The Man Behind the Cop. Janice Kay Johnson

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      “Lenora has a sister in this country. She has children, too. I’m not sure whether they’re in the Seattle area.” Once they talked to Lenora’s uncle, he’d make calls.

      Karin shut off lights and locked up. Activity in the parking lot had slowed and the tire iron had apparently been bagged and removed, but a uniformed officer asked that they exit carefully, pulling out so as not to drive over the crime scene. Somebody, Karin saw, was vacuuming around the bloodstain. Trace evidence could make or break a case, she knew, but how would they be able to sift out anything meaningful from the normal debris?

      Following her gaze, Cecilia murmured, “What a terrible night,” and got into her van.

      Karin hit the locks once she was in her car, inserted the key and started the engine, then began to shake again. She was shocked at her reaction. She’d always tended to stay levelheaded in minor emergencies, whereas other people panicked. Minor, she thought wryly, was the operative word. Bruce Walker had been angry, but utterly controlled, while here she was, falling apart.

      She sat in the car for easily two minutes, until her hands were steady when she lifted them. Finally, she was able to back out, and followed the police officer’s gestures to reach the street.

      At a red light, she checked to make sure her cell phone was on and the battery not exhausted. How long, she wondered, until she heard from Detective Bruce Walker? And why did it seem so important that he not delegate that call?

      BRUCE HADN’T TOLD the women that what he most feared was finding Anna and Enrico Escobar dead at their father’s hand, next to his body.

      Bruce had gone straight to the Lopez home, but on the way he made the necessary calls to get a warrant to go into the Escobar house. If the son of a bitch had intended to take his whole family out, it seemed logical that he’d have gone home with the kids. He might have feared being stopped in the parking lot before he finished the job.

      God, Bruce hated domestic abuse cases. Every single one struck too close to home for him.

      The woman who now lay dead just inside the front door looked disquietingly like her niece—unfortunately, down to the depressed skull and blood-soaked black hair. Unlike her niece, she had tried to defend herself, though. Her forearm was clearly broken.

      Gazing down at her, he thought, So, Dad, what would you think of this? To keep order in his own house, does a man have the right to kill not just his wife, but her relatives, too?

      Not that his own mother was dead, although she seemed more ghostlike than real to Bruce.

      He had barely time for a quick evaluation of the Lopez murder scene before the warrant for a search of the Escobar house came through. Wishing Molly were with him, he snagged a uniformed officer to accompany him to the Escobars’.

      They turned off headlights and coasted to a stop at the curb in front of the small place, but the minute Bruce saw that it was dark he knew they’d find it empty. The front door, he discovered after one hard knock, wasn’t even locked. No, Escobar hadn’t worried about protecting his possessions.

      Walking through, Bruce tried to decide whether the place had an air of abandonment because Lenora had moved out with the kids, or Roberto Escobar, too, had departed with no intention of returning.

      Near the telephone in the kitchen, a fist-size hole was punched in the wall. Plaster dust littered the otherwise clean countertop. Had Lenora laid the note here, by the phone, telling her husband she’d left him? One of the kitchen chairs was also smashed, and lay in the corner behind the table. Roberto had read the note, thrown a temper tantrum and sworn he’d find his wife and punish her.

      It was hard to tell in the small master bedroom whether he’d packed. Lenora hadn’t taken all her clothes, and some of his hung in the closet, as well. But Bruce found no coats and, more tellingly, no shaving kit or toothbrush in the bathroom. The tiny bedroom the children had apparently shared looked as though a burglar had ransacked it. Maybe Escobar had been trying to find a few toys and clothes for his kids.

      Bruce poked into the single, detached garage and down in the dank, unfinished basement just in case, before finally sealing the property with tape. He’d come back tomorrow, in better light, to see what else he could learn. Right now, he was glad to have found the place deserted. That gave him hope that Escobar intended to run with the children, not murder them out of spite.

      But there was no guarantee they wouldn’t find the bodies in his car, parked in some alley, or…It was the “or” that stopped Bruce. He hated knowing so little. He couldn’t even speculate on where Escobar might go to hide or to commit suicide.

      Because he couldn’t resist the temptation, Bruce called to let Karin Jorgensen know they hadn’t located Escobar and to find out whether she’d gotten any word on the wife’s condition.

      “She’s out of surgery, but in a coma. They…don’t sound hopeful.”

      He wasn’t hopeful, either. He’d seen Lenora Escobar’s head, and the blood, bone splinters and other tissue on the tire iron. He wondered whether they ought to be hoping she didn’t survive. He, for one, wouldn’t want to wake up at all if it meant living in a vegetative state or anything approaching one. He wasn’t sure it would be much better if she woke up clear and present to be told that her aunt had been murdered and her children taken by the violent man Lenora had fled.

      “Do me a favor and think back to anything Lenora ever told you that would suggest a place Escobar might go to ground. Does he have family in this country? In Mexico? Did she talk about friends? Hell, I don’t suppose they have a summer cabin.”

      “No, I’m pretty sure they weren’t in that economic stratum. Uh…” She sounded muzzy, not surprising given that it was—Bruce glanced at his watch—3:00 a.m. Likely her adrenaline hadn’t yet allowed her to curl up in the waiting room and conk out.

      “She didn’t talk about friends,” Karin continued. “I don’t think he encouraged them, at least not for her. Maybe not for him, either. He was jealous, of course. He’d imagine any other man would be coveting her, I’m afraid. As for family—his mother used to live with them, but she decided to go back to Mexico last year.” Silence suggested Karin was thinking. “Chiapas. That’s what Lenora said. Roberto was mad that she went.”

      “Chiapas.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So I suppose it’s reasonable that he might run for Mexico.”

      “Maybe. But how would even a mother take the news that he’d killed his wife—tried to kill his wife,” she corrected herself, a hitch in her voice, “and murdered his wife’s aunt?”

      “Depends on the mother. I’ve met some crazy ones.”

      “You mean, the ones who pay a hit man to knock off the judge or prosecutor?”

      “Or a rival cheerleader,” he noted dryly.

      “Well…yes. But I had the impression Mama had thrown up her hands over Roberto. There was another son, if I remember right, still in Chiapas. But Roberto was the elder, so of course he thought she should stay here.”

      “What—to babysit and keep a stern eye on his wife?” Bruce loosed a tired sigh. “No sign he’s bought airline, Amtrak or bus tickets, and we’ve got the state patrol here and in Oregon watching for his car. Sounds like it’s a beater, though. I doubt he’d make СКАЧАТЬ