Widows' Watch (16 page)

Tuesday, October 5, 10:00 A.M.

Staring dismally at the computer screen, Elena picked up Maggie's instructions, accessed the central files, and entered her parameters. Crime: robbery/homicide. Victim: male, 62 plus. Scene of crime: victim's residence. Scope of search: five years. Maggie's suggestions for trying to find out where the wife had been were difficult. Maybe if there weren't too many cases, Elena could just scan each file.

The first case came up on the screen. Good lord! It was just three months ago. She read the patrolman's report and shook her head. The homicide had been committed in the projects on the far Westside, an elderly male Hispanic killed by a teenager who was in the act of stealing the victim's car, a 1978 Mercury with, as it happened, a dead battery. She rejected that case and punched next.

A year ago, Jose “Joe” Castro, a retired high-school principal, had been shot in his kitchen with a Japanese Nambu at approximately 2:30 P.M. while fixing himself a bourbon and ginger ale. Daytime drinker, thought Elena. Wife beaters were often heavy drinkers. The Castro murder was still an open file, no arrest. She scanned further. Robbery-homicide. She called up the next screen. A family ring and a watch given to the decedent on his retirement by the school system were missing, both presumed to have been taken off the body. The widow's name was Mercedes Castro.

Elena cross-referenced to Domestic Violence. No reports, which didn't mean there hadn't been any. Still, it would have been nice to have something clear-cut. She skipped back to the detective reports on the Jose Castro murder. Reading . . . reading . . . bingo! Mercedes Castro had been at the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center when her husband was killed. Excitement flowed through Elena's veins, something that rarely happened to her in front of a computer. Maybe there was something to the rumors. Two murders in one year. Both wives at Socorro Heights.

“Sanchez. Jarvis.” Elena looked up at the sound of Manny's voice. “Shooting on the perimeters at Bowie.” Elena poked her head out into the aisle. “You got anybody else, Sergeant? The Potemkin case just blew up in our faces, but I'm onto something else.”

“What?”

“My mother's been telling me about other women at the center whose husbands have been killed in daylight robberies. Rumors about spousal abuse.” Elena grinned. “Mom thinks it's divine retribution.” This was a theory that Harmony had advanced on the drive home.

“Oh, right!” said Manny. “Do you think it's divine retribution? What do you expect to find? God in the computer?”

Elena shrugged. She didn't believe in divine retribution, but on the other hand, she didn't believe in big fat coincidences either. If any more of these murders showed up, she'd figure it was more than a coincidence.

“So what are we looking at?” asked Manny. “A serial killer based out of a senior citizens center?”

“I know it sounds crazy, Sergeant, but it's the only lead we've got beside the boyfriend—unless we get Lance back.” But would Lance use Sims as an alibi if he hadn't been with Sims? The professor was probably lying to cover his ass with his wife.

Coming down the aisle, Leo heard the last sentence. “What's up?”

“Your partner's pursuing a case of divine retribution.”

“The Potemkin case? The wife says God killed him.”

“You want to take a shooting over at Bowie with Sanchez?”

“Sure. I'd rather go out with Sanchez than be in on accusing God. Concepcion would never forgive me. She'd figure she can't get pregnant cause I'm on God's shit list.” He headed back toward Sanchez, who was talking to another detective where the two aisles intersected.

“Thanks, Sergeant,” said Elena. “I've already found one killing that fits the pattern.”

Manny rolled his eyes and left. Elena went back to the computer and took notes on the Jose Castro case. Hoping to interview Mercedes Castro, she wrote down addresses and telephone numbers for the family home, plus the son's place, then called up the next entry.

A year and a half ago an old man was shot in his home. The case was investigated as homicide but closed out as suicide. He had advanced cancer. Items reported missing by relatives turned out to be pawned to pay his medical bills, the last of which had been for an office-visit appeal to his doctor to give him a hundred sleeping pills. The doctor had refused. Elena shook her head. Poor old guy. He'd shot himself through the ear, blown his brains out all over the bathroom, and been discovered three days later by a neighbor lady soliciting for the American Cancer Society.

Elena called up the next file. Victim: Harold “Hank” Brolie. Shot in his home three years ago around one in the afternoon with a Smith and Wesson, case open. Stolen: a watch awarded him as Salesman of the Year for an independent insurance agency. The watch had probably been taken off the body. Elena nodded. Same as Jose Castro. But this one had a new wrinkle. Well, not new when you considered Boris. Hank Brolie's National Rifle Association shooting medals, usually displayed in a case in the living room, were missing. Medal theft number two.

Wife of the deceased: Chantal Brolie. Elena called up the detectives' reports. And smiled. Chantal Brolie had been—guess where?—at the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center. The whole afternoon. Dear God! There really might be a serial killer at work here. Chantal had been a French teacher in a local high school, retired at the time of the killing. Two high-school connections, thought Elena, Castro and Brolie. But not with the Potemkins.

She cross-referenced for domestic abuse. Three disturbing-the-peace calls phoned in by neighbors over a period of two years, but nothing a year prior to the murder. Elena bit her lip. The patrolman who answered one of the calls said the husband and wife claimed it was just an ordinary quarrel, maybe a little loud. Another noted that the wife had a bruised cheekbone and twist marks on her left wrist. She claimed a fall for the bruised cheekbone, burst out crying and wouldn't answer when asked about the wrist. Husband sullen and uncooperative, noted Officer Amalo Baile. The third officer smelled alcohol on the husband. Elena wrote down the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and parallels between the Brolie murder and the others.

“This is really creepy,” she muttered and pulled up two more cases, the first an old man living alone in Sunset Heights. They'd cleaned out everything in his house. Neighbors had seen a truck and moving men but hadn't thought anything of it. It was a mind-your-own-business street. The body wasn't found for two weeks, until the mailman noticed an odor emanating from the mail slot and called the police. Newspapers piling up in the front yard might have been a clue, but nobody had investigated. One neighbor said he figured the old man had gone to visit his daughter in Carrizozo, maybe taken his furniture with him, although the neighbor couldn't explain why the furniture had been moved after dark.

The second was a murder-suicide over by the water-treatment plant. Husband killed the wife, then himself, although it had been investigated for a time as a double murder. Neighbors said the smell from the plant was enough to make anyone crazy.

Elena went out to lunch with a detective from Sex Crimes and had a salad, trying to ameliorate the effects of overeating during the bicycle-race weekend. At two o'clock she pulled up the death four years ago of Porfirio Cox. Since it occurred before the department began entering everything into the computers, there wasn't as much information, but it was listed as a daylight robbery-murder, unsolved, so Elena took the case number. She'd follow up by pulling the written files. The last one she could find that fit the pattern at all was Herbert Stoltz, another daylight robbery-murder. Porfirio Cox had a wife listed, Marcia Cox. Stoltz didn't. Still, Elena took down his case number and name.

She shut down the computer and headed for I.D. & R., only to be stopped by Manny, who said, “If you've got the time, Jarvis, we've got an agg assault at a pawnshop on Alameda, one Jesus Bonilla. Isn't he a buddy of yours?”

“No. Who did Jesus assault?”

“Someone assaulted him and cleaned out his gun inventory.”

“Who'm I covering it with?”

“Me. We're out of detectives except for you, our computer wizard.”

Elena made a wry face. “I'm just following Maggie's instructions, but I'll tell you, Sergeant, it's really getting weird. I've now got three old guys killed in the last three years, their wives all at the Socorro Heights Center when the deed was done.”

“That is weird,” Manny agreed. “I'll drive.” The two went to the lot and hopped into an ‘88 Ford Escort, which had been turned over by the Mexican police, another of the hundreds of stolen cars that crossed the border weekly, but one of the few that ever came back. With all the identification numbers filed off, LSPD couldn't find the owner. The car was heartily disliked in the department because potholes and bumps, even the traffic humps at banks and schools, would turn off the fuel pump and leave you stranded until you delved under the carpet in the trunk to turn the pump back on. The Ford Company called it a safety feature that kept the car from catching fire after accidents; the detectives called it a pain in the ass and turned it in regularly to departmental mechanics for adjustment.

“I got two more possibles,” said Elena, “but they're before everything went into the computer, so I'll have to look up the paperwork. You think I should chase it for more than five years?”

Manny wheeled out onto Raynor and headed for the interstate. “Go with what you got now,” he advised. “See how good it looks. If there really seems to be a connection, and that's hard to believe—I mean, what have we got here? Some nut who hates his grandfather, so he runs around killing old men every year or so. Anyway, if it looks good, we'll have I.D. & R. check it further back.”

“Thank God,” said Elena. “You wouldn't believe how many error messages I got just coming up with these cases.”

“Sure I would,” said Manny. “Everyone knows about you and computers.”

They took the Paisano overpass to Alameda, where they found Jesus Bonilla insisting that he was not leaving his shop to go to the hospital no matter how big a lump he had on the back of his head. The hijo de puta pulled a gun on him, made him turn around, and whacked him with the butt. “Where are the police when you need ‘em?” asked Jesus indignantly.

“You turned up anything on that czar's medal?” asked Elena.

“I been attacked and robbed, and you're worrying about some damned czar's medal. No wonder everybody hates the police.”

Not everyone, thought Elena smugly, remembering Lydia Beeman. Just scumbags like Jesus Bonilla. By the time she and Manny got through taking Bonilla's statement, it was 3:45, too late

to pull those I.D. & R. files and see if she could find two more Socorro Heights murders. Well, the last guy, Stoltz, had been a widower, so unless he had visited the center himself, he wasn't part of the pattern. If there was a pattern. Manny's joke about grandfather-haters wasn't going to fly. Someone in the center fingering houses for burglary? Nothing of great worth had been stolen. And the husbands had been at home. But the thief might have had some reason to think they wouldn't be. Maybe she should check for successful burglaries while the householders were at the center. The only other possibility was the spousal abuse factor and T. Bob Tyler or some other avenger of women. It worked for the Potemkins, for the Brolies. Nothing on the Castros. And one of the two remaining victims didn't even have a wife—well, not a living wife. His next of kin had been a son.

“That Maggie Daguerre is something else,” said Manny. “Right out of hospital emergency, with her leg in a fifty-pound cast, and she still wants to go to a barbecue and sleep in a tent.”

“She's going home early today.”

Manny looked alarmed. “Something wrong?”

“Mostly her captain,” said Elena, grinning. “He doesn't like the cast. Thinks it's unprofessional.”

“Yeah? Jesus,” said Manny, “I thought it was a work of art. I never realized my kids had any talent that way.”

They arrived back at headquarters, where Elena clocked out and headed for home, but the Potemkin murder was so curious that she wished it were tomorrow morning so that she could keep delving.

Tuesday, October 5, 8:30 P.M.

Elena dragged a rocking chair from her bedroom into the living room so she could keep her mother company while Harmony was walking the loom. “That's really a great pattern, Mom,” she said, examining the growing length of fabric.

“My patterns usually are,” Harmony replied. “I don't know why that Lydia Beeman—well, we won't talk about her.”

Elena stifled a grin. “What about Lydia?”

“It's just that I was beginning my weaving class—I have twelve ladies and two gentlemen—and I told them that weaving is a very practical skill. You can make fabrics for home decoration and for your own wardrobe. I mentioned this outfit as an example.” Harmony gestured to her loose-weave overblouse and full skirt. The blouse had a high mandarin collar and wide, three-quarter-length sleeves. The deep purple fabric was banded at the sleeves and hem with rose and turquoise Indian designs. A silver concho belt inset with pinkish-red stones cinched the blouse at the waist. Elena hated to think what an outfit like that would cost in one of the Santa Fe boutiques. No wonder her mother was starting to make money. “So what did Lydia say?”

“She said my clothes are quite impractical because they aren't machine-washable, probably not even hand-washable.”

“Well, I suppose it's true,” said Elena.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Harmony demanded. “There are people who don't even have washing machines. And most of my clothes are hand-washable. Comfort, color, beauty—those are the important qualities in clothes. The self-image they give you—”

“Mom, you'll have to admit that Lydia Beeman is the wash-and-wear type. She probably doesn't even wear skirts.”

“She made remarks about my sandals too. Said I'd ruin my feet unless I switched to sensible walking shoes. There's nothing wrong with my feet!”

“I know, Mom. They're very pretty.”

“She probably has ingrown toenails or bunions. That's why she wears those ugly lace-up shoes.”

Elena sensed a real feud developing between her mother and Lydia Beeman, which was kind of unusual for Harmony.

“How's your investigation coming on the Potemkin case?” asked Harmony.

“Lance came in and told us that he'd been with some professor from the university the whole time.”

“I knew it!”

“But the professor denies it.”

Harmony looked astonished. “He must be lying.”

“Quite possible,” Elena agreed. “The man's married.”

“What? To another man? I didn't know that was possible in Texas.”

“It's not. He's divorcing a wife and wants partial custody of the children, so Lance didn't want to mention their—ah—weekend together.”

“Well, of course he didn't. Very thoughtful and caring of him.”

“We still have to question Professor Sims in person.”