The Bone Fire_A Mystery

Chapter TEN

Friday Night

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The night at work was beginning to slow down for Lucy. She had edited Tommy’s skull story, which was mostly right on the mark except for a lengthy lead she had to edit down. In the fifth graph, Tommy deftly mentioned the possibility that the skull was Brianna’s—along with the “no comment” answer from police about the likelihood of that. She had hit a few keys on her computer and sent it on its merry way along the editing chain.
Now she just needed an okay from copydesk that the story was good. She also wanted to check the front page proofs, which wasn’t necessary, but she decided to let her OCD perfectionism guide her tonight. Because this story was important. The article would definitely be run up by all state news agencies and the Associated Press, which would send it out to newspapers across the country. More than likely it would get picked up by CNN and the other cable news shows, meaning that for a few bright moments tomorrow, tiny Santa Fe, New Mexico, would be on the map—and here she was, the final check, before it was read by millions. Tommy was still there for the same reason, making sure there were no questions.
She was mindlessly reading over wire copy when Tommy came over.
“Wanna hear something weird?” he asked.
“Always,” she said.
“So I was checking out the road closures downtown today, and one guy I talked to said he’d heard that someone had put some bones in front of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church.”
“Human bones?”
“That’s what he said.”
“There is no way that’s true,” Lucy said dismissively. “That’s like Florida or Texas level weird. New Mexico’s level of weird is some dude who blames his cat for downloading child porn. We do stupid weird.”
“He said it was this whole display thing with art and dolls’ heads and stuff,” Tommy said, smiling broadly. A cat-eating-canary smile. He knew a great news story when he heard one. “And he said he heard there were more of them around town.”
“Seriously?” she said, wondering how the story could get any more creepy. The amount of creepy in a story was directly proportional to the rate of newspaper sales. “Where are we at with it? I can call people in to help.”
“The problem is his information is thirdhand at best.”
“Nobody else will confirm it?” she asked, her excitement quickly deflating.
“No, and I can’t even get anyone else to say that they heard the rumor.”
“Really? That seems odd. How good’s your source?”
“Pretty solid. I don’t think he’s lying,”
“But he has no direct knowledge.”
“Nope,” Tommy said, shaking his head.
“Was your source thinking this was related to the skull in Zozobra?”
“Yep.”
“Damn it. Well, what do you want to do?”
“I’ll chase it tomorrow. We might never be able to confirm it, but my gut tells me that it’s true.”
“Yeah, mine, too. Well, good luck tomorrow. I’m only sorry I won’t be here to help you. I guess this means you won’t be getting to this other story idea I had for you.” She told him about the burned-out cars, the red graffiti, and how they all led back to the same apartment complex.
“That’s going to take some intense investigative work,” he said. Which was why Lucy had thought of him. He loved deep research and slowly cultivating sources. The boy might have grown up on a Northern New Mexico farm, but he was a natural when it came to working the city folk. She could tell he was thinking it over.
“And the reporter has to know Spanish since most of the victims seem to be Mexican,” she said in a singsong voice, trying to tempt him further.
“I would love to do it,” he said, “but I can’t until this skull thing has cooled down.”
Lucy sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m just teasing. We’ll wait until next week to get going on it. It’ll hold until then.”
“What about Andrea?”
“The copydesk intern?” Lucy had only bumped into her in the ladies’ room, so all Lucy could say about her was that she was a thorough hand washer.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s from Puerto Rico, and she’s dying to do a news story.”
“Tommy, come on. We both know this isn’t a story for a newbie.”
“She could just go over there and get the ball rolling. See what the deal is.”
Lucy thought about it. It might not be such a bad idea. Andrea could serve as an initial undercover reporter, then hand it off to Tommy later.
“I guess I’ll go see if she’s interested,” Lucy said. She walked toward the copydesk corral with Tommy following close behind her.
Andrea looked up brightly and expectantly from her computer. She had yet to learn that anyone who came over to your desk probably wanted you to do something that you didn’t want to do.
“Hi,” Andrea said, smiling. “What do you guys need?”
Tommy quickly explained the situation. Andrea actually clapped her hands in joy. Lucy was starting to regret her decision.
“I just need someone who can ask questions,” Lucy said, trying to temper the girl’s enthusiasm. “I was thinking you could go by there tomorrow.”
“Are you going to be there?” Andrea asked Lucy.
“What? No,” Lucy said. She had never been asked by a reporter to act as babysitter.
“Please,” Andrea said imploringly. “I don’t even know what questions to ask.”
“How would it work if I came?” Lucy asked, annoyed. “I’d ask the questions and you’d translate? That’ll go over great. An Anglo chick telling a Hispanic chick what to do.”
“But I don’t think I can do this myself . . .”
Lucy sighed heavily. She had no use for helpless women. “Fine. I’ll come with you, but I’m staying in the car. Okay?”
She went back to her desk and sat down heavily just as her cell phone started to vibrate. It was her mom. Lucy’s desire to talk to her was over, replaced by the reality that talking to her mom could be exhausting. She let it go to voice mail.
Gil drove back to the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center and had Rodriguez booked into one of the special protective custody cells. They would bring him over to the station in the morning when he was sober. Hopefully, if they found no more bone displays, Gil might have time to question him further about Ashley’s abuse.
Gil waited until he and Joe were back in the car before saying, “I think that guy’s a dead end. I just don’t see him taking Brianna and then setting up the crime scenes that way.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Joe said, sighing heavily. “He’s a molesting son of a bitch, but honestly, he couldn’t kill his way out of a box.”
“Let’s just go back to the office and go at it again.”
“Copy that, good buddy,” Joe said.
“And, Joe,” Gil said, “I just wanted to thank you for before, back at the house with handling everything.”
“Hey, you always hold it together for me, dude, so I can return the favor one time, no problem.” Joe leaned his head against the passenger-side window and went to sleep for the rest of the ten-minute drive.
Gil was back at the office, making corrections on his last report, when his phone rang. It was his cousin Suzanne.
“I’m sorry I’m just calling now, but I had to wait until I left work,” she said. “Don’t you dare tell my mom that I’m helping you like this.” Gil knew she was actually breaking the law in helping him.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“We had a patient in the ward a few months ago who was schizophrenic and his delusions revolved around the Freemasons and the Catholic Church,” she said. “Hang on . . .” He heard her talking to her four-year-old in the background. “Sweetheart, you need to go lie down.” He heard a little voice respond to her but couldn’t make out the words.
“Devon’s not in bed yet?” Gil asked, remembering the sleep schedule of toddlers.
“No, he’s in bed, he just can’t seem to stay there,” Suzanne said in the typical harried voice of a mother. “I might have to go in a minute. Anyway, the patient was brought in by the sheriff’s department after he threatened them with a sword.”
“Really?” Gil said, feeling that they finally might have gotten a break.
“Yeah, and according to his chart he was approached by police after his neighbor said the man threatened his kids.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “I never treated him.”
“What’s the name?”
“David Geisler,” she said and gave him the address.
“That’s just a few blocks from Brianna’s house,” Gil said.
“I know,” Suzanne said. He thanked her, and they hung up.
Gil looked up the sheriff’s arrest report online. On May 24, Santa Fe County sheriff’s officer Jackson Yazzie approached a white male about suspicious activity. A 911 caller reported that the man, who was acting strangely, walked near some children playing outside in the street and reportedly said something about blood on a head. The arresting officer went to the suspect’s house. When he opened the door, the man was holding a samurai sword. The officer called for backup, and the man was taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation.
Gil got Yazzie’s cell phone number from Dispatch. Yazzie confirmed the contents of the report and added, “We’ve been over to the house a couple more times since then just to calm things down. The neighbors are really spooked by the guy.”
“When you picked him up in May, do you remember him saying anything in particular?” Gil asked.
“He was hard to follow, but he talked a lot about religion and how God was eating our innocence,” Yazzie said. “It didn’t make much sense.”
“Do you have his fingerprint card?” Gil asked. If so, they might finally have something to match against the prints found at the scenes.
“Yeah,” Yazzie said, “but I never entered his prints on the system since he wasn’t charged with anything. I can e-mail them to you.”
Gil thanked him. After they hung up, Gil grabbed his keys and said, “Joe, how would you like to go on a field trip?”
On the way, Gil called Liz, who was still in the office, and asked her if the stab marks in the skull could have been made by a samurai sword. She didn’t hesitate in her response. “Yes, that would fit,” she said. “The wounds aren’t actually that unique. I was thinking maybe a strong kitchen knife, but any thin sword would fit.”
“Thanks,” Gil asked, “and later on I’m going to be e-mailing you some fingerprints to check against the ones from the scenes.”
“Do you have a suspect?” she asked.
“Not quite yet,” he said.
Gil pulled up in front of David Geisler’s house and cut the engine, but neither he nor Joe got out of the car. Dusk was coming, and some neighbors already had their porch lights on. Geisler’s house was dark brown and flat-roofed, with large cracks in some of the stucco. The yard was overgrown.
No lights were on in the home, but it wasn’t full dark yet.
“What do you want to do?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” Gil said. “We need to talk to him and get access to the house.”
“At least he left us plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to compare to if we can get inside,” Joe said.
“We don’t really have enough probable cause to arrest him.”
“I think that means we go knock on the door and see what’s what,” Joe said, getting out of the car.
They walked up the brick path, which was heavy with weeds, and up to the porch. Joe knocked loudly on the screen door. After several more minutes and two more knocking sessions, the front door finally opened. The man inside was thin, with a chaotic brown beard.
“Are you Mr. David Geisler?” Gil asked after introducing himself.
The man said nothing. He just stared at the floor.
“Sir, we’re here about some problems in the neighborhood,” Joe said.
“The child . . . child . . . they got to admit they can’t do that much,” Geisler said, covering his mouth as he giggled.
“Are you talking about Brianna Rodriguez?” Gil asked.
“An advanced being . . . a kind of . . . a certain . . . hands of motherness, that’s right . . .” he said and then giggled again.
“What do you know about her disappearance?” Gil asked.
“My sins never hope . . . that’s why they want me, I think,” he said. He looked up at the sky and grinned.
“Is he laughing about Brianna?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know,” Gil said to Joe. Then he asked Geisler, “Can we come in?”
The man said nothing; he just stared off with a slight smile on his face.
“I’m taking that as a yes,” Joe said, opening the door. Geisler made no move to stop them. Inside was the normal living room, but the couch had pillows and blankets on it. It appeared to be where Geisler slept. Two closed doors led out of the living room, but one was blocked by an ironing board and the other by a large chair.
“I was wondering, Mr. Geisler,” Gil said, realizing that the man’s mental illness was making him nervous enough that he kept using the formal title. “How do you feel about the Catholic Church?”
“What was said by the priests, they can hear my thoughts. It’s just . . . it’s just . . . the energy coming out of me . . . and I put it together . . . this means something,” he said, nodding.
“So the priests can hear what you are thinking,” Gil said. “That must be scary.”
Geisler put his hand over his mouth and giggled. “I am a superpower . . . anyone who puts together a creative understanding . . . it’s like 1984.”
“Did you know Brianna Rodriguez?” Joe asked as he looked around the room, which had beige carpet and paneled walls, making the room dark. It was made bleaker by the lack of pictures on the wall.
“They don’t . . . they don’t . . . God goes to penetrate the subconscious . . . and the prayer . . . it’s like rats,” he said. “That’s why they want me . . . and I put it together and let it go . . . and if I let it go . . . Jesus is bankrupt.”
Joe shot Gil a look. They weren’t going to get anywhere questioning him. They should go talk to the neighbors and maybe his family to see if he’d ever been violent. Gil was about to turn to leave when Joe pushed aside the ironing board blocking one of the doors and opened it.
The room was carpeted in the same beige color and had the same paneling. It had no furniture, but over in one corner some bedsheets were taped by their edges to the ceiling and hung down in a wall of white. Making a separate room inside the room. Gil’s daughters used to make forts like that when they would stay home from school on snow days. Gil pushed his way past the soft white fabric, holding the panel back for Joe. On the other side was a kitchen table lined with newspapers. In its center lay a silver samurai sword, its black handle embedded with silver triangles.
The curved tip of the sword reflected the dim light of the room. As Gil moved closer to the sword, he noticed that rust had started to form on the blade’s edge. It took him a moment to realize that the rust was more the color of dried blood.
Gladys Soliz Portilla stood at the bus stop and looked again at the time on her cell phone. She needed to pick her son up in fifteen minutes, and the bus was ten minutes late. She had called her babysitter, who had said she wouldn’t wait. Now she was trying to get in touch with one of the neighbors to see if they could go get him.
She missed her car. It had been more than ten years old when she bought it from a nice man who lived near downtown Santa Fe, but it was reliable. And it was hers. Back when she was married, whenever she and her husband went anywhere together, he always drove. They had fought about it a little. She told him he was too traditional. He said she was too liberal. She missed him, too.
They had been married for only three years, but she had known him much longer. When he told her he was entering the new police academy that the state of Chihuahua was creating in order to combat the drug cartels, she didn’t try to talk him out of it. She knew what might happen, though. As did he. She also knew that he would take the worst job out there, if it meant providing for her and her son. Plus, it was more interesting work than what she did at the factory.
Her father-in-law had followed his son into the academy, seeing that it was the best way to make an income. She wondered about her mother-in-law for a moment, about how she was doing. The two of them had never really gotten along. Even so, she should send a card, just to let her know that her grandson was doing all right here. That Gladys was doing all right, too.
Well, mostly doing all right. Except for the car problem. The bus came up, puffing out a little black exhaust from its backside. Gladys got on quickly, thinking she might still make it in time to get her son.
Gil and Joe waited outside the house, watching David Geisler through the open windows as the man puttered around in the near dark. Gil had called Kline to get an arrest warrant more than twenty minutes ago. Joe paced back and forth next to the cruiser while Gil stood considering. He knew he would have to get inside Geisler’s mind in order to get a confession during the interrogation, and right now what was worrying Gil was that Geisler’s mind was none too intact. Gil might have to accept that even if they got a confession, their case would ultimately rest with the evidence, and that meant the sword, the blood on it, Geisler’s previous behavior toward neighbor children, and his match to the profile.
Joe stopped near Gil. “I know it’s not scientific, but that laughing thing he was doing makes me think we’ve got our guy.”
Gil felt the same way. For the first time all day, he had hope that they might actually solve the case. Then the brutality of the crime scenes would be washed away. At least from his conscious mind. His unconscious would never forget.
A car sped down the street and pulled up. Chief Kline got out of the driver’s seat and handed Gil a piece of paper, saying, “Here’s the warrant. Go get the bastard.”
“Yeah, let’s do this,” Joe said.
He and Gil went back to the front door and knocked again. This time Geisler didn’t answer. They were forced to go in, hands on holstered guns. Geisler quietly sat in the living room as they entered. Gil read Geisler his Miranda rights while Joe cuffed him.
Geisler didn’t resist as they put his hands behind his back. He only said, “They’re trying to kill me for my sins.”
“What sins are those?” Joe asked.
“I’m so scared that the table has a stomachache,” Geisler said, looking at his coffee table, as Joe pulled him up to a standing position.
“That’s always a big concern of mine, too,” Joe said.
As they were walking out the front door, the crime scene techs arrived at the house with a search warrant. Now everyone could get to work.