Dead Weight

Chapter Forty-one

County Commission chairman Sam Carter would have cringed at the rate at which we emptied the county’s coffers during the next several hours, but he would have swelled at the attention. Of our dozen or so Sheriff’s Department employees, ten were on duty that evening.

Deputy Taber got to shake out the kinks when she drove to Las Cruces, hand-delivering a briefcase full of evidence for processing by the state’s regional crime lab. Among other things, we had requested a DNA test that would compare the blood from the metal brace on the backhoe with a sample from Sam Carter. I didn’t bother to voice my skepticism about that sort of high-tech testing: Maybe it would produce results, maybe not. But if it could weld a direct link to Sam Carter’s presence in Jim Sisson’s back yard, that was a major step.

If that was Sam’s blood on the machine, what would still be missing is the when-the smear could have been made anytime, even out on the job site before Jim brought the beast home.

Part-timer Brent Sutherland took over the odious, deadly boring job of keeping an eye on the Sisson household from a new position a block farther down the street. I wasn’t ready to cancel the surveillance, as unproductive as it had proved so far, but I wanted a wider view-all of the neighbors included.

Sam and Grace had been hip-deep in an affair, and people had been murdered for a lot less than a hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. Whether or not Grace Sisson was a coconspirator was one of our large, neon, nagging questions. I couldn’t believe that Sam’s dalliance with Grace had been so discreet that it had been witnessed only by Buddy Chavez, the nosy manager of Burger Heaven across MacArthur.

And who the hell knew what little Jennifer was capable of in her own darker, introspective moments-if, in fact, she had such.

Four deputies were down at the store with Bob Torrez, meticulously combing the crime scene and trying to reconstruct exactly what had happened. By 8:00 p.m., we knew that Sam Carter had most likely spun around after the impact of the fatal bullet through the base of his skull. His hand had spasmed and grabbed one of the polished chrome door handles of the glass cooler. The door had swung open as he fell away, allowing the ruptured beer bottles to foam and spit across the smooth tile floor.

A.38-caliber half-jacketed hollow-point bullet was recovered from the insulated wall of the cooler, stopped dead by the appliance’s outside metal casing. The slug was mushroomed and missing fragments of lead, but there was plenty of rifling visible and what must have been bits of Sam’s brain stem and skull embedded in the hollow-point tip. All of that went to Las Cruces as well.

Torrez could now establish a trajectory, lining up the hole in the door with the hole in the cooler’s cabinetry. The distance between the two was less than eighteen inches, but that was enough.

The entry wound in Sam’s skull was on the left side, and the trajectory of the bullet was consistent with his facing the back of the store, the beer coolers on his right and the killer behind him and to his left.

The complete lack of any other evidence suggested to us that Sam hadn’t been caught in a struggle. Shoe soles would scuff that polished tile floor easily, and any flailing of arms would scatter chips and canned dip off the shelves opposite the glass coolers.

The zippered bank bag produced lots of prints, and sorting those out became Tom Mear’s task.

If Jennifer Sisson hadn’t been Sam Carter’s major concern just then, the robbery scenario made sense. I could picture Sam Carter walking toward the back of the store, away from the cash registers up front, bank bag in hand, full of the afternoon’s receipts. The killer could have entered the store through the back door if it had been unlocked at the time, or he could have been waiting anywhere in the store at closing time. As Sam walked down the aisle, the killer came up behind him, and that was that. One bullet, down goes Sam, grab the bank bag, stop to remove the cash, fling down the useless paperwork, and it’s over.

A simple script, and not remotely close to what must have happened. Sam Carter was in the process of arranging some specialized medical treatment for his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. He’d taken the time to reserve a room for her, doing so the day before. He’d picked her up at Burger Heaven when she’d slipped out of the house, heading supposedly for a simple hamburger and some quiet time-out from her mother. Sam had been slick. He knew his wife was busy chasing bowling pins, and he used his son’s Jeep-a nice touch by a caring father.

After making Jennifer comfortable in the motel room, he’d headed back to the store. And that’s where the puzzle remained. Why he hadn’t used the telephone at the motel maybe only Sam knew. It could have been as simple as where he’d placed-or misplaced-the note with the proper telephone number. The puzzling half hour included Sam leaving the motel and arriving back at the store to close up-and keep his appointment with a.38-caliber slug.

Shortly before 9:00 p.m., Linda Real handed me what I wanted to see. I took the eight-by-ten glossies from her and settled back in my chair. She came around the desk to narrate over my shoulder.

“Nicely done,” I said.

In good light, with my bifocals held just so, I could see the distinct shoe sole patterns in the thin film of liquid coating the tiles.

“There are just four of them that were still damp enough to photograph,” Linda said. She looked tired, the dark circles under her eyes pronounced. “But the first two are really clear.”

“Clear enough to match for size, I suspect,” I said. “And an interesting tread pattern. A woman’s shoe.”

“I think you’re right, sir. That’s a utility tread with the diagonal cleats,” Linda said. “More like something a nurse would wear. Not so much a child’s shoe.”

I leafed through the set until the background changed. “And these are the others that I asked you to take.”

“Yes, sir. It’s been a day or two, and there have been people walking through the area, but it wasn’t hard to find a couple that matched what you wanted.”

I took a deep breath and sighed. The dried mud had locked in two sets of prints-the prints of the big, flabby-footed chow, so eager for some exercise and not minding a romp in the fragrant mud after a summer shower, and the shoe prints of the chow’s escort. Taffy Hines had been much more careful than the dog about where she’d stepped. The mild waffle soles of her shoes had left distinctive prints, captured easily on the film.

“No match, sir,” Linda said. “Not even close.”

I got up, tapping the pile of prints into order. “No, the pattern’s not even close.” I slid out one copy of each shoe print and handed the remaining pile back to Linda. “Outstanding work, Linda. Thanks. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay close, in case someone needs your help.”

I found Robert Torrez in the small room that we used as a lab, in close conversation with Tom Mears.

“Can you break away for a bit?” I asked, and Torrez nodded.

“So far, a good set of Sam’s prints from the bank bag. We’re workin’ on the others. But it’s going to be almost any store employee, first of all.”

“Yep,” I said. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like you and Gayle to take a ride with me.” The undersheriff looked at me sharply, and I nodded. “We need to make a stop at Judge Hobart’s. I’ll fill you in on the way.”