by Joseph Badal
“All right,” he said. “The Medical Investigator got nothing off Mrs. Comstock’s body or from the crime scene. No unexplained forensic evidence, no prints, nothing. The place was like a “clean” room in a high tech lab.”
“The perp wiped the place clean?” Barbara said.
“Huh,” Salas said. “It would take one hard-nosed S.O.B. to hack up a woman, then wipe off the prints before he left. But sometimes it happens that way. It’s just bad luck.”
“Now, how about the good news, Lieutenant?”
Salas made her wait for a beat. “The California Highway Patrol stopped a red VW bug for speeding outside San Bernardino. Guess who was behind the wheel.”
Barbara breathed sharply and felt her pulse quicken. Then she expelled the air in her lungs and said, “They got Connie Alban.”
“Nope,” Salas said. “Close. It’s the next best thing, though.”
Barbara was now pissed off. But she wanted to keep her job too much to tell her boss to cut the bullshit and tell her what was up.
“There was a twenty-year-old kid behind the wheel of the VW, name of Hector Nicastro,” Salas continued. “Claims the Alban girl loaned him the car to go see his parents in San Diego. Five days ago.”
“The day of the murder.”
“That’s right. And guess where Hector told us the Alban girl is now.”
Barbara gritted her teeth. Salas’s twenty questions routine, combined with his squeaky voice irritated her.
“In an abandoned horse barn,” he said.
“What barn? Where?”
“The one right behind the Comstock property. Where a couple of deputies just found little Connie Alban. She’s on her way downtown as we speak.”
“Holy shit!” Barbara shouted, which caused the conversation among the bikers in the coffee bar to come to a halt. “Let’s go,” she told Susan as she hit END on her cell phone. “We may have just caught a break.”
CHAPTER 25
While Susan talked with one of the two deputies who had brought Connie Alban in, Barbara peered into the interrogation room through the one-way window. The other deputy stood beside her. “Looks like a nice kid,” Barbara said.
“Seems screwed up, though,” the deputy said.
“What do you mean?”
The deputy shook his head. “I can’t quite put a finger on it. She just seems to be . . . I don’t know, maybe a little out of touch with reality.”
Barbara turned and looked at him, waited for a more detailed explanation, but the man only hiked his shoulders and spread his hands.
After the deputy walked away, Barbara looked back into the room. Connie Alban had a deer-in-the-headlights expression. She appeared to be younger than her eighteen years, with round blue eyes, a small, pursed mouth, and curly blonde hair. She was a pretty, wholesome-looking kid, almost cherubic, who seemed out of place in a halter top that stopped four inches above her navel, and tight jeans.
“You ready?” Lieutenant Salas said, startling Barbara.
“Sure,” Barbara replied. Susan stood beside Salas. Barbara glanced through the glass once again. “Lieutenant, Susan and I agreed that only one of us needs to go in there to question her.”
Salas just nodded.
Barbara turned on the camera and sound system with the controls at the interrogation room’s door and entered the room.
She introduced herself to the girl and said, “You know you’ve had a lot of people looking for you, Connie?”
Connie’s mouth suddenly turned sour. “Shocker!” she said. “My mother would have called out the fuckin’ National Guard if she could have.”
So much for wholesome and cherubic, Barbara thought. “Your mother is worried about you,” Barbara said. “But that’s not what I meant.”
A startled expression crossed the girl’s face. Then the sour look returned and she glared insolently at Barbara. “Bullshit! My mother’s asshole lawyers got you cops to grab me on some fake charge.” She stopped, then added, “How the hell did you find me?”
“Your boyfriend Hector,” Barbara said.
“What a prick,” the girl said. “I’ll kick his ass good next time I see him.”
“What were you doing in that barn?” Barbara asked.
“I’ve been down there for two weeks, ever since I found out my mother sicced a private detective on me. Victoria told me about some guy who showed up at the house.”
“Uh huh,” Barbara said. “You mentioned something about a faked charge?”
Connie shrugged. “You tell me.”
Barbara had dealt with hundreds of juveniles and young adults since getting into law enforcement. It amazed her how many of them displayed aggressive attitudes towards authority figures. When she was this kid’s age, being brought into a police station would have scared her to death. And she would have been ashamed. She needed to knock this kid down a notch.
“Sure,” Barbara said. “I’d be happy to tell you.” She exploded to her feet, knocked over her chair. Connie recoiled in fright. Barbara grabbed one of the girl’s arms and jerked her to her feet. She quickly put cuffs on Connie and fastened the girl’s hands behind her back. “Constance Alban, you’re under arrest on suspicion of murdering Victoria Jean Comstock.” Then she read the girl her rights.
Connie’s insolence melted like wax over a flame. She collapsed to the floor and pushed herself with her feet into a corner. “What are you talking about? Murder? Vickie can’t be dead,” she said. “She can’t be. Pleas-s-se.”
Barbara had seen criminals who should have been nominated for an Academy Award, but Connie’s reaction seemed as genuine as any she’d ever seen.
The girl’s face hardened. “It was my mother, wasn’t it? She killed Vickie. She said she would do it, but I didn’t believe her.” Connie shivered and began to moan.
Barbara waved at the mirror. Susan entered the room and helped lift Connie from the floor back into the chair.
“Quite a performance,” Lieutenant Salas said from the open doorway. “I think that’s it for now. We have to let her calm down. I’ve called a female deputy to sit with her for a while.”
A moment later, an older uniformed deputy known as The Matron squeezed past Salas, walked over to Connie as she slumped in the chair, and touched the girl on the shoulder. Connie stood and silently was led from the room by The Matron.
“You two,” Salas said to Barbara and Susan. “My office.”
Salas’s office always made Barbara cringe. Its walls were full of autographed photographs showing Salas with just about every Bernalillo County and City of Albuquerque politician of the past fifteen years. If Salas had survived personal relationships with that many politicos, he must be Teflon-coated, she thought. Barbara hated politicians almost as must as she hated criminals.
Salas was already in his chair. He didn’t invite Barbara and Susan to sit. Susan sat down anyway, while Barbara paced the width of the room.
“That was not an act,” Barbara said. “She’d have to be some psycho to fake it that well.”
Salas rapped his desk blotter with an aluminum ruler that every detective knew he reached for when under pressure. “If she hacked up the Comstock woman, I would say she qualifies as a psycho.”
Susan shook her head. “I don’t buy it. Connie Alban has been hiding in a barn for a couple weeks. Would she have done that if she had just killed the Comstock woman? She would have gone to California with the Nicastro kid. And we know from Connie’s mother, Marge Stanley, that she adored Victoria.”
“So, what about the mother?” Salas said.
“Marge Stanley made no secret of how she felt about Victoria,” Barbara said. “She hated her with a passion.”
“The girl said her mother threatened to kill Mrs. Comstock,” Salas said.
Barbara and Susan nodded.
“Maybe you should have another talk with the mother,” he said. He stood and leaned his hands on his desk. “You got anyone else to interview?”
“Robert Jameson
in Gallup tomorrow. Maxwell Comstock again on Thursday,” Barbara said.
“Then what?” Salas said, an edge of dissatisfaction in his voice.
“I don’t have a clue,” Barbara said. “Our list of people who hated Victoria Comstock grows every day—with good reason, I might add—but we don’t see any of them as the killer.”
Salas’s jaw tightened. The muscles in his cheeks twitched. “Female intuition?”
Barbara’s back stiffened. “No, Lieutenant. Years of experience as police officers.”
“You don’t come up with something real quick, I’ll have to assign other detectives to the case,” Salas said. “I got calls from a couple of county commissioners this morning. Maxwell Comstock has already called in IOUs from his politician friends. He claims you two humiliated him in public when you met him at the airport, that you showed disregard for his feelings, and that you, in effect, took him into custody without reason or authority. Comstock is pissed and wants you two skinned and your hides tacked to a wall somewhere.”
“It’s the Great White Hunter thing,” Susan said. “You’d think he has enough trophies already, without our hides.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Salas demanded.
But before Susan could answer, Barbara said, “Wouldn’t want to offend our politicians,” as she stared purposefully at one wall of Salas’s photographs.
Salas slowly stood and stabbed the ruler at Barbara. “You can’t be that dumb, Lassiter. You can’t possibly believe that doing our jobs is enough to survive in a political environment. That stunt you two pulled at the airport—”
“What stunt?” Susan blurted. “We went to the airport to question the husband of a murdered woman.”
“If you didn’t know Comstock was a political hot rock in this town, then you should have. You treated the guy like a common criminal. He was in mourning and you hijacked him at the airport.”
“If he murdered his wife, he is a common criminal,” Barbara said.
“Be careful how you handle Comstock,” Salas said.
“So, if Comstock wasn’t some bigwig, it would be okay to treat him like a suspect, which he is?” Susan said.
“Don’t be naïve, Martinez,” Salas said. “Comstock’s been a major political fundraiser for the mayor and most of the city councilors and county commissioners.”
Salas made another stabbing motion at Barbara with the ruler. “You two watch yourselves. You usually have a case load of three or four active cases and half-a-dozen cold cases. But, as of this moment, all you’ve got is the Comstock murder. While you high-tail it around the state like a couple of cowboys, your fellow detectives will cover your other cases as well as their own. Comstock has called a whole lot more of his friends in county government than just a couple of county commissioners. The county manager and the sheriff also called me after he’d called them. The sheriff suggested I do everything in my power to solve Victoria Comstock’s murder as expeditiously as possible. The pressure’s building and I don’t need any of your bullshit.”
Barbara walked to the door and pulled it open. She figured there was no point in responding to Salas.
“Cowgirls, Lieutenant,” she heard Susan say behind her.
“What?” Salas said.
“We would be cowgirls, not cowboys, seeing as how we are of the female persuasion.”
Salas threw the ruler down on his desk and shouted, “Get out!”
As they walked back to their desks, Barbara asked Susan, “Still think the Lieutenant is sweet on me?”
Susan smiled. “Yeah. But I’d have to say it ain’t true love.”
Barbara wiped her forehead with her hand. “Whew,” she said. “At least something good came out of an otherwise shitty day.”
WEDNESDAY
JUNE 30
CHAPTER 26
“Have you noticed that each of the men we’ve interviewed who were married to or slept with Victoria thought she was, at the same time, the best and the worst thing that ever happened to them?” Barbara asked after she picked up Susan at her house.
“Yeah, the Tale of Two Cities Murder Case,” Susan said.
“The what?” Barbara said.
“You know, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ ”
Barbara laughed. “How long did it take you to come up with that one?”
Susan snapped her fingers. “Just like that,” she said.
“How much do you want to bet we hear the same damn thing from Jameson, that Vickie Jean was both saint and Satan?”
“No bet. The more people we talk to, the more convinced I am that we’ve missed something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what. Some of the men in Victoria’s life were loathsome. But nothing we’ve learned indicates they habitually cheated on their wives. They just couldn’t resist Victoria’s pheromones.”
Robert Jameson, another of Victoria’s ex-husbands, met with Barbara and Susan in his office on the second floor of the Central New Mexico Bank & Trust Company in Gallup. They knew Jameson had inherited significant monies and real estate. He’d been a hot rock in Albuquerque, but the scandal that arose after his affair with Victoria, his wife’s suicide, and then his marriage to Victoria had ruined his reputation there. So, he’d moved to Gallup, a backwater town dominated by car dealerships, bars, Indian jewelry stores, and the swath of concrete that was Interstate 40. He’d bought a community bank there.
Jameson was in his mid-forties, medium height, with unruly brown-hair and expressive watery-brown eyes. He would have passed for handsome if his mouth weren’t so small and thin-lipped and his shoulders so narrow. He seemed to be on edge.
When Jameson told them he “didn’t know what life was all about until I met Victoria,” Barbara wanted to throttle him.
Instead, she said, “I understand your wife killed herself in a car accident shortly after you and Victoria . . . . got together.”
The man’s lips got even thinner.
“Carol and I fell out of love years before I met Victoria. Besides, Carol was weak. How else do you account for someone taking their own life?”
Barbara felt real anger. She looked at Susan who sat on the edge of her chair, her face dark red. She looked ready to explode.
Jameson said, “Carol caught me in bed with Victoria.” He sounded downright proud of the fact. “She ran out of the house, got in her car, called me on my cell phone, and told me she was going to kill herself.” He snickered. “Suicide by car. She drove right into a concrete bridge abutment at one hundred miles an hour. What a way to kill yourself!”
“What did you say when she called?” Susan asked.
Jameson smiled. “I told her not to make too big a mess.” He looked at Susan, then at Barbara. “She’d threatened to kill herself at least a dozen times before that day. She’d become an angry, unpleasant woman. I wanted nothing more to do with her.”
“The fact that you couldn’t control your dick have anything to do with her anger?” Susan said.
Jameson slammed both hands on his desk and leaped to his feet. “Get out,” he yelled. “I won’t talk to you any more without my attorney.”
Barbara laid a hand on Susan’s arm. But Susan jumped up anyway. She leaned over Jameson’s desk. Their faces were only inches apart. “You know something, Jameson, I wish you were the bastard who killed Victoria. I would love to haul your ass in. But now that I have a close up look at you, I can see that your eyes are weak and you wouldn’t have the guts to kill anyone.” Susan pushed away from the desk. “Let’s get out of here,” she growled. “I can’t stand the smell in here.”
Barbara stood and followed Susan out. She grabbed Susan’s arm when they got to the sidewalk. “What the hell was that all about?”
Susan’s face was still red. She breathed as though she’d just finished a marathon. “Don’t tell me . . . that guy didn’t get to you,” she panted. “I could see it . . . on your face . . . you were as angry as I was.”
“What does that have to do w
ith anything?”
Susan threw up her arms and marched across the street to their car.
Barbara drove in silence, letting Susan cool down. They were headed east on Interstate 40, halfway to Grants, before Susan spoke.
“All these men we’ve interviewed; it’s a waste of time,” Susan said. “You know why none of them killed Victoria Comstock?”
“I’m all ears,” Barbara said.
“Because they were nothing until they met Victoria.”
“How can you say that? Wainwright was a rich car dealer, Horton was a doctor, and Gibson and Jameson had excellent careers before Victoria destroyed them.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Susan agreed. “But I get the feeling they didn’t see themselves as really successful until they met Victoria. That’s why they say she was intoxicating. They couldn’t ignore her, couldn’t sever their relationships with her—even Dr. Horton, who believes the woman killed his children. They all adored her. And Jameson is the worst of them all. What kind of man allows a woman to ruin his marriage, ruin his life, and then defend the bitch?”
“You think we’re wasting our time? That one of Victoria’s lovers couldn’t have murdered her?”
“Yes. You know something else? I think a woman killed Victoria.”
“Come on!” Barbara said.
“Think about it. Men adored, even worshipped Victoria. One of those men might kill her in anger. But he wouldn’t destroy her. He wouldn’t hack away at her face and body. Only a woman could have done that.”
CHAPTER 27
When Barbara entered the interrogation room at the Homicide Department, she was shocked at the transformation in Connie Alban after only one night in jail. The girl looked as though she hadn’t slept. Dark circles rimmed her eyes and her skin was sallow. But, at least, Connie had emerged from the hysterical state she’d been in when Barbara had last seen her. She was able and willing to talk with them, but only with her attorney present.