“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.
“Lucy, I’m so glad you’re here,” said Connie Dominquez, the office receptionist. She had fake holly in her hair and peppermint stripes painted on her fake nails. Connie, who was in charge of the contest, had wanted Lucy to be a taster for one reason: she was a bizcochito virgin. Lucy had never even heard of bizcochitos before she moved to New Mexico, and she had yet to taste one. Last Christmas—her first since leaving Florida—she hadn’t been in Santa Fe. The holiday season had coincided with her second postbreakup reconciliation with Del. They had decided to take their reunion on tour to Las Vegas. They spent their days drinking pitchers of mojitos, eating shrimp, and talking about what rebels they were for spending Christmas in Sin City. Within a week of counting down to the dawn of a new year, they had broken up again.
This year wouldn’t be her first Christmas in Santa Fe either. She was leaving for Florida tomorrow and would be there for the better part of a week. But for now, her lack of bizcochito knowledge made her the celebrity judge of this contest. She was given a scoring sheet attached to a clipboard, and stopped at the first plate. The bizcochitos were beige, like the Santa Fe desert, and had a thin coat of sugar on top. She took a bite, not sure what to expect. It seemed to be a type of sugar cookie, yet there was something slightly different about it—a hint of nuttiness or caramel. She couldn’t tell which. She took another bite, and heard Connie say across the room, “Lucy, you’d better pace yourself. You’ve got fifty-one more cookies to taste.” She looked around, noticing that some of the other testers were biting down and then spitting the cookie out into a napkin, so as not to get sick. She tried that with the next cookie, and it seemed to work. Five plates later, she had a mush of cookies and saliva leaking through a napkin in her hand. Lucy reached for a cookie from the next batch and took a bite. This tasted more of chocolate, but it was nothing fantastic. She spit it out into her soggy napkin. She moved on. The next one melted in her mouth before she had a chance to bite down, and there was a sweet taste, but not overly sweet. She was about to mark it down as the winner when she noticed Tommy Martinez come in and scan the room, looking for someone. It turned out to be her.
“Hey, boss,” he said.
“I’m not your boss anymore,” she said while watching him sneak a cookie off a nearby plate and take a nibble. He looked over her shoulder to make sure Connie hadn’t noticed and took another cookie off another plate. Lucy grabbed Tommy by the arm and steered him into a corner and away from the cookies.
“So, I heard something about the fire victims—” he started to say.
“Tommy,” she said, trying to interrupt him.
“Wait, hear me out,” he said. “One of my sources said the men were gay and that it looked like a hate crime.”
Lucy must have looked surprised, because Tommy asked, “You didn’t know about that? Interesting.”
“Who’s the source?” she asked. “Are they with the police?” This time she read his face and could tell his source wasn’t anyone official. Probably one of the many emergency dispatchers he chatted up with his stories of growing up in the mountain village of Ojo Sarco, the second youngest of nine from a family that had farmed the land for fifteen generations. Lucy had spent many a night as city editor marveling at how he worked his female sources, slipping into his best Northern New Mexico accent when speaking English and switching to the old Colonial dialect for the Spanish. In both languages, he stretched out the vowels, making his words sound like a lazy Sunday afternoon.
“All you have is a rumor from one of your groupies,” she said. “Are you willing to freak out our entire gay population with speculation?”
“Don’t you think the public has the right to know if there is a homophobic killer running around?”
“That is such a stretch,” Lucy said, trying to keep her voice down. “You have no proof this is a hate crime outside what one of your little chiquitas told you between the sheets.”
“You know, you keep pointing out something to me that up until now I’ve been ignoring,” he said, not keeping his voice down. “You aren’t my boss anymore.” With that, he turned away.
Lucy sighed and looked down at her scoring sheet. She realized she hadn’t written down which entry was the melt-in-your-mouth winning cookie. She glanced over to the table piled with cookies. She wasn’t looking forward to retracing her taste-test steps.
* * *
Gil and Joe were a mile or so outside of Los Alamos when the highway dropped back down toward the desert and the hundred-foot-tall ponderosa pines changed into eight-foot-tall piñon pines. The snow went from three feet deep on the mesa to nonexistent on the southern-facing slopes closer to the valley. They had ended up speaking only to Dr. Goodwin and Saunders. Davis said other lab staff would be made available when and if “the investigation warranted it.” He didn’t say how that determination would be made, and Gil, for the moment,
didn’t want to push the issue.
“That entire place felt like a conspiracy theory,” Joe was saying. “Do you think they bugged our car?”
“Maybe,” Gil said.
“Hey, Davis, I really liked your golf shirt,” Joe said into an air-conditioning vent. “I think red is a lovely color for you.”
If the lab was overly protective, it was for good reason—because it hadn’t been in the past. Gil’s great-grandfather used to tell a story about the time he was sitting in a bar in Tesuque, just outside Santa Fe, as a big truck rolled up outside. It had something about five feet high and ten feet long tied down and covered on the flatbed. The driver and passenger, two local men, came into the bar and went into the back room, which was a brothel at the time. A few hours later, they came back out, got in the truck, and went on their way. His great-grandfather would later learn those men were driving to Trinity nuclear test site and that the “something” sitting unguarded in the back of the truck was the first atomic bomb on its way to get tested.
“How did they get our reports?” Joe asked. “Our office sent them? Who in the office even has our reports?”
“It was probably the chief,” Gil said. “From now on you should just assume the lab knows exactly what we are doing at all times.”
“So I need to stop shaking down the drug dealers and the pimps?”
“Just for the next week or so.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
December 21
Lucy was still coming down from her sugar high when her pager went off. Ironically, the call was for a diabetic emergency. She grabbed her coat and headed out the door, glad to have an excuse finally to move her legs and burn off some extra energy.
She drove her car toward the station while simultaneously taking off her blouse and pulling her navy blue uniform T-shirt over her head, ignoring looks from other drivers. She got to the station, kicked off her high heels, grabbed her combat boots, and ran barefoot across the icy parking lot to the ambulance, where Gerald was waiting.
She climbed up into the cab, saying, “I’m in.” While Gerald pulled out of the station, Lucy hit the lights and sirens and called Dispatch, saying they were en route to the scene. She put her boots on while Dispatch gave the address again, “135 Calle Ocho.” Lucy started saying aloud, “One-three-five Calle Ocho. One-three-five Calle Ocho.” She pulled on her second boot and found the map book.
“Okay,” she said to Gerald. “One-three-five Calle Ocho is just across the highway and down near the arroyo.”
Gerald hit the intersection of the highway and Lucy hit the air horn, letting cars know they were going to cross. A blue car to their right stopped in the middle of the highway and didn’t pull over.
“What does this joker think he’s doing?” Gerald asked, as he tried to maneuver the ambulance around him. Lucy hit the air horn again, but the car didn’t move.
“How difficult is it to pull off to the right side of the road?” she said. “Why do people freak out when they see us coming? They’re like small, furry animals in the headlights.”
Gerald finally got around the car, and they headed down the road.
“When are you leaving for your trip?” Gerald asked, during a break in the radio chatter.
“Tomorrow,” she said. “Within twenty-four hours I will be on the white, sandy beaches of Florida.”
“Is your mom excited for you to come visit?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’ll be good to see her. It’s been more than a year.”
A few minutes later, they were pulling up in front of 135 Calle Ocho, where it looked like someone had thrown up Christmas all over the outside of the house. An inflatable Nativity scene was facing a plastic Santa and reindeer. A trio of inflatable snowmen stood watch over huge glittering snowflake cutouts. And the roof was lined by electric farolitos.
Lucy grabbed the med bag out of the side of the ambulance and followed Gerald inside, where the Christmas overload continued. There were not one but three Christmas trees in the living room, each with different colored garland and ornaments. Under each tree was a pile of gifts, and lining the room on every shelf were Nativity scenes—hundreds of them.
An older woman wearing a sweater taken up entirely by a picture of Santa with a bell sewn onto his hat was sitting in an easy chair, her head lolling off to one side. Gerald got on his knees next to her saying, “Ma’am, ma’am. Can you hear me?”
The woman’s eyes fluttered open but didn’t stay that way. Lucy unzipped the med bag and found the blood glucose machine, while Gerald prepped the woman’s finger with alcohol, then stabbed her with a lancet. The woman jumped a little and looked at Gerald with glazed eyes.
“Ma’am,” he was saying again. “Ma’am, we’re just testing your blood sugar. Sorry I had to poke you.”
Lucy put the blood sample in the machine and in a second the number twenty-one popped up on the digital display.
She showed Gerald, and without a word they started getting an IV ready.
“Ma’am,” Lucy said. “We need to give you an IV so we can get you some medicine.”
While Gerald searched for a vein, Lucy opened up a syringe containing thick, syrupy liquid called dextrose, which was basically liquid sugar.
“I’m in,” Gerald said, as he hit the vein with the catheter. “Open it up.”
Lucy turned the knob on the IV and let it flow, checking the site where the catheter met skin to make sure there was no swelling. She then took the huge syringe, stuck it in a port on the IV tubing, and started to pump the thick liquid into the woman’s veins. As an EMT basic, she was allowed by Santa Fe County to give certain medications, and given the high incidence of diabetes in New Mexico, this was one of them.
It always seemed like a miracle when Lucy gave medicine to a diabetic patient with low blood sugar. They would suddenly go from unconscious, on the edge of death, to fully alert. Within a minute, the woman was sitting up and talking to them as if nothing had happened. And, as was often the case, the woman insisted she didn’t need to go with them to the hospital. Diabetics, especially type-1 diabetics, were so used to the rigmarole they had to endure for their disease that a trip to the hospital was not a relief. In fact, it was to be dreaded. The hospital meant waiting around in an uncomfortable gown to take even more uncomfortable lab tests just to have a doctor determine that the incident had been caused by “complications of diabetes,” which everyone knew from the beginning. Gerald looked at Lucy and shook his head, so she found a patient refusal form.
Gerald said, “Ma’am, you really need to eat something right now. Your blood sugar is going to crash again and we will be right back here.”
“My daughter’s coming in to take care of me,” the woman said. Still sitting in the easy chair, she carefully straightened her sweater, making the tiny bells jingle.
Lucy could hear the dismissal in her voice, so she jumped in. “How about I find something for you to eat really quick?” She went to find some food, not stopping when the woman protested.
The kitchen was something Mrs. Claus would have considered too Christmassy. There were Santa kitchen towels, Merry Christmas magnets, and red bows on every cabinet doorknob. Lucy went to the fridge and rummaged around, looking for something with protein. She found a piece of cheese and a little bit of leftover chicken, which she put on to a plate and brought out to the woman, saying, “We are a full-service EMS service. Not only do we come to your house, we make sure you eat properly.” The woman looked suspiciously at the food.
Lucy said to her conspiratorially, nodding her head to indicate Gerald. “You know, he’s not going to leave until he sees you actually eat it.” The woman took a bite, while looking at Gerald. He watched as she took a few more. Finally satisfied, he and Lucy said good-bye and went outside to put their equipment back into the ambulance. It had started to snow again; the flakes fell down in big clumps. The snowflakes in New Mexico were not lacy. Growing up in Florida Lucy had always assumed all snowflakes had the pretty patterns she’s
seen in drawings and books. But New Mexico seemed to have two types of snow: hail snow and fluffy snow. Hail snow looked like tight balls of hail, but since it was winter, it wasn’t called hail. Fluffy snow was lighter, less tightly packed. Fluffy snow made it look like God had ripped open a sofa cushion and shaken the stuffing out over the countryside. There were no individual flakes. Instead, they seemed to come together for support as they fell. The absence of lacey flakes was likely due to the snow having much lower moisture content than what was found back east. It was disconcerting to have grown up with an image of snow in her head, and have the reality be so different. One time, when her mom was off her medication, she spent a full day cutting white paper snowflakes with lacy edges and swirls inside. By the time Lucy got home from school, the entire ceiling was covered in snowflakes hanging from strings and seemingly falling onto their heads. It was beautiful and claustrophobic. Lucy’s mom hadn’t had an episode like that in years, not since she finally accepted she had schizophrenia. But most of Lucy’s childhood had been crazy, mixed in with a whole lot of scary. She and her mother had been working on their relationship for the last four months, since the time Lucy last saw Gil and Joe and gave them uninvited advice about a schizophrenic suspect. It had brought up a lot of baggage that Lucy thought was better left unpacked. But it was what finally made her call her mother. It was why she was going home to Florida tomorrow, to see if they could eventually become mother and daughter.
* * *
The drive down from the Hill had seemed longer than the drive back. Gil had just driven past the Pojoaque and Tesuque pueblos and was going up Opera Hill when Joe’s cell phone started playing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in mechanical tones. It was Liz. He put her on speaker.
“I don’t have much,” she said. “The water and smoke at the crime scene destroyed everything. I didn’t get any usable prints, but what I do have are more specifics on your burned victim. He’s about twenty to thirty years old, five feet, nine inches tall, and a hundred and seventy pounds. His teeth had some orthodontic work done on them, but needed more.”
When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery Page 7
