Mortal Danger

but he weighed 165 pounds, and that made him considerably taller and heavier than Traia. Still, she’d been forty years older than he was, old enough to be his grandmother. He was hardly a likely candidate as her rapist-murderer, but he might know something that he was afraid to tell.
    Luis didn’t seem concerned about the theft charges. He answered questions about Tom Scott’s missing property, but his responses were vague. They took him into the house and sat down at the dining room table.
    “We don’t want any conversation,” Taylor said, and Luis looked confused. But as the minutes passed, he grew anxious again. If they’d come to talk to him about a burglary, why weren’t they asking him more questions?
    Once they were informed that a second search warrant had been signed by a judge, Taylor, Whitman, and Gunderson led Gabrielle Berrios out to the washhouse in the backyard. She was stunned when they showed the search warrant that now allowed them to look around her property for items of Traia Carr’s that were still missing.
    “We have reason to believe that someone living in your house is aware of what happened to Mrs. Carr—”
    “We all know what happened to the poor lady,” Gabrielle interrupted, crossing herself. “She was murdered.”
    “No,” Jarl Gunderson said. “We think someone who lives in your house may have guilty knowledge about her abduction and her death. We need to talk with Luis Jr.”
    She stared back at him, uncomprehending. And then a shadow crossed her face as she understood. “That’s all right,” Gabrielle said. “I can see why you might want to. He knows just about everything that goes on here—but he doesn’t always tell me.”
    A uniformed officer led Luis Jr. out to the washhouse, and he was interviewed in the presence of his mother, after he was once more advised of his rights—this time in the case of Traia’s murder.
    Luis Jr. finally admitted that he had some of his neighbor’s things. “But I only had them because some Arab gave them to me at a party the night of July Fourth.”
    It seemed to be a contrived story, but there were a largenumber of Middle Eastern students attending Everett Community College at the time.
    Gunderson left the interview to speak with people Luis said were at that party. He learned that Luis had been there, all right, but witnesses said he arrived after midnight—not earlier in the evening, as he said.
    Jarl Gunderson outlined all the evidence—both physical and circumstantial—that indicated Traia Carr’s killer probably lived in his house. He stared hard at Luis. “Luis, I’ve known you for a long time,” he said. “And I know when you’re lying.”
    Luis looked at the floor.
    “You’re lying now, aren’t you?”
    Faced with the information that Gunderson had uncovered, all the bravado went out of Luis Berrios Jr. He heaved a great sigh. “All right,” he said softly. “I did it.”
    “What did you do?” Gunderson pressed.
    “What you think I did. I killed her.”
    The investigators were surprised. They had expected him to tell them about someone else who was Traia’s killer.
    Luis Jr. was now ready to fill in the blank spots in their reconstruction of the victim’s last hours. The three detectives listened avidly as he told them he had felt sexually turned on by his fifty-seven-year-old neighbor. He’d kept track of her comings and goings and come to know her habits. Often, he’d peered into her bedroom window as she undressed for bed.
    “She never knew I was there,” he said.
    “Maybe she did,” Whitman said flatly. “But I doubt she knew it was you.”
    Luis continued with his story of what happened the night of July Fourth. His mother and younger brothers and sisters had gone to see the fireworks display, and his friends had all gone out, too.
    “I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone about twenty minutes after eight,” he recalled. “We had a fight and I hung up on her.”
    Luis said he’d been angry and bored. “I was the only one in our house,” he said. “I saw Traia come home from her picnic and go into her house. I watched while the lights went on. I knew she was probably alone.”
    “You kept that close track of her?”
    “Yeah. I could tell if she was alone or if her boyfriend or her daughter was over there.”
    Luis said that he’d looked around his house for some money “to do something with.” He’d searched through a number of rooms in the big old