Under the color of law

Chapter 9

In his office at the state police headquarters, Andy Baca took a call from Melody Jordan, a senior crime-scene technician. She curtly asked him to visit her in the lab right away and hung up before he could ask any questions. Andy put the phone down and the button on his very private phone line blinked off.

Only his wife, his secretary, Kevin Kerney, the governor's chief of staff, and a few high-ranking commanders in the department had access to the number. Melody Jordan wasn't one of them.

Andy dialed Melody's extension, dropped the handset in the cradle after twelve unanswered rings, and checked the time. He had ten minutes before a scheduled meeting. The state police lab did most of the forensic testing for local police departments, including the Santa Fe cop shop.

Only Kevin Kerney would've been able to get Melody to pull such a stunt.

He went to the laboratory to find out what Kerney wanted.

Through a window in the lab he saw Kerney and Melody Jordan standing in front of a stainless-steel table in the small clean room, a sterile environment designed to ensure no contaminants adversely affected DNA testing results. He watched as they filled out evidence labels, attached them to fluid vials and evidence bags, and sealed everything in a Plexiglas box.

They stepped out of the clean room and removed their white lab coats and plastic gloves. Melody Jordan gave Andy a disconcerted look.

Kerney had a gleam in his eye.

Ignoring Kerney, Andy smiled reassuringly at Melody.

"You called?" he asked blithely.

Melody blushed in embarrassment.

Kerney intervened.

"Blame Melody's phone call on me, Andy."

"I already had that figured out. Why are you here taking up Ms. Jordan's valuable time?"

"She ran a few tests for me," Kerney said.

"I thought you'd be interested in the results."

"You have my undivided attention."

"I've analyzed the hair, skin, and blood samples taken from Scott Gatlin with the remaining physical evidence we have from the Terrell case,"

Melody said.

"Phyllis Terrell did have sex with Scott Gatlin prior to her death."

Andy shot Kerney a quizzical look.

"So the FBI let you confirm their findings.

What's the big deal?"

"That's not quite how it happened," Kerney said.

"How did it happen?"

Kerney turned to Melody.

"Will you give me a few minutes alone with Chief Baca?"

Melody nodded and left the room.

"Well?" Andy said.

"Charlie Perry faked the DNA findings. The night Phyllis Terrell died her bed partner was a neighbor named Randall Stewart, not Scott Gatlin.

The whole FBI investigation is a scam-their evidence, Gatlin's confession, and his suicide."

"Do you have Stewart in custody?" Andy inquired.

"That's not possible," Kerney answered.

"He was murdered."

Andy raised an eyebrow.

"When?"

"Sometime yesterday up in Red River. It was made to look like a skiing accident."

"Suspects?"

Kerney shrugged.

"I'd like to think it was Charlie Perry. But he's not the professional-killer type. My best guess is that it's someone who is operating under the color of law."

Although he didn't want to believe it, Andy had no reason to doubt Kerney.

"Does Perry know you've blown a hole in his case?"

"He will in about four hours when the news of Stewart's murder is made public."

"Jesus, what have you fallen into?" Andy asked.

"Quicksand," Kerney said.

"What are you going to do?"

"I want to move the bar up a notch. Let me use your criminal intelligence people to wire Perry and Applewhites hotel rooms for sound and tap their telephones."

"Have you got a court order?" Andy asked.

"Do you know a judge who'd give me one?" Kerney replied.

"I'd be laughed out of chambers. At worst it's my word against the FBI.

At best it's pure speculation."

"You're asking me for something I'm not willing to do."

"Would you be willing to change your mind if I told you that I have reason to believe Father Mitchell's murder is directly tied to the Terrell case?"

"What reasons?"

"Start with the fact that yesterday Bobby Sloan found a stack of videotapes and a briefcase ful of information Mitchell had assembled that points to a major government espionage operation in South America.

Add to that Applewhite's arrival at Bobby's house after midnight armed with a federal court order requiring that all the evidence be immediately turned over to the Bureau."

"You better give me the whole story."

"Not in your office," Kerney replied.

Andy reached for a phone.

"Let me cancel a meeting and we'll find a nice, private place in the building to talk."

Andy took him to the armory, a room with thick, reinforced concrete walls and a steel door, where tactical weapons and ammunition were stored.

"Start at the beginning," Andy said, closing the door.

Kerney ran it down.

Andy said nothing until Kerney finished.

"The connection between Terrell and Mitchell is a stretch, Kevin," he said.

"The MOs are completely different."

"All four murders, if you include the Gatlin suicide, are different,"

Kerney countered.

"Which is exactly the way a professional killer would operate."

"You're assuming one killer, possibly a government agent, did them all?"

"I think it's highly probable."

"This is risky business, Kevin."

"I know it."

"I don't think you do. You've got a new wife, a child on the way, and a career to think about."

"I'd be very happy if none of this had happened, Andy. But it has.

Would you let it slide?"

"Not completely," Andy said.

"I'd want some answers, but I wouldn't risk my neck to get them."

Kerney thought about Sara, his impending fatherhood, and all he had to look forward to.

"I don't plan on going off half cocked. I want information, not confrontation. Will you help?"

"You want electronic surveillance on Perry and Applewhite?"

"That could get us some of the answers I need."

"And ruin our careers," Andy said.

"Okay, you've got it."

"Thanks."

"Don't thank me," Andy replied.

"I'm already regretting my decision."

The police radio squawked Kerney's call sign. Larry Otero wanted to talk to him, Helen Muiz had paperwork needing his signature, Detective Sloan wanted a few minutes of his time, dispatch had three messages to pass on from Cloudy Herrera's pushy lawyer.

He didn't respond and drove out of town along the two-lane state road that passed by the state penitentiary and the new county jail. He kept his eye on the rearview mirror as he passed the jail and didn't turn around until he was certain he wasn't being tailed.

He had to assume that his office, house, and car were bugged, tapped, wired, and videotaped; that Andy was also under some sort of electronic surveillance; and that vehicle-tracking devices had been planted on department vehicles to keep tabs on the whereabouts of key personnel.

Doing a sweep or a grid-search for wiretaps and bugs at police headquarters wouldn't catch everything, not with the new remote technology that made long-distance eavesdropping easy. Ripping out bugs and inspecting vehicles for tracking sensors wouldn't be smart anyway.

You could never be sure if you found everything and it would only serve to alert the listeners that their surveillance had been compromised.

He parked and went inside the county jail. It was a safe place to put his plan into motion. Cops went in and out of jails all the time, so his presence at the facility shouldn't raise suspicions.

He introduced himself to the receptionist, showed his shield, and asked to use an empty office. In a small space used by shift supervisors he dictated everything he knew and all his conjectures about the Terrell-Mitchell homicides into a micro tape recorder. When he finished he wrote out a message to Helen Muiz that read:

Hand-carry this confidential message to It. Sal Molina and Detective Robert Sloan. Do not speak to anyone about this message or make a copy of it. Destroy this message immediately after the officers have read it.

TO; It. Molina, Det. Sloan Assemble all remaining Terrell-Mitchell case documents and meet me at the county jail ASAP. Do not travel together or use departmental vehicles. Do not reveal your destination or engage in any radio or telephone communication about this assignment after you receive this message.

He signed the message and faxed it, hoping that the two officers didn't show up looking at him like he was a paranoid nutcase.

Kerney's early-morning phone call to the Red River marshal, and his voice message to Helen Muiz canceling all his scheduled appointments, had forced Elaine Applewhite out of a warm bed in her hotel room and into her car.. She'd followed him all the way to Questa before turning back. She didn't give a damn if the fatal accident got turned into a homicide. It had been a good hit that wouldn't come back to bite her.

None of them ever had.

What bothered her was Kerney. He was acting a bit too clever. What put him on to Randall Stewart in the first place? What made him think that Stewart was a target?

Applewhite knew the ambassador wouldn't be happy when she called him in Washington with the report of Kerney's snooping. He expected everything to go smoothly, thought that all field contingency problems were caused by sloppy procedures, and stomped hard on operatives when pissed off.

Maybe there wouldn't be a need to raise the old boy's blood pressure.

Applewhite decided to wait and see what shook out from Kerney's little jaunt up north. She had lots of time before a call had to be made;

Terrell wasn't scheduled to return to South America until tomorrow morning.

She'd watched for Kerney's return from the outskirts of Santa Fe, monitoring the Taos district state-police-band frequency through a computer satellite link that fed directly into her laptop. The last transmission from the officer at the scene came in when Stewart's body had been loaded on the meat wagon for transport. He'd coded his report as an accidental death and resumed patrol.

That had made Applewhite smile.

When Kerney passed by, she'd switched the laptop to a vehicle tracking program that would record the travel and location of his vehicle in a fifty-mile radius. Then she went back to the hotel for a late lunch, feeling much more positive about the phone call she needed to make to Ambassador Terrell.

Maybe fuss-bucket Charlie Perry, whom Applewhite longed to whack just for the fun of it, had been right about Kerney being an over-the-hill lightweight cop who occasionally got lucky.

Kerney hoped that Molina and Sloan would buy into his scheme. While he waited for their arrival, he faxed a request to Andy Baca that would put the plan into play, if his officers agreed, and got a good-to-go response back. Bobby Sloan arrived first, carrying a cardboard box. He dumped it on the table in the meeting room Kerney had taken over and gave him a wily smile.

"What's all that?" Kerney asked.

"Applewhite didn't get everything, Chief. I stayed late at the office last night and copied all the Mitchell documents and tapes."

"Did anybody see you do it?"

Sloan shook his head.

"Nope. I've got more news, Chief. Phyllis Terrell made two five-thousand-dollar cash withdrawals on the same days that Mitchell entered identical deposits in his checkbook."

Kerney smiled. The link between Terrell and Mitchell was now real.

"What will it be, Bobby? A commendation or a promotion?"

"I'll pass on the promotion, Chief. I've already got the job I want.

But a commendation for my personnel file would be nice."

"Consider it done," Kerney said.

"Thanks." Sloan popped an antacid pill.

"I figure we're meeting at the jail because some naughty FBI agents have been listening in on our private conversations."

"You're not wrong. They haven't been playing nice. It's our turn to bend a few rules. Are you game?"

"You bet, if I'm allowed to do great bodily harm to Applewhite. She freaked my wife out last night."

"That's not a good idea."

"I can dream, can't I?" Sloan said with a grin.

Sal Molina arrived. Kerney asked Sloan to bring the lieutenant up to speed on the Mitchell case. Bobby summarized the important events and what had been learned from the new evidence.

Molina sat silent and stone faced.

"I should have known about this, Detective," he said when Bobby stopped talking.

Irritated by Molina's officious response, Kerney fiddled with a loose paper clip before reacting.

"Detective Sloan came to me because you were out in the field, Lieutenant. I asked him not to talk to anyone about the developments in the Mitchell case without my permission."

"You don't think I can be trusted?" Molina asked.

"You wouldn't be here if I thought that. It's almost a sure bet that we're under electronic surveillance. On top of that I acquired conclusive proof today that the FBI lied big time about Scott Gatlin."

Kerney spelled out the facts surrounding Randall Stewart's murder and the DNA test results. Bobby Sloan sat wide eyed in his chair, rubbing a hand over his stomach. Molina let out a low uncharacteristic whistle.

Kerney continued.

"In about an hour Charlie Perry will know that we know Randall Stewart's death was a homicide. He'll assume, quite rightly, that the Terrell murder cover-up has been blown. We've been under surveillance since day one. As of now I'm returning the favor to the fullest extent possible.

There are phone taps, video cameras, and microphones planted in Perry's and Applewhite's hotel rooms."

"You got a court order for that?" Molina asked disbelievingly.

"No." Kerney leaned forward in his chair, concentrating his attention on Molina.

"You were right to bust my balls about shutting down the investigation, Sal. But I'd been warned off by Perry and I didn't want to telegraph my intentions to keep digging into the case-not with the Feds listening. I thought I could do enough hunting out of season on my own to get a handle on what is really going on, but I can't. I need help."

Molina thought about his career and his short-timer's calendar. He thought about doing time in the slammer if the feds decided to hand him his balls on a silver platter. There would be no trips in the camper, no fishing excursions to Idaho.

"Okay, what do you need from us?" Sal asked, his mouth dry.

"I want to put tails on Perry and Applewhite," Kerney said.

"We need to track their movements. Surveillance only. No intervention regardless of what goes down. We photograph or videotape anything that's out of the ordinary."

"For how long, Chief?" Bobby Sloan asked.

"Forty-eight hours."

"Who else gets assigned?" Molina asked.

"Just the two of you," Kerney replied.

"Impossible," Molina said.

"Perry and Applewhite know us."

"If you agree to this, I've registered both of you for a class at the law-enforcement academy starting tomorrow. Two vehicles seized by the state police and outfitted for undercover narcotic work will be waiting for you there.

Each is fully equipped. The sheriff's department will handle all your radio traffic, utilizing the tri-county drug task force channel. I'm betting the feds aren't going to be expecting us to look outside the department for help."

"Speaking of that," Sloan said, "who set up the electronic surveillance?

It wasn't any of our people, that's for sure."

"Chief Baca," Kerney answered.

"His criminal intelligence people will monitor and stay in touch with you through the sheriff's dispatch. This will be a straight forty-eight-hour assignment. You'll sleep in the cars, eat in the cars.

No breaks, no relief."

"This scheme could bring a lot of good cops down," Molina said.

"Which is why I'm asking for your help, not ordering."

"Jesus, Sal, let's do it," Bobby said, who like Kerney had pulled a tour in Nam.

"This country isn't a fucking police state. At least, not yet."

The consequences scared Molina, but he had to decide. Either he took the risk or he bailed out on his chief. He shored himself up.

"Okay.

Forty-eight hours."

"I'm apprehensive too, Lieutenant," Kerney said, reading Molina's expression.

Breath whooshed out of Molina.

"Yeah."

Charlie Perry raged while Applewhite sat at the hotel-room desk punching up the vehicle tracking records for Kerney and the other key investigative personnel in his department on her laptop.

The lead detectives assigned to the homicides were off duty and at home, and Kerney, after making a stop at the state police headquarters, was parked at the county jail, where he'd been for a very long time.

"I thought Kerney had canceled all his appointments for the day,"

Applewhite said.

"Why did he go to state police headquarters and then the county jail?"

"Are you even fucking listening to me?" Perry snapped.

"Yes, the Red River marshal is treating Stewart's death as a homicide,"

Applewhite said blithely. She wished she could garrote the son of a bitch.

"I heard you."

Perry put both hands on the table and stuck his face in Apple white's.

"Who sanctioned the hit?"

"That's a pretty cheeky question to be asking me, Charlie," Applewhite said, closing the laptop cover.

"Neither of us knows the who, what, or the why of the matter."

"Look, if I have to cover your ass, I want to know now."

"All you have to do right now is throw your weight around a little, Charlie.

Scoop up Stewart's body and make sure only a trusted forensic pathologist does the autopsy."

"What trustworthy doctor do you have in mind?"

Applewhite wrote out a name and number and waved the slip of paper under Charlie's nose.

"Call this number in Albuquerque. The man who answers the phone will be a doctor who holds a Q clearance. Get the body to him."

Perry snatched the paper.

"What about Kerney? He's got to know by now that we've been feeding him pure bullshit."

"But can he prove anything?" Applewhite said.

"I doubt it. If it becomes necessary, Chief Kerney will be dealt with."

"How?"

Applewhite knew it wouldn't be her call to make, but she loved thinking about the possibilities if a sanction removal was authorized. The anticipation of it made her smile.

"Firmly but gently, Charlie," she said, getting to her feet. She steered Perry out the door, returned to the desk, and dialed a Washington number.

With the phone cradled against his ear, Hamilton Lowell Terrell made notes while listening to Applewhite's report. She finished speaking and he lapsed into a long silence.

"Your instructions, sir?" Applewhite finally asked, unable to repress her apprehension. If she was due for a butt-chewing, she wanted it over and done with.

Terrell let the silence grind deeper into Applewhite, then said, "This isn't the containment we had in mind."

"I'm aware of that, sir."

"I've heard nothing about your plans to help our third friend reach his destination."

"I've got the itinerary finalized, Ambassador."

"Make sure his trip is uneventful," Terrell said, consulting his notes.

"Are you quite sure that the local police chief has nothing more than suppositions to go on?"

"At this point, yes. But that could change."

"Do you have reason to believe it will change?"

"He's much more resourceful than I was led to believe."

"Did the materials he reviewed give him an advantage?"

"Not really, but they did provide a connection we were hoping to avoid."

"If we manage the situation correctly from here on out, that shouldn't be a problem. Since truth, in this instance, is heavily mingled with falsehood, I doubt he'll be able to probe too deeply."

"Take no action?" Applewhite inquired.

"Let me see what I can learn about him that might be useful for future planning, if the situation warrants."

"And Agent Perry?"

"I know you wish to be rid of him, and you have my sympathy. But ask yourself this question: Where would you like the burden of guilt to fall if all does not go well?"

"I understand, sir."

"Henceforth, there are to be no more contingencies," Terrell said.

"Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly, sir."

Terrell disconnected and dialed a DOD number.

The phone rang once and a voice said, "Yes, Ambassador."

"Santa Fe, New Mexico, Police Chief Kevin Kerney. Best-case scenario for sanctioned removal. All particulars to me, eyes only, by twenty-three hundred hours."

"Under DOD regulations pertaining to the National Security Act, I am required to inform you that contemplated sanctioned removals require concurrence from the national security advisor, CIA, and the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency."

"Particulars to me by twenty-three hundred," Terrell repeated.

"Aye-aye, sir."

Kerney left the county jail and did some shopping. He stopped at a discount chain store, bought cellular phones, and paid the activation fees. At a video store he bought a stack of used movies. He topped off his shopping spree at an electronics super store, where he purchased a small TV with a built-in VCR, a tape recorder, two privacy earphones, and a radio wave frequency detector.

He drove home, dressed to go running, and slipped a night vision scope in the pocket of his lightweight pullover parka. Outside he did a few stretching exercises and took off down the driveway past his landlord's house. Once he turned the corner of the block, he pulled up, and walked down the utility easement that ran behind his cottage. He climbed a lot wall and used an electric meter box as a stepping-stone to get to the roof of an old garage. He flattened out in a prone position and scanned with the scope looking for any evidence of a surveillance video camera.

He spotted it at the base of a TV satellite dish mounted on the porch roof of a neighboring house, angled to get a clear view of the front of his cottage. He looked around for more and found none.

He wondered if the uplink to the watchers and listeners was local or remote. He scrambled down, completed a circle around the block, and stopped in front of the house with the TV dish. No lights were on inside. He gauged the distance between the top of the porch railing and the roof line. If he stood tiptoe on the railing he could probably disable the camera. But why tell the watchers that he knew he was being watched?

At the cottage Kerney punched the playback on his answering machine, and carted in the Mitchell evidence he'd sneaked onto the back patio before parking in the driveway. He caught snatches of messages left by Sara, each one sounding a little more terse, as he brought in his new TV VCR and the other purchases. He dumped it all in the bedroom, stuck a movie in the living-room VCR, turned up the volume, and closed the bedroom door.

John Wayne kicked butt chasing Indians while Kerney hunted bugs in his bedroom and bath. On his first visual sweep he found three, one in a lamp, one in a wall outlet, and one in the bedroom telephone. He swept again, taking apart everything he could think of, searching every surface-bed frame, mattress, dresser, pictures, walls, ceiling. He found a third inside a doorknob, a fourth behind the toilet tank, and a fifth on the underside of a floor heating duct.

Except for the bathroom device he left everything else in place.

Using a handheld scanner Kerney made a grid-by-grid pass of the walls, floors, and ceiling in the bathroom, bedroom, and closet, and didn't find any more bugs. With what he'd bought, he could work in the bedroom without raising the suspicions of his listeners.

He carried everything he needed into the bedroom and closed the door.

Just before he plugged in the earphones and started listening to the audiotapes, the living room TV blared the notes of a bugler sounding a cavalry charge.

Unlike real cities with real morgues and coroners, the Santa Fe local-yokels stashed their stiffs at the regional hospital. That made scooping up the body, as Applewhite had so inelegantly put it, a relatively easy chore for Charlie Perry. He followed the rent-an ambulance to an HMO facility in Albuquerque near the air force base, within shouting distance of the VA hospital. Two white-coats and an armed uniformed security guard waited at the back door.

The white-coats transferred the corpse to the gurney and the guard led the way into the building. Perry tagged behind. The inside didn't look anything like an HMO clinic. There were laboratories, research suites, and communications rooms, offices identified by numbers only, contamination vaults and refrigerated storage lockers posted with radioactive warning signs, a video surveillance room, and finally a real morgue.

The white-coats dumped the body on a stainless-steel autopsy table and left. The guard remained in the room. Perry smiled at the guard. He got a tight nod back.

CIA, thought Charlie. Maybe something to do with the vast nuclear weapons stockpile stored in the mountains on the air force base. He thought human radiation exposure, epidemiology testing for rare forms of cancer, forensic pathology studies to determine unusual causes of death, psych testing to assess mental functioning.

Charlie decided it was smart to put the facility right next door to the base and close to the VA hospital so all the civilian and military worker bees could be easily examined, probed, and tested, to study the effects of exposure to plutonium, uranium, anthrax bacilli, Ebola, or whatever else the government was playing around with.

A man in a lab coat walked in. He flipped off the sheet covering the cadaver and did a visual head-to-toe inspection. Maybe on the early side of forty, he wore a Naval Academy class ring.

"Cause of death appears to be blunt trauma to the head, with some very interesting lacerations," the man said.

"Someone drew blood, did a mouth swab, and took a skin sample. What's that all about?"

Perry froze. That son of a bitch Kerney had all he needed to wash the Terrell homicide cover-up down the tubes. He didn't know whether to lie or tell the truth. He knew Applewhite wasn't FBI. But was she CIA?

Military intelligence?

State Department counterintelligence? He had every reason to believe she'd killed four, possibly five people. It was time to start covering his ass.

"Who took the samples?" the doctor asked.

"I had those done," Perry lied.

The doctor nodded.

"Want me to open him up?"

"If you think it's necessary."

"What do you need?"

"The local police are calling it a homicide," Perry replied.

"I doubt they're wrong. What do you want done?"

"It needs to become an accidental death," Perry said.

"Who gets the autopsy report?"

"The Red River town marshal."

Sal Molina's undercover vehicle was a minivan equipped with a radio, a pinpoint shielded privacy light, cell phone, 35mm camera, night-vision binoculars, video camera, and an array of weapons held in a rack above his head. While it looked like an anonymous soccer mom car, a souped-up eight-cylinder engine powered the vehicle and a new suspension gave it a surefooted feel on the road. The van could top out at 140 mph and manage a high-speed emergency U turn without nipping over.

It had been used by a local real estate agent to transport crack cocaine to wealthy clients who divided their time between Santa Fe in the summer and trendy, upscale Colorado skiing destinations in the winter.

Sal had tailed Charlie Perry and the ambulance to Albuquerque. Watching Perry play body snatcher demolished the last of his doubts about Chief Kerney's plan.

He took snapshots, scribbled surveillance field notes, and followed Perry back to Santa Fe, expecting to spend the remainder of the night parked outside of Charlie's hotel. Instead, he waited and watched as Perry parked at the back of the federal courthouse two blocks from the plaza and went inside.

The FBI offices were next door in the post office building. What was Perry doing at the courthouse? Unless he had a late-night meeting with a judge or a federal prosecutor from the U. S. attorney's office in from Albuquerque, it made no sense. Other than Charlie's unit there were no cars in the spaces reserved for judges and staff. But behind the post office there were five nice, shiny new Ford sedans that screamed FBI.

Only one full-time resident agent, Frank Powers, worked out of Santa Fe.

Why the late-night caucus?

Sal reached for the Santa Fe telephone book, found a number, and dialed up a retired sheriff's captain who worked as a federal court security officer. Six years ago Molina had busted the man's youngest son for drug dealing, turned him into a snitch, and let him walk. After the kid cleaned up his act, Molina had cut him loose.

A sleepy voice answered on the second ring.

"Jake."

"Yeah."

"It's Sal Molina. Who's holding a late-night convention at the courthouse?"

"Man, I don't know what you're talking about. The courthouse is locked up at night."

"Wrong answer, Jake. I just watched an FBI agent go in the back door."

Sal heard Jake catch his breath.

"I don't know nothing about that," Jake said.

"I hear Joey's doing okay. Married. Kid on the way. Got a good job as an auto mechanic with the highway department."

"Jesus, don't do this to me, Sal." The words came out pinched.

"That's not a trade someone learns in the slammer," Sal said evenly.

"Okay, okay, I owe you. There's an off-limits suite of rooms in the basement.

People come and go. I don't know what they do down there."

"I need more than that, Jake."

"This has to stay off the record," Jake said.

"I'm not supposed to talk about it."

"You've got my word."

"You gotta pass through a retina- and palm-print-scan foyer that's behind a keypad access door on the first floor, just off the back entrance. That's all I know."

"You said you see those people come and go, Jake. Who do you think they are?"

"Some are FBI suits and Beltway types, but most of the current crew look like computer gee ks to me."

"Is the basement in constant use?" Sal asked.

"Staffed regularly?"

"The last group to use it was the Secret Service. They were here when the vice president came to Santa Fe."

"When did the computer gee ks set up shop?"

"About two months before the FBI task force came to town on the Terrell homicide."

Sal decided not to push it any further.

"Thanks, Jake. Give my best to Joey."

After sampling the Mitchell audiotapes to get the meat of each interview, Kerney worked up a set of questions he would use in the morning. He planned to call some of the people Mitchell had interviewed.

He figured it would be safe to use each of the new cell phones three or four times before the feds got on to it.

He stared at Mitchell's list of names and numbers. How did the priest make contact with these people? There was no phone in his room at the brothers' residence hall, and the two phones in the common areas where the brothers congregated weren't suitable for private conversations.

Kerney went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and used one of the cell phones to call the residence hall. Brother Jerome answered.

Kerney identified himself and jumped right to the point.

"Did Father Mitchell have access to a campus telephone?"

"None was assigned to him, but he did use my office telephone when he needed to make a call. He used a calling card when he was in the field that was billed to my number. He was very prompt about paying the college for the charges."

"Do you have a record of his calls?" Kerney asked.

"Of course. Every personal and long-distance call charged to the college must be logged on a special form. Each month we get a printout of all charges incurred from each office telephone. Every faculty and staff member is honor bound to identify non business calls and reimburse the college."

"Does that include local calls?" Kerney asked.

"I have my department faculty and staff log all calls, regardless of whether they're local or long distance. That policy applied to Father Mitchell."

"I need copies of those records, Brother Jerome. Can you have them ready for me in fifteen minutes?"

"Certainly. Come to my office."

Kerney got to the college in a hurry and gathered up the copies, thanked Brother Jerome, and left. Back at home he stuck a Steve Mcqueen movie in the VCR to entertain his unknown listeners, and started in on the log sheets. Each showed date, time, and number-called information. Using Mitchell's notes, Kerney matched a good two dozen names to numbers. In the morning he'd work all of Mitchell's most recent calls, starting with area residents.

Kerney switched his attention to the computer printouts and broke into a smile. Over the last three months Mitchell had made, eight-no, ten-phone calls to Phyllis Terrell in Santa Fe and Virginia. The connection was getting stronger and the proof more convincing.