Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel

by Michael McGarrity

  So far, all he’d spotted were one rusted can and the stump of a juniper tree cut down years ago with a hand ax. Several times he had Avery stop so he could get out and look around. He found an abandoned coyote den on a slope under a rock ledge and a shredded truck tire partially covered by dirt, home to an active ant nest.

  It was time-consuming, but Clayton knew better than to let down and lose concentration. That’s when bad things could happen, especially to cops.

  After two hours, he decided he’d seen enough of nothing and ended the sweep. They left the property through an old ranch gate that accessed a county road, drove to town, stopped at a burger joint near the university, ordered takeout, and took it back to the center, where they corralled Garcia, who’d just finished clearing all the vendors’ employees. With Davenport’s permission, they ate lunch in her office.

  Clayton didn’t mention it was the very place where his mother and father had hooked up decades ago. Besides, Garcia and Avery were too busy eating their burgers and arguing about which baseball teams would make it to the World Series in the fall.

  He put his half-eaten burger away and called Liz Waterman, chief of the NMSU Police Department. She said her officers would direct traffic to the entrance of the center, staff a control point there, verify the occupants of cars, visually screen all vehicles before allowing entry, and manage parking on the grounds. Six campus officers would be on scene two hours before the event began. Clayton thought the plan more than adequate, and was pleased he didn’t have to ask Luis Mondragon to send uniforms to help.

  He left Avery and Garcia debating a World Series yet to happen, sidestepped caterers unloading vans, and walked to the fenced garden, which badly needed weeding and tilling. At the far end stood an old gray wooden bench, with sturdy arms and a spindle back. A carved inscription on the top rail read In Memory of Matthew & Mary Kerney—Clayton’s paternal grandparents. He wondered if Kerney had made it.

  He sat on the bench and gazed at the house and the southerly hills beyond, the angle of the sun low in the cloudless sky, heating up the day. It was clear and calm enough to see a trace of distant farmland that bordered the Rio Grande and dwindled away to nothing north of El Paso.

  Clayton glanced at his wristwatch. Two hours to go before the guests, governor, and ambassador arrived. It was that in-between time when not much happened. As he started back to the center, he cautioned himself to stay alert.

  Half an hour before the start of the festivities, all was in order and ready to go. Long tables draped in white linen positioned in front of the living room windows held covered trays of finger food, disposable plates and utensils, bottles of wine, plastic glasses, and elaborately decorated confections. Next to the fireplace stood a portable podium complete with a built-in speaker and microphone.

  Outside, three TV satellite trucks were parked on the south side of the house, where Avery and Garcia had conducted inspections of the vehicles, mostly to amuse themselves.

  By four o’clock, virtually all two hundred well-dressed guests had arrived and gathered in clusters inside and outside the center, chatting, strolling, drinking, and nibbling.

  Clayton studied faces, looking for people who seemed nervous or distracted, a stray loner on the fringe of the crowd, or someone loitering where the VIP cars would arrive. He didn’t count on appearances to trigger suspicion; perps came in all varieties. Today, there wasn’t a person in sight who set off warning bells.

  When Davenport, dressed in her black-and-ivory sleeveless dress, announced the governor and the ambassador would be twenty minutes late, it didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.

  Twenty minutes later as promised, Governor Vigil and Ambassador Francisco de Cardenas arrived, causing a stir of excitement as folks surged toward the car. They came out of the backseat smiling, the ambassador first, tanned and sporting a neatly trimmed mustache and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, followed by the governor, tall in his mid-fifties with brown hair, broad shoulders, and the athletic build of a former college running back.

  Avery and Garcia quickly formed up and moved within arm’s reach of the ambassador, while Joe Castellano and his team forged a path for the governor, who paused here and there, shaking hands and chatting his way toward the front door. Ambassador Cardenas kept pace, greeting guests with smiles and handshakes. Video cameras recorded, smartphone cameras flashed, shutters clicked, and TV reporters talked into their microphones as the two men inched their way inside.

  In the living room, Clayton stayed near the front door. Joe Castellano soon joined him. A little over six feet, Joe was taller than Clayton and had a friendly smile that masked a tenacious competitiveness. Clayton had no doubt Castellano would someday be chief of the state police.

  “Why the special handling for the ambassador?” he asked, wondering if there was anything else to the story Luis Mondragon had told him.

  Castellano shrugged. “The governor wants to be a senator, but figures he’s six years out. Next stop, if he plays his cards right, may be ambassador to the United Nations, then the Senate. Didn’t Mondragon fill you in?”

  “Not the specifics,” Clayton replied.

  “Now you know,” Joe said as he scanned the crowd around the governor.

  Meeting and greeting was what Governor Javier Alejandro Vigil did best. He had a knack for making folks feel he was truly listening to them. He introduced Francisco de Cardenas to the ranking university officials and local business leaders, and glad-handed everybody who sought him out. When the time came for his remarks, he ignored the podium, unveiled the plaque honoring Erma Fergurson, said a few words about her vision and generosity, and thanked all those assembled who’d helped to make the expansion of the center possible.

  It took Davenport a few minutes to corral all the VIPs for the groundbreaking ceremony but soon she had them trooping outside with the governor. The guests followed, spilling off the portal onto the grounds.

  Clayton checked the time and smiled. He’d get home early enough to shower and change before taking Grace out to dinner.

  On the other side of the temporary orange construction fence, the backhoe rumbled into position behind the governor and the assembled VIPs, all with shovels in hand. In unison, they dug into the earth and discharged their ceremonial duty to much applause.

  On cue, as the governor and VIPs turned to watch, the backhoe operator swung the bucket, lowered it, and dug into the ground, quickly depositing the dirt in a pile behind the fencing. He swung the bucket back, dug deeper, and repeated the operation. As the bucket swung into everyone’s view with a third scoop of rocks and earth, the backhoe exposed part of a human skull wrapped in a fragment of cloth.

  Shield in hand, Clayton ran forward yelling at the operator to stop, but it was too late. The skull, cloth, and what looked like a lower arm attached to a hand spilled onto the pile, completely covered over by the dirt.

  Behind him, Clayton heard the crowd gasp as the backhoe operator shut down the machine. Clayton gazed unhappily at the mound of dirt, hoping the bones might be from some ancient burial. But until he knew differently, he had a homicide on his hands and hours of hard work ahead. He called Grace and apologetically told her to cancel their dinner reservation.

  CHAPTER 2

  It took two days of careful excavation to uncover all the residue of the skeletal remains from the burial site. Nobody, other than the news media, was happy about it, and Clayton caught the brunt of crabbiness coming from Santa Fe.

  During the little time he spent at home to sleep and change his clothes, Grace had fallen silent. Her disappointment about their ruined anniversary trip cut deep. At the center, Cynthia Davenport constantly hovered outside the crime scene barrier, repeatedly asking members of the forensic team when they would be finished. Finally fed up, Clayton escorted her away and banned her from further loitering.

  The general contractor, David Michael Jones, owner of DMJ Construction, nervously came and went, mumbling about lost job time. And by way of Luis Mondragon, Cla
yton learned the governor wasn’t pleased that his opportunity to look like potential ambassadorial timber had gotten so screwed up.

  All of it got synthesized into one very unambiguous message from state police headquarters in Santa Fe: clear the case ASAP.

  The fact that the body had been in the ground for decades, that an old, rusted nineteenth century pistol had been found with the skeleton, and that there were entry and exit wounds from a bullet to the head, made that scenario unlikely. Additionally, the backhoe had severed the skeleton in half and shattered bones into shards, making evidence-gathering more time-consuming. Technicians were painstakingly reconstructing the skull, which was seriously damaged when the contents of the bucket had been dumped.

  Nevertheless, the evidence gathered so far raised Clayton’s hopes slightly. Analysis showed that the victim was a young Caucasian female, probably in her twenties. She had been wrapped in a blanket before being buried in a shallow grave less than twenty-five yards from the house, which meant the body had been moved from the original crime scene.

  The cloth fragments found at the site were a combination of natural and synthetic fibers, which suggested, regardless of the presence of the old pistol, that the murder had been relatively recent, perhaps no more than fifty or sixty years ago. But that didn’t rule out the possibility that the skeleton was very old, and along with the antique handgun had been wrapped in the more recent blanket and reburied. Fortunately, the need to bring in a forensic anthropologist proved unnecessary when the skull revealed dental work that conclusively put the victim in the modern era.

  All that didn’t ease Clayton’s mind. In many homicides, especially cold cases, the crimes remained unsolved. Notwithstanding advances in technology and science, little had happened to change that unpleasant fact. Despite daunting odds against a successful arrest and prosecution, Clayton wasn’t about to give up.

  As he gazed at the tract of land that had been cleared and graded by the contractor prior to the groundbreaking ceremony, he wondered what it looked like before being scrubbed down to bare ground. He glanced at the house. Why would a killer bury a victim close to a residence, heightening the risk of discovery? Or at the time of the murder had the house even existed?

  Clayton went looking for Davenport, found her in her office, and learned that Erma Fergurson had built and moved into the house in 1966.

  “What did the land look like before the contractor cleared it for the groundbreaking ceremony?” he asked.

  “It was very rocky, with several sotol plants here and there,” she said. “Also, there were some boulder-size rocks, lots of mesquite, and some old dead juniper trees, one of them huge.”

  “That’s all? No structures or stand of trees?”

  “No.”

  “Was the area used for anything?”

  Davenport shook her head. “Not that I know of. None of the walking trails on the property go in that direction.”

  Clayton asked her to make a sketch of it.

  “I doubt it would be very accurate,” Davenport replied.

  “Whatever you can remember will be very helpful.”

  Davenport quickly drew a rough map and handed it to Clayton. In addition to the placement of several large boulders at the far corner of the site, it showed a large dead juniper tree close to the spot where the backhoe had revealed the human skull.

  Clayton pointed to the juniper. “Are you sure before the site was cleared the juniper tree was here?”

  “Yes, I am. I remember it clearly because it died three or four years ago and lost all its needles. I’d look out from the portal and think it needed to be cut down. I just never got around to having it done.”

  “Thank you.” Clayton folded the sketch and put it in his shirt pocket.

  “When can we start construction?” Davenport asked.

  “I’m going to talk to the contractor now,” Clayton said, sidestepping the question. Outside, he told Garcia and Avery to have the crime scene techs go over every inch of the cleared ground once more, looking for anything that caught their eye, and drove to the office of DMJ Construction.

  The construction yard sat south of town on a state road that featured feedlots, clusters of run-down houses, and the shuttered remains of failed roadside businesses, closed years ago because of the completion of the nearby interstate highway. Enclosed by a chain-link fence, the two-acre yard contained a modular office on concrete supports, several large toolsheds, and an old semi truck-trailer presumably used for storage.

  Heavy equipment, dump trucks, and pickups littered the lot, haphazardly parked among the piles of rock and gravel, stacks of rebar and lumber, and an old conveyor that fed raw material to a separator. A junk pile of old tires, discarded wire spools, miscellaneous broken engine parts, and empty oil drums sat in the far corner of the lot in sharp contrast to the stark uplift of the distant Organ Mountains.

  Clayton found Jones in a small office of the modular building. Five-eight, he had big round eyes and upwardly slanted eyebrows that made him look always surprised at something. He immediately wanted to know if he could put his people to work.

  “Not quite yet,” Clayton replied. Sitting across from Jones at a tiny, very dusty desk, he showed him Davenport’s sketch and asked if she’d gotten the tree location correct.

  “I’d say so.”

  “Did you walk the land before you cleared it?”

  “Yeah, the whole site, twice.”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Trash? Old tires? Beer cans? Anything a person might have left behind?”

  Jones scratched his chin. “Nothing like that, but there was an old rock campfire pit. It hadn’t been used in years, but I knew what it was right away.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I do a lot of deer hunting in season. It was man-made, for sure.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Near the dead juniper.”

  “What did you do with the material you removed from the site?” Clayton asked.

  “Hauled it here and separated what I could.”

  “And the trees?”

  Jones nodded in the direction of the window behind Clayton. “In the yard, behind the gravel. I’ve got a guy coming to grind the smaller branches into mulch and cut up the rest for firewood I’ll sell in the fall.”

  Clayton got to his feet. “Let’s go look.”

  Jones led the way past the mounds of gravel, rock, and dirt, each at least twenty feet tall. Unless Clayton used an earthmover and had a squad of techs sifting through all of it by hand for weeks, whatever might be hiding there of value to the investigation was simply beyond his reach.

  The dead junipers had been knocked down, loaded in pieces on a truck, and dumped along the fence. With Jones’s help, Clayton pushed aside the branches partially covering the largest of the dead junipers to get a better look at it. Where it had snapped off at the stump, he did a rough tree ring count, and gauged it to be at least a hundred and fifty years old.

  Under the bark of a four-inch-thick branch, a neatly coiled pattern protruded, as though something had been deliberately wrapped around it and become encased under the bark. Perhaps it was nothing more than a piece of baling wire twisted around the limb for some reason. Years ago on the rez, Clayton had come upon a tree that had virtually engulfed a small No Trespassing sign, so he knew such oddities were possible. He ran his hand over the pattern, backed off, and took a closer look. It looked and felt less substantial than baling wire.

  “What is it?” Jones asked.

  “I don’t know,” Clayton replied. “But I’d like to take this branch with me.”

  Jones sawed the branch off at the trunk, trimmed it into a four-foot length, and handed it to Clayton. “When can I get my people started on the job?”

  He tucked the branch under his arm and started for his unit. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Jones smiled. “Great. Think you’ll actually solve the case?”

  “Officially, I can’t comment, but I’m da
mn sure gonna try.”

  “Good luck with it.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Call me if you dig up any more bodies.”

  “I’ve got your number on speed dial,” Jones replied.

  In Clayton’s absence from the center, a dust devil had swept through the job site, coating the crime scene vehicles and unmarked units with a sheen of dirt. He found Avery and Garcia, both sporting crusty faces, on the rear portal of the center with a rusted motor oil can peppered with bullet holes and a crumpled, empty cigarette package—the total haul from the latest sweep. He handed Avery the branch from the juniper tree and asked Garcia to tell the crime scene team to wrap it up and head out.

  “Now the hard work starts,” he added.

  “What’s the stick for?” Avery asked as Garcia hurried off to release the CSI personnel.

  “It came from a dead juniper near where the victim was unearthed.” Clayton pointed out the coiled pattern. “I want it X-rayed pronto.” He handed it to Avery. “If it shows a foreign object embedded in the wood, find somebody, maybe an arborist or a botanist at the university, who can very carefully expose it without causing any damage, if that’s possible.”

  “You got it.” Avery swung the branch like a baseball bat.

  “Enter it into evidence. I’ll do the paperwork later to start the chain of custody.”

  Avery slapped the limb against his open palm. “This is a first, a dead juniper branch as evidence.”

  “Any progress with the pistol?” Clayton asked.

  “It’s a Colt Single Action Army .45, probably very early production model from the 1870s,” Avery answered. “The cylinder and ejector housing are rusted to the frame, and we don’t have serial numbers yet due to its poor condition. Pristine, it would be worth some big bucks. There’s nothing like it in the National Crime Information ­Center database.”

  “The murder might predate the NCIC system,” Clayton mused.

  Avery nodded. “A depressing but likely thought. And because the body was moved, we may never know where the actual killing took place.”