The Pumpkin Seed Massacre

by Susan Slater

  “If there were any survivors, carcasses—and I’m not saying there were—they survived because they were away from the center of the fire and have already been admitted as evidence,” he said. “Arson isn’t suspected but heat intensity, center of blast—those things need to be determined. The contents of the lab, the rats, help us get a picture of what happened. It’s just routine.”

  “What would that entail?”

  “Shipping them off to the state lab.” The chief pulled a log from the top desk drawer.

  “But you’re not sure that happened?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute.” He turned a few pages before he found what he was looking for, then he checked several entries before looking up. “A number of parcels were sent to Santa Fe, but I’m not at liberty to say exactly what was contained in those samples.”

  Or someone wasn’t very accurate in his reporting. There was no doubt that the chief wasn’t above a little behind-chewing. And “storm cloud” didn’t do justice to his expression. She certainly had his attention on this.

  “I’d like you to do something for me.” Julie was busy writing on the back of her business card. “If the rodents are still intact, send a sample to IHS, Dr. Sanford Black, Clinical Director. The CDC still has a lab set up here in Albuquerque at the Indian hospital. Right now, they’re primarily doing rodent testing. This could be important.”

  The chief looked relieved, probably felt she was cutting him some slack by not mentioning using the information in a story.

  “I’ll tell Dr. Black that he’ll be hearing from you in the next couple days. Is that sufficient time?”

  “Yes. I’ll have Santa Fe contact him directly. We may be able to get him something by noon tomorrow.” He took the card, then rose to walk her to the door. “Miss Conlin, I’m sure every precaution was taken in handling any evidence.”

  Julie smiled “I sincerely hope so.”

  + + +

  Did she have a lot to tell Ben. They could decide what to do when he came by tonight. But, it was probably time to let the authorities know everything they suspected. There weren’t any definitive answers yet; no one had come forward with a confession and a lot did depend on whether Tony Chang’s collection of rodents held any clues. But the coincidences were overwhelming. Tony Chang dies; Johnson Yepa dies. Both apparently of accidents, both players in the casino deal, probably key players. One in a position to come up with the killer in his laboratory, the other in a position to take the pumpkin seeds to the pueblo. Give them to the governor.

  Julie pushed her garage door opener, and pulled in between the packing crates. She’d go back out for groceries after she called Sandy, so there wasn’t any reason to close it again. It was only five-fifteen; she should be able to catch him at the office.

  Then, time for a shower, start the pasta, bring some wood in for a fire. Julie laughed; it was beginning to sound like a fun evening. She fumbled for her keys and then realized that the back door was open. Standing open about an inch. Thank God, for garage doors. She must have forgotten to close it after she’d taken the garbage out.

  She tossed her purse on the kitchen counter. Talavera tile in a mixture of terra cotta, yellow and blue covered the counters and bordered the Saltillo tile on the floor. She reached in the fridge for the pitcher of apple juice and carried it to the kitchen table, a glass and rough wood beam thing with matching chairs. The gift from her always trend-conscious mother had actually fit right in.

  She punched the message button on her answering machine and grabbed a glass from a rough pine cupboard above the sink. Her dry cleaning was ready; Ben would be there by six-fifteen and would she like to see a movie; a girl at work reminding her of the baby shower for the receptionist; then the whirring of the machine before someone hung up. People still had a problem with leaving messages. She waited. There was one more message.

  The voice wasn’t familiar, could have been altered in some way. It was male. Possibly an older man. But it was the message that made Julie brace herself against the sink.

  “Get out while you can. They’re going to kill you. You know too much. Leave Albuquerque. Don’t treat this as some joke. Your life is in danger.”

  Was someone trying to scare her? He was doing a good job. Her knees felt like rubber. What should she do? Give the tape to the police for starters. Just another thing to talk to Ben about. She couldn’t just stand there; she was starting to run late if she was going to have everything ready by six-thirty. She took a deep breath and walked to the drawer under the phone and got a new tape. But before she messed with a tape, she should call the hospital. It wasn’t as though she’d forget to tell Ben about the threat. Could be a prank, but it could be for real.

  She dialed the hospital. Gloria said that Sandy was upstairs, did she want to leave a message?

  “Tell him to expect some rodents from the state lab. No, that may not be true. Just tell him that I’ll call back in the morning.”

  The arm came around her suddenly, pinning her arms to her sides, another hand around her mouth. She struggled, kicking backward and up, but not connecting with anything solid. She was being lifted off the floor. It was the last thing she remembered.

  + + +

  Julie’s car was gone when he got there, but the garage door was up and the back door open. She’d probably gone to get something for dinner. She’d offered to cook and he had enthusiastically accepted the invitation. Maybe tonight, they could talk about the two of them.

  The apple juice on the table was cool, so it hadn’t been sitting out since breakfast. It seemed odd she hadn’t even started dinner yet. He checked his watch. Six-twenty. Well, maybe she’d worked late and hadn’t had time to shop earlier. So much for the movie idea. They’d just have to figure out something else to do. He smiled. He’d finally made up his mind to force the issue; tell her exactly how he felt and suggest a couple ways that they could work things out after he left. Do the long-distance thing for a year or so. But he couldn’t walk away without an understanding. An understanding about their future together.

  He walked toward the dining room; the table wasn’t set. In fact, other than the door being open and the juice out, it looked like she hadn’t been there. He turned back to the kitchen and automatically straightened a throw rug that was wadded under the phone stand. The plastic lid to the answering machine’s tape deck was up. Maybe she had gotten some message and had to leave. He looked around for a note. Nothing on the table, nothing pinned to the fridge with a magnet. He toyed with playing her phone messages. It wasn’t like he was opening her mail. But it was a little snoopy. He’d wait. She should be back any minute. He flopped down on the couch.

  + + +

  Ben sat up and tried to get oriented. Long shadows invaded the room, broken by the twinkling lights of the city below. The view through the French doors leading to the deck captured the best of Albuquerque. Or, at least, it was a reason to live in the foothills of the Sandias. The furnace coming on had awakened him. The blower from the forced-air unit was the only sound in the townhouse. Julie. He was at Julie’s. And she wasn’t here. A feeling of panic rose from somewhere and threatened to squeeze the air from his chest.

  They were supposed to have dinner. What time was it? He fumbled with the switch on the table lamp and checked his watch. Oh, God. It was seven o’clock. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He could feel it. She would have called, not just stood him up. Hadn’t she left the door open for him? He stood, walked to a floor lamp and turned it on, then the hanging lamp over the dining room table. The light wasn’t reassuring. It didn’t help to quell the rising feeling of dread. It just kept him busy for half a minute.

  What if there had been an accident? He’d check the hospitals. She could have gone to the store and been hit by a car. He walked to the phone. Stay calm. You don’t know anything for sure, yet. Talking to himself wasn’t very reassuring, either. He opened the drawer to find a phone book.

  Maybe he should just replay her messages. She, or someone, h
ad already listened to them—if there were any. Or, maybe she’d erased them. He rewound the tape. He’d just replay the last three or four. It couldn’t hurt to check.

  He was almost ready to say it had been a bad idea when the last message began. A death threat. He played it once, twice. By the third time, he knew that he didn’t recognize the voice. He’d take it to the police. But then they’d just assume that she had run. Panicked and bolted. He knew better. But, did he? Yes. She would not have gone anywhere without telling him. What would she have done after hearing that message?

  Maybe the neighbors had seen something. He grabbed a spare key off the peg board by the back door, locked up, and ran across the narrow expanse of Bermuda grass that separated the two dwellings.

  An elderly woman answered the door and kept it as a shield between them as she peered at him closely.

  “I’m a friend of Julie Conlin. Ben Pecos. We were supposed to meet at her house tonight. She left the back door open for me, but she hasn’t come back. Did you see her leave earlier?”

  The woman studied him. “Well, she borrowed my eight quart kettle. Told me about cooking dinner for someone. Sounded like that someone was special.” The woman smiled coquettishly.

  “But did you see her leave?”

  “You know, now that I think of it, I did, earlier. Just a minute, let me ask Harold. We were just getting back from playing golf.” She started to go back into the house. “Oh my, I’m forgetting my manners. Step inside. This will only take a minute.”

  It seemed like hours before the woman came back.

  “Harold says her garage door was up when we got home. He says he saw her little red car parked inside. What I remember was the big white van in the driveway. You know, like the van from the studio. She sometimes drives it home.”

  “Did it have the Channel Nine insignia on the side?”

  “Oh dear. I can’t say that it did or didn’t.”

  “Did you see either one of the cars leave?”

  “Yes. Both of them. Someone was driving the van and it followed Julie in her car.”

  “So, Julie was driving the Miata?”

  “Well, I couldn’t swear to it. I just assumed it was Julie. I had stopped for a few groceries and was taking the things out of the trunk of our car.” The woman paused. “No, I didn’t actually see her. I waved. I remember doing that.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Early. About five-thirty.”

  He thanked her and ran back to Julie’s. Should he go back inside and wait? Call the station? It was seven fifteen. No. He’d go to the station. Maybe, just maybe, there was some emergency and she had been called in to work late on a story. It sounded good, but he didn’t believe it.

  + + +

  Unnecessary roughness, abduction, life-threatening ... but you had to be alive to make those kinds of charges and Julie knew that if she didn’t come up with something fast, that was the one thing she wasn’t going to be. Her head ached. She remembered passing out after someone put pressure on her neck. She had just called Sandy; what else was she doing ... Ben. He’d be there by now looking for her. Would he stay or would he leave, thinking she’d had to work?

  She eased an elbow out to the right to brace herself from hitting the side of the van as it turned a corner. Whoever was driving was a maniac. The voice in her kitchen that told him to put her in the back of the van and follow him was all too familiar. Even semiconscious, she recognized Bob Crenshaw. Then after the van doors were slammed shut, she’d heard the Miata start. Bob must be driving it.

  The ropes at her wrists pulled and itched. At least the ropes at her ankles didn’t chafe through thick socks. But it was the tape—heavy, wide and metallic gray—wound double around her mouth that was the most uncomfortable.

  She was stretched out flat in the back of a van. It was one from the station. That much she was sure of. The driver was someone she’d never seen before. Odd man. Didn’t seem comfortable with his role as heavy. In fact, he didn’t seem a menacing type at all. More like an accountant who lifted weights and bit his fingernails. He had the hands of someone who sat at a desk. And the nervous mannerisms of someone unsure of himself.

  So, who would kill her? There it was. She put it into words. It was the truth. Either the man driving or Bob Crenshaw would get rid of her. She wasn’t in the back of the van, trussed up like a wild animal, unless she was going to slaughter. This certainly corroborated what her sixth sense had been screaming—she had been right. Isn’t that what the phone message had warned her about—knowing too much? She had reached that expendable level.

  She just wished she knew where they were going. How much time would she have to react? Would someone open the doors of the van and shoot her? Too messy. They’d probably drag her out at some point, then what?

  The van turned another corner then bounced over two speed bumps and angled downward before it suddenly stopped. Where were they? Bob opened the passenger side door and said something about when he got back ... then the door slammed shut and the driver turned up the radio, at which point the door opened again and Bob growled about not attracting attention. The radio went dead. They must be in a public place.

  The station. The underground parking at the station. Her hearing was distorted by the tape, but the van door had made that echoing sound of a parking garage when Bob slammed it. Now what? They wouldn’t kill her here. Somehow, it didn’t make her feel better.

  Julie had never been good about telling time without a watch, but it seemed like she’d been there over an hour before she heard another sound. A car door slamming shut next to the van. She had a feeling it was the Miata. The springs in the van’s bucket seat creaked under the weight of the driver pushing back away from the steeling wheel. Must not want to be seen.

  Julie lifted her legs together high above her head and brought the heels of her shoes down hard on the floorboards. Ouch. Not enough noise. Quickly twisting onto her side, she banged her feet against the side of the van before the driver yanked a handful of her hair, pulling her a foot in the air.

  “More of that, and I won’t wait for Bob.”

  He dropped her but leaned over her, his hand still holding a fistful of her hair. The pressure brought tears to her eyes. So much for his being a softy. And, so much for trying to attract attention; no one had heard her. The man slipped into the passenger’s seat, but turned back to keep an eye on her. Then, as an afterthought, he climbed beside her and unrolled a canvas tarp tucking it snugly around her arms and legs and pulling it up to her chin.

  “Now, try to throw yourself around.”

  Julie hated the confinement. But she had watched his face as he covered her. There wasn’t one part of her body that he hadn’t looked at. He hadn’t touched, just looked and lusted after. Maybe she could use his wanting to her advantage. But how? There were two of them.

  There was still a chance that Ben would have sensed something was wrong and ... and what? He would have gone to her house expecting dinner. Did he know her well enough to know she’d never have reneged on a dinner invite? No, he probably didn’t. He could have just given up and gone home. It was difficult to keep the tears back. How could she have been so stupid? Not seen Bob for what he was. Not been more careful.

  + + +

  Ben parked to the west of the building, number One Broadcast Plaza, in a visitor’s space. He thought Julie usually left her car underground in the area reserved for employees. It wouldn’t hurt to check on his way in. The garage was a two story, spacious cement attachment to the back of Julie’s office building. The ramp leading to the underground level curved to the right. All the signs and large sweeping arrows looked freshly painted but the fluorescent lighting bled them of color, leaving little contrast between pillars, floor, and the light tan ceiling.

  Ben jogged down the ramp and checked a row marked “compact cars only” along the north wall. Halfway down the row, a quick look told him no red Miatas. He headed toward the elevator. Better yet, he’d take the stairs.
He wondered if anyone was ever on duty, some guard who spent the night walking up and down the ramps, maybe lapping the building once or twice. He didn’t see any evidence of human existence. The elevators were enclosed in a glassed-in box, obviously heated and cooled and provided with a sand-fitted canister for cigarette butts. The building was posted No Smoking; the metal sign had been tagged with graffiti.

  The stairs were behind the elevators near a large closet area marked Maintenance. Beside the room, six spaces were reserved for Maintenance Vehicles Only. And there it was. Between two white vans.

  Ben checked the passenger side door. Open. He looked inside, then got into the car. Nothing out of place. Didn’t look like the glove compartment had been touched recently. No remnants of torn clothing or blood stains on seats or floor. Not that he was looking for something like that, but he was relieved when he didn’t find it. With her car here, she just might be upstairs working.

  He leaned toward the driver’s seat and struck his knee on the gear shift. It had been left in neutral. The emergency brake was on—yanked to its limit by someone stronger than Julie, Ben thought. But not leaving the car in reverse was a dead giveaway that Julie hadn’t parked her car. Nor had she pushed the driver’s seat back four inches.

  He eased out of the car and looked around. No sign of life. Closing the car door echoed among the pillars, but no one appeared to ask him what he was doing. He’d check upstairs and see if anyone knew where she was. Something told him to go back to the front entrance and not let anyone know that he’d seen Julie’s car.

  The evening receptionist was busy answering phones and whispered for him to wait. Ben looked around. Only about half the room full of cubicles that stretched behind the information desk was lighted. Ben saw four people still in front of computers.