The Bone Fire: A Mystery (29 page)

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.

Gil got Donna Henshaw’s address from the MVD and headed toward that part of town. It was in the mountains above the city, where new homes of the rich and famous were starting to encroach on national forest land.

They stopped at a gas station to fill up. Gil stayed in the car but could hear Joe outside beeping at the pump as it beeped at him. Gil called Susan, who picked up on the third ring. There was the sound of a band in the background as she was yelling hello.

“Hey, my mom made carne adovada,” he said. Susan and the girls would be going over to Aunt Yolanda’s party in a few hours.

“Thank God,” Susan said. He heard her yell to the girls, “Grandma made carne adovada,” then heard Therese’s shriek of excitement.

“Where are you?” he asked. The noise coming from her side was unending.

“We’re on the Plaza,” she shouted, and Gil heard the girls laughing in the background.

“Really?” he said. “I was just there. I didn’t think you were going to go over there after the pet parade or I would have looked for you.”

“Oh, the girls talked me into it,” she shouted over the noise. “How about you?”

“I don’t think I can make it to the party, but—” Gil was interrupted by Susan yelling, “Damn it . . . Joy just spilled her Coke all over herself. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.” Then she hung up.

Joe came back into the car drinking a Mountain Dew and chomping on some Cheetos. Gil pulled out and headed away from downtown.

“I wonder why Donna Henshaw would adopt a kid?” Joe said, not really asking. “She must be in her sixties, but, boy, back in the day she had some truly outstanding knockers. I mean, like real ones. She put the boob in boob tube.”

“How old were you when her shows were on?” Gil asked.

“Oh, hell, I wasn’t even born,” Joe said, “but they still show her stuff on late night TV. Like her first sitcom,
Can You Dig It?
About her and her two black roommates. That stuff was groundbreaking back in the day, you know. Like when one of the guys accidentally joined the Black Panthers? That was hysterical.”

“I don’t think groundbreaking is the way to describe it,” Gil said. “It was just stupid.”

“No way, dude. Now her second sitcom, in the eighties, that one was stupid,” Joe said, then took a large drink of his Mountain Dew. “She was, like, this single divorced mom who had a kid, but when the kid wasn’t cute anymore they did a
Cosby Show
and brought in a younger kid for the cute factor.”

“What was the name of that show?”

“It was called
Word to Your Mother
, like from the Vanilla Ice song,” Joe said. “She did some movies, too. I think she was in one of the Conan movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Joe’s voice went down an octave, and he said with a fake German accent, “What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

“Is that from the movie?”

“Dude, that’s like a classic line,” Joe said.

“Oh please, a classic movie line is like ‘What is your major malfunction?’ ” Gil said.

“You pull out a
Full Metal Jacket
line on me? Well, I’ll take some of that action, ‘Only steers and queers come from Texas.’ What do you say to that?”

“A day without blood is like a day without sunshine,” Gil said, smiling.

“Damn, Montoya, I never had you figured for a war movie guy,” Joe said, actually impressed. “What about having a wife and kids? You can’t watch
Full Metal Jacket
with your little girls around.”

“I can when they go to bed,” Gil said.

“Oh, I am finally learning all about the secret life of Detective Gilbertito Montoya,” Joe said, laughing. “What else do you do when your family is in bed? Make crank phone calls? Or maybe you call up that pretty girl from the newspaper?”

Gil said nothing but was annoyed. “Oh, dude,” Joe said as he saw Gil’s look. “It was a joke. I don’t really think you’re porking her. I can’t even joke about it?”

Gil said nothing and hoped that, for once, Joe would do the same.

Gil turned onto a dirt road and drove another quarter mile. He expected to see a mansion covered in huge windows that would allow the occupants to admire the beautiful vistas of the valley below. Instead, they came upon a large gate set in an eight-foot-tall razor-wire fence. At the gate was a guard shack painted white. There was nothing to be seen but woods. No house. No cars. No nothing.

A woman came out of the shack and headed toward their car. She was dressed in a cobalt blue turban and pajama-like shirt and pants in the same color. Around her waist was a burnt orange cummerbund with a small jeweled dagger tucked into it.

Gil heard Joe say next to him, “Well, what the hell is this?”

The woman came up to the driver’s side of the car, and Gil rolled down the window. The woman, who was Anglo and looked to be about forty, smiled and said, “Blessings and victory upon you.”

“Umm . . . thanks,” Joe said.

“We’re here to see Donna Henshaw,” Gil said, showing his badge. The woman smiled again and went back to the guard shack, where she got on a walkie-talkie. They were too far away for Gil to hear what she was saying.

“Is that an AR-15 on the wall?” Joe whispered just as Gil noticed a black rifle with a collapsing stock, laser sight, and pistol grip hanging in the shack.

“I think it’s an FAR-15, not an AR-15,” Gil said. He unsnapped his paddle holster but didn’t take out his .45 caliber Smith & Wesson. Joe hit the release of the shotgun bolted to the dashboard but left it sitting in its mount, then pulled out his own sidearm and held it down by his right side, where it couldn’t be seen. Gil watched the woman on the walkie-talkie, ready to unholster his gun the second she made a move toward the FAR-15.

Joe, staring intently at the rifle, said, “I think you’re right. My guess is it’s a clone. That would mean it has a ten-round magazine and fixed muzzle. I’m also going to guess it has a forward assist, which personally I’m not a fan of.”

Gil was watching, but also thinking of where he would put the seven rounds he had in his Smith & Wesson and whether the car door would stop the high-velocity rounds from the FAR-15. If the rifle was fully automatic, and there was no way to tell from this distance if it was, she could get off eight hundred rounds a minute.

The woman finally put down the walkie-talkie and walked back toward them—away from the rifle. She pulled open the gate and motioned Gil through with a wave of her hand. Gil didn’t put the car in drive. He didn’t want that FAR-15 behind him, where it could be used to shoot at them after she closed the gate and blocked their only exit. She looked back at them, but Gil still didn’t move the car forward, forcing her to come back to the car to see what the problem was.

“I just have a few questions for you,” Gil said, his hand staying on his gun. “For instance, why do you have that rifle?” He nodded his head toward the shack. Gil could feel Joe next to him, hard with tension, ready to move if things went badly.

“We get bears up here sometimes,” the woman said, smiling.

“That’s a lot of firepower for a bear,” Gil said.

“It’s not even loaded,” the woman said. “Let me show you.” Before Gil could stop her, she turned back toward the shack. Joe was out his door in an instant, standing up next to the car and using it as a shield. Gil saw Joe’s gun hand come up and rest on the roof. Gil followed suit, opening his car door, dropping to one knee behind it, and pointing his gun out the open window.

The woman, her back still to them, started to reach inside the shack.

“Ma’am,” Gil said firmly and almost quietly, “I need you to step away from the building.”

The woman turned. Gil saw her register the guns aimed at her, and she looked surprised. Then scared. She whispered a high-pitched “Oh my” before putting her hands up.

Gil kept his gun pointed at the woman while Joe went to the shack and found what the woman had been reaching for: a fully loaded magazine that could be slapped into the FAR-15.

The woman looked at them with big eyes. Gil reholstered his gun, and Joe took the FAR-15 off the wall, checking to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t. They had no right to seize it since they were on private property, but they could hold on to it until they left.

“Who are you?” Gil asked.

“I’m Jind Kaur. I do security here,” the woman said.

“How many more weapons like that can we expect up at the house?” Gil asked.

“Umm . . . I don’t . . . I’m not sure,” the woman said.

“Well, call up there and tell them that if we see even one weapon we are going to have to call the ATF,” Gil said. “We are going to take the rifle with us for now, but we’ll give it back to you before we leave.” Joe put the rifle across the backseat, and then they got back into the car, settling into their seats.

“Are we really going up there?” Joe asked. “Can we call for backup? I really don’t want to get killed by a security guard.”

“Then it’ll be all over the news how we raided the house of a famous actress,” Gil said, “and we can forget about getting any information on Brianna.”

Gil pulled the car through the gate and down the dirt road.

“What was the deal with the turban?” Joe asked. “What was she? Like Muslim?”

“No, she’s a Sikh,” Gil said. “You’ve probably seen them around town. Most of them wear white. I’m not sure why she was in blue. A few thousand live in Santa Fe and Española. Like Adam Granger. He and his parents are Sikh.”