Death Song

by Michael McGarrity

  “I’ll ask Chief Bolt to find you a ladder,” Hewitt said.

  “I’m also going to need something other than my truck to drive,” Clayton said.

  Hewitt glanced at the Ford Explorer that had been assigned to Tim Riley less than sixteen hours ago. “It’s got a rebuilt engine, good tires, and a new clutch.”

  Clayton nodded. It was either the Explorer or the only other available sheriff’s vehicle, a six-year-old Crown Victoria that needed new shocks, burned over a quart of oil a day, and was about to throw a rod.

  “Ten-four,” he said, not completely happy with the idea of driving the murdered deputy’s unit.

  “I’ll get you that ladder,” Hewitt said as he went to find Bolt. “Be careful when you climb up there.”

  Clayton stared at Tim Riley’s unit. It was an Apache tradition to believe newly deceased people wanted to have some of the living journey with them to the other side. The most dangerous time for this to happen was the four days after death, when the dead person was still present, although invisible. During this period, they revisited the critical events in their lives and remained close to the important people they were about to leave behind.

  Clayton figured getting murdered had to be an event of great consequence for Tim Riley, one he would definitely have to revisit. That meant Riley’s invisible presence would be hanging around over the next few days, and Clayton would have to stay alert and balanced to avoid any witchery that might come his way.

  A village fire engine pulled to a stop on the street. A firefighter climbed out of the cab, waved at Clayton, and asked where to put the ladder. Clayton pointed to the spot and helped the man carry the ladder to the side of the cabin. He spent an hour on the roof inspecting every fiberglass shingle, examining the plumbing vent protrusions, and studying the woodstove flue. He checked the eaves, the gutters, and the downspouts. He went over every inch of the side of the cabin, high and low, where the slug could have impacted. He looked for any evidence that it could have ricocheted. Finally he gave up, climbed down, and helped the firefighter put the ladder back on the truck.

  “There’s nothing up there,” Clayton said before Hewitt had a chance to ask.

  Hewitt handed Clayton a piece of paper. “This is a list of the people we know Riley had contact with since he moved down here. There may be more.”

  There were over thirty names on the list. Some worked at local businesses, several were real estate agents, and a few were people Clayton had introduced to Riley earlier in the week.

  “Use whomever you want to help you work that list,” Hewitt added.

  “Thanks,” Clayton said. “Any word on Riley’s missing wife?”

  “Not yet. Maybe something will break on that end.”

  “Yeah,” Clayton said without enthusiasm, wondering if his father, Kevin Kerney, was involved in the Santa Fe investigation.

  “Where is Cañoncito?” he asked Hewitt.

  “I have no idea,” Hewitt replied.

  In Cañoncito, the news that Deputy Riley had been shot dead turned a missing person case into a full-scale homicide investigation. Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup of the Santa Fe S.O. called out his major felony investigators, his crime scene team, and asked Kerney to provide additional detectives to assist. Aside from Detective Matt Chacon, who was already on his way, Kerney had Sergeant Ramona Pino and two more detectives roll to the scene.

  Helen Muiz rejected Kerney’s suggestion to go home and await further developments. Although the double-wide and surrounding area were now part of a homicide investigation and thus closed to civilians, Kerney didn’t force the issue. Helen’s long and distinguished record of service with the department, the strong support she’d given him during his tenure as chief, and their friendship that extended back to Kerney’s rookie year as a cop entitled her to all due consideration.

  To make way for the investigators and the techs, Kerney took Helen and Ruben to his police vehicle, where they sat with the dome light on, the motor running, and the heater cranking out warm air.

  Kerney asked Helen to tell him about her baby sister, and he learned that Denise had lived with five or six men during her wanderlust years, none of whom the family had ever met. According to both Helen and Ruben, Denise had volunteered very little information about her past relationships and would brush off any serious attempt to discuss her time away from Santa Fe. It was as if she had erased from scrutiny a dozen years of her life.

  Kerney did learn that Denise had left Santa Fe two days after her high school graduation party, taking with her all of the money she’d saved for college, cash she’d received as presents from relatives, plus two hundred dollars she’d stolen from her mother’s purse. There had been gossip at the time that Denise had taken the money and left town to get an abortion, but those rumors soon died away.

  Kerney asked for clarity about Denise’s rapid departure. Helen said Denise left because of conflict with her father that centered around his refusal to let her go away to college. Because of her rebellious nature, he wanted her to live at home and go to the community college for her first two years.

  “Was going away to college a financial issue?” Kerney asked.

  Helen, who sat on the front passenger seat next to Kerney, shook her head. “Not at all. Daddy just wanted to keep an eye on her. He’d just sold his plumbing and heating business and had settled my grandfather’s estate. Each of us children received money from the sale of Grandfather’s foothills property, although Denise had to wait until she was twenty-one to receive her share.”

  “Why would Denise leave home because of a spat over where she could go to college?” Kerney asked.

  “It went deeper than that,” Ruben said from the backseat of Kerney’s cruiser.

  Kerney turned to Ruben. “Do you think she was pregnant when she left home?”

  “She may have been, but it’s one of those topics that’s never discussed in the family,” Ruben replied.

  Helen shook her head. “Because it wasn’t true.”

  “Then why is the topic always such a sore spot with you and Denise?” Ruben countered.

  “Go on,” Kerney said to Ruben before Helen could reply.

  “Denise was super smart, totally bored with Santa Fe, and very unchallenged in high school. You could call the crowd she hung out with a fringe, arty group. They were into theater, film, acting, music, art, and smoking a little pot. Denise had aspirations; she wanted to strike out on her own, see the world, and she didn’t want to be held back. She had big dreams to make it as a singer or actress.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about your sister-in-law’s teenage years,” Kerney said.

  Ruben smiled. “I was the head of the guidance and counseling department at the high school during the time Denise was enrolled. As Helen’s husband, I couldn’t counsel her directly, but I did stay informed of her progress. She dropped out of the gifted program her sophomore year, although she continued to take advance placement classes in subjects that interested her.”

  Kerney was about to direct the conversation to Denise’s relationship with her husband when Detective Matt Chacon stepped onto the deck of the double-wide and motioned to him. Kerney excused himself and went to see what Chacon had discovered.

  “Did you find anything interesting on the computers?” he asked. Through the open door Kerney could see deputies and detectives carefully examining the furnishings, carpet, walls, and curtains, looking for trace evidence.

  “It’s what I didn’t find that’s interesting, Chief,” Matt replied. “Both computers have had the hard drives completely erased and reformatted using what I think was a bootleg recovery system that can’t be traced back to a manufacturer. Everything on the computers was wiped clean. Whoever did this didn’t want whatever was on the computers to be retrieved.”

  “Can’t you restore the hard drive data?”

  “It’s not a question of retrieval,” Matt replied. “The drives have been scoured and sterilized of all information. It doesn�
��t take a computer geek to do it. An hour or two of Internet research can give anyone the information they need to permanently purge files, folders, and data. However, I can tell you that this was done twenty-four hours ago.”

  “What about any removable storage devices?”

  “Both computers have CD and flash drive capacity, but I haven’t found any compact disks or portable storage devices in the house. I’m assuming whoever erased the hard drives took them. I dusted both machines for fingerprints. They’d been wiped clean.”

  “This is not good news,” Kerney said.

  “I know it isn’t, Chief,” Matt replied. “But most people pay their monthly IP bills automatically through online checking or a charge to a credit card. Sergeant Pino is looking for banking and credit card statements. If we can determine the IP provider, we can get a court order and access e-mail account information.”

  “Do the same with the cell phone and landline accounts.”

  “It’s on the list,” Matt said. “I’m going to take both computers back to the office and go through everything again. Sometimes a recovery program will miss, skip, or write over an old file or folder. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

  “Okay.” Kerney gave Matt a pat on the back. Soon after becoming chief, he’d promoted Chacon to detective, and although the young officer didn’t know it, he was about to receive his sergeant stripes and be put in charge of the Property Crimes Unit. “Keep at it,” Kerney said.

  “Will do, Chief.”

  When Kerney returned to his police unit, Helen quizzed him about his conversation with Chacon. He short-circuited the facts and told her that Matt hadn’t yet found anything of interest on the computers, but would conduct a more comprehensive examination at police headquarters.

  By daybreak, Ruben had talked his exhausted wife into going home. Inside the double-wide, Sergeant Ramona Pino, two SFPD detectives, and three sheriff’s investigators were continuing the house search. Kerney joined Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup in the RV that served as the sheriff’s office mobile command center, and asked him to talk about Tim Riley.

  Jessup eased his bulk into a chair behind a small bolted-down table and motioned for Kerney to join him. Jessup’s pale blue eyes were weary. The deep creases below his chubby cheeks pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave him a perpetual hangdog expression. In contrast to his dour appearance, Jessup had a high-pitched voice. A true tenor, he was the mainstay of a barbershop quartet that performed locally and at regional competitions.

  “Tim was a solid, dependable officer,” Jessup said, “and we were sorry to lose him.”

  “No personality conflicts with other officers or problems with the brass?”

  “None.”

  “Then why did he leave?” Kerney asked.

  Jessup shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t give a reason other than to say he’d accepted a job with the Lincoln County S.O.” He handed Kerney a file folder. “That’s Riley’s personnel file. Look it over for yourself. He received solid performance evaluations, had no disciplinary actions, and received several commendations from his supervisors and one from the board of county commissioners.”

  Kerney paged through the paperwork. “What about his personal and family life?”

  “That I don’t know anything about,” Jessup replied. “He wasn’t one to socialize much with other officers. I met his wife maybe twice, once at a retirement party and once at some community fund-raising event. I didn’t even know she was Helen Muiz’s kid sister.”

  Outside the RV window, detectives and investigators were loading boxes of evidence into the back of the S.O. crime lab van. On the driveway that led from the double-wide to the county road, S.O. patrol vehicles, state police units, and SFPD vehicles were arriving, along with members of a search and rescue team.

  Jessup stood up and nodded toward an unmarked sedan that came to a stop near a staging area for searchers that had been set up in front of the stables. “The sheriff has arrived. He wants us to scour this area until we either find Denise Riley’s body or we know that she isn’t here to be found.”

  Kerney followed Jessup out of the RV and looked at the mesa that rose above the narrow valley, much of it still in deep shadows. There was a lot of rugged country to cover and places where a body could be hidden so that no matter how exhaustive the search, it might never be found.

  At the staging area, Kerney joined Leonard Jessup, Sheriff Luciano Salgado, the state police captain who commanded the district office, and an emergency room doctor who also served as the search and rescue director. Together, they went over the sheriff’s search plan, which consisted of a concentrated sweep of the valley and surrounding area before moving into the higher country. When the searchers had assembled, Salgado divided the personnel into teams and gave out grid assignments. A sober and silent group of three dozen men and women fanned out in all four directions, the quiet broken only by the rough, querulous sound of Mexican jays in the tall pines and the low whine of a commercial jet thirty thousand feet overhead.

  Kerney spent a few minutes alone with Luciano Salgado, who had retired as a SFPD patrol sergeant six years ago to accept an appointment as chief deputy for the S.O, and was now serving his first term as the duly elected sheriff. Luciano asked if he could continue to use Kerney’s detectives throughout the day. He wanted Ramona Pino to work with his major crimes unit supervisor on an evidence search of the stable and the P.D. detectives to assist in a follow-up neighborhood canvass of all residents.

  Kerney readily agreed and passed on the assignments to Sergeant Pino. Back at his unit he called Sara on his cell phone.

  “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked.

  “Patrick did that a half hour ago,” Sara replied, sounding perfectly normal. “We’ve had our breakfast and now he’s petitioning me to go horseback riding.”

  “Are you feeling up to it?”

  “I am. Have you found Helen’s missing sister?”

  “Not yet. But we have learned that the woman’s husband, a police officer, was murdered last night in Lincoln County.”

  “Does that mean you won’t be home anytime soon?”

  “No,” Kerney replied. “This case is not under my jurisdiction. I’ve given the sheriff’s department all the help they’ve asked for and done as much for Helen Muiz as I can at this point. I don’t need to stay here watching other people work.”

  “Too many chiefs?” Sara asked.

  “Something like that. I’ll be home soon.”

  Kerney disconnected and went to find Ramona Pino to tell her he’d be leaving. He found her in the tack room at the stables with Don Mielke, the major crimes unit supervisor for the sheriff’s department.

  “Don’t come in, Chief,” Ramona said when Kerney appeared in the doorway.

  Kerney looked around. An upended saddle was on the hard-packed dirt floor, some of the halters and bridles lay in a heap under the wall hooks, and there were scuff marks in the dirt that looked as if something had been dragged out into the corral, where the two horses whinnied and snorted for their morning oats.

  “Any hard evidence of a struggle?” Kerney asked.

  “Not yet,” Mielke replied.

  Beyond the corral, next to a horse trailer, a medium-size black-and-white mutt with a long coat joined the chorus. “Do you know if the Rileys had a dog?” Kerney asked.

  “There was a picture in the house of Riley’s wife kneeling next to a dog,” Ramona said.

  Kerney pointed at the mutt who had taken up a position at the back of the trailer. “That dog?”

  “Maybe,” Ramona said.

  “Has it been here all night?”

  “I didn’t see or hear it earlier,” Ramona replied.

  “Has anyone checked that horse trailer?” Kerney asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Mielke replied.

  “Let’s do it,” Kerney said, stepping off in the direction of the trailer.

  The barking dog fell silent and backed off when Kerney approached, but i
t stayed nearby, watchful, and seemed unwilling to scamper away. The trailer, built to haul two horses, was padlocked. Kerney turned to Mielke and asked him to find some bolt cutters. Ramona Pino dropped down on one knee and looked back at the stables and corral. Although it was impossible to tell for sure, what seemed to be drag marks in the dirt ran from the tack room to the horse trailer. She pointed them out to Kerney.

  “Ten-to-one odds says we can call off the search as soon as Mielke brings those bolt cutters,” Kerney said.

  Ramona shook her head. “I learned a long time ago never to bet against you, Chief.”

  Mielke returned, snapped the locks with the bolt cutters, and swung open the doors. Inside one of the trailer stalls was the rigid body of a woman facedown on a bed of blood-soaked straw.

  “Okay,” Kerney said as he exhaled and turned to Mielke. “You’d better get your bosses over here pronto.”

  “Yeah,” Mielke replied.

  Chapter Three

  The discovery of the body set off a chain of procedural events common to all murder investigations. Kerney backed off so Ramona Pino and Don Mielke could work without his interference, and informed Sheriff Salgado about the unidentified female victim.

  By radio, Salgado got the word out to the searchers and asked them to suspend operations and maintain their positions until a positive ID could be made. Kerney took Salgado and his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup, to the horse trailer, which had already been cordoned off, and from behind the police line the three men watched as Mielke and Pino established a wider crime scene perimeter.

  After roping off a larger area that extended from the tack room to the horse trailer, they began documenting and processing the scene. Mielke photographed the body as it lay, leaving it untouched and unmoved. Although it was highly likely the dead woman was Denise Riley, protocol required the body remain as it had been found until the medical investigator arrived.

  Mielke moved on to photograph the horse trailer, the drag marks in the dirt, and the interior of the tack room, while Ramona Pino inspected the victim and made a list of the woman’s clothing, which included notations of the condition of the garments and any visible damage and stains. The woman’s jeans barely covered her buttocks, and flecks of straw adhered to exposed skin at the small of her back.