One of the good things about working with a partner is that you gradually come to terms with a division of labor. Without our even having to discuss it, Mel opened Rita’s e-mail containing the SASAC board member essays. While she started studying those, I opened the file she had brought home from the office.
Mel had given me the broad outline of Destry Hennessey’s grandmother’s case, but the collection of articles gleaned from various newspapers laid out the story in much greater detail. I skimmed over the ones that dealt with the physical attack on Destry’s grandmother, Phyllis Elaine Hammond, and focused instead on what had happened to her attacker. Taking detailed notes, I was gradually able to gain a reasonably clear picture of the chain of events.
After serving four years for one count each of rape and robbery on seventy-nine-year-old Phyllis Elaine Hammond, Juan Carlos Escobar had been released from the North Utah Juvenile Correctional Institute in Logan on October 6, 2003. On the day of his twenty-first birthday, he had been driven to the bus terminal in Logan and handed a Greyhound ticket to Salt Lake City, where his own grandmother, Maria Andrade Escobar, had been expecting him. His bus ticket was never used, however, and he never arrived in Salt Lake, either. Several witnesses had reported seeing him in conversation with a nun near the Greyhound terminal an hour or so before his scheduled departure. Two days later, Escobar’s battered body had been discovered in an irrigation ditch on a deserted blacktop road outside Bountiful.
At the time Escobar was sentenced to serve his time in a juvenile facility, several relatives of his victim had appeared in public strenuously objecting to his having received special treatment. One or two of them had even gone so far as to vow seeking revenge.
“With that kind of history, naturally that was the first place we looked,” the lead investigator, Bountiful homicide detective Ambrose Donner, reported. “Members of Mrs. Hammond’s family were initially considered persons of interest, but at this point they’ve all been questioned and cleared of any involvement.”
Investigators continue in their efforts to locate the unidentified nun who was seen speaking to Escobar shortly before he disappeared. They’re also trying to locate the vehicle involved in the incident, reportedly a dark blue Buick Riviera with a broken front headlight and extensive front end damage.
The mention of a nun’s possible involvement was an immediate red flag, but for right then I let it go because I finally had what I needed. Flipping open my phone, I set about finding Detective Donner. He had been investigating a homicide that involved a dead sexual predator, which, it so happened, was what SHIT was doing, too. More or less.
It took a while. “Sorry to interrupt your Sunday,” I said when I finally reached the man at home and had introduced myself. I was worried he’d give me the third degree and want to know all about me-who I was and why was I horning in on his weekend, to say nothing of messing around in one of his cases.
“No big deal,” he said. “I’m watching golf. Tiger’s cleaning everybody’s clock, as per usual. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking into one of your old cases,” I said. “Wondering whether or not you ever closed it.”
“Which one?”
“Juan Carlos Escobar.”
Donner didn’t even hesitate. “That punk? No, we never closed it. Doubt we ever will. Near as we can figure, he pissed someone off while he was in juvie and they took care of him as soon as he got out. He was sent up because he raped and robbed some helpless little old lady,” Donner added. “The victim died eventually and probably because of what Escobar did to her, but he was never charged with murder like he shoulda been.”
“And none of her relatives were involved in his subsequent death?” I asked.
“We thought so at first, but they all came out squeaky clean. We ended up settling on the gangbanger theory. What can I tell you?”
“Did you ever find the vehicle?”
Donner hesitated. “Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we did. Two weeks after the fact, this guy comes home from taking his wife to Europe for their fortieth wedding anniversary. He gets off the plane and his car is missing from the airport parking lot.”
“Let me guess, a blue Buick Riviera.”
“You got it. The parking lot attendant figures the guy just forgot where he parked, so he gets a security guard to drive him around. When they find it, it’s there in the lot all right, but the date and time stamp on the ticket is a whole twenty-four hours after the guy and his wife landed in Paris. When the crime lab went over it, the interior had been wiped down pretty thoroughly, but they did find pieces of Juan Carlos still stuck to the front end and undercarriage.”
“What about the nun?” I asked. “Did you ever find her?”
“Look,” he said, hedging, “this is a small town. I’m not sure I should go into all this.”
After blithely spilling his guts about Escobar, I found Donner’s sudden reticence mystifying.
“Come on, Detective Donner,” I urged. “Did you find her or not?”
“We never found her,” he said. “But nobody ever reported her missing, either,” he hurried on. “We never found a body. Never found any remains or any blood evidence. So we didn’t have any way of knowing if we even had a second victim. The chief made the call. Said we were keeping it under wraps until we had an actual ID or a missing persons report to go on.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What are you saying?”
Donner sighed. “When the crime lab went over the Buick, they found a single thread-a long black thread. The guy who owned the car didn’t own anything black like that and neither did his wife.”
“So the nun was in the car.”
“That’s what we think, but we have no idea what happened to her afterward.”
“The thread’s still there?”
“As far as I know.”
“Did you do composites of her?”
“I think so,” Donner said. “They’re probably locked away in the cold case room. Why?”
“I’d like to get a look at them, if I could. Maybe you could fax them over to me.”
“But…” he began.
“Look,” I said. “I know you went out on a limb here by telling me this. If you like, you don’t even have to fax them to my office. If I give you my home number, we can keep this off everybody’s radar, right?”
“Right,” he said. “That would be a big help. What’s your number?”
CHAPTER 18
What’s going on?” Mel asked as I hung up with Donner.
“The cops in Bountiful had reports that Escobar spoke to a nun shortly after his release and just before his disappearance. There’s some evidence that the nun was in the car that ran down Escobar.”
“She’s dead, too, then?”
“No evidence one way or the other,” I returned. “And without a missing persons report or any evidence of foul play, Bountiful sat on that part of the case. I’ve asked him to fax over a composite sketch, but we won’t get that until after Detective Donner goes into work tomorrow-if then.”
The phone rang. It was the doorman calling to say Ralph Ames was on his way up.
Even late on a Sunday evening, Ralph arrived looking like someone who had just stepped out of a Brooks Brothers ad. Under the best of circumstances I look like your basic rumpled bed-tux-wearing occasions excepted. Fortunately our friendship is more than skin-deep.
“Good evening,” he said. “Although, from the sound of things, there’s not much good about it.”
Mel gave him a wan smile. “Not much,” she agreed. “Should I get my checkbook?”
“Definitely,” he said. “Then let’s go over this whole thing again, from beginning to end. I’ve got a call in to Lucinda Reyes down in Arizona. She’s a retired Phoenix cop, and she’s the best translator in the business when it comes to talking with federales.”
We spent the better part of the next two hours bringing Ralph up to speed on everything we had learned not only about the Matthews case but about Juan Carlos Escobar as well. In the end, Ralph seemed to agree with us.