The Bone Fire_A Mystery

Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

Sunday Morning

Image

Having no other ideas, Gil and Joe went back to old-school detective work—looking through documents. Gil had spent the last half hour going over Ashley’s financial statements from a year before Brianna went missing up to a month after. The statements had been part of the original investigation and the warrant that went with that. Gil knew it was unlikely they’d get a court order for her most recent financial information, given the lawsuit, but he thought he’d satisfy his curiosity about the money Ashley was paid for the adoption. Anna Maria Roybal said that payments to the birth mother from the adoptive parents were normal, but it still rubbed Gil the wrong way. He could understand that there were expenses, but it felt like a payoff.
Joe, of course, had his own agenda, which was proving his most recent theory. He was looking over David Geisler’s bank statements, which they had found during the search of his house. Unfortunately, Geisler’s statements were incomplete, with many months missing.
Joe sighed and said, “What kind of mom sells her kid to a crazy guy?”
“I really don’t think she did,” Gil said, already regretting that he hadn’t stopped Joe when he first started to tug on this crazy thread.
“It fits nicely, though,” Joe said. “We’ve got the blood on the sword, the prior complaint by the neighbor that Geisler approached some kids. Plus, the guy is nuts, but he really wasn’t that messed up when we first went to his house. He started that thing . . . What did Lucy call it? Word salad? He started the word salad thing only after he was in custody.”
Gil said nothing, and the two worked quietly until Joe said, “Gil, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How would you have done the initial investigation differently?” Joe asked, looking at Gil intently. “Like instead of how Fisher did it?”
“Joe, I don’t—”
“Look, Fisher is dead, and he was a good guy, but he was no genius.”
“Why do you ask?” Gil said, purposely deflecting the question.
“It’s just,” Joe said hesitantly, “when we were sitting there asking Stevens all those questions, like really manipulating the hell out of the guy, he didn’t even realize it. That’s when I saw how an interrogation is supposed to look, and it occurred to me that I never saw Fisher come close to doing what you do.”
“What is it I do exactly?” Gil asked. He did not want to get into a conversation about Fisher. Joe had seemed to worship the man. If there was one rule Gil had learned when he was a teenager, it was don’t talk bad about your buddy’s ex-girlfriend, because when they get back together, you won’t be friends anymore. Gil felt the same thing was true in this case. Fisher was dead, but Joe’s hero worship wasn’t.
“Gil, man, don’t take this the wrong way, because I mean it as a compliment, but you are one cold motherf*cker,” Joe said. “You lie better than my ex-wife, and she lies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Gil didn’t take it as a compliment. Instead, it only made him feel vacant.
They spent the next few minutes in silence while they continued to go over the financials. Gil finally tracked down the ten thousand dollars. It was paid to Ashley in January when Brianna was adopted. He flipped through the papers and found what he was looking for toward the back of the file. It was a personal check, and the signature on it was clearly written, without flair or flourish. Victor Otero.
“Interesting,” Gil said, showing the check to Joe.
“Why would Judge Otero give Ashley a check as part of the adoption?” Joe asked. “Why wouldn’t Donna Henshaw just write it?”
“I don’t know,” Gil said. “First he lies about only meeting Ashley once and now this. I think Judge Otero is much more involved then we thought.” Gil stared at the check, writing down the account number and the judge’s other information. Joe was unusually quiet.
“Uh, Gil,” Joe said. Gil looked up to see him looking at the white-board. “I don’t think the only thing the judge lied about was meeting Ashley once.”
“What do you mean?” Gil asked, joining him to stare at the board. All he saw was Brianna’s adoption timeline and then the lists and that ominous phrase—I was dead and buried. There was nothing new written on the board.
“Do you remember me telling you that Brianna was a preemie?” Joe asked. “She was born in May and was thirty-three weeks old instead of the normal forty weeks.”
“Okay,” Gil said.
“That would put her conception at around mid-September,” Joe said.
“Okay,” Gil said, staring at the board.
“You don’t see it?” Joe asked.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Gil said.
Joe stepped up to point at the adoption timeline on the board. The first date on it was when Ashley met Judge Otero. The next mark was for Brianna’s birth date on May 5.
“If you work backwards thirty-three weeks from Brianna’s birth date . . .” Joe said. Instead of finishing his sentence, he wrote the word “conception” in big letters, then drew a mark to September 16, the same day Ashley met with Judge Otero.
Lucy was pulling up to her house when she remembered that she had to go rescue the crime scene photo from the copier at work. The thought made her weary. She just wanted to go to back to bed. She turned the car around and headed to the newspaper. She had a hard time finding space in the parking lot, which struck her as odd for a Sunday morning. Then she remembered that it was fiesta, so everyone at the paper was making use of their work parking permits. She was getting out of her car when she heard someone call out to her. She turned to look. It was John Lopez with his family. Lucy had met his wife and two children several times but couldn’t remember their names. She would have to wing it.
“Hi,” she called to them. “How was fiesta?”
“Wonderful,” the nameless wife said. “We always come for the green chile enchiladas.” The nameless children, who looked to be twin girls of about eight, just ignored the grown-ups.
“Great,” said Lucy, falling back on the one expression she seemed to automatically use around Lopez. She really just wanted to get inside, get the photo, and leave. She was always so bad at chitchat. What’s boring with your life? Please, let me tell you about it for ten minutes.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” Lopez said. “I have two things I wanted to bring up.”
She suddenly remembered last night, when she avoided the questions on the SWAT situation. She figured that was what he was about to mention.
Instead, he said, “We never finished your review.”
She smiled. Having dodged the SWAT bullet, so to speak, she was more than happy to talk about continuing her painful yearly review. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “When do you want to reschedule it?”
“I was thinking that before we do that, I want to have you fill out a self-evaluation.”
“Umm . . . sure? But wouldn’t I just evaluate myself as great? ’Cause I am, you know,” she said. The nameless children, bored with the conversation, went to play near a wrought-iron fence that surrounded the parking lot.
“Well, let’s see what happens,” he said, always in the patient dad voice. “When you write your self-evaluation there are a few things I want you to keep in mind and maybe write about.”
“Okay,” she said slowly. Nameless wife left them, going over to her nameless children, while inside Lucy was pleading with her to stay.
“So one of the things I want you to think about is what you see as your future, not only with the Capital Tribune but wherever you think you want to go with your life,” he said, smiling gently. “I also would like you to address your future with the company.”
“Okay,” she said, then added as a joke, “Just to be clear, do you think I have a future with the company?”
He smiled. “I think, as with any employee, there are considerations.” The answer did nothing to make her less nervous.
“Like what?” she asked, but not really wanting to know.
“For instance, I’m curious why the police haven’t served us with a court order for the security tapes.”
Her stomach fell five stories during that one sentence. She started to say, “I don’t—”
“It’s almost like someone told them that trying to get the tapes was useless.”
Lucy said nothing. There was nothing to say. No excuses to be made.
Lopez shook his head and said, “Lucy, you have to decide where your loyalties lie. I think this needs to be a major part of your self-evaluation. For example, look at what you’re wearing.” She glanced down at her EMS uniform and combat boots. “Yet here you are at work,” he said.
“I have thought about that, a lot. Basically, when I’m here, my loyalties are to the newspaper, and when I’m on call, they’re with the fire department.”
“You don’t see a problem with that?” he asked.
“No. It’s everyone else who has a problem with it.”
“Do you at least see why?” he said with a slight smile that she really wished didn’t look so condescending.
“Frankly, no,” she said, trying not to sound defensive. “I do a good job when I’m here and a good job when I’m there.”
“That’s true—but every once in a while your two worlds collide, and suddenly the police know more than they should and we know less than we should. For instance, there’s the car fire story that Tommy and Andrea are working on, which is based on information that you got while working for the fire department,” he said. In her head, Lucy cursed out Andrea, knowing that she had to be the one who talked too much about the story. Lopez continued, “Then, of course, there is that SWAT situation.”
Lucy said a thousand little swear words to herself.
Gil stood in the bright morning sun, watching the exits of the cathedral. He could have gone inside—in fact, probably should have—but he couldn’t bring himself to go into this holy place when he knew the questions he had to ask would involve immoral answers. The statues in front of the church were alone at the moment, with no tourists to take pictures of them. The sightseers probably all had been drawn to the spectacle inside the cathedral, where the closing Mass of fiesta was taking place.
Gil wondered if the tourists understood why there were grown men dressed in conquistador helmets and pantaloons at Mass. He wondered if the tourists would giggle at their simple, quaint tradition of having a fiesta queen dressed in a white gown and cape. They would probably go back home and tell their friends about Santa Fe’s backward ways. How they had an archbishop—the most senior representative of the Catholic Church—preside over a service that included city councilors and people in costume carrying swords. Gil knew the tourists would never understand what fiesta was to Santa Fe. To him. They wouldn’t understand that this was not an amusing celebration of a historic moment long past. This wasn’t their version of a medieval-days festival or a Civil War reenactment. To Santa Feans, celebrating fiesta meant celebrating their ancestors.
Gil had convinced Joe to let him come down to the cathedral by himself while Joe stayed at the office and tied up loose ends—making calls, processing paper, and looking over reports. Joe was unhappy, but Gil needed to do this next interview alone. It required a certain touch.
The bells started ringing in the cathedral towers, and the front doors opened. Out came the archbishop, followed by a gush of priests, as well as Don Diego de Vargas, La Reina, and a crowd of people in a riot of colors. They were in their fiesta best—ribbon shirts for the men and multicolored broom skirts for the women. They stood in front of the cathedral, chatting, waiting for the procession to start. Gil scanned the crowd. He saw the huge cluster of the Protectores de la Fiesta, their yellow satin shirts shining in the sun. A mariachi band started playing as four men came out of the church, carrying a huge wooden platform on which was a carpet of flowers and the two-foot-tall statue of La Conquistadora.
The band started to proceed down the street, and the four Protectores carrying the padded litter followed, with the wooden bars that supported the platform on their shoulders. The platform had its own white awning, embroidered with gold roses. Underneath, safely away from the sun’s harmful rays, was La Conquistadora. The real one. This was the only time of year she ever left the safety of one of her chapels. Today, La Conquistadora was dressed in a cape of deep blue with gold stars. On her head was a crown of flowers. Around her neck was a tiny silver filigree crucifix made with real pearls and rubies that matched her earrings. Behind her litter, a trail of priests, dressed in green vestments, walked with the archbishop. Next came La Reina and Don Diego, along with the fiesta royalty. They were followed by the religious organizations, holding banners and flags showing different appearances of the Virgin Mary. Last was the crowd. They marched down the street as the band began to play.
Within a block, all of the careful groupings had been destroyed as wives went to go walk with husbands and city councilors stopped to shake hands with constituents. Gil stayed on the outside of the procession, trying to catch a glimpse of Judge Otero. He finally saw him praying the rosary aloud among one of the religious groups.
Gil was trying to get as close as he could to the judge when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Joe, sending him a text that read: Henshaw gave $10,000 to Judge O’s last campaign. Gil knew that was the legal limit for campaign contributions. He wondered why it was also the exact amount that Ashley had been paid.
He started looking for the judge in the crowd once again. He spotted him and walked quickly toward him, skirting people and musicians.
Gil could hear the rises and the falls of the Hail Mary as he approached the praying group. Gil slowly came up next to Judge Otero, just as he was finishing an Our Father.
The judge turned his head and saw Gil next to him, exclaiming, “Gilbertito. How are you?” Before Gil could say anything, the judge said, “You need a rosary. Who has an extra rosary?” he yelled to his fellow faithful. A plastic yellow rosary was passed from hand to hand across the processing crowd. Judge Otero grabbed it and put it into Gil’s hands.
“Look, we just finished the Second Mystery, so we are right here,” Judge Otero said, pointing to the correct bead on the rosary. They were making good time, having already gotten through thirteen Hail Marys and three Our Fathers. Gil clicked off the beads as the crowd went through the prayers. He could wait until they were done, which would be about twenty minutes, but then they would just start again and keep it up until they reached their destination—the Rosario Chapel, La Conquistadora’s second home, which was about three-quarters of a mile away.
“Sir,” Gil said almost in a whisper, “I need to talk to you about Brianna.”
“This is the perfect time to talk about her,” Judge Otero said, making no effort to lower his voice. “What better time to talk about that poor girl than when you are praying?”
“Well then, sir,” Gil said, “I wanted to clarify a few things with you.”
“Of course,” the judge said in the middle of a Hail Mary. Gil tripped slightly on the pavement and had to steady himself as they walked.
“I wanted to ask you how many times you and Ashley talked over the adoption,” Gil said, trying not to let the crowd, the band, and the praying distract him.
“I told you,” he said. “It was just the one time.”
“The court records show that she was in your courtroom multiple times,” Gil said.
The judge didn’t respond, but he stopped praying the rosary as they walked. Gil had never really considered asking the judge to come down to the station so they could do a formal interview. The judge’s position meant that Gil would have had to wade through the mayor, city attorneys, and even his own chief if he wanted to talk with him officially. That left Gil with one option—a surprise attack. Of course, Gil knew that as a good member of the Protectores, the only place the judge would be this morning—on the last day of fiesta—was at the procession for La Conquistadora.
“I can think of several reasons you wouldn’t want to tell us that you knew Ashley better than you let on,” Gil said. “The first one, of course, is that you are Brianna’s father.” Once Gil saw the look on the judge’s face, he knew the surprise attack had been the right way to go. That look of guilt.
The mariachi band started a different tune while the crowd near them moved on to the Third Mystery.
Gil said, “I know she was seventeen, so she was past the age of consent, so there is no problem as far as statutory rape goes.”
“However, statutory rape has a second part that makes it illegal for people in a position of authority to use their office for certain favors,” Judge Otero said. He turned and looked at Gil. “I never touched that girl.”
There had never been a chance that the judge would admit to anything. He had too much to lose. Gil had actually gotten further with the interview than he had expected to. He had thought the judge would tell him to talk to his lawyer almost immediately. Now it didn’t matter if he did. Gil had already gotten what he came for—the guilt drawn tight across the judge’s face. He finally knew who Brianna’s father was. He had started to suspect it was the judge when he saw the personal check to Ashley. Gil might never have proof, but the knowledge would be enough. Now he was just curious about a few more pieces of information.
“Can I ask about your relationship with Donna Henshaw?” Gil asked.
“As I said, she was just a friend of a friend,” Judge Otero said, exasperated.
“She must be a good friend of a friend since she gave your last campaign ten thousand dollars,” Gil said. “That’s an awful lot of money for a municipal election.”
Judge Otero said nothing.
“I’m confused, sir,” Gil said, “so I’m just going to ask flat out, did Donna Henshaw give you campaign money for you to give to Ashley? Then Ashley gave Brianna to Donna Henshaw?”
Judge Otero still said nothing, and any guilt that had been on his face was long gone. Gil could keep asking him questions that he wouldn’t answer. Like if he was the father of Ashley’s new baby. The man knew when to shut up. The judge might not be a lawyer, but he did know the law. He knew Gil couldn’t prove any of it. Gil probably didn’t even have enough evidence to compel the judge to take a paternity test to see if he was Brianna’s father. When all was said and done, they could do nothing more than prove the judge was improperly involved with an adoption.
The procession was leaving the crowded buildings of downtown now and was going toward an area more populated with businesses. Gil decided to give it one more try.
“Was Ashley blackmailing you about being Brianna’s father?” Gil asked.
“You can ask my lawyer,” Judge Otero said. He started saying the next prayer. “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
Lucy used her keycard to let herself in the side door of the newspaper building. No one was around, and all the lights were off. There was enough sunlight creeping through a few of the painted-over windows for her to see her way to the copier.
She opened the lid, and there, lying facedown, was the photo. “Hallelujah,” she whispered to herself as she clutched the picture to her chest.
As she closed the cover of the copier, she saw the bright blue flyer hanging on the bulletin board in front of her. THE MEDITATION OF RELEASE. It sounded so peaceful. She read the first line of the flyer once again. “So often in our lives we have old emotions and habits that hold us back and try to tear us down.” She smiled. Bitterly.
She heard a noise from down the hallway and saw a form appear from the shadows. She flipped the light switch nearest to her and saw Peter Littlefield.
“Jesus, Peter,” she said. “You scared me to death. What are you doing here?”
“I had that special opera review to write,” he said.
“Right,” she said, nodding, wondering how many Santa Feans really read the paper for its up-to-date opera news.
“You’re here early,” he said, peering over his glasses.
“I forgot something,” she said, still clutching the photo to her chest.
“Oh, you mean the picture of the Tamara,” he said, nodding. “I saw that in the copier. I knew she was working on a new piece, but I had no idea it was so intricate.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The photo,” he said. “I assume it’s of her new work.”
“Whose new work?”
“Tamara. She’s a fabulous naturalist. I mean, look at her use of color,” Peter said, reaching for the photo. Lucy turned it over to him, and he pointed out the sunflowers and the doll’s heads.
“Tamara is an artist?”
“Well, yes,” Peter said, frowning at Lucy. “She did the statues in front of the new judicial complex, and she has a few pieces hanging in the permanent collection at the capitol.”
“How do you know she did this?” Lucy asked, waving her hand at the photo.
“Are you kidding? This is classic Tamara,” he said. “Look, here and here, at these bones that are strung together in that delicate star shape? That’s one of her signature motifs. She did a whole piece using star bones last year at SITE Santa Fe.”
“You’re positive she did this?” Lucy asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Her themes always include religion, death, and innocence.”
“How do you get all of that from this photo?” she asked, peering at it.
“Look at the interpretation,” he said. “You have the inherent religious image of the statue, and death, of course, is represented by the bones. And see how she mixes it with the classic pop-culture symbols of innocence, the flowers and dolls?”
“She works with bones?” Lucy asked, still not understanding. Not believing. “Why?”
“Because you have to have death in order to have life, and art is all about life.”