The Man Behind the Cop

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  “She’s out of surgery, but in a coma. They…don’t sound hopeful.”

  He wasn’t hopeful, either. He’d seen Lenora Escobar’s head, and the blood, bone splinters and other tissue on the tire iron. He wondered whether they ought to be hoping she didn’t survive. He, for one, wouldn’t want to wake up at all if it meant living in a vegetative state or anything approaching one. He wasn’t sure it would be much better if she woke up clear and present to be told that her aunt had been murdered and her children taken by the violent man Lenora had fled.

  “Do me a favor and think back to anything Lenora ever told you that would suggest a place Escobar might go to ground. Does he have family in this country? In Mexico? Did she talk about friends? Hell, I don’t suppose they have a summer cabin.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure they weren’t in that economic stratum. Uh…” She sounded muzzy, not surprising given that it was—Bruce glanced at his watch—3:00 a.m. Likely her adrenaline hadn’t yet allowed her to curl up in the waiting room and conk out.

  “She didn’t talk about friends,” Karin continued. “I don’t think he encouraged them, at least not for her. Maybe not for him, either. He was jealous, of course. He’d imagine any other man would be coveting her, I’m afraid. As for family—his mother used to live with them, but she decided to go back to Mexico last year.” Silence suggested Karin was thinking. “Chiapas. That’s what Lenora said. Roberto was mad that she went.”

  “Chiapas.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So I suppose it’s reasonable that he might run for Mexico.”

  “Maybe. But how would even a mother take the news that he’d killed his wife—tried to kill his wife,” she corrected herself, a hitch in her voice, “and murdered his wife’s aunt?”

  “Depends on the mother. I’ve met some crazy ones.”

  “You mean, the ones who pay a hit man to knock off the judge or prosecutor?”

  “Or a rival cheerleader,” he noted dryly.

  “Well…yes. But I had the impression Mama had thrown up her hands over Roberto. There was another son, if I remember right, still in Chiapas. But Roberto was the elder, so of course he thought she should stay here.”

  “What—to babysit and keep a stern eye on his wife?” Bruce loosed a tired sigh. “No sign he’s bought airline, Amtrak or bus tickets, and we’ve got the state patrol here and in Oregon watching for his car. Sounds like it’s a beater, though. I doubt he’d make it all the way to the border, never mind damn near to Guatemala. I think you’re right about the economic stratum.” He paused. “How’d she pay for the sessions with you?”

  “Department of Social and Health Services program. When a woman or child needs us, we find funding.”

  “Ah.” He softened his voice. “You should get some sleep, Ms. Jorgensen.”

  “Karin.”

  “Karin. The night’s not done.”

  “No.” Her breathing told him she hadn’t hung up. “I just keep thinking…”

  Understanding stabbed him. “You’ve never been assaulted?”

  “No. And now I’m thinking how—how glib I must have sounded to women who have. Ugh.”

  God. Here he’d considered her as a colleague, in a sense, who’d seen it all. Of course she hadn’t. She’d only heard it all.

  “I’ve been told by people who know that you and your colleagues at A Woman’s Hand are the best. I doubt you’ve been glib.”

  Even through the phone line, her exhalation sounded ragged. “Thank you for that. And for calling. Oh. Have you talked to Lenora’s sister yet?”

  “Sorry. I meant to say that first. They’re in Walla Walla. Asparagus harvest. No phone—I had to send an officer around. But they’re on their way. What is it—a three-, four-hour drive? They should be at the hospital by dawn.”

  “Thank goodness. When Lenora wakes up…”

  An optimist. He’d guessed she would be. He was well aware that he’d be wasting his breath to suggest she go home and go to bed. She felt responsible, justly or not, and wouldn’t let herself off the hook. Lenora wouldn’t know Karin was holding vigil, but Karin did, and would think less of herself if she didn’t.

  There wasn’t much more he could do tonight. He’d sent officers out to canvass near neighbors to Julia and Mateo Lopez shortly after the body was found. None had heard a thing. Evidence techs had taken over the house and were still working. He wouldn’t get results from the crime lab on exactly whose blood was on the tire iron until tomorrow at best. He knew damn well what the results would be, given that no weapon had been located in or near the Lopez home.

  There was a limit to how much he could do before morning to find Escobar’s rat hole, either. He’d put out the description of the vehicle and the license number, but not until tomorrow would he be able to access bank records or speak to co-workers and—if any existed—friends. Mateo was so distraught he’d had to be sedated. Bruce hadn’t gotten much out of him, not once he’d been told about his wife.

  Resisting the temptation to drive to Harborview and keep Karin Jorgensen company in the waiting room, Bruce went home. Tomorrow would be a long day. He’d done what he could tonight to set a manhunt in motion. Now he needed a few hours of downtime.

  Funny thing, how he fell asleep picturing Karin Jorgensen. Not with her face distraught, but from earlier in the evening, when she’d still been able to smile.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BRUCE SLEPT for four hours and awoke Tuesday morning feeling like crap. He grunted at the sight of his face in the mirror and concentrated after that on the path of the electric razor, not on the overall picture. Coffee helped enough that he realized the ring of the telephone had awakened him. He checked voice mail, and found a message from Molly.

  “Houston, we have a launch. Baby Elizabeth Molly—yes, named for me—was born at 5:25 this morning. While you were no doubt sleeping, ah, like a baby.”

  Ha! He grinned.

  “Since I didn’t have an indolent eight hours of beauty sleep,” she continued, “I’m taking Fiona and baby home and crashing—Elizabeth Molly permitting—in Fiona’s guest room.” As an obvious afterthought, she added, “Hope the self-defense workshop went well.” Beep.

  Oh, if only you knew.

  He skipped breakfast, figuring to get something out of the vending machine at the hospital.

  Karin had gone home, he found, and was surprised at his disappointment. Instead, the waiting room was filled with Lenora Escobar’s extended family. The sister and husband and their brood of five children, and one of the Lopez’s four grown children with his wife. Lenora, he was told, was still unresponsive in ICU.

  He asked to speak privately with Lenora’s sister and her husband, and took them to a smaller room likely saved by hospital officials for the grave business of telling family a loved one hadn’t made it. Tending to claustrophobia, Bruce left the door open.

  Yolanda spoke English well, her husband less so. They switched to Spanish, in which Bruce had become fluent on the job. He’d started with Seattle PD on a beat in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, building on his high-school Spanish.

  Both told him that they had always thought Roberto was scum. “Pah!” Alvaro Muñoz declared. “You could see the bruises, how frightened she was of him. But she lied to make us believe everything was fine. Only recently…” A lean, mustachioed man, he hesitated, glancing at his wife.

  “She told me she was going to leave him. She said so on the phone. She lowered her voice, so I think maybe he was home. She said she’d call when she got to the safe house.” She bit her lip in distress. “Did he hear when she told me?”

  Bruce shook his head. “Your aunt Julia went to the shelter to pick the kids up. I suspect Roberto was following her.”

  Yolanda Muñoz was petite like her sister, but pleasantly rounded. Her husband’s skin was leathery from the sun, but hers was a soft café au lait. She must stay at home with the children, whatever home might be, given what Bruce gathered was their migrant lifestyle. Grief made her voice t
remulous, kept her eyes moist. “You’ll find Anna and Enrico?” she demanded. “When Lenora wakes up, how can I tell her he has them?”

  He offered his automatic response. “We’re doing our best. What I’m hoping you can do is tell me everything you know about Roberto. We’ll be talking to his co-workers, but what about friends? Hobbies?” Seeing perplexity on their faces, he realized the concept of hobbies was foreign to them, as hard as they worked and as careful as they likely were with every penny they earned. “Ah…did he go fishing? Work on cars?”

  Both heads shook in unison. “He didn’t like to leave Lenora alone,” Yolanda explained. “Even when family was there, so was he. All women in the kitchen, and Roberto. As if he thought we’d talk about him.”

  Or as if he couldn’t let his wife have anything that was hers alone, even the easy relationship with her family.

  Bruce continued to ask questions, but they knew frustratingly little. Roberto Escobar worked. Yes, he was a hard worker, they agreed, the praise grudging but fairly given, and he did help keep their place nice. He talked about his mother coming to live with them again. He was angry when she went to live with his brother, instead. Lenora said he called the mother sometimes, but mostly he yelled, so they didn’t know if he would take the children to her. Yolanda thought maybe his mother liked Lenora better than her own son. And who could blame her?

  Yolanda and her husband rejoined their children and cousins, and Bruce drove to the lumberyard where Escobar had worked. There, he learned little. Co-workers thought Roberto Escobar was surly and humorless, but his supervisor insisted that he was a good worker, and reliable until he’d failed to show up yesterday morning.

  “So what if he ignores the other guys here, eats the lunch his wife sends instead of going out with them?” The balding, stringy man shrugged. After a moment, he added, “Maybe you can’t tell me why you’re looking for him, but…Will he be back to work?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So I’d better be replacing him.” He was resigned, regretting the loss of a good worker but not the man.

  Bruce’s only glimmer of hope came from the last interview, when the middle-aged cashier said suddenly, “He did used to be friends with that other Mexican who worked here. Guy didn’t speak much English. Uh…Pedro or José or one of those common names.” She leaned back in her chair and opened the office door a crack. “Pete,” she called, “you remember that Mexican used to work here? The one with the fake papers?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Garcia.”

  “Carlos,” she said with satisfaction. “Carlos Garcia. That’s it. They talked during breaks. ’Course, no one else could understand a word they were saying.”

  “And this Garcia was the only person you noticed Roberto spending any time with?”

  “Yeah, he wasn’t a real friendly type. After Pete fired Carlos—and he about had to, once he found out his green card was fake—Roberto went back to sitting by himself at breaks. Couple months ago, we all went in together to buy flowers when Toby’s wife died, but not Roberto. He was the only person working here who didn’t contribute.” The memory rankled, Bruce could tell.

  Bank records next. Turned out the Escobars hadn’t had a debit card. Roberto, Bruce learned, had been paid Thursday and deposited his check in the bank on the way home, all but two hundred dollars. No checks had cleared subsequently. Monday morning, Roberto in person had gone into his local branch office and withdrawn the entire amount. He’d also taken a cash advance against his one-and-only credit card—which, Bruce noted, had not had his wife’s name on it. The whole added up to about fifteen hundred dollars. Not a lot, but if he had someplace to go where, even temporarily, he didn’t have to pay rent, he’d have enough to get by for weeks, if not months.

  Yeah, but how to find that place?

  Still, the fact that he planned to need money was reassuring.

  Uncle Mateo was up to talking this morning, although he broke down and cried every few minutes, his daughter and a daughter-in-law both fussing over him. Bruce hid how uncomfortable the display of raw emotion made him.

  Uncle Mateo gave Bruce the names of a few men he thought might have been friends of Roberto’s.

  Yes, he’d suspected Roberto had hit Lenora sometimes, and since she had no father to speak for her, he had talked to her husband. Shaking his head, he said, “He thought it was his right. As if he were God inside his own house.” He shook his head at the blasphemy of it.

  God. Yes, that was a nice analogy. King was what Bruce’s father had called himself. If a man can’t be king in his own castle… That was one of his favorite lines, just after he backhanded his wife for being lippy—a cardinal sin in the Walker home—or committing any of a number of other sins. Or pulled out the leather belt to use on one of his sons.

  As if paralleling Bruce’s thoughts, Uncle Mateo begged, “What made him so crazy?”

  Bruce wished he had an answer. Was it crazy? he wondered. Or too many years of being unchallenged? What would his own father have done if his wife had taken Bruce, Dan and Roger when they were little boys and fled? If a man was king, didn’t he have the power of life and death over his subjects?

  Knock it off, he ordered himself. It seemed every time he dealt with a certain form of domestic violence, he leaped like a hamster onto a wheel of useless bewilderment. Why, why, why? the wheel squeaked as it spun and went nowhere.

  Damn it, he’d put it all behind him, except at moments like this. He detested this inability to stop himself from going back and attempting to reason out his own family history. He couldn’t change the past; why replay it?

  Back to see Karin Jorgensen. Lenora Escobar knew more about her husband than anyone, and he guessed that, in turn, she’d confided more in her counselor than she had in anyone else.

  He called A Woman’s Hand and, after waiting on hold for a couple of minutes, was told Karin would be free in an hour and would expect him. Glancing at his watch, he realized the free time would undoubtedly be her lunch break. He’d offer to feed them both.

  The moment the receptionist spotted him, she picked up a phone. Karin came down the hall before he could reach the counter.

  He hadn’t imagined the tug he’d felt last night, even though exhaustion transformed her face from pretty to…Studying her, he struggled to understand. The only word he could come up with was beautiful. Not conventional, fashion-magazine beautiful, but something different: the purity old age or illness could bare when it stripped the illusions away and revealed the strength of bones and the life force beneath.

  Bruce was not idiot enough to think she’d be flattered if he told her she looked beautiful like an old lady. And that wasn’t exactly what he meant, anyway. It was more like seeing a woman in the morning without makeup for the first time, and realizing the crap she put on her face was not only unnecessary, but it blurred the clean lines.

  Not that Bruce had ever thought any such thing upon seeing a woman’s first-thing-in-the-morning face, but it seemed possible.

  As she neared, Karin searched his eyes anxiously. “Have you heard anything about Lenora? Or found the children?”

  He held out a hand, although he felt a surprising urge to hold out his arms, instead. “Last I knew, she’s still unconscious. And no, regrettably.”

  “Oh.” She put her hand in his, and seemed not to notice that he didn’t shake it, only clasped it. Or perhaps she did because her fingers curled to hold his, as if she was grateful for the contact.

  “Why don’t we go get lunch,” he suggested.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea. I suppose you don’t usually take the time to stop.”

  “Drive-through at a burger joint is usually the best I do.”

  She shuddered. “I’m a vegetarian. Um…let me get my purse.”

  He waited patiently, although he had every intention of paying for the meal.

  Every block of the nearby stretch of Madison Street had a choice of trendy bistros and cafés tucked between boutiques, gourmet pet food shops and
art galleries. The shopping area was an extension of an area of pricey homes and condos, many with peekaboo views of Lake Washington and the skyline of Bellevue on the other side. The street itself dead-ended at the lake, where city-paid lifeguards presided over the beach in summer.

  Bruce let Karin choose a place, and they sat outside on a little brick patio between buildings. Today was cool enough that they were alone out there, which was fine by him.

  She ordered a salad, Bruce a heartier sandwich and bowl of soup. Then they sat and looked at each other while the waitress walked away.

  “Are you all right?” he asked quietly.

  She tried to smile. “A nap would do wonders. But you must have gotten even less sleep.”

  “I’m used to it. But that’s not really what I meant.”

  “I know.” She began to pleat her cloth napkin, her head bent as she appeared to concentrate on an elaborate origami project that wasn’t creating anything recognizable to his eyes. “When Roberto hit her with the tire iron, it made an awful sound. I keep hearing…” For a second her fingers clenched instead of folding, then they relaxed and smoothed the damage to the napkin.

  Bruce watched, as fascinated by her hands as she was.

  “Naturally, I didn’t sleep very well.” She stole a glance up, her eyes haunted. “I saw him coming. And now I measure distances in my head and think, if I’d run, could I somehow have reached them in time?”

  “You might have gotten your skull crushed, too,” he said brutally. “Julia Lopez did her best to defend herself. Her forearm was shattered before a second blow hit her head.”

  “Ohh.” Her fingers froze, and she stared at him. “Oh.”

  The image of her flinging herself between the furious, betrayed husband and the wife he was determined to kill shook Bruce. He tried not to let her see how much.

  “There’s no way you could have reached her in time anyway. Even if it had been physically possible, you would have had to read his intentions first, and that would have taken critical seconds.”

  “I should have walked her to the van.”