Death Song (7 page)

“Okay.” Kerney gave Matt a pat on the back. Soon after becoming chief, he’d promoted Chacon to detective, and although the young officer didn’t know it, he was about to receive his sergeant stripes and be put in charge of the Property Crimes Unit. “Keep at it,” Kerney said.

“Will do, Chief.”

When Kerney returned to his police unit, Helen quizzed him about his conversation with Chacon. He short-circuited the facts and told her that Matt hadn’t yet found anything of interest on the computers, but would conduct a more comprehensive examination at police headquarters.

By daybreak, Ruben had talked his exhausted wife into going home. Inside the double-wide, Sergeant Ramona Pino, two SFPD detectives, and three sheriff’s investigators were continuing the house search. Kerney joined Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup in the RV that served as the sheriff’s office mobile command center, and asked him to talk about Tim Riley.

Jessup eased his bulk into a chair behind a small bolted-down table and motioned for Kerney to join him. Jessup’s pale blue eyes were weary. The deep creases below his chubby cheeks pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave him a perpetual hangdog expression. In contrast to his dour appearance, Jessup had a high-pitched voice. A true tenor, he was the mainstay of a barbershop quartet that performed locally and at regional competitions.

“Tim was a solid, dependable officer,” Jessup said, “and we were sorry to lose him.”

“No personality conflicts with other officers or problems with the brass?”

“None.”

“Then why did he leave?” Kerney asked.

Jessup shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t give a reason other than to say he’d accepted a job with the Lincoln County S.O.” He handed Kerney a file folder. “That’s Riley’s personnel file. Look it over for yourself. He received solid performance evaluations, had no disciplinary actions, and received several commendations from his supervisors and one from the board of county commissioners.”

Kerney paged through the paperwork. “What about his personal and family life?”

“That I don’t know anything about,” Jessup replied. “He wasn’t one to socialize much with other officers. I met his wife maybe twice, once at a retirement party and once at some community fund-raising event. I didn’t even know she was Helen Muiz’s kid sister.”

Outside the RV window, detectives and investigators were loading boxes of evidence into the back of the S.O. crime lab van. On the driveway that led from the double-wide to the county road, S.O. patrol vehicles, state police units, and SFPD vehicles were arriving, along with members of a search and rescue team.

Jessup stood up and nodded toward an unmarked sedan that came to a stop near a staging area for searchers that had been set up in front of the stables. “The sheriff has arrived. He wants us to scour this area until we either find Denise Riley’s body or we know that she isn’t here to be found.”

Kerney followed Jessup out of the RV and looked at the mesa that rose above the narrow valley, much of it still in deep shadows. There was a lot of rugged country to cover and places where a body could be hidden so that no matter how exhaustive the search, it might never be found.

At the staging area, Kerney joined Leonard Jessup, Sheriff Luciano Salgado, the state police captain who commanded the district office, and an emergency room doctor who also served as the search and rescue director. Together, they went over the sheriff’s search plan, which consisted of a concentrated sweep of the valley and surrounding area before moving into the higher country. When the searchers had assembled, Salgado divided the personnel into teams and gave out grid assignments. A sober and silent group of three dozen men and women fanned out in all four directions, the quiet broken only by the rough, querulous sound of Mexican jays in the tall pines and the low whine of a commercial jet thirty thousand feet overhead.

Kerney spent a few minutes alone with Luciano Salgado, who had retired as a SFPD patrol sergeant six years ago to accept an appointment as chief deputy for the S.O, and was now serving his first term as the duly elected sheriff. Luciano asked if he could continue to use Kerney’s detectives throughout the day. He wanted Ramona Pino to work with his major crimes unit supervisor on an evidence search of the stable and the P.D. detectives to assist in a follow-up neighborhood canvass of all residents.

Kerney readily agreed and passed on the assignments to Sergeant Pino. Back at his unit he called Sara on his cell phone.

“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked.

“Patrick did that a half hour ago,” Sara replied, sounding perfectly normal. “We’ve had our breakfast and now he’s petitioning me to go horseback riding.”

“Are you feeling up to it?”

“I am. Have you found Helen’s missing sister?”

“Not yet. But we have learned that the woman’s husband, a police officer, was murdered last night in Lincoln County.”

“Does that mean you won’t be home anytime soon?”

“No,” Kerney replied. “This case is not under my jurisdiction. I’ve given the sheriff’s department all the help they’ve asked for and done as much for Helen Muiz as I can at this point. I don’t need to stay here watching other people work.”

“Too many chiefs?” Sara asked.

“Something like that. I’ll be home soon.”

Kerney disconnected and went to find Ramona Pino to tell her he’d be leaving. He found her in the tack room at the stables with Don Mielke, the major crimes unit supervisor for the sheriff’s department.

“Don’t come in, Chief,” Ramona said when Kerney appeared in the doorway.

Kerney looked around. An upended saddle was on the hard-packed dirt floor, some of the halters and bridles lay in a heap under the wall hooks, and there were scuff marks in the dirt that looked as if something had been dragged out into the corral, where the two horses whinnied and snorted for their morning oats.

“Any hard evidence of a struggle?” Kerney asked.

“Not yet,” Mielke replied.

Beyond the corral, next to a horse trailer, a medium-size black-and-white mutt with a long coat joined the chorus. “Do you know if the Rileys had a dog?” Kerney asked.

“There was a picture in the house of Riley’s wife kneeling next to a dog,” Ramona said.

Kerney pointed at the mutt who had taken up a position at the back of the trailer. “That dog?”

“Maybe,” Ramona said.

“Has it been here all night?”

“I didn’t see or hear it earlier,” Ramona replied.

“Has anyone checked that horse trailer?” Kerney asked.

“Not that I know of,” Mielke replied.

“Let’s do it,” Kerney said, stepping off in the direction of the trailer.

The barking dog fell silent and backed off when Kerney approached, but it stayed nearby, watchful, and seemed unwilling to scamper away. The trailer, built to haul two horses, was padlocked. Kerney turned to Mielke and asked him to find some bolt cutters. Ramona Pino dropped down on one knee and looked back at the stables and corral. Although it was impossible to tell for sure, what seemed to be drag marks in the dirt ran from the tack room to the horse trailer. She pointed them out to Kerney.

“Ten-to-one odds says we can call off the search as soon as Mielke brings those bolt cutters,” Kerney said.

Ramona shook her head. “I learned a long time ago never to bet against you, Chief.”

Mielke returned, snapped the locks with the bolt cutters, and swung open the doors. Inside one of the trailer stalls was the rigid body of a woman facedown on a bed of blood-soaked straw.

“Okay,” Kerney said as he exhaled and turned to Mielke. “You’d better get your bosses over here pronto.”

“Yeah,” Mielke replied.

Chapter Three

The discovery of the body set off a chain of procedural events common to all murder investigations. Kerney backed off so Ramona Pino and Don Mielke could work without his interference, and informed Sheriff Salgado about the unidentified female victim.

By radio, Salgado got the word out to the searchers and asked them to suspend operations and maintain their positions until a positive ID could be made. Kerney took Salgado and his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup, to the horse trailer, which had already been cordoned off, and from behind the police line the three men watched as Mielke and Pino established a wider crime scene perimeter.

After roping off a larger area that extended from the tack room to the horse trailer, they began documenting and processing the scene. Mielke photographed the body as it lay, leaving it untouched and unmoved. Although it was highly likely the dead woman was Denise Riley, protocol required the body remain as it had been found until the medical investigator arrived.

Mielke moved on to photograph the horse trailer, the drag marks in the dirt, and the interior of the tack room, while Ramona Pino inspected the victim and made a list of the woman’s clothing, which included notations of the condition of the garments and any visible damage and stains. The woman’s jeans barely covered her buttocks, and flecks of straw adhered to exposed skin at the small of her back.

Ramona wondered if the woman’s jeans had been rearranged by the perpetrator. If so, it signaled that the killer probably knew the victim. She made a closer visual inspection of the victim’s exposed right forearm and left hand and saw what appeared to be bruising—quite possibly defensive wounds. Had the crime started out as a sexual assault and escalated to murder?

She wrote down her observations and speculations, drew a rough sketch of the body in relation to the corral and tack room, measured off all distances, and then began a search for trace evidence on the surfaces of the horse trailer.

When the MI arrived and declared the victim dead, the body was turned faceup and two facts became readily apparent. First, comparison with the driver’s license photo Ramona had found in the purse inside the double-wide showed that the dead woman was indeed Denise Riley. Second, her throat had been cut.

Salgado promptly called off the search and released all off-duty and nonessential personnel who had volunteered their time. As the searchers returned to the staging area and quietly began to disperse, Kerney, Salgado, and Jessup thanked each of them personally for coming out. The three men silently watched as the searchers loaded gear and equipment into their police units and emergency vehicles and left the area in a line of cars that stretched the length of the long dirt driveway.

As the last vehicle turned onto the county road, Sheriff Luciano Salgado turned to Kerney. “Are you going to tell Helen Muiz?” he asked.

“I’ll go over to her house right now,” Kerney replied.

“Let her know that I’ll be in touch with her real soon,” Salgado said.

“Maybe you’ll have some answers for her by then.”

“God, I hope so,” Salgado replied with a sigh. “How long can I use Sergeant Pino and your detectives?”

“As long as you need them,” Kerney replied, thinking it was unlikely that the two separate homicides of Riley and his wife would be cleared anytime soon.

“Thanks,” Salgado said.

Kerney nodded in reply and headed to his unit. Before driving off, he tried reaching Sara at home by phone. There was no answer, so he called her cell phone and got a voice message that told him that Sara and Patrick were off on an early morning horseback ride.

The message pleased Kerney. Being with Patrick was the best medicine for what ailed Sara. That sweet, happy, smart-as-a-whip little boy buoyed her spirits and got her thinking about all the good things life had to offer.

He put the unit in gear and headed for town, his thoughts turning as dark as the gunmetal gray March sky that masked the morning sun. Far too often over the course of his career, he’d brought the news of a loved one’s death to family members. Most times, they had been complete strangers or only slightly known to him through the course of an investigation. But it was never an easy thing to do.

This time it would be worse. He would have to tell a woman he’d known, liked, and respected for over twenty years that the death of her brother-in-law was not the worst of it. The kid sister she’d adored was dead, murdered just as her husband had been hours ago in Lincoln County.

Ruben and Helen Muiz lived in a historic double adobe home that had been in her family since the early twentieth century. Ancient cottonwoods and pines screened the house from the dirt lane that ran around the back side of the hill to a new fourteen-thousand-square foot adobe mansion built by a Chicago real estate developer who came to Santa Fe every summer for the opera season.

The cars that lined the driveway to the Muiz residence told Kerney that the family had gathered in the wake of the bad news of Tim Riley’s murder and Denise’s disappearance. He parked on the lane and walked toward the house, thinking that over the years his friendship with Helen had been basically work-related and he knew very little about Helen’s siblings or her extended family. The circumstances of the last eight hours were about to change all that.

He rang the doorbell and was soon greeted by Ruben Muiz, who stared at him with bleary eyes ringed with dark circles. Beyond the entry hall in a nearby room, he could hear the low sounds of hushed conversation.

“What have you learned?” Ruben asked.

“Is Helen sleeping?” Kerney countered.

“Nobody’s sleeping,” Ruben said tersely. “Everybody’s here. Tell me what you found out about Denise.”

Kerney touched Ruben on the shoulder. “Take it easy,” he said gently as people began crowding into the entry hall.

“Sorry,” Ruben said, lowering his voice.

“Why don’t you get everyone together and let me talk to them as a group.”

“Yes, of course,” Ruben said, ushering Kerney into a large living room filled with twenty-some somber people who stopped talking and stared at him with great intensity.

Helen sat on a couch with several women and a man clustered nearby who looked to be her sisters and brother. Other men hovering close by Kerney took to be the sisters’ husbands.

He crossed the room, trying to keep his expression passive, reached Helen, took her by the hand, and shook his head once. She gasped and began sobbing. He stepped away as the sisters closed in around Helen, the women choking back tears, crying, reaching to embrace one another and clasp hands. He backed off to a far corner of the room and waited patiently for the grieving to subside and the questioning to begin. The family’s anguish was about to become a hell of a lot more distressing once they learned how Denise had died.