The Big Gamble - Michael Mcgarrity [79]
The woman, whose husband ran a maquiladora in Juárez, shook her head. “No, it was just Tony, Martha, and the children.”
“How well did you know them?” Clayton asked.
“They were nice people who always came to the annual neighborhood potluck parties. The children were polite and well behaved. Other than that, they didn’t do a lot of socializing. The kids kept them too busy.”
Clayton rephrased his question: “What do you know about them?”
“Tony worked for a trucking company. He had a management position of some sort.”
“Big Five Trucking?”
“Yes, I think that’s it. Martha was a stay-at-home mom.”
Clayton thanked the woman, left, and kept looking for Deborah Shea. She wasn’t listed in the phone book or in the several recent city directories he examined at a branch library. He tried a long shot at a motor vehicle office, hoping that Shea had reported an address change, and struck out.
“Can you search your database of licensed drivers by address?” Clayton asked the office manager.
“You bet,” the manager said, turning to his keyboard.
“How far back do you want to go?”
“Six years.”
The man pulled up the data on his computer screen and printed out the information. The retired army officer, his wife, former occupants Tony and Martha Duran, and Deborah Shea topped the list. But another eight people, all young females, had also used the address to get licenses at one time or another.
“What is this address, an apartment or something?” the manager asked. “A group home? A sorority house?”
“None of the above,” Clayton replied. “It’s a single-family house.”
“That’s unreal. What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure,” Clayton said, handing the list back to the manager. “Can I have hard copies of the license information for each of those drivers?”
“Sure thing.”
Clayton took the information to the El Paso police headquarters and got a desk officer to cross-check all the names with computerized arrest records. Two of the women had rap sheets of one count each, for soliciting. The officer escorted Clayton to a vice-squad cop and introduced him as Detective Brewer. He was an older, soft-bellied man with a passive face who wore a shirt with a cigarette-ash burn in the pocket. His breath stank of nicotine.
Brewer pulled the offense reports on the women. Both had been busted at an El Paso hotel.
“What were the case dispositions?” Clayton asked.
It took a minute for Brewer to ferret out the notations. “Both paid fines,” he said.
“Where can I find them?” Clayton asked.
“Hell if I know,” Brewer said. “They haven’t been seen in town for over a year, maybe two. Whores move around a lot these days, one city to the next.”
“What about their pimps?”
“There’s nothing in the files about that.”
Brewer didn’t seem particularly eager to help, and his attitude bothered Clayton. He stuck Deborah Shea’s motor vehicle photograph under the man’s nose. “Do you know this woman?”
Brewer shook his head.
“How about Luis Rojas?”
“I don’t know any Luis Rojas who’s working girls in El Paso,” the detective said.
One by one, Clayton fed Brewer all the driver’s license photographs to review.
“Except for the two whores, I don’t know any of these women,” Brewer said, handing them back.
Although he didn’t mean it, Clayton said, “Thanks.”
Brewer nodded, watched the Indian cop leave, and dialed a private number. “Tell Mr. Rojas I need to talk to him,” he said to the kid who answered the phone.
“Call back at six,” Fidel said. “He’ll be here then.”
The deputy’s report on the Norvell DWI stop identified the passenger in the car as Helen Pearson, and gave a rural route address. The phone book carried no listing, so Kerney called the post office and learned that Pearson now had a postal box. The application listed her permanent residence on a road off the Old Santa Fe Trail, just outside