Guarded Secrets

by Leann Harris

  “Hey, Littledeer. You here to give me trouble?” Johnny Longrunner asked. Johnny was a full-blooded Navajo whose great-grandfather was a code breaker during World War II.

  “You get anything off those apartment tapes we dropped by?” asked Jon.

  Johnny grimaced. “They are in miserable shape, Littledeer.”

  “You get something off them?” Dave asked.

  “Of course he did,” Jon answered. “He’s just wanting us to know how good he is.”

  Johnny shrugged. “Hey, I work miracles. And those tapes needed one.” Johnny accessed the scene he’d transferred from one of the tapes to his computer. “There’s a shot of your victim arguing with someone outside a second-floor apartment. There wasn’t a shot of his face on this footage, but—” He typed in another file name. A picture popped up in the lower corner of the computer screen. The camera aimed at the parking lot had captured a full front shot of the man who had argued with Peter. “That’s your man.”

  The man had a beard, and the hair on his head looked black. His round face had a tough, worn quality to it, as if the man had seen his share of trouble. But it was the eyes that got Jon’s attention. Soulless. Cold. Merciless.

  “He’s someone you don’t want to meet in a dark alley,” Johnny commented.

  Jon had to agree with Johnny’s assessment. This man would feel nothing when he killed. And if he was the man who had broken into Lilly’s house, he’d have no mercy.

  “Print me off the picture,” Jon ordered. “We’ll need it to show around.”

  Johnny complied.

  Walking to the window, Jon stared out at the city street. They needed to find this man before another break-in resulted in Penny or Lilly getting hurt.

  “I’ve got the picture,” Dave told Jon.

  “I’ll send this pic to the duty captain so he can alert the patrols to be on the lookout for this man,” Johnny told them.

  Turning, Jon nodded and thanked him.

  As Jon and Dave drove to the offices of Painted Desert Construction Associates, Dave read the file on the construction company.

  “Adam Finley owns the firm. According to the bio on the firm’s Web page, he worked his way up from summer jobs on construction sites to owning his own firm. His is the biggest construction company in New Mexico. The company also boasts of its work in the neighboring states of Texas, Colorado and Arizona.”

  “This firm, how old is it?”

  “Thirty-five years old.”

  They pulled into the parking lot of a midrise building. In the lobby, the directory told them Painted Desert was on the seventh floor.

  The instant they walked through the company’s door, a young woman greeted them. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  Jon pulled out his badge and asked to speak to Adam Finley.

  “I’ll let him know you are here,” said the receptionist.

  At that instant, the door to an office opened and a man walked out.

  “Mr. Finley, these two men are here to see you,” announced the receptionist.

  Adam Finley stood five-eleven and had a full head of gray hair. The weathered skin of his face spoke of his time out in the harsh sun. The man might be in his fifties, but he looked like he’d just come in from working at a job site. There was not an ounce of flab on him.

  “Gentlemen, what can I do for you?”

  Jon showed him his badge. “We’ve come to ask you about an ex-employee.”

  Finlay motioned them inside his office. From the window, they could see the street below and the mountains in the distance.

  “Who are you interested in?”

  “A man named Peter Burkstrom,” said Jon.

  Finley walked to his desk and leaned back against it, crossing his arms over his massive chest. “Yes. Pete worked for us. Is he in any trouble?”

  “He was murdered,” Jon informed him.

  Finley shook his head. “I am so sorry to hear that.”

  Jon studied Finley carefully, watching his expression. “How well did you know him?”

  “I knew him well enough to say hi at the job site, ask about the job and how it was going, but we never went beyond that. He worked with some of the foremen I know. No one said they had any problems with him.”

  “It surprises me,” Dave interjected, “that you didn’t know him very well.”

  Finley shrugged. “You’ve never worked construction, have you, detective?”

  Dave shook his head.

  “It’s a job with a high turnover. Construction crews can have a ninety percent turnover rate from start to finish. And if it’s the winter, I’ll be lucky to keep those ten percent.”

  Jon pulled out his notebook. “When did he leave?”

  Finley walked around his desk, logged onto his computer and typed in several things. “He left last May.”

  “Do you know why?” Jon asked.

  “No. The only reason I know he quit is because Greg told me he left.”

  “Greg who?” Jon asked.

  “Greg Majors,” said Finley.

  “And did Mr. Majors say why Peter Burkstrom quit?”

  “Nope.”

  “It might help us if we talked to Mr. Majors and some of the men who worked with Peter Burkstrom,” said Jon. “Also, if you could give me the names of a couple of the other foremen he worked with.”

  Finley nodded. “Of course. Greg is out at a work site north of the city. Let me call him and see if he’s available.”

  Jon and Dave traded looks while Finley dialed his foreman.

  “Do you want Greg to drive into the city?” Finley asked.

  Jon shook his head. “No, we’ll drive out to see him. That way we can talk to the men who worked with Peter Burkstrom.”

  Finley nodded and spoke quietly into the phone. After a minute, he hung up. “There’s a bridge going up over State Highway 44 that we’re working on.” He gave them the mile marker where the crew was working.

  “How long did Burkstrom work for you?” Jon asked.

  Finley looked at his computer screen. “Off and on for five years.”

  “Isn’t that a long time?” Jon asked.

  “Yes and no. He didn’t work continuously for the firm. He worked for us on several different highway sites in different states. He also worked some building jobs for the state, so I wasn’t in contact with him all that time.”

  “Is there anything you can think of that might help us in this case? Did Burkstrom have a falling-out with someone, or did something on a job site go wrong?”

  Finley rubbed his chin, glanced at the computer screen, then shook his head. “Nothing comes to mind. Like I said, no one mentioned any problems with him, and there’s zero in the personnel file about problems.” He rose to his feet.

  Jon and Dave knew the interview was over.

  At the door of his office, Finley looked at the receptionist. “Brandi, can you give the detectives a list of the men working on the bridge at Bernalillo?”

  She gave Finley her pageant smile. “I’d be happy to.”

  “If I can be of any further assistance to you, gentlemen, please let me know.” Finley shook each detective’s hand, smiled and walked back into his office. The door closed behind him. However politely, they’d been dismissed.

  “It will take a few moments to get the information,” said the receptionist as she quickly typed into the computer and her printer sprang to life.

  “How long have you worked here?” Jon asked.

  “Six months,” she replied.

  “Does anyone from the various work sites come into town?” asked Dave.

  She shook her head. “Rarely. Mr. Finley spends a lot of time visiting each project. Sometimes he meets with the suppliers here.”

  “It must be boring here,” Dave commented.

  “Usually,” she said.

  “Something happen recently?” Dave asked, pressing.

  She pulled the paper out of the printer and handed it to Jon. “You know, Mr. Finley is very stri
ct about the times I come in and out. If I am ten minutes late from my lunch break, he’s all over my case. Well, a couple of times this last month, he’s told me to go home at four-thirty. The first time, I thought he was teasing. But he wasn’t.” She shook her head. “The next time it happened, he gave me theater tickets for the new production of Grease that is playing downtown. I was out of here in less than two minutes. My boyfriend and I went that night.”

  The phone rang. She picked it up. “Okay, Mr. Finley.” Her expression told the detectives they needed to go.

  Jon pulled out his business card. “Call me if something happens or you remember anything unusual.”

  The detectives said nothing until they were in the car.

  “What did you think?” Dave asked.

  “It seems odd to me that Finley wouldn’t know a man who worked for his company for five years.”

  “He gave us the information readily.”

  Jon guided the car onto the street. “Did he have a choice?”

  “It is reasonable to believe Finley didn’t know anything about Burkstrom but his statistics. I don’t know everything about every detective on the force.”

  Jon shook his head. “Every man who’s been with the department for more than six months you know everything about.”

  “That’s because my wife is nosy, always asking me questions. It’s easier to supply the information than to endure the endless questions.”

  “No, I don’t buy that. We need to ask some of Burkstrom’s old crew how chummy he was with Finley.”

  Dave laughed. “I agree. Somethin’ ain’t right.”

  “You got that itch, too?”

  “Yup, my radar is yelling at me.”

  Lilly finished vacuuming Peter’s apartment. Penny sat by the fireplace. The rest of the furniture had been removed this morning.

  “Mom, I’m bored. Can we leave?”

  Lilly glanced around the empty apartment. She’d checked every piece of furniture before it was removed this morning. She’d found nothing.

  “Yes.”

  Penny whooped in delight. She ran to the door and threw it open. A startled young woman stood on the other side.

  Penny stumbled back in surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I was about to knock on the door.”

  “May I help you?” Lilly asked.

  “I’m Julie Rose. I live here in the complex. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your husband. He was a very nice man. He also was a big help to me when I moved here to Albuquerque.”

  “You knew my daddy?” Penny asked.

  “I did,” replied the woman.

  Penny smiled. “Did you like him?”

  “Yes. He helped bring up the furniture to my apartment and was always nice.”

  Penny nodded.

  “Thank you,” Lilly added.

  The woman turned to leave, then stopped. “Do you know the names of the detectives looking into your husband’s murder?”

  “Yes,” replied Lilly.

  “Could you tell them to call me? I’ve remembered something else I’d like to tell them,” said the woman.

  “They are Detectives Jonathan Littledeer and David Sandoval. If I see them again, I’ll tell them,” Lilly assured her.

  The woman nodded and left.

  Lilly knew she needed to call Jon.

  The construction site lay north of the city, near the junction of I-25 and State Highway 44. The new bridge would replace the existing structure. A sign outside the trailer at the site proclaimed Painted Desert Construction.

  Jon pulled their police-issue black sedan up to the trailer door. Before they got to the door, it opened and a young man in his early twenties barreled out, grumbling under his breath.

  The door bounced off its frame.

  At the same time Jon reached the steps of the trailer, another man appeared in the doorway.

  “This is a closed site,” the man growled.

  “That may be, but I’m Detective Jonathan Littledeer and this is my partner, David Sandoval. We’re here to interview Greg Majors about a Peter Burkstrom.”

  The barrel-chested man stepped back. “Come in. Mr. Finley told me to expect a couple of detectives from the Albuquerque PD.”

  Stepping into the trailer, Jon saw a desk at one end of the room, scattered with papers. Above the desk hung a detailed plan of the new bridge with the dimensions. At the other end of the trailer was a worn couch and a couple of ragged chairs.

  Majors settled his bulk in the chair behind the desk. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  “Tell us about Peter Burkstrom,” Jon answered, taking his notebook out of his shirt pocket.

  “Pete worked with the company for a number of years. He worked on various projects,” said Majors.

  “Why’d he quit?” Dave asked.

  Majors shrugged. “Can’t say.”

  “Weren’t you curious as to why someone who’d worked at your company for a long time wanted to quit?” Jon pressed.

  Majors rested his hands on his knees and stared at his fingers. “I was going through a divorce. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to all the men’s complaints, so Pete stepped in. I guess he got tired of listening to complaints, too, because a couple of months ago, he up and quit on me.”

  “And you have no real idea why?” Jon pressed.

  Majors shrugged. “I should, but I was too busy with my own problems, and I’m not a shrink. If he had problems, he didn’t say anything to me.”

  Jon put his notebook back into his shirt pocket. “Do you mind if we interview some of the men?”

  “No. But I’ll warn you that some of the men who worked with him are no longer working on this project,” replied Majors.

  “Why is that?” asked Dave.

  “Well, we have several projects going on in Colorado and Texas that need experienced crews to finish up on time. We have another couple of months on this bridge, so I sent some of the guys to Colorado and Texas to bring those projects in on time.”

  “We’ll need the names of those crew members who are in different states.” Jon glanced at Dave. From his partner’s expression, Jon knew Dave had as many unanswered questions as he did. It seemed no one knew anything about a man who’d worked for the company for close to five years. Something was wrong. Someone was lying.

  “It will take me a while to get those names together,” Majors announced.

  “Not to worry. We’ll probably be close to an hour talking to the men here,” Jon told him.

  With those words, Jon and Dave left the trailer and started walking down to where the crew was working.

  “How well did you know Peter Burkstrom?” Jon asked Tony Rhodes. The young man had to be in his early twenties.

  “I worked with him last summer. We worked on a bridge off Highway 53 between Grants and the Zuni Indian Reservation.”

  The wind picked up, blowing dirt into their faces. Stepping into the shelter of the bridge abutment, Jon asked, “Did he have any problems with any of the crew?”

  “Yeah, he did. He had to let go a couple of guys.”

  “Do you know what kind of trouble he had with them?”

  Tony shook his head. “No, not really. But whatever it was, he blew up and threw the guys off the site. The project shut down for a couple of days until they were replaced.”

  “Do you know the names of these men?”

  “Jose Heinz and Tony…uh…Ben—I don’t know. Check around with some of the other guys who were at that site. They might know his name.”

  Jon pulled out his business card. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  Forty minutes later, Jon discovered that only one other man there had been at that construction site the summer before. And that man added nothing to what Jon already knew.

  The detectives headed back to the trailer to pick up the list of men who had worked with Peter. When Jon asked about the two men Peter had let go, Majors told them that the guys were lazy and h
ad missed too much work. Jon asked for their addresses and got them.

  As the detectives walked back to their car, Jon’s cell rang.

  “Littledeer.”

  “Jon, this is Lilly.”

  “Is anything wrong?” Jon asked, worried that something else might have happened at her house.

  “No. When I finished cleaning Pete’s apartment today—”

  “You went to Pete’s apartment by yourself?”

  Silence greeted his question.

  “Did you have any trouble with the manager?”

  “No. I gave the keys back to him. I’ve met friendlier stray dogs than he was. I’m glad I don’t have to go back there again.”

  He shared her sentiments. There was something about that man that didn’t sit right with him.

  “Uh—the reason I called was one of his neighbors, Julie Rose, came over and asked me to tell you to call her. She wants to talk to you and Dave.”

  He remembered the young woman. “Did she mention why she wanted to talk?”

  “No. She only wanted to talk to you and Dave.”

  “We’ll be there soon.”

  “Penny wants to know when you’re going to come and see her garden. She has a patch that is all her own. She’s very proud of her work. I think she wants to impress you with her knowledge.”

  Jon racked his brain, trying to determine when he could go by the church garden. “Is she there with you at the church during the day?”

  “Usually. Sometimes she spends the day with my cousin Allison and her daughter. There’s just so much weeding that an eight-year-old wants to do.”

  He laughed. “I understand. Dave’s mentioned that his girls want to come by and see if real carrots grow in the ground. They have their doubts.”

  “Any time.”

  Jon hung up. Tomorrow was Dave and Marta’s twelfth anniversary. He’d volunteered to take the girls to a movie in the afternoon, but they might enjoy a trip to the garden. He knew he would.

  Jon and Dave pulled up to the Mission apartment complex. As they headed for the stairs, Mark Rodgers popped out of his office. “Detectives, what are you doing here?”

  Jon stopped and locked gazes with the man. “We’re continuing our investigation.” His tone left no room for further questions.