The Bone Fire: A Mystery (37 page)

“What kind of problems?”

“Just, you know . . . okay, like for instance she can’t have sex unless she’s had a few beers,” Stevens said, as if he had just laid something out on the table. Just given up his king of hearts. It was an important card, but it wasn’t the most telling. He was still holding an ace.

“I get that,” Gil said as a filler response to show that he wasn’t judging the man.

“You know, if she’s drinking and then I’m drinking . . .”

“So you’ve only ever had sex when you were both drunk?” Gil
asked. Stevens shifted in his seat uncomfortably, but there was nothing strange about the conversation yet. It was common for women who had been sexually abused to need alcohol to overcome their fears in bed.

“Yeah,” Stevens said. He was still bouncing his leg. There was something else.

Gil said, “When both people are drunk it gets complicated.” It was almost a nonstatement, but it might move the conversation along.

“Yeah, like, okay, so we haven’t had regular sex for a really long time,” Stevens said, leaning in closer and talking quietly.

“You mean intercourse?”

“Yeah, I mean, we’ve done other stuff . . . you know, but not that,” Stevens said.

“When was the last time you had regular sex?” Gil asked, thankful that Joe wasn’t jumping in to ask questions about his favorite subject.

“We got drunk one night about eight months ago, and then later Ashley said we had sex, but I can’t remember it. Plus, like a guy can tell, you know.” This was Stevens’s ace of spades. The card that would break him. Gil quickly realized why this fact, this one instance, was so important. “So you’re not sure you’re the new baby’s father?” he asked.

Stevens leaned back and said, “It’s not that . . . maybe . . . I don’t know.” His leg started jumping again. He let out a few more slow breaths before saying, “I have to be the dad, you know? Ashley would never cheat on me. And then plus, with all of her hangups . . . we were dating for four months before she could even have drunk sex. So, like, who would she have sex with?”

That had been the question from the beginning.

Gil stood outside the interview room with Joe, who rolled his neck and said, “I have no idea where this leaves us.”

Gil wasn’t sure either. He had one of the uniformed officers bring Alex Stevens a soda and a bag of chips so he wouldn’t get too nervous and ask for a lawyer while they considered filing false statement charges against him for fingering David Geisler.

Gil and Joe went back to the conference room and looked at the whiteboard, which still displayed Brianna’s timeline, as well as all the lists and the phrase
I was dead and buried.

They stared at the board in silence until Joe said, “I know the family is lying to us, but I can’t see any of them putting Brianna’s bones up in those displays. It’s just too evil.”

“That’s my issue with it, too,” Gil said.

“I wonder about the David Geisler thing,” Joe said. “I know he could still be our guy . . .”

“Although it seems less likely since Stevens lied about seeing him with Brianna.”

“But he fits the profile perfectly.” Joe got up and stood next to the board. “I don’t know. Maybe the profile is wrong.”

“Our profile is solid,” Gil said. “I know it is. Whoever killed Brianna and left her bones fits this profile.”

“The profile that describes David Geisler,” Joe said, exasperated.

Gil’s head was starting to hurt again. “So let’s change tacks here,” he said. “Alex Stevens seems pretty convinced that Ashley got rid of Brianna, but you and I both know that no one in the family put up the displays of Brianna’s bones. So let’s assume both things are true. How would Ashley get rid of Brianna in a way that explains how we found her bones?”

“The only thing I can think of is that Ashley sold Brianna to a psychopath,” Joe said, “and now we are back to creepy land.”

They kept looking at the board until Joe said hesitantly, “Could Ashley have sold Brianna to David Geisler?”

It was a measure of how much of a toll the investigation was taking on Gil that he actually considered it.

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 motherfucker,” 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.”