“Yes, I said.” A flash of irritation flushed his face. “It’s just the one key.” He enunciated the words as if talking to little Carlos. “It’s one key, and it fits both the inside door by the stairwell, and the outside door. That’s the one door we use most of the time. We don’t come and go through the house. We use the outside stairway.”
“You always lock the apartment when you go out?” Mitchell asked.
“Yes. I mean, we forget once in a while, but yeah…we lock it as a matter of course.”
“Leave an extra key with somebody? The manager, someone like that?”
“No. Mrs. Freeman might have one. I suppose she does. I never asked her.”
“Let me see yours.” Mitchell held out his hand and waited while the deputy dug the wad of keys out of his hip pocket. “Which one?”
Sisneros held the apartment key by the blade, the rest dangling. Mitchell took them and looked again at the keys in the evidence bag.
“Okay,” he said slowly, and looked up questioningly at Estelle. “Keys don’t just come off key rings all by themselves. And you’re sure she didn’t keep it on a separate ring.”
“I know she didn’t.”
“So where did it go?”
“I don’t know, Captain.” The use of rank as a name wasn’t lost on Eddie, who gazed thoughtfully at Sisneros.
“We have two choices that make sense,” Estelle said. “Either Janet gave it to someone…to anyone-”
“Why would she do that?” Sisneros interrupted.
“You’d know that better than we would, Mike.”
“Well, I don’t know it.”
“No idea? All right, then. The other choice is that someone took it. Let’s suppose for a minute. Suppose that the killer took it off the ring.”
“What would he want with it?” Sisneros asked. “The killer, I mean. If he took it.”
“Good question. Obviously to get inside her apartment…either then or to use at some point in the future. He knew where she lived. Or he found out one way or another.” She held up the keys in the bag, looking at them again. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which one is for the apartment.” She counted them off. “Jeep keys, this one looks like it’s for a small suitcase or night bag, we’ve got a safety deposit key for Posadas State Bank, and I’d be willing to bet that this big Yale key is for A amp; H Welding. Who knows what the little Brinks key is for…some little padlock somewhere.”
“That’s to her storage unit over on Escondido, by the trailer park. Where she used to live.”
“Fair enough. Somebody wasn’t interested in gaining entry to that, evidently. Is anything else missing from your apartment?” Mitchell asked.
“Anything else?” Sisneros replied. “I mean, nothing’s missing. I was there from the time you dropped me off until the undersheriff called this morning. If something was gone, I would have noticed.”
I’m not so sure of that, Estelle thought. The way Mike Sisneros had looked when she first saw him plodding down the stairs suggested that a bulldozer could have driven through the apartment and he wouldn’t have noticed or, if he had noticed, wouldn’t have minded.
“Other than your.22 pistol, I think he means,” Estelle said. “Janet’s personal effects were all there?”
For the first time since breakfast, the young man’s face crumpled with agony, and he leaned against Mitchell’s desk, jaw slack. “Christ,” he whispered. “Yeah…they were there. They’re still there. I walked into the bathroom and her comb and brush and everything…” He choked it off. “Still there,” he murmured. “Just like she stepped out for a minute and was coming right back.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I can’t believe this.”
“The gun was gone,” Mitchell said mildly, repeating the obvious. His heavy-lidded eyes assessed Mike Sisneros without a trace of expression.
“I don’t know when that happened,” the deputy said. “I’ve said that a dozen times.”
“Could it have happened yesterday?”
“I suppose it could,” Sisneros said, exasperated. “And it could have happened a year ago, too. But what sense does that make? He shot her, then took her apartment key, went to the apartment and stole my gun? That’s sort of backward for that little scenario, don’t you think?”
“What if Janet didn’t have her key with her yesterday.” Estelle voiced the possibility and waited.
“If she lost her key, why wouldn’t she have said something to me when she came here? Wouldn’t that have been the logical thing? Especially since I was going to Lordsburg, and she had decided not to. What’s she going to do, sit in the apartment all day?”
“But she didn’t do that, did she?”
Mike’s temper rose again. “What are you getting at, anyway?”
Estelle held up the evidence bag. “The apartment key is gone. That’s what I’m getting at. We don’t know why it’s gone. We don’t know when it went missing.” She dropped the plastic bag back on Mitchell’s desk. “I’ll feel better when I know the answers.”
“Well, so will I.”
“I’m glad to hear that. You ready to go back to work?”
He didn’t look ready for anything, but Estelle saw Mike Sisneros’s spine straighten a little.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Now that we know the key is missing, I want you to go back to your apartment and really look, Mike. Look through everything. All your papers. All your stuff. And Janet’s too. I know it’s hard, but you’ll know better than anyone what should be there and what’s not. Look at everything, Mike.” She paused. “When you’re going through Janet’s things, get the telephone number and address for her sister. We’ll want to talk with her.”
“Okay. I know where that is. You want me to call her?”
“I’d rather do that, Mike.” She nodded at the evidence bag. “And if I were you, I’d have the locks changed today.”
“A burglar’s not going to get much in my place,” he said.
“I’m not worried about burglars, Mike.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
When Estelle entered the hospital, the hustle and bustle of the day shift had overtaken the halls and offices. Medicine didn’t pause for rest on Sundays. There was no sign of the nocturnal Stacy Cunningham and his floor polisher.
In his room, Bill Gastner stood in front of the window, gazing out into the bright December morning. A small bandage covered the back of his skull behind his left ear. Estelle rattled the door knob so he wouldn’t startle, and he raised a hand without turning around.
“I saw you drive into the parking lot,” he said. “Goddamn gorgeous day, you know that?”
“Yes it is.”
“Have you taken any time to enjoy it yet?” He turned and grinned at her. “You missed Christmas, you know.”
“Actually, I have, Padrino,” Estelle said. “And you look like you’re ready to go.” She had almost said huggable, since his brown Hush Puppies, russet corduroy trousers, and plaid flannel shirt made him look like a comfortably rotund teddy bear.
“That’s for sure,” Gastner said emphatically. He looked at the hospital bed with distaste. “Thanks for agreeing to play taxi.”
“I bet you’re hungry,” Estelle said.
“Of course I’m hungry,” he replied. “Let’s go get a little something.”
“I just spent a half-hour with Mike Sisneros at the Don Juan, so…”
“Without me? How could you? I’m crushed.”
“Well, we could have used your touch, sir. JanaLynn says hi, by the way.”
“God, the love of my life,” Gastner said.
“I ordered a breakfast burrito, and didn’t touch it. We can go back to the house and nuke it for you.”
“Sounds good. Although their breakfast menu leaves a little something to be desired in the size department. But that’s a good start.” He went to the closet and pulled his jacket off the hanger. “Let’s get out of here before they show up with that damn wheelchair.” He patted his pocket. “And I have enough drugs to go into business.”