Death Song

Chapter Eleven

Overnight the tail end of the blizzard backed into northern New Mexico and dumped an additional six inches of snow on Santa Fe County. At dawn Kerney broke his way through the frozen crust of deep snow to the barn and spent the better part of an hour cleaning out stalls and feeding the horses and Patrick’s pony.

Kerney had kept the stock inside the barn for protection during the storm, and they were restless and in need of exercise. One by one he turned them loose in the corrals, and they pawed, kicked, pranced, stuck their muzzles into the snow, and high-stepped through the drifts near the fence line. Patrick’s pony, Pablito, bucked his way around the perimeter fence, whinnying as he went.

Kerney watched their spirited antics for a few minutes before deciding to leave them outside until after breakfast. As he trudged back to the house, the depth of the snow made him doubt that Jack Burke would have the ranch road plowed by eight o’clock as he had promised. In fact, Kerney doubted that much of anything would be moving in northern New Mexico for at least another day.

He shucked off his coat and boots in the mudroom, sat at the kitchen table, downed a big glass of orange juice, and listened for sounds of movement from Sara, Patrick, or Clayton. All was quiet. He called the regional dispatch center and asked for a report on road conditions.

“It’s a big mess, Chief,” the dispatcher said. “The Interstate is shut down, none of the major city arterials have been plowed or sanded, there are six-foot snowdrifts on some of the county roads, and we’ve got people calling 911 to report that they are stuck in their driveways and would I please send someone to help. There are motorists in ditches, none of the tow truck operators are moving, officers can’t make it to work, and those who have are attempting to transport emergency medical personnel to the hospital or rescue stranded motorists along the Interstate.”

“Put me through to the shift commander.”

“Deputy Chief Otero is ten-eighty-one if you want to talk to him.”

Somehow Larry had made it to police headquarters. “Ask him to stand by for my phone call,” Kerney said.

“Ten-four.”

He called and talked to Otero, who told him that the graveyard shift had been held over to pull a double, and only about half of the first shift had reported for duty.

“I’ve told all commanders to respond to emergency calls, only if we can even get to those locations,” Larry added, “and I’ve authorized all nonessential civilian personnel to take a snow day.”

“Very good.”

“Also, the state police report that the governor is going to declare a state of emergency. He’s calling out the National Guard to assist.”

“That will help a lot.”

“Sergeant Pino and Detective Chacon are on their way to the Cañoncito crime scene. Pino wants to know if you have contact with Sergeant Istee.”

“Tell her affirmative and to proceed without us. We’ll be at her twenty later in the morning. Speaking of Sergeant Istee, he needs to borrow a vehicle. What do we have on the lot?”

“If he can get here, there’s an unmarked Crown Vic with a rebuilt motor he can use.”

“I’ll let him know,” Kerney said. “Thanks, Larry.”

“I’m here if you need me,” Otero said before disconnecting.

Kerney checked the pantry and refrigerator to see what he could whip up for breakfast. He had no idea how long Clayton would sleep, so he decided he would make blueberry pancakes—one of Patrick’s all-time favorite meals—and keep a batch warming in the oven for Clayton.

He put the teakettle on the stove, got the coffeepot started for Sara, and was halfway through his prep when Patrick came into the kitchen still wearing his pajamas and holding his copy of Herman and Poppy Go Singing in the Hills, a storybook of the friendship between a horse and a pony.

“Good morning, scout.” Kerney picked up his son and gave him a smooch. “It’s blueberry pancakes for breakfast.”

“Yummy.” Patrick grinned and threw his arms around Kerney’s neck. “Mom says it’s a snow day and everybody has to stay home.”

“Some of us can’t, sport.” Kerney lowered Patrick to the floor. “But the time is coming when I won’t have to go to work anymore.”

“And you won’t be a police chief anymore,” Patrick added.

“That’s right,” Kerney said, wondering how that was going to feel.

He poured Patrick a glass of orange juice and sat him at the kitchen table. Between sips of his juice, Patrick read the fantastic adventures of Herman and Poppy aloud. Only Sara’s arrival temporarily interrupted the telling of the tale. Clayton followed along soon after, looking a whole lot better after a good night’s sleep.

Kerney put the finishing touches on breakfast and served it up while Patrick regaled the table with the part of the story where Poppy the pony goes missing and Herman the horse goes looking for his friend.

Clayton said it was one of the best stories he’d ever heard.

Patrick replied there was one that was even better and hurried off to his room. He returned with his all-time favorite book, a dog-eared copy of Pablito the Pony, and promptly started reading it to Clayton.

After breakfast, all hands pitched in to clear the table and stack the dishwasher. Chores done, the foursome went to the barn to put the horses back in their stalls. On their return to the house, Jack Burke and his road grader came into view. From the front courtyard they watched as he cut a swath in the snow wide enough for one car to get through and cleared the driveway to the ranch house.

At Sara’s insistence, Jack came inside for a cup of coffee. Patrick promptly climbed onto Jack’s lap as he sat at the kitchen table and asked if he could have a ride on the road grader. With Sara’s permission, Jack agreed to give him a short ride to the lip of the canyon and back.

“Can I drive it?” Patrick asked.

“You sure can,” Jack said, getting a nod from Kerney.

Patrick’s eyes lit up. He jumped off Jack’s lap, ran to the mudroom, returned with his boots and cold weather gear in hand, and started getting ready to go back outside.

“Guess I’d better hurry up and finish this coffee,” Jack said with a grin.

“We have to go as well,” Kerney said, gesturing toward Clayton. “Thanks for plowing our road.”

“No need for thanks,” Jack replied. “I like driving that big old grader about as much as Patrick does.”

Bundled up and ready to go, three men and one excited little boy trooped out into the fierce glare of sunlight bouncing off the thick layer of snow.

In the truck, Kerney lowered the visor, honked the horn, waved at Patrick and Jack, and started down the road. Even with the plowing Jack had done, it was slow going. Kerney made the turn onto the highway, looked at Clayton, and grinned.

“What?” Clayton asked.

“I was just thinking that you look a hell of a lot better once you get a good night’s sleep.”

Clayton smiled slightly. “Too bad it didn’t make me any smarter. Maybe then I’d have some ideas of what we should do to solve the murders.”

“Sometimes the solution is in the little details.”

Clayton nodded. He’d slept hard until just before he woke, when the dream of Tim Riley dressed as an Apache warrior and the faceless, laughing woman had returned. What did it mean? Why couldn’t he shake free of Riley’s ghost? Today he’d worn black jeans and a black wool sweater to protect himself from ghost sickness. But maybe it was too late.

“Are you okay?” Kerney asked, noting the dark expression on Clayton’s face.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Clayton replied, forcing a smile, trying to make himself believe it.

At the Cañoncito double-wide Ramona Pino and Matt Chacon found an empty fifty-five-gallon oil drum in the stables and rolled it over the snow to the well house. At the woodshed they gathered up and carried armloads of kindling and firewood until they had enough to keep a good fire going for several hours. Matt got the fire started with blank paper from a writing tablet, and soon the warmth from the drum had noticeably raised the temperature under the improvised canopy that had been put up hastily during yesterday’s storm to protect the area from additional moisture contamination. But the canopy kept the smoke from rising, and after deciding the extra warmth wasn’t worth smoke-filled lungs and watery eyes, the two detectives cut it down.

Once the smoke had dissipated, Ramona crawled into the well house and turned on the battery-powered camping lantern. The partial roof on the structure and the temporary canopy had helped to keep deep snow from covering the dirt floor, but with a probe she could tell there was still a good twelve inches to dig through.

With the lantern instead of a flashlight and the morning sunlight streaming through the damaged roof, illumination inside the well house was much improved. Ramona did a careful visual inspection of all the surfaces that might have been touched by Brian Riley or anyone else who’d entered the structure, paying particular attention to the door, walls, and the metal parts of the old well motor and pipes that were exposed.

A good investigator knew that a person coming in contact with anything could leave a trace. Knowing what to look for could turn up a critical piece of evidence. It could be a hair, a fiber, a drop of blood, a mark left by a tool, a fingerprint, a footprint, or a toothpick with dried saliva on it. Cases had been solved and murderers convicted based on plant life, insects, and soil samples found at crime scenes.

On the rough-cut boards to the door there were what looked like some short dark hairs, quite possibly from rodents, stuck to the wood. It would be up to the lab to decide if the hairs were human or not. Using tweezers, Ramona removed each hair and bagged it separately.

She dusted for prints on likely surfaces and lifted several good ones from the metal door latch, the old motor, and one of the broken roof joists that hung down five feet above the dirt floor.

The snow accumulation behind the motor had an uneven indentation that Ramona closely examined. There were several scoop marks in the snow, made possibly by gloved hands. Brian Riley had come here yesterday looking for something, and this looked to be the likely spot.

Using a small trowel, Ramona began removing the snow by scraping away a thin layer at a time. When her trowel scratched something solid, she brushed the snow away to expose some wooden boards frozen to the dirt floor. Gently she pried the frost-covered boards loose and inspected them. There looked to be the outline of fingerprints on one of them. If so, when the frost on the board melted, the prints would mostly likely vanish.

Ramona quickly dusted the impressions, photographed the prints, and then examined the shallow pit the wooden slats had hidden. The earth had been disturbed, as though something had been dug out. A rectangular, dimpled outline around the edge of the pit suggested the object had been about the size of a briefcase.

Ramona photographed the pit, and the flash from her camera reflected off something shiny at one corner that was almost completely covered in dirt. She tried to pick it up with tweezers but couldn’t pull it free. Using the trowel, she pried it loose, slipped it off the trowel into a clear plastic bag, and zipped it closed. It was a gold coin, a 1974, one-troy-ounce South African Krugerrand. She put it in her coat pocket along with the other evidence she’d collected and went outside.

“Is it my turn?” Matt Chacon asked, standing next to the fire in the oil drum, looking warm and dry.

“Look at this.” Ramona handed Matt the bagged coin.

“A one-ounce Krugerrand. First produced in 1970. The obverse depicts Paul Kruger, the first president of the South African Republic, and the reverse shows the springbok, the national animal. During the apartheid years in South Africa, Krugerrands were banned from the United States.”

“I didn’t know you were a numismatist.” The heat from the fire felt wonderful. Ramona edged closer to the oil drum.

“Hardly that. I earned a coin collection merit badge in Boy Scouts.”

“I’m impressed. So how much is it worth?”

“If I remember correctly, Krugerrands contain exact amounts of gold, so the value of each coin is equivalent to the current market price of gold.”

“Which is?” Ramona asked.

“You’ve got me. The price of gold can change daily. It’s somewhere over five hundred dollars an ounce, I’d guess. Maybe way over.” Matt laughed. “I wish the pennies in my Lincoln collection were worth that much. I’d probably get seventy-five bucks for all of them, max. I like to think of the collection as my emergency cash fund. That’s pretty sad, isn’t it? Do you think there are any more Krugerrands in there?”

“I don’t know,” Ramona said, “but it does raise my curiosity to know what else might have been hidden here and why.”

“I’ll take a look. Finders keepers, right?”

“Get real, Detective,” Ramona replied with a smile.

Matt gave the coin back to Ramona and ducked inside the well house.

Using one of the tarps that had served as part of the canopy, Ramona assembled her collected evidence, tagged everything, and filled out the evidence log. She’d just finished up when Matt emerged from the well house holding another bagged coin for her to see. It was contained in a clear plastic sleeve, which had some letters and numbers on it in permanent ink.

“It was buried just a little bit deeper in the pit,” he said. “This one is a twenty-dollar U.S. gold piece. It’s called a Saint-Gaudens after the man who designed it. These are highly collectible and usually sell way above the value of the gold content.”

“What do the numbers and letters on the plastic sleeve mean?” Ramona asked.

“They have nothing to do with the grading of the quality of the coin, which looks to be uncirculated to me.”

“Uncirculated is good?”

“About the best there is. It’s one step down from brilliant uncirculated. I’m thinking the numbers and letters represent an inventory designation given to the coin by either the owner or a dealer who sold it.”

“So give me a guess on its value.”

“It could be thousands,” Matt replied. “It depends on rarity and condition.”

“From the evidence Don Mielke collected at Clifford Talbott’s ranch house, Brian Riley was down to his last five thousand dollars in cash,” Ramona said. “Do you think he may have come back here for the coins?”

“Maybe, but there were no gold coins listed in the evidence inventory from the ranch house.”

“Riley could have hidden the coins in the house before Talbott arrived and shot him. Ask Mielke to send an investigator out there to look.”

Matt keyed his handheld and made the request just as Chief Kerney and Sergeant Istee came into sight.

“Good morning,” Kerney said as he entered the small clearing. He handed each detective a thermal mug of coffee that had been freshly brewed in the mobile command vehicle. “Bring us up to speed.”

Coffee in hand, Ramona talked about their morning finds and showed them the two coins. “It will probably take all day for Detective Chacon and me to finish up here,” she added.

“Not if the four of us take shifts,” Clayton said.

“That’s a good idea,” Kerney said. He turned to Ramona. “Why don’t you and Matt head back to the S.O. command vehicle and see what you can find out about any open or cold cases involving stolen gold coins while we take a turn inside the well house. Take the fingerprint evidence with you and run it through any computer database you can think of while you’re there.”

“Will do,” Matt said.

“Have you told her?” Kerney asked Matt with a nod in Ramona’s direction.

“Told me what?” Ramona asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Matt answered.

“Shall I?”

“Go ahead, Chief.”

“Sergeant Pino, meet Sergeant Chacon, effective the first of next week. You’re losing him to the Property Crimes Unit.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Before Matt could answer, she swung around to face Kerney. “Do I get to pick his replacement?”

Kerney nodded, laughed, and slapped Matt on the back. “See how soon you’ll be forgotten?”

Grinning from ear to ear, Matt faked a sad head shake.

As the two left the clearing, Ramona continued chewing out Matt for not being forthcoming.

“I’ll take the first shift,” Clayton said.

“There could be footprints in the frozen ground underneath the hard-packed snow in front of the entrance,” Kerney said. “I’ll start on that.”

“That’s a good idea.”

Kerney threw some wood onto the fire and picked up a small shovel. “Let’s get to it.”

The two men worked steadily for an hour without uncovering anything of value. There were no footprints under the packed-down snow in front of the well house door, and the buckets of snow Clayton had removed from inside the well house and melted over the fire contained no trace evidence visible to the naked eye.

As they warmed themselves by the fire, Clayton asked if anyone had inspected the exterior of the well house for evidence.

“Not that I know of,” Kerney replied.

After a careful but futile up-and-down look at the exterior walls, they returned to the fire burning in the oil drum.

Clayton threw another log on it. “We’ve been assuming that Riley followed a path to the well house when he came here yesterday. What if he didn’t? What if it wasn’t a path to begin with and he simply went cross-country.”

Kerney looked back through the trees in the direction of the double-wide. “If he did go cross-country, he took a fairly direct route from the residence to the well house.”

“This well house hasn’t been used in years,” Clayton replied. “It was abandoned long before Tim Riley bought the land and moved his double-wide onto the property. Maybe there’s an old path. That’s where we have the best shot at finding any footprint evidence.”

Kerney made a three-sixty scan. The clearing and the well house were in a slight depression on the downslope of a mesa. Below, through a break in the trees, he could see the narrow canyon floor where the railroad tracks followed the creekbed. He looked up at the mesa. Near the top, a quartet of deep arroyos converged into one and snaked down to join with the creek within fifty feet of where he stood.

“What are you thinking?” Clayton asked.

“I’m thinking this well was drilled here to tap into the groundwater supplied by that nearby arroyo. In its time, it would have been a more reliable source of water than the creek. I’m betting it once served a homestead that probably sat below us on the canyon floor.”

“The old electric motor inside the well house is stamped with the maker’s name and a patent date of 1936,” Clayton said.

“I doubt that rural electrification would have reached Cañoncito before then.”

Clayton looked at the treetops. “I don’t see any electric lines or poles running up here.”

“Scavenged long ago,” Kerney suggested.

Clayton walked to the edge of the clearing, squatted down, and gazed through the trees at the canyon. “There’s a snow-covered mound on the flat just to the left that doesn’t fit with the topography. It’s just behind a fence. That could be the rubble from the old homestead.”

Kerney joined Clayton. “Just eyeballing it, I’d say that mound falls easily within Riley’s property boundaries.”

Clayton stood, broke off a small dead branch from a piñon tree, walked to a point ten feet east of the tracks through the snow, and marked an X next to a large juniper tree. “The original path is here.”

“You’re sure of that?” Kerney asked.

“Yep. Coming up from the canyon this is the easiest, most direct route. New growth obscures it in places now, but this is the path. Riley couldn’t see it because of all the snow, so he just made a beeline straight to the well house.”

“Let’s find out if you’re right.”

Kerney got two shovels and handed one to Clayton. They removed most of the snow quickly, slowing the pace when they reached the last few inches, and then set aside the shovels and brushed away the last of the powder with gloved hands. At the edge of the two-foot-long trench they’d dug there was a heel print clearly visible in the frozen ground. They cleared away more snow until the entire print was visible.

“It could be Brian Riley’s shoe print from an earlier visit,” Kerney said.

Clayton hunkered down for a closer look.

He’d found partial shoe prints on the porch to Tim Riley’s rented cabin in Capitan, and the print in front of his eyes looked identical. “Did Brian Riley have small, narrow feet?”

“I don’t know.”

“This is an impression of a boot that is no more than a narrow size eight. That’s small for a man, plus it looks a hell of a lot like the partial impression I found at the Capitan crime scene.”

“Can you make a definitive comparison?” Kerney asked.

“I took photographs of them. They’re in my briefcase in your truck.”

Kerney called Ramona and asked her to bring Clayton’s briefcase to the well house.

“Will do, Chief,” Ramona replied.

“Also, where is Brian Riley’s body right now?” Kerney asked.

“It’s being held at a local mortuary until tomorrow, when it will be sent down to the OMI in Albuquerque for an official autopsy.”

“Send an officer to the mortuary ASAP. I want to know what shoes or boots Riley was wearing at the time of his death, and what the size is. Have the officer check Riley’s personal effects to see if he had any other footwear, take pictures of the soles of all left-foot shoes, and send them to me at my cell phone number.”

“Ten-four, Chief. Anything else?”

“What’s happening on your end?”

“No fingerprint hits so far, and there are no open or cold cases we can find in the national data banks that match the gold coins we uncovered. Sergeant Chacon is querying Interpol and a number of law enforcement agencies in foreign countries.”

“Very good. See you in a few.”

While they waited for Ramona to arrive, Clayton photographed the impression, removed what loose material he could from around it, and then used Ramona’s casting kit to build a form. He mixed up a batch of plaster using melted snow, sprayed oil on the form so the material wouldn’t bind to it, and poured the mixture into it.

“It should set up in a few minutes,” he said as he got to his feet.

Ramona appeared in the clearing. They joined her at the oil barrel, where the fire had burned down almost to embers. As Clayton searched through his briefcase for the photographs, Kerney threw more wood into the barrel and stirred the flames to life with a stick.

“We have a match,” Clayton said, handing the photograph to Kerney.

Kerney threw the stick into the fire, looked at the photograph, nodded, and handed it back.

“And if the impression turns out to be from Brian Riley’s shoe, that puts him at the Capitan crime scene,” Ramona said, “which makes him a very dead prime suspect.”

Clayton waved off the possibility with his hand. “You can’t convince me that Brian Riley was a natural-born psychopath who killed his father, his stepmother, a police officer, and a young woman who had befriended him, for no apparent reason other than the enjoyment of it.”

“He returned to the Robocker crime scene, concealed his identity, and ran from the police,” Ramona countered.

“Okay, let’s assume for the sake of argument that he is the killer,” Clayton said. “He’s down to his last five thousand dollars and needs a lot more money than that if he’s going to disappear for a very long time. So he lies about his identity to a cop at the Robocker crime scene, jumps on his motorcycle, and drives here through a gathering blizzard to get the gold coins hidden in the well house.”

“That makes sense,” Ramona said.

“Up to a point it does. But if the coins were here yesterday when Riley came for them, the only logical place they would be today is at the Talbott ranch house. Have the deputies searched it?”

Ramona nodded. “From top to bottom and there wasn’t one gold coin to be found.”

“So if it wasn’t the coins that drew him back here, what did?” Kerney asked.

In response, Clayton shrugged his shoulders and Ramona shook her head.

Kerney’s cell phone rang. The incoming call was from the officer who had been sent to the mortuary to take digital photographs of Riley’s shoes. He looked at the screen for a moment and then passed the phone to Clayton.

“They aren’t a match with the footprint,” Clayton said.

“So we’re back to zero suspects,” Ramona said.

“Not necessarily,” Clayton replied. “We need to find someone connected to Tim or Denise Riley who wears men’s narrow size eight shoes.”

“Oh, goodie,” Ramona replied in her sweetest voice. “That narrows down the field considerably.”

Kerney laughed in spite of himself. “Let’s get back to work,” he said.

Halfway through Kerney’s shift inside the well house, Matt Chacon arrived with news about the coins.

“The Saint-Gaudens is from a ten-year-old heist of an art dealer’s personal collection in Brisbane, Australia. The entire collection, a hundred coins worth over two million in Australian dollars, was taken out of a safe in his house. A Brisbane police detective is faxing the case file to us.”

“Any suspects?” Clayton asked.

“None,” Matt replied.

“Exactly when did the robbery take place?” Kerney asked.

Matt checked his notes and read off the dates.

“If I’m not mistaken, that’s when Denise Riley was allegedly living in Australia. What about the Krugerrand?”

“There is nothing unusual enough about the coin to help connect it to a specific robbery,” Matt replied, “so I queried Interpol again and asked for a list of all unsolved heists of large quantities of coins that included Krugerrands. I made a similar request of law enforcement agencies in the Asian rim countries and the Australian Federal Police.”

Kerney nodded in approval.

“One more thing, Chief. I examined the plastic sleeve used to protect the Saint-Gaudens. There’s an indistinct but recognizable partial thumbprint on the inside of the flap. I powdered it, and it could be a match to a thumbprint Sergeant Pino lifted from inside the well house, but that’s just a guess. However, it doesn’t appear to belong to Brian Riley, Tim Riley, or Denise Riley. It’s going to take a special lab technique to get results that will allow us to make a definitive comparison.”

“Okay,” Kerney said.

“Let’s hope the thumbprint can identify a male subject who wears a size eight narrow shoe,” Ramona said.

“Is that who we’re looking for?” Matt asked. “Those are some really tiny feet.” Matt had met or seen somebody recently with feet like that, but couldn’t remember who or where. “Would he be small in height as well?”

“Not necessarily,” Clayton answered.

Kerney’s phone rang. It was Claire Paley, the questioned documents expert with the state crime lab.

“I didn’t expect you to be at work today,” Kerney said.

“You wanted quick results,” Claire said in her lilting, girlish voice. “Besides, I was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Three feet of snow is hardly enough to keep me from getting to work.”

“What kind of results do you have for me?”

“Come to my office and I’ll show you,” Claire answered. She disconnected before Kerney could question her in detail.

Kerney and Clayton left Matt Chacon and Ramona Pino behind to finish up at the well house and made the slow drive to the state crime lab on barely passable roads and streets. The cold, harsh light from a yellow sun blurred the rolling hills beneath the mountains. On the mountaintops, strong breezes whipped snow into the clear blue sky, creating the illusion of undulating clouds. In the city, long shadows cascaded across deep, untrammeled snow cover that created an oddly different landscape, empty of people and movement. Trees bowed under the weight of snow, branches almost touching the ground. So much snow had fallen that streets and sidewalks were invisible. Traffic lights at deserted intersections blinked and changed colors in sequence along empty thoroughfares.

Large drifts had softened the shape of buildings, hiding much of the boxy ugliness of the businesses along Cerrillos Road, the main route through town. Where major roads had been plowed, only one lane in each direction was passable, and the mounds of snow pushed to the curbs climbed halfway up the lampposts and street signs. In the parking lots only the telltale humps scattered here and there gave evidence of those few cars that had been abandoned by their owners during the storm.

For the moment, it was a world almost without motorized vehicles or the constant background noise of engines. Kerney liked the look of it a lot, but he was glad to be driving his truck to the crime lab and not hoofing it down Cerrillos Road.

At the Department of Public Safety, the parking lot was empty except for a Subaru with a Minnesota Vikings bumper sticker that sat near the public entrance. They found the front entrance unlocked, but no one was on duty at the reception area to sign them in and pass them through the electronically controlled interior door.

Kerney called Claire on his cell phone, and she came and got them. As they walked down the hall, he introduced her to Clayton and asked what she’d discovered.

“That depends on whether or not what I’ve found makes any sense to you,” Claire said as they entered the lab. She led Kerney and Clayton to a large worktable where some of Denise’s letters were arranged, protected in clear plastic sleeves.

“First, my analysis of the handwriting conclusively shows that all the letters were written by Denise.” Claire peered at Kerney over the bifocals perched on her nose. “Secondly, you wanted to know if the foreign stamps and cancellation marks on the envelopes are real. They are. Then, as you asked, I looked carefully at the paper and watermarks, and found they are of both domestic and foreign manufacture, the highest quality paper being Canadian in origin. The inks used were easily identified by the chemical footprint added by the manufacturers.”

Claire glanced from Kerney to Clayton. “You do know that the manufacturers change the chemical composition each year, which makes dating the substance a relatively easy task.”

“Of course,” Kerney replied.

“So, by comparing the dates in the letters with the paper watermarks and the ink used in composition, I can say without a doubt that they were all written in the year in which they were mailed. However, it is not possible to narrow down the actual composition of the letters to anything less than a twelve-month time frame.”

Claire paused for questions.

Kerney knew from experience that Claire was very precise in her presentation of facts, and it was best not to rush her. Besides, she’d braved the elements to get this work done, and he owed her big-time. “We’re with you so far,” he said.

“Good. I examined the cross-overs and obliterations, and they all fell within the category of misspellings or poor word usage.” Claire pointed at the letters on the table. “You wanted me to identify and decipher, if possible, any impressions of handwriting on the paper. The letters before you are the only documents I found with that kind of indentation. Four of them show signatures in Denise Riley’s handwriting. The names used are Diane Plumley, Debra Stokes, Dorothy Travis, and Mrs. John Coleman.”

“All in Denise’s handwriting,” Clayton said.

“That’s correct.” Claire pointed a finger at the letter closest to her on the table. “This document, however, contains more decipherable information than just a signature. Again, it was written in Denise Riley’s hand. The return address on the envelope and salutation shows that it was mailed to Helen Muiz by Denise Riley from Brisbane, Australia. The indented writing in the letter is a short thank-you note to a Jann and Jeffery McCafferty for a lovely dinner party. Not every word is readable, but it’s dated September 17 and signed ‘Dot,’ which of course could be short for Dorothy.”

“Excellent work, Claire,” Kerney said.

“Thank you.” Claire patted an errant strand of hair back into place. “But is it helpful information? Do any of these aliases Denise used years ago have a bearing on your case? And who are Jann and Jeffery McCafferty?”

“We don’t know yet,” Clayton said. “But every factual detail helps.”

Claire looked decidedly piqued by Clayton’s response. “How unforthcoming you are, Sergeant.”

“We do know that the State Department has no record of having issued a passport in Denise Riley’s maiden name,” Kerney said quickly. “The aliases you’ve found may very well help us clear that up.”

Claire smiled warmly. “Good. I’ve made photocopies for you of the indented handwriting I was able to discern under oblique light.” Claire handed Kerney a manila envelope. “I was going to forward the letters to our fingerprint specialist today, but he’s not at work because of the snow.”

“What if I send Detective Matt Chacon here to work with you on that?” Kerney asked. Matt Chacon had started his law enforcement career as a civilian fingerprint and tool-mark specialist in the state crime lab, before becoming a police officer with the Santa Fe P.D., and in addition to being a questioned documents expert, Claire was also certified as a forensic fingerprint specialist.

“Under your supervision of course,” he added.

Claire hesitated, frowned, and thought it over.

“I’ll clear it with Chief Baca,” Kerney added.

Claire’s expression brightened. “Well, it is your case evidence, and since I’m here now I might as well stay for a while and work with Matt.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Claire,” Kerney said.

Claire adjusted her eyeglasses in a failed attempt to hide a blush.

After Kerney called Andy Baca, who gave the green light for Matt Chacon to work in the lab, Clayton called Matt, filled him in on the plan, and asked him to get to the state crime lab pronto.

Clayton disconnected. “Matt is on his way.”

Claire walked the men to the reception area, where Kerney paused at the door and thanked her again.

“I’m going to miss you when you retire Chief Kerney,” she said in her tiny, breathless voice.

“I’ll miss you too, Claire,” Kerney said, holding her hand in his. When he released her hand, she turned quickly and hurried away.

Outside Clayton chuckled. “You made her blush twice. I didn’t know you were such a ladies’ man.”

“Get real.”

“I can’t get over that little-girl voice of hers. It’s just doesn’t fit with who she is, what she does, and the way she looks.”

“Claire’s a force to be reckoned with in more ways than one. State police agents have used her to catch Internet sexual predators. If a pedophile wants to talk directly by telephone to the fictitious underage female he’s solicited in the phony chat room the department runs, Claire acts as bait. I understand she has a flair for the theatrical and does a great Lolita. She’s helped to put a few really bad scumbags in the slammer for a long time.”

“Isn’t that something.”

“Yes, she is,” Kerney said as they piled in the truck. “Let’s start running down Denise Riley’s aliases, and see if we can find out who Jann and Jeffery McCafferty are.”

“Okay.”

Kerney cranked the engine and turned to Clayton. “I don’t know why Claire found you so unforthcoming. I thought ‘every factual detail helps’ was a perfectly reasonable response. Much in keeping with my thought earlier in the day that sometimes the solution to a crime is in the little details.”

Clayton groaned. “Don’t try to bust my chops. That’s conduct unbecoming a parent.”

Kerney laughed, let the clutch out, and slowly drove out of the slippery parking lot. “Tit for tat,” he said.

Matt Chacon’s years of experience as a fingerprint technician had taught him that the best detection techniques depended on the nature of the surface to be examined, the presence of any contaminants such as blood or fluid, whether or not the surface was wet or dry, and the likely age of the prints.

Since he would be dealing with dry stationery that had been kept out of direct sunlight for a number of years and quite possibly handled by several of the victim’s family members, Matt decided to start with a simple visual inspection of the documents. In the crime lab, he sat on a stool across from Claire Paley at a large examination table. Wearing gloves and using tweezers, they removed each piece of paper and envelope from its protective plastic sleeve and studied it under white light. The few latents revealed by the white light were immediately documented and recorded, but they would have to use ultraviolet light to bring out the invisible prints.

Matt looked across the table at Claire. “When we finish the visual, we’ll put everything under ultraviolet. Do we have an autopsy fingerprint card for Denise Riley?”

“Yes,” Claire said, “plus Chief Kerney provided fingerprint cards for Helen Muiz, her husband, and other members of her family.”

“If nothing else, the chief is very thorough,” Matt said gloomily. Many officers in the department, Matt included, weren’t happy with the idea of losing Kerney as their top cop. He’d restored professionalism and pride to an organization that had been badly mismanaged by his predecessor.

An hour into the ultraviolet scan, Matt looked at the stack of untouched documents enclosed in clear plastic sleeves. With the number of latents that were showing up on each piece of stationery, he estimated it would take several days to finish the job. He called a halt to the process.

“There’s no way we can get through all of this in less than two or three days,” he said.

“I agree,” Claire said. “What do you suggest?”

“There’s a barely visible latent on a protective clear plastic coin sleeve that might match up with a print from a fixed surface at the crime scene. But since it’s on a nonporous surface, we need to enhance it.”

Claire rose from her stool. “Let’s get started. We’ll use laser light first, and if that doesn’t work, there are a couple of other techniques we can try.”

Clayton sat at a small conference table in Kerney’s office at police headquarters, paging through the cold case file of the coin collection robbery that the Brisbane P.D. had faxed.

Across the table, Kerney was on the phone talking to federal officials at government agencies. Since arriving at headquarters, he’d been asking every relevant bureau within the State Department, Justice Department, and Homeland Security to do an expedited computer database search on Denise Riley’s aliases.

Clayton waited for Kerney to hang up and then quickly said, “The victim of the coin collection theft was, or is, Andrew Edgerton.”

Kerney raised an eyebrow. “Meaning?”

“The last entry in the case file is two years old, and Mr. Edgerton was not in good health at that time. If he is still alive, he’ll turn seventy-nine on May 18.”

“What was the date of the theft again?”

Clayton flipped back to the face sheet and read off the date.

Kerney had made the copies of the letters Denise had sent to Helen Muiz before taking the originals to Claire Paley. He went to his desk, fanned through them, and found Denise’s Australian correspondence.

“Denise was in Australia at the time of the heist,” he said. “Does the case file give a phone number for Andrew Edgerton?”

“It does.”

“Read it off to me.”

“What time is it in Australia?” Clayton asked.

“I don’t know,” Kerney replied. “If it’s the middle of the night and Edgerton is dead, it won’t matter that I might have disturbed him. If he’s still alive, maybe he’ll be happy I woke him up and reminded him of the fact. Give me the number.”

Clayton read it off. Kerney wrote it down, looked up the international calling code for Australia in the phone book, dialed the number on his desk phone, and motioned to Clayton to turn on the speaker phone that sat in the center of the conference table.

Kerney looked at his watch. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, which meant it was sometime tomorrow morning in Australia. He listened for the call to go through, and when he heard the distinctive ringtone, he hung up the handset and joined Clayton at the conference table.

A man with an elderly voice answered the call and Kerney asked if he was speaking to Andrew Edgerton.

“That’s right.”

Kerney introduced himself as the Santa Fe, New Mexico, police chief, told Edgerton that Sergeant Clayton Istee was also on the line, and asked if Edgerton would mind talking about the theft of his coin collection.

“Have you found the collection?” Edgerton asked. “Did the thieves take it to the United States?”

“We only found one coin,” Kerney replied, “so I can’t tell you if the coins were smuggled into the country.”

“Which one did you find?”

Kerney described the Saint-Gaudens in detail.

“A very nice gold coin,” Edgerton said. “Probably worth a lot more now than what the insurance company reimbursed me. Don’t send it to me. The insurance company owns it now.”

“I understand that, Mr. Edgerton. Would you mind if we ask you some questions about the robbery?”

“Go ahead, but I’ll tell you right now I’ve been over all of this a dozen times or more and it hasn’t done a bit of good.”

Kerney and Clayton took turns asking Edgerton questions, and his answers were consistent with the facts recorded in the case file. The night of the robbery, Edgerton, a widower, had locked all the doors and windows to his house, armed his home security system, and gone to bed around ten-thirty. Just after midnight, a masked, armed man woke him and ordered him to open the safe in the downstairs library. Edgerton did as he was told and the robber cleaned out the contents, which consisted solely of the coin collection. The robber tied Edgerton up using duct tape and left by a rear door.

“There were two of them,” Edgerton said. “I’m sure of it. When the thief with the gun was leaving my house, I heard a car engine start up. He had a wheelman.”

Clayton smiled at Edgerton’s use of crime story slang. “But you didn’t see the driver.”

“No, and as I said, I didn’t really see the man with the gun. He was masked.”

“In your statement you said he was slender in build and about five-eight or five-nine in height,” Kerney said.

“That’s right. But he was wearing one of those ski masks so I didn’t get to see the color of his hair or any of his features.”

“His eyes?” Kerney asked.

“I was too scared to notice.”

“What did he sound like?” Kerney asked.

“An average bloke,” Edgerton replied.

“Australian?”

“That’s right.”

“Had there been any other recent robberies in your neighborhood?” Clayton asked.

“No. The police who investigated told me that I’d been targeted because of my coin collection. They talked to everyone who knew about it, and that wasn’t very many people as I tend to keep my affairs to myself.”

“A wise thing to do,” Clayton said. “Did anything out of the ordinary occur in your neighborhood prior to the robbery?”

“Out of the ordinary?”

“Door-to-door salesmen coming around, large parties that might have attracted strangers to the neighborhood, people asking for donations to worthy causes.”

“I can’t recall anything like that.”

“Mr. Edgerton,” Kerney said, consulting the list of names that Claire Paley had deciphered from Denise Riley’s letters. “I’d like to read you some names and have you tell me if you either know the person, or if the name sounds familiar.”

“Go ahead.”

“Diane Plumley.”

“No.”

“Debra Stokes.”

“No.”

“Dorothy Travis.”

“No.”

“Anyone who might have used Dot as a nickname.”

“No.”

“How about a Mrs. John Coleman?”

“I don’t know anyone named Coleman.”

“Jann and Jeffery McCafferty?”

“Jeff and Jann are friends, although I don’t see them very often now that they live in Sydney. Jeff’s a senior vice president of a bank.”

“How did you make their acquaintance?” Clayton asked.

“At church. I’ve know them for twenty-five years or more. In fact, Jeff got me started collecting coins as an investment. He’s a serious numismatist.”

Clayton zeroed in on Edgerton’s interactions with the McCaffertys around the time of the robbery. Edgerton had lost his wife to a stroke six months before the theft. To bolster his spirits, the McCaffertys had made him a frequent guest at their dinner parties. Mostly the guest list consisted of bankers and their spouses, but sometimes Jeff threw a beer and pizza party for his serious coin collector friends.

“Think back, Mr. Edgerton,” Kerney prodded. “A few weeks before the robbery, do you remember meeting an American woman at one of the McCaffertys’ dinner parties? She would have been Hispanic looking, attractive, in her early thirties, slender and petite, with dark hair.”

“I can’t recall meeting an American woman like that,” Edgerton replied. “But there was a very interesting couple from Belize Jeff had met at a Brisbane coin show. Belize used to be British Honduras, you know. Part of the Commonwealth. He was a Brit and she was half-English and half-Hispanic. However, I don’t recall their names.”

“Can you describe the man?”

“No, it was years ago and I only met him and his lady friend that once.”

“Thank you,” Kerney said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

A smiling Matt Chacon stood in the open doorway. Kerney waved and pointed to an empty chair. Matt entered and sat.

“I hope you catch the bugger who stuck that gun in my face and stole my property,” Edgerton said.

Kerney promised to do his best, said good-bye, disconnected, and turned his attention to Chacon. “Why the smile?”

“Because the thumbprint on the plastic coin sleeve belongs to one Archie Pattison, a citizen of the United Kingdom. He is also known as John Culley, Denise Riley’s employer.”

“By chance does Mr. Pattison have any ties to what was once known as British Honduras?” Clayton asked.

Matt looked surprised. “Yes, he does. He was born there. When British Honduras became the independent country of Belize, he retained his British citizenship and emigrated to London. He served in the Royal Marines and disappeared from sight after his discharge.”

“What else do you know about Mr. Pattison, aka John Culley?” Kerney asked.

“Other than he’s in this country as a permanent resident under a false identity with a forged passport, that’s it for now,” Matt replied. “What do you know about him, Chief?”

Kerney stood. “Culley and Denise Riley, posing as a married couple, probably pulled off that coin heist in Australia. Let’s go pay Culley a visit. Where’s Sergeant Pino? She needs to be in on this.”

“She’s on her way here,” Matt replied.

Kerney headed for the door with Clayton and Matt at his heels. “Tell her to meet us at Culley’s house.”

“Roger that, Chief,” Matt replied.