Death Song Read online

  “She probably didn’t hang up the phone properly,” Helen said.

  “I know,” Tim replied. “But I’d feel better about it if you went out and checked on her.”

  “Of course.”

  “Have her call me right away.”

  “I will. She’s going to be upset that she worried you unnecessarily.”

  “Tell her not to be. Thanks, Helen.”

  Tim disconnected and listened to incoming traffic on his radio. A Carrizozo police officer was en route to a fight in the parking lot of a local bar. Riley turned on his emergency lights, put his unit in gear, accelerated, and alerted the officer that he was on his way to assist.

  In the eastside Santa Fe home her grandfather had built eighty years ago, now surrounded by millionaires’ mansions, Helen Muiz found her husband sleeping in his favorite chair in the den with the television turned down low. She shook him awake and told him to put on his shoes and drive her to Cañoncito right away.

  “What’s the problem?” Ruben asked grouchily as he laced up his shoes.

  “Probably nothing,” Helen replied. “But Tim’s worried because he can’t reach Denise, and the phone company says it’s because the phone is off the hook.”

  Ruben shook his head. “It’s pretty late in the evening to go joyriding out to Cañoncito and back.”

  “Don’t be such a grump, Ruben. You’re retired, remember? So it’s not like you have to get up in the morning and go to work. Besides, she’s my baby sister and I’m worried about her.”

  Ruben knew better than to argue with Helen about her five sisters and one brother, all younger than she was. She was about to turn sixty and had been mother hen to all of them since their parents had died. Denise, the youngest by twenty-one years, was her favorite.

  He went to the hall closest, got his jacket, put it on, and held out Helen’s coat. She slipped her arms into the sleeves, turned around, and kissed him on the cheek. “I wish she wasn’t moving to Lincoln County.”

  Ruben shrugged. “A wife goes with her husband.”

  “Chauvinist.”

  “I prefer the term traditionalist,” Ruben replied.

  “That may be, but you’re still a chauvinist,” Helen said, patting her husband on the arm. “There’s no earthly reason for Tim to take Denise away to Lincoln County. He could have easily gotten a job with the Santa Fe Police Department.”

  Ruben opened the front door and stood aside to let his wife pass. “Yes, he could have. But I don’t think he wanted that.”

  Helen looked sternly at Ruben. “Has he talked to you? Do you know why he’s so set on moving away?”

  Ruben shook his head. His wife had done her best to change Tim’s mind about the job in Lincoln County. Helen had spent thirty-eight years working for the Santa Fe Police Department. She and her boss, Chief Kevin Kerney, a man she’d known since his first day on the job, were both retiring at the end of the month. She’d spoken to Kerney about Tim, who’d encouraged Helen to have him apply for a transfer to the SFPD. But Tim would have none of it.

  “Some people thrive on change and variety,” Ruben said. “Tim spent twenty years in the air force and lived all over the world. Maybe it’s just in his blood.”

  Helen sighed and marched down the walkway toward the car. “Well, since her return to Santa Fe, it’s certainly not in Denise’s blood. I think she should come stay with us until Tim finds a place to rent in Lincoln County. I don’t like the idea of her being out in Cañoncito by herself.”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell her that when you see her,” Ruben said as he opened the passenger door to the car.

  Helen settled into her seat and grimaced at her husband. “I hate the idea of her moving away.”

  “I know you do,” Ruben said, gazing at his lovely wife, who didn’t look a day over fifty and had a figure that still earned admiring glances from strangers. “But they’re only going to be living three hours away by car. We can easily visit.”

  Ruben got behind the wheel and Helen gave him a smooch. “You’re always so logical,” she said.

  “Only when I’m not being chauvinistic.” Ruben buckled his seat belt and cranked the engine. “Okay, let’s go on this rescue mission so we can tell Denise to hang up her telephone.”

  A five-minute drive on empty city streets got them to the Old Las Vegas Highway, once part of the original Route 66 and now a frontage road that paralleled I-25. On the map, Cañoncito was a settlement where the pavement dead-ended at a small chapel. But in fact, houses, trailers, and double-wides were sprinkled throughout foothills and mesas all the way to the mainline railroad tracks that followed the Galisteo Creek south toward Albuquerque.

  Tim and Denise lived up a small canyon near the creek, on a mixture of pasture and woodland, their double-wide tucked under some trees near a rock outcropping. Helen and Ruben arrived to find Denise’s car parked outside, lights on inside the residence, and the front door ajar.

  As soon as Helen saw her sister’s car keys and purse on the kitchen counter and the wall phone dangling from the cord, she started to panic. In a loud voice she called out to Denise, only to be greeted by silence. Nothing appeared to be out of order in the front room, but it was unlike Denise to be gone from her home at such a late hour. Helen hurried through the rest of the house searching for her sister with Ruben at her heels.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said when they returned to the front room. Her heart was racing and she patted her chest to catch her breath.

  Ruben handed Helen his cell phone. “You call your sisters and brother, and I’ll check the stable.”

  “She would have heard us if she was with the horses.”

  “Maybe not,” Ruben replied calmly, trying to hide his own growing anxiety. “If I don’t find her, I’ll knock on the neighbor’s front door. She could be just visiting nearby.”

  “I didn’t see any lights on in that house when we drove by,” Helen said.

  “I’ll check anyway. Call your sisters and brother. They might know where Denise is.”

  Helen speed-dialed a number. “Don’t be long.”

  “I won’t,” Ruben said. Outside, he took a flashlight from the glove box of his car and walked to the corral and stable. Tim and Denise’s two prize quarter horses were in their stalls. Ruben found the light switch. Both stalls were dirty and stinky from the smell of urine and manure. No feed or fresh water had been put out and the horses were restless, snorting in displeasure.

  Ruben released the animals into the corral and walked around the stable. The horse trailer was parked in its usual place next to the old pickup truck Tim used to haul hay and supplies. He made a circle around the double-wide, shining his flashlight on the ground and behind the trees, thinking that maybe Denise had met with some accident. Finding nothing, he hiked down the driveway to the nearest neighbor and pounded on the front door. The porch light came on and a sleepy-eyed man in his fifties opened the door a crack and looked out.

  “I’ve got a pistol,” he growled. “What do you want?”

  Ruben raised his hands. “I’m not a crook. I’m Denise Riley’s brother-in-law. My wife and I are looking for her.”

  The man opened the door. His hair was matted against his forehead, and he had a very large pistol in his hand. “I haven’t seen her drive by recently.”

  “Do you speak to her frequently?” Ruben asked.

  “No, usually we just wave at each other.”

  “Could she be visiting some other neighbors?”

  The man shrugged. “This time of night? I doubt it.”

  “Okay,” Ruben said. “Thanks.”

  “Has she run off?” the man asked.

  “We don’t know,” Ruben replied. Back at the house he found Helen standing outside on the deck, about to dial the cell phone.

  “Did you learn anything?” she asked, snapping the cell phone closed.

  Ruben shook his head. “You?”

  Helen grimaced. “Nobody in the family has seen or talked to Denise in the
past two days.”

  “The neighbor I spoke to asked me if she’d run off,” Ruben said.

  “Run off? That’s absurd.” Helen flipped open the cell phone.

  “Are you calling Tim?”

  Helen shook her head. “Not yet. I don’t want to upset him any more than he already is. I’m calling Chief Kerney.”

  By the time Tim Riley arrived at the parking lot outside the Carrizozo bar, the fight had turned into a brawl. Six men and two women were mixing it up big-time. Fists were flying, kicks were landing, and the women were especially hard at it, pulling hair and gouging each other with their fingernails. It took some scuffling with the brawlers by Tim and the Carrizozo cop to settle things down, but eventually pepper spray did the trick. They made arrests, called for EMTs to treat the injuries sustained by the combatants, and took witness statements.

  According to all concerned, brawlers and onlookers alike, the fight had started inside the bar when the two women began arguing about who had dibs to play the next game of pool. In all his years as a cop and as a career military criminal investigator, Tim had yet to hear a rational explanation for a bar fight given by drunks. Plausible excuses, perhaps, but never rational reasons.

  Tim’s shift had ended by the time the suspects in custody were transported and booked into the county jail. He finished the booking paperwork, went to the sheriff’s department, and put his completed shift reports in the tray on the chief deputy’s desk.

  In the silence of the empty offices—there would be no deputies on duty until the morning shift—Tim again tried calling home on a landline, only to get another irritating busy signal. Why hadn’t Denise called him? Or Helen for that matter?

  Tim decided he couldn’t wait for a phone call to find out what in the hell was going on at home. He’d go to his rented cabin, change into his civvies, and hit the road for Santa Fe. At this time of night, if he pushed it hard he could make it in under three hours.

  In Capitan he rolled to a stop in front of the cabin. The street was dark and there were no lights on in any of the adjacent houses. Before he reported himself home and off duty, Tim searched the backseat of his unit. It was something he always did after transporting perps or prisoners. Experience had taught him that even when cuffed, people would hide items from the cops in police vehicles that had been overlooked in pat-down searches. Over the years, he’d found things like knives, drugs, needles, money, condoms, and wallets stuffed behind cushions and under the seat.

  This night he found nothing, signed off with dispatch, locked his unit, and headed for the front door.

  Behind him a familiar-sounding voice whispered, “Hey.”

  Startled, Tim turned, and the last thing he saw was the flash of a shotgun blast that hit him full force in the face.

  Chapter Two

  The shotgun blast woke up nearby residents, and in the silence that followed, several nervous but curious neighbors left the warmth and safety of their homes to investigate. Separately they converged on Tim Riley’s body lying in a pool of blood and called 911 to report it, their voices cracking with alarm. Within minutes, Craig Bolt and Paul Hewitt arrived at the scene. After a quick look to confirm that Riley was dead, they covered the body, cordoned off the area, and ordered every available officer under their commands back on duty ASAP.

  A number of officers and some emergency personnel had gathered by the time Clayton pulled up to a police barrier on the street to Riley’s rented cabin. In the numbingly cold night, a small crowd of citizens stood quietly gazing at the flashing lights of the police vehicles parked in front of the crime scene.

  The deputy manning the barrier waved Clayton through. As he drove slowly down the street, he saw Craig Bolt’s officers interviewing people outside their homes. On the sidewalk in front of Riley’s rented cabin, two male civilians dressed in pajamas, slippers, and winter coats were giving statements to deputies.

  Clayton parked his pickup truck next to Paul Hewitt’s vehicle and spotted the sheriff standing near a tree in the front yard talking to his chief deputy and Chief Bolt. Crime scene tape had been strung from the cabin’s front porch, wrapped around the rearview mirror and bumper of Riley’s unit, and tied off on the antenna of a pickup truck parked close by. It formed a triangle that enclosed a body covered by a tarp, illuminated by the headlights of Craig Bolt’s police vehicle.

  Deputy Sheriff Bennie Anaya guarded the crime scene. Approaching sixty and close to retirement, Bennie was a jovial, roly-poly man who wasn’t the smartest cop on the street by a long shot, but who did a barely adequate job of transporting prisoners to and from court.

  “Who has inspected the body?” Clayton asked as he approached Anaya.

  “Just the sheriff and Chief Bolt,” Anaya replied. He held out his clipboard with a crime scene log-in sheet attached.

  Clayton noted the time on the form and signed it. “Did you take a look, Bennie?”

  Bennie nodded. “It’s not a pretty sight.”

  Clayton handed him the clipboard. “Sign yourself in.”

  Bennie did as he was told.

  “Has anyone been inside the cabin?” Clayton asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Bennie replied. He paused and reconsidered his answer. “Maybe, before I got here. But the sheriff didn’t say.”

  “Nobody enters the crime scene or the cabin without my permission,” Clayton said, nodding in the direction of Hewitt, Bolt, and Baca. “That includes the top brass who are over there by that tree jawboning.”

  “Affirmative,” Bennie replied.

  “Do you know who else will be joining us?” Clayton asked.

  “The DA and the medical investigator are on the way,” Anaya said, “and state police are sending a mobile crime lab and some techs up from Las Cruces. Every law enforcement agency in the region has offered to help out.”

  Clayton ducked under the tape and put on a pair of gloves. “Do we have anything for them to do?”

  Bennie snorted. “We don’t have squat. Not yet, anyway.”

  “That could change,” Clayton said as he walked to Riley’s body, bent down, and pulled back the tarp. From the looks of it, a rifled shotgun slug fired at close range had almost obliterated Riley’s face. A massive amount of blood from the large entry wound had saturated the ground under Riley’s head. On his forehead, above what was left of his nose and eyes, gray brain matter dripped down like coagulated gobs of cooked pasta.

  For a moment Clayton found it hard to remember what Riley had looked like before he’d been murdered. He forced his gaze away, composed himself, and rapped a knuckle on Riley’s chest. As he suspected, Riley had been wearing his body armor. Did the murderer know that and take the head shot to be sure of the kill?

  Clayton raised his eyes back to Riley’s mangled face. Earlier, he had apologized to the deer for its needless death. Now he wondered what circumstance had gotten Riley killed. It surely wasn’t a random act. From the position of the body, he guessed that Riley had turned to face his killer. Perhaps a sound had alerted him. He inspected the soles of Riley’s boots, fished out a flashlight from his equipment bag, and went looking for footprints. The ground was too frozen to show fresh impressions, but on the porch he located two partials. One matched the tread on Riley’s boot and the other did not.

  Clayton dropped down for a closer look. Riley’s footprint showed him leaving the cabin. Wind had obliterated part of the tread, and Clayton judged it to be the older of the two partials. The second, smaller footprint was fresher and pointed in the direction of the front door. There was nothing on the porch to suggest Riley had entered the cabin prior to the shooting. The presence of the second partial suggested the possibility that the killer had arrived before Riley and been lying in wait.

  Clayton unzipped his equipment bag, pulled out his camera, and took photographs of the footprints, his thoughts focused on trying to figure out the sequence of events in the last few minutes of Tim Riley’s life.

  He walked to Riley’s unit, studied the ground,
and saw what appeared to be a small indentation of a boot tread on a crushed leaf near the rear of the vehicle. By the passenger-side rear door there was a partially broken twig that might have been caused by the weight of a step. In the flashlight beam he saw a crumpled-up piece of paper lodged against the rear tire. He picked it up and smoothed it out. It was a month-old Lincoln County credit card receipt for two new windshield wipers that had been purchased by another deputy.

  Clayton wondered if Riley inspected his vehicle at the end of his shift. It was common practice among seasoned officers to do so. He imagined the scene. Riley would have been exposed and vulnerable while checking for contraband or cleaning out trash inside the unit. He would have been bent over with his back exposed. Why wait for a frontal shot when a slug to the back of the head would do the job just as well? Did the killer want Riley to see it coming?

  Although there were no defensive wounds on Riley’s hands, Clayton looked around for any sign of a struggle. Nothing on the ground or near Riley’s unit pointed to an altercation.

  The doors to Riley’s unit were locked. If he had been on his way to the cabin, chances were good he would have had his keys in his hand. Clayton went back to the body. He searched around the corpse and emptied Riley’s pockets. He rolled Riley carefully onto his side and looked for the keys on the ground under the body.

  The exit wound was gruesome. He lowered Riley and glanced over at Deputy Anaya, who watched with interest. “Bennie, did you find Riley’s keys?” Clayton called out.

  Bennie smiled and patted his pants pocket. “Yeah, I secured them so that they wouldn’t get lost.”

  Clayton forced a smile at Anaya. “Where exactly did you find them?”

  “They were in his hand.”

  “Which hand?”

  Bennie pulled the keys out of his pocket. “His right hand.”

  “Give them to me,” Clayton said as he walked over to Anaya.

  Bennie dropped the keys into Clayton’s palm. Rather than chew out Anaya in public for being stupid, Clayton turned on his heel and went back to the body. Riley was right-handed. Clayton looked at his holstered sidearm. It was strapped down, which meant Riley hadn’t anticipated any danger. Was that because the shooter was known to him, or simply because he’d been caught off guard?