The Burnt House

39

D UDLEY SAID, “I need time alone with my client.”

Decker ignored him. “We found her body, Mr. Holmes. She’s right there where you left her. If there were intervening circumstances, now’s the time to tell me.”

“I told you, I need time alone with my client,” the lawyer insisted.

“You can have as much time as you want once I book him for murder.”

“Lieutenant, even if he talked to you now, you can’t use what he says.”

“I can if he allows it.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Holmes protested. “I did not kill her!”

“So tell your lawyer that you want to tell me about it.”

“Ray, shut up!” Dudley said.

“You shut the fuck up,” Holmes snapped back. “It’s not your ass on the line. He’s right about one thing. You’re going to sleep in a bed tonight.”

“You’re paying me to advise you, let me advise you. First, let me talk to you so I know what’s going on!” Dudley turned to Decker. “I repeat. I need to talk to my client in private.”

“I’m trying to help you, Mr. Holmes.” Decker pulled out his coup de grâce and handed it to Dudley. “I’ve got a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Isabela Hernandez.” He turned to Dudley. “The woman was once Mr. Holmes’s sister-in-law.” Back to Holmes. “I haven’t executed the warrant yet. So if you want to talk to me, now’s the time.”

“Don’t say a word!”

“I didn’t touch the bitch,” Holmes said.

“Then tell your lawyer that you want to tell me who did the murder. Tell your lawyer that you want to talk to me to clear things up.”

“Don’t say another word, Ray. He’s lying to you!”

“He doesn’t have a warrant for my arrest?”

Dudley stammered, “Well, yes, but if you talk to him, it’ll only get you into trouble. That’s the game they use, Ray. They pretend to be sympathetic, but they’re not. Just let them go through the motions of booking you and I’ll have you out of here by tonight.”

“Or maybe tomorrow morning, depending how the docket goes,” Decker added.

“So that’s your advice? To let the bastard arrest me?”

“He’s going to arrest you, Ray, whether you talk to him or not!”

“But maybe not for murder,” Decker said.

“He’s lying through his teeth,” Dudley said.

Decker was lying through his teeth. The lawyer was absolutely right. But Holmes’s aversion to prison was stronger than logic. He crossed his arms. “I’m not going to talk to you, Lieutenant. But if you tell me what you know, I’ll correct your mistakes.”

Holmes thought he was being very clever, but Dudley wasn’t going to give up without a fight. “If you correct him in front of me, he can take those words and twist them against you, Ray.”

“I’ll take that chance.” Holmes sat back in his chair. “Go on. Tell me what you’ve heard.”

“Okay, let’s give it a shot,” Decker said. “Thirty years ago, Beth and Manny Hernandez disappeared off the face of the earth. And I know that you, my friend, were christened Belize Hernandez. You are Manny’s brother and Beth’s brother-in-law. And just like you admitted, you’ve had a long history of trouble with the law.”

“And the point is…?”

“You were paroled thirty-two years ago for good behavior, about six months before your brother and sister-in-law disappeared. You moved to Madrid, New Mexico, and lived there for about three months, and eventually, you moved to Arizona, using the name Tomas Martinez. You hopped around the state for a while. You lived in Mesa, Yuma, Tucson, Phoenix.”

“I don’t deny that, either. I worked construction. I was building up my skills. I was still that Latino from New Mexico and Arizona felt familiar to me.”

“You were in Arizona for around five years-”

“I was learning my trade. So what?”

“Then we lost track of you,” Decker continued on. “Three years later you take the contractor’s licensing examination in San Jose using the name Raymond Holmes.”

“I told you, I changed my name to Raymond Holmes to make me sound less Latino. And I did that legally. So far, all you have on me is stealing the name Tomas Martinez. And I told you I stole his name because I wanted to make a fresh start. Adios to Belize and hello to Tomas. So what?”

“No problem, Belize, but here is where we have conflicting information. Before you made that move to Arizona, we have some unaccounted time for your whereabouts and that period happens to coincide with the disappearance of your brother and sister-in-law.”

“You expect me to remember every minute for the last thirty-two years?” Holmes sneered. “I bet you can’t even remember what you had for dinner last Thursday.”

“You’re right. I don’t remember what I had for dinner last Thursday. But I definitely would remember killing my sister-in-law.”

“I already told you, I did not kill her!”

“Well, other people and this warrant say you did.”

Holmes bolted up and started to pace. “Who says I killed her?”

“Sit down, Ray,” Dudley told his client.

“Who says I killed Beth? I want to know a name!”

“I can’t continue with the interview unless you’re seated,” Decker told him.

Angrily, Holmes plopped himself back down. “Give me a name.”

“The D.A. will give you all the exculpatory evidence that we have, but I can’t do that until you’re booked for murder-”

“I didn’t kill her! What do you want from me!”

“I want to know where you were from the time you moved from Madrid until you moved to Arizona.”

“I don’t remember!”

“We’re going around in circles,” Dudley said.

“Would you like me to execute the warrant as is?” Decker said.

Dudley said, “You’re going to do it anyway.”

“Taz, let me handle this my way!” Holmes said. “I don’t remember where I was because I was too busy trying to survive. I drifted here and there.”

“Did you drift here and there and visit your brother in L.A.?”

Holmes clamped his mouth shut, his eyes moving from side to side. Dudley piped in, “Don’t answer anything you’re uncomfortable answering, Ray.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Decker lied. “We already know the answer to that one because we have witnesses.”

“Who?” Holmes asked.

“C’mon, Mr. Holmes. Did you really think that you could live with Beth and Manny and belong to their church and have them disappear and not have people remember you?”

“I never belonged to their church!” Holmes replied.

“Everyone knew you were staying with Beth and Manny.” Decker leaned in close. “Look, sir, I understand the fix you were in. You were an ex-con. No one would hire you because of your background. You couldn’t go back to Santa Fe to get some help from your old lady because there were scores of people mad at you for boosting their cars or stealing their TVs. Plus your old man had dropped a couple of innocent lives. So you went to visit your brother and sister-in-law in L.A. You figured they’d be good for something. You’re not going to deny, right?”

Holmes said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”

“No problem,” Decker said. “

Again, they took a break just as Decker was on a roll. Still, it was good to get up and stretch one’s legs. When they returned to the interrogation room, Dudley was still trying to convince Holmes not to talk. But the big man was insisting that he could take good care of himself. He sat down, poured himself another glass of water, and said, “So I visited my brother. So what?”

“So what?” Decker repeated. “The first ‘so what’ is that your brother and sister-in-law have been missing for over thirty years. The second ‘so what’ is that we’ve recovered Beth Hernandez’s murdered body, and the final ‘so what’ is that you’re our prime suspect in her murder.”

“I didn’t do it!” Holmes blurted out. “Manny did it!”

Dudley slapped his face. “Can I please talk to you alone for a minute, Ray?”

“Absolutely, you can talk to him right after I book him for murder-”

“I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t kill her!” Holmes shouted. “Manny killed her in a fit of rage. I was there! I saw it! That’s the fuck why I moved to Arizona. I needed to get far, far away.”

Decker imagined the high fives Scott and Marge were exchanging after hearing Holmes’s admission to being at the scene of Beth’s death. But Decker was still far away from the full confession. He said, “Tell me what happened, Ray. It may bring the charges down from murder to accessory after the fact.”

“Or it may not,” Dudley said. “I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but he’s lying, Ray. You fell into his leg trap. Don’t keep pulling on it or you’ll wind up an amputee.”

“Taz, I swear I didn’t kill her. Why should I take the fall for my stupid brother’s mistake?”

“You’re right, Mr. Holmes,” Decker soothed. “If Manny killed his wife, you shouldn’t take the fall. So tell me what happened.”

Holmes held up his hand to silence his lawyer. “They got into an argument. He pushed her hard. She fell backward and hit her head. I wasn’t even in the room when it happened. I was chilling in the living room and they were going at it in the bedroom. She was a freak, man. She was screaming at my poor brother and I think he just cracked.”

“What were they arguing about?”

“I told you already. I don’t know!”

“Take a guess.”

Holmes looked away. “Probably money.”

“Maybe they were arguing about the money that Manny had taken from the church funds to get you back on your feet?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do, Ray,” Decker said. “We’ve talked to people who were there. Alyssa Bright Mapplethorpe, Christian Woodhouse…members of the church. They remember you and your brother and Beth very well.”

Holmes said, “I did not take any money and I did not kill Beth! Period!”

“I didn’t say you took it, Ray. I said that your brother took it.”

“Jesus!” Holmes gnashed his teeth and mopped up his brow. “First of all, Manny borrowed it. Second of all, if he borrows money and doesn’t pay it back, how is that my fault?”

“It isn’t,” Decker said. “So tell me your side of the story. Because I have lots of others who are telling me their side and it doesn’t look good for you.”

“Okay, okay.” Holmes wiped his face, though he wasn’t sweating nearly as much as before. Dealing with the truth, even partial truths, seemed to calm him down. “This is what happened in a nutshell. I needed a place to crash. My baby brother invited me to L.A., but his bitch wife wasn’t at all happy about it. Even though I never did anything to her, even though I stayed out of their way, even though I minded my own fucking business, that bitch just had it in for me. Finally, Manny couldn’t take it anymore. He said he loved me, but it just wasn’t working out and I’d have to leave. I told him it was okay. I told him I had a buddy in Arizona and he could probably give me a crash pad for a couple of weeks until I could find construction work there. I didn’t want to work construction in L.A. Too many damn greasers. I am not a fucking Mexican. I am an American citizen from New Mexico and I’ll be damned if I’d work side by side with a bunch of illegals.”

“I got it,” Decker said. “Go on.”

“Manny felt real bad about kicking me out. I was his big brother after all. So Manny offered…I repeat, he offered to give me money. I said okay. I didn’t ask questions. I was in a bad way and I needed help. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t ask how he got it. I only found out later, when Beth was yelling at him, that he was the treasurer of his church and that he borrowed the money from the church funds.”

“When was this?”

“The night it happened. Beth was yelling at him, demanding that Manny get the money back. I felt bad that I was the reason they were fighting, so I finally knocked on the bedroom door and explained to the bitch that I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. I was trying to tell her that I’d pay the loan back as soon as I got on my feet again. I even offered her interest.”

“How much did he give you?”

“Around a thousand bucks.”

“Try again, Mr. Holmes.”

“It was a thousand dollars.”

“The account was looted completely.”

“You want to know what happened, you got to let me finish, okay?”

Decker said, “Go on. So Manny loaned you a thousand dollars and Beth wanted you to give the money back.”

“Exactly.” Holmes drank another glass of water. “Now this is the part that gets a little fuzzy. At that point, all I’m doing is trying to leave the goddamn apartment, but by then, Beth is in overdrive. Screaming at him, screaming at me, insisting that I give the money back right now! ‘Fuck her,’ I say to myself. ‘Manny gave me the money, not her. I don’t have to listen to her.’ So like I said, I start to walk away, then Beth screams that she’s going to call the cops on me and report that I stole the money.”

He exhaled with a snort.

“She picks up the phone and starts to dial the police or the operator or information, someone. So that’s when Manny goes over to her and grabs the phone from her hand. He says to her, ‘Beth, you can’t do that.’ Then she says, ‘I’ll do what I please and you can’t stop me!’ Then, I guess that was too much for Manny. He finally decides to be a man. So he says, ‘You let my brother alone and let me worry about the money. I’m the treasurer and you’re nothing but a mousy piece of shit without me.’ And to emphasize the point, he pushes her, not meaning to hurt her, just meaning to get her out of the way.”

Holmes swallowed, his eyes as blank as the wall he was looking at.

“He pushes her a little too hard and she cracks her head against the wall and drops to the floor.”

Dudley was about to say something, but just shook his head instead. He continued to stare as if the scene were taking place in front of his eyes. It was certainly replaying itself in Holmes’s brain. But Decker knew that the evidence didn’t match the story that Holmes was recounting. The bash on Beth’s skull was caused by a blunt object striking her in the forehead region and was probably delivered face-to-face. It was not an injury that could have been caused by the back of Beth’s head hitting the wall.

Decker didn’t say anything. All of that would come out later.

Holmes continued to speak. “As soon as it happened, I knew we were in big trouble. I did time for burglary in a medium-security place and that was bad enough. I wasn’t about to go to Santa Fe Correctional and do real hard time. My old man was there. We both knew what Santa Fe Correctional was from visiting him. No fucking way that we were going down because some little bitch couldn’t control her mouth!”

Decker nodded encouragingly. “About what time of the day did it happen?”

“Not late, but it was after dark. I don’t know. Maybe around six. I don’t remember.”

“Okay. So what happened after you realized she wasn’t moving?”

“I remember feeling paralyzed. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I was in a strange city and I had no friends and here I was with a dead bitch and I didn’t even kill her. I told Manny that we’d better just get the hell out. My baby brother’s reaction was funny. He was calm and collected. Maybe he even felt good about it. She’d been getting on his case for a long, long time and he had enough I guess. He was the smooth one. He told me to help him wrap up the body and he’d take care of it. So that’s what I did. I helped him wrap the body. I helped him load it into Manny’s pickup. Then Manny took it from there. I don’t know what he did with it. I never asked and he didn’t say.”

“How long was he away?”

“I don’t know. A couple of hours maybe. I was cleaning up the mess while he was gone.”

“And you don’t remember when Manny returned to the apartment?”

“I remember it was late. We spent the night packing up the truck, and the next day, Manny took out the rest of the church money from the bank. We needed everything we could get our hands on.” Holmes took in a breath and let it out. “Manny wanted us to go together, but I wanted o-u-t, out, know what I mean?” He pointed to his chest. “I didn’t kill her; he did. Let him figure it out. Besides, I could tell he was scared. The adrenaline had worn off and I didn’t want him to freak out while I was around. I told him to take the truck and go, that I’d take care of myself. I told him to look me up in Arizona in about six months after everything had calmed down. He never did call me. I never saw or heard from him again. I don’t know what happened to him, if he’s alive or dead or what.”

Sure you don’t, Decker thought. “Where’d you go after the two of you split up?”

“I hitched a ride to Las Vegas. I played the tables and turned my measly grand into five big ones. I lived it up for about a week-booze, drugs, hookers, you name it. I was the happiest that I’ve ever been in my life.”

“What happened after that week?”

“What do you think?” Holmes laughed. “Booze, drugs, and hookers cost money. I left glitter city with about three hundred in my pocket, and thumbed a ride to Arizona. I rolled up my sleeves, learned the construction business, and became a working stiff. I started paying taxes, and I’ve been a solid citizen ever since then.”

“And you never heard from Manny again?” Decker asked.

“Not a whisper. Maybe I should have reported my brother…let Beth’s parents know what happened. Maybe I shouldn’t have helped him wrap the body or clean up the mess. But fuck, he was my baby brother and he was in trouble and he got into trouble trying to help me out. I felt responsible, but not responsible enough to take the fall for something I didn’t do.”

Decker nodded. There was a lot about his story that rang true. Maybe Beth and Manny were arguing about the money. And it made sense that, during the argument, someone got pissed and bashed Beth over the head. Maybe it was Raymond/Belize, or maybe it was Manny. The one thing that was certain in Decker’s mind was that one of the brothers killed Beth.

It also made sense to Decker that Manny had buried Beth and didn’t tell his brother where. Why else would Holmes stick around after Decker and Marge had paid him an initial visit? They had told him that an old body had been discovered under the debris of the ruined apartment building. That meant nothing to Holmes because he had no idea where Beth had been buried. The contractor didn’t know L.A. all that well. It would have taken quite a stretch for Holmes to assume that the body they had found had been his dead sister-in-law. At the time of the interview, he had stated that he thought the discovered body was Roseanne Dresden.

That had probably been the truth.

Still, Holmes’s spiel was distinctly different from the recitation given to Decker by Holmes’s father, Martin Hernandez. The old man had stated that Belize had confessed to murdering Beth even though he didn’t mean to kill her. Hernandez also kept reiterating that Manny was dead.

Now, how would Hernandez know that Manny was dead unless he knew the person who had killed him? The old man had stopped short of implicating his older son in the death of his younger one, but by insisting that Manny was long dead, he pointed the arrow in that direction.

Decker wasn’t positive which one killed Beth, but he was pretty damn sure that Belize had killed Manny. In Decker’s mind, Belize’s formal name change to Raymond Holmes was Holmes’s odd way of honoring his dead brother, Ramon Hernandez.

Decker said, “You want to tell me about Roseanne Dresden now?”

“Oh God!” Holmes slapped his face. “I don’t know what happened to Roseanne! Before she disappeared, I hadn’t seen her in six fucking months!”

“I don’t know if I believe you, Ray.”

“Why not? I have been perfectly honest with you about everything else. I told you what happened with my brother, I told you about the money, I told you that I helped wrap the body, I told you I cleaned up the mess. I told you everything I know.” Holmes mopped up his face. “I have nothing more to say.”

“It’s too late,” Dudley told him. “He’s going to arrest you for murder now.”

Decker said, “You probably should have listened to your lawyer, Mr. Holmes.”

“Why?” Holmes started sweating again, pools of sweat shooting out from his overworked pores. “C’mon. I was honest with you. I told you everything. I even took a fucking lie-detector test about Roseanne. How can you arrest me for murder after all that?”

“I just figure I’ll serve the warrant and let the D.A. sort it out.”

“You fucking bastard! You don’t have a leg to stand on because I didn’t do it!”

“I told you not to talk, Ray,” Dudley said.

“You’re a fucking bastard, too,” Holmes shouted. “You’re fired.”

“Fine,” Dudley told him. “You go convince some rookie PD to set your bail.”

“Wait! You’re not fired!” Holmes looked desperate. “Please, Taz, I’m sorry. Don’t leave me alone!”

Dudley said, “I will represent you, but now, it’s not so simple. I’ll need a fifteen-thousand-dollar retainer, and another fifteen in two weeks. If you’re short on cash, I’ll take the deed to the house on Chase as collateral.”

“You two gentlemen can continue this conversation a little later in the quiet of a jail room. Right now Holmes has a date with Ms. Miranda.”