Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel Page 7

  “How long?” Clayton asked.

  “The DA has a judge standing by. Thirty minutes, tops.” Olivas handed him a copy.

  Clayton gave the form a thorough read. “Good job,” he said, looking up to find the entire team clustered at the front of his desk. He pushed back his chair and stood. “I want everyone on the campus and ready to move as soon as the warrant is delivered. An ADA will hand-carry it to us.”

  The prospect of getting out and doing some fieldwork made everyone smile.

  “Get ready for a long night,” Clayton added.

  The university administrators who’d been forced to stay late at work, or were called back to the office from their after-dinner evening in front of the television, barely maintained their civility as Clayton and his agents entered buildings, searched computers and storage areas, and printed or gathered up documents, records, and files. Two assistant district attorneys watched to ensure the search stayed within the legal limits of the warrant.

  At Clayton’s request, Liz Waterman, chief of the campus police department, had shown up with three of her officers.

  They went from office to office, building to building, filling the trunks of several units with seized documents and computers. At their last search site, the university health center, a crowd of fifty activist students had gathered to protest state police being on campus. They shouted insults and recorded smartphone video.

  Liz and her officers spread out to keep them at bay as the clinic administrator, a middle-aged woman, unlocked the front door and ushered the team inside. The woman read the warrant and shook her head in dismay.

  “Is there a problem?” Clayton asked.

  “For you, not for me,” the woman replied. “Health records this old were put on microfilm years ago, and have never been converted digitally. We don’t have the staff or funding to even organize it properly. I can’t remember the last time anyone needed to access them.”

  “Well, we do, and right now, if you don’t mind,” Clayton said politely.

  She turned on her heel, key ring in hand. “Follow me.”

  At the back of the first floor, she unlocked the door to a storage area and turned on the overhead fluorescent lights. Inside were dozens of tall, dust-covered microfilm storage cabinets, one long table with a microfilm reader on top, and an old wooden desk chair.

  “How long do you think this will take?” she asked.

  “A while,” Clayton answered as the team fanned out across the room.

  At four in the morning, with everything logged in, Clayton sent the team home with instructions to be back at noon. As he stood in the doorway of the Criminal Investigation Unit offices surveying the two folding tables filled with seized records and computers, he considered, out of spite, calling Deputy Chief Robert Serrano at home to report he had almost irrefutable evidence that Kimberly Ann Ward, age twenty-three, graduate of Deming High School and varsity member of the NMSU rodeo team, was their murder victim.

  Forensics still had to make the final call, but Ward had broken her right arm at a rodeo meet during her sophomore year, and the microfilm X-ray in her university health records showed an exact match with the break in the recovered skeletal remains.

  Deciding not to get ahead of himself and wait until Ward’s dental records could be located to confirm her identity, he turned out the lights and locked the door.

  In his unit, dispatch advised him that Captain Luis Mondragon was on a back channel waiting to speak to him.

  Clayton switched frequencies. “What’s up, Cap?”

  “Heading home?” Mondragon asked.

  “I’ll be back at ten hundred hours. Did you call to say good night?”

  Mondragon chuckled. “Not likely. Bobby Serrano, my friend and your headquarters boss, wants to know why you caused a riot on the NMSU campus.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Negative. Seems a complaint has been lodged about the disruption and inconvenience you and your agents caused during the search. There was mention of hundreds of students protesting your Gestapo-like tactics.”

  “It was no more than fifty,” Clayton said.

  “No matter. My take is that the whole thing was nothing more than a show put on by a fringe group of students who wanted to protest against the police and get some attention. Word has it through my brother-in-law the sorry spectacle will be on the early morning TV news with video showing you and your team supposedly storming the campus health center. Get the picture?”

  “BS,” Clayton grunted, too tired to give a hoot.

  “The deputy chief would like you to call him.”

  “Tell him I will do so when I’m back in the office at ten hundred hours.”

  Clayton counted to ten before Mondragon broke the silence with a chuckle.

  “You’ve got some huevos, amigo. I’ll ask Bobby to chill. He owes me a few favors. I’ll also find out what our Intelligence Unit knows about any radical student agendas on the NMSU campus. Catch some sleep.”

  “Roger that, and thanks,” Clayton said as he wheeled onto the frontage road and headed home.

  Clayton got up at nine to find Grace had delayed going to work to fix him breakfast. Over a cup of fresh coffee and the smell of scrambled eggs and bacon, he listened to Luis Mondragon on a local radio station dismiss the campus disturbance as nothing more than a small gathering of rowdy students bent on causing trouble. He went on to say that the ADA who accompanied the agents had issued a statement that all law enforcement officers had conducted themselves professionally. For having his back, Clayton figured he owed Mondragon a bottle of his favorite scotch.

  As Grace served his breakfast, she smiled and said, “Did you crack the case?”

  “Did I what?” Clayton asked, surprised by a question he’d never heard her ask before. Not asking anything about his cases was her norm.

  “Isn’t that what cops in murder mysteries do?” she replied teasingly. “Crack the case?”

  Clayton laughed and reached for his fork. “No, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure of who the victim is.”

  “So, progress is being made?”

  “Yes, but not quickly enough,” Clayton replied.

  “You’re a patient man,” Grace counseled. “You’ll get there. By the way, your mother wants us to come this Saturday for dinner. The kids say they can make it.”

  Saturday was in two days. “Okay, sure.”

  “That will make her happy.” She grabbed her purse from the kitchen counter and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m off to work. Scrape and stack when you’ve finished.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Clayton said between mouthfuls.

  Clayton telephoned Deputy Chief Serrano as soon as he arrived at work. Serrano’s tone of voice indicated he was pissed that Clayton hadn’t called back at four in the morning. At least the man held his temper. But he pushed hard, telling Clayton to positively ID Kim Ward as the victim and find the perp. He finished his badgering by implying there was the likelihood of a forced transfer out of investigations if Clayton didn’t produce something substantial soon.

  On the heel of Serrano’s call came some good news. Fortunately, Kim Ward’s dental records had been retained by the dentist who’d bought the practice. By the end of the day, Forensics confirmed Kimberly Ann Ward was the murder victim.

  Clayton’s second conversation of the day with Deputy Chief Serrano went a lot more smoothly. Serrano granted him permission to release a public service announcement asking for help locating Kim’s mother, Lucille Ward, any of Kim’s known relatives and friends, and her husband at the time of her death, Todd Marks.

  Some years after Kim’s disappearance, Lucille Ward had sold her house and moved away. Her current whereabouts were unknown, but there were local reports that she’d been seen in Lordsburg near the Arizona border, and in the village of Rodeo situated in the Bootheel, a sparsely populated part of the state that juts into Mexico, in a shape reminiscent of the heel of a cowboy boot. There were also several statements by
those who’d known her that she’d remarried. One old-timer thought she was dead. Another said she’d become a heavy drinker.

  Two of Kim’s old high school friends still living in Deming also gave statements. One woman recalled Kim was into the drug scene. The other woman remembered hearing stories that Todd Marks had been two-timing Kim with a buckle bunny who couldn’t keep her blue jeans on around rodeo cowboys. Both had lost touch with her.

  Stories abounded, but none with reliable leads.

  The PSA went out the next morning. Clayton, with every agent he could muster, fanned out across the southwestern quadrant of the state, from the Bootheel north to Catron County and the village of Reserve, where Todd Marks had been born and attended school before his family relocated to a small ranch in the tiny settlement of Glenwood.

  Marks’s parents, Ty and Heidi, were both deceased and the current ranch owner had no relationship to the family. Todd’s brother and only sibling, Travis, lived in Reserve, directing an agricultural outreach program serving rural farmers and ranchers. Married, with three grown children, Travis told the agent who took his statement that he’d last seen his brother over twenty years ago, when Todd had shown up broke, drunk, and asking for money. Travis had put him up overnight, given him fifty bucks, and not heard from him since. The agent did verify that Todd had married Kim in Las Cruces, just before the couple dropped out of college and joined a pro rodeo circuit.

  In his narrative report, the agent noted Travis Ward’s description of his brother as an alcoholic deadbeat loser who drove their parents to an early grave.

  The rodeo connection sent Clayton back to the NMSU campus to talk to the team coach, Lane Simpson, a young man in his mid-twenties with a band of freckles across his nose. He was at the ag barn checking animals and equipment for an upcoming event.

  A New Mexican ranch-raised cowboy, Simpson was congenial, easygoing, and accommodating. Clayton explained what he was looking for. Simpson escorted him to his office, where it didn’t take him long to find the documents Clayton had asked about.

  “That team went to nationals both years,” Simpson said proudly, handing Clayton several photographs, rosters, and statistical sheets. “We almost always do.”

  “That’s something to be proud of,” Clayton said, studying the photographs. Kim Ward and Todd Marks were easy to spot. He showed it to Simpson. “Do you personally know any of these team members?”

  “I sure do,” Simpson replied. “Rodeoing isn’t something you give up easily. For most, it’s in the blood. Even when they can’t compete anymore, a lot of former team members stay involved either as boosters, sponsors, high school coaches, or judges.”

  “Do you know Todd Marks?”

  Simpson shook his head. “I sure don’t.”

  Clayton asked for the names and contact information of the team members who’d rodeoed with Todd Marks and Kim Ward.

  “This is about that murdered girl from a long time ago up at the Fergurson Center, isn’t it?”

  Clayton nodded. “Kim Ward.”

  “I thought so.” Simpson printed out a list from his computer, checked off a half dozen names of Kim’s old teammates he personally knew, circled the rest, and gave it to Clayton.

  “Do you have addresses for the ones you know?” Clayton asked.

  Simpson nodded and scrolled through a computer file. “Most of them I checked off on that list still live in these parts.” He studied the screen, jotted down some addresses and phone numbers, and gave the information to Clayton.

  “You’ve been very helpful.” Clayton handed him a business card and asked him to call if he remembered anyone else who might have known Todd and Kim back in the day.

  On his way back to the office, Clayton heard from Carla Olivas that Lucille Ward supposedly had a relative, possibly a brother named Thomas, who once lived in Anthony, New Mexico, a small working-class community on the Texas state line.

  “Nothing came back on a records check under the surname Ward,” Carla said. “He’d be in his late eighties, if he’s still alive.”

  A tough town, Anthony attracted the wounded of society, including the mentally ill, the marginally competent, and the indigent old, who signed over their disability or Social Security checks to unscrupulous landlords and lived in uninsulated garages, sheds, and condemned shacks, often with no running water or toilets. There was no law against it.

  “I’m on my way there now,” Carla added.

  “Do you need assistance?” Clayton asked.

  “Negative.”

  At five-foot-five and one hundred and twenty pounds, Olivas held black belts in tae kwon do and karate. She had an oval face and soft brown eyes that belied her toughness. To learn she was gay had disheartened many of the straight male officers in the department.

  “Hang on a minute.” Clayton pulled to the curb and consulted the list Simpson had given him. “Since you’ll be in the vicinity, try to make contact in El Paso with Abby Hardin, maiden name Anderson.” He read off the address and phone number. “She was Kim Ward’s teammate.”

  “Ten-four, LT.”

  “Be careful,” Clayton replied.

  “Always,” Carla said.

  Clayton pulled back into traffic, hoping Olivas would come away with at least a single tangible lead from either Lucille Ward’s brother or Kim Ward’s rodeo teammate. Surely there was someone alive out there who could help turn things around.

  He thought about Grace’s “crack the case” joke at breakfast yesterday and smiled. Was she trying to cure him from spending too much time thinking like a White Eyes?

  He decided to read Fergurson’s entries about his father one more time.

  For decades, much like its namesake across the Texas state line, Anthony, New Mexico, had been an unincorporated village. In a special 2010 election, voters decided to transform it into a city. Less than thirty miles from Las Cruces and halfway to El Paso, the town straddled a state highway that paralleled Interstate 10, the southernmost cross-continental highway in the nation. Originally an agricultural settlement, it was predominately Hispanic and poor. A good number of farms, dairies, and pecan groves still existed along the west side of town, extending into the rich Rio Grande bottomlands. To the east, neighborhoods of modest homes, many sorely in need of repair, were sandwiched between the interstate and the main highway through town.

  Agent Olivas knew her way around because of a recent undercover assignment on a joint task force investigating illegal cockfighting in the area. Although outlawed, cockfighting with its attendant gambling still flourished in out-of-the-way rural areas of the state.

  When the bust was made, over two hundred gamecocks were impounded, a hundred adults were cited for illegal gambling, and the owners of the birds arrested, along with the two families running the operation. Successful as it was, the officer in charge of the task force figured once all the parties made bail, they’d be up and running within weeks with new birds at a different location.

  The fights were cruel and sickening. Before the bust, Carla had grown angry watching parents with their young children in tow, cheering on the bloody, gravely wounded birds, shouting with glee as the animals destroyed each other in the ring.

  At a stoplight on the main drag, she put in a call to the Doña Ana SO asking for the whereabouts of Deputy Sheriff Orlando Guerrero, who’d worked with her on the task force and lived in the city. Told he was at home, she called his cell and asked if he had time for a cup of coffee. He agreed to meet her in ten minutes at a Mexican diner. He showed in less than eight, parked his patrol car outside the diner’s picture window, and came in wearing sweats, running shoes, a faded Marine Corps sweatshirt, and a smile on his sweaty face.

  Without asking, the waitress brought Orlando a diet soft drink along with Carla’s coffee.

  “That stuff’s bad for you,” she said.

  Orlando took a swallow. “Tell me about it. What’s up? You didn’t drive down here to help me live a healthy life.”

  Carla laughed. “I
’m looking for an elderly man named Thomas. His last name may be Ward. It’s about the Kim Ward cold-case murder investigation.”

  “I figured, given the surname.” Orlando shook his head. “I don’t know a Thomas Ward.”

  “He’d be in his eighties. Maybe he goes by Tom or Tommy. Does that ring a bell?”

  “There used to be a guy everyone called Old Tommy. I never knew his last name. He’s dead.”

  “When?”

  “Three months ago, in a hit-and-run on the interstate. The perp fled the scene. It was bound to happen to him. He constantly walked up and down I-10. Been doing it for years. Never crossed the state line into Texas. Said he didn’t like the cops over there. He’d hike along the shoulder day and night. Sometimes he’d hitch a ride, most times not. He always looked skanky and smelled worse.”

  “Was he homeless?” Carla asked.

  “I used to think so until a couple of years ago, when I saw him entering an old chicken coop at the rear of a run-down house that backs up to the interstate. I stopped by to check him out and found he’d been living there a long time, paying the landlord fifty bucks a month. No running water, a chamber pot for a toilet, an old surplus military bed, one ceiling light bulb fixture, and an outlet for a hot plate. When he wanted a shower, he walked to the big truck stop off the interstate to clean up. He’d wash his clothes at the Laundromat there.”

  “Did he have mental problems?”

  “Yes. And he was basically harmless.”

  “Where was he living?”

  “Better yet, follow me over and I’ll introduce you to Nestor Vasquez, the guy who owns the place. Nestor isn’t the brightest fellow and tends to get easily agitated with strangers.”

  “Let’s go,” Carla said, laying some dollar bills on the table.

  Nestor Vasquez’s house, a small mid-century ranch with a slumping front porch and peeling stucco, sat behind a waist-high, sagging, chain link fence. Behind it, five junky vehicles were parked helter-skelter in front of a shed and a chicken coop. The nearby roar of interstate traffic within yards of the property was loud and constant. The starkly beautiful Franklin Mountains rose in the distance to the east.