Under the Color of Law Read online

  "Where is Agent Applewhite?" Kerney asked. "I haven't seen much of her."

  "She's busy. Just give your people the news that they can close the Terrell case, and pass on my thanks for their cooperation."

  "I'll sure do that." Kerney stood up and reached for his hat. "Where's Gatlin's body?"

  "In Ramah."

  "Let's go see."

  Perry laughed. "Don't waste your time."

  "It's no bother." Kerney put on his hat and stepped to the front of his desk. "You can ride with me."

  "There is nothing for you to do there," Perry said. "Don't start playing games with me and going behind my back, like you did with the Catron County militia."

  "Why don't you want me to see Gatlin's body, Charlie?"

  "Wise up, Kerney, or you'll get burned, big time."

  "Don't you think this is all too quick and easy?"

  Perry stood up and leaned in close to Kerney. "I don't like you, never have. But I'll say this once and you'd better listen: This time you could lose a lot more than that shitty little seasonal job you had with the Forest Service."

  Kerney tossed his hat on the desk. "It's been a pleasure working with you again, Charlie."

  "Yeah, right," Perry said. He dropped a folded paper on the conference table.

  "That's a copy of the official FBI statement to the press. I'm releasing it in an hour. Want to be there?"

  "I'll pass," Kerney said. "It's your party. Have a good time."

  ***

  Sal Molina had gone back out in the field. Kerney got him on the radio and told him the Terrell case had been closed by the FBI. Molina wanted specifics.

  "Not over the radio," Kerney said. "We can hook up later. Go to Perry's press conference. It starts in an hour. That way you'll know what I know."

  "Ten-four."

  Kerney read over the graveyard report that noted the last motel the agents had been seen at during their early-mo ming search for Terjo on Cerrillos Road. He got in his car and started checking the remaining motels from that point on along the strip, looking for Terjo.

  February had suddenly turned unseasonably warm and the snow pack on the mountains was fast disappearing, along with the tourists who had traveled north to Taos looking for better skiing conditions.

  Between stops Kerney wondered what was keeping Agent Applewhite so busy. She hadn't coordinated anything, as far as he could tell. Why would she be staying on in Santa Fe with Charlie Perry when she was supposed to be returning to Taos to resume an interrupted vacation with her husband? He wondered if it would be worth his time to try to get a line on the husband.

  His last stop was at a motel near an outlet mall. He parked and tried to talk himself into taking Charlie Perry's advice and dropping the whole mess. He stared at the mall, and tried to think of other things.

  Surrounded by acres of parking, the mall had a facade that combined elements of an oversized northern New Mexico hacienda with what appeared to be medieval castle battlements. The building consisted of retail shops around a large open-air courtyard, which shoppers entered through an enormous gate decorated with stylized buffalos, bracketed by two mock watchtower turrets. The watchtower motif continued around the perimeter of the structure, jutting up at different elevations. The walls had been stuccoed in two different colors, one of which, ugly mustard, reminded Kerney of dirty diapers.

  The thought of dirty diapers made Kerney smile. Although it still felt unreal, in a little more than six months he would become a father. With Sara far away and seeing her so infrequently, to Kerney the relationship had felt more like a passionate love affair than a marriage. The baby would change all that, but Kerney wasn't sure how.

  Of course, Sara would return to active duty after her maternity leave, but then what? She was exploring the possibility of landing an assignment in New Mexico after finishing up at the Command and General Staff College. But there was no guarantee she could swing it.

  The idea that his wife could be stationed far away at an army post with their child while he stayed behind in Santa Fe held no appeal. Through no fault of his own Kerney had missed out on raising one child, a son born to his college sweetheart, Isabel Istee, who'd kept the birth a secret from him for over twenty-five years. While Kerney was in Vietnam as an infantry lieutenant, Isabel had returned to the Mescalero reservation in the Sacramento Mountains to give birth and raise her son as a single parent. She lived there still, as did her son Clayton, who was a tribal police officer, a husband, and the father of two small children.

  The recent shock of discovering that he was both an instant father and grandfather still stunned Kerney on occasion. He pushed the random thoughts away and focused on Applewhite. It shouldn't be all that difficult to confirm her Taos vacation ski story, and it would ease his mind if it were true.

  He made contact with Sal Molina.

  "How did the press conference go?"

  "Unbelievable, Chief," Molina said.

  "Are you buying it?"

  "For now. Applewhite's husband is supposedly in Taos."

  "Yeah, I know. She made a big deal to me about how her vacation got screwed up by the Terrell case."

  "Find out if she made any calls to her hubby."

  "This doesn't sound like you're buying Perry's spin, Chief."

  "It's just my natural curiosity at work, Lieutenant."

  "It may take some time to track down her cell-phone provider," Molina said.

  "Do it quietly and without radio transmissions."

  "Ten-four."

  Kerney went into the motel and talked to the desk clerk, who glanced at the stars on Kerney's uniform shirt collar and nodded his head vigorously at Terjo's photograph.

  "Yeah, he was here. Two FBI agents came looking for him earlier. A man and a woman."

  "And?" Kerney prompted, thinking that he'd been wrong about Applewhite. She'd been given some work to do after all.

  The man lifted a shoulder.

  "I didn't see what happened. Nothing, I guess. There wasn't a commotion or anything like that."

  "Did you give them a room key?"

  "No, they said they'd come back if they needed one."

  "Had Terjo checked out?"

  "I don't know. He paid in cash. People who do that usually just leave the key in the room when they go."

  "I'd like to see the room. Has it been cleaned?"

  The man consulted a housekeeping schedule. "Maybe. There's a girl working that wing now. She'll let you in. Room one sixty three."

  The housekeeping cart stood on the walkway in front of the open door to Terjo's room. The bed had been stripped by an older, tired-looking Mexican woman who was running a vacuum cleaner. She switched off the machine when Kerney entered and dropped her head as if to avoid trouble.

  Kerney spoke to her in Spanish. "Was the room slept in?"

  "Yes."

  "Was it messy?"

  "No more than any other room."

  "Were there any signs of a fight or a struggle ?"

  "No." The woman reached into an apron pocket and held out a key ring.

  "But I did find these on the carpet next to the nightstand."

  Kerney took the keys, inspected them, thanked the woman, and left. Terjo had left behind his truck keys, which wasn't what a man who should've been on the run and had stayed in town overnight would do. Terjo had to have been thinking of getting his truck and maybe borrowing some money from his girlfriend.

  Kerney jiggled the keys in his hand. Charlie Perry's story about not finding Terjo was pure bullshit. He wondered where Perry had Terjo stashed.

  Charlie's reasons for the heavy warning to drop the case were now completely clear: everything related to the Terrell murder was being systematically sanitized.

  Kerney knew it was probably in his best interest to accept the FBI's party line, walk away from the game, and get on with the task of running his department. More than enough important issues were nipping at his heels demanding attention.

  He also knew he couldn't let t
hings slide that easily.

  * * *

  Ignacio Terjo leaned forward to ease the discomfort of the muscle spasms and loss of feeling in his arms. His hands were handcuffed behind his back and after two hours of sitting in the backseat of the sedan, he was tense and agitated. He twisted his head to get limber, but it didn't help.

  The woman driving the car wouldn't talk to him, although she had the rearview mirror at an angle so she could see him clearly. He stared out the window at the desert and mountain landscape to distract himself from the pain. They were traveling south toward Mexico on the Interstate, maybe three hours away from the border. Until they reached Las Cruces, which was a very short distance from El Paso, there would be only a few towns and small cities along the route.

  The buzz of a cell phone made Terjo switch his attention back to the woman. He watched as she answered, listened, and disconnected after acknowledging the call. Still, she said nothing to him. Finally, after another half hour, she spoke.

  "We'll be stopping soon," she said, Terjo nodded and watched a low-flying helicopter parallel the car and pass out of sight. They left the Interstate ten miles further on at an exit where nothing but a dirt road cut through brown sand hills. After a few miles on the rutted road the car topped a small rise. Terjo saw a helicopter on the ground. Two men waited at the front of the aircraft canopy.

  "Why is that here?" Terjo asked.

  "To take you the rest of the way to Mexico," the woman said as she stopped the car.

  "I have to make water first," Terjo said.

  "No problem."

  Outside the vehicle the woman took the handcuffs off and pointed at a nearby mesquite tree.

  "Over there," she said.

  Terjo walked to the tree with the woman close behind. He unzipped his pants and relieved himself. One of the men opened the hinged helicopter door and took out what looked to be a folded black blanket.

  "Finished?" the woman asked.

  Terjo nodded and zipped up. Before he could turn around, Agent Applewhite raised her handgun and shot him in the back of the head.

  Chapter 6

  Late in the afternoon Bobby Sloan released two of the state police agents who'd assisted in his investigation and held a debriefing session with the senior agent, Lalo Escudero. Escudero, an old friend who'd tipped more than a few beers with Sloan over the years, sat in the cubbyhole that served as Bobby's office reading off the list of people who'd been interviewed over the last two days. At his desk Sloan checked off the names one by one.

  "That's it," Escudero said, looking at the sprawling stacks of files, reports, and paperwork on Sloan's desk.

  "How in the hell do you find anything in that mess?"

  "It's all organized," Sloan said.

  "As far as I can tell, we've talked to every faculty member, student, and staff member at the college who had any contact with Mitchell."

  "Including a few whose only interaction with the priest was sharing a table with him at the college library or using the men's room at the same time he was taking a leak," Escudero noted.

  "So, nobody's lying, or withholding information?" Sloan asked.

  "So it seems," Escudero replied.

  "Supposedly it's not unusual for an academic researcher to stay tight lipped about his work."

  "Yeah, yeah, I heard that from every faculty member I talked with," Sloan said.

  "I'm thinking about personal stuff Mitchell might have talked about. You know, his hobbies, his years in the army, what he liked to read. Anything like that."

  "The man kept to himself," Escudero said.

  "Why?"

  "Hell if I know," Escudero said.

  "Maybe that was his personality."

  "Or he was hiding something," Sloan said, stifling a burp.

  "Maybe. But other than the robbery, you've got no motive for the murder. Nobody had a grudge against him, he wasn't embroiled in any controversial campus politics, and nobody disliked him."

  Sloan looked at the blank piece of paper he'd placed on his desk for note taking, removed his reading glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

  "So say he wasn't killed by somebody on campus," he said.

  Escudero rolled his eyes.

  "What?" Sloan demanded.

  "Either way, you've got robbery as a motive."

  Sloan shook his head. "Come on, Lalo. Robbers are the sloppiest killers on the fucking planet. They get surprised by the victim, panic, pull off a couple of caps, bolt, and leave most of what they wanted to steal behind. We get prints, find witnesses, get a make on a vehicle, cruise the pawnshops, and make a bust."

  "Okay," Escudero said. "Mitchell was retired army and his research project involved interviewing ex-military types."

  Sloan elaborated on Lalo's guess. "Are you saying officer X or sergeant Y dusted Mitchell because of his research?"

  "That would explain the professional kill," Escudero replied. "The killer could have been one of those special forces types."

  Sloan covered his mouth, burped, and noted the idea on the paper. "Let's say Mitchell gets whacked because of his research. Something from the past he was writing about, maybe gonna publish. Now the robbery starts to make sense. The killer wasn't sure what Mitchell had or where it was, so he cleaned out everything."

  "Or he knew exactly what he was looking for and staged the rest of the rip-off to throw us off the track."

  "That, I don't buy," Sloan said, suppressing a burp. "The perp didn't waste time killing Mitchell. I doubt he wanted to risk getting caught lugging a bunch of unnecessary stuff away."

  "Okay, what's the motive?" Escudero replied, pausing to let Bobby finish another belch.

  "Revenge?"

  "More likely fear of exposure," Sloan replied, "if it was related to Mitchell's research. But what if the perp killed him for something that didn't have diddly to do with the army? Maybe it was personal. Maybe the priest was a pedophile and the church was hiding him away."

  "What we know about the victim doesn't tell us much," Escudero said, watching Bobby burp again. "Maybe you should forget about figuring out the motive for now and concentrate on the victim."

  "Yeah," Sloan said. "You'd think if the perp didn't know exactly what he was looking for, he would have left something behind about Mitchell's research that would give us a clue."

  "No good motive, no hard evidence, no known suspects," Escudero said. "Your case is a piece of shit, Bobby. When do you want our paperwork?"

  "Tell me about it. Tomorrow will do." Sloan let out a long belch and patted his stomach.

  "We're finished talking, right? I want to get out of here before you start blowing farts."

  "It's just gas," Sloan said.

  "You sound like a bullfrog in heat," Escudero said.

  "You gotta stop eating that junk food."

  Sloan grimaced. "Thanks for the advice and the help."

  "Any time."

  Lalo left the cubicle and Sloan picked up the page of notes he'd just made and let the paper float down to the desktop. Was Mitchell killed for revenge? Was Mitchell killed to cover up some past crime? Was he killed because of what his research had uncovered? He hated this kind of homicide. The chances were good it would go unsolved unless someone stepped forward with solid information or another crime occurred that could be tied conclusively to the murder, with sufficient evidence to target a suspect.

  He rocked his chair back and reached down for a thick three holed binder on the floor. Although forms and reports were now computerized, Sloan still used a homicide casebook to keep his material organized. He thumbed through the pages, stopping to look once again at the two yellow Post-it notes he'd found as page markers in Father Mitchell's Bible. Mitchell had written INS COM on one Post-it and "video" on the other.

  Sloan had no idea what INS COM meant. Maybe it was a stock-market abbreviation, the name of a corporation, or an acronym of some sort. He would try and track it down.

  No videotapes had been found in Mitchell's room, so maybe that note was a r
eminder to return a borrowed or rented movie. There were several video players and televisions in the common areas of the Christian Brothers residence hall. Although it was probably a dead lead, tomorrow he would ask around to see if Father Mitchell was a movie buff, and check the video stores near the college on Cerrillos Road.

  But maybe it referred to something else. Mitchell supposedly was taking oral histories of retired veterans for his research. Was he making audio or video recordings?

  Sloan decided not to get excited about the idea until morning. He started writing his report, and his gut rumbled as the gas built up. He needed to stop by the drugstore and get something for it on his way home.

  ***

  Kerney's last meeting of the day was with Tobias Maestas, the lieutenant in charge of training. Maestas, a low-key, competent officer, sat stiffly across the conference table and with a pained expression on his face described how Kerney's predecessor had gutted the annual in-service training budget by taking himself and a few high-ranking cronies to expensive out-of-state law-enforcement seminars and conferences. As a result, unless new money could be found or existing funds transferred from another budget category, firearms instruction and range re qualification testing with the department's newly adopted Smith & Wesson 45 caliber semiautomatic would have to be curtailed until the start of the new fiscal year in July.

  Kerney heard Maestas out, thinking that every new day on the job seemed to bring another surprising revelation of past mismanagement. He glanced at the weapons-training cost estimate and the instruction schedule Maestas had prepared and closed the file.

  "We have six unfilled patrol officer positions," Kerney said. "I'll ask Chief Otero to transfer the funds you need out of personnel costs into the training budget. Go ahead and set it up, Lieutenant."

  Maestas smiled as though he'd won the lottery, thanked Kerney, packed up his paperwork, and left. Almost immediately, Sal Molina stuck his head inside the open door.

  "Got a minute, Chief?" he asked.

  "Sure," Kerney replied.

  "We've cleared last summer's drive-by shooting. The Albuquerque PD picked up our suspect on a fugitive warrant early this morning during a DWI traffic stop. He's hooked into the county jail."