The Bone Fire_A Mystery

Chapter SEVENTEEN

Saturday Afternoon

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The front desk called to tell Gil that the lawyer had arrived. He went out to greet her. Anna Maria Roybal had brought her two children with her, a boy about eight and a girl a year or two younger.
“I hope it’s all right that they came with,” she said. “We were on our way down to fiesta when you called.”
“No problem,” Gil said as she escorted them through the office and into an interview room.
They all sat down, and the boy immediately started kicking the underside of the table. “Honey, stop that,” Anna Maria said, putting her hand on his leg. The little girl squished down in her seat, clearly intimidated by the whole situation. Joe popped his head in and said, “Hey, Gil, if you wouldn’t mind, could I take the kids on a tour of the station?”
Gil’s response was drowned out by the chorus of “Cool” and “Can we, Mom?” Anna Maria smiled as the kids went off with Joe.
“Well, that was nice of him,” Anna Maria said.
“That’s Detective Phillips,” Gil said with a smile and a hint of sarcasm. “He’s just a nice guy.”
“So you wanted to talk to me about an adoption?”
“Yes. The one involving Brianna Rodriguez,” Gil said.
Anna Maria closed her eyes, as if she were in pain, and put her head in her hands. She stayed that way for a few moments, then said, raising her head, “Before we start this, I want to clear something up. Are you telling me that if I don’t answer your questions you will consider it an obstruction of justice and will subpoena my testimony?”
Gil knew what she was asking him to do. It was her way of getting around the strict rules of attorney-client privilege. Anna Maria could not disclose any conversation she had with Ashley. Not even if Ashley died. One of the few exceptions was if Anna Maria was forced to do so by the courts via a subpoena. She was asking Gil to threaten her with the only thing that could potentially free her to speak.
“Anna Maria Roybal,” Gil said firmly, “if you do not answer my questions regarding this matter it will be considered an obstruction of justice and a subpoena will be issued forcing your testimony.”
Anna Maria nodded, but she looked defeated. She knew what she was about to do—break the very rules that made her profession what it was—and she clearly didn’t do it lightly.
She breathed deeply and said, “Then I guess I’ll have to answer your questions.”
“Tell me about Brianna Rodriguez’s adoption,” Gil said.
“It was an independent adoption that was structured more like a foster parent arrangement in that either party could terminate the agreement at any time,” she said. “It was on a trial basis.”
“Who tried to adopt her?”
“Donna Henshaw.”
“Who is she?”
“You know, the actress from the seventies. The one with all the self-help books about finding your inner female warrior.”
“When did Donna Henshaw contact you?” Gil asked, trying to remember what he knew about the actress.
“When Brianna was eighteen months old, which was about eight months before she disappeared,” she said. “Ms. Henshaw didn’t want Brianna to come live with her before January for tax reasons. If she had claimed her as a dependent in December that would have hurt her financially.”
“Then what happened?”
“Brianna went to go live with Ms. Henshaw at the beginning of the year. I got a call six months later that the adoption had been terminated on the request of Ms. Henshaw, and Brianna got sent home.”
“That would have been in June, only a month before Brianna disappeared,” Gil said. Anna Maria said nothing. This was why she was talking to him. Because the coincidence was just too coincidental.
“Do you know why the adoption didn’t work out?”
“No.”
“Do you still have the placement reports?”
“I only have the preplacement report,” she said. “The postplacement report was never filed because the adoption was terminated before the trial period was over.”
“So it’s like it didn’t happen?”
“In the eyes of the court, yes.”
“How did this work out? I’m confused.”
“As I understand it, Judge Victor Otero set it up.”
“Judge Otero? He’s a municipal judge,” Gil said. The municipal judges in Santa Fe were not required to have a law degree. They decided the sentences for parking tickets and barking dog violations. They were elected officials who often played to the masses. Judge Otero was known for his Turkey Fine during the holidays. If the suspect donated a turkey to one of the area shelters, he would waive the ticket. He was also known for less than ethical practices. He was currently under investigation for sentencing driving offenders to a traffic school run by his clerk.
“Apparently he was the presiding judge over some of Ashley’s many speeding tickets. I assume she told him about the pregnancy and her desire to find adoptive parents. I guess he knew Ms. Henshaw professionally and that was that.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
She looked momentarily confused. “Tony Herrera signed the papers. He’s not the father?” Gil should have known that Herrera had held something back during the jailhouse interview. Most inmates did. The idea was to keep a piece of information handy in case you needed a free pass on another crime.
“He says he’s not,” Gil said. “Why did Ashley’s father sign the forms?”
“Just as a witness.”
“How did Brianna end up back with Ashley?”
“Again, that I don’t know,” she said. “My involvement was pretty much over after the paperwork was signed and all the payments were made to Ashley.”
“I’m sorry,” Gil said, “did you say that Ashley got paid?”
“Yes. Which is a completely normal practice. She was given ten thousand dollars to pay for housing, transportation expenses, post-adoption counseling, and my legal fees.”
“Did Ashley ever say why she wanted to do the adoption?”
“You’d have to ask her that.” Her answer made Gil curious. It was the first evasive response she had given him. It made Gil think there was something there. He considered it again: Why would Ashley give Brianna up for adoption?
Joe came back in with the kids. The boy was on Joe’s back, and the girl was holding his hand, dragging him toward the conference room. They were all laughing.
“Mom, Mom,” the boy was saying as Joe eased him off his back, “we got locked in a holding cell. It was so cool.”
Anna Maria got up and hugged her kids tight, then kissed the tops of their heads. The boy wiggled away as soon as he could, not understanding how badly his mother needed to be near him right now. To know he was safe. To make sure he knew he was loved. She needed the confirmation that she was not Ashley and her children were not Brianna.
Gil asked Anna Maria to e-mail him all the adoption paperwork, then thanked her and watched the family leave. Joe still had a smile on his face when Gil said to him, “You sure were good with those kids.”
“I couldn’t wait for those brats to leave,” Joe said. Gil doubted him but said nothing about it. He told Joe everything that Anna Maria had passed along.
As they were talking, one of the assistant DAs finally called back. She sounded annoyed. He explained the situation with Geisler to her, but before he could get to the meat of the problem she said, “Send him to the hospital for a mental evaluation. Then on Monday we can get working on making the guy take his meds.” She then hung up. Gil got the impression the mental evaluation was more because she didn’t want her weekend interrupted and less because of the merits of the case.
He next called the hospital and asked for the psychiatric unit. He and the nurse in charge of the floor discussed how to best get Geisler there. In the end, they decided to have him go in the back of a police cruiser instead of an ambulance. Before they hung up, Gil asked if she could look over Geisler’s medical chart and see if there was a phone number for his next of kin. She found it and gave it to Gil. They hung up, and he dialed the number for Geisler’s parents. The area code was in Denver. No one answered, and the robo voice on the automated answering messages only said “No one is at home,” so Gil left a message asking them to call him back. He didn’t give any details.
Next he had Rudy Rodriguez transferred to a holding cell and called the sex offender detective on duty. It took Gil about five minutes to get him up to speed and officially have his unit take over custody. Gil hung up the phone and Joe, who was waiting nearby, asked, “Now what?”
“Let’s go talk to Judge Otero.”
Joe hadn’t enjoyed the time it had taken them to get to the Plaza, where the fiesta was in full swing. Gil had been able to park the Crown Vic nearby, using his lights to break up the crowd. Even so, they still had to walk at least five blocks through the river of people, which churned this way and that. Gil could only walk a few steps before another cousin, high school friend, or someone from church greeted him. This was what fiesta was all about. Catching up with people. The concept was lost on Joe, who was exasperated by the slow progress. Joe had only lived in Santa Fe for a few years, and his life consisted of the police department. There was no one in the crowd who would push over to greet him because he was an outsider.
They finally made it to the Plaza, its block-sized area of green grass playing picnic grounds for what seemed to be hundreds of people. Food booths selling funnel cake, tamales, and Navajo tacos ringed the edges.
“We are totally getting some of that action,” Joe said, watching a young woman walking by eating a funnel cake. Gil hoped he was talking about the food.
“Well, if it isn’t little Gilbertito Montoya,” Gil heard someone nearby say, using the diminutive form of his first name. Something his own parents had never done.
“Although I guess you’re not so little now,” said Judge Victor Otero, walking toward Gil with his hand outstretched. He was dressed in the yellow and red satin shirt of the Protectores de la Fiesta. “I bet you no one calls you Gilbertito anymore.” Next to him Gil could feel, rather than see, Joe laughing.
“No one ever really did call me that, sir,” Gil said, shaking Judge Otero’s hand, then introducing Joe.
“I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager at your grandpa’s funeral,” Judge Otero said.
“Yes, sir,” Gil said, using “sir” less out of respect than because Judge Otero would expect it.
“You know,” Otero said, clapping Gil on the back and turning to Joe, “I knew this boy’s grandfather. He was a hell of a judge and one hell of a drinker.” Gil said nothing. Otero added, “I even knew his father. Best district attorney I ever met.” Otero seemed to expect Gil to thank him for the compliments to his relatives, but Gil felt no sense of obligation. Judge Otero had been one of many local officials that had been over to his parents’ and grandparents’ houses when he was little. They had been among the movers and shakers of the day. Gil hadn’t seen Judge Otero in more than a decade, though. They had no friendship, only an acquaintanceship now well past its peak.
“So when are you going to start coming to the Protectores’ meetings?” Judge Otero asked Gil. “Your father and grandfather were some of our most dependable members.”
“We have a few questions to ask you, sir,” Gil said, still keeping the honorific in order to smooth over the conversation’s rough edges, and ignoring the judge’s question.
“Yes, I know. Chief Kline already called and told me,” Judge Otero said. Gil wished that the chief had told him about his plan to call the judge when they had talked earlier. Gil had decided he had finally avoided his boss long enough and called to give him an update on the case. Kline was disappointed about Geisler being sent to the hospital but didn’t blame Gil, instead heaping his scorn on the DA. Gil also wanted Kline’s blessing to talk to Judge Otero. Gil didn’t really need it, but he thought it was a good idea to give the chief a heads-up. Now he wished he hadn’t. The interview might have been more telling if Judge Otero were surprised to see them.
“Do you know Ashley Rodriguez?” Gil asked, seeing if it would throw the judge off his game.
“Of course,” Judge Otero said as he shook the hand of an elderly woman as she walked by and murmured a greeting. “She came to my court over a speeding ticket, and I helped her with a personal matter.”
“What kind of relationship did you have with her?” Gil asked, thinking he might get an emotional response of some kind.
“Purely professional,” the judge said. “Actually, I take that back. I did feel a little fatherly toward the girl the one time I met her. She came into my courtroom and told me she was three months pregnant. I think at the time she was using her condition to try to get leniency on a speeding ticket, and I admit, it worked. She reminded me so much of my own daughters.”
“What did you do to help her?” Gil asked.
“Well, while she was testifying, I asked her what her plans with the baby were. I just wanted to make sure she was a fit mother, and she said she was going to give it up for adoption.”
“What happened?” Gil asked.
“I had her stay after court was over, and I told her I knew someone who was hoping to adopt. I gave her a phone number of a friend of a friend.”
“You mean Donna Henshaw,” Gil said.
“Yes. I simply introduced them,” the judge said as he shook the hand of a young man and murmured, “So good to see you.”
“That’s the only involvement you had with Ashley?” Joe asked.
“That is all,” he said.
“Why didn’t you come forward when you saw Brianna was missing? It must have occurred to you that the adoption hadn’t worked out.”
“Of course, if I had been a normal citizen I would have come to you right away,” Judge Otero said, “but I’m not. I take my oath of office very seriously. It would not have been within the law for me to tell you about it. I even checked with my attorney to see if there was a way around it.” Gil had to admit that he had no idea of the legalities of the oath for municipal judge. It could be there was a clause that forbade him from discussing court proceedings.
“Plus,” Judge Otero added, “I simply passed a phone number between two people I barely know. For all I knew, Ashley never even called Ms. Henshaw.”
“I was told by Ashley’s lawyer that you set up the adoption,” Gil said, keeping the insinuation out of his voice. He was simply stating a fact.
“The only thing I did was give Ashley a phone number of an acquaintance,” the judge said without seeming defensive. “I didn’t ‘set up’ anything. All I did was help two people who were in difficult situations.”
“And you don’t know why Ashley waited until Brianna was eighteen months old to have her adopted?”
“I have no idea,” the judge said, smiling as a group of people eating funnel cake and ice cream approached them. Clearly, this was his family. “My guess would be that she found that motherhood was too much for her.”
Lucy sat at her computer in the newsroom. It was Saturday afternoon, so no one was around. Copydesk would be arriving in a little while, as would a single reporter. There was no city editor on weekends anymore. That had been one of the first things to go during a round of cutbacks and layoffs. Her fellow editors spent many an hour bemoaning the death of newspapers, but they were old school. They hadn’t grown up using the Internet, as she had. Lucy had made her peace with the fact that one day, after most print newspapers closed, she would probably work as a blogger or as an editor for an Internet news company.
She looked at her computer screen as she typed “Alex Stevens” into Google.
She found a MySpace page for an Alex Stevens from the Czech Republic, who, judging from his shirtless photo, was a gay porn star and had apparently just finished filming The Empire Strokes Back II.
She tried the search again. This time she added “Santa Fe” next to his name on the query line, yet still came up with only porn-related entries.
She was just getting started. Some people made the mistake of thinking that a journalism degree was the same as an English degree and assumed that Lucy had spent all her time in college writing compositions. In fact, a journalism degree is more like one in criminology. She was taught to read upside down and backward, just in case someone she was interviewing had a file folder on the desk she would have to read surreptitiously. She learned surveillance techniques and the legalities of secretly recording conversations. Her professor had once given her a list of ten names of elected officials. Her job: to track down their Social Security number, describe the interior of their home, get their police record, and find out if they drank coffee. All of that required hours of stakeouts and undercover interviews.
Lucy, still in front of her computer, next went to the newspaper’s digital archives. Here she found actual information about Santa Fe’s Alex Stevens. He had his own tow truck company, called Alex’s Towing, which Lucy found mildly interesting. Her second run-in of the day with a tow company. There was mention in the police notes about a break-in at the tow yard a few years ago and some tools being taken. She read all this as she was actually scanning for the oldest entry under his name, hoping to find a birth announcement. She finally saw it under the year 1979. It told her he was an Aries and had been eight pounds six ounces at birth—and it gave her his birth date.
“Gotcha,” she said, smiling in satisfaction at the computer screen.
She got up and walked to the end of the newsroom and went through heavy steel double doors. They were designed to keep the sound of the press and its churning gears restricted to the back of the building. She walked through the dark machine room past the huge two-story press, which was silent at the moment. In the corner, she went toward another room and, using her editor’s key, unlocked the door. Inside were a chair, a desk, and a computer. This computer was old and clunky. She turned it on and, several minutes after a start-up that involved lots of whirring and pinging, the screen flashed to life. The computer was locked in here because the information on it was sensitive. The computer’s only job was to connect remotely to the Motor Vehicle Division. The connection would give her not only Alex Stevens’s driving record but all of his personal information, thanks to the computer’s ancientness. This was why it would never be upgraded to a new improved model. The 1997 Driver’s Privacy Protection Act restricted access to the personal information in someone’s MVD record, but the computer predated 1997, as did its connection. They had been grandfathered in, but it wasn’t something the Tribune staffers liked to brag about. They weren’t even sure if the MVD had ever bothered to check if its back door was still open. She typed in Alex Stevens’s name and birth date and was rewarded with his Social Security number, current address, driver’s license number, and arrest report.
He had been arrested for two DWIs five years ago, but nothing since then. She wondered how he could run a tow business with a DWI record. She wrote everything down and turned off the computer, which winked out. She left, relocking the door, and went back to her desk.
She had everything she needed to find out about Stevens’s life. Now she would use it to get him to tell the truth.