When the Devil Doesn't Show: A Mystery (28 page)

*   *   *

Kristen had kept watch over the Mazer’s house until Gil and Joe arrived. The first thing Gil did was send her home. She tried to convince him to let her stay, hoping she could be there for the arrest, but Gil insisted she go. It was Christmas Eve after all, and her family would be waiting. Plus, she had her personal car, not an official vehicle, and was in street clothes, not her uniform. If things went badly, her fellow offers wouldn’t automatically know she was one of them. And when it came down to it, not even Gil or Joe would be there to witness Hoffman getting handcuffed for the first time. That honor would be left to the Special Weapons and Tactics team, which, because of dangers inherent in their job, always operated alone. Gil and Joe would have to stay outside the perimeter and wait for the all-clear.

Kristen reluctantly drove away just as the SWAT team pulled up in their navy blue Chevy Suburban. As the men got out and started to gear up, Gil told the SWAT commander about the number of weapons and the amount of ammunition in the house. Then he got back into the Ford Explorer to wait, where Joe was supposed to be calling Chip Davis to tell him that Dr. Laura Goodwin and Chad Saunders were the next targets. Instead, he was saying to the person on the other end, “And this was during the outbound inspections on the Juárez–Lincoln International Bridge?”

“Who are you calling?” Gil asked.

“Yes, I can wait,” Joe said into the phone, and then to Gil, “I’m on hold with Border Patrol.”

“Why?”

“Wait a second,” he said to Gil and then said back into the phone, “Huh … okay … what day was this?… Great. Okay, thanks.”

Joe hung up, and Gil asked, “Did you call Chip Davis?”

“Yeah, of course,” Joe said. “That’s all taken care of. But listen to this. Just yesterday Blanca Escobar passed through customs on her way back into Mexico.”

“With the baby?”

“Yep,” Joe said. “Somehow Blanca had paperwork showing she was the mother, so she got through no problem. Georgina Rose is safely in Mexico, where Tyler James Hoffman and Mazer can’t get to her or fight for custody.”

Gil saw a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye and looked up to watch as the SWAT team silently moved toward the house. A K-9 unit waited on the road, in case Hoffman decided to run. If the Santa Fe Police had been able to afford a helicopter, it would have been there. As it was, there were only the five SWAT members dressed all in black, moving like shadows against the white snow. Gil watched as they made their way up the driveway. Then they were out of sight. The plan was for SWAT to break up into two teams, Team A and Team B, when they were within twenty feet of the house. The three-man Team A would go to the front door, while the two-man Team B made their way to the back. Before getting into position to make entry, Team A had the job of covering Team B as they secured a sliding glass door on the side of the house by quietly laying a thick metal dowel into the door’s running track. If anyone inside tried to slide the door open, it would jam in the track. Both teams would then get into position in the front and back of the house, but while Team A made entry, Team B would simply cover the back door and the perimeter. Once inside, a SWAT member would guard the front door from the inside while a now two-man Team A moved as a unit through each room of the house, looking for Hoffman as they went.

More than five minutes had passed since Gil had watched SWAT disappear down the driveway. He knew they had to be in position, ready to make entry, but the two teams were radio silent, which was protocol so the suspect wouldn’t hear them approach. A minute later, Gil heard the SWAT team leader at the front door say, “Set.” He heard the second-in-command with Team B say, “Set.” Then the team leader said a single word,
Go.
There was a boom from the breaching round of a shotgun.

“Avon calling,” Joe said with a smile. The breaching round, which was a twelve-gauge shell with a projectile made of powdered steel and covered in wax, fit into a regular combat-sized shotgun and would disintegrate a deadbolt lock or a door hinge with one shot. SWAT was inside the house with Hoffman, but there was no noise. Nothing on the radio. Silence. All Gil could see were the footprints SWAT had left in the snow.

To the left of the property, Gil heard scraping and crunching. Then he saw a dark Lexus SUV driving away from the back of the house, maneuvering its way through the underbrush and past piñon trees. The car came crashing onto the main road, pulling some downed bushes along with it, then went speeding off past Gil and Joe sitting in their SUV.

“What the…” Joe said, as Gil threw the car into reverse and made a quick U-turn. Joe picked up the radio and said, “All units. In pursuit of suspect going east on County Road Sixty-Two.” Then he hit the light and sirens. Hoffman’s SUV reached the end of the road and blew through a
STOP
sign.

“Crap, crap, crap,” Joe said, looking both ways as Gil slammed through the intersection. “Clear right,” Joe yelled, as he made sure no traffic was coming from the right side. Gil started to speed up as the residential road emptied out onto a county road. Both cars took a left. Joe picked up the radio, saying, “All units we are heading north on State Road Five-niner-one. SWAT, do you copy?”

“We copy,” came the reply. “We’re just a little ways behind you.”

“Copy that,” Joe said into the mike, and then to Gil, “Let me find a map to figure out where we are.” Gil floored the gas as Hoffman sped up, the speedometer clicked up past seventy miles per hour, then eighty.

“Joe, I think there’s someone in the passenger seat,” Gil said. They both craned their necks to get a better look into Hoffman’s car. As the Lexus took a wide turn in the road, a silhouette was visible sitting in the right seat. They watched as the passenger window slid down slowly. Then someone aimed a shotgun at them and pulled the trigger.

“Watch it,” Joe yelled. The buckshot went too far to the right and missed their car. They were close enough to the Lexus to see the force of the blast throw the person holding the shotgun back and the butt of the gun hit her face.

“I guess we found Lupe Escobar,” Joe said. “And lucky for us she doesn’t know a damn thing about firing a shotgun. She probably got a bloody nose from that.”

The highway started to twist slightly; Gil kept his eyes on Hoffman’s wheels. When it came to sheer speed, their Ford SUV was outmatched by the Lexus, which had more horsepower and was about four hundred pounds lighter. According to the laws of physics, the Lexus would always be faster than the Explorer—as long as the asphalt was dry.

“Where does this guy think he’s going?” Joe asked, looking at the map book. “There is nothing out here.”

The police radio, which had been silent a second ago, was now difficult to follow, with every unit calling out where they were and what they were doing. Most were on their way to help in the chase. Gil was trying to listen for the SWAT team leader’s voice, knowing it was likely that he and Joe would need their heavily armed backup. The state highway merged into another, this one heading even farther away from civilization and into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Joe called out their position over the radio as they came to the top of a ridge. Hoffman took a quick left onto a dirt road. His wheels spun for a second, kicking up gravel and ice, and he swiveled as if he were about to go off the road. But he was able to correct himself and speed off. Gil was right behind him, with Joe calling out over the radio, “We’re going east onto County Road Seven-six.” They heard the SWAT commander start to say, “Copy that, we…” then he crackled out. Joe said, “Repeat, SWAT. Can you repeat?” But there was only static. Gil and Joe had hit a radio dead area.

“I think they got our last position,” Joe said.

The wide, flat dirt road started to climb. It followed the top of a ridge, with almost vertical drop-offs on either side. They had left any houses far behind and were now in country marked with low piñon and juniper.

“God, I hope they get a flat tire or something soon,” Joe said. “I really don’t want to follow them if they go plunging off a cliff.”

The road had gotten enough sun throughout the day to melt off the snow and turn the resulting mud into drying dirt. Below, in the valley, the setting sun was able to generously break its way through the building clouds, and sunlight glinted off houses on the horizon. Up in the much colder mountains ahead, Gil could see Mother Nature was being generous in another way: it had started to snow.

The radio, which had been silent with static, suddenly jumped alive with voices asking where they were and what roads to take. Joe tried to respond to the dispatcher, who was the only one he needed to be talking to at the moment, “Still heading on County Road Seven-six, heading”—Joe stopped to flip through the map book, jumping from page to page. After a moment, he closed it, threw it on the floor and said into the radio, “We are officially off the map.” No response came back. They were in a dead area again. Joe took his cell phone out of his pocket, but there was no signal.

“Where the hell are we going?” Joe asked.

“I wish I knew,” Gil said.

The road abruptly stopped climbing and topped out. The flat surface meant Gil could try to catch up to Hoffman. He hit the gas and inched the speedometer up, the sand and ice crunching fast under the tires. The barest falling of snow started swirling in front of the windshield.

“Wait,” Joe said. “There’s something up ahead.”

“There’s a sign,” Gil said. “What does it say?”

“Hang on,” Joe said. “It says, ‘National Forest Road…’ Damn, I couldn’t see the number.”

“Oh crap,” Gil said as he started to hit the brakes.

“What’s the matter?” Joe asked, as up ahead Hoffman’s car skidded and started to buck like a bronco.

“In about one second, the road is about to get a whole lot worse,” Gil said. Within three feet, the wide, level road became a narrow one cut with deep grooves and large rocks. The change in the road quality marked where the county ended its road repair responsibility and where the National Forest Service took over. And road maintenance was not a Forest Service priority. Gil and Joe watched as Hoffman hit the bad road ahead of them. His Lexus SUV went flying over rocks while his tires hit a hole and the windshield took out some overhanging branches, but he kept forcing his SUV down the road. Gil’s braking meant they hit the ruts of the road at a much slower speed, but the impact still jarred them as they jumped over a large rock and took a swipe at some piñon too near the road.

“Welcome to the backcountry,” Gil said, almost hitting the top of his head on the Explorer’s roof as they bounced over a log.

*   *   *

Lucy sat in Nathan’s car watching the snowy plains pass in the distance. The sun was setting, making the horizon look like someone had scraped the clouds with their fingernails and the sky had turned radioactive orange in protest.

After talking with Lucy last night, Tommy Martinez had tracked down Nathan, telling him that she had been arrested. Nathan had spent the night calling the county detention center and local lawyers, trying to find out where she was, what to do, and when he could post bail. He had given her a big bear hug the second he saw her, which made her burst into tears. She hadn’t told him about her mother’s hospitalization. She hadn’t mentioned the cancelled trip to Florida. She hadn’t called him when she’d been arrested. Yet he was still there, caring about her.

Now they were driving back toward town, listening to Christmas carols on the radio. They had stopped for food—a burger, which she ate gratefully. Now she was looking forward to her own bed. She noticed he didn’t take the turn to her house and instead started down the bypass road.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he said, smiling at her.

“Nate, I have been wearing these same clothes since yesterday,” Lucy said. “Could we please just go back to my house?”

“You look fine.”

“I just want to go home,” she said, whining purposely.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” he said. “You’re not going to spend it by yourself.”

They took the bypass to downtown and searched for a place to park. He found a spot on a side street lined by galleries and low stone walls.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

“You’ve never been in Santa Fe during Christmas before,” Nate said. “I thought you’d like to do the Farolito Walk.”

She pulled her coat around herself and sighed, then got out of the car and into the darkening night. They walked down the street, trying to avoid icy patches on the sidewalk. Then they turned onto Canyon Road and into a crowd. The street was shut down and people walked along paths lined in
farolitos.
These were not the electric kind. These were hundreds of brown paper bags, all with candles glowing inside, lining every possible surface—on roofs, chimneys, fences, trees, sculptures. It looked like fairies had been in charge of the Christmas decorations. Bonfires burned in the street, with people warming themselves near them.

“Okay,” Lucy said. “This is beautiful.” She wondered how something as simple as sand and a candle in a paper bag could be so picturesque.

“The whole neighborhood does this,” Nathan said. “At the elementary school they make mazes of
farolitos
that you can walk through. A house down on Garcia Street sets up a bunch of toy railroad sets in the snow.”

“What do we do now?”

“We walk,” Nathan said, taking her hand.

*   *   *

The scattered piñon and juniper of the high desert had become a full-blown forest of aspen, spruce, and ponderosa pine. The road crashed up a steep hill and kept climbing, with cliffs down one side and up the other as it snaked its way through a narrow gorge. The elevation here was too high for the snow to melt much during the day; the road was covered in almost six inches, with more coming down. The snow cover meant Gil was no longer able to make out the grooves and holes in the road, so every bounce was a surprise.

But where the Lexus had the advantage on the dry road—this was where the Explorer took over. It had an extra inch of clearance compared to the Lexus, meaning it could plow through the snow much more easily. Plus, here, its size was a blessing. Gil could see by the tracks of the Lexus in the snow ahead that Hoffman had fishtailed several times as his back tires lost traction. As Gil followed along the same path, the Explorer kept its footing because its weight pushed the tires firmly down.