Prolonged Exposure

by Steven F Havill

  But the place was damn near vacant. I recognized Martin Holman’s brown Buick, and one of our department’s older marked units. Parked on the opposite side of the roped-off area was one of the Posadas Village Police units, its red lights pulsing.

  Sheriff Holman, a portable radio in one hand and a cellular phone in the other, stood near the door marked SERVICE ONLY. He was in animated conversation with DeWayne Sands, the night manager of the motel, gesticulating over his shoulder as he talked.

  DeWayne did not look happy. He was well over fifty and going to flab. Standing outside in the chill November night while watching police take over his motel to find out who had whacked one of his guests was enough to make his blood pressure go over the top. I recognized all the signs, even from across the parking lot.

  Holman saw us and said into the handheld radio, “Back door over here, Bill.” By then, I was already out of the patrol car, concentrating on keeping up with Estelle’s dogged pace. She ducked under the ribbon when she reached the sidewalk that skirted the bank of heat-pump units.

  “DeWayne,” Holman was saying as we approached, “you’re going to have to make doubly sure that no one comes or goes until we say otherwise. And I mean no one, and I mean from the entire motel. I don’t care if their room is a mile away on the other wing. No night staff, no maintenance crew, no patrons. If you’ve got a long-haul trucker who needs to leave, make sure you clear him through me or Chief Martinez. No one comes and no one goes. Understood?”

  “Well, sure, but—”

  “No buts,” Holman said, and he steered Sands away from the door. Sands trudged off down the sidewalk, muttering to himself. “In here, Bill, Estelle.”

  The service door opened into a small foyer. Immediately on the left was a flight of stairs. Yellow plastic taped it off top and bottom. Directly ahead of us, a hallway stretched beyond the limits of my eyesight, ending eventually, I knew, in the front foyer, with restaurant to the left and check-in desk to the right.

  Another hallway took off to the right, beyond the game room and the ice and soda machines, and that’s where Marty Holman led us. He walked on the right side of the hallway, sticking close to the wall.

  “The victim’s name is Roberto Madrid,” he said over his shoulder. “At least that’s what some rental-car paperwork we found in the room says. Other than that, we don’t know.”

  The rooms began with 140 on the right and 141 on the left. About halfway down the hallway, Holman stopped. That was just as well. I was running out of breath. It wasn’t exercise, but anxiety, the kind of awful jolt to the nerves that I hadn’t felt in more than a decade.

  He pointed at the door at the far end. Standing beside it were Chief Eduardo Martinez and one of his part-time officers, George Bohrer. “That door leads to the west parking lot. It’s one of those deals that’s locked after nine P.M. under normal circumstances. There’s some evidence that the door was used by the assailant.”

  “Martin,” I started to say, but the sheriff held up a hand. He lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t have called you over here if I didn’t think it was important.”

  We stopped in front of the door to 167, two rooms from the end of the hall. Holman held up a hand again, like a cavalry trooper halting his patrol. The door was open, and, looking inside, I could see two chairs crashed together against one wall, the mattress askew, and glass from the shattered TV’s picture tube scattered across the pale blue carpet.

  “Who did prints?” Estelle asked quietly.

  “Torrez,” Holman replied. “And myself. But we’ve got a lot more to do.” He indicated the outline of the body, white chalk on blue carpet. “There’s no one else staying in this wing, which is peculiar. But one of the other patrons who had come down for some ice heard a ruckus. He says one or two gunshots, not very loud. Maybe three shots at the most—he’s not sure. And then he heard what might have been a loud groan. He’s not sure about that, either.”

  “Where’s this he?” I asked.

  “Waiting up in the manager’s office,” Holman said. “The body was lying in a fetal position on its right side, facing the bed.” He stepped closer to the outline. “Maybe he was trying to reach the telephone here on the nightstand. I’m not sure.” Holman sighed. “At any rate, he didn’t make it.”

  “Who actually came into the room first?” I asked.

  “The night manager.”

  “The victim was dead?”

  “No. The manager—”

  “Is this DeWayne you’re talking about?”

  “DeWayne Sands, right. He says he entered the room, and that the victim was gasping and appeared unconscious. At any rate, he didn’t respond to questions. The night manager says he saw blood on the victim’s shirt and went directly to call police. Bob Torrez says it was a small-caliber weapon, like a twenty-two. Bob Torrez was the first to arrive, and the man was still alive at that time. EMTs transported him, and they said he was alive when they reached the hospital. Still unconscious, but alive.”

  “No blood on the carpet,” I said. “That’s interesting. So who the hell is Roberto Madrid, and what was it that you wanted us to see that’s connected to…” My voice trailed off, refusing to frame the words.

  “Look over here.” Holman walked around the outline of the man’s body and circled the bed. “We’ve got a blood splash here,” he said, pointing down by the second nightstand, “that continues up onto the wall. There’s more blood back here by the sink. And then right here, on the entrance to the bathroom.”

  I nodded. “Other wounds on the victim?”

  Holman shook his head. “He was shot twice, once under the left armpit, once in the back. Like I said, small-caliber weapon. He didn’t bleed much.”

  “Then what accounts for all this?” I said.

  “Someone else was here, and got hurt,” Holman said. “Badly. Step over here really carefully.” He motioned me toward the bathroom. Estelle hung back, her eyes locked on the chalk outline on the floor.

  The doorknob and doorjamb were smeared with blood, heavy smears that indicated serious bleeding. A splatter of blood dotted across the counter and the bathroom sink, and there was a partial handprint on the polished vinyl, smeared into the blood as if the person had staggered and caught himself.

  “Right here,” Holman said, and knelt down. The blood on the floor was more than spots. Whoever had been bleeding had fallen, or slumped here. One of the blood sprays had been smeared by a footprint, so clear and well defined that it sent chills up and down my spine. I could see the imprint of the toes, the narrow curve past the high arch.

  “Estelle, come in here,” I called. My response to what I was seeing was automatic. It was only after the words were out of my mouth that I regretted them. In a moment, I could feel her presence behind me. I straightened up and stepped out of the way.

  She didn’t say anything, but I could hear a little sigh of breath.

  The footprint was tiny, no more than five or six inches long.

  Estelle stood for almost a full minute, gazing down at it. I could see that her breath was coming in rapid, shallow spurts. Then she turned back toward the doorway, her eyes fastened on the tile floor. She was deathly pale, and with one hand, she reached out to me like a blind person, fumbling her way. The other hand went to the door-jamb.

  “Come on outside, sweetheart,” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “No. Look. There’s only one print.”

  I hesitated, still holding her hand, not sure what to say.

  Martin Holman cleared his throat. “The child was picked up,” he said. “If he had walked out of the bathroom, there would be other prints—at least one other footprint.”

  He knelt down and pointed. “Here’s a right foot here. It’s almost four feet to the door. That would put a left foot about here,” and he reached out and touched the tile. “And the right foot again, just before the threshold. Or even on the carpet.” He looked up at me. “But there’s just the one print.
”

  “He was picked up and carried out,” I said.

  “Right,” Holman nodded.

  “Then whose blood is it?” I asked, and felt Estelle’s grip tighten.

  “And which child?” she whispered.

  Chapter 33

  “Any other blood anywhere else?” I asked.

  Holman beckoned, and we followed him out of the room. “First of all, there’s a small smear right here, on the doorjamb,” he said. He pulled out his ballpoint pen and pointed with it. The smear was about five feet up on the jamb, as if someone had leaned there for support.

  “And then he turned and went left, out the side door,” Holman said.

  “Less risk being seen,” I said. “If he went back up the hall, he’d risk that intersection where other patrons come down to visit the ice machines.”

  Chief Eduardo Martinez eased away from the wall as we approached. Eduardo was round and comfortable, given to good humor and easy smiles. He had an endless repertoire of jokes for any occasion. He wasn’t smiling. With him was George Bohrer. If straight, square shoulders counted, Bohrer was a winner. Unfortunately, good posture is about all Bohrer had going for him.

  “Chief,” I said. That was about all I could manage, even though I liked Eduardo. He never presumed to be more than he was—the grand marshal for the Posadas Fourth of July parade. Rumor had it that eons before, he had actually spent a year with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

  “Say, it’s good to have you back home,” Eduardo said, and extended a hand. His grip was warm and friendly. “This is sure a hell of a deal.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No one’s been in or out since you left, Sheriff,” Bohrer said. He had a thick Texas drawl and nodded with every syllable, as if each sound needed hatching by the physical motion of his head. I could guess what instructions Holman had left for him.

  “The killer went out this way,” Holman said. “If you look here, you can see a faint smudge on the door. I’m sure it’s blood, but the lab will tell us for sure. And then,” he said, toeing the door open with the tip of one polished boot, “it appears that he fell.”

  “Don’t touch the door, George,” Estelle said as she saw Bohrer reaching out to hold it open for us. He jerked his hand back as if struck.

  Chief Martinez bent down and slid a pebble into the crack between door and jamb.

  The man had made it down the carpeted hall successfully, then collapsed on the concrete just outside the door. Blood was puddled thick and dark, as if the man had rested there, catching his breath, taking time to wish that this day wasn’t going to be his last. A hand-print had smeared blood on the cement, as if the man had slipped while trying to push himself up.

  “There’s no sign of a child’s tracks out here,” Holman said. “None at all. We don’t know what happened.”

  “Did someone process this boot print?” Estelle asked. She knelt and, using the small black flashlight from her purse, bounced light off the print. Just a small curve of featureless sole had broken the margin of the bloodstain.

  “We missed that,” Holman said. He knelt beside her. “Looks like just a smooth leather sole. Not enough to be sure.”

  “It could be one of the officers,” I said. “There’ve been people milling around here for an hour.”

  “Not milling, Bill,” Holman said, sounding a little testy. “Anyway, this is as far out from the building as the blood went. Either there was a car waiting or one drove up just then. Or maybe he was able to hold himself together and limp off somehow.”

  I turned and looked back at the hallway. “This amount of blood means someone is hurt pretty badly. He’s not going to go far. You’ve got everyone who’s not sitting a roadblock or checking door-to-door working this?”

  Holman managed a trace of a smile. “We don’t have anyone else, Bill. We’ve got some help coming, but it’s going to take a couple of hours.”

  I grimaced. “Who’s working the blood typing for us?”

  “Skip Bishop. He took about eight doubles from inside the room, and a couple from out here. One set went to the ME’s office in Cruces. Dale Kenyon ran it over for us. Skip took the other set to the hospital lab here to get something quicker. Unofficial, but quicker. He’ll stay with it until he’s got an answer.”

  I nodded, thankful that Skip worked faster than his older brother, Sgt. Howard Bishop. Howard had finally agreed to attend one of the FBI seminars in Quantico. I knew the sheriff had pressured him into it, figuring that late November was a good, slow time of the year and that we’d be able to spare him for three weeks.

  “So tell me about Roberto Madrid,” I said, turning back toward the doorway.

  “We know nothing about him except what a car-rental paper tells us. He was thirty-four years old. He’s a Mexican national, driving a car he rented in Douglas, Arizona. He had a receipt in his suitcase that shows he paid cash for the car rental but used a Banco Central de México credit card as collateral and as secondary identification.”

  “He came across legally, then.”

  “Absolutely.” Holman shrugged. “There’s isn’t a clue in the room why he was here. Not a clue what his business was. His wallet has been taken, as well.”

  “You’re sure he had one?”

  “No,” Holman said uncomfortably. “I guess I was assuming that he had one.”

  “And we have a child’s footprint,” I said. We walked back to the room, and Estelle and I meticulously searched the small suitcase that lay on the stand near the busted television. From what I could see, there were a couple of changes of clothes, toiletry items, and one paperback book.

  I leaned closer and looked at the cover, a hazy blue design with what might have been the figure of a child standing under a tree. The title, Cuentos del Soñador, was in black script.

  “What’s soñador mean?” I asked.

  “Dreamer,” Estelle said softly. “Stories of the Dreamer.” She pushed open the book with the eraser of her pencil and scanned a page at random. “It looks like a collection of short stories for children. Bedtime stories.”

  She looked up at Holman. “Was someone going to process this for prints? The shiny cover might show us something.”

  “That’s next on the list,” Holman said. “As soon as Bob Torrez or Eddie Mitchell gets back here.”

  She nodded absently. “He hadn’t been here long,” she said. “He hadn’t even unpacked his toothbrush.” She pushed at the vinyl toiletry case with her pencil and shook her head. “What time did Sands say Madrid checked in?”

  “Shortly after noon.”

  “How shortly after?” I asked.

  Holman pulled out his small notebook and flipped pages. “Twelve thirty-seven is the time punched by the clock on his registration.”

  I leaned against the door, nestling the edge of it against my spine. “He checks in at twelve thirty-seven, and then just sits here until someone comes and shoots him sometime after six.”

  “Maybe he was reading,” Holman said, gesturing at the book.

  “For six hours? Maybe. Maybe it’s a good book.”

  Estelle stood up and closed her eyes, tilting her head back.

  “Are you all right?” Holman asked.

  “No,” she said. She shook her head and slid the pencil back into her purse. “If that footprint is my son’s,” she said, and paused to take a deep breath, “then that means whoever took him did so in order to bring him down here. The timing fits, if nothing else.”

  “And it could as easily be a coincidence,” I said. “Unrelated. The footprint could be from any other child, or even a woman with very small feet.”

  “And what if that is my son’s footprint,” Estelle said. “It could be his. It had a high arch like his.”

  “If it’s his, then there are several possibilities. Maybe Madrid took the boy, and someone else came after him. Maybe there was some sort of arrangement and something went wrong.”

 
“Let’s look for something more obvious,” Holman said. “Madrid could have brought a child with him from Mexico. Isn’t that possible? Let’s say the occupants of the room were Madrid and his own son. They come here for whatever reason. Maybe just on a vacation.”

  “In Posadas?” I said.

  “Well, they might have been bound for somewhere else—you can’t tell. And then someone breaks in and takes his child.” He shrugged. “The MO fits. Someone broke into the Guzman home and took a child. They come here and do the same thing. That’s the most obvious answer. Madrid resisted, and pop.”

  “The child was not Madrid’s,” Estelle said softly.

  “What makes you think not? There’s even that book of children’s stories, like you said.”

  She gestured toward the small suitcase. “For one thing, there is no child’s clothing in that suitcase.” She looked at Holman, her left eyebrow drifting upward. She turned slowly and surveyed the rest of the room. “Or anywhere else in this room. No one travels with a child for any distance and only takes the clothes that the child is wearing. And for another thing, if the child had on only socks, or his pajamas, when he was picked up and taken, where are his shoes now? Where are his clothes? Do you travel with a kid in socks and no shoes?”

  “The intruder took them with him.”

  Estelle grimaced at Holman’s train of thought, and I said, “Sheriff, if you were hurt badly enough to be leaking puddles of blood, either shot or stabbed, would you bother to stop and pick up a pair of shoes?”

  Holman glanced at me. “I guess not.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I think it’s pretty obvious Roberto Madrid was in this room by himself, waiting. Just him and this small suitcase.”

  “That means his assailant—”

  “Or assailants,” Estelle corrected.

  “One, two, three, however many. His assailants brought the child with them. If Madrid didn’t have the child to begin with, the only thing that makes sense is that someone brought the child with them.”

  “And left with the child, as well.”