The Rule of Law Read online

  “And what about Celia? Why go to Phyllis’s if she knew Adam was the killer?”

  “Well, good question, but a couple of good answers spring to mind. First, what if she was afraid that if she didn’t leave town, Adam would kill her next?”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because he shoots Hector right in front of her, then tells her she has two choices: he can shoot her right now and make it look like a murder-suicide, or she can do exactly what she did and get out of town. She can’t go to the police, so which one do you think you’d choose?”

  “He might have shot Celia, too? Do you really think that?”

  “It wouldn’t have been a gigantic reach. The idea of shooting Celia wouldn’t have slowed him down much if he felt he needed to. Instead, way better, he put all the blame on her, plus he had two other witnesses willing to swear that Celia had done it. Everybody wins. And that was exactly how it played out, with the bonus round going his way when Celia killed herself.”

  “So Celia, she just let herself be framed?”

  “Not much choice. Dead or framed. I’d take framed any day.”

  “Okay, but once she’d gotten away with Phyllis, and no chance that Adam’s going to kill her now, why didn’t she tell her?”

  “You mean rat out Adam to his sister? What good would that do? Celia’s got to believe that Phyllis is going to be on Adam’s side no matter what, isn’t she? And Adam saw that, too. Once he got her to start running, she wasn’t ever going to tell. Which, I wouldn’t be surprised, might have played a role in her killing herself.”

  “What a cretin,” Frannie said.

  “But not a stupid cretin.”

  “No. He had it all figured out, didn’t he?”

  “That’s how I read it.”

  “So what about Phyllis?”

  “What about her?”

  “Is she in danger?”

  Hardy cast her a glance. “What do you think?”

  16

  BETH AND IKE agreed that the most emotionally vulnerable of the three eyewitnesses was Mel’s girlfriend, Rita Allegro. That Thursday morning, after Beth had gotten an update call from Dismas Hardy, they’d both reread the transcript of Rita’s earlier statement when they’d interviewed her on the day of the murder, and it seemed that she had the most tenuous grasp on what may have actually happened, so she was the one they wanted to talk to.

  Ike, now on board, albeit unenthusiastically, with the clandestine reopening of the case, had called Rita and set up an early (10:30) appointment at El Sol. No, Ike told her, it wasn’t necessary that Mel come along with her, not for today’s meeting, anyway. They just wanted to clear up a couple of questions that remained now that Celia had died. And, no, she wasn’t in trouble. It was just routine business, some last-minute paperwork, so they could close the case.

  They parked right in front of the bar, and by the time they were out of the car, Rita was standing in the bar’s doorway, smiling uncertainly. In her early thirties, with shoulder-length black hair and deep, smoldering brown eyes, she projected a heavy sensual aura. Flattering blue jeans with a men’s white dress shirt tucked into them added to the effect.

  She nodded hello and led them inside. After pouring them coffee from a pot behind the bar, she came back around and led them to a table where they all pulled up chairs and got settled.

  Beth had a sip of coffee and then took out her cell phone. “We’re going to be taping our conversation if you don’t mind, Rita. Just so we don’t miss anything.”

  “It’s not really a question,” Ike told her, a little on the gruff side.

  “Of course,” she said. “Last time we did that, too.”

  “That’s right.” Beth smiled at her and pushed her cell phone to the center of the table, then recited her standard introduction: the date and time, her badge number, the case number, memorializing the presence of both Ike and Rita, and ending with “Okay, now, we’re on the record.”

  Ike had brought inside a leather binder, and while Beth had been doing her spiel, he pulled out a few typed pages—the transcript of Rita’s earlier statement—and laid them out in front of him.

  “Inspector McCaffrey and I have gone over what you told us last time, and we’ve just got a few questions. The first one is this: Before the morning that he was killed, did you ever see Hector Valdez in possession of a gun?”

  Rita’s face clouded over in confusion. “Did I ever see him with a gun?”

  “Right,” Ike said.

  “Did I ever say I did?” When she got no answer, she said, “Well, no. I don’t think so.”

  “Did you ever see a gun in the office?” Ike asked. “Maybe in the safe? Did you ever look in the safe?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen in the safe, and, no, we don’t normally have a gun back there.”

  “All right. Did you see him bring in a gun that morning?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Turning to Beth, she said, “I don’t know where the gun came from. But he was wearing a Giants jacket. You know, the black and orange one. He could have tucked it underneath somewhere. But I never saw no gun.”

  “Not with Hector? Not with Adam?”

  “Neither one. Not that I was looking. I was working, like I said.”

  Beth was all understanding. “That’s all right. Let’s forget about the gun and move along to the moment when the shooting happened. Where were you?”

  “In the front here, stocking behind the bar. It was before we were open.”

  “About this time in the morning, then?”

  “Close. Yes.”

  “And while you were here, stocking,” Beth asked, “who else was with you in the bar?”

  “I already tol’ you that last time we talked.” She pointed at the papers on the table in front of Ike. “Don’t you got that down?” she asked, then came back to Beth. “Mel and me and Adam. And then Hector and Celia in the back, in the office.”

  “So five of you.” Beth let her eyes sweep the room. “And Adam. Where was he?”

  Rita pointed. “Back there, by the register.”

  “The one at the end of the bar?”

  “Right.”

  “Would you mind, Rita, showing us exactly? If you’d just go down and stand where he was the last time you remember seeing him.”

  Showing some impatience, Rita hesitated, then got up and walked on the customer side of the bar to the back, and then around behind it.

  “About there?” Beth asked. “Just before you heard the shot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what was he doing there?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Counting the cash, I think.”

  “All right. Stay there just a second, please.” Beth walked over to the front end of the bar, swung underneath and behind it, then walked a few steps down toward the waitress’s station. From there, she looked down toward Rita. “So you were here, prepping the limes, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And where’s Mel?”

  “He’s back behind where we were sitting, but at the corner table, wiping it down.”

  “So he’s in the corner, you’re here where I am, and Adam’s down by the register? With Hector and Celia in the back office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, so now you’ve got a sharp knife in your hands, you’re concentrating on cutting limes, and you hear the shot. Boom! What did you do?”

  “First thing, I ducked.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I call out, see if everybody’s okay.”

  “And they are?”

  “Yeah, but Mel’s yelling, ‘Stay down, stay down.’ So I stay where I am and cover my head and do that.”

  “You covered your head and you’re protecting yourself, looking down?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about Adam?”

  “What about him?”

  “What did he do?”

  She paused. “He was behind the bar, like I said.”

  “Down in
a crouch like you were?” When she didn’t answer right away, Beth pushed. “Was he down in a crouch, Rita?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure. You saw him, down in a crouch at the end of the bar?”

  “Yes, I just said.”

  “I know you did say that. But I wonder how you could have seen him when you were crouched, looking down with your head covered.”

  “I must have looked over. I was afraid he was shot. I saw that he wasn’t. I was sure of that. That’s all I remember.”

  “Did Adam call out to you or Mel, or did either of you call out to him?”

  “Did Adam call out?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  And again, dredging up her answer took Rita a second or two. “I don’t remember exactly. I know I yelled to see if everybody was okay and Mel said to keep down, so I did. It all went so fast. One minute we were scrunched down, and then Celia was coming out of the office, still holding the gun, and she ran through the room and out of here.”

  “You stood up to see her running?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Adam go with her?”

  “No. Why would he do that?”

  “What did he do then? Adam.”

  “He went back into the office, where the shot had come from and where he found Hector, so he called nine-one-one and then he waited for somebody to arrive, just like we did. All of us the same, waiting, just sitting here, with Hector dead in the office.”

  • • •

  WHILE IKE WAS finally finishing up with Mel’s interview about a half hour later, Beth walked out to the sidewalk and put in a call to Dismas Hardy, who had after all been the prime mover in convincing her to take another look at the details of Hector’s murder. She told him that she felt they’d made some marginal progress in their talks with Mel and Rita, and that it had certainly been worthwhile to reopen the case, at least informally.

  “So you got something real?” Hardy asked her.

  “I don’t know about that, but we did ask a few questions we didn’t get around to last time, when we got there and everybody seemed to agree that Celia had been the shooter.”

  “Such as what questions?”

  “For starters, just their physical location when the shot went down. Rita had herself and Adam behind the bar and Mel across the room wiping down a table. Mel said he was wiping down a table all right, but it was by the front door, and Rita was behind the bar, but at the end nearest him, not halfway down at the condiment tray cutting limes.”

  “And what about Adam?”

  “Behind the bar, back by the office, same as Rita said. But actually Rita couldn’t have seen him because she said she was squatting, covering her head to hide behind the bar.”

  “Oops.”

  “Right. So, with Rita’s statement, Adam could easily have been in the office shooting Hector. But Mel, of course, said he never lost sight of him standing behind the register, looking around apparently to see if the shot had caused any damage inside the bar itself. Oh, and Rita said she called out to see if everybody was all right, and Mel told her to get down, but Adam didn’t answer at all, or if he did, Rita didn’t remember. Of course, if he was in the office shooting Hector, the whole calling-out moment was bogus. It never happened. Rita just made it up. And Mel never mentioned it at all.”

  Hardy was silent for a beat or two. “They got the basic story right but never worked out all the little details.”

  “That’s how I read it. The important thing they had to remember, and to tell us, was that Adam was behind the bar the whole time and never wandered into the office so he could shoot Hector. So they both tried to put him there where he needed to be, but he was either squatting or standing, certainly not both, and he never answered when Rita asked if everybody was all right, which probably never happened. Rita made that up because it seemed the logical thing that somebody would have done.”

  “Right. And also,” Hardy said, “in the excitement of the moment when there’s shooting going on, people’s memories can get squirrelly real quick.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Beth said, “but at the same time, it’s good to see some inconsistencies.”

  “True. Don’t let me rain on your enthusiasm. When are you going to talk to Adam?”

  “Uh, he’s been a little hard to get ahold of. His contact information when we interviewed him last time turned out to be unreliable.”

  “Not a big surprise. He’s staying at his sister’s apartment; if you’d want to drop by, I can get you the address. Phyllis, my client, his sister, says he tends to sleep in. He might still be just waking up, and it would be better to talk to him before he’s had a chance to check his story against his partners’.”

  “Yes, sir. I think I got that part down in theory.”

  Hardy paused. “Sorry, Inspector. That was just me being a jerk. Of course you know what to do next. I apologize.”

  “No worries. I’ll get over it. And I’ll take that address if you have it.”

  “Well, also, in the small world department, I happened to run into Phyllis last night. She told me a little about Adam’s version of events, which may not have been exactly what he’s told you. If you’ve got another minute . . .”

  • • •

  PHYLLIS WAS RIGHT. Her brother tended to sleep in.

  Beth rang the doorbell to Phyllis’s apartment and Adam answered the door barefoot in jeans and a Willie Nelson & Family T-shirt. His hair hung in dirty-blond strands. With barely a glance at the IDs that both inspectors proffered, he nodded affably and invited them inside.

  Beth and Ike didn’t seem inclined to make friends. This was, after all, a career criminal fresh out of prison and—at least to them—quickly becoming a prime suspect in a murder case.

  They walked through the apartment, following him into the kitchen, where they each took a seat at the round linoleum dining table. Beth took out her cell phone again, explained that she’d be taping this discussion as they had before, and then recited her standard introduction.

  When she was done, she said, “All right, Adam, we’re ready to go. We’ve got several questions about events on the morning that Hector Valdez was killed.”

  Still acting as though he didn’t have a care in the world, Adam gave both of the inspectors an upbeat, sincere look and said, “Why?”

  Ike didn’t like that answer. “What do you mean, ‘Why?’ We’ve got questions because we’ve got questions. You got a problem with that?”

  Adam raised his hands, palms out. “No problem, not at all. But I was thinking that with Celia out of the picture now . . . Well, I mean, she shot Hector and then lit out. Right? What more is there to know? She ain’t likely changing her story now, is she?”

  “She never gave anybody her story, Adam,” Beth said. “We got that story from you and your partners down at El Sol, if you remember. We just want to make sure we got it right. Do you remember where you were when you heard the shot?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I was down by the register at the back, behind the bar.”

  “Standing up?”

  “What else would I have been doing?”

  “Maybe ducking after you heard the shot.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “And how about Rita?”

  “How about her what?”

  “Where was she when the shot was fired?”

  For a second the question seemed to stump him. Then: “I wasn’t really looking around for her when I heard the shot, which was obviously in the office. I was looking that way.”

  “From behind the cashier’s station?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where was she the last time you remember seeing her?”

  “Behind the bar, I’d say. Down the other end someplace.”

  “And Mel? Where was he?”

  “Well, same thing. I wasn’t looking at him. I was getting the cash station ready, counting the money in the till. Paying attention to that. You don’t want to get the money w
rong.”

  “If you had to guess? At the moment you heard the shot?”

  “Somewhere up by the front door, if I had to say.”

  Beth threw a frustrated look at Ike, who took over. “Okay, then, let’s talk a minute about right after the shot. What did you do?”

  “Not much. I’m mostly just waiting, see what’s going to happen.”

  “You’re behind the bar the whole time?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did anybody call out?”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Anybody.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To see if you were okay?”

  After his longest pause so far, Adam finally shook his head. “I don’t remember nobody yelling anything.”

  “All right. Let’s move on. You don’t go toward the office?”

  “No way. I don’t want to get shot, man. Somebody in there’s got a gun that just got fired. No way am I going in there.”

  This response, in direct contradiction to what Phyllis had told Dismas Hardy the previous night, seemed to energize Beth, and she leaned forward in her seat. “I want to be real clear on this, Adam. You never went into the office until Celia had already come out?”

  He made a little show of pondering the question. “That’s right.”

  “And when you did go in there, you never saw a gun?”

  “No. Celia’s already gone with it. I’m around a gun and I go running nowadays. Police see me with a gun, I go back to the joint, so I got no truck with no gun. Besides, Celia, when she comes out, as I said, she’s got that gun with her, so I’m just trying to stay cool, not rile her up, let her walk away, gun and all.”

  “Walk away? Not run?”

  “Pretty fast. Maybe not running, but in a hurry.”

  “And the other two—Mel and Rita?”

  Adam bobbed his head up and down. “Same thing. Celia just shot Hector, and we are the only witnesses. Who’s to say she don’t panic and start shooting at us? So we just let her go, get her out of there, and then I go in to see about Hector and call you all. There really ain’t no doubt about what happened, you know. Couldn’t have happened any other way.”

  “There wasn’t another way in or out of the office?” Beth asked.