The big gamble kk-6 Page 7

  After making no progress at the state nursing board, he put in a quick appearance at the office and then paid a visit to the state department of education, asking about any recent appointments of a male PhD in area school districts. He scored another zero.

  He moved on to the local colleges, hoping perhaps a midyear faculty vacancy or an administrative position had been filled by someone matching the scanty information Walter Montoya had provided. That failed, so he went back to the office and expanded his search by phone, calling colleges in Albuquerque and some nearby area branch campuses, on the chance his unknown party commuted to work from Santa Fe, as more and more people did these days. The hunt fizzled out quickly.

  The more Kerney worked to find the mystery caller, the more he began to realize that he still had a lot of ground to cover. The number of specialties, professions, and disciplines offering doctoral degrees had mushroomed over the last thirty years. There seemed to be PhD programs for virtually every occupation. Academia had apparently become a head-count growth industry, much like the private prisons that were springing up all over the country.

  He called churches looking for newly installed reverend doctors, local high-tech think tanks asking about recently hired scientists, and state and local civil service personnel offices, hoping to locate any PhDs who were newly employed in the public sector. Zip, zilch, zero, nada.

  He dropped the phone in the cradle and grunted in frustration as Helen Muiz, his office manager, walked in.

  "My, my," Helen said. "Should I warn the troops that you'll be short-tempered and testy today?"

  "You are cursed with a wicked sense of humor, Mrs. Muiz," Kerney said with a laugh.

  In her fifties, Helen was a grandmother who didn't look like one. Always well dressed, today Helen wore tan slacks and a red silk top. Years ago she'd served as Kerney's secretary when he was chief of detectives. He was delighted to have her working with him once again.

  "I like to think of it as a survival skill," Helen said, "made necessary by working in a male-dominated, testosterone-charged environment. That issue aside, Mr. Walter Montoya is waiting to see you. He says it's about his sister."

  "Send him in," Kerney said.

  Montoya entered, looking a bit sheepish. "First, I'd like to apologize about yesterday."

  Kerney stepped from behind his desk and raised a hand to cut him off. "There's no need. I wish the world was more perfect, Mr. Montoya, so that nobody had to go through what you and your family have experienced."

  Montoya nodded and gave Kerney an opened envelope. "This came in yesterday's mail at my parents' house."

  Kerney read the return address. He'd spent hours trying to come up with the information that had just been dropped in the palm of his hand. He waved the envelope at Montoya and smiled. "I take it this is from the man who called looking for your sister?"

  "Yes."

  Kerney nodded. It got him one step closer to talking with someone who might have new information. "This could be very helpful."

  Montoya shrugged, paused, and spoke slowly, the words coming with difficulty. "Or not, I suppose, given what few facts you have to work with."

  "If this doesn't pan out," Kerney said, tapping the envelope with a finger, "we won't stop looking for your sister's killer," Kerney said. "I promise you that."

  "I believe you," Montoya said. "Still, I want to apologize for our behavior yesterday."

  "That's not necessary. It's perfectly natural to get frustrated when a police investigation stalls, no matter what the circumstances."

  "Blaming you or your department serves no purpose. My sister and I talked; we won't cause you any problems."

  "I appreciate that."

  Montoya solemnly shook hands and departed. Kerney knew the sudden resurgence of goodwill might well be fleeting. The need to finger-point and blame could easily return. He'd seen it happen time and again with family survivors, who could go from feelings of numbing anguish to blistering outrage within a matter of minutes.

  He read the return address and the enclosed sympathy note, called information, and got a new residential listing for Kent Osterman in Los Alamos. He dialed the number, identified himself to the woman who answered, explained the reason for his call, and learned that Osterman was at work. The number she gave him at the Los Alamos National Laboratory yielded Osterman's voice mail.

  He hung up without leaving a message. On his way out of the administrative suite he paused at Helen's desk and told her where he was going.

  "Did you know more people with PhD degrees live in Los Alamos, per capita, than anywhere else in the country?" she said.

  Kerney nodded. "And most of them are pursuing peace in our time by designing new, improved weapons of mass destruction. Doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling?"

  "That's the other thing about working with cops," Helen said with a laugh.

  "What?"

  "You're all so cynical."

  "Only about people," Kerney replied.

  Los Alamos was coming back from a major forty-thousand-acre forest fire that had burned down hundreds of homes and scorched the adjacent national forest with heat so intense that large swaths of ground were barren of growth. On ridgelines random exclamation points of blackened timber stood as silent reminders of the catastrophe. During the summer months, monsoon rains eroded canyon slopes, buckled roads, broke sewage lines, flooded streets, and seeped into basements.

  But with the damage and destruction confined to several heavily forested residential areas, the urban core of the city still looked tidy. High in the Jemez Mountains on a narrow plateau, it was thirty-five miles from Santa Fe. For all practical purposes, it was a corporate town with one industry, a national research laboratory created by the legacy of the atomic bomb. No matter how the chamber of commerce or the town fathers tried to soften the image, Los Alamos remained a place of scientists, spies, and secrets.

  He passed through the town center and parked in Technical Area Three, a cluster of buildings including a four-story, flat-roofed, concrete structure that housed the lab's administrative offices.

  Signs were everywhere, directing foot traffic to the J. Robert Oppenheimer Study Center, which served as a staff library, a badge office, which Kerney found to be an interesting euphemism for a guard station, and a building that contained the personnel offices and an employee cafeteria. A number of the other buildings in the complex were off-limits, but the personnel department could be visited without going through the security checkpoint.

  Halfhearted attempts had been made to landscape the complex with sloping walkways, some trees, and a few planters, but the look was purely industrial and utilitarian, and mostly dismal. Aesthetics did not seem to be a high priority to those building the modern engines of war.

  Outside the personnel building, racks held a number of newspapers, some clearly antinuclear in point of view. A small, empty water fountain near the entrance was splattered with bird droppings. The lobby displayed the various presentation bowls and platters that employees would receive on completion of significant years of service.

  In the cafeteria the dress code for the patrons on their coffee breaks ran from casual to sloppy, with a lot of mismatched outfits, especially among the men, who seemed to favor top-of-the-line running shoes, plaid shirts, and light-colored Dockers. Kerney felt overdressed in his civvies, which consisted of black jeans, boots, a shirt, tie, and a sport coat.

  At the personnel office Kerney explained to three different people that his request to speak to Dr. Kent Osterman had nothing to do with either national security or Osterman's status as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen. Finally, the last person in the hierarchy, a woman with big teeth and a frozen smile, arranged for Kerney to meet with Osterman in the cafeteria.

  Escorted by the woman with the frozen smile, Osterman made his appearance in ten minutes. Kerney introduced himself and guided him to a corner table away from chatty clusters of employees.

  Forty or so, Osterman had worry lines that creased
his forehead, serious brown eyes, and blond, baby-fine hair that covered the tips of his ears.

  "You're here to ask me about Anna Marie," Osterman said, sliding onto a chair. "I was so shocked to learn about her disappearance, and now to know she's been murdered." His expression turned into an unhappy grimace.

  "How well did you know her?" Kerney kept his eyes fixed on Osterman, looking for any sign of uneasiness or deception.

  "We were undergraduates together at the university. Both of us took our degrees in psychology. That was twenty years ago."

  "Is your specialty still psychology?" Kerney asked.

  "No, I discovered that I didn't have the patience or personality to work with people with emotional or mental problems. I switched to hard science in graduate school and took my advanced degrees in physics."

  "When did you last see Anna Marie?"

  "We worked as field interviewers on a research project the summer after we graduated. I left New Mexico when the job ended and spent a year taking the math and science prerequisites I needed to switch my field of study to physics."

  "Were you romantically involved with Anna Marie?"

  "No, we were just friendly. I really didn't get to know her very well until we worked together that summer."

  "Tell me about the research project," Kerney said.

  "It was a social psych study to assess the cultural causes of alcoholism among Hispanic males. Anna and I conducted interviews to gather raw data about family, employment, and educational histories, drug and alcohol use patterns, and criminal behavior. We spent a lot of time in jails and area treatment programs. It got Anna Marie interested in social work as a career."

  "Who ran the project?"

  "The primary investigator was a professor named Jeremiah Perrett. I always wondered if he ever published the findings. I never saw it in any of the psych journals. After a while I lost interest and stopped looking."

  "Did Anna Marie have any personal problems that summer?"

  "No, but both of us thought Perrett was a bit of a flake."

  "Why is that?" Kerney asked.

  "He kept changing the data-gathering instruments we used in the interviews. You can't draw any significant conclusions unless you have reliable and consistent information to work with." Osterman forced a chuckle. "Maybe that's why he never published."

  Kerney smiled at Osterman's humorous attempt. "Did you keep in touch with Perrett?"

  "No. He wasn't one of my favorite instructors. At the time, he was thirty-something and tenured, so he may still be at the university."

  "Was Anna Marie romantically involved with Perrett?"

  Osterman chuckled again. "That's a laugh. He's gay. Or at least he was then."

  "Why did you try to contact Anna Marie?" Kerney asked.

  "Just to reconnect," Osterman said. "I lost track of a lot of people after I left New Mexico. I thought it would be fun to catch up with old classmates."

  "Did you reconnect with anyone else?" Kerney asked.

  "A few people," Osterman replied, his eyes widening a bit. "Are you thinking I'm a suspect?"

  Based on his conduct, Kerney didn't think Osterman was a murderer. But he'd learned never to rely on first impressions. "Would you mind giving me their names?"

  "I'll write them down for you," Osterman said, a touch of coolness creeping into his voice. He reached for a pen in his shirt pocket, scribbled on a napkin, and pushed it toward Kerney. "The first three live in Albuquerque, the others in Santa Fe. I don't have their phone numbers handy, but they're listed in the directory."

  Kerney looked at the five names. They were all new to him. "How many of these people knew Anna Marie?"

  "As far as I know, just Cassie," Osterman said, pointing to the first name on the list.

  "Is Bedlow her maiden name?"

  "No, it was Norvell back in college."

  Kerney folded the napkin and put it in his shirt pocket. "I may need to speak to you again."

  "If you must, please call me at home," Osterman said, rising from his chair. "I'm new here, and I'd rather not have to deal with the police at work. It doesn't create a good impression."

  "I assured the people in personnel that you are not under any suspicion," Kerney replied.

  "That doesn't stop office gossip," Osterman replied, "and you haven't reassured me."

  "Thanks for taking the time to talk," Kerney said.

  Osterman nodded curtly and left in a hurry. Kerney followed suit, not feeling overly optimistic that he was making any progress, but pleased to have some new ground to cover. He'd start with trying to locate and talk to Jeremiah Perrett.

  When Clayton struck out on picking up Ulibarri's trail through a canvass of car dealerships and rental companies, he made the rounds of the few available public transportation services, which were limited to a shuttle service to El Paso, one taxicab company, a bus station, and the regional airport served by a small puddle-jumping airline. Ulibarri hadn't used any of them. So he was still in the area or he'd gotten a ride out of town.

  Back at the office, Clayton worked alongside Quinones and Dillingham, calling what seemed to be an endless list of places where Ulibarri could be staying. As a tourist and vacation destination, Ruidoso boasted lodging options ranging from tent and RV campgrounds for the budget-minded to swanky resorts for the well-heeled. In between there were motels, hotels, cabins, privately owned houses and condos, bed-and-breakfast operations, and apartments available for short-term and long-term rental. Beyond the town limits but within reasonable driving distances were villages and towns with even more possibilities.

  It was drudge work that frequently meant leaving messages on answering machines at property management and realty companies, or getting no response whatsoever from the mom-and-pop cabin-rental operators who only took reservations during certain hours of the day. After lunch, Paul Hewitt jumped in to help with the calls and sent Clayton out to start making the rounds of places that couldn't be reached by telephone.

  There were cabins off the main roads in canyons sheltered by tall pines, cabins perched above the river, hillside cabins on stilts, cabins that hadn't yet opened for the season, and cabins sprinkled along and behind the main roads through the city. He stopped at property management firms, tracked down real estate people on their mobile phones, and met with resident condo and town-house managers.

  After several hours, with most of his list checked off, Clayton called in. Dispatch passed along more lodging establishments Hewitt, Quinones, and Dillingham had been unable to reach by phone. One of them, Casey's Cozy Cabins, was close by Clayton's location.

  At the bottom of a hill two blocks behind the main tourist strip, six rental units bordered a circular gravel driveway just off a paved street. Each cabin had a stone chimney; a covered porch; a shingled, pitched roof; and weathered wood siding. Old evergreen trees shaded the structures, and barbecue grills on steel posts were planted in front of every porch. All the parking spaces in front of the cabins were empty.

  Clayton cruised by, parked on the shoulder of the road, and walked up to the compound. A hand-carved sign hanging from the porch on the cabin closest to the pavement announced the name of the business. On the porch railing were pots filled with ratty-looking artificial flowers.

  Clayton knocked at the door and an older man, probably in his early sixties, opened up. He had a pasty gray complexion, watery eyes, and a heavily veined, pudgy nose.

  "Are you Casey?" Clayton asked, showing his shield.

  The man eyed Clayton suspiciously, stepped outside, and quickly closed his front door. "He died five years ago. I bought the place from his widow and never got around to changing the name. What can I do for you?"

  Before the door closed, Clayton caught a glimpse of several poker tables in the front room. Tribal gaming operations had wiped out a lot of the illegal poker parlors in Ruidoso, but not all of them. Some players still preferred private big stakes games, where none of the winnings went to the tax man.

  "Who are you?"
Clayton asked.

  "Do we have a problem?" the man responded with a tinge of an East Coast accent.

  "Let's see some ID."

  "Name's Harry Staggs," the man said, reaching for his wallet. He held it out to Clayton. "I run a quiet, family place here, deputy."

  "I'm sure you do," Clayton said. "Take your driver's license out of the wallet and hand it to me, please."

  Staggs did as he was told. Clayton copied down the information and handed back the license.

  "What's this about?" Staggs asked.

  "Do you have any guests?"

  Staggs shrugged. "Three cabins are rented, but I don't think anyone is here right now."

  "How about this man?" Clayton asked, holding up Ulibarri's photograph.

  Staggs nodded in the direction of the cabins on the right side of the porch. "Yeah, he's in cabin three, but like I said, nobody's here right now."

  "You're sure of that?" Clayton asked, stepping to one side so he could keep the cabin in view.

  "Well, I haven't seen him all day, so I'm guessing he's out."

  "Did he check in alone?"

  "Yeah."

  "Nobody was with him?"

  "A man and a woman dropped him off, but they stayed in the car."

  "Are you sure he doesn't have company?"

  "No, I'm not. I rent cabins. As long as my guests don't cause trouble or do damage, it doesn't much matter to me what they do or who visits them."

  "Did you get the names of the companions who dropped him off?"

  "There was no need," Staggs said. "They waited while he registered, then he got his bag out of the car, and the people left."

  "Do you know either of them?"

  "It was dark and I didn't get a good look," Staggs replied. "I just saw them sitting in the front seat."

  "But you could tell it was a man and a woman."

  "Yeah."

  "Describe the vehicle."

  "Late model Lincoln. Dark color. Maybe blue or black. I didn't pay any attention to the license plate."

  "Let's step inside," Clayton said.