Death Song

Chapter Ten

The bullet from Clifford Talbott’s bolt-action rifle splattered blood and brains against the back of the easy chair. The perfectly centered dark red hole above the dead man’s eyes made him look like a fallen Cyclops.

With shaky hands, Talbott lowered his Remington, walked to the kitchen sink, put the rifle on the counter, and promptly threw up.

During a lifetime of hunting, Talbott had killed untold numbers of varmints, a dozen or more coyotes, brought down his fair share of buck deer in season, bagged an occasional turkey, and had once taken a trophy-size elk, but he’d never before shot and killed a person, much less even pointed a gun at anybody.

He stayed bent over the sink for a long moment with his back to the dead man, smelling the stink of his vomit as he washed it down the drain with the hand pump, wishing he could just as easily wash away the last five minutes of his life.

Thirty-five years ago, Clifford Talbott had inherited the ranch from his father. Since then, in early March of every year, no matter what the weather, he drove up from his home in Moriarty, a town just south of the Santa Fe County line, to air the place out, make necessary repairs, and get it shipshape and ready for a small herd of cattle that he would buy at a spring auction, fatten up over the summer, and sell in the fall.

Most years he broke even on the effort, once in a while he lost money, and some years he made a small profit. But running livestock on the ranch kept his property taxes low and allowed him to renew his Forest Service grazing permit, which was hard to come by and valuable.

He looked out the window over the sink. On the outside sill an inch or more of white stuff had piled up against the glass. If he’d stayed home and waited for the storm to blow over like his wife had asked him to, he wouldn’t be standing in the ranch house his father had built with the still-warm body of a man he’d just shot and killed.

Finally, he turned. The dead man—a boy probably no older than Talbott’s teenage grandson—still clutched the pistol. Clifford recognized the handgun as his old S&W Model 10 revolver, which he’d left behind in the bedroom chest of drawers.

He glanced away from the body. The police needed to be told, but there was no way to call them unless he got back in his truck and drove to Cañoncito, where he should be able to either get a signal for his cell phone or borrow a phone from someone in the village.

Talbott’s wife was a big fan of television detective shows, so Clifford had learned that it was best not to touch anything at a crime scene. He left the Remington rifle on the kitchen counter, banked the woodstove to lower the fire, and went to his truck, wading through a good foot and a half of snow past the motorcycle parked near the porch.

He’d made it to the ranch in four-wheel drive, but it had been slow going. With wet snow still coming down, he decided to put chains on the tires before starting out. He drove the truck into the barn, turned on the single bare lightbulb that dangled from a roof joist, and got to work, his hands still shaking from what he had done.

He got the chains snapped on and started for Cañoncito. Blowing snow cut his visibility down to less than ten feet, and the truck headlights couldn’t penetrate enough to give him a fix on the road. He reduced his speed to a slow and steady five miles an hour and used the vague outline of the fence line bordering the county road to keep himself on track. The bad driving conditions worsened his already jangled nerves. He sat bolt upright, gripping the steering wheel with all his strength, looking for any obstruction up ahead.

An hour passed before he began the descent into the narrow canyon that sheltered Cañoncito. He rounded the last curve where the pavement started. Soon the train tracks and the streambed came into view, and Clifford let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a lump in his throat when he spotted a police car with flashing emergency lights blocking access to a side road.

He slowed to a stop behind the vehicle and flashed his headlights. A deputy sheriff got out and walked to the truck.

“This road is closed, sir,” the deputy said after Clifford lowered his window. “If you live on it, I’ll need to see some ID before I can let you through.”

“I don’t live here,” Clifford said, wondering how to tell an officer of the law that he’d just killed a person.

The deputy pointed toward the paved road that crossed the streambed and the railroad tracks. “Then you’ll have to move on.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Clifford said. “I need you or another police officer to go with me to my ranch up on the mesa.”

“Is there someone in need of immediate emergency assistance?” the deputy asked.

Clifford shook his head, took a deep breath, and worked out what he needed to say before speaking. “I’m trying to tell you that a man broke into my house, started a fire in the stove, cooked and ate some of my food, and tried to shoot me when I showed up. I killed him.”

The deputy’s friendly expression vanished and his hand found the pistol grip of his .45. “When did this happen?”

“Just now,” Clifford said.

The deputy drew his weapon and opened the driver’s door to Clifford’s vehicle. “Keep your hands where I can see them. You say you killed this person?”

Clifford raised his hands above his head. “Yes, with my hunting rifle, right between the eyes.”

“Where’s the weapon?”

“I left it at the ranch.”

“Do you have any other weapons on your person or in the truck?”

“No.”

“Step out of the vehicle,” the deputy ordered.

Clifford climbed down from the cab of his truck. “Are you arresting me?”

“Open your jacket and turn around.”

Clifford did as he was told. The deputy patted him down for weapons, cuffed him, took his wallet, and put him in the backseat of the police car behind a protective cage. He relayed Clifford’s driver’s license information to a dispatcher, asked for a records check, and then turned in his seat and read Clifford his rights.

Clifford said he understood them, didn’t need a lawyer, and would answer any questions.

“This person you shot, did you know him?” The deputy held a tiny tape recorder in his hand.

“No, I never saw him before.”

“In your own words, tell me exactly what happened.”

“I drove to my ranch and when I got there I saw that somebody had smashed the glass to the porch door and the lights were on inside the house. I took my rifle off the rear window rack of my truck and went to see who it was. I was sort of thinking that maybe somebody had broken in to get out of the cold. In this kind of weather it didn’t make much sense to think that somebody had driven to such an out-of-the-way place to rob me.”

“Go on.”

“There was a motorcycle parked outside next to the porch, so I called out a couple of times and even went back and sounded my truck horn hoping to get the attention of whoever was inside. But the wind was howling so bad I guess he didn’t hear me.”

“A motorcycle was parked outside?” the deputy asked with heightened interest. “Do you know what kind?”

“I didn’t pay it no mind. Anyway, I went inside and here was this young kid, no more than eighteen or nineteen. He had my old barn coat wrapped around his shoulders and was sitting in my easy chair with my Smith and Wesson pistol that I keep in a bedroom dresser pointed at me. He raised the pistol as if to shoot me and I shot him first.”

“Do you remember the make of the motorcycle?” the deputy asked.

“I don’t pay any attention to those contraptions,” Clifford said with a shake of his head.

“What did you do after you shot him?”

“I put chains on my truck tires and drove straight here so I could call the police. Then I saw you and stopped. I didn’t touch anything at the ranch, except to throw up in the sink and damp down the fire. I just left that boy sitting there, dead in my chair.”

Clifford choked up and paused to collect himself, but his voice broke anyway. “In my mind’s eye it’s a terrible thing to see.”

“Now, just relax, Mr. Talbott,” the deputy said soothingly. He turned away, keyed his radio microphone, and spoke to someone in code.

“Bring him to my twenty now,” a voice on the radio replied when the deputy had finished.

“Ten-four.”

“Will I have to go to jail?” Clifford asked as the deputy drove down the snowpacked dirt road. The thought scared him. Although he was still strong and healthy, he was seventy years old and the only gangbangers, criminals, and drug addicts he’d ever seen were on television news shows or on TV dramas.

The deputy nodded. “At the very least you’ll be transported to the jail and booked.”

“Is that necessary?”

“Yes, it is. If the facts jibe with the statement you gave me, you may only be held overnight. But if the facts don’t agree, you’ll need to go before a judge and ask for bail.”

“I shot only in self-defense.”

“That may well be,” the deputy said. “But I took you into custody, cuffed you, and read you your rights. That constitutes an arrest and I can’t undo it. You will be booked.”

“What are my chances that I’ll be let go?”

“I can’t say for certain, but the rule of law says that a person has a right to defend himself when his home has been invaded and he has reason to believe his life is in danger. If your story holds up, your chances may be good. But first, you’ll be questioned, officers will be sent to the crime scene, evidence will be gathered, and the district attorney and medical investigator will be called in.”

Clifford sighed. “Can I call my wife in Moriarty?”

“No, sir, that will have to wait.” The deputy slowed to a stop at the end of a long lane where police vehicles were parked in front of a manufactured home with a wooden deck.

Don Mielke followed the yellow crime scene tape that Clayton Istee had strung from the side of the double-wide where Brian Riley had left footprints in the snow to an abandoned well house where the footprints ended. There he found Istee and Ramona Pino working by the light of battery-powered flood lamps, rigging a canvas tarp over the partially caved-in roof of the well house.

“There’s someone you need to talk to right now,” Mielke said when Clayton had finished tying off a rope to the trunk of a nearby tree.

“Who’s that?” Clayton asked.

“A rancher by the name of Clifford Talbott may have shot and killed Brian Riley. He’s in custody at the double-wide.”

Clayton stopped in his tracks. “You’re kidding.”

Mielke shook his head. “Nope.”

“If it’s true, it sucks,” Ramona said.

“Tell me about it,” Mielke replied sourly.

Clayton looked at Ramona. “Can you get started here without me?”

“Sure,” Ramona answered.

Clayton picked up the end of the last rope that needed to be tied off, walked to the tree behind the well house, threw the rope over a low branch, and knotted it. Unless the storm turned heavy again, the tarp would do a fairly adequate job of protecting the well house from further snowfall. He looked at Mielke. “Let’s go.”

Mielke paused as Clayton started toward the double-wide. “Do you want me to send someone help to excavate the snow inside that structure?” he asked Ramona.

“No, thanks,” she replied. “There’s only room inside for one person at a time.”

Mielke turned away and left Pino to her task, which was to first carefully clear out the snow inside the well house, looking for physical evidence along the way. Once the snow was removed, every inch of the structure would be examined, probed, dusted for prints, and if necessary dismantled, in an attempt to find anything that could explain why Brian Riley came back to it during a blinding snowstorm while every cop in the state was looking for him.

Walking through knee-deep snow took effort, and by the time Mielke caught up with Clayton he was short of breath.

“Tell me what you know,” Clayton said as Mielke came abreast of him.

“Give me a minute,” Mielke replied, gasping for air as Clayton moved effortlessly through the wet, heavy snow without breaking a sweat. He’d read somewhere that during the Indian Wars, Apaches had been known to run fifty miles a day through the blistering summer heat of the Southwestern deserts without stopping for food or water. Watching Istee made him a believer.

As he struggled to keep up with Clayton, Mielke filled him in on Talbott’s statement. When they reached the double-wide, the arresting deputy told them that the old man had identified Brian Riley from a driver’s license photograph.

Clayton’s expression turned sour. “Where is he?”

“In the backseat of my unit,” the deputy replied.

“Bring him inside.”

The deputy fetched Talbott, removed his handcuffs, and sat him at the kitchen table across from Mielke and Clayton, who gave the man the once-over. No more than five feet eight, Clifford Talbott had thick, stubby fingers, a well-formed upper body, a short neck, and a full head of curly gray hair. He sat with his head bowed and had a morose expression on his face.

“Tell us what happened,” Clayton said.

Talbott put his hands in his lap and looked up. “I’ve done that twice already, and all it does is makes me feel worse about shooting that boy.”

“I need you to tell your story one more time,” Clayton replied. “What you have to say to me might help solve several recent murders.”

Talbott’s eyes widened. “That boy killed people?”

“I didn’t say that,” Clayton answered, “and I can’t talk about ongoing homicide investigations. Now, please, tell me with as much detail as you can what happened at your ranch.”

Once again, Clifford recounted the events that had led to the fatal shooting of Brian Riley. When Talbott finished, Clayton asked if the two had exchanged any words.

“Nary a one,” Clifford replied.

“Did you see anything in the room that may have belonged to Riley?”

“I don’t recall anything.”

“Think hard,” Clayton urged.

Talbott brought his hands up from his lap to the table and studied them for a moment. “At the foot of my easy chair there was a backpack. Blue, I think. One of those smaller ones you see high school and college students lugging around.”

Clayton smiled. “That’s good, Mr. Talbott. Anything else?”

Clifford shook his head. “That’s it, I’m afraid. Now am I going to go to jail?”

“We’ll keep you here,” Mielke answered, “until we can get to your cabin, take a look around, and see if what you’ve told us can be verified.”

“You’re going to have a tough time getting to my ranch,” Clifford replied. “I came down the mesa in four-wheel drive with chains on the tires and almost didn’t make it.”

Mielke stood up. “We’ll get there all right. The county has a road grader and a snowplow on the way, and I’m borrowing two Arctic Cat snowmobiles from Search and Rescue.”

As he rose, Clayton gave Mielke an approving glance. Calling for special equipment had been a smart move. He stepped around the table to Talbott and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. He may have killed Brian Riley, but in Clayton’s mind Clifford Talbott wasn’t a murderer.

“Stay with the deputy, Mr. Talbott. If you think of anything else you may have forgotten to tell us, let the deputy know about it.”

“I’ll do it,” Clifford said with great seriousness.

On the deck to the double-wide Clayton stood with Mielke as the snow swirled around them. It was hard to tell how much of it was wind-driven off the fresh accumulation on the ground and how much was falling from the sky.

“I’ll handle the crime scene at the ranch,” Mielke said.

“Good deal.”

“Our mobile command center will be here in a few minutes,” he added. “There’s a drop-down bunk bed in it. Get some sleep before you drop dead. I’ll wake you if anything important turns up.”

“I need to call Sheriff Hewitt and Chief Kerney.”

“Already done. Chief Kerney is on his way, but it make take him a while. All the highways are dangerous and there are whiteout conditions in some places.”

“Where’s your boss?” Clayton asked.

Mielke looked up at the sky. “Monitoring the situation from home.”

“That’s great.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, I am not.”

Mielke kept looking at the night sky. “I didn’t think so.” He knew Clayton had been going almost nonstop since the crack of dawn yesterday. “Take a catnap in the mobile command center.”

Although Clayton had no plans to go to sleep, getting off his feet for a spell sounded like a good idea. “I think I will. Send someone to get me when Chief Kerney arrives.”

“Sure thing,” Mielke replied, lying through his teeth.

Kerney wrestled his truck slowly down his ranch road, hoping the highway had been plowed and sanded, only to find it snowpacked and covered in places by drifts that were almost axle-deep. He pushed on, wipers thudding against the accumulation of wet snow on the windshield, heater blasting away to clear the fog off the side windows. In all his years in Santa Fe, he’d never seen a winter storm of such magnitude. It had to be a fifty-, maybe even a hundred-year event.

Where the highway connected to the Interstate, he turned onto the freshly plowed and sanded frontage road and made his way without delay to Cañoncito. At the turnoff to the Riley double-wide, he talked briefly with the deputy at the roadblock. The deputy told him that a grader and a snowplow were halfway down the country road to the crime scene with Major Mielke and one of his investigators following behind on borrowed Arctic Cat snowmobiles, that Clifford Talbott, the confessed killer of Brian Riley, was at the residence under watch, that Ramona Pino was excavating the well house, and Clayton Istee was catching twenty winks in the S.O. mobile command center.

At the double-wide Kerney sat down across the kitchen table from Clifford Talbott. He knew Talbott from several spring and fall works, the semiannual cattle roundups that both men had participated in at ranches on the Galisteo Basin. In the vast stretches of rural New Mexico, there remained a long-standing tradition for ranchers, cowboys, and their families to congregate twice a year at the various spreads to gather, brand, and sort out livestock to be sold at auction, held over for breeding, or kept for private sale to other stockmen.

Talbott’s small ranch bordered the basin, and he had always been a neighbor to count on when it came to lending a hand. Last fall, Kerney had worked a long, dust-choked day with Talbott branding and tagging calves at one of the largest ranches on the basin. Talbott had been cheerful and talkative, and had pulled his share of the weight when it came to getting the work done. Kerney had enjoyed his company.

“How are you holding up?” Kerney asked.

“I don’t know,” Talbott replied, looking rather hangdog. “I sure didn’t set out to kill that boy, Kerney. If he hadn’t raised that pistol at me, I never would have fired. They say I have to go to jail. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after that.”

“It will all get worked out.”

Talbott looked around the room and glanced at the deputy who’d positioned himself by the front door. “Why are they keeping me here? Whose place is this, anyway?”

“Just be patient,” Kerney replied.

Talbott shook his head. “The idea of jail scares the bejesus out of me, Kerney. I’ve been asking, but they won’t even let me call a lawyer, my wife, my minister, or my son over in Tucumcari.”

“How long have you been held here?” Kerney asked.

“It’s going on two hours since I told the deputy what happened.”

Kerney did a quick mental calculation. Under normal circumstances, Talbott would have been booked and processed at the county detention center and allowed his phone call by now.

“Who do you want me to call for you?” he asked.

“My wife, Enid.”

“Won’t telling her what happened upset her?”

“She’ll be upset some, but she’s a strong gal. Just tell her to trust in the Lord, stay put at home close to the phone, and to call our minister.”

“Give me the phone number.”

Talbott broke into a relieved smile and rattled off his number. Outside on the deck, where the winds had quieted down and light flakes in a clearing night sky were floating lazily to the ground, Kerney made the call. Enid Talbott answered after the first ring. Kerney identified himself, told her there had been a shooting at the family’s ranch, and her husband was unharmed but a police investigation was under way.

“What happened?” Enid Talbott asked breathlessly.

“I’m not at liberty to say, Mrs. Talbott. Your husband would like you to stay at home and not attempt to come to Santa Fe. Do as he asks, ma’am, the highways are treacherous. He also wants you to call your minister and tell him about the shooting. Does he have a special reason to ask you to do that?”

“Probably because our minister is also the chaplin for the Moriarty Police Department and he might be able to find out more about what’s going on.”

“I see.”

“Is Clifford in trouble?”

“That’s a possibility, Mrs. Talbott.”

“Is someone dead?”

“An investigator from the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office will be in touch with you as soon as they know more about the situation.”

“Can’t you tell me more?” Enid Talbott pleaded.

“I’m sorry, I cannot.”

After advising Enid Talbott to call a friend to keep her company, Kerney disconnected. He walked to the barn, where Detective Matt Chacon was in the tack room working under the overhead glare of a bare lightbulb. From the doorway Kerney watched Matt use a pry bar to loosen a slat from the wall and poke his hand inside to feel around.

“Find anything?” Kerney asked.

Matt turned around. “Nothing yet, Chief. But the nails holding this board in place were of a different type and looked newer, so I thought I better check to see if something was stashed inside the wall.”

Kerney nodded. “Good thinking, Sergeant.”

Detective Matt Chacon blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”

Kerney smiled. “I’m giving you a heads-up. You’re about to be promoted.”

Matt cracked a big, boyish grin. “Unbelievable.”

“It’s well deserved, Matt. As of next week, you’re the new Property Crimes Unit supervisor.” Kerney paused. “The sky is clearing and the temperature is dropping fast. Don’t stay out in the cold too long, Sergeant Chacon.”

Matt nodded and kept grinning. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Kerney returned to the double-wide and followed the crime scene tape to the well house. Sergeant Ramona Pino was crawling out of the structure on her hands and knees. Her nose and cheeks were bright red from the cold, and the winter coveralls she wore were soaking wet.

“How’s it going, Sergeant?”

Ramona stood under the jerry-rigged canopy, brushed some snow off her coveralls, and shook her head. “It’s too early to tell, Chief. I’m still excavating snow.”

“That’s enough for tonight, Sergeant. This can wait until morning. I want you to head back to the double-wide and get yourself dried off and warmed up.”

“I can keep going, Chief.”

“A half-frozen detective sergeant is of no use to me.” Kerney flipped open his cell phone and asked for a deputy to be sent to his twenty to protect the crime scene. “Head out, Sergeant. I’ll stay here until the deputy arrives.”

The sound of footsteps breaking through the frozen crust of the snow drew Kerney’s attention. Clayton stepped under the canopy into the light. He looked worn down, and in spite of the cold his face had little color to it.

“I thought you were getting some rest,” Kerney said.

“Can’t sleep.” In truth, in spite of trying to force himself to stay awake, Clayton had fallen asleep, only to have a spooky dream startle him back into consciousness. In it, Tim Riley, wearing a kerchief headband, knee-high buckskin boots, and a painted leather war shirt, chanted a death song.

Why had he dreamt that Tim Riley was an Apache warrior singing a song no white eyes should know? And why had there been a faceless women in the dream laughing soundlessly as Riley sang?

Clayton knew that if he couldn’t shake off Riley’s ghost he would have to have a ghost medicine ceremony performed after he got back to the Rez. He turned on his flashlight, walked to the well house, bent low, looked inside, and glanced back at Ramona. “I’ll take a turn.”

Kerney gave Clayton a measured look. “No, you will not. We’ll pick this up in the morning. Go back to the double-wide with Sergeant Pino.”

Too tired to argue, Clayton yawned, shrugged, turned on his heel, and trudged away.

Kerney gestured at Ramona to follow. When both officers disappeared in the darkness, he took a peek inside the well house. There was maybe a foot of snow left to remove before any close inspection could be made. Parts of an old well motor were partially exposed under the intact section of roof at the back of the structure, and there was a rusted section of pipe leaning against a half-rotted wall. Clearly the well had been abandoned years ago.

Kerney couldn’t even hazard a good guess about what had once been secreted away in the dilapidated, abandoned structure. But whatever it was, apparently it had become a catalyst for murder. Counting Brian Riley and Denise’s unborn child, six dead so far. He wondered if there would be more.

The wind picked up and felt like a raw, icy slap against his face. It was a hell of a night to be outside for any reason at all, including murder.

At Clifford Talbott’s ranch, Don Mielke climbed off the Arctic Cat and told the snowplow driver and road-grader operator to stay with their equipment. The two men huddled together in the cab of the snowplow to stay warm. Stiff from the cold, Mielke gestured to his senior investigator, Tony Morales, to join him.

Morales killed the engine to his snowmobile and grabbed his equipment bag. After a quick look at the license plate on the Harley to confirm that the motorcycle belonged to Brian Riley, and a glance at the broken porch door glass, the two men drew their sidearms and cautiously entered the ranch house. The corpse in the easy chair was clearly dead, so they did a fast sweep of the premises before returning to the front room.

The slug from a hunting rifle, which was on the kitchen counter just where Talbott said he’d left it, can do lethal damage to a target several hundred yards away. From a range of less than ten feet, the results were lethal and god-awful. The entry wound above Brian Riley’s eyes from the round of Talbott’s bolt-action Remington .30–06 was almost perfectly cylindrical. But the exit wound in the back of his head was an explosion of blood, brains, and bone that had penetrated and saturated the upholstery of the easy chair and blown a pulse of blood splatter onto the far wall.

Riley’s bowels had released at the time of death, and the stench of Talbott’s vomit still lingered, so the room smelled as bad as it looked.

Mielke gave the body a careful once-over while Morales took photographs. Riley’s hand was wrapped around the pistol grip of the revolver, and an empty, handmade leather-tooled holster was in his lap. He was wearing a heavy wool sweater at least two sizes too big and had an old faded barn coat draped over his shoulders. On the floor to his right, next to a leg of the chair, was a backpack.

Mielke left the backpack untouched and made a thorough search of the small house. In the bedroom, dresser drawers had been pulled out and left open. In the kitchen cabinets, dust on the shelves had been disturbed. A dirty plate, a gummy fork, and a pot with the remains of gooey macaroni and cheese stuck to the sides sat on the counter. In the bottom of the trash bucket was the empty macaroni and cheese box. A pot of water that had boiled down to almost nothing sat on the woodstove, and an empty coffee mug was on the lamp table next to the easy chair.

On the front porch Mielke found an adjustable wrench that Riley had likely used to break the glass to the door. Back inside, Tony Morales was busy bagging and tagging the cookware, plate, utensils, and trash.

“Have you finished photographing the body?” he asked.

Morales nodded.

He handed Morales the wrench to bag and tag, went to Riley’s body, took the Smith & Wesson revolver out of the dead boy’s hand, and opened the cylinder. The handgun was fully loaded. Mielke held it up for Morales to see.

“I think this is just what it appears to be, Major,” Morales said. “Straightforward self-defense.”

“Apparently so.” Mielke reached down, picked up the backpack, opened it, dumped the contents—which looked to be only clothing—on the floor. He searched through the smaller side pockets, found a large envelope containing currency, put the envelope aside, and pawed through the wadded-up, dirty, smelly clothing looking for anything in the pockets. All he found was a pack of matches advertising a nightclub in downtown Albuquerque and a plastic bag with a small amount of grass. He dropped the empty backpack on top of the pile of dirty clothes.

“Nada?” Morales asked.

“Nada.” Mielke flipped open his cell phone. Although Talbott had told him it wouldn’t work, he tried to call out anyway, but there was no signal. He keyed his handheld, got dead air on the S.O. frequency, and switched through the remaining police and emergency channels with the same results.

“Are we cut off from radio contact?” Morales asked.

“That’s affirmative.” The room had cooled down quite a bit since their arrival. Mielke checked the woodstove, opened the vent to increase the airflow, and added some wood to the bed of hot embers. “You’re going to have to stay here while I go back and report in. If the medical investigator is there, I’ll send him to you right away. Meanwhile, dust for prints. Make sure you get the handgun, the rifle, and the wrench.”

“Ten-four, Major.”

Morales had used both a digital camera and a 35mm Pentax to photograph the crime scene. Mielke asked Morales for the digital camera so Kerney and Clayton could see what the crime scene looked like. With the camera safely zipped into an inside pocket of his parka, he stepped over to the kitchen cabinet that contained foodstuffs, reached to the back of the top shelf, pulled out a full pint bottle of whiskey he’d spotted earlier, unscrewed the top, and took a swallow. It felt good and warm going down. He held the bottle out to Morales. “Go ahead, we’ve earned it.”

Morales hesitated, took the bottle from Mielke’s hand, tilted it to his lips, and let the liquid run down his throat, wondering if the major would be taking the whiskey bottle with him. On more than one occasion he’d watched Mielke down eight shots in a row at the FOP and get totally stinking drunk.

Morales held the bottle out to Mielke.

Mielke shook his head as he went to the door. “Clean off the fingerprints and put it back in the cupboard. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

After returning to the double-wide with Ramona Pino, Clayton forced himself to stay awake. He wanted direct confirmation from Don Mielke that the dead man in Clifford Talbott’s ranch house was truly Brian Riley.

In the mobile command vehicle, he talked with Ramona for a while until she left to go home and get some sleep. Then he spent some time with Kerney filling him in on how close he’d come to finding Riley in Albuquerque, and how an Albuquerque cop had let Riley waltz right into the Minerva Stanley Robocker crime scene and drive away on the Harley.

Kerney, in turn, told Clayton about his analysis of the letters Denise Riley had written to her sister during the years she’d supposedly lived far away from Santa Fe, at times in foreign countries.

“When will you hear something?” Clayton asked.

“Tomorrow, hopefully.” Kerney looked at his wristwatch. “But maybe not. With all this snowfall, except for essential personnel, the governor will probably shut down all state offices. I imagine the mayor and the county commission will do the same.”

Clayton suddenly remembered he’d high-ended the Lincoln County S.O. unit on a boulder and had asked Mielke to send a tow truck to free it. “Do you know the status of the vehicle I was driving?” He wasn’t about to claim Riley’s assigned S.O. 4×4 as his own.

“It’s at the county yard in Santa Fe,” Kerney said, “and not going anywhere for a while. It has a broken front axle, a leaking radiator, two flat front tires, and a bent wheel. Paul Hewitt told me you ran into a deer recently and put your marked unit in the shop. Seems you’re rather hard on your assigned vehicles.”

“That deer ran into me. Can I borrow a P.D. vehicle?”

Kerney thought it over. “I’ve got a clunker in the headquarters parking lot that you can use.”

“Thanks a lot,” Clayton retorted, unable to keep a sarcastic tone out of his voice.

Kerney smiled pleasantly and was about to respond when a knock at the command vehicle door interrupted their exchange. The door opened to reveal the arrival of the medical investigator, an MD named Mark Trask who worked full-time for the state health department and did occasional on-call work for the Office of the Medical Investigator, headquartered in Albuquerque.

“Do you have a body for me to inspect?” Trask asked, stomping his boots on the carpet to shake off some clinging snow. Mark weighed in at a hefty two hundred and fifty pounds on a five-six frame, so the RV shook slightly underfoot.

“Not here,” Kerney said.

Trask flipped back the hood of his parka. His gray walrus mustache was wet with condensation and his eyes were tearing from the cold. “Then where might I find the deceased, Chief?”

“About five miles up on top of the mesa,” Kerney replied.

“Ah, and how am I to get there in this blizzard?”

“We’re in the process of securing appropriate transportation for you,” Kerney answered.

“Such as?”

“It could be a road grader, a snowplow, or as a passenger on a snowmobile.”

“Wonderful,” Trask said with a grimace, eyeing Clayton. “And who do we have here?”

Kerney said. “Sergeant Istee, this is Dr. Mark Trask.”

Trask reached out and firmly shook Clayton’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. Have either of you viewed the remains of the deceased?”

“No,” Kerney replied. “Don Mielke and one of his investigators are there now. We’re waiting for a report.”

Feeling as though he could fall asleep on his feet, Clayton was about to step outside and suck down some cold air when the door opened again and a man stepped inside. Tall with an angular face, he quickly took off his coat and nodded at Kerney and Trask before turning his attention to Clayton.

“We haven’t met. I’m Kirt Latimer, ADA.”

“Sergeant Clayton Istee, Lincoln County S.O.”

“Don Mielke told me on the phone this might be a case of justifiable homicide. Is that correct?”

“It’s likely.” Kerney turned to the built-in desk and picked up a palm-size tape recorder and several microcassette tapes, and handed them to Latimer. “Tape one is Clifford Talbott’s voluntary statement made immediately after he was taken into custody. Tape two is an in-depth interview with Talbott conducted soon after his arrest.”

Latimer juggled the cassette tapes in his hand. “But nothing of the suspect’s story has yet to be confirmed.”

“We’re waiting on Don Mielke,” Clayton said, “who is at the crime scene with one of his investigators.”

“What can you tell me about Talbott?”

“I’ll answer that,” Kerney said. “He’s a seventy-something white male, married, with one adult son, who lives in Moriarty. He has two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, I think, and was a state livestock inspector for thirty-five years before he retired. He owns a small ranch on the mesa that he inherited from his father and runs a herd of cattle on it during the spring and summer months.”

“How do you know all that?” Clayton asked.

“Because I’ve met Clifford Talbott several times before,” Kerney replied.

“Do you think he’s a cold-blooded killer?” Latimer inquired.

“Cold-blooded, no. But that’s only one of the fifty-seven varieties of killers I’ve met over the years.”

Conversation ended when Latimer started playing the tape recording of Talbott’s confession, and Clayton used the moment to put on his coat and step outside the command center. He took a deep breath and listened for the wind, but all was still and quiet. Heavy snow not only buried everything in a white blanket, it made the world miraculously fall silent for a time. It was a soundlessness like no other and always served to remind Clayton of how needlessly noisy life had become.

The momentary stillness passed with the faint but gradually growing sound of an engine, and soon Clayton could discern the full-throated, barely muffled growl of a snowmobile coming down the long driveway to the Riley double-wide. He watched as Mielke brought it to a stop next to the cluster of police vehicles parked in front of the deck to the double-wide.

Clayton walked through deep snow to greet Mielke. He waited to speak until Mielke removed his goggles, flipped back the hood of his parka, and took off his ski mask. “How did it look?” he asked.

“It appears to be just the way Talbott said it would be, and I don’t think anything was staged.”

“Can you confirm that Brian Riley is the deceased?”

“There’s no doubt about it. I saw his body. I searched his backpack and personal items and only found money and a small quantity of grass, nothing else.” Mielke unzipped his parka, reached inside, brought out a digital camera, and nodded toward the command center RV. “Who’s here?”

“Mark Trask, a medical investigator, and ADA Latimer are inside with Chief Kerney.”

“Good.” He waved the camera at Clayton. “I’ve got photographs of the crime scene we can download to a computer.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

Inside the mobile command center, Mielke downloaded directly to a computer software program that ran the photographs as a slide show. The four men clustered around Mielke in front of the monitor as he talked them through his preliminary investigation at the scene.

“Personally,” Mielke said, “I think that if Talbott hadn’t entered his house with his rifle, Riley would have shot him.”

“I believe I’ll declare the subject dead based on your graphic photographs and go home to a snifter of brandy,” Trask said.

“You have to personally inspect the body, Mark,” Latimer replied.

Trask sighed dramatically. “I know, but I’m just not a cold-weather person. Riding on the back of a snowmobile in a blizzard holds no appeal.”

“I’ve got a grader and a snowplow working on the country road from here to Talbott’s ranch,” Mielke said. “We should be able to travel by four-by-four to the crime scene within the hour. If we can’t get an ambulance up there, we’ll bring the body out the same way.”

Trask smiled. “That sounds much more agreeable.”

Mielke eyed Latimer. “Does this give you enough to make a decision on how to proceed?”

“I’ll meet with him, but I’m not willing to decline to prosecute until your investigation is complete. At best, I’ll think about filing an involuntary manslaughter charge, but I want him held overnight and brought before a magistrate judge for a preliminary hearing first thing in the morning. If everything continues to check out by then, I may agree to a reasonable bond.”

“With this storm, the courts may be closed tomorrow,” Mielke said.

“I’ll find a judge.”

Mielke turned to Kerney. “Do you have a question, Chief?”

“Is there any reason to believe that Talbott shot Riley, got his Smith and Wesson revolver from the bedroom, and put it in the dead boy’s hand?”

Mielke used the mouse to scroll through the sequence of photographs taken of Riley’s body. “As you can see, nothing looks staged. Tony Morales, my senior investigator, is dusting for prints. If we find Riley’s fingerprints on the bedroom dresser where Talbott kept his revolver, that will be fairly conclusive evidence that the weapon wasn’t planted on his body.”

Kerney nodded. “That makes sense.” He turned to Clayton. “Is there anything you’d like to add, Sergeant?”

“If anyone has any viable suspects in the murders of Deputy Tim Riley, his wife Denise, Minerva Stanley Robocker, and APD Officer Judy Connors, I’d love to know who they are.”

A tight-lipped silence greeted Clayton’s frustration.

“We’ll get the investigation back on track tomorrow,” Kerney promised.

Latimer, Trask, and Mielke nodded in agreement and left the command center.

“Let’s call it a night,” Kerney said.

“I’ll sleep here in the command center,” Clayton replied.

“That’s unacceptable. You’re coming home with me.”

“Can we even get to your place?”

“I’ll just bet we can.”

Driving home with three feet of fresh snow on the ground wasn’t the smartest decision Kerney ever made, but he managed to pull it off without getting stuck, although it took almost two hours to travel the fifteen or so miles from Cañoncito to his ranch.

Sara had all the outside lights on, and most of the inside lights were burning brightly as well, so during the slow ascent up the ranch road from the canyon, the house was an inviting beacon in the night.

Kerney parked, breathed a sigh of relief, and looked over at Clayton, who’d fallen asleep ten minutes into the drive, with his head resting against his wadded-up coat. He hadn’t moved a muscle since. Kerney shook Clayton hard to wake him.

Slowly Clayton opened his eyes. “That was speedy,” he said, talking through a yawn.

“Not really. You want something to eat? There’s some leftover green chili stew in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll take a shower, call Grace, and go to bed.”

“Okay.” Kerney killed the engine.

Clayton didn’t move.

“What is it?” Kerney asked.

“I’m flat out of ideas on how to catch this killer.”

“We haven’t exhausted all possible leads yet. Denise’s letters could give us something, and maybe the well house will yield some evidence. Sergeant Pino will be out there first thing in the morning.”

“Tell her to be very careful working in that snow,” Clayton said. “Moisture can easily destroy latent fingerprints and make it almost impossible to find any trace evidence.”

“Sergeant Pino is up to the task, Clayton.”

Clayton smiled and put his hand on the door handle. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Inside, Clayton made his excuses to Sara and went immediately to the guest quarters. In the kitchen, Kerney joined Sara for a cup of tea. A partially destroyed gut from a drug dealer’s bullet had pretty much done away with Kerney’s coffee-drinking days.

Sara reached out and touched Kerney’s cheek. “I was starting to get worried about you.”

“It was slow going, but we made it. Clayton needs sleep. I ordered him off duty but that didn’t seem to work. So I decided that I didn’t want him staying anywhere else but here tonight.”

Sara’s eyes danced. “That sounds remarkably like what a concerned parent would do.”

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“A very good thing. Jack Burke called to say he would be out at first light plowing his roads with his grader. He said if you’re not in a fired-up hurry to get to work early, he’d have ours cleared by eight o’clock.”

Jack was Kerney’s closest neighbor, friend, and the man who’d sold him two sections of ranchland. He owned an old Highway Department surplus road grader that he used to keep his ranch roads in good condition. “Bless him.” He took Sara’s hand. “You seem in a good mood.”

“I’m loving this storm. It reminds me of Montana winters on the ranch when we would be snowbound for a week. There were days when nothing moved, when even my father was forced to stay inside until the sky cleared and the winds died down. Those days were magic for me and my brother. The land an unbroken white blanket. The mountains frosted cones. The ranch house cozy and warm. Me in the kitchen with my mother learning how to make biscuits from scratch.”

“Most people nowadays will never have those kind of memories.”

Sara squeezed Kerney’s hand. “Well, we do.”

Kerney raised his wife’s hand to his lips. The Sara he loved was back, at least for a while. There would be rough spots to come, but it was heartening to see her eyes dance and hear that lovely country lilt creep into her voice. “Let’s keep making those memories,” he said.