“Not much professionally. We were friends. He’ll be missed. I was surprised he retired. He hadn’t planned on it at least for five more years, but he wasn’t the same after he was shot.”
“That can happen.” Al had been driving into Durango from his office in the Highway Patrol building when he’d been ambushed and wounded in the leg. Al had been investigating rumors of a smuggling ring in the area.
The secretary returned to the counter. “Mrs. Lopez is available now.”
Thirty minutes later, Kyle was enrolled in Durango High School and had his schedule in his hand. Mrs. Lopez walked Cody and Kyle out into the reception area where a student would be waiting to show Kyle to his locker and his next class.
“Manny will come to each of your classes and take you to your next one. If you have any questions, he should be able to help you with what you need. He’s one of our aides who does this for any new students. Ah, there he is now.”
Cody peered toward the double doors as a teenager with black hair, brown skin, and a tall, thin build came through the entrance. Kyle stiffened next to him. His son’s permanent frown cut even deeper into his face.
“I can find my own way around. I went to a high school twice this size. I don’t need any help,” Kyle whispered to Cody.
Mrs. Lopez stopped a few feet from Manny and swung toward Kyle. “We do this for all our new students. It helps them not feel so overwhelmed with a new place.”
“That’s okay. I have seven minutes to get to second period. I think I can manage.” He stalked away from Cody and Mrs. Lopez and passed Manny without a word.
“I’m sorry for my son’s behavior. This move has been difficult for him. Thank you for your help today.” Cody tipped his tan hat then hurried to catch up with Kyle. When he did, he clasped his arm, halting his progress. “This isn’t the time or the place to have this conversation, but this evening we’ll talk about your behavior this morning. You might be upset and angry at me, but you do not take it out on others who have nothing to do with your situation. Son, sometimes in life you have to grin and bear it.”
Kyle yanked his arm from Cody’s grasp. “I didn’t ask for a student to show me around like I don’t know how to find room numbers or ask directions if I need to.” The bell rang. “Now I need to get to class. I wouldn’t want to be late because you delayed me.”
Students poured out into the hallway, and his son disappeared into the crowd. When Cody noticed the stares he was receiving, he pivoted and made his way out of the building. At his SUV, his cell sounded. Noting it was the police station, he quickly answered it. “Jackson, here.”
“There’s been another murder. Chief Winters wanted me to call you.”
He’d know Liliana’s voice anywhere. There was a huskiness to it as if she’d inhaled too much smoke. “Where?”
“Out south of town, not far—the second dirt road on the highway to Seminole Canyon State Park. It leads to a two-hundred acre ranch.”
“I’ll be there.” Cody pocketed his cell, wondering how long it would have taken her to call if the chief hadn’t told her to notify him.
Miguel Salazar covered his mouth with a quaking hand, his face leeched of all color as he stared at his cousin’s body. “Who would do this?”
“That’s a good question. Any thoughts on it?” As Officer Hudson strung up the yellow tape from the barn to the wooden house thirty feet away, Liliana moved back from the body, indicating to the man who had found the body to follow her.
“I felt for a pulse to see if he was alive. He was warm. He hadn’t been . . .”
Liliana paused. “You touched his neck?”
“Sí, but that was all.”
That could possibly account for the blood on his boots and clothes. “Did you wipe your hand off on your shirt?”
He nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. I need to change. I need to get these clothes off.”
His gaze transfixed on his cousin, Miguel stumbled as he backed away. He went down on one knee. The action caused him to fold in on himself, sobs coming from the man. She was acquainted with Miguel but didn’t really know him well. She certainly hadn’t realized he had a cousin named Carlos who lived out here. She hadn’t realized anyone had bought this property recently.
She gave Miguel a few moments to gather his composure. He struggled to his feet and turned away from Carlos lying sprawled on the ground in front of the barn. “How long has Carlos been here?”
“A couple of weeks at the ranch. My wife’s uncle bought it but got sick so Carlos worked out an agreement with him. Carlos had been staying with members of the family.”
“Does anyone live here with him?”
Miguel peered down at the ground by his feet. “No. He’s single.”
“How long has he been in Durango?”
“A few months. He used to live in New Mexico.” Miguel glanced over his shoulder, mumbled, “I think I’m going to be sick,” and slapped his hand over his mouth again. He heaved several times, tears shining in his eyes. “I don’t—understand. I . . .” He swallowed hard. “Can I leave? I can’t stay here. He’s riddled with bullets.”
She didn’t think she would get much more from Miguel as long as he could see his cousin’s body and the funeral home wouldn’t be here for a while. “Yes, you can go down to the station. When I’m through here, I’ll finish interviewing you.”
“Salud!”
“Officer Hudson, can you take Miguel to the police station?
Give him something to change into and process his clothes.”
“My clothes? Why?”
“You touched your cousin. You are part of the crime scene.” “I can’t go home, take a shower, and change into my own clothes?”
“No, but I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
“You don’t think I could do this?” The man waved wildly toward the body.
“Did you?”
His mouth dropped open. “No!”
“Then you’ll have no reason not to cooperate with us.”
“Come with me, Mr. Salazar,” Officer Hudson said, heading toward his patrol car.
“Why can’t I follow in my truck?”
“Someone will bring you back out here to pick up your truck.”
As Officer Hudson drove off, Cody’s blue SUV came around the curve and pulled into the yard. She waited for him before proceeding to the body to examine it up close. “This is probably not how you envisioned being welcomed to Durango.”
“Not in my wildest dream—three murders in four days.” Cody brought his camera and began shooting some pictures of the body and crime scene.
As two more squad cars rolled into the yard, Liliana squatted near the body and ran her gaze slowly down Carlos, categorizing the injuries she saw. Multiple gunshots to both kneecaps, right shoulder, stomach, and probably the last one was to the heart. From the blood spatter and damage to the body, it appeared Carlos might have been killed from a distance.
In her mind, she visualized how she thought the crime might have gone down. From the trail and pattern of blood, Carlos came out of his house and headed toward the barn or his movements could have been reversed. There was no way to tell for sure. He fell, shot most likely in the shoulder, but got back up and began moving toward the barn. Went down again. Blood pooled in the dirt.
“The shooter toyed with Carlos before killing him.”
After walking to the barn and extracting a bullet lodged in the wood, Cody turned toward her. “This is a 7.62 NATO round used in M16 rifles. From the entry and exit wounds and the blood splatter on the barn door, I think the shots came from there.” He pointed toward a cropping of rocks perched on top of a small rise about three hundred yards away.
“A sniper?”
“Possibly. We’ll need to check that out, then the house. But it’s looking like there were no witnesses around.”
“He lived alone.”
“You know him personally?”
“No, but I’m acquainted with the man who fo
und the body—his cousin, Miguel Salazar. We’ll interview him later at the station. Officer Hudson took him there.”
“Why was Miguel Salazar out here?”
“He came to visit.”
“Nothing else? On a Monday morning? Where does Miguel work?”
“He works in construction. Miguel was upset. He kept staring at his cousin and shaking his head. I thought it best to get him away from the crime scene. Since he touched Carlos to feel for a pulse, I wanted to process his clothes. He had blood on his boots, too.”
“Are you thinking Miguel had something to do with this?”
“A large percentage of the murders in this country are committed by people who know the victim.”
“I know the statistics, but this doesn’t feel like that.”
“And it doesn’t feel like a random murder either. Why would a killer come all the way out here to kill a random person? Toy with that person?”
Cody swiveled toward Liliana. “I agree. Like the other two, this is personal. The killer knows Carlos and has a reason to kill him.”
“I don’t think it’s Miguel. He seemed genuinely scared.”
“Why scared?”
“Good question. One we’ll need to ask him.”
Liliana inspected the body again as the ME approached with Officer Robertson. In the front jean pocket something blood-soaked stuck out of it. “Look.” She pointed at what she’d seen then carefully with her gloved hand pulled out a folded piece of paper.
Cody bent over her and stared at the paper covered in Carlos’s blood. Taking the tweezers he handed her, she carefully opened it to reveal a letter.
“The signature looks like the name ‘Anna’ but no last name.” She rose and held it out for him to see better.
“It’s all in Spanish.”
She read the first line out loud in English, “I will be there soon. I am counting the days until I see you again.” The next part of the letter was unreadable from the blood.
“I don’t see a date.”
“I don’t either. So this Anna could have come and gone. Miguel said Carlos was alone. He said nothing about a woman.”
“Once we know what the whole letter says we might have more information about when she was coming. Maybe from where.” Cody held open the evidence bag while Liliana slipped it inside.
“The letter may mean nothing, but I’m hoping it’s a piece of evidence because we sure could use some.”
“Let’s get this scene processed then check out the place I think the killer was.”
An hour later, after the ME took the body to do an autopsy, the area had been combed for any pieces of evidence. “Not much for us to go on,” Liliana said as she and Cody headed toward the cropping of rocks. “I hope we find something here. We could use it.”
“What bothers me the most is that you haven’t had any murders in Durango for a few months and suddenly in four days you have three.” Cody’s strides cut the distance at a quick pace. “On the surface they don’t appear to be done by the same person. Different weapons used. The MOs are all over the map.”
Even though it was the end of March, the sun bore down on Liliana with an intensity that reminded her of early summer. Sweat beaded her brow, and she brushed her hand across it. “I hope this isn’t a pattern. It’s been quiet for a while, although we have had a rise in robberies.”
“What kind?” he asked as he began climbing the hill.
“The majority are homes, a few businesses. I think it’s the same people responsible for most of them.”
“Didn’t Garcia work a series of murders last fall?”
“That was outside of Durango—along Highway 90. They were related to drug running. We’re pretty isolated out here. Which can be a bad thing. Certain people like that fact.”
“But it can be good. You know who the strangers are in the area.”
“If you see them. What about the ones you don’t? We’re starting to discover Victor Ruiz aka Victor Torres, thanks to the police in Brownsville, wasn’t a nice man.”
“Yeah, he’s suspected of bringing illegals into the U.S. from Mexico. Things were getting too hot in Brownsville. I guess that’s why he changed his name and town. So had he opened shop here in Durango smuggling people across the border or was he doing something else? He had a drug charge in his past.”
“It would have been nice if the .38 had been used to kill Jane Doe. That would have been one crime solved. Do they have the ballistics on the other guns in the freezer?”
“The full report should come in this afternoon.”
Liliana stopped at the base of the rocks overlooking the barn and house and peered down at the indentation in the dirt. “A tripod?”
“Probably, and I bet it wasn’t for taking pictures.” He gestured toward the ground that had been swept. “Covering his tracks using this.” With gloves still on his hands, Cody picked up a branch tossed to the side on the grassy part of the hill. “The crime lab guys are going to give me grief, but I’m bagging and tagging this as evidence in hopes there might be some kind of DNA evidence or fibers on the branch.”
“I know what you mean, but we’re desperate for evidence we can use. I especially want to know what else was in that letter.”
“I’ll be driving everything we gathered today to the lab in San Antonio first thing tomorrow morning and put a rush on it. I don’t like the fact there have been so many murders close together—seemingly unrelated but violent.”
While Cody took photos of the area, Liliana made a slow circle then walked a few paces to the other side of the hill. “He probably parked down there.”
Cody stooped to investigate the ground closer, looking beneath some rocks. “No shell casings left here. He took them with him.” Standing, he covered the distance between them. “Let’s go check it out. It’ll be hard to cover up tire tracks.”
Carrying the bagged branch, he descended the steeper slope on the backside of the hill. When he offered his hand to assist her over a deep rut, Liliana ignored it and jumped the gully, landing a few feet from him. She wobbled but quickly regained her balance. Being only five feet three inches tall had its disadvantages. People underestimated her strength and capabilities.
At the bottom, tire tracks left an impression in the dirt.
“After we go through Salazar’s house, I’ll take a casting of these impressions. At the moment, besides the bullet lodged in the barn door and the letter, there’s little else to go on.”
“You forgot the branch. It could be a valuable piece of evidence.” She suppressed the smile for a few seconds but couldn’t for long.
“Are you gonna give me grief too?” Wading through tall weeds and cacti, Cody followed the tracks and made his way to the dirt road that led to the small ranch.
“No, never, especially since we both know long shots can come in from time to time.”
When they reached the road, the tire tracks became lost among others. “Too bad we can’t follow them to the killer’s place. Sure would make this job easier.” Liliana started back toward the house.
“It doesn’t look like the guy went close to Salazar’s home. Before our tracks covered up his, it appears the killer turned toward the highway.”
“He murdered him from a distance then left. Maybe we’ll find something in the house that will point to someone who would like to see Carlos dead.” Liliana mounted the steps to the porch of a small, rundown place where their victim lived.
Inside the adobe brick structure, the front door opened into a tiny living area with a kitchenette off to one side, equipped with a small refrigerator, two burner plates, a sink, and two chairs. A chipped plate with bits of dried egg on it sat on a table along with an empty mug—as though Carlos had finished his breakfast and gone right out to the barn without cleaning up.
Looking closer, she noticed drawers weren’t completely shut, the counters in the kitchen were cluttered with items from the cabinet. “Either Carlos is a lousy housekeeper or this place has been tosse
d.”
“The killer came down from his perch after he killed Carlos and searched the house? Then walked back to his vehicle behind the hill and left?”
“I guess Miguel could have. Although I don’t think so. He was visibly shaken. He didn’t take anything with him.”
“That you could see.”
“We should check his truck parked out there before we leave.”
“And take fingerprints. If the killer went through this place, we may find them.”
Cody’s long strides chewed up the distance between the kitchen and the doorway into the lone bedroom in the house. “I’ll take this room. You process the living area.”
Because she so recently found Maria in a couch, that was the first place Liliana looked, tossing the cushions to the floor and checking every crevice. Nothing. Next, she went to the TV table and pulled out the drawer. Empty. Had there been something inside that the killer took?
She took out her fingerprinting kit and began dusting for prints. Lots of smudges. Some areas wiped clean. Had that been Carlos or the killer?
She finished her search in the kitchen, opening and investigating each drawer and cabinet. For a lone bachelor, he had a lot of food. Was he expecting a visitor? Miguel? Anna? What were they missing? Again, she processed the kitchen and gathered a few good prints.
Cody came back into the main room. “There wasn’t anything in the bedroom or bathroom, except a couple of changes of clothes. He bought a new pair of white pants and a white shirt. The price tags were still on them. But that was all.”
“A new outfit. More food than a single man usually has in the house. Most of the men I know who live by themselves have pretty bare shelves. Not Carlos. I wouldn’t be surprised that he went shopping yesterday. So what was he planning? Expecting Anna? If so, why didn’t Miguel know? He acted like they had been close.”
“Maybe that will be the key. Figure out what he was planning, and we’ll know what’s going on.”
“I’m thinking Anna is at the center of this.”
“We don’t know why she was excited about seeing him, but I bet it is because they were lovers.”
Shattered Silence: Men of the Texas Rangers Series #2 Page 7