Death Song

Chapter Three

The discovery of the body set off a chain of procedural events common to all murder investigations. Kerney backed off so Ramona Pino and Don Mielke could work without his interference, and informed Sheriff Salgado about the unidentified female victim.

By radio, Salgado got the word out to the searchers and asked them to suspend operations and maintain their positions until a positive ID could be made. Kerney took Salgado and his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup, to the horse trailer, which had already been cordoned off, and from behind the police line the three men watched as Mielke and Pino established a wider crime scene perimeter.

After roping off a larger area that extended from the tack room to the horse trailer, they began documenting and processing the scene. Mielke photographed the body as it lay, leaving it untouched and unmoved. Although it was highly likely the dead woman was Denise Riley, protocol required the body remain as it had been found until the medical investigator arrived.

Mielke moved on to photograph the horse trailer, the drag marks in the dirt, and the interior of the tack room, while Ramona Pino inspected the victim and made a list of the woman’s clothing, which included notations of the condition of the garments and any visible damage and stains. The woman’s jeans barely covered her buttocks, and flecks of straw adhered to exposed skin at the small of her back.

Ramona wondered if the woman’s jeans had been rearranged by the perpetrator. If so, it signaled that the killer probably knew the victim. She made a closer visual inspection of the victim’s exposed right forearm and left hand and saw what appeared to be bruising—quite possibly defensive wounds. Had the crime started out as a sexual assault and escalated to murder?

She wrote down her observations and speculations, drew a rough sketch of the body in relation to the corral and tack room, measured off all distances, and then began a search for trace evidence on the surfaces of the horse trailer.

When the MI arrived and declared the victim dead, the body was turned faceup and two facts became readily apparent. First, comparison with the driver’s license photo Ramona had found in the purse inside the double-wide showed that the dead woman was indeed Denise Riley. Second, her throat had been cut.

Salgado promptly called off the search and released all off-duty and nonessential personnel who had volunteered their time. As the searchers returned to the staging area and quietly began to disperse, Kerney, Salgado, and Jessup thanked each of them personally for coming out. The three men silently watched as the searchers loaded gear and equipment into their police units and emergency vehicles and left the area in a line of cars that stretched the length of the long dirt driveway.

As the last vehicle turned onto the county road, Sheriff Luciano Salgado turned to Kerney. “Are you going to tell Helen Muiz?” he asked.

“I’ll go over to her house right now,” Kerney replied.

“Let her know that I’ll be in touch with her real soon,” Salgado said.

“Maybe you’ll have some answers for her by then.”

“God, I hope so,” Salgado replied with a sigh. “How long can I use Sergeant Pino and your detectives?”

“As long as you need them,” Kerney replied, thinking it was unlikely that the two separate homicides of Riley and his wife would be cleared anytime soon.

“Thanks,” Salgado said.

Kerney nodded in reply and headed to his unit. Before driving off, he tried reaching Sara at home by phone. There was no answer, so he called her cell phone and got a voice message that told him that Sara and Patrick were off on an early morning horseback ride.

The message pleased Kerney. Being with Patrick was the best medicine for what ailed Sara. That sweet, happy, smart-as-a-whip little boy buoyed her spirits and got her thinking about all the good things life had to offer.

He put the unit in gear and headed for town, his thoughts turning as dark as the gunmetal gray March sky that masked the morning sun. Far too often over the course of his career, he’d brought the news of a loved one’s death to family members. Most times, they had been complete strangers or only slightly known to him through the course of an investigation. But it was never an easy thing to do.

This time it would be worse. He would have to tell a woman he’d known, liked, and respected for over twenty years that the death of her brother-in-law was not the worst of it. The kid sister she’d adored was dead, murdered just as her husband had been hours ago in Lincoln County.

Ruben and Helen Muiz lived in a historic double adobe home that had been in her family since the early twentieth century. Ancient cottonwoods and pines screened the house from the dirt lane that ran around the back side of the hill to a new fourteen-thousand-square foot adobe mansion built by a Chicago real estate developer who came to Santa Fe every summer for the opera season.

The cars that lined the driveway to the Muiz residence told Kerney that the family had gathered in the wake of the bad news of Tim Riley’s murder and Denise’s disappearance. He parked on the lane and walked toward the house, thinking that over the years his friendship with Helen had been basically work-related and he knew very little about Helen’s siblings or her extended family. The circumstances of the last eight hours were about to change all that.

He rang the doorbell and was soon greeted by Ruben Muiz, who stared at him with bleary eyes ringed with dark circles. Beyond the entry hall in a nearby room, he could hear the low sounds of hushed conversation.

“What have you learned?” Ruben asked.

“Is Helen sleeping?” Kerney countered.

“Nobody’s sleeping,” Ruben said tersely. “Everybody’s here. Tell me what you found out about Denise.”

Kerney touched Ruben on the shoulder. “Take it easy,” he said gently as people began crowding into the entry hall.

“Sorry,” Ruben said, lowering his voice.

“Why don’t you get everyone together and let me talk to them as a group.”

“Yes, of course,” Ruben said, ushering Kerney into a large living room filled with twenty-some somber people who stopped talking and stared at him with great intensity.

Helen sat on a couch with several women and a man clustered nearby who looked to be her sisters and brother. Other men hovering close by Kerney took to be the sisters’ husbands.

He crossed the room, trying to keep his expression passive, reached Helen, took her by the hand, and shook his head once. She gasped and began sobbing. He stepped away as the sisters closed in around Helen, the women choking back tears, crying, reaching to embrace one another and clasp hands. He backed off to a far corner of the room and waited patiently for the grieving to subside and the questioning to begin. The family’s anguish was about to become a hell of a lot more distressing once they learned how Denise had died.

The report that Tim Riley’s wife had also been murdered reached Clayton by way of a phone call from Sergeant Ramona Pino. Clayton had worked with Pino once before, on a case involving a revenge killer intent on wiping out Kevin Kerney and his entire bloodline, including Clayton and his family. The perp had almost succeeded, but Clayton had gunned him down in Santa Fe before he could kill Kerney, Sara, and their brand-new baby boy, Patrick.

After winding up the search for evidence at Tim Riley’s rented cabin, Clayton convened a meeting of his team at the Capitan town hall and brought them up to speed on what he knew about Denise Riley’s murder in Santa Fe County.

“I doubt that these murders are coincidental,” Clayton told the group, “but until we have either a motive or a suspect, I want some people backtracking on Tim Riley’s time here in Lincoln County. I want an accounting for every minute of every day in the week Riley was here.”

Clayton paused and looked around the room, which contained every available deputy plus Paul Hewitt, Craig Bolt, and the two Capitan village officers. “I’ll get to the assignments in a minute, but remember this: I don’t want reports coming in with any gaps,” he warned. “I want his entire week reconstructed. Names, dates, times, places—you all know the drill. You’ll be looking for any unusual event, altercation, heated exchange, or misunderstanding that may have happened which could have led—no matter how remotely—to his murder.”

“What if Riley’s murder has nothing to do with anybody in Lincoln County?” Chief Craig Bolt asked.

“It’s very possible,” Clayton answered. “When a husband and wife get murdered in separate locations within hours of each other, it makes you wonder if maybe all was not sweetness and light on the home front. But with no motive and no suspect, we have to focus on the victims for now. So as soon as this meeting is over, some of you are going to start an all-out, deep background check on both Tim Riley and his wife. I’m sure the Santa Fe County S.O. will be doing the same.”

Clayton walked to the whiteboard, drew a line down the middle, and wrote Tim Riley’s name on one side and Denise Riley’s name on the other.

“Here are some things to think about,” he said. “At the cabin crime scene, the killer probably spent a minimum amount of time in the area and quickly killed his victim after he arrived home. Very little physical evidence was left behind. In fact, all we have so far is a partial footprint on the cabin porch that is probably from a man’s boot, size eight, which correlates with my theory that the killer may be small in stature—not more than five seven or eight. Murder weapon, a shotgun, fired at point-blank range of no more than four feet.” Clayton wrote the information under Tim’s name.

“In Santa Fe,” Clayton continued, “Denise Riley’s throat was cut with a knife after she’d been attacked in a tack room in a barn at the couple’s double-wide in Cañoncito. She was dragged to a nearby horse trailer, killed there, and then locked in the trailer. It’s possible that she was sexually assaulted either prior to or after her death. A detective at the scene thinks the killer made an attempt to partially cover the lower half of the victim’s body, which suggests the perp knew the decedent. Time of death was approximately sixteen to twenty hours before Tim Riley’s murder.”

Clayton wrote down the information under Denise’s name. “Don’t let the differences in the methods between the two homicides make you think we are dealing with two distinct perpetrators.”

He turned to the whiteboard once again and underlined Tim Riley’s name. “At first glance, our homicide looks professional. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a contract killing carried out by a specialist.”

“But it could mean exactly that,” Paul Hewitt said from the back of the cramped room. “Basically, the killer waited in ambush, fired one shot from close range at a sure kill area of the body, the head, and left behind little physical evidence.”

“I’m not discounting those facts, Sheriff,” Clayton replied. “But from my analysis of the crime scene I think the shooter could have killed Deputy Riley when his back was turned, but chose instead to let his victim see it coming. Additionally, by literally taking Riley’s face off with a shotgun slug, the killer depersonalized his victim. It’s as if he tried to erase the most easily recognizable part of the man. To me, that makes the murder decidedly personal, just as the killing of Denise Riley appears to be.”

“Personal in what way?” Hewitt asked.

“If I knew that, I’d have motive,” Clayton replied. “The one thing I’m fairly sure of, as I mentioned before, is that the shooter is male, possibly slight in build, and shorter than Riley by two to three inches.”

Clayton wrote the physical information of the shooter on the chalkboard. “I’m guessing that we’re dealing with a single perpetrator, and I agree with Chief Bolt that chances are slim to none that our killer is local. With that in mind, we need to be surveying motels, gas stations, eateries, and be talking to people about any strangers who might have recently been asking about Riley or the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.”

Clayton put the chalk on the tray. “Finally, we need to retrace everywhere Riley went while on patrol last night.”

“I’ll do that,” Paul Hewitt said.

“I’ve got you down to handle the news media, Sheriff.”

“The media can wait,” Hewitt growled. “Besides, we’ve got nothing to tell them.” He looked around the room. “So I expect all of you to keep your lips zipped about this case until further notice. It’s ‘No comment’ to any questions. Got that?”

Heads nodded.

“Okay,” Clayton said as he looked at the sixteen officers in the room. Excluding himself, Hewitt, and Bolt, only two of the field officers had any solid investigative experience. “Here are your assignments.”

He read off names and tasks, putting the heaviest burden on himself and the two experienced officers, knowing that it meant double shifts until they broke the case or it became too cold to work full-time any longer.

Clayton closed his notebook, looked at the sober faces of the officers sitting in front of him, and nodded at the door. “Let’s go out and catch this killer,” he said.

Sara’s favorite gelding, a baldfaced dark sorrel named Gipsy, and Patrick’s pony, Pablito, were missing from the corral when Kerney arrived home. He saddled Hondo and rode up the hill, past the ancient piñon tree where Soldier, the wild mustang he’d bought, gentled, and trained years ago during his bachelor days, was buried. He paused for a minute and then turned in a westerly direction toward the live spring at the edge of the ranch property that was always a favorite horseback riding destination for the family.

A fresh pile of horse apples near the water tank and windmill told Kerney he was on the right trail. He clamped his cowboy hat down hard, lowered his head against a stiff, cold southwesterly wind, rode Hondo at a slow trot, and tried to clear his mind of the events of the last ten or so hours. The Cañoncito crime scene had been grim enough, but the impact on the family of the devastating news of Denise Riley’s murder had been heart-wrenching to witness.

The wind eased. Kerney raised his eyes and blinked away some dust as he reached the top of the small hill that overlooked the pond and live stream. Several hundred years ago, during the days of the Spanish conquistadors, the pond had been a stop along a wagon road that ran from the village of Galisteo to El Rancho De Las Golondrinas, a way station on the El Camino Real south of Santa Fe. The ruts of the road were still visible under the overarching bare branches of several old cottonwood trees that once shaded a hacienda, which was now nothing more than a rock rubble foundation covered by cactus and shrubs.

Under the trees, Gipsy and Pablito stood quietly. Down by the stream, Kerney spotted Sara and Patrick watching a small flock of Canadian geese that had stopped during their northerly spring migration to feed on the tall grass that surrounded the pond.

Hondo’s whinny startled the geese, and the flock rose skyward, honking deeply in unison, the sound of their wings creating a back-beat rhythm as they circled and flew north in a loose formation.

Kerney rode down to his wife and son, and Patrick gave him a stern look when he arrived.

“You scared the birds away, Daddy,” he said.

“That was Hondo, not me.” Kerney patted Hondo’s withers, bent low in the saddle, and extended his hand. Patrick grabbed on and Kerney swung him up onto his lap. “You’re getting heavy.”

“I’ll be four this year,” Patrick announced proudly.

“That’s a fact,” Kerney said, smiling down at Sara. The cold March wind had put some color in her face, highlighting the line of freckles that ran across her cheeks and nose. “Are you ready to head home?” he asked.

Sara smiled. “Now that you’ve scared the geese away, we might as well.”

Kerney groaned.

“Did you find Helen’s sister?” Sara asked.

Kerney nodded. “We did,” he said flatly.

“Not good?”

“It doesn’t get any worse.”

Sara stepped to Hondo and put her hand on Kerney’s leg. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know if I can do anything more.” Kerney jiggled the reins and Hondo broke into a walk. “In three weeks I’m going to be just another retired cop, a civilian, and it may take a lot more time than that to put this case to rest.”

“But it happened to a family member of one of your people, on your watch,” Sara said, her head suddenly filled with the images of the firefight in Iraq, the wounded soldiers on the ground. The acid smell of gunpowder filled her nostrils.

“I know,” Kerney replied. He reined up next to Pablito and put Patrick on his saddle.

“Can we come back to see the birds tomorrow?” Patrick asked.

Sara swung into the saddle, and Gipsy pranced sideways next to Pablito. “Yes, we can.”

“Does anybody besides me want blueberry pancakes when we get home?” Kerney asked. It was one of Patrick’s favorite meals.

“I already had breakfast,” Patrick said glumly as the three-some wheeled their horses toward home. “Cereal.”

“Is there a rule that you can only eat breakfast once a day?” Kerney asked his son.

Patrick shrugged and gave his mother a questioning look.

“I think there are special times when breakfast is a meal you can have twice a day,” Sara said with a laugh.

“The boss says yes to blueberry pancakes,” Kerney said.

Patrick grinned and spurred Pablito into a trot. “Okay,” he yelled, taking the lead on the trail.

Clayton Istee always looked forward to evening meals with his family. As a police officer, he’d missed far too many of them over the years, and now that the children were getting older—Wendell had turned eight and Hannah was approaching six—he knew it was more important than ever to be home for dinner as much as possible. He didn’t want to become one of those cops who sacrificed their personal lives or lost their families through divorce all for the sake of the job.

He’d called Grace late in the day to tell her he’d be home for dinner no matter what, and when he finally broke away from the investigation he was fairly certain that there would be no new developments that would interfere with his plans. In fact, in terms of developing leads, identifying suspects, and collecting any useful evidence, the day had been a complete and utter bust.

Clayton rolled the unit to a stop next to his pickup truck, which Sheriff Hewitt had arranged to have brought back to his house, and beeped the horn twice to announce his arrival. As he dismounted the vehicle, his son, Wendell, threw open the front door, bounded across the porch, and ran to the unit to greet him.

“I saw you on TV,” Wendell said, looking up at his father. “The evening news.”

Clayton nodded and said nothing. Earlier in the day, a camera crew from an Albuquerque television station had filmed him and the state police crime scene techs carrying evidence from the cabin.

Politely, Wendell waited a moment to see if his father was taking his time to consider a response. Clayton said nothing.

“The man who died,” Wendell said. “The deputy…”

Clayton pressed his forefinger against his son’s mouth before he could say more. “It is best for us not to speak about that. What has your mother fixed for dinner?”

“Spaghetti,” Wendell said. “With meatballs.”

Clayton rubbed Wendell’s head. “Good. I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Wendell said.

In the kitchen, Grace was ladling spaghetti sauce onto plates of pasta while Hannah set the table. Without being asked, Wendell pitched in and helped his sister.

Clayton got quick kisses from his wife and daughter, along with instructions to go wash up for dinner. He locked his sidearm away in the gun cabinet where he kept his hunting rifles, gave his hands and face a good scrub, and returned to find his family seated at the table awaiting his arrival.

He eased into his chair and glanced from Wendell to Hannah. “Whose turn is it to tell us everything they did at school today?”

“It’s my turn,” Hannah said as she twisted her fork around some pasta.

“Okay,” Clayton said, smiling at his beautiful daughter, who had her mother’s eyes, small bones, and finely chiseled features. “Let’s hear all about it.”

Hannah took a bite of spaghetti and then began recounting her day at school.

After the table had been cleared, the dishes done, and the children put to bed, Clayton and Grace snuggled together on the living room couch.

“Your mother wants you to call her,” Grace said.

Clayton raised an eyebrow. Isabel Istee, a former member of the tribal council, continued to exert considerable influence over government affairs and was always pushing Clayton to get involved in politics. “Did she say what was on her mind?” he asked.

“No,” Grace replied, “but I can hazard a guess. Rumor has it that the tribal police chief position is about to open up, and after your close encounter with Bambi’s father yesterday, Isabel wants you off the streets and safely ensconced behind a desk. Today’s murder of the deputy only makes it a more urgent issue for her.”

“But not for you?” Clayton queried.

“I know you love your job.”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

Grace shifted her weight and sighed. “I want you to be safe. Last night and today have been scary for me.”

Clayton pulled back his head and scanned Grace’s face. “In spite of my mother’s agenda, I have never wanted to be the tribal police chief.”

Grace placed her hand gently on Clayton’s chest. “I know. Let’s not get into a fight over this. Just call your mother.”

“Maybe later. Just so you know, over the next week I’ll be gone most of the time. I’m driving to Albuquerque in the morning for the autopsy, and from there I’m going up to Santa Fe.”

“Will you see your father?” Grace asked.

Clayton shook his head in mock disbelief. Until several years ago, he’d never known who his father was, but a chance meeting with Kerney on the Mescalero Reservation had forced his mother to admit to the truth. “You just love referring to Kerney as my father, don’t you?” he said.

“Well, he is your father,” Grace replied sweetly, “and I do my best to encourage you to think of him that way.”

“I’m working on it,” Clayton said with a smile. “Yes, I will see him, and also pay my respects to Sara and say hello to Patrick if time allows.”

Grace poked him in the ribs with a stiff finger. “You make sure that time allows, Sergeant Istee.”

Clayton laughed. “The hardest part of being a Mescalero is dealing with the matriarchy.”

Early in the morning over coffee in an eatery on Cerrillos Road near police headquarters, Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino asked Detective Matt Chacon to give her an update on his attempt to recover data from hard drives taken from the computers at the Riley residence.

“Nada, zip, zilch,” Matt replied, chewing on a toothpick, which was his habit, “but all may not be lost, to turn a phrase.”

“That’s cute, Matt,” Ramona said. “Give me details.”

“Details, I don’t have, but I do have an idea about what it took to scour those hard drives, which can tell us something about the person who did it.”

“Explain,” Ramona said.

“Most of your typical computer users will either purchase or download a free hard-drive eraser utility that does a fairly adequate job of destroying data. However, a good computer forensic specialist can often find information that hasn’t been overwritten in clusters because of something called file slack.”

Ramona rolled her eyes skyward. “This is all so very riveting.”

Matt laughed. “Be patient, Sarge, I’m getting there. In this particular case, both hard drives were cleaned and sanitized to the max.”

“How is that done?”

“Simply put, by repeatedly overwriting and replacing hard-drive surface information with random numbers or characters. On hard drives that have been cleansed by your typical software end user, I’ll normally find file slack that has been dumped from the computer’s memory, which makes it possible to identify passwords, log-on information, and prior computer usage we call legacy data. But not this time. Everything was as clean as a whistle. I’m betting whoever did this is no average user when it comes to computers. In fact, it could well be the individual is an IT specialist. But if not, he or she is a gifted amateur techie.”

“And you can tell this by how the hard drives were erased.”

“Yep. Whoever did this used the techniques and standards set by the Department of Defense to cleanse computer hard drives.”

“What else have you got?”

Matt looked surprised. “Nothing right now. I was waiting on you to tell me what Internet service provider the victims used so I could get a subpoena to access their records.”

Ramona drained her coffee and gave Chacon an apologetic look. With the discovery of Denise Riley’s body in the horse trailer and the ensuing work that it entailed, she’d totally forgotten to follow up as promised.

“Never mind,” Matt said with a smile. “I’ll do it. Do you know if the evidence search at the residence turned up any floppy disks, zip drives, or compact disks? I didn’t see any when I was there.”

“I’ll take a look at the evidence sheets when I meet with the sheriff’s investigators and let you know.”

“Thanks.” Matt slid out of the booth. “Also, ask about any software. If they secured anything like that during the search, have them give me a call. I’ll pick it up for analysis.”

“Coffee’s on me,” Ramona said.

“Thanks,” Matt said, knowing full well that it served as a partial apology on Ramona’s part.

Outside the restaurant, Ramona took a call on her cell phone from Don Mielke of the sheriff’s department asking her to show up for an investigative team meeting at the sheriff’s office in fifteen minutes. She told him that she was on her way, passed the word of the meeting by radio to the two other detectives Chief Kerney had assigned to the case, and drove out of the parking lot, still feeling a bit miffed with herself for failing to get Matt Chacon the information he needed.

Several years ago, the county had built a new law enforcement complex on Highway 14, a state road that ran from Santa Fe through the old mining towns of Cerrillos, Madrid, and Golden, into the Ortiz Mountains, and down the back side of the Sandia Mountains that rose up east of the city of Albuquerque.

Designated a scenic route and named the Turquoise Trail, most of Highway 14 was indeed picturesque, with views of high, heavily forested peaks and several old mining towns along the way that were definitely worth a stop.

One such town was Cerrillos, named for the nearby hills, where according to fact or legend—Ramona wasn’t sure which—Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, had experimented with a precious metal extraction method he’d devised. When the effort failed, Edison shut down his operation and returned to his laboratory in New Jersey to invent other wonderful gadgets.

However, miles before travelers reached Cerrillos or the other old mining towns, they had to pass a cluster of institutional buildings outside the city limits that paid homage to a decision that had been made by the city fathers years before statehood. When the legislature had given Santa Fe first choice of either being home to the territorial prison or the college, the city officials had picked the pokey. At the time it had supposedly been a no-brainer; the prison would bring many more jobs to the community than a college ever could. Which meant that Santa Fe missed out on being the home of the largest university in the state, which Ramona saw as a slow-growth blessing in disguise.

Travelers on the Turquoise Trail thus encountered the stark and foreboding old prison a short distance from Santa Fe. The scene of a bloody, ghastly riot in 1980, it was now closed and rented out to filmmakers as a movie set. Visible nearby were the modern, high-security penitentiary that had been built to replace it, enclosed by towering fences topped with concertina wire; the neat and tidy Corrections Department headquarters and training academy, where the bureaucrats looked after the welfare, safety, and rehabilitation of their incarcerated clients and trained their guards to manage and control the inmate population to keep them from rioting again; and finally, across the road, the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center and the separate law enforcement complex that housed the S.O.

Inside the county law enforcement building, a group of deputies, sheriff’s investigators, and several state police agents were milling around in a large conference room waiting for the meeting to begin. At the front of the room behind a large table, the sheriff; his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup; and Don Mielke, who ran the major crimes unit for the S.O. and carried the rank of major, were engaged in quiet conversation. On the table was a stack of folders.

Ramona took a seat at the back of the room, where she was soon joined by her two detectives. After a few late stragglers wandered in, Sheriff Salgado convened the meeting while Mielke and Jessup distributed the folders, which contained copies of the briefing report.

Ramona flipped though the document as Sheriff Salgado highlighted preliminary findings from the crime scene and subsequent follow-up activities. All in all, the S.O. had done a creditable job, and Ramona didn’t see any missteps or gaps in the work that had been carried out on the case so far.

Salgado ended his presentation by announcing that the autopsy on Denise Riley would be conducted in Albuquerque later in the afternoon. He turned the meeting over to Major Mielke, who passed out copies of an initial criminal investigation report of the murder of Deputy Tim Riley, prepared by Sergeant Clayton Istee of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.

Ramona read through the report, wondering how many people in the room other than herself knew that Clayton was Chief Kerney’s son. While it wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t common knowledge either.

She stopped speculating about it and returned her attention to the case. Mielke was warning the group not to let the investigation stall because there was no motive and no suspect.

“Don’t pin your hopes on forensic evidence solving this case,” he said as he leaned against the table, “and in spite of the different modus operandi, we agree with the Lincoln County S.O. that there is a strong likelihood that the murders are linked.”

One of the state police agents raised a hand. “What about this theory by the Lincoln County S.O. investigator that the killer is probably a male, approximately five-seven to five-eight in height, who wears a size eight shoe and knew his victim?” he asked in a smug, mildly skeptical tone. “Can we put any stock in it?”

The state cop’s attitude rankled Ramona. “I’ve worked with Sergeant Istee in the past,” she said before Mielke could reply, “and I wouldn’t bet against him. His analysis that these homicides are personal is right on, and I’m convinced that Denise Riley’s killer either redressed her or rearranged her clothing after she was dead. That makes both murders personal.”

The state cop threw up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I was just asking,” he said, but his eyes weren’t smiling.

“Sergeant Istee has given us a start on a profile for our perp,” Mielke said. “We need to use it when we’re out there asking questions.”

“The perp may also have more than a passing knowledge of computer technology,” Ramona added. “According to Detective Matt Chacon, whoever scoured the hard drives on the two computers removed from the Riley residence is not your typical personal computer user. Also, both the desktop and laptop had been wiped clean of prints.”

“Let’s add that to what we know and move on to assignments,” Mielke said. “Sheriff Salgado and Sheriff Hewitt out of Lincoln County have decided to consolidate the two murder cases into one shared investigation. Myself and Sergeant Istee will serve as case supervisors, and we will both, I repeat both, have equal authority.”

Mielke looked directly at every officer in the room. “Are there any questions about that? Good. Our starting point is an in-depth look at our victims. The question I want answered is why these persons were murdered. We’ll use the FBI crime classification protocols for violent crimes.”

Mielke went over the protocols item by item, handed out assignments, and fielded some questions.

“Before we mount up, there’s one more thing,” he said. “In a few days, we’ll be burying Deputy Tim Riley and his wife, Denise. Most of us in this room knew Tim, worked with him, liked him, and liked his wife. They were family to us.”

He paused and scanned every face in the room. “I don’t expect a miracle between now and the funeral, but I want to see steady progress on this investigation every single day. We are going to grind it out until we catch this killer.”

After most of the officers had filed out of the conference room, Ramona approached Mielke and asked to take a look at the evidence inventory. He took her to his office, which was adjacent to the suite that housed the sheriff and his chief deputy, and had her sit while he thumbed through the stacks of paper on his desk.

Mielke was middle-aged but looked older than his years. Tall with slightly stooped shoulders, he had a slim build, a narrow chest, and a gaunt face that gave him an emaciated look. Although his eyes were clear and his hands steady, Mielke was known to be a binge drinker, who’d been on some legendary benders at the Fraternal Order of Police bar on Airport Road.

Ramona hoped the major would stay sober until the case was closed, but if he blew it, at least she knew she could count on Clayton Istee to hang tough.

He fished out a file and handed it across the desk to Ramona. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Zip drives, floppy disks, compact disks, and any software programs found at the Riley residence,” Ramona replied as she flipped through the inventory forms.

“We didn’t find any of that stuff,” Mielke said.

“I’d like to go out and take another look,” Ramona said.

“Suit yourself, but if you find anything bring it here and log it in with our evidence custodian. In fact, have Matt Chacon drop off those computers to us so we can keep the chain of evidence intact.”

“Ten-four,” Ramona replied.

Mielke looked at his watch. “I need to get down to Albuquerque for the autopsies. The chief medical investigator and his senior pathologist are personally doing both Riley and his wife.”

Outside Mielke’s office, Ramona found her two detectives waiting in the break room. At the meeting, Mielke had assigned Ramona and her people the task of learning what Tim and Denise Riley’s Cañoncito neighbors knew about the couple. It was just one piece of what cops did to develop a victimology, a cop shop word for an exhaustive, comprehensive, up-to-the-minute history of a crime victim’s life. When completed, everything that could be known about an individual would be, in the hopes that it would lead to the killer.

During the process of collecting information, officers would delve into every aspect of the victim’s life, review in minute detail the elements of the crime, analyze the crime scene, pore over the forensic findings, locate and interview witnesses, family members, past and present associates, and friends, serve search warrants, and scrutinize autopsy results.

Sometimes the technique worked and sometimes it didn’t. Ramona and the detectives divided up the list of neighbors and drove out to Cañoncito in their separate vehicles to start the interviews. From experience, Ramona knew that the process might not put a killer in their sights, but it rarely failed to reveal a victim’s secrets.