Dead or Alive

by Michael McGarrity

  He knelt down and moved the body just enough to pluck a wallet from a back pocket of the blue jeans. The dead man was Riley Burke, Kerney’s neighbor and partner. He took a quick look around. Three pickup trucks were parked in the driveway. One belonged to Kerney, one probably to Riley Burke, and the third had a magnetic sign on the driver’s door that read “Lenny’s Auto Body Shop,” followed by a phone number.

  He returned to the sedan, opened the trunk, and pulled out an old wool blanket he kept there for emergencies.

  “Who is it?” Grace asked.

  “Not now,” Clayton replied. Wendell was wide-eyed and standing bolt upright in the backseat. Hannah was frozen on Grace’s lap. “I’ll tell you more later.”

  He walked back to the body, covered it, and dialed 911 on his cell phone. While he waited for dispatch to pick up, he swung the flashlight beam in an arc to keep the coyotes at bay, their eyes flashing back at him in the night.

  Clayton quickly identified himself when dispatch answered, gave his location, reported the dead body, and asked to be put through to New Mexico State Police Chief Andy Baca.

  “Please identify yourself again and repeat your location,” the dispatcher said after a brief pause.

  “I’m Lieutenant Clayton Istee with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office,” he repeated forcefully, “and I am at Kevin Kerney’s ranch outside Santa Fe. There is a dead man who appears to have been shot twice in the chest. I need state police officers and a forensic team sent to my twenty right now, and ask Chief Baca to call me on my cell phone immediately. Have you got all that?”

  “Affirmative. Did you ID the body?”

  “I did and it is not, repeat not, Chief Kerney.”

  “Ten-four. I’ll call Chief Baca and have him contact you.”

  “Roger that. Do you need directions to my twenty?”

  “Negative. I have a sergeant responding and more officers will be on the way shortly. ETA is under twenty minutes.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Clayton disconnected and heard the beeping sound of another cell phone coming from the pickup truck parked next to Riley Burke’s body. He retrieved it and saw on the screen that Riley had missed six calls, the earliest five hours ago, the latest within the half hour. He wondered why no one had come looking for him, especially with his parents and wife living so close by.

  From the driveway came the sound of the sedan’s engine turning over, followed by horn-honking. He put some rocks on the four corners of the blanket covering Riley’s body to keep the coyotes away and walked back to the car. Grace sat behind the wheel.

  “I can’t stay here with the children waiting for you,” she said. “We’re leaving. I’ll get a room in town for the night and call you to let you know where we are.”

  Clayton nodded. “I may be here for some time.”

  “The week is ruined,” Grace whispered.

  “Don’t think that way.” He watched Grace turn the car around and drive down the road before returning to the ranch house. The coyotes had closed in on the body. Clayton chased them off before they could do additional damage, and they snarled in protest.

  Chief Baca’s call came as Clayton was about to use the house key Kerney had given him to make a quick tour of the ranch house.

  “Dispatch says the dead man is not, I repeat not, Kerney,” Andy said. “Is that true?”

  “Affirmative,” Clayton replied, as he noticed that Sara’s SUV was not parked in the driveway. Perhaps it was in the garage or stored in the horse barn. “The deceased is Riley Burke.”

  “Damn,” Andy said. “That’s going to make Kerney very angry.”

  “I know it,” Clayton said as he jiggled the front doorknob and found it locked. He walked through the enclosed courtyard to the glass patio door to the kitchen and saw that it had been smashed. The pattern of glass fragments on the floor suggested it had been broken from the outside in order to gain entry.

  “And you think it’s a homicide?” Andy asked.

  “No doubt about it, Chief.” Clayton stepped back from the debris so as not to contaminate evidence at the point of entry. “There’s a broken kitchen patio door that suggests a home invasion. I’m going to go through the front door and take a quick look around.”

  “Be careful,” Andy said. “I’m about to leave my house for your twenty. See you when I get there.”

  “Roger that, Chief.”

  Inside the house Clayton turned on the exterior lights to keep the coyotes at bay. The front room and adjoining library appeared untouched. The television and stereo system hadn’t been taken, nor had any of the art on the wall been removed. In the master bedroom there was no sign of a burglar’s quick search through the dressers for jewelry and other valuables.

  The absence of disarray made Clayton question the motive for the break-in. Or had Riley Burke’s arrival kept the killer from looting the house?

  He checked the truck with the Lenny’s Auto Body Shop magnetic sign on the door and found it was registered to a Leonard Hampson who resided in Springer. He phoned the information to dispatch and watched the coyotes yip and yap at him for being kept away from the fresh kill while he waited for the state police to arrive.

  Sergeant Russell Thorpe, shift commander for New Mexico State Police District One, ran north on I-25 with lights and siren. As a rookie officer, Thorpe had worked with Kerney, who’d been deputy state police chief at the time before taking over as top cop at the Santa Fe Police Department. Several years later, Russell had teamed up with Clayton Istee and Ramona Pino, an SFPD detective, on a case that involved the discovery of a graveyard outside of the town of Socorro where a serial killer had buried his victims.

  The unearthing of the crime scene was directly connected to the hunt for another killer who’d plotted the murder of Chief Kerney and his entire family, including Clayton, his wife, and children. Fortunately, Clayton had put the man down for good before he could accomplish his bloodletting.

  Russell knew that if Clayton Istee said the dead man at Kerney’s ranch was a homicide victim, you could take it to the bank. He was one hell of a fine investigator.

  According to dispatch, Clayton had reported that it wasn’t Kerney lying in the driveway at the ranch. Word had it Kerney was living large in London while his wife pulled a gravy tour as the U.S. Army military attaché at the embassy. It was good to know that he hadn’t been killed on a brief visit home.

  So who was the dead guy? A caretaker hired to look after the place? A neighbor? Some wandering vagrant? And why had he been killed?

  Thorpe knew that about 90 percent of murder victims knew their killers, which meant investigators usually had a good pool of potential suspects to target. The small percentage of random murders, killings by strangers, and murders that occurred during the commission of other crimes could be much more difficult to work because of the absence of any links to the victims.

  He wondered if this homicide might have something to do with the bizarre sequence of events that had started earlier in the day when a correctional officer had been brutally attacked by a convicted felon, sent by mistake to the state prison in Springer.

  Every cop in the state was on high alert for Craig Larson, who had so far nearly killed the correctional officer, almost suffocated a young family locked inside a Department of Correction van, and left a man to fry in the blistering hot desert grasslands outside of Santa Rosa.

  Thorpe’s radio kept him updated as he barreled down Lamy Hill to the ranch road turnoff, and word came to him that one of the vehicles parked at the ranch belonged to Lenny Hampson, the man who been kidnapped by Larson in Springer and dumped in the desert.

  Dispatch also reported that two homicide agents were en route about ten minutes behind him, a forensic team was rolling with the same ETA, and of equal interest, Chief Baca was on his way to the crime scene.

  On the ranch road, he rolled his front windows down, cut the siren, switched off the emergency lights, and pushed the unit hard through the canyon and up the c
rest. A waning half moon had just risen, giving just enough light to outline the structure of the horse barn a quarter mile away. The outside lights of the ranch house flooded the porch, courtyard, and parking area in front of the house.

  Through the open windows Thorpe could hear horses whinnying and coyotes barking. He flashed his headlights as he approached the house. Clayton Istee stood near a covered form on the ground, waving both hands over his head. Thorpe announced his arrival to dispatch, dismounted his unit, and hurried over to Clayton.

  “Look who they sent me,” Clayton said with a smile as he shook Russell’s hand.

  “I heard you made lieutenant,” Thorpe replied, grinning back.

  Clayton glanced at the three stripes on Russell’s uniform shirt-sleeves. “Yeah, and now you’re a sergeant.”

  “How about that? Who’s the victim?”

  “Riley Burke.” Clayton flipped off the blanket covering the body.

  Thorpe stared down at Riley Burke, took in some air, and let it out slowly through his nose. “I know him slightly, met his wife and his parents on several occasions. They’re Kerney’s neighbors.”

  Clayton nodded. “This wasn’t a burglary. A patio door was smashed from the outside to gain entry but nothing inside the house appears to have been taken.”

  Thorpe pointed at the truck with the auto body sign. “I’m not surprised. Two hours ago, the registered owner of that truck, Lenny Hampson, stumbled half-dead into a gas station on the outskirts of Santa Rosa and told the local cops that a fugitive named Craig Larson had dumped him in the desert without food or drink.”

  Clayton’s eyes widened. Before he’d gone off duty, he’d heard about Larson’s attack on the correctional officer and the theft of the Honda from the young couple with the baby, but the kidnapping was new information.

  “That, I didn’t know about,” he said. “Larson may have come here to switch vehicles. There are fresh tire tracks that could be from the SUV Kerney’s wife, Sara Brannon, drives. It’s a red Jeep and it’s not in the garage. I haven’t checked the horse barn.”

  “Would you mind staying with the body while I take a peek inside the horse barn?” Thorpe asked.

  “Actually I do mind, but I’ll do it anyway because you’re a friend.”

  “Don’t you like dead bodies?” Thorpe asked as he started for his unit.

  “Not really,” Clayton replied. “By the way, there are six missed calls on Riley’s cell phone, some hours old. I’m guessing his wife and parents are away, otherwise they would have come looking and found him.”

  Thorpe stopped in his tracks and turned back to Clayton. “You’re right. Where’s his phone?”

  “On the seat of his truck.”

  “Will you check Riley’s contact list on the phone against the missed calls while I go look for the Jeep?”

  “Not a problem,” Clayton replied.

  Thorpe got in his unit and drove toward the horse barn. Clayton retrieved the phone and quickly discovered that the missed calls were indeed from Riley’s wife and parents. He put Riley’s phone on the hood of the truck and used his own phone to call his boss at home and brief him on Riley Burke’s murder and the tie-in to the manhunt for Craig Larson.

  “Who’s on scene with you?” Sheriff Paul Hewitt asked when Clayton finished.

  “A state police sergeant, Russell Thorpe. He’s solid. More personnel are on the way, including Chief Baca.”

  “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.