Prolonged Exposure (18 page)

Chapter 31

When I walked back inside the Guzmans’ house, I found Estelle sitting on the couch, her arms still wrapped around tiny Carlos. He had stopped crying but continued to pop a hiccup now and then.

From what Erma had told us, the infant hadn’t uttered a peep all the time that the intruder was in the house. Carlos had been asleep in his crib in one of the back bedrooms, and only he knew exactly when he had awakened and what he had heard.

Only when Erma Sedillos had begun creating her hour and a half of thumping, banging mayhem did Carlos let loose, standing in his crib and screaming.

I didn’t blame him. I’d have done the same thing if it would have brought my godson to the front doorstep.

By the look on her face, though, Estelle was far, far away. Her dark brows were closely knit, and her rocking and cooing to Carlos were distracted.

“I told Robert to have someone pick up Francis at the hospital,” I said. “He’ll be here any second.”

I didn’t know if that was true or not. If Dr. Guzman was in the midst of delicate surgery, it was going to be hard for him to drop the scalpel and run. Unlike a large metro hospital, there wasn’t a plethora of vascular surgeons who could just step in and take over.

And, as so often happens, a ridiculous thought, unbidden, came to mind. If Florencio Apodaca was guilty of actually murdering his wife, and if he was even half-cogent, he must have been wondering just how patient he was going to have to be with the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department. I wondered what stage of Bob Torrez’s preliminary interview with the old man had been interrupted when the deputies got the call to break away.

“This has to be someone who knows our family,” Estelle murmured. “He knew exactly what he wanted, and didn’t waste a step.” She turned tortured eyes to me. “He wanted Francis, sir.”

“It appears that way,” I said. “He knew the layout of your property. You can’t really see your back door from the street unless you’re looking for it. With the back light off, it would have been even harder.”

“And there’s no gate in the chain-link fence,” she said.

“I don’t know too many people who can vault over a four-foot fence with a child under one arm.”

“And he didn’t search through the house,” Estelle said, nuzzling Carlos on the forehead. As if sensing that now wasn’t a good time to interrupt, the child had released his hold on Estelle’s neck and sat like a silent beanbag doll, his dark face sober and eyes watchful, as quiet now as he’d been noisy a bit earlier.

In the next few minutes, he had lots of things to watch. Camille arrived with Gayle Sedillos, Erma’s older sister. This was my daughter’s first visit to Posadas in nearly twenty years, and already she seemed a perfectly natural fit—part of her talent for remaining a stranger for only a few seconds.

“Gayle,” I said, “Make sure that no one ties up any of the telephones. The phone in the bedroom is listed to Dr. Guzman in the directory. Until we get some recording equipment over here, I’d rather they weren’t even answered. Camille, I’d like you to use the cell phone in my Blazer to keep in touch with the hospital. We want Dr. Guzman here the instant he can break free.”

“Three ten, three oh one on channel three.”

I jerked the handheld from my belt, recognizing Martin Holman’s voice and at the same time dreading what he might blab out over the air for all of Posadas County to hear. “Go ahead.”

“Ten-eighty-seven at Posadas Inn.”

For an instant, I couldn’t even remember what the hell 10-87 meant, and I frowned at the radio as if the translation would pop up in the little frequency window. My mind snapped into gear, but my frown deepened. The motel was the last place I was interested in visiting at the moment. A drunk getting himself killed in a parking-lot brawl was just not one of my concerns at the moment.

“Sheriff, that’s negative. We’ve got a mess here.”

“Three ten, stand by.”

“I don’t know what the hell he wants,” I said to Estelle.

“He doesn’t know about Francis yet,” she replied.

“I’m sure he knows by now. Torrez is good at keeping things off the air, but—” The telephone rang, sounding so loud that we all jumped.

I picked up the receiver, not knowing what to expect.

“Bill,” Martin Holman said, his tone clipped and businesslike. “You need to get down here ASAP. I know what you’ve got going there. Mitchell told me. There’s something here that ties into the boy’s abduction, and I want you to see it for yourself. Hustle. And bring Estelle with you.”

“She’s not going to want to leave Carlos,” I said.

“Then bring him.” The line went dead. I realized it was the first time Martin Holman had ever cut short a conversation with me.

“What is it?” Camille asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, then turned to speak to Estelle. “Sweetheart, we need to go down to the Posadas Inn. Holman’s got something he wants us to see. He says it ties in somehow.” And for the first time in our working relationship, I saw Estelle Reyes-Guzman hesitate. Two car doors slammed and I stepped to the entryway.

Deputy Tom Pasquale’s long stride was matched by Dr. Francis Guzman. The young physician’s face was grim. “Thank God you’re here,” I said.

“You need to go to the motel,” Guzman said as he brushed by me. In two or three long strides, he was kneeling beside Estelle. “Go with him,” he said to his wife. He disengaged Carlos from her embrace. “I’ll be here, and Tommy’s been assigned to stay here until we know what’s going on. From what the sheriff told me, it’s really important that you go to the motel. Then come right back.”

Estelle nodded, stood up, and shook her head as if breaking loose from a tangle of cobwebs. She turned to Camille and Gayle. “Can you both stay?”

My daughter nodded. “Good,” Estelle said. “We won’t be long.”

We left the house, Estelle at a dead run. She started toward her own unmarked county car, then thought better of it and climbed into the passenger side of 310. Across the street, I saw a heavyset woman—the wife of the county road superintendent—standing on her front step, watching the action. When she saw me, she started a step or two toward the sidewalk. I ignored her, and by the time I’d grunted myself into 310, she’d gone back up on the porch.

The telephone circuits around Posadas would be buzzing, if they weren’t already. There would be a lot more ammunition for gossip before the night was over.

The Posadas Inn was just off the interstate on Grande, less than four blocks from my house. During the two minutes it took to cover a little less than three miles, I didn’t have much time to reflect on what could be so important that Martin Holman would summon us both.

Chapter 32

Approached from the interstate, the Posadas Inn looked about as cheerful and clean as neon and plastic could make it. The front of the motel faced southeast, with a covered portal. The generous parking lot circled the building. As we approached from the village, I could see the flutter of yellow tape under the harsh illumination of the parking lot’s sodium-vapor lights.

The barricade had been set up to include a service entrance, the sidewalk in front of it, and about a third of an acre of the parking lot itself. A November night hadn’t attracted many guests to Posadas, and if anyone had parked around behind the motel, they had evidently been asked to move.

Under normal circumstances, a homicide would have attracted enough patrol cars to equip a sizable fleet. Every law officer in whistling distance would want a share, or, at the very least, a private tour—if for no other reason than to break the monotony.

But the place was damn near vacant. I recognized Martin Holman’s brown Buick, and one of our department’s older marked units. Parked on the opposite side of the roped-off area was one of the Posadas Village Police units, its red lights pulsing.

Sheriff Holman, a portable radio in one hand and a cellular phone in the other, stood near the door marked
SERVICE ONLY
. He was in animated conversation with DeWayne Sands, the night manager of the motel, gesticulating over his shoulder as he talked.

DeWayne did not look happy. He was well over fifty and going to flab. Standing outside in the chill November night while watching police take over his motel to find out who had whacked one of his guests was enough to make his blood pressure go over the top. I recognized all the signs, even from across the parking lot.

Holman saw us and said into the handheld radio, “Back door over here, Bill.” By then, I was already out of the patrol car, concentrating on keeping up with Estelle’s dogged pace. She ducked under the ribbon when she reached the sidewalk that skirted the bank of heat-pump units.

“DeWayne,” Holman was saying as we approached, “you’re going to have to make doubly sure that no one comes or goes until we say otherwise. And I mean no one, and I mean from the entire motel. I don’t care if their room is a mile away on the other wing. No night staff, no maintenance crew, no patrons. If you’ve got a long-haul trucker who needs to leave, make sure you clear him through me or Chief Martinez. No one comes and no one goes. Understood?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“No buts,” Holman said, and he steered Sands away from the door. Sands trudged off down the sidewalk, muttering to himself. “In here, Bill, Estelle.”

The service door opened into a small foyer. Immediately on the left was a flight of stairs. Yellow plastic taped it off top and bottom. Directly ahead of us, a hallway stretched beyond the limits of my eyesight, ending eventually, I knew, in the front foyer, with restaurant to the left and check-in desk to the right.

Another hallway took off to the right, beyond the game room and the ice and soda machines, and that’s where Marty Holman led us. He walked on the right side of the hallway, sticking close to the wall.

“The victim’s name is Roberto Madrid,” he said over his shoulder. “At least that’s what some rental-car paperwork we found in the room says. Other than that, we don’t know.”

The rooms began with 140 on the right and 141 on the left. About halfway down the hallway, Holman stopped. That was just as well. I was running out of breath. It wasn’t exercise, but anxiety, the kind of awful jolt to the nerves that I hadn’t felt in more than a decade.

He pointed at the door at the far end. Standing beside it were Chief Eduardo Martinez and one of his part-time officers, George Bohrer. “That door leads to the west parking lot. It’s one of those deals that’s locked after nine P.M. under normal circumstances. There’s some evidence that the door was used by the assailant.”

“Martin,” I started to say, but the sheriff held up a hand. He lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t have called you over here if I didn’t think it was important.”

We stopped in front of the door to 167, two rooms from the end of the hall. Holman held up a hand again, like a cavalry trooper halting his patrol. The door was open, and, looking inside, I could see two chairs crashed together against one wall, the mattress askew, and glass from the shattered TV’s picture tube scattered across the pale blue carpet.

“Who did prints?” Estelle asked quietly.

“Torrez,” Holman replied. “And myself. But we’ve got a lot more to do.” He indicated the outline of the body, white chalk on blue carpet. “There’s no one else staying in this wing, which is peculiar. But one of the other patrons who had come down for some ice heard a ruckus. He says one or two gunshots, not very loud. Maybe three shots at the most—he’s not sure. And then he heard what might have been a loud groan. He’s not sure about that, either.”

“Where’s this
he
?” I asked.

“Waiting up in the manager’s office,” Holman said. “The body was lying in a fetal position on its right side, facing the bed.” He stepped closer to the outline. “Maybe he was trying to reach the telephone here on the nightstand. I’m not sure.” Holman sighed. “At any rate, he didn’t make it.”

“Who actually came into the room first?” I asked.

“The night manager.”

“The victim was dead?”

“No. The manager—”

“Is this DeWayne you’re talking about?”

“DeWayne Sands, right. He says he entered the room, and that the victim was gasping and appeared unconscious. At any rate, he didn’t respond to questions. The night manager says he saw blood on the victim’s shirt and went directly to call police. Bob Torrez says it was a small-caliber weapon, like a twenty-two. Bob Torrez was the first to arrive, and the man was still alive at that time. EMTs transported him, and they said he was alive when they reached the hospital. Still unconscious, but alive.”

“No blood on the carpet,” I said. “That’s interesting. So who the hell is Roberto Madrid, and what was it that you wanted us to see that’s connected to…” My voice trailed off, refusing to frame the words.

“Look over here.” Holman walked around the outline of the man’s body and circled the bed. “We’ve got a blood splash here,” he said, pointing down by the second nightstand, “that continues up onto the wall. There’s more blood back here by the sink. And then right here, on the entrance to the bathroom.”

I nodded. “Other wounds on the victim?”

Holman shook his head. “He was shot twice, once under the left armpit, once in the back. Like I said, small-caliber weapon. He didn’t bleed much.”

“Then what accounts for all this?” I said.

“Someone else was here, and got hurt,” Holman said. “Badly. Step over here really carefully.” He motioned me toward the bathroom. Estelle hung back, her eyes locked on the chalk outline on the floor.

The doorknob and doorjamb were smeared with blood, heavy smears that indicated serious bleeding. A splatter of blood dotted across the counter and the bathroom sink, and there was a partial handprint on the polished vinyl, smeared into the blood as if the person had staggered and caught himself.

“Right here,” Holman said, and knelt down. The blood on the floor was more than spots. Whoever had been bleeding had fallen, or slumped here. One of the blood sprays had been smeared by a footprint, so clear and well defined that it sent chills up and down my spine. I could see the imprint of the toes, the narrow curve past the high arch.

“Estelle, come in here,” I called. My response to what I was seeing was automatic. It was only after the words were out of my mouth that I regretted them. In a moment, I could feel her presence behind me. I straightened up and stepped out of the way.

She didn’t say anything, but I could hear a little sigh of breath.

The footprint was tiny, no more than five or six inches long.

Estelle stood for almost a full minute, gazing down at it. I could see that her breath was coming in rapid, shallow spurts. Then she turned back toward the doorway, her eyes fastened on the tile floor. She was deathly pale, and with one hand, she reached out to me like a blind person, fumbling her way. The other hand went to the door-jamb.

“Come on outside, sweetheart,” I whispered.

She shook her head. “No. Look. There’s only one print.”

I hesitated, still holding her hand, not sure what to say.

Martin Holman cleared his throat. “The child was picked up,” he said. “If he had walked out of the bathroom, there would be other prints—at least one other footprint.”

He knelt down and pointed. “Here’s a right foot here. It’s almost four feet to the door. That would put a left foot about here,” and he reached out and touched the tile. “And the right foot again, just before the threshold. Or even on the carpet.” He looked up at me. “But there’s just the one print.”

“He was picked up and carried out,” I said.

“Right,” Holman nodded.

“Then whose blood is it?” I asked, and felt Estelle’s grip tighten.

“And which child?” she whispered.