for sedation, and the drug’s side effects included amnesia.

“Sounds good to me,” Joe said to Gil. “If we add a few more bruises to his collection during our interrogation, he’ll be none the wiser.” Maybe it was the lack of sleep coupled with the level of violence in the case, but Gil no longer much cared how he got the information he needed. In the five days since he had given Hoffman the list of names, Mazer had gone to work, the grocery store, and any number of other places. He could have warned Price, Jacobson, Ivanov, and the Martins. He could have called the police. He could have stopped Hoffman. He could have done anything—but he’d chosen to do nothing. Gil knew that this was because Mazer got something out of keeping quiet. He got to get rid of people he’d thought had wronged him while simultaneously gaining the trust of his long-lost son.

Mazer lay in his bed in the surgery recovery suite. His eyes fluttered open when Joe called his name.

“You’re not going to remember any of this,” Joe said. “So let me just get this out of the way. You are nothing but a motherfucking—”

“Joe,” Gil said. “Knock it off. We don’t have time for that.”

“I never get to have any fun,” Joe said in a pretend pout.

“Dr. Mazer,” Gil said. “A heavily armed SWAT team is about to storm your house. Do you understand?”

Mazer was so drugged that his only reaction to what Gil had said was a slight wrinkling of his forehead, but he nodded, saying yes at the same time.

“You need to answer my questions in order for everyone to come out of it alive,” Gil said. Mazer nodded again, and Gil continued, “Is Tyler Hoffman your son?” A nod from Mazer. “Is he alone in the house?”

Mazer shook his head and said in a hoarse voice, “Lupe is with him.”

“Anyone else?”

He shook his head.

“What are the two other names on the list you gave to your son,” Gil asked.

“Dr. Laura Goodwin and Chad Saunders.”

“The security guard?” Joe asked. “Killing your boss I get—she is one cold fish—but what did you have against the security guard?”

Gil gave Joe a look and asked, “How many weapons are in the house?”

“I have a shotgun and two rifles,” Mazer whispered.

“How much ammunition?” Gil asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Think,” Joe said, closer to Mazer’s ear.

“I don’t—I have a box of shells for the shotgun and maybe a half of a box for the rifles.”

“That’s twenty-five rounds for the shotgun and ten for the rifles” Joe said to Gil. That was a lot of firepower.

“Dr. Mazer,” Gil said, “I am taking you into custody for aiding and abetting a fugitive. While you are in the hospital, there will be an officer guarding you at all times. Once you are released, you will be brought directly to the county detention center, where you will be placed under official arrest pending formal charges. At that time, your rights will be read to you in full; however, you do have the right to speak to a lawyer immediately. Do you understand?”

“Don’t…” Mazer started to whisper, before stopping to cough.

“Don’t what?” Joe asked.

“Don’t hurt him,” Mazer said, his voice fading as he reached the end of the sentence. “Tyler only came here to see me.”

“Why would he do that?” Joe asked.

“He wanted me to meet my new granddaughter,” Mazer said in a whisper. “Her name is Georgina Rose.”