“And what was she going to do?”
“Do?”
“For the rest of her holiday? She evidently wasn’t in the apartment to see Mike off. Was she going to see relatives of her own? Does Janet have folks nearby? I know about the sister out east somewhere.”
“Mike says not. Her mother died a while ago. Dad walked out on the family when Janet was just a kid, and who the hell knows where he is. Maybe the sister knows. Mike says that Janet told him that she had some errands, and then was going to spend a quiet evening in their apartment. Mike planned to be home by ten or so.” He shrugged. “Finish out their holiday together.”
“Not to be,” Estelle said, more to herself than Mitchell. She glanced at the wall clock, then at the captain. “That’s all?” With it pushing midnight, it wouldn’t have taken Eddie five hours to round out. Mike Sisneros’s simple story…even to the point of double and triple checking times with whoever might have an accurate guess about what might have happened when.
“No,” Eddie said. “We have a few bullet fragments from Tripp’s brain, but I kinda doubt that we’re going to match much of anything. I’m sure it’s a.22, and so is Mears.” He paused, looking down at his hands again. “I asked Mike if he had a.22 of some kind. In point of fact, he has two. Actually, I should say, had two.”
“Had?”
“One’s missing.”
Silence hung heavy for a moment.
“You mean stolen?”
“I don’t know what I mean,” Mitchell said. “And neither does Mike. The last time he saw it, the gun was in a dresser drawer in their bedroom. It’s not there now. The plastic box is there. The gun isn’t.”
“What about the other one?”
“He showed it to me. It’s a.22 conversion kit that he bought to fit his duty gun. Kind of a slick little deal. Take the barrel and slide off the.45, and just slip on the replacement.22 kit. Go plink on the cheap. The kit’s clean as a whistle. It hasn’t been fired in a while, unless Mike did the job and then came home and diligently cleaned up.”
“But you said a second gun is missing.”
“Yup. A.22 Ruger.22/45, one of those heavy barreled things that’s supposed to sort of match a 1911 in heft. He says that he’s had it for quite a number of years.”
“He didn’t loan it to anyone?”
“Says not.”
“Janet didn’t use it?”
Mitchell shook his head. “She wasn’t much of a gun fancier. What bothers me is that Mike can’t account for how it might have gone missing. He says that he knew it was in its case, in the drawer. No doubt Janet did too, although he says that she would never use it for anything. He says that he once tried to talk her into carrying a little something for protection, but that she wouldn’t do it. So he doesn’t think she took it. And it doesn’t make sense to me that she would.”
“Somebody did.”
“Sure enough, somebody did,” Mitchell said. “The apartment was locked, with no sign of forced entry. It’s on the second floor, so no one busted in through a window.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nothing else is missing, as far as Mike can tell. And we really looked.”
“Just the gun.”
“Yup. And Mike claims he doesn’t know how, why, or when. I have trouble with that, Estelle. A gun is not the kind of thing most folks misplace.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Another hour spent with Deputy Mike Sisneros produced nothing that the investigators didn’t already know. Estelle let Captain Eddie Mitchell’s steady, methodical pressure on the young deputy continue uninterrupted. No one in the department knew Sisneros any better than did Mitchell. As the time dragged into the early hours of the morning, small bits and pieces of information dribbled in, but Estelle knew, as that awful Christmas Day finally slipped into yesterday, that they’d reached an impasse.
A State Police officer in Lordsburg reported that a careful search of Mike Sisneros’s personal vehicle, still parked at his mother and stepfather’s house, had produced nothing out of the ordinary. It would have been physically impossible to cram a body the size of Janet Tripp’s into what passed for a trunk in the Mustang without leaving traces behind. Samples of human hair on the upholstery were taken, and Estelle had no doubt that they would belong to Mike and Janet. Further search had revealed the usual junk lodged under the seats-popcorn, two wrapped mints, pennies, one dime, an empty.45 ACP casing without even a hint of burned powder aroma, and a broken windshield scraper.
Other than the ATM records and a single.22 long-rifle cartridge casing found in the parking lot, Janet Tripp’s vehicle produced nothing but questions.
The arroyo where the young woman’s body had been found was telling no stories.
Estelle had chafed at the delay, but she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Her one contact at the lab who might have considered coming into the state office to work on a holiday was out of town visiting relatives. The wheels of forensic laboratory work ground to a halt on Christmas Day, further hampered by the holiday’s falling on a Saturday. But there was little that the lab could tell them anyway, short of an unexpected curve ball when the toxicology reports came back.
Alan Perrone had called the office earlier with the news that Janet Tripp’s body bore no other wounds or marks that weren’t consistent with being roughly transported and then dumped into a tangle of rusting cars and arroyo gravel. She hadn’t struggled with anyone…her short fingernails were clean with the exception of a small amount of grit from her death spasms in the arroyo. She hadn’t flailed about, grabbing her assailant’s hair, or gouging flesh from his face or arms. Instead, all signs pointed to her sitting in her car in the bank parking lot, head bowed forward as she tucked money and the ATM receipt into her purse. And then…pop. Unconsciousness, if not death, would have been instantaneous.
An hour after Estelle had given Tom Mears the rebar, Bill Gastner’s house keys, and the shovel, the sergeant’s report confirmed what she had expected. There were no prints on the rebar, none on the shovel. Her own-and Bill Gastner’s-were on the bundle of keys and the tiny penlight joined on the ring.
Linda Real’s photographs clearly showed the eruption of dirt around the hole in the ground where the rebar had first been jerked out, then returned to its place.
Beyond that, nothing.
Shortly after two in the morning of December 26, when no new ground could be pawed over, Lieutenant Mark Adams ran out of patience and overtime. He offered to drive Mike Sisneros home, and Estelle watched the young officer leave Mitchell’s office, his shoulders bowed like an old man’s. She wanted to find a quiet, dark corner and talk with Sisneros by herself, but was too tired at the moment to frame coherent questions and strategy.
“Shit,” Eddie Mitchell said succinctly. He stretched far back in his chair with a creaking of leather, arms straight over his head, fingers entwined. He held that position for a long time, then slumped with his hands in his lap. “You got any bright ideas?”
“I wish that I did,” Estelle said. She rubbed her face wearily. “I need a great big sign in neon letters that says, ‘Go this way.’”
“Copy that.”
She grinned at Mitchell and his curt military style, even though the dark circles under his eyes were probably just as deep as hers. “I wonder if we’re missing something obvious just because of the way we’re looking at this.”
“And how would that be, Undersheriff?”
“If we go all the way back to the beginning of this miserable holiday, to what is now the day before yesterday, I responded to a telephone call from Chief Martinez on Christmas Eve.” She paused. “That seems like a year ago, now.”
“Okay, he called you from the motel.”
“And then he goes out in the rain, to sit in his car, to do what, we don’t really know. What we know is that he did not do what my husband told him to do-sit down and wait for medical help. We know he did not say, ‘Okay, Dr. Francis, I feel terrible. Treat me. Here I am, waiting at the motel. Take me to the ER and make this all go away.”