Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel Page 8

  A frail-looking man in his late seventies, Nestor met Carla and Orlando on his front porch.

  “Nestor, this is Carla Olivas. She’s trying to find out if Old Tommy was a relative of a woman she’s looking for. Have you rented out the chicken coop to somebody else since he died?”

  Nestor eyed Carla suspiciously and shook his head. “No, it’s too falling-down now. Tommy was my friend. Terrible somebody run him down.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your friend,” Carla replied, almost certain she’d seen Nestor at the cock fights. “Do you know what his last name was?”

  “He told me once, but I forgot,” Nestor replied.

  “Is there anything in the chicken coop that belonged to Tommy?”

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “Did you get rid of his stuff?” Orlando asked.

  Nestor snorted at the question. “No, Tommy never kept nothing there.”

  “Nothing?” Carla probed.

  “Not in the coop, but in the coupe,” Nestor replied.

  “Excuse me?” Carla said.

  Nestor pointed a shaky finger at a rusty, 1960 two-door Ford Falcon sitting in front of the chicken coop. “In the car. He called it his closet.”

  “Can we look?”

  Nestor shrugged. “It was his car.”

  On unsteady legs, Nestor followed Carla and Orlando Guerrero to the Ford, and explained that Tommy had bought the car for forty bucks from a junkyard and had it towed to the chicken coop soon after moving in.

  Carla opened the driver’s door and a family of mice scampered out from under the chewed-up bench seat and fled through the rusted-out floorboard. The interior was empty, but the glove box yielded a faded bill of sale from the junkyard and a key that opened the locked trunk. Inside the trunk were several plastic garbage bags filled with smelly clothes, a dopp kit containing a dozen pill bottles filled with expired psychotropic drugs, and a small suitcase. The suitcase contained old snapshots of young men in army fatigues, several military medals, a certificate of disability from the Veterans Administration, and an honorable discharge certificate made out to Thomas J. Trimble.

  Held together with a rubber band was a packet of letters, all postmarked over twenty years ago, sent by Lucille Trimble. The return address was a Belen, New Mexico, post office box.

  A fast scan of a letter brought a smile to Carla’s face. Thomas and Lucille Trimble had been cousins, not brother and sister. In one passage, Lucille wrote of her continued, unsuccessful efforts to find her missing daughter, mentioning Kim by name. Carla now had a tangible lead—albeit an old one—on Kim’s mother. Carla waved the letter at Orlando. “Kim Ward’s mother. Maybe we’ve found her.” She put the letters back in the suitcase, snapped it shut, hoisted it out of the trunk, and smiled at Nestor. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Vasquez.”

  Nestor scowled. “No more police come here anymore?”

  “I can’t promise you that,” Carla said.

  “That’s okay,” Nestor said, hobbling back toward his house.

  Carla did a plain-view search of the empty chicken coop, thanked Orlando for his assistance, and headed for El Paso. A short drive down I-10 brought her to the home of Abby Hardin, who lived in a neighborhood near the El Paso Country Club. The housekeeper who answered the doorbell, an older, heavyset Mexican woman, told Carla that Mrs. Hardin and her husband were on an extended Mexico RV caravan tour of Yucatán and not due home for two more months. She added that they checked in by cell phone at least once a week.

  Carla handed the woman a business card, asked to have Mrs. Hardin call her as soon as possible, and drove back to district headquarters eager to read Lucille’s letters to Tommy.

  Looking at the stack of documents on his desk made the notion of a streamlined, paperless workplace very appealing to Clayton. But such a fantasy would never fly in a cop shop. Nobody made a good arrest, served a legal warrant, testified correctly in court, or made an airtight case without paperwork, and lots of it.

  He was too distracted to even think about wading through the field notes, investigative narratives, staff memos, and various other documents he was required to review. Instead, he looked expectantly at his desk telephone.

  Carla Olivas had called in her discovery of Lucille Ward’s old letters. Belen was a small city about forty miles south of Albuquerque along the I-25 corridor. A check with the post office revealed that a new patron had recently rented the postal box number once used by Lucille Trimble. Two agents from the north zone investigations unit were on their way for a meeting with a postal inspector to try and track her down. Clayton badly wanted them to succeed, and quickly.

  He pushed aside the reports and reached for the leather-bound Fergurson journal that contained her entry on Kim Ward’s stay in Kerney’s bedroom before she vanished. Something about it didn’t sit right.

  Clayton read it again and realized it wasn’t the content that bothered him, but the handwriting. It was choppy and untidy, and not at all like Fergurson’s usual neat, flowing script. He scanned earlier and later entries, and it was the only one clearly out of sync. Perhaps what happened that night had really rattled her.

  He closely examined the interior binding of the journal, where the pages had been glued and stitched together, and noticed that the page just before the Kerney entry had been carefully cut out. A thorough look confirmed no other pages had been removed. But what about the other journals?

  With James Garcia’s help, Clayton checked the remaining journals for missing pages. All told, at least thirty-six pages had been cut out from various journals.

  “I guess there were some things Fergurson wanted kept private,” Garcia said, closing the last journal.

  “Or the pages were cut out by another person,” Clayton replied as he headed for the door. “If Fergurson did it, chances are she destroyed them. But if it was somebody else, we need to find them. Call Eleanor Robbins at the campus library and radio me the office location for the art history professor who’s researching Fergurson.”

  “You want company?” Garcia called out.

  “Negative. I want some frigging answers.”

  CHAPTER 6

  As a graduate of Western New Mexico University, a small college in Silver City, for Clayton the size of the NMSU campus had always been a source of amazement. Today foot traffic seemed unusually heavy. After cruising past the university’s stadium, he found his way to the building that housed the art history program and Dr. Nadira Shaheen’s small office. She was a rather serious-looking woman of no more than thirty-five, with beautiful dark eyes. She wore a hijab that exposed her face but covered her hair and neck. Sitting at her desk, she smiled pleasantly at Clayton when he knocked at the open doorway.

  “You’re Lieutenant Istee, I believe. One of your colleagues called to say you were on your way.”

  “Yes, I am.” Clayton showed his badge. “I need a moment of your time, Professor Shaheen, if you please.”

  “I am hoping you’ve come to say you are returning the Fergurson Papers to the library,” she replied, her voice soft with a hint of a British accent.

  “Not exactly.” Clayton gauged her for any sign of anxiety, but saw none.

  Shaheen’s smile faded slightly as she gestured at an armless desk chair. “I’m disappointed. Please, sit and tell me what brings you here.”

  On the wall behind her desk were framed diplomas from the University of the Punjab, Cambridge University, and Harvard University, where she’d received her doctorate.

  Clayton eased onto the chair. “There are thirty-six missing pages from the journals, and I need to recover them immediately.”

  Shaheen folded her hands and didn’t blink at his insinuation. “Actually, the total number of missing pages is eighty-nine. If you have knowledge of where they are, I’d be most grateful if you told me.”

  “Perhaps you held them back for research purposes,” Clayton pushed, hoping a frontal attack would rattle her composure.

  “My goodness, why would I purloi
n documents I can easily make copies of?” Shaheen answered.

  “Because of their inherent value or historical importance,” Clayton countered. “Other academics have been known to do so.”

  “In this instance, your allegation is incorrect.”

  Clayton shrugged nonchalantly. “How do you know eighty-six pages are missing?”

  “Eighty-nine,” Shaheen corrected. “Because I am very thorough in my research, Lieutenant, and I examined every journal meticulously. But to answer your question more broadly, before he died last year, I recorded several interviews with one of Fergurson’s closest colleagues in the art department, William Spenser Hurley. It was Hurley who told me Fergurson had removed some entries before bequeathing her journals to the university. She told him there were things from the past better left unrecorded.”

  “Did Fergurson share this information with anyone besides Hurley?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Why did she tell Hurley?”

  “To reassure him. They’d been lovers for a time during his marriage. When the affair was over, Hurley’s wife, Barbara, subsequently became Fergurson’s close friend. Erma saw no need to cause unnecessary strife with her. Thus, she removed the entries.”

  “Can I hear that part of the interviews?” Clayton asked.

  “Yes, of course.” Shaheen entered some keystrokes on her computer and sat back in her chair.

  The raspy voice of an old man confirmed what the professor had said. It left Clayton with no doubt of Shaheen’s truthfulness. “Eighty-nine pages?” he reflected.

  Shaheen nodded. “Destroyed, I would imagine. I’d love to know what else Fergurson believed needed to be kept secret. So often, when recording in her journal, she was unconstrained, and personally revealing. What more had to be hidden from public view? It’s quite an enticing mystery.”

  “Have you searched for the documents?”

  “Everywhere. With Cynthia Davenport’s assistance, I even went through the Fergurson Center files and looked at every folder and piece of paper. I’ve gone over all relevant Art Department archives, as well as associated library holdings. There is no place else to look.”

  Clayton stood. “Will it keep you from writing a good biography?”

  “No, but I’ll always wonder about the missing pieces.”

  Clayton flashed a sympathetic smile. “I can understand that.”

  He thanked the professor for her time, promised to get the journals back to the library as quickly as possible, and left wondering if her search had truly been exhaustive. Combing through papers was one thing. Academics were good at that. Probably better than cops in some ways. But what about searching places? Cops were much better at that specialty than art history professors.

  It was time to go back to the Fergurson Center.

  On his way to his unit, he got a call on his cell phone from Avery, who’d done a quick background check on Shaheen. Pakistani by birth, she had permanent resident status, and was married to a research scientist employed by NASA at the White Sands Missile Range Test Facility.

  “Sorry, LT, she’s legal. We can’t deport her,” Avery said flippantly.

  “Did you know my ancestors were deported by the government?” Clayton replied. “Sent, shackled together in freight trains, from New Mexico to Florida.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. They called it the Trail of Tears, right?”

  “Wrong. That was an entirely different atrocity, and the victims were Cherokees, not Apaches.”

  “I guess not much has changed over the centuries,” Avery said somberly.

  “Try not to forget that,” Clayton counseled.

  A report by radio during Clayton’s drive to the Fergurson Center brought frustrating news. The post office records search for Kim Ward’s mother in Belen had stalled. The agents were back out in the field visiting residents and neighbors at the physical addresses where Lucille Trimble was known to have lived, hoping for a lead.

  Clayton snorted in annoyance. He needed more than a lead, he needed a break in the case. He was way overdue for one. He slowed to a stop in front of the Fergurson Center and stared in astonishment at the mountain of dirt at the side of the house. A front-end loader was busily filling the bed of a dump truck, while two other trucks idled nearby, awaiting their turn. The excavation for the sunken amphitheater was huge and deep, almost swallowing up an earthmover blading dirt at the bottom of the hole. A cloud of dust and fine sand cloaked everything, thickening the air and reducing daylight by a third.

  He parked behind a line of construction workers’ vehicles and went looking for Cynthia Davenport. She was in the kitchen with the general contractor, David Jones, studying a set of drawings spread out on a counter. Clayton’s sudden appearance triggered a passing look of irritation on Davenport’s face. Jones, on the other hand, smiled affably.

  “We’re very busy, Lieutenant Istee,” Davenport said. “Is it important?”

  “I’m afraid so. I need to speak with you in private.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “Would you be more comfortable talking to me at district headquarters?”

  With a dark look, Davenport grudgingly broke away and followed Clayton into the living room.

  He continued toward the front door. “Your office, please.”

  Davenport sighed and followed him outside.

  “What is it?” she demanded over the roar of heavy machinery.

  Clayton didn’t reply until they were seated in Davenport’s office looking at each other across her desk, the construction noise reduced to a guttural rumble through the closed windows.

  He had trained himself to read documents upside down, a skill helpful in his work. On top of the overflowing papers on Davenport’s desk was a completed application to attend a memoir-writing workshop in Taos.

  “I appreciate you telling me about Fergurson’s journals,” he began diplomatically. “I’d like to know more about your involvement with them.”

  Davenport blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “As her last assistant, I assume you helped Fergurson put them in order before the papers went to the university library archives.”

  The lines around the corners of Davenport’s eyes tightened, and she said slowly, “I assisted only in a small way. After all, they were Erma’s personal writings. I only helped with the accompanying index. The catalog, so to speak.”

  Clayton showed no reaction, but it was hardly believable that Fergurson had donated her journals, minus eighty-nine pages, for all the world to see, without her trusted assistant ever getting a peek before they went into the archives.

  “That makes perfect sense.” Clayton smiled. “Did you know there are pages missing from the journals?”

  Davenport cleared her throat. “I had no idea, until Professor Shaheen approached me about it.”

  “Of course, how could you know?” Clayton replied soothingly. “Do you recall any conversations with Erma about removing some of the entries?”

  Davenport shook her head. “No. I discussed this with Professor Shaheen in detail. I even helped her search through all the center’s files. Must I go through this again?”

  “When you called to tell me about the journals, you didn’t mention the missing pages,” Clayton said.

  Davenport looked at her wristwatch and stood. “I forgot about them, that’s all. I was just trying to be helpful to you, Lieutenant. Now you’ve made me feel as if I’ve done something wrong. I really need to get back to my meeting with the contractor.”

  Clayton stayed seated. “I’d like to look at the files, Ms. Davenport. Maybe I’d have better luck.”

  Davenport shook her head. “Because Professor Shaheen is a university employee, it was permissible. But in this instance—a police matter—I’ll need clearance from the administration.”

  “I’ll arrange it.” Clayton rose to his feet. “While I’m here, I’d like to take another look around the main premises.”

  “Whatever for?”
>
  “I have a homicide to solve, and I want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

  “From nearly a half a century ago? I doubt there’s anything here for you to find.”

  “Humor me.”

  Davenport stepped around the desk to the door and opened it. “Be my guest.”

  Clayton followed her out, debating if she’d played straight with him or not. When it came to people doing wrong, he’d learned that acting like an injured party often signaled deceitfulness.

  Davenport scooted away and Clayton wandered into the expansive, still-empty living room, thinking about Fergurson’s “unconstrained” writing, as Professor Shaheen had put it.

  Why were the missing pages from so many different years? From what he’d read at the office, some were gaps in sections of biting criticism about other artists and their work, several had been removed from Fergurson’s running commentary about high-ranking university administrators, and there were two pages missing from a lengthy entry about a highly regarded, long-deceased former governor she’d actively supported with fund-raising dinner parties. Another intriguing break in a narrative involved a well-known feminist writer who’d been the editor-in-chief of a national magazine.

  He studied the smooth plaster walls, the shiny tile floors, the long rectangular fireplace, looking carefully for any evidence of a hiding place. Nothing jumped out at him.

  Fergurson had been a woman of means living alone in a somewhat secluded setting. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume she had a secure, secret place for valuables and important papers. Finding it was the problem.

  He could hear Jones and Davenport talking as he walked down the hallway to inspect the bedrooms. The larger one was Erma’s master suite, complete with a walk-in closet and adjacent bath. Two doors down, on the other side of a large linen closet, was the guest bedroom. It was opposite a full bathroom.