Everyone Dies

Chapter 4

I t took Kerney a minute to realize that the new vehicle parked next to his truck outside the guesthouse belonged to Sara. Stirred by the uneasy realization that he’d spaced out their appointment to take delivery of the car, he hurried inside to apologize. He shucked off his wet windbreaker, hung it on the hall closet doorknob, and called her name as he walked into the living room.

Sara answered from the kitchen. She sat at the table eating her dinner, a bowl of pasta with asparagus in a cream sauce. Kerney’s. 38 sat next to the place mat by her right hand.

He lowered himself into a chair, eying the handgun. “Sorry I couldn’t get back in time to take you to pick up your car.”

“I managed.” Sara stood, moved to the stove, and spooned out a bowl of pasta. She seemed calm, not at all upset with him.

“You didn’t have to make my dinner.”

“Yes, I did. I need to practice cooking for two, at least for a little while. Besides, I was hungry.”

He took the bowl from Sara’s hand and reached for a fork. “What’s up with the pistola?”

“We had a dead rat delivered to our front door this afternoon,” Sara replied, returning to her chair, “by person or persons unknown.”

Kerney set aside the fork. “And?”

Sara laid the story out, including the call from Tug Cheney confirming that the rat, according to Byron Stoll’s toxicology test, had been poisoned with strychnine.

“It’s commonly used in rodenticides sold over the counter,” Sara added calmly.

“Rodenticides?”

“That what Tug Cheney calls them,” Sara answered, stabbing the last asparagus spear. She chewed it slowly. “Anyway, the pistola is a precaution until we find out who is playing this unpleasant little game.”

“I’ll deal with it,” Kerney said.

Sara shook her head, and pushed aside her empty bowl. “Don’t go getting all macho on me, Kerney. I’ve already started the ball rolling. I spoke to both the city and the county animal control supervisors this afternoon and asked about any recent calls regarding dead rats.”

She got up and fetched a notepad next to the kitchen telephone. “Two days ago, a rat was removed from in front of a house off Hyde Park Road, just outside the city limits. The woman who requested the service was afraid of contracting Hantavirus. She didn’t realize that the disease was spread to humans only by deer mice droppings, not from rats. An animal control officer removed the rat and disposed of it. In his report he noted the animal appeared to have been poisoned. The woman found it in the driveway next to her car.”

“Was it a kangaroo rat?” Kerney asked between forkfuls of pasta.

“The officer thought so, but wasn’t sure,” Sara replied, returning to the table. “Requests to remove dead rats aren’t all that common.”

“Who was the woman?”

“Dora Manning.”

“That name sounds familiar,” Kerney said.

“I tried phoning her several times and got no answer.”

His mouth full, Kerney nodded in approval before speaking. “Was the rat tested before it was destroyed?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Sara went to the sink and rinsed out her bowl. “I think we should pay a visit to Ms. Manning’s house after you finish your dinner.”

“Why should we do that?”

“I got the phone company to give me the names and numbers of Manning’s immediate neighbors, and one of them hasn’t seen her for a day.”

“How did you do that?”

“I asked questions.”

“No, I mean find the neighbors.”

“You’re not the only member of this family with law enforcement experience. I commanded a military police unit, remember? The phone company was very cooperative. Anyway, I spoke to a neighbor. Manning is an older woman who lives alone. Her car is at the house but the neighbor hasn’t seen her outside since yesterday evening, and she always lets him or his wife know when she’s going out of town.”

Sara held out her key ring. “Come on, I’ll let you drive my new SUV.” She eased the. 38 into her purse.

Kerney dropped the fork in the bowl. “Okay, let’s go. Good chow, by the way.”

“You’re too kind.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” Kerney asked, as he followed suit and rinsed out his bowl in the sink.

“Perhaps a tiny bit,” Sara said with a smile. “You can tell me about your afternoon in the car.”

“It’s a big mess, that’s for sure,” Kerney said.

Throughout the day, the bald-headed man had listened carefully to radio traffic on his police scanner, waiting for the call that would send animal control to Kerney’s house to remove the dead rat.

He’d left it there fully expecting Kerney’s wife to ask animal control to collect it and then think no more about it. But it hadn’t played out that way. Perhaps she’d called Kerney by phone instead, or simply thrown the rat into the trash. Either way, the man was not disconcerted. He’d prepared his plan with those contingencies in mind.

When Kerney reported by radio that he was leaving Tesuque and going home, the man drove to the church at the bottom of Upper Canyon Road and parked. Within ten minutes of his arrival, Kerney passed by.

He drummed his fingers on the shoe box that contained another dead rat. Soon it would be dark enough to leave it, without being detected, for Kerney to find, accompanied by a note that would fully clarify the chief’s predicament.

After nightfall, he drove to the end of Upper Canyon Road and walked down the hill to Kerney’s house. The new car was missing from the driveway and there were no lights on inside. He stayed in the shadows, moved quietly to the portal, placed the rat on the floor, tacked the note to the door, and hurried away.

Soldier’s slaughter and the discovery of the poisoned rat made Kerney apprehensive. But he stayed focused on the Larsen shooting during the drive to Manning’s house. Likewise, Sara avoided the subject, limiting her comments to some questions about the SWAT screw-up. It was as if they’d silently agreed to postpone any speculation about the day’s events until they had a better understanding of them.

He could sense that Sara’s worry matched his own, but she didn’t appear rattled by it. He expected as much from her. Before their marriage, she’d won a meritorious promotion to her current rank for leading a covert mission in Korea that had successfully thwarted an assassination plot against the secretary of state.

Beyond that, Kerney had witnessed firsthand Sara’s coolness under fire, when a military intelligence agent had tried to bushwhack them in order to cover up an illicit government spy operation.

The Manning house was in a foothills subdivision off Hyde Park Road, which climbed into the high mountains of the national forest and ended at the ski basin. Kerney followed a long, looping street with several culde-sacs that ran around a hillside. The storm had cleared out, and thick stands of pine blocked the weak glow of the moon. With no street lamps and only a few house lights showing, the neighborhood was masked in shades of darkness.

Sara consulted her notes and guided Kerney to the right address. He drove by slowly without stopping. A car sat in the driveway in front of the unlit house.

“Based on what I learned today,” Sara said, turning off the map light, “this is definitely not the natural habitat of D. merriami.”

“Of the what?”

“The Merriam Kangaroo Rat, or either of the other two native species, for that matter. Stop next door.”

Kerney swung into the driveway. Lights were on inside the house. Sara rang the doorbell and an older man answered.

“Mr. Saul?” Sara asked. “I spoke to you earlier today about Dora Manning.”

“Oh, yes,” Saul answered, nodding his head. “I went to Dora’s house after you called, but she wasn’t home. You have us quite worried about her. She never leaves town without telling me and my wife she’ll be gone. We always pick up her mail for her.”

“Does she often travel without her car?” Sara asked.

Saul nodded. “She doesn’t like to drive in Albuquerque, so she takes a taxi downtown and rides the shuttle bus to the airport. Perhaps she had an emergency. Her older sister in California isn’t in good health.”

“How old is Ms. Manning?” Sara asked.

“About my age,” Saul said. “In her late sixties, I’d say.”

“Does Dora have health problems?” Sara asked.

“Not that I know of. She’s very active.”

“Does she work?” Kerney asked.

“She’s an artist,” Saul replied, “and works at home. We have several of her watercolors.”

“And before that?”

“For many years, she was a clinical psychologist here in Santa Fe,” Saul said, looking closely at Kerney. What had brought the police chief and a very pregnant woman to his front door to question him about Dora?

“You’re the police chief,” Saul said.

“I am,” Kerney said quickly. “Have you had any problems with rats?”

Saul shook his head. “The only rat I’ve ever seen around here is the one Dora found in her driveway several days ago. She came and told me about it before animal control took it away.”

“Do you have a key to her house?” Kerney asked.

“Yes, and a mailbox key as well. My wife picked up her mail this afternoon.”

“Did you or your wife go inside her house?” Sara asked.

“No, we only check inside when she’s on extended trips, just to make sure everything is okay.” Saul’s worried gaze shifted from Sara to Kerney and back again. “What’s going on?”

Sara smiled reassuringly. “Probably nothing. Could we have the key?”

Saul nodded and left them waiting in the doorway. They could hear him talking in a hushed voice. After a few minutes, he returned with his wife in tow, who handed Kerney a key.

“Is there an alarm system?” Kerney asked.

“No,” the woman said. “This is very disconcerting. Why are you concerned about Dora?”

“We’re just checking on her welfare,” Kerney replied.

He thanked the couple and asked them to remain in their house. They nodded in unison, eyes wide with misgiving.

At the SUV, Kerney got a flashlight and led the way along the dark street to Manning’s house. He thought about asking Sara to remain behind while he looked around, but knew she’d have none of it.

“So, do you know Manning?” Sara asked, as they approached the house.

“Professionally, I did,” he said. “She did a good bit of forensic psychology work for the courts before she gave up her practice to become an artist. I’d forgotten all about her. It was a long time ago.”

He knocked hard and rang the doorbell several times before handing Sara the key. “Stay here. I’ll scout the perimeter and look for any signs of forced entry,” he said, reaching for his sidearm. Sara already had the. 38 out of her purse and in her hand.

He checked every door and window and returned to find Sara with her back against the wall, her weapon in the ready position, and the key in the lock.

He shook his head. “Looks okay on the outside,” he whispered. “We’ll do a room search. Back me up.”

Sara nodded and turned the key.

Together, they swept the house. In the master bedroom they found Dora Manning stretched out on an ornate Victorian bed with her throat cut. Her pajama top and the bed sheet were soaked in blood. On the wall behind the bed, the killer had left a message in red. In block letters, it read:

EVERYONE DIES

They retreated from the house. Kerney turned on the ceiling lights with the butt of his flashlight as they went from room to room, illuminating walls covered with Manning’s framed egg tempera and watercolor paintings. There was no sign that the house had been burglarized or a struggle had occurred.

Under the portal porch light, Kerney holstered his weapon, called in homicide on his cell phone, and told dispatch to roll units running a silent code three.

“Get Chief Otero and Lieutenant Molina up here ASAP,” he added before disconnecting.

“I don’t like this at all,” Sara said.

Kerney thought about the two murder victims, Jack Potter, a former prosecutor, and now Dora Manning, an ex-forensic psychologist. He thought about the message on Manning’s bedroom wall, and the image of Soldier lying dead in the horse barn ran through his mind.

“Maybe you should go up to Montana and stay with your parents until after the baby is born,” he said.

“I am not having this baby without you there to greet him,” Sara said peevishly.

“I’d feel better if you did.”

“No way, Kerney,” Sara said.

“Until we know what ‘everyone dies’ means, it would be the best thing to do.”

Sara shook her head fiercely. “I’m staying. It isn’t negotiable.”

“Fine. I’m sending you home with a patrol officer as soon as my people get here, with orders to sweep the house and remain with you until I return.”

“Try to get home before morning,” Sara said.

“We’ll see how it goes.”

She wrapped her arms around her belly, cradling and protecting the baby. “This is an absolutely crappy thing to have happening right now.”

He pulled her close. “We’ll get through it, I promise.”

Slowly, her arms encircled his waist and she held him tight.

The bald-headed man pulled to the shoulder of Hyde Park Road to let a line of police cars pass by. He followed and caught up in time to see the last unit turn off into the subdivision where Dora Manning lived.

He nodded approvingly. According to his timetable, if Manning’s body hadn’t been discovered by midnight, he would make an anonymous call to the police. He decided to go back to the war room and confirm it on the scanner.

Everything was working perfectly. He wondered where Kerney and his wife were. But it really didn’t matter. Part of the plan was designed to get Kerney scared and scrambling for answers, which he would then supply.

So far, so good.

After Kerney’s people arrived and were briefed, the patrol lieutenant and an officer in a second unit escorted Sara home. At the lieutenant’s request, Sara stayed in the squad car until the two men checked the grounds around the guesthouse and the main residence. She could see the beams of their flashlights as they moved back and forth through the trees and shrubs, until they disappeared behind the buildings. Finally they returned.

“It’s clear,” the lieutenant said through the open driver’s side window, holding out his hand. “Your house key please, ma’am.”

“There’s something tacked on the front door,” she said, handing him the key.

The lieutenant turned on the unit’s spotlight and aimed it at the front door. “Manny, go see what that is,” he said to the patrol officer. “But don’t touch it.”

The officer hurried to the front door and came back at a run. “It’s a typed note on white paper that says, ‘Everyone dies. Two down, two to go, and then you’re dead.’ There’s no signature, but there’s a dead rat on the portal.”

Sara bit her lip and wondered if she and her unborn son counted as two in the killer’s mind. The odds were good that they did.

The lieutenant reached in through the open window for the microphone and called Kerney’s unit number. It took him a minute to respond.

The baby moved, and Sara leaned back against the headrest wondering if she was about to give birth. She held her breath, hoping it was a false alarm. She wanted this madness over before Patrick Brannon Kerney came into the world. She listened as the lieutenant gave Kerney the news.

“Have you searched the house?” Kerney asked, his voice clear on the radio speaker.

“Not yet.”

“Bring in another officer to assist,” Kerney said. “I doubt whoever left the message is around, but play it safe anyway. Call me when you’ve finished the house search, and I’ll send a detective to fetch the note. Is everything else ten-four?”

“Affirmative.” After requesting another unit, the lieutenant dropped the microphone on the seat. “This won’t take all that long, ma’am,” he said.

“Good,” Sara replied, trying not to wiggle, “because I have to pee.”

Kerney sat in Sara’s new car with Larry Otero and watched as a group of detectives huddled in the middle of the street while Sal Molina gave them the word that the scope of the investigation now included a serious threat to the chief and his pregnant wife.

The emergency lights from the police units, an ambulance, and the crime scene van blinked lollipop colors into the night, bouncing off the trees and the front of Manning’s house. A cluster of neighbors, including the Sauls, stood behind the police line watching techs lug equipment into Dora Manning’s house.

The killer’s note and the explicit symbolism of a second dead rat on his doorstep ate like a worm in Kerney’s gut, and assigning officers to protect Sara didn’t ease his anxiety. Until he knew who the perp was and why this was happening, none of them was safe.

An unmarked unit passed through the checkpoint and pulled to the side of the street. Ramona Pino came over with a shut-down look on her face and handed Kerney the note retrieved from his front door. It was protected in a clear plastic bag.

He read it, turned it over to the back side, which was blank, and passed it along to Larry, who did the same before handing it back.

“I think the neighborhood knows that we’ve arrived in force,” Kerney said, as he returned the note to Pino. “Except for the patrol officer at the checkpoint, ask the officers and detectives to kill their emergency lights.”

Kerney knew his orders sounded picky. But it was a lot better than cursing the nameless son of a bitch who wanted to kill his family.

Ramona nodded stiffly and walked away.

“She’s not a happy camper right now,” Larry said.

“She’ll get over it,” Kerney said, not in the least interested in Pino’s emotional state. “What’s happening with the IA investigation?”

“Lieutenant Casados has personally interviewed Pino, Tafoya, Molina, all on-duty commanders in the operations division, and the SWAT supervisor. I’m next on the list. I’m meeting with him in the morning. He’ll want to see you after that.”

One by one, the emergency lights went dark. Kerney nodded. Unless directed otherwise, Casados reported to the chief and no one else.

“We’ll see what shakes out,” he said. “Have Molina put Tafoya and Pino on desk duty starting tomorrow. I want a comprehensive search made to locate every case file and court record that involved Jack Potter, Dora Manning, and me. I don’t care how many archives they have to dig through to get the information. It’s time to start connecting the dots.”

“You’ve got it.”

“Also have the ME give us his best estimate of the time of Manning’s death. To me, it looks like she’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours, perhaps longer. That would mean the perp cut her throat before he shot Jack Potter.”

“Why the different MOs?” Larry asked.

“We don’t know yet if they’re different,” Kerney replied.

“He used a knife on Manning and a pistol on Potter.”

“Because each circumstance and setting was unique. Potter was killed early in the morning on an empty street. I doubt our perp wanted to risk attacking him with a knife. It was far better to shoot him and then get the hell out of there in a hurry. On the other hand, Manning died in her bed, so I’m assuming she was killed at night. A gunshot could have alerted the neighbors. In that instance, it was better to use a blade.”

“But there’s no indication the perp played any mind games with Potter before he killed him,” Larry said.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Kerney said as he started the engine.

“Going home?” Larry asked, as he opened the passenger door.

“Not yet. There are a few things I want to do first. Is the ADA on his way?”

“Yeah, Foyt should be here soon. I’ll bring him up to speed.”

On late rounds, Dr. Rand Collier read the admission report, the medication chart, and the nursing notes in Mary Beth Patterson’s chart. After an hour of observation in the ER, Patterson’s catatonic stupor had lifted, replaced by a moderate psychotic reaction stemming from the death of her boyfriend. The ER physician who’d examined Patterson cited nihilistic delusions, verbal requests to be punished, and a flat affect. An antidepressant had been prescribed and Patterson had been sent up to the psych unit for further observation and evaluation.

The nursing notes from the afternoon shift reported that upon arrival, Mary Beth had been placed on a close watch. She had remained passive and verbally unresponsive until early evening, when she had requested some juice at the nursing station. Since then, she’d been observed in her room watching television, and had partially eaten her dinner meal-all good signs.

He reviewed summaries of Patterson’s prior admissions which detailed her self-destructive behavior, depressive episodes, and her sex-change operation, and read through the intake note prepared by the hospital social worker who’d interviewed Joyce Barbero, Patterson’s counselor at the independent living center.

Collier, who was covering for the mental health clinic’s psychiatrist, walked into Mary Beth’s room and introduced himself.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, as he approached the bed.

Mary Beth pushed herself to a sitting position. “I need to go home. My Kurt will be worried about me. He doesn’t know where I am.”

“Would you like to talk about what happened to Kurt today?”

“Nothing happened to him,” Mary Beth replied.

“Do you remember why you were brought to the hospital?” Collier asked.

“Why was I?” Mary Beth replied. “I wasn’t sick or anything.”

“You were upset,” Collier said.

“No, I don’t let things upset me anymore.” She tugged at the collar of her hospital gown. “I want my own clothes. I can’t let Kurt see me like this.”

Collier asked Mary Beth to tell him the day, month, and year. Her answers were way off.

“Do you know Joyce Barbero?” Collier asked.

“Is she one of the nurses?” Mary Beth replied, looking confused.

“I’m going to have the nurse bring you something to help you sleep,” Collier said, as he scribbled a prescription note on the chart and a remark that Mary Beth was disoriented, possibly due to emotional trauma. “Rest tonight and we can talk again in the morning.”

“I don’t want to stay here.”

“We’ll see how you feel in the morning,” Collier replied as he smiled and left the room.

Mary Beth sank back against the pillow and started scratching her arm with her long fingernails, drawing blood as she went.

At police headquarters, Kerney asked dispatch to pull all the logs for animal control calls that had occurred on nights and weekends over the past sixty days. During normal weekday hours calls went directly to animal control, which was housed on the grounds of the humane society shelter but under the control and supervision of the police department.

Kerney knew Jack Potter’s house was inside the city limits. But he didn’t know if Potter and his partner, Norman Kaplan, owned a pet. Still, it was worth checking out. Dispatch called and reported no contact by Potter to animal control. He contacted the animal control supervisor at home and asked him to go to the office right away and search the phone logs for Kaplan’s or Potter’s name. The supervisor said he’d call back in thirty minutes.

Kerney used his time making a list of what else needed to be done to start identifying candidates who might reasonably be suspected to hold a grudge against Potter, Manning, and himself. Checking court records and case files only started the paper search. Data from the sex offender registration files, intelligence reports, jail and prison release reports, and confidential files needed to be pulled to see if any red flags popped up. He ended his list with the names of a dozen or so of the most violent offenders he’d busted during his career who were mostly likely to seek revenge.

He looked at the names on the list. The men were all hardcore felons with extensive criminal records. It would be foolish to assume the killer’s motivation could be tied to a single case that involved all three primary targets. A separate search would need to be done for threats against each one.

He scratched out a note amending the order he’d told Larry Otero to pass on to Sal Molina, and called Helen Muiz, his office manager. He asked to have her staff get all in-house documents gathered and on Sal Molina’s desk by mid-morning with instructions to conduct both a combined and separate assessment of perps who might have reason to seek revenge against any one of the targets.

Molina wouldn’t like getting Kerney’s orders through Helen Muiz, but right now he didn’t give a dead rat’s ass about Sal’s feelings. The SWAT screw-up still stuck in his craw and the jeopardy to Sara and the baby was too great to waste time worrying about protocol.

“I’ll call my staff and have them get to work early,” Helen said. “You’ve got me worried about you and your family, Kevin. Is Sara all right?”

Kerney smiled at her rare use of his given name. “She’s doing okay.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to have Larry Otero pass on your orders to Lieutenant Molina?”

“Larry’s got enough to do, and there isn’t time for niceties,” Kerney replied. “I’ll leave my note on your desk. Wave it at Molina if he gets uppity.”

“What a terrible day you’ve had,” Helen said.

“It hasn’t been a good one. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

Soon after he hung up, the animal control supervisor called.

“We haven’t had any calls to that address, Chief,” he said. “But I just checked the animal shelter’s lost dog reports. Three days ago Jack Potter called asking if a five-year-old, mixed-breed, female Border collie named Mandy had been picked up or brought into the shelter. He said she’d gotten out of his backyard. She’s still active on the lost animal list.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” Kerney said, pushing back his chair.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Chief, first I get a call from your wife about a dead rat, and now you want to know about a lost dog. Does all this have something to do with Potter’s murder?”

“You’ll read about it in the papers soon enough,” Kerney said. “Thanks.”

Jack Potter’s house sat on a hill above the Casa Solana neighborhood, once the site of a World War II Japanese-American internment camp. A newer adobe structure with large glass windows, the house commanded a view of the mountains and downtown Santa Fe.

He could see headlights of cars traveling on Paseo de Peralta, a street that looped around the historical core of the city, and a few of the traffic lights along Saint Francis Drive, the state road that led north to Taos. Behind the city the mountains were soft, obscure shapes in a star-filled night sky, and the semicircular sliver of the moon looked like the cutting edge of an old-fashioned sickle suspended in the air.

Kerney didn’t bother ringing the doorbell; Norman Kaplan was still on a plane flying home from England. He walked around the darkened house and encountered a high six-foot fence and a locked wooden gate that enclosed the backyard. Kerney wondered how Potter’s mixed-breed collie, which wasn’t a big dog, could have jumped the fence. It didn’t seem likely.

The closest house was about a hundred yards away. Kerney spoke to Potter’s neighbors, a younger couple who were surprised to find him at their doorstep. He showed his shield and explained the reason for his visit.

“What does Mandy have to do with Jack’s murder?” the man asked. A chocolate-colored Labrador padded to the open door and sniffed at Kerney’s knee.

“Behave, Herschel,” the man said.

The dog sat and smiled up at Kerney.

“I’m just wondering how Mandy managed to go missing from the backyard,” Kerney said. “I didn’t see any evidence that she’d dug her way out under the fence. Was the gate left unlocked?”

“Mandy isn’t a digger, and Jack always kept the gate locked when he wasn’t home and Mandy was outside,” the woman replied.

“We don’t know how she got out,” the man said. “It’s never happened before, and we’ve been Jack and Norm’s neighbors for three years.”

“I think Mandy was stolen,” the woman said.

“What makes you say that?” Kerney asked.

“How else can you explain it? Mandy is an absolutely beautiful dog, very well behaved, and has a large, secure backyard to romp in when Jack and Norman are at work.”

“Did he search the neighborhood for the dog?”

“Yes, along with Norman and the two of us,” the woman said. “We went house to house, passed out posters, and even walked through the arroyos.”

“I think a coyote got her,” the man said.

“Perhaps,” Kerney said, doubting it. Coyotes rarely took down large prey, unless it was sick or wounded.

“Do you think whoever took Mandy killed Jack?” the woman asked.

“Anything’s possible.”

Kerney thanked the couple and went home, where he found Sara asleep in the bedroom and two uniformed officers on duty. After being assured that the house was secure and all windows were closed and locked, he released them to return to patrol.

Unwilling to risk waking Sara, he sat quietly on the living room couch and mulled over the pattern that seemed to be developing in the cases: dead kangaroo rats delivered to doorsteps, a prized horse killed, a cherished dog stolen. All seemed acts intended to intimidate, to create a climate of fear, and demonstrate the killer’s superiority and intelligence.

The threatening note left on his door announcing two more deaths before his own meant that he was supposed to be the final target. Did it also mean the killer wanted Kerney to lose Sara and the baby before he died himself? Or was it a ploy to throw him off?

He used the cell phone and called Larry Otero, who was still at the Manning crime scene.

“Jack Potter had his dog stolen three days ago,” he said. “Have the detectives find out if Manning had a pet, was a recent crime victim, or had suffered any kind of personal or family loss.”

“Will do,” Otero said. “She didn’t have any pets, so that’s one thing we can forget about. How far back do you want them to go?”

“Six months, for now,” Kerney said. “Do we have flight information on Norman Kaplan?”

“Nothing specific, just that he’s on his way.”

“Put someone on it,” Kerney said. “I want him met at the Albuquerque airport, accompanied home, and given protection.”

“I’ll see that it’s taken care of,” Otero replied.

“Where are you with the crime scene?”

“Molina and his people are still gathering evidence and talking to neighbors. You were right about the time of death; Manning was killed before Potter was shot.”

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

He checked the lock on the front door one more time, pulled off his boots, and stretched out on the couch. With all that had happened, with all there was still to face, he wondered if he could sleep. It didn’t seem possible.

When the nurse brought the sleeping medication, Mary Beth kept her mutilated arm under the covers, tucked the pill under her tongue and pretended to swallow it. She spit it out as soon as the nurse left the room, her mind racing with images of Kurt dead, all cut up and bleeding. He was dead, dead, dead.

Had she killed Kurt? She decided no one else could have done it. But how and when?

For hours, she moaned quietly into the pillow, stuffing it in her mouth, covering her face. But she still kept breathing, kept thinking, kept seeing Kurt standing naked like a statue with his arms at his sides, bleeding from every pore of his body with a sickly smile on his face until he disappeared behind a creamy red shroud.

Her visions never lied. She needed to stop her mind from remembering how she’d killed her Kurt.

She waited until the nurse made a late-night round, then got out of bed and went to the bathroom. The mirror was metal and fixed to the wall. The toilet had no tank, just a flush valve. The light fixture had a plastic cover screwed in place over the flourescent tube. There was nothing around she could use to stop the bad vision of Kurt and the terrible thoughts about herself.

She opened the venetian blind next to the bed and looked out the window into the dark night, running her finger along the sharp edge of a plastic slat. With both hands, she bent the brittle slat until it snapped, and then broke it once more to free it from the cord that held it in place.

In the bathroom with the door closed, she pressed down hard, drawing the sharpest point of the slat up the length of her arm, cutting deeper than her fingernails ever could. The pain felt so good it made her shiver.

She did the other arm, and then her thighs. Lovely red blood stained her gown. She took the gown off and cut into the soft flesh under her breasts and watched red droplets course down to her belly button.

She put her hands together and looked at her wrists. The veins were right at the surface. She dug the slat into the fattest one, gritting her teeth until she broke through and blood squirted out in pulses. She clenched her fist, gouged between two tendons, popped open the other vein, and watched the blood flow freely into the sink.

She switched hands to repeat the process, her fingers shaking as she tried to stab into the vein. She punched repeatedly until the slat pierced it. Then she sawed the last one open, her blood lubricating every cutting stroke.

She dropped her hands to her sides, smiled at herself in the metal mirror, and saw Kurt smiling back at her. She could feel the blood draining from her body, her head becoming light and empty of bad thoughts. It felt so very, very dreamy.

Now she could sleep. She sank to the floor and closed her eyes.

The telephone rang and instinctively Kerney reached for it on the bedside table, his hand grabbing empty air. Groggily, he got up from the couch, hurried to the kitchen, and picked up on the third ring. The stove clock read 4:00 A.M.

“What is it?” he asked.

The third-shift dispatcher told him Mary Beth Patterson had been found dead in her psych-unit hospital room.

“How did it happen?”

“An apparent suicide, Chief. She cut her veins open with a piece of a venetian blind.”

“Who’s on it?”

“Lieutenant Molina and Detective Pino.”

“Have them call me back when they know something,” Kerney said.

“Ten-four.”

Kerney dropped the phone in the cradle. Day two of his vacation had just begun and it had already gone from bad to worse.