Slow Kill

Chapter 8

K erney woke up stiff and sore. He’d worked on the garden wall until dusk, removing stones from the trench and expanding it so he could lay in a wider foundation as Joe Valdez had suggested. After a good hot soak in the shower, he dressed and drank a cup of tea at the breakfast table. Before he’d been gut shot by a drug dealer, Kerney had been a heavy coffee drinker, and sometimes he still missed the aroma and taste of it.

Always an early riser, Kerney watched dawn break through the French doors that opened onto the pergola. A thin layer of clouds on the horizon, washed pink by the first light, faded into pale ribbons as the sun bleached color from the dark blue morning sky, foretelling a still, dry day.

Across the pasture, peppered with dull green rabbitbrush and bunches of bluestem grass withered by drought, he could see the horse barn, sunlight now reflecting off the slant of the metal roof. It had stood empty since a day last summer when he’d found Soldier, a mustang he’d bought and gentled some years back, brutally slaughtered by a man who’d then tried to kill Kerney’s family.

Behind the barn at the top of the hill stood an ancient pinon tree. He’d buried Soldier in its shade and placed a boulder on top of the grave.

The tree was dead now, a victim of drought and bark beetles, the bare branches rising and jutting at odd angles against the skyline. He’d lost a lot of trees on his 1,240 acres and had cut most of them down, especially the dead thickets that dotted the land and posed the greatest fire danger. But the tree on the hilltop he’d let stand in Soldier ’s memory.

After rinsing out his cup, he walked into the living room and gathered up his keys, handheld radio, and cell phone. He took his sidearm from the locked gun cabinet, put it in a clip-on holster, and attached it to his belt. Today, he wore civvies, jeans, boots, and a white western-cut shirt, for his trip to Taos. But that would come later. First he’d stop by the office to see where things stood with Griffin and Dean, and make a call to the Taos PD to let them know he was coming and what he was looking for.

He glanced around the room. Sara’s sense of style was everywhere. The matching soft Italian leather couch and love seat were arranged to give a view through the picture window to the canyon below. Cherrywood end tables held handsome pottery reading lamps, and under the glass coffee table a Tibetan area rug picked up the warm color of the Mexican tile floor. On the walls Sara had hung two western landscapes, the larger one an oil painting of his parents’ ranch on the Tularosa Basin done by Erma Fergurson, his mother’s lifelong friend and a renowned artist. Upon her death, Erma had bequeathed it to Kerney along with a parcel of northern New Mexico ranchland that had made him a rich man.

Right now, having money was the furthest thing from Kerney’s mind. He was lonely for his wife and son and weary of seeing them so infrequently. He counted the days until he left for Arlington. He’d be with Sara and Patrick for two solid weeks, commuting to the FBI Academy at Quantico to attend an executive development seminar and teach several classes.

He would fly east on Friday, and the time couldn’t pass quickly enough.

Day shift started at 6:30 in the morning and radio traffic on his handheld picked up as officers began broadcasting their call signs and reporting in. As he left the house he heard Sergeant Pino announce her arrival at headquarters. He’d ask her for a briefing as soon as he’d finished scanning the reports and paperwork.

It was midmorning before Ramona Pino found the time to call other cop shops to ask if Mitch Griffin might be the target of a probe or a person of interest in an ongoing case. She came up empty, which wasn’t surprising. Queries about suspects ate up time and often resulted in dead ends. But going through the exercise narrowed the focus and usually enhanced the investigation.

Unwilling to let her suspicions about Griffin’s motives drop, Pino put in requests to federal, state, county, and municipal agencies asking for a records search of his name in all appropriate databases. The bureaucrats she spoke to warned that it would probably be several days before she heard anything back.

She pulled into the public parking lot at the county jail just in time to see Barry Foyt, the ADA who’d secured Griffin’s voluntary permission to search, get out of his car. She honked the horn to get Foyt’s attention, and he waved and waited for her at the front entrance.

“Did you get my evidence report on the Griffin house search?” Ramona asked as she approached Foyt. At five-three, she could almost look Foyt directly in the eye. He stood no more than five-six and was seriously balding, which made him look much older than his thirty-something years.

Foyt nodded. “It was a good haul,” he said. “Congratulations. Let’s hope we can use it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Griffin lawyered up after we talked to him. He hired Patricia Delgado as counsel. Last night she got a court order to take a urine sample from Griffin for drug and alcohol screening by a private laboratory. The results should be in anytime.”

“What does that do to us?” Ramona asked.

“If it tests positive, Delgado will likely argue that Griffin’s permission to search should be excluded because he was under the influence and therefore not coherent at the time to make a rational decision. The same applies to Griffin’s waiver of his Miranda rights.”

Ramona shook her head. “He was coherent, dammit. Did you argue against Delgado’s request?”

Foyt scowled humorously. “No, I let Delgado walk all over me. Of course I did. But the judge saw no reason not to sign the order. Under Miranda, any waiver must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. The judge would’ve been foolish to disallow it.”

Foyt shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other. “If Delgado can make a strong case that both the Miranda warning waiver and the voluntary permission to search occurred while Griffin was mentally debilitated due to drugs or alcohol use, we could lose all the evidence you seized.”

“The fruit of the poisoned tree,” Romana said.

“Exactly. But we’re not there yet. Pretrial discovery will require Delgado to show the results of the test and provide an expert opinion about the findings before asking the judge to exclude Griffin’s confession and the evidence.”

“I think Griffin rolled over on himself because he’s hiding something or protecting someone.”

“Like who or what?” Foyt asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, get a handle on it, Sergeant,” Foyt said, “because this case might need all the ammunition we can muster.”

“Are you here to make a deal?”

Foyt shook his head. “No, to listen to one. Want to come along?”

“You bet I do,” Ramona replied, pushing open the door. “What’s up with Dean?”

Foyt followed her into the public reception area where three female citizens were waiting to speak to their incarcerated loved ones. “He’s in a holding cell at the courthouse awaiting arraignment.”

“No problem with him, I hope,” Ramona asked.

“Not so far.”

They signed in and got buzzed through to the corridor that led to the interview rooms. Patricia Delgado stood in the hallway by an open door. At five-nine, she towered over both Pino and Foyt.

A former basketball star at one of the smaller state universities, Delgado kept in shape by running marathons, usually finishing in the top five for her age group. Single, still in her thirties, and attractive, she was romantically linked to a state senator rumored to have his eye on the governorship in the next election.

Ramona thought of Delgado as an ice princess, who hid her self-absorbed personality behind a veneer of charm. Today she wore a tailored tan pantsuit that accentuated her long legs. The smile on her face held all the false enthusiasm of a media spokesperson peddling a beauty aid.

“I’d almost given up on you,” Delgado said, nodding at Foyt and giving Ramona a quizzical look. “I didn’t realize you were bringing Sergeant Pino along.”

“Is that a problem?” Foyt asked.

Delgado shrugged and gestured at the table inside the room where Griffin waited. “Not at all. I just hope you don’t have any more little surprises for me.”

“If your client has told you everything,” Foyt said as he sat down, “there won’t be. What’s on your mind, counselor?”

Ramona slid into the seat next to Foyt and studied Griffin. He’d shaved and combed his hair back so that it stood up at his forehead like strands of wispy wire. He no longer looked like a faded country music star. The stress and anxiety of yesterday were gone, replaced by a blase, untroubled expression.

“If you give him a pass on the drug dealing charges in exchange for his testimony against Mr. Dean,” Delgado said, “he’s agreed to cooperate.”

“Mr. Griffin made that same offer to us yesterday,” Foyt said huffily. “I didn’t take it then. Why should I take it now when I’ve got more than enough evidence collected at the pharmacy to nail Dean on drug trafficking without the help of your client?”

Delgado leaned forward in her chair and smiled winningly. “Because he might be able to help you with the murder charges you’ve filed against Dean.”

“I’m listening,” Foyt said.

“Before we get into that, let me tell you that the lab report on Mr. Griffin’s urinalysis came back positive for both alcohol and barbiturates. In fact, he was barely below the legal limit for intoxication hours after his arrest, and the thin layer chromatography and infrared spectrophotometer analysis shows that Mr. Griffin had ingested a significant amount of Seconal prior to being taken into custody.

“You’ll get the details at the preliminary hearing when I move to have the evidence suppressed, the confession thrown out, and the charges dismissed. I also plan to bring along expert witnesses who will testify that my client was in no condition to intelligently understand his rights or give an informed consent to search his premises.”

Clearly irritated, Foyt rolled his tongue around his lips before speaking. “I’m not going to bargain with you based on a report I haven’t seen.”

Delgado flipped slowly through a leather-bound notecase with her long fingers and perfectly manicured nails. She extracted the report and gave it to Foyt. He read through it quickly and passed it to Ramona.

Delgado hadn’t exaggerated. Ramona pushed the report across the table to Delgado. “Exactly what evidence will you ask to have suppressed?” she asked.

“The pharmaceuticals, of course,” Delgado replied.

Ramona smiled. “But not the ten pounds of marijuana we found in the locked contractor ’s truck box on a garage shelf?”

The expression on Griffin’s face turned from smug to stunned. “What?”

“All neatly wrapped in plastic bundles.”

“That’s not mine,” Griffin said. “I don’t know anything about that shit.”

“Regardless of who it belongs to,” Delgado said, putting a hand on Griffin’s shoulder to shut him up, “it’s still part of an illegal search.”

“That’s yet to be determined,” Foyt said, switching his gaze from Delgado to Griffin. “Whose grass is it?”

“Not mine,” Griffin repeated hotly.

“Let me do the talking, Mitch,” Delgado said.

Griffin shook his head and the swept-back hairs on his forehead flopped and waved. “That’s not my toolbox. It was left there by one of my subcontractors last week.”

“Does this person have a name?” Ramona asked.

Delgado held up a hand. “Stop right there. This goes no further unless we have a deal.”

Ramona watched Foyt think it through. If he went for Delgado’s deal, he’d earn bragging rights for nailing three bad guys in one fell swoop and have one less case to prosecute. Faced with the possibility that the judge would rule in favor of Delgado’s motions, Ramona didn’t think Foyt would turn her down.

“Griffin gives us the marijuana dealer,” Foyt said, “tells us what he knows about the Spalding homicide, and pleads out to intent to distribute.”

“Unacceptable,” Delgado replied. “This is his first offense.”

“No, it’s just the first time he’s been caught,” Ramona said.

Delgado sighed as she reached for her notecase. “I’m sorry we couldn’t reach an agreement. We’ll see you in court.”

“But,” Foyt said, “if Mr. Griffin would show some good faith and tell us what he knows about the Spalding murder case, I’ll consider dropping the current charges.”

“Agreed.” Delgado nodded at Griffin.

He looked directly at Pino. “Like I told you, I never slept with Claudia Spalding, but I know this guy who said he did. He works as a wrangler at a horse rescue ranch down by Stanley, in the southern part of the county, or at least he used to. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Go on,” Ramona said.

“Anyway, Claudia was like a big supporter of the program, gave it money and volunteered to tour the schoolkids around who’d come out to the ranch on field trips. This guy tells me that he got pussy action from her, but cut it off when she asked him to help her arrange a little accident for her husband.”

“What kind of accident?” Ramona asked.

“She wanted to bring Spalding down to the ranch, have the guy take them both out on a horseback ride, and then fake a bad fall. You know, the horse spooks, throws Spalding, and he dies in front of two witnesses.”

“When was this?”

“While I was building her house, before she met Kim.”

“Give me a name,” Ramona said.

“Coe Evans,” Griffin said. “I haven’t seen him in two, three years.”

Ramona got a physical description of Coe Evans and the location of the ranch before Delgado stopped the questioning, gave Foyt a toothy smile, and asked him to affirm the agreement.

Foyt met her smile with a cool look. “Only if your client is willing to give us the names of everyone he’s sold to, every dealer and supplier he knows, precise information about this subcontractor he says stored the marijuana in his garage, and agrees to testify against Dean on both the murder and drug charges, if needed.”

Griffin nodded. “That’s cool with me. When can I get out?”

“As soon as you deliver,” Ramona said, getting to her feet. “I’ll have detectives here within the hour. How long it takes is completely up to you.”

Foyt used his cell phone to clear his calendar for the remainder of the day so he could supervise the interrogation, and joined Ramona at the door.

“I’m hungry,” Griffin said, grinning and patting his stomach.

“We’ll have your lunch brought in,” Ramona said. She walked with Foyt to the lobby and used her cell phone to arrange for a narcotics officer and detective to meet her at the jail pronto.

“You’re not disappointed with the plea bargain, are you?” Foyt asked.

“A little bit,” Ramona said, slipping the phone on her belt. “But I understand your reasoning.”

What she didn’t mention was her plan to have Griffin arrested for harboring a fugitive as soon as the interrogation was over and the current charges were dropped. She had the unshakable feeling that Griffin was still hiding something.

Marched into the courtroom by a uniformed officer, Kim Dean looked around for Stubbs, the moon-faced young lawyer, and didn’t see him. Except for a judge, bailiff, court stenographer, a guy in a suit talking to the judge, and the cop who’d escorted him, the room was empty.

Dean had spent a miserable, sleepless night and an anxious morning at the jail. He’d almost abandoned any hope that Stubbs had gotten through to Claudia. But maybe he had, and Claudia was in the process of lining things up and getting him a good criminal attorney.

The cop put Dean in a seat and hovered behind him. What if the guy in the suit was his new attorney? Kim watched the man eagerly, waiting for him to turn from the judge and make a sign of recognition in his direction. Instead, he picked up his briefcase and left the courtroom just as Stubbs rushed in.

“Did you call my friend?” Dean whispered.

Stubbs scrunched into the seat next to Dean, and looked at the cop, who moved out of earshot.

“I did.”

“And?”

“She thanked me for the call,” Stubbs replied.

“That’s it?” Dean hissed. “What did you say to her?”

“I told her where you were and what the pending charges are.”

Kim took a deep breath. “Have you been contacted by another attorney?”

“Listen,” Stubbs said in a terse whisper, the color rising on his cheeks. “You made it clear yesterday that I am not the lawyer you want. That’s fine with me. Let’s just get you through the arraignment. You’ll be formally charged, given copies of the criminal complaints, and informed of your constitutional rights. I’ll enter no plea on your behalf and you won’t have to say anything. In fact, I don’t want you to. The DA will ask for bail to be denied, and I’ll argue against it. Don’t get your hopes up. The charges are serious.”

Feeling sorry for himself, Dean sighed with resignation.

“Have the police tried to talk to you since yesterday?” Stubbs asked.

Kim shook his head.

“Good. Keep it that way. If you want, I’ll call around to several good criminal trial attorneys. You’re going to need one.”

Kim had waited long enough for Claudia to come through for him. “Why don’t you do that?” he said brusquely

The judge shuffled papers and called Dean’s case.

“Gladly,” Stubbs said, getting to his feet.

The drive from Santa Fe to Taos was always a hassle, especially along the section of the two-lane twisting highway that paralleled the Rio Grande, where Kerney got stuck between two slow-moving motor homes.

In town, summer tourist traffic clogged the narrow main street, and it was stop-and-go all the way until Kerney reached the turnoff to the police station a few blocks north of the old plaza.

Inside, he met with Victor Pontsler, the police chief, who’d held the top cop position on three separate occasions over the span of his thirty-five-year career with the department. Twice in the past, Pontsler had been given the boot after a change in city administration, reverting back to his permanent rank of captain. Now he was back in the chief’s chair again, this time to clean up the mess left behind by a heavy-handed predecessor who had driven officer morale into the ground and alienated the city fathers.

No more than five or six years older than Kerney, Pontsler kept himself in good shape. He weighed in at about a hundred and sixty pounds on a five-ten frame. He had a full head of hair and a crooked nose with a thin pink surgical scar that ran down to his nostrils. It had been badly broken years ago when Vic had responded to a fight in progress that turned into a bar brawl between cops and drunks.

Pontsler sat behind his cluttered desk and twirled a rubber band around his fingers. “I spent time after you called thinking about who you should talk to,” he said. “Michael Winger would be your best bet. Back in the old hippie days he called himself Montana. He grew up in Manhattan and dropped out of college to come west and be part of the love generation. Moved here from San Francisco in the early seventies. He knew just about everybody who lived in the local communes.”

“What else can you tell me about him?” Kerney asked.

“He’s part of the establishment now, a successful businessman. Chamber of Commerce member, museum foundation patron, and all that. Owns the Blue Mountain Restaurant on the Paseo and the Blue Moon Gallery just off the plaza.”

“He likes the color blue, I take it,” Kerney said.

“You’ve got that right. He lives in a primo old hacienda on a ten-acre parcel off Kit Carson Road. He likes to play the cowboy role. Wears his hair pulled back in a ponytail and dresses in jeans and boots. He’s divorced and has a Scandinavian girlfriend who teaches writing workshops and makes documentary films about oppressed women.”

“Is he into anything shady?” Kerney asked.

“As far as I know, Winger is a solid, upstanding citizen.”

“No trouble during his early days in town?”

“I know he smoked pot, but he never was busted.”

“How did he get started in business?” Kerney asked.

Pontsler rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “He likes to say he started out buying southwestern art for himself before the market for it took off. But it was really family money that bankrolled him. His father was a big-time New York City architect.”

Before leaving, Kerney got a rundown on a few more people Pontsler thought might be helpful. He locked his sidearm in the glove box of his unit, stuck his shield in his back pocket, and walked to Winger ’s restaurant.

Although it was touted as a mecca of Native American culture and had a long history as a famous art colony, Taos had never appealed much to Kerney. Parts of it were charming and the surrounding landscape was majestic. But the city was also a magnet for modern-day rogues and ruffians, frauds and fugitives, many of whom could be belligerent and nasty. Pontsler’s sterling character reference aside, Kerney wondered if Winger fit into any of those categories.

The Blue Mountain Restaurant occupied an old adobe house with a lovely tree-shaded outdoor dining patio and two small separate dining rooms with low ceilings, light blue walls with framed photographs of early Taos scenes, and Mexican tile tables. The hostess, a tall, rather aloof woman with a clipped English accent, told Kerney that Winger was never at the restaurant until late in the afternoon and could most probably be found at his gallery. He half-expected her to say “ta-ta” or “cheerio” when he thanked her and left.

He walked down the Paseo toward the plaza. Slow-moving road traffic with its incessant noise lurched in both directions as groups of shoppers wandered in and out of the retail stores lining the street. Many establishments had sale signs in the windows; others displayed rugs, apparel, and hand-crafted furniture in the front yards of old houses that had been converted to shops. Here and there a bored store clerk stood in a doorway watching the foot traffic pass by.

The hot, dry day had brought the tourists out in shorts, pullover short-sleeved shirts, and athletic walking shoes. Some were building up to painful sunburns, while others shaded their faces with newly purchased cheap straw cowboy hats or billed caps that proclaimed their visit to Taos.

The Blue Moon Gallery was an austere, modern space a few steps from the plaza. Overhead track lights and exposed heating and cooling ductwork hung from the ceiling, and the walls were filled with the works of the Taos Society of Artists, established in the early part of the twentieth century by a group of bohemian artists drawn to the area’s culture and landscape.

Kerney trailed behind two couples cruising the gallery and immediately recognized the distinctive styles of Joseph Henry Sharp, Eanger Irving Couse, and Ernest Blumenschein, three of the founding members of the society. Only the placards next to the smaller paintings displayed a price. There was nothing on sale below twenty thousand dollars until you got to the lesser-known artists who’d joined the society later on, and even those works were pricy.

In the center space, randomly placed pale blue stands of various heights and widths held sculptures by Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.

Kerney admired everything before moving on to a small display of Maynard Dixon pencil drawings that were hung on a corridor that led to a suite of offices. A comely woman with curly hair and a bright smile approached him holding a gallery brochure and asked if he needed any assistance.

Kerney shook his head, showed the woman his shield, asked for Winger, and when she showed concern, quickly reassured her there was no reason for alarm.

She led him down the corridor and knocked on an open office door. Michael Winger sat at a large cherrywood desk in front of a flat screen LCD computer monitor. Behind him was a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit crammed with art reference books.

Winger looked up from the monitor and studied Kerney with interest as the woman explained the reason for the interruption. Then he stood, shook Kerney’s hand, and gestured at an empty chair.

“You’re the Santa Fe police chief,” Winger said with a smile as Kerney eased into the chair.

“How do you know that?” Kerney asked as the woman left the office. Winger’s gray, neatly tied-back hair draped several inches below the back of his neck. He had on an expensive blue designer work shirt that matched the color of his eyes, which held a look of amusement. On his left wrist he wore a vintage watch with a leather strap. His face was narrow, long, and deeply tanned.

“I have some business interests in Santa Fe,” Winger replied, “so I spend a lot of time there. What can I do for you, Chief?”

“I’d be interested in what you could tell me about Debbie Calderwood.”

Winger laughed. “Boy, I haven’t heard that name in years. Debbie Calderwood. I may be the only person around who knew her real name. At the commune, she called herself Caitlin, after Dylan Thomas’s wife. She was always quoting his poems to anyone who would listen. She liked to say he was the only true poet of the twentieth century.”

“Certainly one of the best,” Kerney said. “What was she like?”

“Waiflike in a very sexy way. She was tiny, but perfectly proportioned, with these huge innocent eyes. Every guy who saw her wanted to sleep with her, but she’d have none of it. She was really smart and had a steel-trap mind. You could talk to her about something and weeks later she’d remember the conversation almost verbatim.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She just wandered into the commune with a sleeping bag and a backpack one day and stayed. Said she need to crash with us until her old man returned from Guatemala. Things were going downhill at the time. People were bailing to go back to the city, couples were breaking up, cash was tight, and the cops and the locals were hassling us. She had money, which helped a lot.”

“How much money?”

“I don’t know, but she was pretty free with it. She’d pay for the supplies we needed and put gas in the bus without anyone asking.”

“How did you learn her real name?” Kerney asked.

Winger smiled. “We were all a bit paranoid about newcomers who showed up back then, worried about the lowlifes who wandered in, or outsiders nobody knew who might be narcs. This one guy showed up, stayed for a week, and then stole the International Scout we used to till the garden with an old plow. So I searched through her stuff one day after she came back from town, and found some general delivery letters addressed to her.”

“Did you read the contents?”

“Yeah, they were innocent, chatty notes from some girlfriends in Albuquerque and Oregon.”

“Did you confront her about her name?”

Winger laughed and shook his head. “No. We were all into giving ourselves or each other new names. Jimmy called himself Beaner; Sammy, a surfer guy from Hawaii, was Bear; Judy had an acid ceremony to change her name to Peachy Windsong. We had girls who called themselves Star, Feather, Aurora, Chamisa; guys who went by Owl and Rabbit. Owl held a drum circle to celebrate his new name.”

“And you were Montana,” Kerney said.

Winger looked sheepish. “You heard about that. I guess I grew up watching too many cowboy movies. In retrospect, it’s funny now. But we were all just kids who’d dropped out of the establishment to create a brand-new society, live peacefully, and change the world. Free love, flower power, new identities, and lots of dynamite drugs. We wanted truth, enlightenment, sex, and freedom to get high without any bullshit.”

Winger shifted in the chair, with a sunny look on his face as he warmed to the memories. “Looking back, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We built chicken pens and then let the birds run wild, put up a big dome-sort of an aboveground kiva we used for family meetings-that almost blew down during the first big storm. Hell, the most substantial structure on the whole place was the outhouse. It had six seats and was made of scrap slat lumber.”

“Looks like you came through it all right,” Kerney said, thinking of his year in Nam, which occurred probably right about the time Winger and his friends had been trying to build their utopia.

Winger smiled. “Yeah, and most of it was fun. The one thing I learned was that you can’t live without rules. It’s a great idea but it doesn’t float.”

“Did Debbie do a lot of drugs?”

“She smoked some pot, but that’s about it.”

“How long did she stay?”

“Three, maybe four months, until her boyfriend showed up. They split two days after he arrived.”

“When was that?” Kerney asked.

Winger closed his eyes and thought hard, “Shit, I don’t know. Sometime in the summer. I was on a really bad head trip at the time. People were staying wasted, not pulling their share, or just bitching each other off right and left about the crops we couldn’t raise, the goats that got into the garden, the pig nobody knew how to slaughter, the tools that had gone missing. There were maybe a dozen of us left and nobody was getting along or doing any work.”

It was clear that Winger had told the story of his youthful, hippie escapades many times. Kerney decided Winger wasn’t a rogue or ruffian, fraud or fugitive. He was just a guy who wore his counter-culture experiences as a mark of his individuality.

“Tell me about the boyfriend,” he said.

Winger made a face. “Now, that was strange. He showed up one day driving a new truck with Mexican license plates. It was like he didn’t want to talk to anybody but Caitlin. They went off together in his truck. Two days later they came back, picked up her stuff, and left. That was the last time I saw her.”

“Describe him to me.”

“Average height, real fit looking, with a shaved head that he covered with a bandana. Oh yeah, and a fairly new mustache he was cultivating. Somebody asked him what had happened to his hair, and he said he’d picked up head lice and had to shave it off in Guatemala.”

“Did he have a name?”

“Caitlin called him Breeze.”

“Can you give me a little more detailed description of him?”

Winger chuckled. “I can go one better than that. Photography was my thing back in those days. I was documenting communal living and keeping a journal. My plan was to write a book about it someday. Never did get around to it. Anyway, I snuck around taking pictures of everyone and everything with a telephoto lens. Before Caitlin and Breeze left, I snapped a couple of frames from a distance for my rogues’ gallery. Got a nice tight head shot of both of them.”

“I need to see those photographs,” Kerney said.

“Hell, I’ll give you copies if you’ll tell me what this is all about.”

“If I’m right, Breeze may be a solider named George Spalding who faked his death in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. Why he did it, I still don’t know.”

Winger’s eyes widened. “A deserter. Isn’t that something?” He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it across the desk. “Meet me at my house in an hour. It shouldn’t take longer than that for me to dig through my archives and find the photographs.”

“One more question,” Kerney said, pocketing the address. “Do you have any idea where they went?”

Winger shook his head. “They could have gone anywhere. South to Silver City. There was a commune down there. Maybe up to Trinidad, Colorado. All I know is that they didn’t hang around Taos.”

Ninety minutes later, Kerney waited patiently in the library at Winger ’s house, a spacious room with massive ceiling beams, double adobe walls, and tall casement windows, painted on the outside in turquoise blue. Bookcases along three walls were filled with Native American artifacts, pre-Columbian pots, and rare first editions of early Southwestern archaeology studies. The room held two oversized antique Mexican tables that served as desks, each laden with books, old maps, file folders, photographs of high-end artwork, and related provenance documents.

He sat in front of the stone fireplace, impatiently waiting for Winger ’s return from what he called his archives room, located somewhere in the back of the rambling adobe. The sound of hurrying footsteps brought Kerney to his feet. Winger appeared, photographs in hand, which he passed to Kerney.

“Sorry to take so much time,” Winger said. “I had to make copies and dig out my journal to look up when I took the photos.”

“What?” Kerney asked, staring at the head shots of a young Debbie Calderwood and her boyfriend Breeze, also known as U.S. Army Specialist George Spalding, killed in action. His mother had been right on the money all along.

“I looked up the date I took the pictures,” Winger repeated, “in my journal.”

“When was that?” Kerney asked.

Winger told him.

“You’ve been a big help,” Kerney said.

“So what happens now?” Winger asked.

“I’m going to find out where Spalding’s grave is located and see who’s buried in it.”