Dead or Alive (6 page)

“Do you want in on the investigation?”

Clayton hesitated. State law gave blanket statewide jurisdiction both to sheriff's officers and the New Mexico State Police. Clayton could rightfully work the case if Hewitt gave him the authority to do so.

“Well?” Hewitt asked.

“That's up to you, Sheriff.”

“And I say no,” Hewitt replied. “I want you to take that academy course I've already spent taxpayer money for you to attend and then go on vacation. Understood?”

“Affirmative.”

“Have you talked to Kerney?”

“Not yet,” Clayton replied.

“Better do it soon,” Hewitt advised. “Five will get you ten, once he learns about the murder, he'll book the next available flight home.”

“I wouldn't bet against it.”

“Keep me informed.”

“Ten-four.”

Russell Thorpe came back with news that Sara's SUV was nowhere to be found, and that he'd asked dispatch to issue a BOLO on the missing Jeep.

Clayton told him the missed calls on Burke's phone were indeed from Riley's wife and parents.

“Why don't you break the news to them,” Russell suggested as he searched inside Lenny Hampson's truck.

“This isn't my case, Russell.”

“I know that.”

Clayton looked at the phone he'd placed on the hood of Riley's truck. Riley had been murdered on Kerney's doorstep, probably because he'd been looking after the place the way a good neighbor should. More than that, Riley was Kerney's business partner, and his parents had sold Kerney his land at a fair price after turning away other offers from well-heeled easterners who wanted to play cowboy in Santa Fe. The Burkes deserved to hear of the tragedy and their loss from a member of Kerney's family, which meant Clayton needed to make the calls. Kerney would expect no less. He picked up the phone.

“You haven't told me what brought you up to Santa Fe,” Russell said, as he held up the Department of Corrections shotgun he'd found under the seat.

“I start a two-day law enforcement academy course tomorrow and then we were planning to stay over at the ranch for a family vacation.”

“Grace and the children came with you?” Thorpe made sure the chamber was empty and the safety was on before putting the shotgun on the hood of Hampson's truck.

“Yeah. Grace is checking us into a motel for the night.”

“You actually believe you can be a cop and have any kind of normal family life?”

“Silly of me, isn't it? But I am starting to doubt it.”

Clayton made the calls, first to Riley's wife and then to his parents, and they took the news hard. After he finished, he told Thorpe that the Burkes had gone down to Roswell to attend a cattle auction and Riley was to have joined them earlier in the evening.

“This sucks,” Russell said.

“Murder usually does,” Clayton replied, watching a string of flashing emergency lights top out on the crest of the canyon. He counted five approaching vehicles.

Russell stepped off to meet the lead car and Clayton's cell rang with an incoming call from Grace. She told him what motel she'd checked into with the children and asked when he'd be able to join them.

“I don't know how long I'll be,” Clayton said, “so don't wait up for me.”

“Who died?” Grace asked in a whisper.

In the background Clayton could hear the sound of a children's television show. “Riley Burke, shot twice in the chest.”

“Oh dear.”

The incoming vehicles parked behind Thorpe's unit. In the darkness Clayton couldn't make out the people exiting their units. “Gotta go,” he said.

“If you're not here in the morning,” Grace said, “I'm driving the children back home to Mescalero.”

The line went dead. Clayton was just about to call Grace back when Russell Thorpe approached with Chief Andy Baca of the New Mexico State Police.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Andy Baca said, offering his hand. “Why don't you and the sergeant bring me up to speed?”

 

 

The report of the suspicious, unattended death of a woman named Jeannie Cooper brought Lieutenant Ramona Pino, commander of the Santa Fe Police Department Violent Crimes Unit, out on a hot and unusually muggy July night. She drove up Cerrillos Road toward the South Capitol neighborhood, listening to the secure channel traffic of the personnel handling the homicide at Kevin Kerney's ranch and searching for the red Jeep Craig Larson had stolen.

She stopped at a dead-end lane just off Paseo De Peralta, a street that looped around the historic Santa Fe downtown area. At the end of the lane, Officer Dennis Gavin stood in the glare of his squad car's headlights talking to a chunky older woman wearing a halter top, shorts, and flip-flops.

Pino approached and Gavin interrupted his interview to introduce her to Sally Newcomb, a friend of the victim who'd called the police after discovering the dead woman in her apartment. Newcomb had a blocky jaw and square face that matched her chunky body.

“According to Ms. Newcomb, her friend Jeannie Cooper has a history of suicidal behavior,” Officer Gavin said. “She just finished telling me that she became worried when Jeannie didn't answer her phone. Ms. Newcomb came over, saw her truck, and knocked on the door. When she didn't get an answer, she let herself in with a spare house key she knew Ms. Cooper kept hidden under a rock and discovered the body.”

“I see,” Ramona replied. She looked at Newcomb, who appeared genuinely distraught. She glanced up at Gavin to get a read as to whether or not he was buying the woman's story.

At six-three Gavin towered over Pino. He gave her a slight nod to signal he thought Newcomb was on the level.

Ramona nodded in return, asked Newcomb to continue giving her statement to Officer Gavin, walked toward the open apartment door, and paused to look around before entering. Once a single-family residence, the building sat behind an electrical power substation that fronted Paseo De Peralta, within steps of some of the fanciest and most expensive art galleries in town. But it was a world apart from the high-end condos and multimillion-dollar homes of nearby Garcia Street and Acequia Madre.

The stucco was cracked and the wooden frames of the old-fashioned casement windows needed a coat of paint. The porch sagged beneath a rusted tin roof that covered the four doors to the separate apartments.

A row of mailboxes stood at the front of a gravel walkway that led to the apartments, and the front yard was packed dirt used as parking spaces that butted up to the porch. Cooper's apartment, an end unit, had a privacy fence that enclosed a small patio at the back. Using her flashlight, Ramona checked the patio, the front door, and the exterior windows for any visible signs of forced entry and found none.

Inside the apartment, Jeannie Cooper's body was sprawled on the couch, eyes closed, mouth open, one arm dangling over the side of the couch, the other positioned on the armrest above her head. Ramona looked at the fresh bruises and marks on the face, the red strangulation marks around the neck, and the discoloration at the corners of the mouth that suggested the woman's mouth had been forced open. She bent over and gently opened the mouth and saw several pills at the back of the throat.

She stepped back, keyed her handheld radio, advised the shift captain on duty of the ten-zero-one—her fifth homicide of the year—and called out the crime scene unit, her two on-duty detectives, and the medical investigator.

Back outside, Officer Gavin waited at his unit with Sally Newcomb. He gave Ramona the microcassette containing Newcomb's tape-recorded witness statement.

Ramona pocketed the cassette and asked Newcomb to stay with Officer Gavin until the detectives arrived and they could ask her about Jeannie Cooper's personal life.

Newcomb's expression turned somber. “Do you think she was murdered?”

“We have to look at all the possibilities.”

“I saw the marks on her face, but I just thought that Jeannie had mutilated herself again,” Newcomb said. “She always does that when she gets depressed. And besides, as far as a personal life goes she hasn't had one since she started her own landscaping company in the spring.”

Ramona smiled. “That's exactly the kind of information that could be very helpful to us.”

Radio traffic on her handheld told Ramona that the detectives and crime scene unit were five minutes out. She used the time to start questioning the residents in the other apartments. Two hours later, she had a homicide with no witnesses, no apparent motive, and no suspects. She huddled with her two detectives, Beatty and Olivas, while the MI and crime scene techs finished up inside the apartment.

“We could expand the canvass,” Beatty said, “but I don't think it would do any good.”

“Agreed,” Ramona said, “although I think come morning we should talk to the business owners in the neighborhood to find out if they saw anyone hanging around in the late afternoon.”

“I'll do it,” Olivas said, sounding dour, which was more his prevailing outlook on life than an attitude in need of adjustment.

“Okay.” Ramona handed Beatty a notebook she'd found in Cooper's truck. “There's a list of her clients and jobs in there. Make some calls and talk to the people she has been working for.”

Beatty, a thick-set, middle-aged man who suffered from serious allergies, sniffled and nodded. “Sally Newcomb told me who Cooper used to work for.” He consulted his notes. “His name is Daniel Peck. Owns a company called Milagro Landscaping. I found his home phone number and address in the telephone directory.”

“I'll talk to him,” Ramona said.

Beatty rattled off Peck's phone number and address.

Ramona wrote them on her notepad. “Did Newcomb know if Cooper was seeing anyone six months to a year ago?”

Beatty put his finger to his nose and sniffled. “She doesn't think there was anybody special, and she couldn't give me any names of who Cooper had seen in the past. But then, I got the feeling from Newcomb that she may have been interested in reeling Cooper in for herself.”

“Interesting,” Ramona said. “Note that in your narrative, so we can follow up on it if need be.” She nodded toward the apartment. “This homicide has some wrinkles, but by the way the murder was committed, I don't think jealousy or lust was the motive. The perp forced the pills down Cooper's throat, which suggests he was angry at her for some reason.”

“Are you thinking the perp is male?” Beatty asked.

“The bruise marks on Cooper's neck suggest that,” Ramona replied.

“For a female, Newcomb has large hands,” Beatty noted.

“I'm not ruling her out,” Ramona said. “The sloppy attempt made to mask the killing as a suicide tells me that the killer knew the victim. I'd like both of you to take another look inside the apartment. Find me something that will link the victim to a suspect—a romantic entanglement, an illicit relationship, a conflict with a neighbor, former colleague, or ex-lover—whatever. You know the routine.”

“Maybe we'll find some love letters or a diary containing revealing and damaging tidbits,” Olivas said as he started toward the apartment.

“You really think so?” Beatty asked with sarcastic enthusiasm as he caught up with his partner.

“Nah,” Olivas grumbled. “Nothing is that easy.”

Pino flipped open her cell phone, dialed Daniel Peck's number, and got his answering machine. She left a message, went to her unit, and drove to Peck's residence, a post-World War Two pueblo-style house in the Casa Solana neighborhood, which had been the site of a Japanese-American internment camp during the war.

Lights were on inside the house, so Ramona parked and rang the bell. A deeply tanned man in his early fifties with short-cut gray hair answered. He wore a short-sleeved V-neck undershirt that revealed a Marine Corps tattoo on his left forearm. He had pleasant features and crinkly blue eyes.

Ramona flashed her shield and ID. “Daniel Peck?”

“That's right.”

“I'm Lieutenant Pino and I need to ask you some questions about Jeannie Cooper.”

“I haven't seen her since she quit working for me to start her own business. Did she overdose and get taken to the emergency room again?”

“No, she's dead.”

Peck looked stunned. “She finally went and did it.”

“No, she was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“It appears that way.”

“Poor Jeannie,” Peck said with a sigh. “She was such a gentle, lost soul, except when she got too manic or too down in the dumps. Then you must be looking for Craig Larson, right?”

“Why do you say that?” Pino asked.

“Because I've been watching the TV news story about his escape today from that prison guard he almost killed. My company did landscape and garden maintenance at the Bedford estate. Jeannie and Larson had a thing going right up to the time he went to trial for embezzling all that money.”

“You know that for a fact?”

Peck nodded. “I saw it with my own eyes, and Jeannie told me all about it.”

“What reason would he have to kill Jeannie?”

“You've got me,” Peck answered.

There was no way Peck could know about the murder of Riley Burke at Kevin Kerney's ranch or the discovery of the abandoned pickup truck Larson had used to abduct Lenny Hampson from his Springer auto body repair shop. Ramona doubted he was deflecting suspicion from himself. Still, she needed to rule him out as a suspect.

“Can you account for your time since about four this afternoon, Mr. Peck?” she asked.