Escapes Can Be Murder

by Connie Shelton

  The address I’d found on the website came up on the right and I whipped into the parking lot on threat of being run down by an aggressive driver who clearly didn’t like someone address-searching on such a busy street. The building looked like dark brown adobe, a color within the Santa Fe building codes. Every window on the second floor was brightly lit. Would Brown’s be like those big-city law firms where they pride themselves on working half the night? I didn’t want to summon up the patience for that kind of waiting game, but I backed into a parking slot so I could watch.

  Ten minutes later, meeting adjourned, lights began going out and people emerged one-by-one from the front entry. I realized I might not recognize Brown in the dim evening light, so I left the Jeep and walked to the double doors. I had a good idea what he looked like, provided his photo on the firm’s website was even close to current. Dark hair, trimmed short, goatee (although facial hair has a way of changing on a moment’s notice), green eyes, high cheekbones, a nose that was a little too rounded to qualify as handsome. I stood just inside the doorway, watching until I saw him come down the stairs.

  “Christopher Brown?”

  He turned toward me with an open gaze.

  “I need to ask about Rory McNab.” I introduced myself and told him I’d been hired by Fergus. “Could we talk for a few minutes? I’ll buy you a drink, if you were heading somewhere.”

  “Just home. I’ll pass on the drink. Rory, huh? Wow, that’s a name from the past.” He shifted a heavy briefcase from one hand to the other as two middle-aged women walked past. “Look, the lobby isn’t the most comfortable … Want to come up to my office?”

  I followed him up the stairs, through a reception area and past a grouping of cubicles to a spacious office with windows that offered a surprising view of the city. I hadn’t realized this spot sat a bit higher than most. The room had a recently occupied feel—coffee mug on the desk, two thirds full of milky-looking brew, wastebasket half full, a faint warmth from the computer terminal at the corner of the large pine desk.

  “So—Rory. What questions could you possibly have about him?” He plopped the briefcase on the floor beside his credenza and took a seat behind the desk. I sat across from him, although he hadn’t specifically invited me to.

  “His father, Fergus McNab, is dying.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear it. I remember Fergus. Kind of a crusty old guy. Must be in his eighties now?”

  I nodded. “I gather he and Rory were always close.”

  Christopher waggled one hand in a ‘maybe’ type of motion. “Fergus was very proud of Rory, of his success, especially when he started talking about running for the state Senate.”

  “But …?”

  “I’m not sure the admiration went both ways. Sorry, I shouldn’t be saying that. Rory just didn’t want to grow up to be a farmer. He had his sights set on fancier, more glamorous things for his own life. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of Fergus, not exactly. He just didn’t want to become him.”

  “And yet Fergus put everything out there when Rory got in trouble, even going so far as to help him escape.”

  A sharp look from Brown. “That was never proven. I mean, the police questioned everyone connected with Rory. Fergus got the lion’s share of the interrogation, but they never arrested the old man.”

  Not sure how much I should say, I changed the subject. “What about the case against Rory, the jury tampering—was he guilty? Ten counts seems rather extreme.”

  “It was. Come on, anybody who watches Law and Order could tell you one juror can throw a case. Why would Rory take the risk of messing around with ten of them?”

  “It doesn’t seem logical. Maybe it was the nature of the case—I read somewhere that he’d defended a man accused of dealing drugs.”

  “Ah, yes … what was that kid’s name … Baca. Damian Baca. I say ‘kid’ but he was legally an adult. Nineteen, I think. He came from a good family, one both Rory and I knew. Neither of us believed he was guilty and the evidence was skimpy. Everything was going our way and the jury found in Damian’s favor. His grandmother was so thankful she even kissed Rory on the cheek after the verdict was read.”

  “So, what went wrong?”

  “Herman Quinto. As a prosecutor he had the reputation for getting things done, cleaning up the streets, so to speak. He was on a winning streak with cases where he was putting drug dealers away for hard time. He couldn’t believe he lost the Baca case and he vowed to get back at Rory.”

  “So he made up these jury-tampering charges? Wouldn’t there have to be some basis?”

  “It roared up on us like a freight train. Suddenly, there were deputies from the U.S. Marshals’ office raiding our place and seizing files. Rory was served with a warrant. Both of us were sputtering like idiots. We had no idea where these charges had come from.”

  “But how—?”

  “Somebody got to them. That’s all I can figure.” He noticed the dirty coffee mug and turned to set it behind him on the credenza. “Jurors who’d been amenable to our case suddenly testified that they’d been approached by members of the Baca family who hinted that Damian’s lawyer sent them. The Bacas denied it, but Quinto made the argument that of course they would deny it. Guilty people deny incriminating evidence all the time. He came up with a couple of handwritten notes of a threatening nature, even had some recorded phone calls, evidence Rory swore he’d never seen before.”

  “Did he prove those came from Rory …?”

  “It was very shaky. We were stunned when the verdict came in, even more so at the sentencing.”

  “And you weren’t dragged into it?”

  “Luckily not. It was Rory’s case, and he seemed to be the one Quinto was after.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. I told you Rory was planning to run for state Senate—it’s the same seat Herman Quinto holds now. I think, when it came to a squeaky clean reputation versus a tarnished one, Quinto realized he needed to get Rory out of the picture or at least smear him so badly he’d never get elected.”

  During the drive home, my inborn skepticism kicked in. I wanted to believe Chris Brown—he’d seemed a genuine sort of guy—but I also had to remind myself that everything he’d said could also be used to cover his own ass. As Rory’s business partner at the time, he would have tried to throw some distance between them. And, if that was the case, it had worked. Rory had spent ten years on the run, while Chris now headed a very successful law firm, by the look of it.

  Plus, everyone involved was a lawyer or a politician—seriously, how much could I trust anything any of them said? Both Helen Bannerly and Kate Letterman had been hesitant to talk to me, and I didn’t see either of them as the shy type.

  I arrived at home to find Drake in the kitchen, working his magic with a couple of steaks and baked potatoes. When he handed me a glass of my favorite merlot, the happiness picture was complete. We finished our sumptuous meal, watched an action movie, and called an early bedtime. He would need to be airborne at daylight to head for the high country and count elk with his Fish and Game client. I snuggled in next to him, but my mind was a little too charged up to let me sleep right away—I’d learned something important today but couldn’t figure out what it was.

  Chapter 13

  Drake made himself a hearty breakfast of oatmeal, toast, a green smoothie and, to balance out all that healthy stuff, two sausage patties. I think my terrible eating habits are rubbing off on him. I poured myself a cup of coffee and emptied the rest of the carafe into a thermos for him to carry along. He was out the door at five.

  I felt a temptation to wander back to bed. The sun wouldn’t peek over the Sandias for almost another two hours. I nixed the idea when I remembered the scattered dreams I’d had all night: a curious mix of visits to Rory McNab’s remote cabin in Maine, the hallways of a nursing home where I was walking away from a crying Elsa, and a midnight raid on Helen Bannerly’s law office where I was breaking into her files t
o find the information I knew she was hiding from me. Of the mishmash sent to me from dreamland, only the last one held any appeal.

  I brewed another pot of coffee and brought out the news stories and photos I’d printed from Rory’s trial. I found it hard to believe Helen Bannerly didn’t recall details or keep records from what had probably been her highest profile case. Corporate mergers, if they made the spotlight, featured the moguls. Lawyers kept themselves very much to the background. She certainly wasn’t one of Albuquerque’s hotshot attorneys who regularly made the nightly news with an A-List of celebrity clients. Maybe if Fergus or Rory contacted her, perhaps they would have the right client-attorney credentials to get her to open up.

  Or, it could simply be that she’d vowed never to discuss the most public humiliation of her career. The more I thought about it, the more that theory seemed plausible. I set the articles aside and was debating between oatmeal or a blueberry muffin—I’ll admit it, the muffin was winning—when my phone rang. My eyes went immediately to the time; it wasn’t quite six o’clock yet. An early morning call didn’t bode well—especially with an elderly loved one in the hospital, a husband on a flight, and a client on the run from the law—my gut reacted accordingly. I didn’t recognize the number and picked up the phone, almost wishing it would be a telemarketer.

  “Miss Charlie?”

  I recognized Fergus’s voice. “Fergus, what’s happened?” I couldn’t help it. I was all set for bad news.

  “Happened? Well, nothing new. I just wanted to check in with you before I head to my doctor’s appointment in a little while.”

  His slight bewilderment told me he had no clue how early it was and that normally I would have still been sound asleep at this hour.

  “You said you’d let me know what you found out about getting Rory’s case dismissed. What’s happening with it?”

  Oh boy. “Fergus, I don’t have any influence with the court. You know I can’t get Rory’s case dismissed. It’s too late for that. But I have been asking around.” I told him about my visits to Helen Bannerly and Christopher Brown.

  “I liked his lady lawyer, that Helen,” Fergus said. “She really took an interest in our case and said she’d get Rory out of that mess. Said the charges were stupid. Well, maybe that’s not the word she used; it was something like that.”

  “Did she say what basis she was using to prove the charges were false?”

  “Well, I don’t know about any basis stuff. But she said the witnesses had been coached and several changed their stories. The ones she’d interviewed ahead of time, a couple of them didn’t show. Every time she asked the really good questions, the judge would overrule her. Afterward, when they gave the verdict, she was fuming about the judge. She didn’t like the man right from the get-go but at the end, she was real angry because she hadn’t been able to get the case moved to a different … whatever you call it, get a different judge to hear it.”

  “What did Rory say about it, about the judge’s integrity?”

  I’d been skimming back through the articles while he talked and came up with the name of Judge Aldo Blackman. This was another familiar one in Albuquerque but I couldn’t think specifically of what the connections were—politics, I was fairly sure, which made sense that there might be a link with Herman Quinto and with Rory’s ambitions for the Senate. Could this whole thing be as simple as a judge and prosecutor wanting to get a young upstart out of the way in an upcoming election term?

  “Fergus, did you, by any chance, receive a copy of the trial transcript at the time?”

  “No. Rory suggested we get it, and I thought his lawyer was going to follow up on that but then she kind of disappeared on us. Went to work at a new place and then wouldn’t ever call me back.”

  “What about the witnesses against Rory? Do you have their names?” I wasn’t sure if I would be risking a witness-tampering charge of my own by contacting them, but it didn’t seem likely this many years after the fact. And maybe I could learn something.

  I heard papers rustling in the background and felt somewhat relieved to know Fergus wasn’t relying only on his memory.

  “Well, let’s see … there was a lady named Emelia Sanchez and an older man called Fernando, but I didn’t write down whether that was his first name or last.”

  Hm, big help.

  “And there was a woman—I remember her because her husband was out in the seats near me and I got to talking with him. They’d been farmers too, and we talked about the weather and crops and such.”

  “And her name …?”

  “Oh, it was Billie Jones.”

  “Any others?”

  More rustling of papers, followed by a crash that sounded distinctly like a heavy ceramic object hitting the floor.

  “Oh, shoot—there goes my coffee,” he muttered. “Naw, I guess that’s all the witness names I wrote down.”

  I thanked him for the information and let his distraction with the spilled coffee become the excuse to get off the phone. For now anyway, I had enough research to keep me busy. I wondered what were the odds I’d find any of the players from ten years ago, much less those involved in Damian Baca’s case two years prior. There was only one way to find out. I brought my laptop to the kitchen table and pushed the file of newspaper article reprints aside.

  I love those movies where the heroine sits at her computer, keys in one search word, and has the entire history of her quarry laid out on the screen, including a blinking dot showing where the person is right this minute. Let me just say, it doesn’t actually go that way. By the time I had addresses and phone numbers for Billie Jones and Emelia Sanchez two hours had slipped by, and I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure I had the right people—Jones and Sanchez are not exactly rare names in this part of the world.

  Heading for the shower, I contemplated how this whole thing would be far simpler with Ron’s help. He spends all day tracking down people’s histories, doing employment background checks. Of course, he has a few advantages such as willingly given contact info and a social security number. I’d like to see him do any better with the skimpy memories of an eighty-year-old from an event years in the past. Not that it mattered. I let those thoughts wash down the drain with the suds from my shampoo. Today and the information I’d just located were all I had to go by. I dressed in my customary jeans and T-shirt after doing a minimal blow-dry and ponytail with the hair. I wasn’t out to win any glamour contest today, just needed to smell and look respectable enough to get a couple of senior women to talk to me.

  Freckles looked decidedly mistreated when I sent her to her crate for the day. “Sorry, kid. It’s going to be too warm for you to wait in the car this time.” She felt better when I handed a biscuit through the door and gave a pat to the top of her fluffy brown and white head.

  According to the addresses I’d found—when online sources fail, try the old-fashioned printed phone book—Billie Jones lived closer. It had been a few years since I’d cruised this semi-rural area in the south valley, but it’s a part of the city which has avoided the rampant suburban sprawl of the northeast heights and the west side. The street names and familiar sights came back to me as I drove through, looking for Bernal Road somewhere off the busier Atrisco. And there it was—a small ranch-style home sat on about a half acre of land, encircled by a chain-link fence three feet tall. I pulled to the side of the road and parked directly in front of the gate.

  Right away, little signs pointed to the possibility that no one was home and hadn’t been here for a while. Unmown lawn, a layer of sand on the sidewalk and front porch, no car in the drive. When I walked up to the door I noticed open drapes and no furniture inside. With no idea why, I pressed the doorbell button anyway.

  “She’s moved away,” said a raised voice.

  A dark-haired woman about my age, pushing a stroller with oversized wheels, had paused by the front gate.

  “I’m looking for Billie Jones—is this her house?” I stepped off the porch and walked toward her.


  “She’s moved away,” came the patiently repeated reply. “I’m the neighbor just to the west.”

  “Do you know where they went?” I remembered this was the couple Fergus had said were farmers; maybe they’d moved back.

  “After Mr. Jones passed, their son from Deming came up and helped her get moved. She’s in one of the assisted living places.”

  She didn’t seem inclined to go on without something more from me. Fair enough. “I’m looking into a legal matter on behalf of an elderly Hatch farmer, someone they’d met a few years ago. Do you know which assisted living place she’s in?”

  The neighbor pondered this a few seconds but apparently decided she didn’t want to make the judgment call on any legal matter. “It’s the Sunrise Home, off Central, near the hospitals.” The baby started to fuss and the woman excused herself, saying it was nap time.

  How convenient was this? The place had to be associated with Sunrise Rehab where Elsa was about to be sent. Was it possible I could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, visiting with Billie Jones and getting an inside peek at the lifestyle there?

  I hopped back in my Jeep and was on the freeway five minutes later.

  Chapter 14

  The assisted living facility looked like a place I wouldn’t mind moving to myself, if and when the time came. Two-storied buildings of pale tan stucco, red tile roofs over tiny balconies, neatly tended lawn all around, with mature shade trees and flowerbeds filled with autumn blooms at their peak. A high fence of wrought iron surrounded the property but there was nothing prison-like about it. Vehicles could freely come and go through the open gates, and apparently residents could also own cars, as evidenced by the numbered parking slots versus those marked as Visitor Parking.

  I pulled into one of the latter, shut off my engine, and picked up the flower arrangement I’d bought on a whim from a florist one block away. It seemed more prudent to show up bearing a gift than a notepad and a quiz. We would get to that part later—once I’d worked out how I would get an elderly woman to open her door to a stranger.