When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery

by Christine Barber

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “You have to call Susan.” He waited a second before saying, “Listen, Mom, can I ask you about something?”

  “Of course, hito,” she said.

  “When Dad was prosecuting the inmates from the state pen riot, why did he have to have the police protecting him?”

  His mom didn’t answer right away, but she also didn’t completely brush his question off, which was what he had expected. Instead, she said, “That was a bad time. Why are you asking about it?”

  “Dad told me that an inmate named Pat Abetya had said some things to him,” he said. “I think Abetya is involved with a case I’m working on.”

  “That man—he wasn’t a good man,” his mom said. “You were too little back then. Your father and I didn’t want to worry you or your sister.”

  “Mom, I was ten,” Gil said. “I was old enough to know something was going on. There were officers all over the house. What happened? Was Abetya the man Dad needed protection from?”

  “Oh, hito…”

  “Just tell me, Mom, please.” Gil said.

  She answered quietly, “The protection wasn’t for your father; it was for me and you and your sister.”

  “What?” Gil said, loudly enough that Joe, still sitting in the SUV, turned to look out at him. Gil paced a few feet away and struggled to keep his voice level as he said, “I really need you to explain this to me, Mom.”

  “That man … he sent someone to the house,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Gil asked. “Pat Abetya sent someone to threaten you?” His voice started to rise at the end, his anger coming out.

  “I was putting your sister down for her nap and you were at school when he broke in. He had a gun.”

  “What happened?” Gil asked. His eyes were closed, his jaw clenched, the phone tight against his ear.

  “Before he could do anything, your grandpa heard me scream and came running over from the old house with his shotgun.”

  “Did they catch the man?”

  “No,” she said. “Your grandpa shot at him, but he ran away. They followed him as far as the Mexican border, but they never caught him.”

  When Gil was ten, Judge Gilbert Nazario Estevan Montoya insisted on teaching him how to shoot a shotgun. They stood out in the field for hours, while Gil took aim and the judge yelled at him when he missed. They repeated this over and over, until Gil could hit his mark perfectly. Now he knew why.

  “How did they know Abetya had sent the man?” Gil asked.

  “They were cousins,” she said. “But your dad couldn’t prove that man, Mr. Abetya, was involved. All your dad could do was prosecute him as best he could for the riot. Mr. Abetya was supposed to be released that year, but your father got him sentenced to life.”

  * * *

  Lucy’s margarita sat in front of her, untouched. Dr. Goodwin’s was the same. Lucy was still trying to maneuver around Goodwin’s reluctance.

  “It must be hard having two employees die like that,” Lucy said. Dr. Goodwin didn’t answer. Lucy decided if an appeal to human emotion didn’t work, she’d have to try something else. “It must have really increased your workload.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Goodwin said. “It really did.”

  Lucy kept going. “That must be difficult. I’m sure you were already working long hours.”

  “I’m always there after everyone else has left for the day,” Dr. Goodwin said, taking a sip of her drink. Lucy smiled. She had finally found a topic Dr. Goodwin cared about.

  A half hour later, Lucy sat sucking from her fingers the salt that had once lined the rim of her margarita glass, which was now empty. Dr. Goodwin was really chatty now, going on about her work while never revealing what kind of work she did. She would just refer to generic experiments and procedures.

  “With Dr. Price gone, I’ll have to interview for new employees,” Dr. Goodwin said. “I don’t have the time for that. I was already doing the work of another employee who’s on maternity leave.”

  “That’s hard,” Lucy said, taking a final hit of spinach dip, scraping the bottom of the bowl. She signaled for the waiter to bring them another round of drinks.

  “She was supposed to come back to work six months ago,” Dr. Goodwin said, finishing off her margarita. “But she said she needed more time, since she had twin boys. Is having twins really that much harder than having one baby?”

  * * *

  Gil, still standing out in the cold, called his sister and told her the whole story about Pat Abetya. Her first response was much like Gil’s, only with more swear words. Her second response was “I’ll be at mom’s in an hour.” They had no reason to think Abetya would want to revisit an old grudge. But then again, he already had committed three home invasions. How easy would it be for him to kill two birds with one stone—go out to Gil’s mom’s place for another home invasion while simultaneously getting back at the family of a man who’d helped get him sentenced to thirty years in prison? Elena called back ten minutes later to tell him their aunt Yolanda and cousin Tomas, who was a corrections officer at the state pen, had volunteered to go over and help make tamales until Elena arrived. Next, Gil called Susan, just to check on her, but he got only her voice mail.

  Gil got back into the car and tried to warm up his hands in front of the heater.

  “Everything okay?” Joe asked, looking at Gil intently.

  “Yeah,” Gil said, rubbing his hands together.

  “Not that I believe you in the slightest,” Joe said, “but I’ll let it go for now.”

  “Thanks,” Gil said. “Hear anything new?”

  “Nope,” Joe said. “Just to be clear, we still think Escobar and Hoffman are involved, right? And Abetya was using his consulting work to get names and addresses of the people connected to the movie so he and Escobar and Hoffman could go pay them a visit?”

  “That’s about it,” Gil said. He leaned back in his seat and tried to concentrate on the job before him: surveilling Abetya’s house

  Hours later he was still in the same position. Joe sat next to him, occasionally looking up from the movie he was watching on his phone. There had been no movement inside the house; despite the fact Abetya’s car was in the driveway. Joe and Gil had debated the idea that Hoffman had turned on Abetya and the latter was lying dead inside the trailer, which wouldn’t be the worst news Gil had heard. The other possibility—which was Joe’s favorite—was that Abetya was Mr. Burns and had been dead all along. But they couldn’t be sure either way and didn’t want to swarm the house too early and possibly scare off Hoffman. So they stayed put.

  They had police cars in front of the Escobar house and more officers looking for the SUV Hoffman was driving. Now they just had to wait. They debated putting SWAT on standby, just in case Abetya showed. But they decided there would be time for that when they knew exactly where Abetya was.

  The phone on Gil’s belt vibrated. It was Lucy. He let it go to voice mail.

  * * *

  The drive down from the Hill had many pockets of cell phone dead areas. The mesas and canyons were stingy with what signals they let get past.

  Lucy called Gil again as soon as she had a signal, saying, “Gil, I found something that might help you. Call me.” She had tried him once from the restaurant and left a similar message, but he hadn’t gotten back to her. But then, that was only twenty minutes ago.

  She was passing Pojoaque Pueblo when she thought to call Joe’s cell, but one look at her signal told her she’d have to wait until she topped Opera Hill. The waiting was making her anxious.

  Lucy heard the siren before she saw the police cruiser. At first she thought he was going to pass by, off to some car accident or bank robbery. She was surprised when she pulled off to the right to let him pass and he pulled up behind her. She was positive she hadn’t been speeding, careful to keep it one point under the limit. Maybe her taillight was out. Maybe the men in black SUVs were coming for her because she’d interviewed a lab employee. The sheriff’s deput
y got out of his car and walked up to her door, his right hand covering the butt of the gun on his belt. Lucy rolled down her window and was hit with a blast of cold air. She tried to smile nonetheless.

  “Hi there, officer. How are you tonight?” she said.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I need to see your vehicle registration and driver’s identification.”

  “Okay. Let me get it out,” Lucy said. She was careful not to obstruct the deputy’s view of the emergency radio installed in her car, hoping he might give a firefighter a break. But he said nothing. She handed over the documentation, which he took, saying, “I’ll be right back. Stay in your car.”

  He sat in his patrol car behind her, calling in her information. She had no speeding tickets. Not even any for parking. She thought at most she would get a warning. As she waited for him, she watched the passing cars and their occupants, who craned their necks to look at her, everyone wondering just what kind of criminal she was. The deputy came back, knocking on her window before she had a chance to roll it down.

  “Ma’am,” he said. “You need to step out of the vehicle.”

  She got out of her car, smiling and said, “Geez, it’s cold out here.”

  The deputy didn’t smile. Instead he said, “Ma’am, I need you to come over here and walk a straight line.”

  That was the first time it occurred to her that she was being pulled over for drunk driving.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  December 23

  Gil was resting his eyes when Joe’s phone rang. He zoned out Joe’s conversation and instead went back over the home invasions in his head. They had passed the list of a hundred or so people connected to the movie on to Chief Kline, who was deciding whether to alert them to the possibility they might be targeted for a home invasion. Gil was thinking about calling the chief to check on his decision when Joe got off the phone.

  “That was one of the guys from county jail,” Joe said after hanging up. “Lucy’s been arrested.”

  “For what?” Gil said, less surprised than he probably should have been.

  “DWI,” Joe said.

  Gil sighed. Lucy was always very good at causing problems—and her drinking had become one huge problem. She had called him drunk a few months ago, during a missing-child case and had even come to the station one night after a few beers. “Does she want us to come get her out?”

  “All they said was that she was waiting to talk to you.”

  “She can keep waiting,” Gil said. Somehow Lucy was able to frustrate him more easily than anyone else he had ever met. When it came to her, his emotional meter seemed to have two settings: amused and annoyed, with nothing in between.

  “You sound mad,” Joe said.

  “No, I just don’t care right now,” Gil said, lying.

  * * *

  Her jail cell wasn’t that bad. She was in a group pod with three other women, all of whom were asleep. There were bunk beds attached to the walls and benches to sit on. The cell wasn’t overly grimy or scary, and the red jumpsuit she was wearing was comfortable enough for her to stretch out in.

  She was in a Santa County detention center after having been processed at the sheriff’s department, which included a mug shot and fingerprinting. She had passed the field sobriety tests—sort of. Bad footing or icy pavement could explain her minor stumbles. But there was no arguing with the Breathalyzer test. She’d known that if she refused to take it, she could be charged with aggravated DWI, so she blew into the instrument—as she had so many times at home to ensure that she never drove drunk. The Breathalyzer had registered a .09, just above the .08 limit. She would be held in lockup until arraignment in the morning, at which point she could post bond and get out. In the meantime, she was trying to figure out a way to get in touch with Gil.

  A corrections officer came by, and she called over to him, saying, “Did you call him? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t answer,” the officer said.

  “Call him again.”

  “Give it up. He’s not coming to get you out of here,” the officer said.

  “What about his partner, Joe?”

  “I talked to him. He didn’t say anything. Sorry.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Just after nine thirty.”

  * * *

  Mateo Garcia stood at a glass-and-wood counter with a calculator in his hand. He had locked the store’s doors at 9:00 P.M. and turned the red-and-white sign on the door to CLOSED. Now he had the shoebox containing all the IOUs in front of him. Willie’s visit that day had made Mateo curious about just how much money he would owe the mountain man when the time came. Mateo had spent the last ten minutes pulling out receipts and typing numbers off the IOUs into a calculator. Willie came in only four or five times a year, but the fifty-dollar checks came in every month.

  There was a knock on the door and Mateo looked up. Mr. Anaya, Shorty Anaya’s father, waved at him through the glass. Mateo went to unlock the door, and Mr. Anaya came shuffling in, leaning heavily on his cane.

  “What can I help you with tonight, sir?” Mateo asked him.

  “Oh, I need candy,” he said. “It’s almost Christmas. I need candy to hand out to the kids when they come to the door.”

  While Mr. Anaya made his way over to the candy aisle, Mateo went back to the counter to use the store phone. A few minutes later, Shorty Anaya drove up and came into the shop, stomping the snow off his boots.

  “Thanks for calling,” he said to Mateo. They both watched as Shorty’s father took a Hershey bar and put it in his coat pocket. Shorty shook his head, laughed, and yelled across the store, “Dad, put the candy back. It’s not yours.” Mr. Anaya didn’t listen and put a bag of Skittles in his pocket next.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mateo asked. “I’d rather he shoplifted from me than some teenager. How’s he doing with the Alzheimer’s?”

  “He’s good,” Shorty said, “until he goes wandering off like this. How he manages to walk in the dark up that icy road…” He didn’t finish the thought.

  “It’s no problem,” Mateo said. “At least he always comes here and doesn’t head off into the woods.”

  “I think he comes here because he remembers it from when he was a kid,” Shorty said. The Anaya family had been shopping at Garcia’s Hardware since it first opened in 1910. The Anayas still lived in the house where generations of children had grown up.

  The wood floor creaked as Shorty went over to the candy aisle. “Dad, it’s time to go,” he said, taking his father’s arm to lead him out of the store.

  “I don’t want to go,” Mr. Anaya said, sounding like a whining child. “I need to get candy for when the kids come to the door.”

  “He’s been saying that since he got here,” Mateo said. “I think he’s remembering Mis Crismes.” Mateo’s mother had told him stories about Mis Crismes from when she was a girl in the 1950s. On Christmas morning she and her brothers and sisters would each take a pillowcase and go door to door to neighbors, yelling, “Mis crismes.” When the neighbors opened the door, each child would get a treat in his bag. Mrs. Quintana had popcorn balls. The Archuletas gave out candy canes. The Ortegas down the hill made bizcochitos. His mother could come home with a pillowcase full of cookies, apples, and oranges. Mateo wondered why the tradition had died out. He and his friends had never celebrated it. As best he could tell, his mother’s generation was the last one that did, unless the practice still survived in the tiny mountain villages.

  “Is that what you’re talking about, Dad?” Shorty asked him. “Are you remembering back when you celebrated Mis Crismes.”

  “Mis Crismes, Mis Crismes,” Mr. Anaya said in a little high voice, making Shorty and Mateo laugh.

  “Those were good times,” Shorty said as they reached the door. Mateo opened it for them. “Back then you got Christmas candy for free just by asking for it and you didn’t have to shoplift.” Mateo told them good night as he closed the door behind them. He decided to leave the IOUs for another day a
nd instead made a sign that read, CLOSED UNTIL DECEMBER 26, which he put on the door that he locked behind him.

  * * *

  One of Lucy’s cellmates had woken up, and Lucy had gone into interview mode, talking to the woman as if she were a subject of an article, asking her question after question yet never offering any information about herself. The woman, who had four kids, two ex-husbands, and only $14.02 in the bank, had been arrested on her third DWI, which meant jail time. Lucy was just about to ask the woman if she was scared to go to jail when the corrections officer came past again and Lucy asked, “What time is it?”

  “It’s twenty minutes later than the last time you asked,” he said.

  “That would make it after eleven, right?”

  “Why do you keep asking me about the time?” he asked.

  “It’s after eleven, right? That’s all I need to know.”

  “Fine, yeah. It’s officially”—he looked his watch—“eleven-oh-nine and fifteen seconds.”

  “Thank you. I want to make my phone call.” He shook his head and opened the cell door, leading her to the guard station, where the phone was. She dialed Tommy Martinez’s cell phone.

  “Hey, boss, what’s up?”

  “I’m in jail,” she said.

  “For what?” he asked, sounding like he didn’t believe her.

  “DWI, but that’s not why I called. I need a favor.”

  “I can come bail you out—” he started to say.

  “No, I need you to do something for me,” Lucy said. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?”

  “Yeah, okay, go ahead.”

  “Do you know who Detective Gil Montoya is, with the Santa Fe Police?”

  “Sure…”

  “Can you get a hold of him right away?”

  “No problem.”

  “I need you to ask him something,” she said. “Write this down. I need you to ask him if it’s true that all the victims of the recent home invasions worked in the same department at Los Alamos National Lab.”

  “Really? Is that true? Do they?”