The water was, as Jenny had said, extremely cool. Mary couldn’t detect any odor or sting of chlorine (although someone had told her that alkali was actually to blame for any irritation). It was the first time she had swum since the summer before, and she was breathless after a single fast trip down to the float-bobbing rope and back again. Here she found Jenny, now muffled in white terry, standing on the concrete deck, gazing down at her and saying, “I think I’ll go up to the room and write some postcards, okay? Have you got the key?”
“In the pocket of my robe.” Luckily, they were very deep pockets. Mary swam away again, wondering, a little worried. Was Jenny, whom she had hoped would enjoy this necessitous trip, regarding her as a chaperone, checking up? How to reassure her that if she had found some friendly man—and for some reason Mary felt sure it was a man—that was all to the good?
Unless the man was someone Jenny didn’t want her to know about. Like Brian Beardsley. But even if he had arrived in Santa Fe, even if by some kind of second sight he had discovered their departure for Juarez, he couldn’t possibly have pinpointed the Casa de Flores so soon.
Except that it was the newest motel in Juarez, cleverly masquerading as a resort. If he had asked someone about a good place to stay, he might very well have been directed here.
A part of Mary’s mind saw Jenny upstairs, not writing postcards but at the telephone asking hurriedly to be connected to another room. Another sector remembered those two gained pounds—no, more, consider those snappy-cheese-and-green-pepper sandwiches on the way down here, while she did nothing more active than keep a foot on the accelerator and make minute corrections with the steering-wheel.
By now, the water felt warmer than the air. Mutinously, with a goal of fifteen laps, Mary went on swimming.
For some hours, the Santa Fe police had had their murder suspect in custody on grounds of suspicion, but if he succeeded in obtaining the services of the attorney he had asked for, he wouldn’t be there long. This attorney would cry discrimination because of a Spanish surname, and ask incredulously if anyone seriously believed that his client, out on bond while awaiting trial, would have been so stupid as to place himself in further jeopardy?
Certainly the suspect did not look stupid; his pointed face had the alertness of a snake’s. Picked up with surprising ease at his parents’ home, the address on his driver’s license, he said that his wallet had been lifted the day before while he was playing pool. Had he reported the loss of his license? Shrug; he was going to get around to it.
Where had he been last evening between seven-thirty and eight o’clock? With friends; he produced names, confidently. In view of the nature of the dead woman’s injuries it was impossible that her attacker could have walked away without bloodstains; could they see his clothing? They sure could. He showed them notably clean jeans and a flowered shirt, and when a deputy walked into the kitchen and remarked that the washing machine was set on “Cold” he said, “Haven’t you heard about the energy program, man?” and pointed down at a large box of cold-water detergent. “Bio-degradable,” he said with a grin.
What were those purple bite-marks on his thumb? He’d been fooling around with the dog, he said, and snapped his fingers for the animal; it cowered.
There was no use trying to get anything out of his parents, who had summoned the police a few months earlier on an occasion when he had attacked them with his fists. There must have been reprisals for that, because even with the police now present they were clearly terrified of their son.
As the attack had taken place in the driveway, there was no hope of fingerprints. Footprints were also out, as the ground had been dry for a couple of weeks; the rain hadn’t started until about a quarter of eight. Grass under the trees gave them blood but nothing else.
The driver who had stopped for the victim had been requestioned, but without further result. All she had said was, “A boy. He tried to . . .” and the obvious inference there was attempted rape. Same with the ambulance attendant and at the hospital, which wasn’t odd: even without severe physical damage leading to shock, women tended to try to block this thing out.
According to her husband, whose innocence was unmistakable on a number of grounds, she hadn’t said anything helpful in the few minutes he had with her before she died. “She described running, trying to get away, but we’re fairly new here and it was dark and she had no idea where she was. And of course she was—well, pretty incoherent . . .”
But she must, the police reasoned, have tried to find refuge somewhere between her driveway and the street where she had been picked up. There were houses, after all; it wasn’t as if she had been staggering about a deserted mesa. What had happened there?
They would have to try to trace her route. More importantly, they would have to find the weapon, whose dimensions the police surgeon had been able to give them with fair accuracy because of that killing plunge. It wasn’t in the suspect’s home; they had established that, and it wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity of the attack.
But here they had a slight break. A friend of the suspect’s, hauled in routinely because he was known to the police for a variety of reasons, thought correctly that they would overlook the very small amount of marijuana in his possession at the time if he gave them any assistance. He said positively, “No
