When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery

by Christine Barber

“Personally, if I want to find rich people, I’m driving around looking at nice houses,” Joe said. “But that doesn’t make any sense really, because Price and Jacobson lived so far off the street that Hoffman would’ve had to make a special effort to find their place. Maybe one of the accomplices knew the victims? You know, we still haven’t interviewed the snowplow guy.”

  “How did Hoffman find his victims in the past?”

  “Now, that’s a good question,” Joe said. He tapped the computer a little while and then said, “Okay, it looks like last time, he got a list of names from a buddy.… One of the crew worked as a mechanic in a high-end dealership.”

  “Okay,” Gil said. “That’s a place to start. Let’s look to see if any of our victims had their cars worked on recently.”

  “Can you handle that?” Joe asked. “I want to check something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just give me a second,” Joe said, typing another few strokes on the keyboard. “I read something last night on Alexander Jacobson’s Facebook page…”

  “You stayed up reading his Facebook page?”

  “I know you think I just watch porn and drink a fifth of whiskey every night, but that’s only on days that end in a y,” Joe said. “Anyways, Jacobson wrote something … okay, wait, here it is … yeah, he says, ‘I just got a new gig. Hope I get to see somebody famous.’ What does that sound like to you?”

  “Like he got a job,” Gil said. “Doing what? He was a makeup artist for the Opera, but their season doesn’t start for months. It had to be work for another client.”

  “Exactly—someplace where he’d meet a celebrity,” Joe said, looking through some papers on the table. He pulled out his notepad and flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for. “The state police said their victim, Stanley Ivanov, worked for TV and film companies finding them props. What do you think? Coincidence?”

  “You’re thinking that they both worked on the same movie or TV show,” Gil said. “What’s filming in town right now?” New Mexico offered huge tax incentives to studios, and they took great advantage of the discount. At any given time, there were usually two television shows and a half dozen movies filming in the area.

  “There’s that movie about the state penitentiary,” Joe said.

  “What movie about the penitentiary?”

  “Gil, do you not read anything besides police manuals?” Joe asked. “They’re doing this whole big-budget movie about the riot in 1980.”

  “Why would anyone want to watch a movie about that?” Gil asked more strongly than he’d intended.

  Gil’s father knew every detail about the riot, even though he wasn’t at the prison that day. Gilbert Montoya Sr. was out of law school only a year when he was named special prosecutor of the inmates who’d started the riot. It happened on a Saturday in February, when the chronically understaffed state pen had only fifteen corrections officers guarding more than a thousand prisoners. When a guard caught two inmates drinking home-brewed alcohol, they attacked him. Other prisoners joined in, and soon four more guards were taken hostage. Using a set of keys left behind by an escaping officer, the prisoners were able to open more cells, including those in solitary confinement, where the deadliest inmates were held. These men led a group armed with blowtorches to Cellblock 4, where the police informants were housed. For five hours, the inmates used the torches to cut their way into Cellblock 4. When police came in later, they found the informants decapitated, hanged, burned alive—and worse. The inmates had full run of the entire prison for only thirty-six hours. In that time, thirty-three prisoners had been killed and more than two hundred injured. For Gil, who was only a kid at the time, the riot wasn’t as memorable as when the inmate trials started. State police officers kept twenty-four-hour guard on their house after his father started to receive death threats.

  Officer Kristen Valdez stuck her head in the conference room door, asking, “Do you guys need anything? I am just starting my shift.”

  “I think we’re good,” Gil said. “Just keep your eye out for this guy.” He showed her a picture of Hoffman on his computer. She took out her notebook to write down his details. She glanced at the white board just as she was about to leave.

  “Why do you have tampons on your murder shopping list?” she asked.

  “What?” Joe said. ‘What do you mean?”

  “Tpx,” she said. “That means tampons.”

  “Is that some kind of girl code?” Joe asked.

  “Sort of, I mean it’s the first thing I think of when I see tpx,” she said. “You know, like Tampax. But it also is just common sense.”

  “How’s that?” Gil asked.

  “See here,” she said, pointing at the word pads on the list. “That probably means ‘feminine hygiene pads.’ Since women need both, usually at the same time, tpx could mean ‘tampons.’”

  “Why would Mr. Burns put feminine products on his murder list?” Joe asked.

  “Because a woman he knows was having her period and made him go shopping,” Kristen said. “I just have no idea how that helps you.”

  * * *

  After talking to her brother, Lucy wanted a drink. Instead, she went to a meeting. She sat down in the circle of chairs, waiting for it to start. Next to her, an older woman introduced herself as Karen. “You’re Tina, right?” she asked. Lucy nodded. “I can’t help but notice you haven’t talked yet.”

  “Nope,” Lucy said with a smile. “Not yet.”

  “You know this is a safe place,” Karen said. “It might help to share.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Think about it,” Karen said, and got up to get some coffee.

  Lucy had never spoken to anyone honestly about her drinking, but people had their suspicions. Gerald had talked to her about it a few times. She thought maybe some people at work knew. Joe and Gil definitely knew. She had phoned Gil drunk before and had gone into the station a few months ago after having spent the night at a bar. But despite her slipups, she had tried to be careful. If she had to leave the house at night after she’d started drinking, she used a Breathalyzer to ensure she never drove tipsy. She kept track of where she bought her beer each night, keeping a set schedule of convenience and liquor stores she would visit, never the same one twice in a week. Lucy had been going to an all-night grocery store, where the automated self-checkout line meant there was no cashier to judge her. But two months ago, she was there one night after work when she saw her managing editor, John Lopez, in the frozen food section. She ducked down the candy aisle and waited, pretending to look at some licorice sticks. She took another few minutes to restack the marshmallow bars and organize the different chocolate Santas according to height. She finally ventured out of the aisle, looking carefully across the store. She didn’t want to take a chance of running into her boss holding a case of beer, so she decided to duck out without getting any alcohol. Then there he was, in front of the deli. He caught sight of her and yelled across the store, “Hey, Lucy.” She had no choice but to go over to him.

  “Did you just get off work?” he asked. “Did we have any breaking news?”

  “Not really,” she said, hoping this wouldn’t be a long chat.

  “What did you decide to do about the dead body story?” he asked. He was referring to an article that had made her almost come to blows with the photo editor. A man in Española had driven up to the hospital with a woman in the front seat of his car, and asked hospital staff to help her—only the woman was dead. When police interviewed the man, he said they had been drinking in the car and he didn’t notice she’d died at some point. Police estimated he had been driving around town for three days with her dead body in the passenger seat. Lucy pushed to put the story on the front page, knowing people would want to read it. But the photo editor hated the idea, mainly because there was no photograph to go with the piece. A compromise was reached: Lucy could put it on the front page if she found some artwork to go with the story. She left the meeting and
called the Española cops, asking for their help.

  Now she told her editor, “We were able to get a mug shot of the man, so I put it front page, above the fold.”

  “Good thinking,” he said. “That’ll sell some papers.”

  “Okay, great,” she said. “Well, you have a good night.” She turned to leave, heading to the front doors, but he called after her, “Aren’t you buying anything?”

  “Um. You know, they were all out of the cheese I needed to make nachos,” she said. “Okay, bye.”

  Not wanting to repeat that awkwardness, she now drove ten miles out of town some nights, to an Allsup’s on Kewa Pueblo, where she wouldn’t be recognized as a repeat offender.

  Karen came back to the circle of chairs with her own coffee and an extra cup for Lucy. Lucy smiled and sipped the black sludge, trying to figure out what lies she would need to tell when it eventually came her time to talk. And Karen seemed to think the sooner that time was, the better.

  * * *

  The sky was heavy with clouds as Gil and Joe drove out of town and across the white plain to the south, toward the old state penitentiary. Snow was falling across parts of Santa Fe and heading their way. Gil turned off the highway and drove past an unmanned guard post. There were a few trees around, but the old prison itself stood alone, tall and stark.

  After the riot, the prisoners had been moved to a new facility just down the road, and the Old Pen had been closed. It became disused but hardly unused. Reality show ghost hunters came to the site and left there claiming that while they were inside the place, radios changed frequencies on their own and cell doors closed randomly. They said they saw shadows of people who weren’t there and watched light bulbs glow without electricity. Radio and TV stations held “fear contests” in the prison, locking contestants in cells to see how long they could last in the dark with the ghosts.

  Gil drove the Crown Victoria along a tall fence lined by tangles of tumbleweed the wind had blown in from across the plain. Inside the main fence were buildings of long rectangular cinder block with small windows set in them every few feet and a catwalk connecting the roofs. Old semitrailers sat outside along with bags of trash with weeds growing up through the snow. The film studios found the broken-down buildings made good backdrops for movies such as Astronaut Farmer and the remake of The Longest Yard.

  Gil stopped the car by the main gates, which stood open. A surprising number of cars were parked there, with people milling around even in the cold. Most looked to be actors, trying out for parts, including bald-headed inmate types and people portraying law enforcement officers.

  Gil and Joe got out of the Crown Victoria and started toward the main building, which was built out of stone and had a large arching doorway.

  “This feels really weird,” Joe said, adjusting his badge on his belt. “Some of these people look just like police officers.”

  Gil gave him the once-over and said, “Too bad you don’t.”

  * * *

  Lucy sat at the meeting listening to yet another “getting sober” story. This one, like the pastor’s from the day before, was an epic tale of woe. She was the next in line to speak, and was getting fidgety, wondering what she would say, knowing Karen expected her to talk. She tried to think. Maybe she did have an epic tale of woe. Maybe something did happen that day she decided to stop drinking. She’d gone to work as usual and then run a call with the fire department. After the call, it was getting dark, but instead of going to the convenience store on Camino Alire, where, according to her schedule, she was supposed to go buy beer that night, she went home. What had made her not go to the store?

  The man finished his story and everyone turned to look at Lucy. She took a deep breath and said, “My name is Lucy and I’m an alcoholic.” She actually startled herself by giving not only her real name but also saying the word “alcoholic.” She decided that being truthful was as good as it was going to get. “And that’s enough about me.” She folded her hands in her lap and sat quietly while Karen stood and started her tale.

  * * *

  Mateo sat atop Baby, who stomped her hoof on the asphalt and shook her head vigorously. Mateo—decked out in his cowboy hat, chaps, stirrups, and duster coat—shifted in the saddle and wondered again how much longer they would have to be out in the cold. He could almost feel snow coming in his bones. He was doing his duty being out here as a representative of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Posse. The members were all volunteer and outfitting both themselves and their horses was expensive, especially when it came to the specialized emergency radios and GPS locators they needed. To make money, they worked as mounted parking lot attendants at special museum events or for the annual fiesta. Today was something different. Today they were in front of the old state penitentiary where they and their horses would be working as extras. The movie people had promised to make a large donation to the posse members for their time.

  Mateo looked up at the wire mesh fence topped with razor wire. Inside the gate, about a hundred or so rough-looking men stood waiting their turn to audition. They hoped to play inmates in the film, so by necessity, they had to look like they were all murderers and rapists. Some were a little too convincing. Mateo and the other posse members would be playing themselves—or, more precisely, they would be reenacting. Thirty years ago, in this exact place, during the state-pen riot, the Sheriff’s Posse had helped round up some of the escaped convicts. Back then, the posse was still part of the sheriff’s department, so they, like all other law enforcement officers within a hundred miles, had stood at the gates during the riot. But unlike the other officers—who had had to wait to get inside the prison in order to do their job—the posse’s work was on the outside. The walls and fences of the penitentiary, missing their armed guards during the riot, were easy for rioting prisoners to get past. And hundreds tried. The state police jokingly called it the “inmate roundup rodeo.” Posse members, sitting tall on their horses, could see a man running across the flat desert plain a half mile away. Mateo’s father had been with the posse then, but he never talked about it. Mateo had heard stories, just the same. About a prisoner they chased into the Ortiz Mountains, toward the old turquoise and silver mines, who fell a hundred feet but was still alive when the posse spied him from the cliff above. The man was impossibly trapped below and hopelessly bleeding. After four hours of listening to his screaming, there had been talk of putting a rifle bullet in him out of sympathy. No one would ever say if it had been done or not. There were also stories about the sounds of the horses’ hooves as they trampled over the bodies of prisoners who had frozen to death during the cold February night.

  Those posse members had been just regular citizens who volunteered with the sheriff’s department. They might have joined with dreams of the Old West, where they would ride off after outlaws, but in reality they mostly wore their revolvers and gold stars as they rounded up loose cows or kept the peace at drunken parties. Then came the riot. What they’d had to do during that time—the acts they’d had to commit—took them very far away from being regular citizens. Afterward, they severed any ties they had to law enforcement. They would still wear the five-point badges, but they would never again carry guns or help catch escaped felons. Instead, they would do search-and-rescue only. What happened during the riot had left its mark. After that, the closest the posse came to doing police work was when they had to pack a dead body on the back of a horse.

  * * *

  Gil and Joe watched workers carefully measure out distances between the inside walls of the prison, use masking tape Xs to mark the floor, then set up large lights on tripods. Space heaters made the cavernous cement room a few degrees warmer than freezing.

  An hour earlier, Gil had called a representative with the movie studio, who told him that the assistant preproduction manager could answer all their questions; she was on location at the pen. Joe was the first to bring up the idea of driving the ten miles out to the prison.

  “And you aren’t suggesting this because ever
y 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.”