“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 SANTA FE POLICE 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?”
“Hispanic,” she said. “But it wasn’t a man. It was a woman.”
* * *
Down the hall behind him, Gil heard the elevator doors open. Something changed in Natalie Martin’s face, making Gil turn to look at who was coming toward them. It was Joe and Kristen Valdez, followed by a doctor wearing a knee-length white lab coat over green scrubs.
“I’ll let you talk to the doctor,” Gil said.
He joined Joe and Kristen a little way down the hall.
Joe said quietly, “The husband is stable, but they aren’t sure how bad it is yet, or if there is brain damage. They’re talking about transferring him down to Albuquerque to get trauma surgery.”
Gil nodded, then said, “I was just going over what happened with Mrs. Martin. Turns out, one of the suspects is a woman.”
“That explains the female-type things on the shopping list,” Joe said.
“Gil,” Kristen started to say. “I am so sorry. I should have interviewed her more—”
“It’s okay, Kristen,” he said. “It happens.” He saw the doctor put his hand on Mrs. Martin’s shoulder then walk back toward the elevators.
“Let me go to talk to her again,” Gil said. “I think it’s better if I do it alone.”
Natalie Martin had gone to sit back down, smoothing the hair on one of the twins.
“Mrs. Martin?” Gil asked. “Can we talk some more?” She nodded, and he sat down across from her, their knees almost touching.
“You said you heard them yell,” he said. “Did they have any kind of accent?”
“The Hispanic man had a Northern New Mexico accent. The woman’s maybe was more Mexican.”
“What makes you think that?”
“When she was on the phone, she spoke Spanish. Really fast Spanish.”
“She made a phone call?” Gil asked, getting his notebook out for the first time. That was new, too.
“On her cell phone, when she was telling me to be quiet,” she said. “She only talked for a second before the Anglo man yelled at her to hang up.”
“Do you know what the woman said when she was on the phone?”
“No,” she said, wiping away more tears. “I don’t speak Spanish. But she was talking to another woman. I could hear her voice.”
“What else did you hear?”
“She said something about her mija…”
“She said mija? Are you sure? She didn’t say mi hita or just hita?”
“It was definitely mija,” she said. “My friend named her dog that.”
“Did you hear the woman on the phone say anything else?”
“No—but there was a baby crying in the background,” she said. “It couldn’t have been more than a week old. Its cry still had that really high pitch. My boys sounded the same when they were born.” She glanced back over to them, curled up in their chairs.
“You told Officer Valdez they had a gun,” Gil said. “Can you describe it to me?”
“Uh … it had a long barrel that was thinner than most guns you see on TV shows, and it had wood on the handle.”
“Okay, good. Is there anything else you can tell me?” He said. “Maybe something you forgot to mention to Officer Valdez.”
“There was something weird,” she said. “They knew about my husband’s 1965 Pontiac Tempest. They were looking for the keys.”
“Why was that odd?”
“How did they know he had a Tempest?” she asked. “He hasn’t had it out of the shed since the summer.”
“Maybe they were just looking for a getaway car,” he said.
“But we have two other cars in the driveway, out in the open,” she said. “And they specifically wanted the Tempest. They said so.”
Gil wasn’t sure what to make of this. He could tell Mrs. Martin’s anxiety was rising, likely due to his questioning, and decided it was time to wrap it up for now.
“I just have one more question,” he said. “Do you or your husband have any connection to the movie business or the film that’s being shot out at the penitentiary?” Gil asked.
“I don’t,” she said. “My husband is a scientist, so I doubt it, but
you’d have to ask him when he wakes up.”
Gil thanked her and went back over to Joe and Kristen.
“I’ll stay with her for a little while,” Kristen said. “And I’ll call a crisis counselor to come talk to her.”
“Thank you,” Gil said. He watched her go sit with Natalie Martin.
Joe watched them as well, shaking his head. “The Martins don’t exactly fit the victim profile,” he said quietly. “Neither of them looks like a rich Anglo male to me.”
“I guess we need to rethink the profile,” Gil said. “But then we need to rethink a lot of this case.” Down the hall, they could hear the twins starting to wake.
“The husband’s lucky to have gotten this far,” Joe said. “Hoffman must have shot him from a little too far away. Kristen said the gun Mrs. Martin described sounded like a Browning pistol. If it hadn’t been a .22…”
“He’d be dead already,” Gil said.
* * *
By 7:00 A.M., Gil and Joe were back at the station. Gil called one of his cousins and asked him to go shovel his mom’s driveway, then he called home, just to make sure Susan and the girls were all right being snowbound. They were busy making cookies and watching movies. He spent the next few minutes trying to explain to Joe about how a baby’s cry changes as it gets older.
“How could anyone tell the age of a baby by its cry?” Joe asked. “I’m not buying this.”
“Susan can. She says it’s a part of being a mom.”
“If we do find the baby, do you think Mrs. Martin would be able to ID its cry?” Joe asked. “What if we do a crying baby lineup…”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Gil said.
“Then let’s call Susan and ask how it does work.”
“I’m not going to bother my wife while we’re in the middle of a case.”
Joe reached over and picked up Gil’s phone and hit redial. “Hi, Susan, it’s Joe … no, Gil’s here with me … I was calling you”—he paused, waiting for her to finish saying something—“Oh, thanks for the invitation, but I don’t know where I’ll be spending Christmas at this point … I just … Okay … well, I just have a quick question for you. Can you tell how old a baby is by its cry alone?… Uh-huh … sure … okay … all right. Thanks. Talk to you later.”
When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery Page 12
