Death Song

Chapter Two

The shotgun blast woke up nearby residents, and in the silence that followed, several nervous but curious neighbors left the warmth and safety of their homes to investigate. Separately they converged on Tim Riley’s body lying in a pool of blood and called 911 to report it, their voices cracking with alarm. Within minutes, Craig Bolt and Paul Hewitt arrived at the scene. After a quick look to confirm that Riley was dead, they covered the body, cordoned off the area, and ordered every available officer under their commands back on duty ASAP.

A number of officers and some emergency personnel had gathered by the time Clayton pulled up to a police barrier on the street to Riley’s rented cabin. In the numbingly cold night, a small crowd of citizens stood quietly gazing at the flashing lights of the police vehicles parked in front of the crime scene.

The deputy manning the barrier waved Clayton through. As he drove slowly down the street, he saw Craig Bolt’s officers interviewing people outside their homes. On the sidewalk in front of Riley’s rented cabin, two male civilians dressed in pajamas, slippers, and winter coats were giving statements to deputies.

Clayton parked his pickup truck next to Paul Hewitt’s vehicle and spotted the sheriff standing near a tree in the front yard talking to his chief deputy and Chief Bolt. Crime scene tape had been strung from the cabin’s front porch, wrapped around the rearview mirror and bumper of Riley’s unit, and tied off on the antenna of a pickup truck parked close by. It formed a triangle that enclosed a body covered by a tarp, illuminated by the headlights of Craig Bolt’s police vehicle.

Deputy Sheriff Bennie Anaya guarded the crime scene. Approaching sixty and close to retirement, Bennie was a jovial, roly-poly man who wasn’t the smartest cop on the street by a long shot, but who did a barely adequate job of transporting prisoners to and from court.

“Who has inspected the body?” Clayton asked as he approached Anaya.

“Just the sheriff and Chief Bolt,” Anaya replied. He held out his clipboard with a crime scene log-in sheet attached.

Clayton noted the time on the form and signed it. “Did you take a look, Bennie?”

Bennie nodded. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

Clayton handed him the clipboard. “Sign yourself in.”

Bennie did as he was told.

“Has anyone been inside the cabin?” Clayton asked.

“I don’t think so,” Bennie replied. He paused and reconsidered his answer. “Maybe, before I got here. But the sheriff didn’t say.”

“Nobody enters the crime scene or the cabin without my permission,” Clayton said, nodding in the direction of Hewitt, Bolt, and Baca. “That includes the top brass who are over there by that tree jawboning.”

“Affirmative,” Bennie replied.

“Do you know who else will be joining us?” Clayton asked.

“The DA and the medical investigator are on the way,” Anaya said, “and state police are sending a mobile crime lab and some techs up from Las Cruces. Every law enforcement agency in the region has offered to help out.”

Clayton ducked under the tape and put on a pair of gloves. “Do we have anything for them to do?”

Bennie snorted. “We don’t have squat. Not yet, anyway.”

“That could change,” Clayton said as he walked to Riley’s body, bent down, and pulled back the tarp. From the looks of it, a rifled shotgun slug fired at close range had almost obliterated Riley’s face. A massive amount of blood from the large entry wound had saturated the ground under Riley’s head. On his forehead, above what was left of his nose and eyes, gray brain matter dripped down like coagulated gobs of cooked pasta.

For a moment Clayton found it hard to remember what Riley had looked like before he’d been murdered. He forced his gaze away, composed himself, and rapped a knuckle on Riley’s chest. As he suspected, Riley had been wearing his body armor. Did the murderer know that and take the head shot to be sure of the kill?

Clayton raised his eyes back to Riley’s mangled face. Earlier, he had apologized to the deer for its needless death. Now he wondered what circumstance had gotten Riley killed. It surely wasn’t a random act. From the position of the body, he guessed that Riley had turned to face his killer. Perhaps a sound had alerted him. He inspected the soles of Riley’s boots, fished out a flashlight from his equipment bag, and went looking for footprints. The ground was too frozen to show fresh impressions, but on the porch he located two partials. One matched the tread on Riley’s boot and the other did not.

Clayton dropped down for a closer look. Riley’s footprint showed him leaving the cabin. Wind had obliterated part of the tread, and Clayton judged it to be the older of the two partials. The second, smaller footprint was fresher and pointed in the direction of the front door. There was nothing on the porch to suggest Riley had entered the cabin prior to the shooting. The presence of the second partial suggested the possibility that the killer had arrived before Riley and been lying in wait.

Clayton unzipped his equipment bag, pulled out his camera, and took photographs of the footprints, his thoughts focused on trying to figure out the sequence of events in the last few minutes of Tim Riley’s life.

He walked to Riley’s unit, studied the ground, and saw what appeared to be a small indentation of a boot tread on a crushed leaf near the rear of the vehicle. By the passenger-side rear door there was a partially broken twig that might have been caused by the weight of a step. In the flashlight beam he saw a crumpled-up piece of paper lodged against the rear tire. He picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a month-old Lincoln County credit card receipt for two new windshield wipers that had been purchased by another deputy.

Clayton wondered if Riley inspected his vehicle at the end of his shift. It was common practice among seasoned officers to do so. He imagined the scene. Riley would have been exposed and vulnerable while checking for contraband or cleaning out trash inside the unit. He would have been bent over with his back exposed. Why wait for a frontal shot when a slug to the back of the head would do the job just as well? Did the killer want Riley to see it coming?

Although there were no defensive wounds on Riley’s hands, Clayton looked around for any sign of a struggle. Nothing on the ground or near Riley’s unit pointed to an altercation.

The doors to Riley’s unit were locked. If he had been on his way to the cabin, chances were good he would have had his keys in his hand. Clayton went back to the body. He searched around the corpse and emptied Riley’s pockets. He rolled Riley carefully onto his side and looked for the keys on the ground under the body.

The exit wound was gruesome. He lowered Riley and glanced over at Deputy Anaya, who watched with interest. “Bennie, did you find Riley’s keys?” Clayton called out.

Bennie smiled and patted his pants pocket. “Yeah, I secured them so that they wouldn’t get lost.”

Clayton forced a smile at Anaya. “Where exactly did you find them?”

“They were in his hand.”

“Which hand?”

Bennie pulled the keys out of his pocket. “His right hand.”

“Give them to me,” Clayton said as he walked over to Anaya.

Bennie dropped the keys into Clayton’s palm. Rather than chew out Anaya in public for being stupid, Clayton turned on his heel and went back to the body. Riley was right-handed. Clayton looked at his holstered sidearm. It was strapped down, which meant Riley hadn’t anticipated any danger. Was that because the shooter was known to him, or simply because he’d been caught off guard?

“What have you got, Sergeant?” Paul Hewitt called out from behind the crime scene tape.

Clayton covered the body with the tarp and approached his boss. “I think the killer surveilled the cabin and waited for Riley to show up. There is a partial footprint on the porch which may belong to the perp. I’ve photographed it. I also believe that Riley either knew his attacker or was caught unawares. He had his keys in his hand and was walking toward the cabin just before he was killed. The head shot tells me that this was a deliberate murder carried out by someone who knew what he was doing. I believe he surmised Riley would be wearing body armor. Otherwise he would have aimed for the chest.”

“A professional?” Hewitt asked.

“Not necessarily. I think the shooter wanted Riley to see him. A professional would have simply taken his first clean shot.”

“You’re saying it’s revenge? A grudge? Something personal?”

“I’m doing a lot of guessing here, Sheriff,” Clayton replied, “but maybe.”

“You spent most of the week with Riley,” Hewitt said. “Did he mention any personal or family problems?”

Clayton shook his head. “Nothing like that. Did you or Chief Bolt go anywhere near the cabin?”

“Negative,” Hewitt answered as he walked Clayton away from Bennie Anaya. “Chief Bolt and I want you to take the lead on this case. We’ll give you whatever you need.”

“Ten-four.”

“I don’t even know Riley’s wife’s name,” Hewitt said, sounding peeved at himself.

“Delores or Diana,” Clayton replied. “Something like that.”

“I’ll look it up in his file.”

“It’s Denise,” Clayton said as he pulled the name to the fore-front of his mind. “Are you going to call her?”

Hewitt shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked over his shoulder at Bennie Anaya. “What was the exchange you had with Anaya all about?”

“Bennie thought it best to secure Riley’s keys from his lifeless hand so they wouldn’t go missing from the crime scene.”

Hewitt groaned and rolled his eyes. “Unbelievable. I’ll deal with it. Thankfully, in three more months he retires. I want this cop killer caught, Sergeant.”

Clayton nodded. “I may be wrong, but I don’t think Riley was in Lincoln County long enough to make any enemies.”

“Agreed. Unless we come up with a suspect fast, you’re going to need to make inquiries in Santa Fe about Riley’s professional, personal, and family life.”

Clayton turned toward the sound of an engine drawing near on the street. The mobile state police crime lab from Las Cruces had arrived. “Excuse me, Sheriff. I need to get the lab techs started taking prints.”

“It’s your show, Sergeant,” Hewitt said as he watched Clayton walk away.

Years ago, long before he’d returned home to Lincoln County to run for sheriff, Paul Hewitt had seen his best friend and partner get blown away in a narco bust gone bad. He would take that image to his grave along with the sight of Tim Riley’s mangled face.

Riley had been with the department for only a week, but he’d been killed on Hewitt’s watch. Paul had never lost an officer under his command before, and although he knew it wasn’t so, he felt responsible. Somehow he’d failed Riley. It left an angry feeling in his gut.

He wondered about a “what if?” What if he got the chance to face down Riley’s murderer? Would he violate every rule of law he was sworn to uphold and kill the son of a bitch himself? Hewitt didn’t have an answer.

Helen Muiz’s phone call persuaded Kerney there was sufficient reason to call out the troops and start a search for Denise Riley. Because Cañoncito was outside his jurisdiction, he asked dispatch to notify the sheriff’s office and state police and request officers be sent to Helen’s location.

He hung up and tiptoed into the den, where Sara was sleeping restlessly on the couch. She was twitching and mumbling through a clenched jaw. Kerney figured she was caught up in another Iraq bad dream. They had been plaguing her almost every night since her release last month from the army hospital.

Frequently over the past few weeks, Kerney had woken up late at night to find Sara in the den, sitting mute, wide-eyed, and shaking, staring into the darkness. He sat quietly with her until the episodes passed and she was ready to return to bed.

As an ex-infantry lieutenant with a Vietnam combat tour under his belt, Kerney knew about flashbacks that made you remember events you wanted to forget, nightmares that woke you up in a cold sweat, panic attacks triggered by nothing more than strange random sounds, and temper tantrums that came out of nowhere. He also knew there wasn’t much he could do ease to Sara’s journey back from the insanity of combat other than be there for her.

He reached over and turned on the table lamp. Sara sat bolt upright and gave him a fierce look. “What is it?” she demanded, blinking rapidly.

He explained what he knew about Helen Muiz’s missing kid sister. “According to Helen, who doesn’t overdramatize, it’s completely out of character for Denise. I have sheriff’s deputies and state police on the way, but I told her I’d personally come by.”

Sara nodded. “Of course, you must go and help out.” Unconsciously she rubbed her right arm where a piece of shrapnel from an improvised explosive device had gouged an inch of muscle from her triceps. The army doctors had done a wonderful job of repairing the damage, but Sara found the scar ugly.

“I won’t be long,” Kerney said, eyeing the half bottle of wine and the glass on the end table next to the couch. “Will you be okay?”

Sara followed Kerney’s gaze. “I’m not going to sit here and get drunk while you’re gone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she snapped.

“I wasn’t thinking that you would,” Kerney said gently. He tried to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her face away. He gave her a peck on the cheek instead. “I’ll be back soon,” he said.

Sara nodded and said nothing, her gaze fixed on the black night sky outside the den window.

In his unmarked police cruiser Kerney’s thoughts remained with Sara as he drove toward Cañoncito. She’d become the first female officer in Iraq to receive the Silver Star for bravery under fire. After being wounded by an IED, Sara had repelled an insurgent attack, single-handedly killing several enemy fighters who were advancing on seriously injured U.S. Army personnel. The wounded soldiers credited Sara with saving their lives.

Along with the Silver Star, Sara had been decorated with the Purple Heart, given a meritorious promotion to full colonel, and, after her release from the hospital, placed on extended convalescent leave.

She had been sent to Iraq by her former superior officer, a chickenshit Pentagon one-star general with political connections who was willing to sacrifice Sara’s career, even her life, to advance his own ambitions. Instead, Sara had returned stateside a newly minted full-bird colonel with a citation for valor and a clean slate.

When her convalescent leave ended in two months, she had orders to ship out as a military attaché to the United States Embassy at the Court of St. James’s, which meant that soon the family would be moving to London. Kerney had willingly signed on for the duration, but their son, Patrick, had been voicing serious reservations about leaving the Santa Fe ranch and his Welsh pony, Pablito.

Using directions Helen had supplied, Kerney arrived at the Cañoncito double-wide to find a small cluster of police officers surrounding Helen and Ruben on the wooden deck to the house. One of the cops was the Santa Fe County chief deputy, Leonard Jessup, who introduced Kerney to the uniforms when he joined the group.

“We were just about to start a search of the property,” Jessup said.

Kerney nodded and smiled at Helen and Ruben, who looked back at him with worried expressions. “Good deal. What else?”

“One of my deputies will go door-to-door to every house in the area and interview the neighbors,” Jessup answered.

Kerney nodded again and spoke to Helen. “I know you’ve already checked with the entire family, but do you have a list of Denise’s friends and coworkers we can call?”

“No,” Helen said. “But I found an address book in her purse.”

“Great,” Kerney said with a reassuring smile. “Let’s start with that while the officers do the property search.”

“She could be hurt or dead out there,” Helen said, her voice cracking.

“Stay calm, Helen,” Kerney said. “Searching is just a precaution. You’re right to be a little concerned about your sister, but this could be nothing more than a false alarm.”

“I know, I know,” Helen said without conviction, looking beyond the porch light into the black night.

Kerney gave Ruben a heads-up nod of his chin. “Why don’t the three of us go in the house and start making those calls?”

Ruben smiled in agreement, and with Kerney close behind he guided a reluctant Helen by the elbow into the double-wide.

Late-night telephone calls to the people in Denise’s address book yielded no helpful information about her whereabouts. Kerney quizzed Helen about her sister’s place of employment and learned that until recently Denise had worked as an office manager for an insurance agent. She’d quit her job to prepare for the move to Lincoln County.

Kerney called the insurance agent at home, on the off chance that he might know where Denise was, and got the man’s voice mail. He left a call-back message, disconnected, and asked Ruben to see if he could access the e-mail accounts on the desktop and laptop computers in a spare bedroom that served as a home office. After a few minutes Ruben returned and reported that both computers were password protected.

Kerney phoned Detective Matt Chacon at home and woke him up. Over the past two years, Chacon had taken specialized law enforcement training in computer technology and was now the in-house expert on computer crimes for the department. Kerney explained the situation and asked him to come out to Cañoncito. While they waited for his arrival, Kerney had Helen give him some background on her baby sister.

“Denise was the rebel in the family,” Helen said as she paced across the room. “Always at odds with our parents, especially our father. She left Santa Fe as soon as she graduated high school and didn’t come home for years.”

Kerney pulled out a chair at the dining room table and invited Helen to sit with him. “What was she doing during those years?” Kerney asked once she had settled into a chair.

“She worked as a waitress and a bartender and traveled a lot. I would get postcards from her when she moved to a different city. Miami; Honolulu; Brisbane, Australia; Toronto—she even spent six months living in London.”

“She had a wild streak when she was young,” Ruben said as he joined them at the table. “Especially when it came to boys.”

Helen shook her head in opposition. “She never deserved that reputation.”

“How many years was she gone?” Kerney asked.

“Twelve,” Helen replied. “She left when she was eighteen and didn’t return to Santa Fe until she was thirty.”

“Not even to visit?” Kerney asked.

Helen shook her head.

“She always took the last name of whatever man she happened to be living with,” Ruben added. “We must have gotten postcards and letters from her with at least five or six different surnames.”

“Boyfriends, not husbands?” Kerney asked.

“Her marriage to Tim is her first, as far as we know,” Helen said.

“Did any of those old boyfriends ever come to visit?”

“Not that I know about,” Helen said.

“Tell me about Denise’s relationship with Tim.”

Before Helen could respond, Leonard Jessup stepped through the door.

Helen jumped to her feet. “Have you found something?”

“Nothing yet,” he replied, casting a quick look at Kerney. “Can I have a minute of your time, Chief?”

Kerney nodded and stood.

“Why do you need to speak privately with Chief Kerney?” Helen demanded as she stepped up to Jessup. “If something is wrong, tell me now.”

Jessup shot Kerney a questioning look.

“Tell her,” Kerney said.

Jessup took a deep breath. “I just got off the phone with the Lincoln County sheriff,” he said. “Tim Riley was killed earlier tonight.”

Helen gasped and her hand flew to her mouth.

The news out of Santa Fe that Tim Riley’s wife was missing complicated Clayton’s investigation. The sketchy information he’d received—her purse, wallet, car keys, and vehicle had been found at the family residence—suggested an abduction or worse. But with so few facts available, Clayton didn’t know if Riley’s wife should be considered a potential homicide suspect or a possible double homicide victim.

The neighborhood canvass was over and nobody interviewed had seen or heard anything until the sound of the shotgun blast had broken the silence of the night. A three-block radius around the crime scene had been searched for any sign left behind by the perpetrator, and nothing had been found. A fresh search would be done in daylight, but Clayton had little hope that any valuable evidence would materialize.

The state police crime scene techs had collected at least a dozen different fingerprints from the exterior and interior surfaces of Riley’s cabin, which quite probably belonged to Riley and everyone else who had rented the place as a vacation retreat over the last six months. Although there were no signs of a forced entry, Clayton had the techs bag and tag every piece of personal property belonging to Riley, along with the bedding, bathroom towels, and the dishes in the sink that were supplied to renters by the owner of the cabin. When that was accomplished, he had the techs vacuum the floors before turning them loose on Riley’s police vehicle. It was a scatter-gun approach to evidence collection, but Clayton knew that every homicide left a trace, and if one blot, smudge, stain, scratch, fiber, or speck was overlooked, the killer could get away with murder.

Dawn came with a stiff wind that blew dust, tumbleweeds, and brown, brittle cottonwood leaves across streets, sidewalks, and lawns. Clayton assembled a group of officers, including Sheriff Hewitt and Chief Bolt, and carried out another three-block search for evidence. Every piece of loose trash and litter that hadn’t been blown away by the wind was bagged and tagged, every tire track and skid mark was photographed, and every parked vehicle was inspected and run through Motor Vehicles.

When the officers returned to the cabin, EMTs were rolling Riley’s body on a gurney to an ambulance that would transport his remains to Albuquerque for an autopsy to determine the cause of death, which in this case would be a formality. All night long Clayton had wondered what had become of the rifled shotgun slug that had taken Tim Riley’s life.

He stood facing the cabin about six feet from where Tim Riley’s body had fallen. The slug had caught Riley in the head straight on, but from the position of the body on the ground it was impossible to tell if Tim’s head had been turned or if he’d faced his killer squarely.

If Riley had faced his killer straight on, the slug would have missed the front of the cabin by a good ten feet. If the killer had fired from a slight angle to the right, the spent slug should be lodged somewhere in the front of the cabin. It wasn’t. If the killer had fired from the left, the slug could be buried in a tree trunk or the back porch of a neighboring house. It wasn’t.

Clayton scanned the cabin, wondering where the spent slug might be. Because he didn’t have the murder weapon, didn’t know the gauge of the shotgun, and could only estimate how close the shooter had been to the victim, it was mostly guesswork.

“What are you studying, Sergeant?” Paul Hewitt asked as he walked up.

Clayton looked at the sheriff. “Angles.” He shuffled through the Polaroid photographs he’d taken of Tim’s body. The entry wound at the front of Riley’s head looked slightly lower than the exit wound at the back of his skull. Clayton noted the difference to Hewitt. “I think the killer may have been shorter than Riley. Either that, or he just raised his weapon at an angle and fired from the hip.”

“Wouldn’t that make it a lucky shot?” Hewitt asked.

“Not from such a close distance,” Clayton replied, returning the photographs to his shirt pocket. “A typical shotgun has a twenty-four-to twenty-eight-inch barrel. If you’re firing a long-barreled weapon from a distance of four to six feet, muzzle end to target, it would be pretty hard to miss what you’re shooting at. And there might not be any powder residue on the victim. Personally, I think the killer deliberately took the head shot. Riley was my height, five feet ten. I make his killer to be two, maybe tree inches shorter. I wonder how tall Riley’s wife is.”

“You think she’s the shooter?”

“I don’t know enough about this crime to exclude her as a suspect.”

Hewitt looked at the cottonwood tree, at the cabin, at the neighboring house, and then at Clayton. “So where’s the spent slug?” Hewitt asked.

“Maybe it’s lodged in the cabin roof.”

Hewitt scanned the roof. It was a pitched, shingled roof with a protruding metal woodstove flue. “I went over Riley’s radio traffic with dispatch,” he said. “Except for the brawl at the Carrizozo bar and a fifteen-minute coffee break with Craig Bolt, Riley made no contact with anyone else after he left the crash scene.”

“We can’t be completely sure of that,” Clayton said.

“I know,” Hewitt replied. “But if Riley did encounter someone unofficially without notifying dispatch, it happened toward the end of his shift.”

Clayton nodded and said nothing. It wasn’t unusual for the sheriff to cruise the county at odd hours without notifying dispatch that he was on duty. It was a good way to stay on top of what the troops were doing in the field. He wondered if Hewitt had shadowed Riley during the early part of his shift.

“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 it 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.