Everyone Dies kk-8 Page 9

  “Have you called the police?” Thorpe asked.

  Burke eyed Thorpe as though he was plain crazy. “Why? So they can take a report and file it? I gave up on that a long time ago. All it does is waste my time. Best I can do is catch ’em when I can and scare the be-jesus out of them.”

  “Have you run anyone off recently who was driving an eighty-two or eighty-three blue GMC van with a crumpled driver’s side front fender?”

  “Care to tell me why you’re asking?”

  “Yesterday your neighbor, Chief Kerney, found his horse dead inside the barn, shot three times.”

  Burke’s face flushed with anger. “Anyone who’d do a thing like that needs a dose of his own medicine. That was a damn fine animal, good-natured and well-trained. Had stamina, too. I remember when Kerney bought him at a BLM mustang auction. He turned that animal into a fine cutting horse with good cow sense.”

  “Have you seen a blue van?” Thorpe asked, trying to keep Burke on topic.

  Burke nodded. “When we sold Kerney his land we gave him an easement to use our road so he wouldn’t have to build a new one from the highway. With all the construction going on up at his place, it doesn’t make much sense to keep the gate locked, so I asked Kerney to make sure that the crew working at the site closed the gate when they came and went. The boys have been real good about it, except for one time last week when me and the wife came back from town.”

  “What happened?” Thorpe asked, trying to hurry Burke along.

  “My wife had just closed the gate when this blue van came barreling down on us kicking up a cloud of dust. I went over and asked the driver if he’d left it open. He said he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. I figured him to be one of the construction crew.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “You bet, so did my wife. He was no further away than you are to me.”

  Thorpe got the day and time of the incident, and a physical description: a white male in his thirties with long blond hair, no mustache, and no beard.

  “Height?” he asked.

  “He stayed in the van,” Burke said, “so I can’t be sure, but I’d say average.”

  “What’s average to you?”

  “Five-ten, with a skinny build,” Burke replied. “Now that I think of it, his hands were kinda soft-looking.”

  “I’m going to need you and your wife to come to state police headquarters today,” Thorpe said, “so we can work up a composite sketch of the suspect.”

  “Isn’t what I just told you good enough?”

  “The man who shot the horse intends to kill Chief Kerney.”

  Burke’s expression darkened. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. Kerney’s a good man. I’ve been looking forward to having him as a neighbor. Wouldn’t want anything to change that. My wife’s at her sister’s house. I can pick her up and be there whenever you want us.”

  Thorpe checked his watch and said he would meet Burke at headquarters in two hours. That would give him time to brief Chief Baca and do his paperwork.

  “I’ll see you then,” Burke said.

  Russell nodded and drove off. Before returning to Santa Fe, he made a quick stop at the construction site, and spoke to Bobby Trujillo, Kerney’s general contractor. As expected, nobody matching Burke’s description of the driver of the blue van was or had been working on the job.

  Awake and up before Kerney, Sara stepped out of the shower, toweled herself dry, and stood in front of the mirror, examining her body. Her face was just a tiny bit fuller, her breasts had gotten huge, but her belly looked enormous. At least her legs hadn’t changed during pregnancy, and her arms were still firm. It was a small consolation; she was retaining fluids and felt like a bloated cow. She wondered how long it would take to lose the extra weight she’d gained after the baby was born.

  Kerney knocked on the bathroom door and opened it a crack when she answered. His hair stood up in a cowlick on the back of his head and his blue eyes were ringed with dark circles.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, peeking inside.

  “You’ve got to stop asking me that,” she replied. “I’m fine. The baby will let me know when it’s time to go to the hospital.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the baby,” Kerney replied.

  In the background, Sara could hear the voice of an early morning local televison news anchor reporting the breaking story of the Manning homicide. “Stop staring at me,” she said, wrapping the towel around her body.

  “I think you look beautiful,” Kerney said.

  “Thank you. But as far as I’m concerned, the beauty of impending motherhood is nothing more than a male myth.”

  “Meaning?”

  “How would you like it if, within a matter of months, your face puffed up, you grew a pot belly, and your chest looked like milk-cow teats?”

  “I thought being pregnant was supposed to be a sensual experience for women.”

  “I’m still waiting for that to happen. Can I have a few minutes alone in the bathroom?”

  Kerney nodded sheepishly and closed the door. Sara put on a loose-fitting short-sleeved summer dress that accented her legs and softened the roundness of her stomach. She applied a bit of mascara, a touch of lipstick, ran a comb through her short, strawberry blond hair, and decided maybe she didn’t look so bad after all. At least, not when she was fully clothed.

  In the kitchen, Kerney served her breakfast, a heaping concoction of scrambled eggs, melted cheese, and bits of ham, onions, and green peppers. He seemed very pleased with himself, so she thanked him with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, wondering where men got the idea that a pregnant woman needed to eat meals fit for a starving stevedore.

  She took a bite and chewed slowly, nodding her head. “Very good.”

  Kerney accepted the compliment with a smile.

  “After the baby is born, and I feel normal again, I want you to take me out dancing. Now that you have a new knee, there’s no excuse not to.”

  “I think I can do that,” Kerney said. He started to say something more and stopped, and his smile vanished, replaced by a preoccupied look.

  “Have you gone quiet because you want to preserve an illusion of normalcy before we start talking about who’s trying to kill us?” Sara asked.

  “Something like that. Mary Beth Patterson committed suicide in her hospital room late last night. I got a call from Sal Molina confirming it while you were in the shower.”

  Sara reacted to the news without emotion. Since last night, her only focus had become survival for her family. That wasn’t about to change until the problem got solved.

  “You’re going in to work, I take it,” she said.

  “I have to,” Kerney said apologetically.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything less,” Sara said. “What happened after you sent me home last night?”

  Kerney told her about setting into motion a records search for the killer, and the mysterious disappearance of Jack Potter’s dog.

  Sara shrugged off the tidbit about the dog as she pushed food around the plate with her fork. It fit the killer’s already established pattern, but added nothing of substance to the investigation. “Assigning only two detectives to do a records search seems a bit skimpy on the resources to me.”

  “More people will be assigned,” Kerney said, “and I plan to help out myself.”

  Sara wiped her lips with a napkin and shook her head. “Think about it, Kerney. We’ve got two homicides, one police shooting, a suicide, the killer’s promise to carry out two more murders-which could very well mean our son and me-and his threat against you.”

  “I know all that, Sara.”

  “If anyone else were the target, you’d be calling out the cavalry. Do you think you can’t ask for help because you’re the police chief? Or is it because you don’t think you’re allowed to be scared about what’s happening to us?”

  “I am scared. But that isn’t going to get in my way of doing the job.”


  “It’s my job too. I’m going to work with you.”

  “This is a police matter.”

  “I’ve got a valid United States Army criminal investigator ID card in my wallet. Give me a desk, a computer, and a telephone, and I can run every potential suspect you have through the military records center in St. Louis to see if they have prior service. Under federal law, none of your people can do that. Who knows what we might learn? Wouldn’t you like to have that information?”

  Kerney bit his lip and nodded. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Well then, shower, get dressed, and let’s go.”

  Sara scraped and stacked the breakfast dishes while Kerney got ready. He returned in uniform, freshly shaved, with his cowlick now firmly under control. He stopped her as she moved toward the front door and hugged her for a long minute.

  “What’s this for?” she asked, looking up at him.

  He could feel the hardness of her belly against his body. He kissed her gently on the lips. “I just needed a hug.”

  Outside, a state police cruiser was parked conspicuously across the street, positioned to allow the occupant a full view of the driveway to the house. Kerney got Sara settled in the passenger seat of his unit and pulled out into the road, flashing his headlights at the vehicle. The officer, a young woman who Kerney knew in passing from his time as deputy chief of the state police, got out of the unit and came around to Kerney’s window.

  “What brings you to my driveway, Officer Rasmussen?” he asked.

  Yvonne Rasmussen bent low to look at Kerney, touched the brim of her cap, and nodded to Sara. “Chief Baca’s orders, sir.”

  “Which are?”

  “Twenty-four-hour security at your house until further notice.”

  Sara smiled approvingly.

  “I see,” Kerney said. “What else has Chief Baca arranged?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” Rasmussen replied. “He did ask me to remind you that you have no authority to countermand his orders.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” Kerney replied, as he waved at Rasmussen and drove off.

  Sara laughed and broke into a big smile. It was the first genuinely happy sound either of them had made since yesterday morning.

  “What?” Kerney asked.

  “He knows you well,” Sara said, “and he isn’t about to let you play the lone wolf this time. I’m going to shower him with kisses the next time I see him,” Sara replied.

  “That will embarrass him.”

  “He’ll just have to cope with it.”

  At headquarters, the parking lot for official vehicles contained an unusually large number of units, including some unmarked sheriff and state police cars, one of which Kerney recognized as Andy Baca’s. They went in through the back entrance to find cops everywhere, working at folding tables set up in hallways, filling the first-floor conference room, and spilling over into the reception area of Kerney’s second-floor office suite. Most were off-duty personnel, but Barry Foyt and two other lawyers from the district attorney’s office were there along with several sheriff’s investigators and state police agents. All were busy on telephones or reading case files.

  Andy Baca, Larry Otero, and Helen Muiz were in Kerney’s office sitting at the small conference table that butted up against the desk. Sara limited her shower of kisses for Andy to one sisterly peck on the cheek while Kerney went to his desk and waited for an explanation.

  None came, so as Sara took a seat next to Andy he asked for one.

  “Larry and I thought it best to centralize the investigation and bring in more resources,” Andy replied, scratching a jowly cheek. “The DA and the sheriff agreed to get on board, and your off-duty personnel just started showing up this morning as volunteers. Seems like nobody wants to see you wind up dead. Although for the life of me, I can’t understand it.” He broke into a big grin. “So, we need to catch this guy, so we can get all these folks back to normal duty before we run out of money to pay for the overtime.”

  Kerney shook his head in disbelief, a smile flooding his face. Of the three, only Andy had the chutzpah to mastermind this ploy. But he knew Helen and Larry had tagged along as willing co-conspirators.

  “Okay, where are we?” he asked.

  “We have a possible suspect that Russell Thorpe got a line on,” Andy said. “Unknown white male, thirty-something, driving a blue GMC van, who was seen twice on the ranch road to your new place. Thorpe is meeting with Jack and Irene Burke right now to have a composite sketch made.”

  “They saw him?”

  “Up close and personal,” Andy replied. “A man delivering adobes to the building site also spotted him on the ranch.”

  “Excellent work.”

  “Detective Pino found the slug that Jack Potter took in the chest,” Larry Otero said. “We’re waiting to hear if a match can be made to the bullets that killed your horse.”

  “More good news.”

  “The caliber doesn’t match Kurt Larsen’s gun.”

  “I didn’t expect it would,” Kerney said.

  “Lieutenant Molina has, according to your instructions, started a full case review,” Helen Muiz said. “With the extra manpower available, we’ve expanded it a bit to include all felony cases within the first judicial district, the county, and the state police district office, so that we don’t miss any possible suspects.”

  “That’s smart,” Kerney said.

  “First up for review are the people on the list you prepared last night,” Larry said. “Tafoya and Pino are working those cases. We’ve got a team pulling names of new possible suspects, another team working prisons, jails, probation and parole personnel to track them down, and Foyt is heading up the court records search.”

  “Give me all those names and identifying information,” Sara said, “and I’ll cross-check them with the armed forces record center in St. Louis.”

  “I’ll get that to you right away,” Helen Muiz said, smiling at Sara and writing herself a note, “and set you up with a desk and computer.”

  Andy stared at Sara’s belly and gave her an uneasy look.

  “Don’t say a word, Andy,” Kerney said.

  Sara patted Andy’s arm. “I promise not to have the baby at police headquarters.”

  Dubiously, Andy looked away.

  “What else?” Kerney asked.

  “You’re booked with meetings,” Helen answered. “Sal Molina, Lieutenant Casados, and the district attorney at his office, in that order.”

  “Larranaga is taking the police shooting to the grand jury,” Larry Otero said.

  Kerney nodded. “Has he met with the media?”

  “Yeah, but he toned his rhetoric down a bit,” Larry replied, “and said he was doing it in the best interest of all parties concerned. He didn’t publically slam the SWAT call-out or dwell on the Patterson suicide.”

  “Fair enough,” Kerney said.

  The meeting broke up and Sara stayed behind for a moment.

  “I like your Helen Muiz,” she said.

  “I wonder why?” Kerney replied, knowing full well both women possessed similar attributes: natural femininity and singular tough-mindedness.

  “And I’m in love with Andy Baca.”

  “Stay away from him. He’s a married man.” He gave her a kiss and sent her on her way just before Sal Molina knocked at the open door.

  Sal looked bleary-eyed and ready to nod off, but his head seemed to be working clearly. He sat at the conference table occasionally running a hand through what remained of his hair, and asked Kerney to come up with some more possible suspects.

  Kerney added the names of a serial rapist he’d caught on the strength of nothing more than a shoe print outside a bedroom window, a stepfather who’d molested his wife’s ten-year-old daughter, and a punk who was pulling twenty-five years for murdering an old lady because she’d refused him a glass of water when he was drunk and thirsty. He dug deep into his memory and added several more names, including several individuals he’d shot a
nd wounded over the course of his career.

  “I gotta ask you a few more questions, Chief,” Sal said as he straightened out his slumping shoulders. “Have you pissed off somebody’s husband or boyfriend that I need to know about?”

  “No.”

  Sal gave him an uncomfortable glance. “Were you ever intimately involved with Jack Potter or Dora Manning?”

  Kerney put his arms on the desk, clasped his hands, and looked Molina in the eyes. “You mean sexually, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I was not.”

  “What about Norm Kaplan?”

  “Same answer.”

  “Did you ever have a confidential informant you either had to lean on hard or bust? A guy who might still be pissed off about it?”

  “Two,” Kerney said, and gave Molina their names.

  “Did you ever put somebody in the slam you knew didn’t belong there?”

  “You’re asking if I falsified evidence or gave perjured testimony.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I haven’t done that.”

  “How about any threats you might have made to a perp?” Molina asked.

  Kerney thought about Bernardo Barela, a young man who’d raped, murdered, and mutilated a woman near Hermit’s Peak, and then killed his accomplice, a state police officer’s son, to keep him silent.

  As far as Kerney knew, Barela was on death row awaiting execution. He’d personally promised Bernardo that he would hunt him down and kill him if he ever got released, and that vow still stood.

  Kerney nodded and gave Sal a brief summary of Barela and his crimes.

  “Anyone else?” Sal asked.

  Kerney shook his head, unclasped his hands, and leaned back in his chair. “No.”

  Sal closed his notebook. “That’s it, Chief.”