Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel Read online

  Clayton laughed. “Because it came to me recently that my mother and Kerney simply baffled each other and could never work it out. I can’t get bent out of shape about that.”

  “What an interesting notion.” She smiled and sipped her coffee. “I think you’re right.”

  “Me, too.” He put down his cup and kissed her. “I’ve got to get dressed and go.”

  Feeling reassured, Grace finished her coffee to the sound of the shower before returning Erma’s journals to Clayton’s attaché case and placing it on the table near the front door. Through Erma’s entries of her visits to Mary, she’d learned a bit about Kerney’s early boyhood days on the ranch, the family’s relocation to Truth or Consequences during years of punishing drought, and Patrick Kerney’s tragic descent into dementia. She decided to write down all she’d read so as not to forget it, and ask Clayton to let her read more.

  While plowing through the papers, Clayton discovered that part of the problem identifying people Erma wrote about was her frequent use of only initials. At the office, he learned his bleary-eyed team had encountered the same difficulty. None of them had yet found anything that appeared relevant to the homicide.

  A quick tally from the team revealed there were still thousands of pages yet unread. Faced with the possibility of many more people to identify, Clayton started a list of initials he’d run across on the whiteboard in the conference room. He told the team to add to it and nail down as many names, ages, and genders as they could.

  “Cross off those that don’t fit our victim’s profile,” he instructed.

  Clayton returned to his office and settled at his desk with the door closed. He looked over the journals he’d yet to read after last night’s marathon and opened to where he’d left off, silently hoping that somewhere inside the pages Erma had provided a clue to the victim’s identity. If his team all stuck out, he’d be shit out of luck and starting from scratch.

  Sometimes Paul Avery could be very funny, and sometimes, as he well knew, his attempts at humor were huge blunders that made him feel stupid for opening his big yap. Yesterday’s joke about hauling Clayton’s father in for questioning wasn’t his worst faux pas in recent memory, but it sure had been a doozy.

  The lieutenant was the best boss he’d ever had, and Avery felt he owed him an apology. But when Clayton’s office door was closed it meant no interruptions unless it was something that couldn’t wait.

  The section of a journal Avery was reading contained Fergurson’s notes on a summer she’d spent at her vacation cabin outside Ojitos Frios, a tiny Hispanic community in northern New Mexico. She’d done a lot of painting there, along with some entertaining, including a person identified only by initials who showed up rather frequently late in the evenings, and not to talk about art.

  Fergurson’s entries about her late-night visitor were lusty and erotic, causing Avery to question his decision to major in criminal justice in college. Perhaps he would have gotten a lot more action with the coeds if he’d been an art major. Except he stank at drawing even stick figures.

  Fergurson’s account of the bedroom antics clearly indicated her visitor was a male, so Avery added the initials to the whiteboard and promptly crossed them out to show they could not belong to the victim. Back at his desk, he glanced at the remaining journals awaiting his attention and hesitated. He had half a headache from all the reading and needed to stretch his legs and get some air.

  He thought about his visit to Billy Boylan, the sergeant at the sheriff’s office in charge of evidence and records, who’d told him no reports of any trespassing at the Fergurson Center had been located. Paul wasn’t sure Boylan could be trusted to do a good job. Back in the day when they’d been rookies together at the SO, Billy had been a skate, always willing to avoid anything that required real effort or hard work. His father was the then-incumbent sheriff’s first cousin. Thus, an accommodation had been made resulting in Billy becoming a fixture as supervisor of the evidence and records office.

  He signed out for the sheriff’s office, hoping Billy’s boss would let him take a look for himself.

  Billy Boylan’s supervisor, Major Frank Casados, had been with the sheriff’s office for thirty years and had no intention of retiring. He’d also been Avery’s field training officer during his rookie year, and subsequently his patrol commander until Paul left the SO for the state police.

  Now in charge of administrative services, a position created especially for him, Frank Casados had a spacious office with a trophy wall bookcase that held his various awards, plaques, and framed commendations. Casados smiled and clasped his hands around his substantial girth when Avery stuck his head in his open door.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked genially, as Paul slid into a chair in front of his desk.

  “It’s that unidentified murder victim that got unearthed at the Fergurson Center,” Paul explained.

  Casados guffawed. “Oh, yeah, that one. Good luck with it. Must have seen the video clip a dozen times on the TV news. Boylan said he made a records check for you that came up empty.”

  “So he says,” Avery replied pointedly.

  Casados rolled his eyes. “Nice of you to be so polite about it. I bet you want to take a look-see yourself.”

  “Only without stepping on Boylan’s toes. Can I look?”

  Casados nodded. “You can, but I don’t think Billy shortchanged you. I stayed on him to do a thorough job. If he missed something, it’s in the basement storage room that’s filled with records that were brought over from the old courthouse. Supposedly it’s ancient stuff from before 1950, but you never know.”

  “Thanks.”

  Casados rose. “I’ll take you down there. But you’d better be prepared to spend the rest of the day.”

  “That’s okay,” Avery replied. As they walked down the corridor to the elevator, he called and left a message for Clayton, reporting where he was and what he was about to do. To make sure he didn’t immediately get yanked back to the journals waiting on his desk, he turned his phone off, which was sure to piss Clayton off if he called.

  During a quick coffee break, Clayton listened to his messages. All but one of them were from Santa Fe, requesting updates on the investigation. He ignored them. The message from Paul Avery made him reach for the phone to order him back to the office pronto. He paused. Avery had good cop instincts. As an ex-deputy sheriff for Doña Ana County, he knew their internal operating procedures better than anyone else on the team, including Clayton. If he had reason to want to double-check the SO records, it wouldn’t hurt to let him do it.

  The conference room whiteboard was filling up with initials, most yet to be matched with names. The names that were listed had been crossed out with notations why, such as “deceased,” “wrong sex,” “too old,” etc. Avery had entered and crossed out the initials NB but written no reason. Clayton skimmed the journal Avery had been reading and came across racy entries by Fergurson about her lovemaking with NB. He wrote “male” on the whiteboard next to NB’s initials, thinking Erma Fergurson had been one helluva woman on many levels.

  Hoping for some good news, he made the rounds of his team, only to be greeted with a shake of a head, a shrug of the shoulders, or a terse, negative reply. Back at his desk, he started in on a new journal that covered a sabbatical year in France and Italy, flipping through Erma’s entries about painting trips in the countryside, visits to museums, meetings with galley directors, and social events with collectors and European artists. Several hours later, he’d moved on to another journal that dealt mostly with matters pertaining to her position at the university, with comments and observations, many less than flattering, about fellow faculty members and various high-ranking administrators. The words were starting to run together when Clayton looked up and saw Avery standing in the open doorway with a piece of paper in his hand, not looking at all happy.

  “What have you got?” Clayton asked.

  “During the move from the old courthouse, someone had mislabel
ed a box of 1973 field deputy reports by transposing the seven and the three, and it had been shelved with the 1930s records.” What he held in his hand the lieutenant wasn’t going to like.

  “And?” Clayton prodded.

  “First, I want to apologize about the stupid joke I made yesterday about Chief Kerney.”

  Clayton waved it off. “I already forgot about that. What’s that in your hand?”

  Avery stepped to Clayton’s desk and handed him a copy of a field report dated Friday, April 27, 1973. “I was looking for missing persons reports and found this instead.”

  Written on a standard SO form used back in the day, it was a report made by Kevin Kerney, a guest at the Fergurson residence, of a stolen 1875 Colt Single Action Army model revolver. The responding deputy recorded that Mr. Kerney had found the handgun missing from a nightstand drawer in the guest bedroom upon his return to the residence with Professor Fergurson after they’d dined out, and that he’d last seen the pistol prior to going to bed the previous night.

  Contacted by the deputy, Fergurson’s renter, Maxwell Colley, a graduate student who lived in an apartment above the garage, noted he’d been home while Kerney and Fergurson were gone and neither saw nor heard any strangers arriving on the property. The only visitors to Mr. Kerney’s room since his arrival two weeks ago had been his hostess, Professor Fergurson, and an old college friend, Kim Ward, a female who’d shown up unexpectedly and spent Wednesday night, 4/25/73, with him in the room. He had no reason to believe Ward would have returned and taken the pistol.

  “It’s an identical match to the Colt found with the skeletal remains,” Avery added. “Minus the serial number, which the deputy noted as unknown.”

  “Holy shit,” Clayton muttered, without looking up.

  “Sorry,” Avery said.

  “Don’t be,” Clayton replied, his bile rising, eyes fixed on the report. “I want Kerney’s fingerprint records sent to the lab pronto for a comparison with the partial from the cartridge recovered from the Colt. Handle it yourself and tell them it has the highest priority. I want an answer now, not next week.”

  “You’ve got it,” Avery replied.

  Clayton raised his head, his hand covering the field report as though to conceal the stark implications. “Ask the team to immediately focus on this Kim Ward. I want to know everything about her. Everything. Start running her down at the university. Concentrate on Fergurson’s journal entries during Kerney’s college years and after his return from Vietnam.”

  “I’ll tell them to get on it.”

  “Tell them to keep a lid on everything,” Clayton added. “No back-channel talk, no gossip, no pillow talk. Got it?”

  Avery nodded. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, fine. Close the door on the way out. I’ve got some calls to make.”

  When the door closed, Clayton’s hand hovered over the desk telephone. Who in the hell was he going to call? Grace, to tell her Kerney had just become a possible murder suspect? The deputy chief in charge of investigations, who’d be on the phone to Clayton’s immediate supervisor with orders to yank him from the case?

  He pulled his hand away and took a deep breath. He wasn’t about to step aside. Not yet. Not until he had more than some very shaky reasonable suspicion of Kerney’s possible guilt.

  The forgive-and-forget attitude about Kerney he’d expressed to Grace was fast evaporating. A lot of ’Nam vets had come home, lost it, and spent years paying for their crimes in the slammer. Did Kerney snap for some reason, kill the woman, and bury her on the Fergurson grounds? If so, why report the murder weapon stolen? Why bury it with the victim? Why kill her in the first place? The mere thought that Kerney might be a killer stunned him, angered him.

  Clayton glanced at his wristwatch, and gave himself eighteen hours—the start of the day shift in the morning—to get some answers. Between now and then, there’d be no time for sleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  As the hours rolled on, Clayton and the team kept digging into Fergurson’s papers, accumulating information that made Kerney at the very least a person of interest in the case. According to Fergurson, Kerney had, early in his first semester at college, introduced her to Kim Ward, and she’d entertained the couple at dinner several times. One entry noted:

  Kevin and Kim at dinner tonight. They could hardly keep their hands off each other. Resisted the impulse to tease them about their obvious mutual lust. They’re so terribly sweet and young. Won’t say a word to K’s mother.

  At the beginning of the second semester, after Kim joined the college rodeo team, Fergurson wondered if the romance had cooled. A month later, she wrote:

  K and K no longer inseparable. Kevin unhappy but putting on a brave face. When he does see her, he lights up. I worry he’ll get hurt. He’s so completely loyal to those he loves.

  Fergurson’s next entry about Kim Ward came at the end of ­Kerney’s freshman year:

  Before K went home for summer break, I asked how he was handling the breakup with Kim. Very defensive, as expected. I told him not to be angry or to think badly of her. His good heart will overcome his bitterness, but it may take time. Still haven’t said a word to Mary.

  The final mention of Kim Ward came years later, while Kerney was staying with Fergurson after his separation from active duty:

  Kim W., one of K’s old college sweethearts, unexpectedly showed up asking his whereabouts. Had heard he was in town. Very disheveled, anxious, looking far too old for her age. Only wanted to talk to K, who took her to his room. I could hear their voices long into the wee hours. She was gone in the morning. Didn’t pry, but K said she’d had a bad fight with her husband and left him to get away.

  Clayton told Agent Carla Olivas to track down the husband, and asked Charlie Epperson to begin immediately concentrating on Kim Ward, or anybody with that given name or nickname, in all missing persons data banks. He reread the entries, wondering why Fergurson hadn’t mentioned Kerney’s stolen pistol, or the deputy sheriff’s interview. Since the revolver was supposedly taken from a room in her home, wouldn’t she have been worried other items might have been stolen? Perhaps a blanket from the guest bedroom? Did she know something bad had happened to Kim Ward, but was unwilling to record it? Did she help cover up a crime?

  It was too much speculating. Clayton shook it off. Tucked in the journal was a letter from Kerney in its original envelope, mailed to Fergurson from Albuquerque months later. It read:

  Dear Aunt Erma,

  I’ve enrolled in graduate school at UNM under the GI Bill trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I grow up. I’ve met a girl who seems to like me. We’ll see how that goes. You know I’m a sucker for the feisty ones. I’ve been thinking about Kim and wonder if you’ve heard from her. She was supposed to get in touch after the dust settled with Todd, but I haven’t heard a word from her.

  I’m living in a dumpy two-bedroom rental house on Cornell Street five blocks from campus with a guy who thinks he’s the playboy of the western world. He’s also hilarious. I’m taking pointers.

  I’ll come visit over Christmas break, if you’ll have me.

  Love,

  Kevin

  Clayton tapped the letter with a finger. Todd had to be the woman’s husband. He stuck his head out the office door and gave Carla Olivas the news. “I bet that Kerney knew him,” he added. “Otherwise, I doubt he would have referred to him by name in his letter.”

  Olivas took the letter from Clayton’s hand and read it quickly. “Okay.”

  “Find the connection between the three of them.”

  Over her shoulder, he saw James Garcia pushing through the front door, carrying a load of books under one arm and not looking very happy. He dumped the books on his desk and approached.

  “The college registrar won’t cooperate,” he said. “We’ll need a court order to get Kim Ward’s records.”

  Clayton held up his hand to keep Olivas from leaving. “Then do it. Work up a search-and-seizure affidavit with Carla pr
onto, and make it for three individuals, Kim Ward, Kevin Kerney, and Todd Somebody—last name unknown.”

  “Last name unknown isn’t going to fly,” Carla cautioned.

  “Leave it blank for now,” Clayton replied.

  Garcia nodded at the books on his desk. “I borrowed some yearbooks from the college library that may give us Todd’s last name. Kim Ward only shows up in her freshman and sophomore years, as a member of the rodeo team. Got a couple of good photos of her. Nice-looking girl.”

  Finally, there’s movement, Clayton thought as he checked the time. “Get me a last name. Tell the registrar we’ll be serving a warrant after their normal business hours, and to have someone standing by.”

  He turned to Carla Olivas. “Alert the campus police and ask for assistance in case we need to access other areas for the search. I’ll call the DA.”

  “Ten-four,” Olivas replied as Clayton returned to his desk and speed-dialed the DA. He finished the call just as Paul Avery plopped down in a chair with papers in his hand and sighed.

  “Forensics says there’s a seventy percent probability the victim was shot in the head with a bullet the same caliber as the Colt,” he reported. “That’s the best they can do. The partial fingerprint on the cartridge could be Kerney’s, but it can’t be absolutely confirmed. The lab gives it a sixty percent likelihood. Helpful for making a case for probable cause, but probably worthless in court. Any good attorney would be all over these little morsels at trial.”

  “Every little bit helps, and that’s all I care about right now.”

  Avery stared disbelievingly at Clayton as he pushed the papers across the desk. “Jesus, do you want Kerney to be the killer?”

  “I want to know the truth, one way or the other,” Clayton responded evenly.

  “Fair enough.”

  Carla Olivas stepped through the open door. “We’ve got a last name,” she announced with a smile and a hint of excitement in her voice. “Todd Marks. He was on the rodeo team with Kim Ward. We faxed the search-and-seizure affidavit to the DA.”