The Drum Within

by James R. Scarantino

  Aragon answered herself. “To die among other soldiers.”

  “Goff’s still insisting Fager did it and Bronkowski’s paying a debt.”

  She asked a member of the accident team for the Linda Fager photo. It was enclosed in a plastic sleeve. A drop of blood smeared the plastic. The upper left corner of the photo had been torn off.

  Was Bronkowski in love with Linda Fager? Maybe this had nothing to do with Bosnia.

  Lewis answered a call while she stared at white crosses.

  “Fager’s house has been secured. And Bronkowski’s. The Camry’s there,” he reported.

  “We need that bone.”

  A beige Camry was parked at Bronkowski’s address on a residential street south of the Capitol building. One uniformed policewoman stood by the car, another at the door of the modest frame stucco house. Aragon put a hand to the driver’s side window to shield the glare. Inside, a cardboard Budweiser case, closed with duct tape, strapped into the passenger seat.

  Lewis said they should get a warrant, and she agreed. The car wasn’t going anywhere. No reason to create legal issues. She would write it up. Lewis would shop judges.

  They moved on to Fager’s house. A patrol car blocked the drive. An officer dozed in the sun on the front step, but came alert at steps on the gravel drive. Again they concurred on the wisdom of a warrant before entering the house.

  But no warrant was needed for the garbage cans at the curb. Aragon kicked one over. A busted portrait frame spilled out, followed by a few stuffed, white plastic bags. The frame was made of oak. Its back had been ripped off, a triangle of photograph caught in the corner. She suspected it was the missing piece of the bloodstained Linda Fager portrait found in the debris of Bronkowski’s crash.

  Her nails were cut too short to ease it out. Lewis freed it with tweezers on his Leatherman.

  “Did we have this upside down?” she asked her partner. “Is Fager missing because he’s dead? Maybe that blood on this photo is his. Maybe Bronkowski killed him because he killed the woman Bronkowski loved, and Geronimo because … ”

  She didn’t know how to finish.

  Lewis sealed the piece of photograph in a plastic baggie. “This gives Marcy Thornton a whole new box of ammo to shoot up our case against Geronimo. I wonder if Tasha Gonzalez ever cleaned Fager’s office.”

  “Just when we saw things winding down, they blow up again.” Aragon kicked over another trash can. Only sealed, white plastic bags spilled out. Cadets would search them later. They returned the bags to the cans and Lewis sealed lids with yellow tape.

  “I’ve got something I need to check,” she said. “It might be nothing. But it might answer a lot of questions.”

  First, she needed to speak with Mascarenas. She went off by herself behind Fager’s house and called her cousin. He was in a hospital lab having blood drawn, keeping his cell close for work. She told him about planting the surveillance camera on the property of Secret Canyon Gallery. Mascarenas asked his phlebotomist for a minute alone. Then he told her that what she had done was absolutely illegal.

  “But you might as well take a look.”

  Lewis was loading the garbage cans in his minivan when she returned to the front of the house.

  “I need to get to my apartment to use my laptop. Can you take me to my car?”

  They drove for three blocks before Lewis spoke.

  “Whatever happened to that camera that caught you breaking into Geronimo’s ranch? That’s what you called Mascarenas about.” He kept his eyes on the road. “I never said a thing. Identified the camera for you. Explained how it worked. Then nothing.” Lewis lowered his chin. “I might as well have been breaking that window with you. How much worse can it get?”

  “Working the grill at Blake’s for the rest of our lives.”

  “Do you think my wife and I haven’t had this conversation? Have you heard me saying anything about wanting another partner so I don’t get hit with your blowback?”

  She pulled the camera from her jacket.

  “We need a laptop. With an SD reader.”

  “On the floor behind the seat.”

  He pulled to the curb. Trees gave them shade to view the screen. She removed the SD card and fed it into the slot on the side of his computer.

  There was a separate video file for each instance the camera’s motion detector was activated. The first images confused them. A shapeless, shimmering ocean surface. Then it went dark. The next file was the same, and two more after that. Not until the fifth file did they see something recognizable.

  “That’s a squirrel’s tail.” Lewis pointed. The full animal came into view. A black squirrel moved across the bottom of the screen, raised its tail and was gone.

  “We’ve been seeing reflections of light and clouds in a window,” he said. “I don’t think the camera can see through glass, or be triggered by motion on the other side. Go to the last file. The one right before the shooting.”

  “Probably more of the same. This wasn’t worth the risk.”

  The last file was recorded earlier that day, at 3:11 a.m.

  “Can they see in the dark?” she asked.

  “What good’s a surveillance camera that doesn’t work when bad guys come out?”

  “This isn’t the shooting. The call came in after seven.”

  She clicked on the file and they saw something very different from the other clips. Light and colors rushed at them too fast, except for the final startling image. Lewis reached over and showed her how to replay the file at very slow speed. Now they could discern a square of light with a round hole almost dead center in the frame. The square began to fall apart, a sheet of ice cracking. Big pieces fell away until there was a jagged edge of glass in a window frame.

  Now a view of a beamed ceiling, walls hung with paintings, the back of a man’s head, the scalp ripped open, a gaping hole, a ponytail dropping out of view to reveal the face of another man looking straight at the hidden camera. His extended arm held a semi-automatic handgun, the shadow inside its barrel lined up almost with the center of the screen. He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a stiff sheet of paper and let it fall. Then he turned and walked off camera.

  “What are we seeing?” she asked. “I think I know, but I want to hear it from you.”

  “It starts with the window, light coming from inside the gallery instead of being reflected on the outside. That round hole. The bullet that exited Geronimo’s head continued through the glass and triggered the camera’s motion activation. The window shatters and we’re looking into the gallery. We’re seeing Geronimo from behind, the instant after he’s been shot. He falls and we see the shooter.” Lewis drummed the steering wheel. “Can you make any sense of this?”

  She turned away to think. They were outside a brewpub that had not yet opened. The sidewalk was littered with cigarettes from last night’s drinkers. An advertisement plastered to the light pole offered rides for people worried about driving with more than a point-eight in their system. “You Drink, You Drive, You Lose,” it said across the bottom.

  “What was that name you wrote on the napkin?” she asked. “The last time at Juanita’s with Fager. Sherman? Sheldon?”

  “Shelby.”

  Fifty

  “Kill that word and tell it again.”

  “Sir?”

  “You say ‘routine’ in the same sentence with ‘Detective Denise Aragon,’” Joe Donnelly said, scowling at Lewis. “You’re full of shit.”

  Aragon watched her partner trying to put the right words in the right order so the Professional Standards investigator would come on board. She saw herself a couple days back giving Fager the words he needed, and holding back ones that would have driven him away. Fager knew what was going on, underneath the words. So did Donnelly. He just needed to hear Lewis say it right.

  “And after observing that the proj
ectile had passed through the victim’s skull and out a window, destroying the window, detective Aragon, pursuant to standard procedures … ”

  “Back up,” Donnelly said. “Start at ‘destroying the window’ and don’t give me a ‘standard procedures’ whitewash. Tell me what the hell she did.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lewis took a breath. “Seeing that the projectile had continued on through a window, destroying the window, Detective Aragon went outside to determine the course of the bullet to ascertain if it could be recovered. She observed on a wall between the gallery and the next building what appeared to be a recording device concealed inside a figurine, a clay Navajo storyteller variety. From the figurine she recovered a surveillance camera aimed at said window. The camera was manufactured by SleuthCon, model number … ”

  “I don’t need that.”

  “Partial latents from the camera match Geronimo’s right index finger and thumb.”

  “That I need. Prints on the SD card inside?”

  “None.”

  Donnelly stroked his chin. “I suppose he could have handled the card by its edges.” His hand came away from his face, the index finger pointing to the ceiling. “Or the process of slipping the card into place wiped it.”

  “Yes, sir. Highly possible.”

  “Works for me.”

  “Furthermore,” Lewis continued, not catching Aragon’s look telling him he had said enough, “the shooter doesn’t have standing to challenge a search of Geronimo’s gallery. He has no legal interest in that property, thus no reasonable expectation of privacy entitled to Fourth Amendment protection.”

  “Now you’re a lawyer.”

  “No, sir. Channeling ADA Joseph Mascarenas.”

  “That must hurt.”

  “What about our other question?” she asked, stepping in now that Donnelly had signaled he was ready to move forward. “About getting a civilian involved in a homicide investigation.”

  “Get me the manual.”

  She dug a copy of the department’s code of conduct from her desk and passed it to Donnelly.

  “It’s not biased-based policing,” he said, turning pages he probably knew by heart. “No allegations of sexual harassment or gender-identity discrimination. Can’t have a hostile workplace for someone not an employee.” He paged some more. “Well lookie here. Under the department’s statement of key values in achieving its mission, it says we uphold community participation through sharing and understanding. Community participation. Sharing. That’s what you did. Can’t fault you for honoring our statement of values.”

  Donnelly left their office to listen from an interrogation room across the hall. Lewis arranged two chairs to face the computer screen on his desk. He remained on his feet. He would stand against the wall as Aragon ran the show.

  She heard Sam Goff coming down the hall, shouting hellos to cops he once worked with. He entered the little office and looked around at a room he had called his for over a decade.

  “That’s still up there.” Goff nodded at a framed copy of The Albuquerque Journal, the headline about the UNM Lobos upsetting the number one college basketball team.

  She put a cup of coffee on the desk by the computer and kicked out a chair.

  “Something you need to see.”

  “Where’s Fager?”

  “Still missing. But this will answer a lot of questions. Sit down, Sam.”

  Goff took the chair and tried the coffee.

  “My old desk. I remember making that cigarette burn. We could smoke in here. Tells you how long ago that was. Coffee’s still lousy.”

  Donnelly came in quietly and stood with Lewis. She tapped the keyboard. The still image of light shining from inside a window held the screen until she pressed “play.” The video ran in slow motion. When it was done, she froze the final image.

  Sam Goff, Beretta in hand. Fager’s Beretta.

  Goff pushed back his chair and started to rise. Lewis needed only lay his hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat.

  “So we know how,” she said.

  Goff would not look at his face on the computer screen. He dropped his eyes to the cigarette burn in the desk, maybe thinking back to a time when he ran shows like this.

  “We left you to watch Fager. You knew his gun was at his house. You got in through the back door. We found scratches on the lock. Thanks to Bronkowski being helpful, you knew exactly where to go. And you took a photo of Linda Fager. It had been in its frame so long, a corner stuck and was ripped off. Then you went to Geronimo’s. You walked in, gloves on, and shot him. In the face. How Fager said he would do it. You were damn quick to remind me.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Goff pointed a bent finger at the screen. His voice was distant and defeated.

  “Geronimo had it set up,” Lewis said. “We found it searching the scene.”

  “A routine search,” Donnelly said, “following standard procedure.”

  Aragon continued. “You dropped the Linda Fager photo next to Geronimo. It fell into his blood. DNA confirms it. No blowback on the gun. Maybe Geronimo was backing away, wondering what the ex-cop who investigated him for Tasha Gonzalez was doing, showing up in his gallery late at night.”

  Donnelly moved so he and Lewis bracketed Goff, ready for when Aragon finished.

  “You returned to Fager’s office. He was gone. You were supposed to call so we could catch him with his gun and hit him with a bail violation. You needed a cover story to explain how you could have missed him if you had been watching all night. So you pretended to have been sleeping. Maybe you even slept some until Bronkowski woke you. Then you returned to Fager’s, called me from there, still playing the part. You yelled to a neighbor walking a dog to make sure you were seen. After the news of Fager missing, they were good enough to call us.”

  “Where was the camera? I checked. He had lousy security. Just motion detectors.”

  Three detectives met eyes. They had heard the beginning of a confession.

  “Checked when, Sam?”

  “Fuck. Before I shot the piece of shit. Alright?”

  “You insisted Bronkowski was not the shooter.” She felt her confidence growing, seeing it hold together. “You were right to make us question why Bronkowski had not used his own gun. I’m guessing that after Bronkowski left Fager’s office he went to his house. Didn’t find him there. So he rushed to Geronimo’s. He was worried about Fager doing something stupid. What he saw confirmed his fears. He cleaned up, thinking Fager had done it. He took the photo and the gun. But he did more. He put down arrows pointing to himself. He intentionally stepped in the blood. No shooter would have left a bloody palm print. It wasn’t a stabbing. He gave that little show outside, shooting up the statues, to make sure he was seen.”

  Goff still would not look at her.

  “Now you’re going to tell me why,” he said.

  “Because Fager saved Bronkowski’s life in Bosnia. He was paying it back.”

  “Not Bronkowski. Me.”

  “Why you did it? We’ve got that, too. You went after Fager at every one of our meetings. I thought it was about him ending your career. I wasn’t paying attention when you kept bringing up another case. The Shelbys.” She raised her gaze to Lewis.

  Donnelly added his hand to Goff’s other shoulder while Lewis spoke.

  “Mascarenas remembers you in court for the trial. Figured you were caught up in the sad story with the rest of the city. A whole family wiped out by a repeat drunk driver. The surviving father destroyed emotionally when defense counsel convinces jurors he killed them by falling asleep at the wheel. The killer walks. The distraught father takes his own life. People forgot. Not you.”

  “They were my kids.”

  Lewis chewed his lip. Aragon could see this was hard for him, a father imagining what another father could feel.

  “Shirley divorced you
,” Lewis continued, “right when you came to Santa Fe, before you joined the force. That’s why nobody ever met her. She married Daniel Shelby, changed her name and the kids’. You hated Fager, but not because of what he did to you.”

  “I did plant the gun on Gallardo,” Goff said. “I deserved what I got. My children, they … ” He didn’t finish.

  “You saw Fager getting another killer off,” Aragon said. “This time unintentionally, but that didn’t matter. That’s when you saw a way to get your revenge on Fager and at the same time keep Geronimo from ever hurting another woman. Maybe you felt guilty about not stopping him the first time you had a chance, despite blaming it on everybody else getting in your way. You would take out Geronimo and pin it on Fager. Sam, look at me.”

  He lifted his chin.

  “We had Geronimo. No matter what Thornton threw into the fan, how much Fager was falling apart. We had him. Bronkowski brought back a bone from one of Geronimo’s statues. It’s going to match one of the women in those graves. We would have found all the statues, and the one with pieces of Linda Fager inside. We’ve got his DNA on paper towels with her blood. He’d go down for the women buried on federal land and the DA would refile state charges on Linda Fager. We don’t even need my recording of him talking to Thornton.”

  “They all get away,” Goff said. “Somehow.”

  “Not all of them,” Donnelly said and reached under Goff’s arm. “Stand up.”

  Fifty-One

  “It’s a fee until it’s paid. Then it’s our money in the bank,” Marcy Thornton said. “The estate could try to get it back to cover debts. Since I’m Cody’s executor, that’s not going to happen.” She winked and pushed an envelope across her desk to Lily Montclaire. “A hazard bonus, the balance of the expense retainer. For having to stay at that scary ranch all by your lonesome. Cody would have approved, but I don’t care if he wouldn’t.”

  Montclaire opened the flap on a wad of hundred dollar bills.

  “I think I’ll go to Paris. Can I have a week?” She riffed the bills, remembering posing at the tip of the island that held Notre Dame, modeling black-on-black suits coming into fashion then. Before color was rediscovered. Before lines at the corners of her eyes ended her career.