Death Song

by Michael McGarrity

  Clayton smiled. “That’s good, Mr. Talbott. Anything else?”

  Clifford shook his head. “That’s it, I’m afraid. Now am I going to go to jail?”

  “We’ll keep you here,” Mielke answered, “until we can get to your cabin, take a look around, and see if what you’ve told us can be verified.”

  “You’re going to have a tough time getting to my ranch,” Clifford replied. “I came down the mesa in four-wheel drive with chains on the tires and almost didn’t make it.”

  Mielke stood up. “We’ll get there all right. The county has a road grader and a snowplow on the way, and I’m borrowing two Arctic Cat snowmobiles from Search and Rescue.”

  As he rose, Clayton gave Mielke an approving glance. Calling for special equipment had been a smart move. He stepped around the table to Talbott and placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. He may have killed Brian Riley, but in Clayton’s mind Clifford Talbott wasn’t a murderer.

  “Stay with the deputy, Mr. Talbott. If you think of anything else you may have forgotten to tell us, let the deputy know about it.”

  “I’ll do it,” Clifford said with great seriousness.

  On the deck to the double-wide Clayton stood with Mielke as the snow swirled around them. It was hard to tell how much of it was wind-driven off the fresh accumulation on the ground and how much was falling from the sky.

  “I’ll handle the crime scene at the ranch,” Mielke said.

  “Good deal.”

  “Our mobile command center will be here in a few minutes,” he added. “There’s a drop-down bunk bed in it. Get some sleep before you drop dead. I’ll wake you if anything important turns up.”

  “I need to call Sheriff Hewitt and Chief Kerney.”

  “Already done. Chief Kerney is on his way, but it make take him a while. All the highways are dangerous and there are whiteout conditions in some places.”

  “Where’s your boss?” Clayton asked.

  Mielke looked up at the sky. “Monitoring the situation from home.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “No, I am not.”

  Mielke kept looking at the night sky. “I didn’t think so.” He knew Clayton had been going almost nonstop since the crack of dawn yesterday. “Take a catnap in the mobile command center.”

  Although Clayton had no plans to go to sleep, getting off his feet for a spell sounded like a good idea. “I think I will. Send someone to get me when Chief Kerney arrives.”

  “Sure thing,” Mielke replied, lying through his teeth.

  Kerney wrestled his truck slowly down his ranch road, hoping the highway had been plowed and sanded, only to find it snowpacked and covered in places by drifts that were almost axle-deep. He pushed on, wipers thudding against the accumulation of wet snow on the windshield, heater blasting away to clear the fog off the side windows. In all his years in Santa Fe, he’d never seen a winter storm of such magnitude. It had to be a fifty-, maybe even a hundred-year event.

  Where the highway connected to the Interstate, he turned onto the freshly plowed and sanded frontage road and made his way without delay to Cañoncito. At the turnoff to the Riley double-wide, he talked briefly with the deputy at the roadblock. The deputy told him that a grader and a snowplow were halfway down the country road to the crime scene with Major Mielke and one of his investigators following behind on borrowed Arctic Cat snowmobiles, that Clifford Talbott, the confessed killer of Brian Riley, was at the residence under watch, that Ramona Pino was excavating the well house, and Clayton Istee was catching twenty winks in the S.O. mobile command center.

  At the double-wide Kerney sat down across the kitchen table from Clifford Talbott. He knew Talbott from several spring and fall works, the semiannual cattle roundups that both men had participated in at ranches on the Galisteo Basin. In the vast stretches of rural New Mexico, there remained a long-standing tradition for ranchers, cowboys, and their families to congregate twice a year at the various spreads to gather, brand, and sort out livestock to be sold at auction, held over for breeding, or kept for private sale to other stockmen.

  Talbott’s small ranch bordered the basin, and he had always been a neighbor to count on when it came to lending a hand. Last fall, Kerney had worked a long, dust-choked day with Talbott branding and tagging calves at one of the largest ranches on the basin. Talbott had been cheerful and talkative, and had pulled his share of the weight when it came to getting the work done. Kerney had enjoyed his company.

  “How are you holding up?” Kerney asked.

  “I don’t know,” Talbott replied, looking rather hangdog. “I sure didn’t set out to kill that boy, Kerney. If he hadn’t raised that pistol at me, I never would have fired. They say I have to go to jail. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after that.”

  “It will all get worked out.”

  Talbott looked around the room and glanced at the deputy who’d positioned himself by the front door. “Why are they keeping me here? Whose place is this, anyway?”

  “Just be patient,” Kerney replied.

  Talbott shook his head. “The idea of jail scares the bejesus out of me, Kerney. I’ve been asking, but they won’t even let me call a lawyer, my wife, my minister, or my son over in Tucumcari.”

  “How long have you been held here?” Kerney asked.

  “It’s going on two hours since I told the deputy what happened.”

  Kerney did a quick mental calculation. Under normal circumstances, Talbott would have been booked and processed at the county detention center and allowed his phone call by now.

  “Who do you want me to call for you?” he asked.

  “My wife, Enid.”

  “Won’t telling her what happened upset her?”

  “She’ll be upset some, but she’s a strong gal. Just tell her to trust in the Lord, stay put at home close to the phone, and to call our minister.”

  “Give me the phone number.”

  Talbott broke into a relieved smile and rattled off his number. Outside on the deck, where the winds had quieted down and light flakes in a clearing night sky were floating lazily to the ground, Kerney made the call. Enid Talbott answered after the first ring. Kerney identified himself, told her there had been a shooting at the family’s ranch, and her husband was unharmed but a police investigation was under way.

  “What happened?” Enid Talbott asked breathlessly.

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Mrs. Talbott. Your husband would like you to stay at home and not attempt to come to Santa Fe. Do as he asks, ma’am, the highways are treacherous. He also wants you to call your minister and tell him about the shooting. Does he have a special reason to ask you to do that?”

  “Probably because our minister is also the chaplin for the Moriarty Police Department and he might be able to find out more about what’s going on.”

  “I see.”

  “Is Clifford in trouble?”

  “That’s a possibility, Mrs. Talbott.”

  “Is someone dead?”

  “An investigator from the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office will be in touch with you as soon as they know more about the situation.”

  “Can’t you tell me more?” Enid Talbott pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, I cannot.”

  After advising Enid Talbott to call a friend to keep her company, Kerney disconnected. He walked to the barn, where Detective Matt Chacon was in the tack room working under the overhead glare of a bare lightbulb. From the doorway Kerney watched Matt use a pry bar to loosen a slat from the wall and poke his hand inside to feel around.

  “Find anything?” Kerney asked.

  Matt turned around. “Nothing yet, Chief. But the nails holding this board in place were of a different type and looked newer, so I thought I better check to see if something was stashed inside the wall.”

  Kerney nodded. “Good thinking, Sergeant.”

  Detective Matt Chacon blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”

  Kerney smiled. “I�
�m giving you a heads-up. You’re about to be promoted.”

  Matt cracked a big, boyish grin. “Unbelievable.”

  “It’s well deserved, Matt. As of next week, you’re the new Property Crimes Unit supervisor.” Kerney paused. “The sky is clearing and the temperature is dropping fast. Don’t stay out in the cold too long, Sergeant Chacon.”

  Matt nodded and kept grinning. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Kerney returned to the double-wide and followed the crime scene tape to the well house. Sergeant Ramona Pino was crawling out of the structure on her hands and knees. Her nose and cheeks were bright red from the cold, and the winter coveralls she wore were soaking wet.

  “How’s it going, Sergeant?”

  Ramona stood under the jerry-rigged canopy, brushed some snow off her coveralls, and shook her head. “It’s too early to tell, Chief. I’m still excavating snow.”

  “That’s enough for tonight, Sergeant. This can wait until morning. I want you to head back to the double-wide and get yourself dried off and warmed up.”

  “I can keep going, Chief.”

  “A half-frozen detective sergeant is of no use to me.” Kerney flipped open his cell phone and asked for a deputy to be sent to his twenty to protect the crime scene. “Head out, Sergeant. I’ll stay here until the deputy arrives.”

  The sound of footsteps breaking through the frozen crust of the snow drew Kerney’s attention. Clayton stepped under the canopy into the light. He looked worn down, and in spite of the cold his face had little color to it.

  “I thought you were getting some rest,” Kerney said.

  “Can’t sleep.” In truth, in spite of trying to force himself to stay awake, Clayton had fallen asleep, only to have a spooky dream startle him back into consciousness. In it, Tim Riley, wearing a kerchief headband, knee-high buckskin boots, and a painted leather war shirt, chanted a death song.

  Why had he dreamt that Tim Riley was an Apache warrior singing a song no white eyes should know? And why had there been a faceless women in the dream laughing soundlessly as Riley sang?

  Clayton knew that if he couldn’t shake off Riley’s ghost he would have to have a ghost medicine ceremony performed after he got back to the Rez. He turned on his flashlight, walked to the well house, bent low, looked inside, and glanced back at Ramona. “I’ll take a turn.”

  Kerney gave Clayton a measured look. “No, you will not. We’ll pick this up in the morning. Go back to the double-wide with Sergeant Pino.”

  Too tired to argue, Clayton yawned, shrugged, turned on his heel, and trudged away.

  Kerney gestured at Ramona to follow. When both officers disappeared in the darkness, he took a peek inside the well house. There was maybe a foot of snow left to remove before any close inspection could be made. Parts of an old well motor were partially exposed under the intact section of roof at the back of the structure, and there was a rusted section of pipe leaning against a half-rotted wall. Clearly the well had been abandoned years ago.

  Kerney couldn’t even hazard a good guess about what had once been secreted away in the dilapidated, abandoned structure. But whatever it was, apparently it had become a catalyst for murder. Counting Brian Riley and Denise’s unborn child, six dead so far. He wondered if there would be more.

  The wind picked up and felt like a raw, icy slap against his face. It was a hell of a night to be outside for any reason at all, including murder.

  At Clifford Talbott’s ranch, Don Mielke climbed off the Arctic Cat and told the snowplow driver and road-grader operator to stay with their equipment. The two men huddled together in the cab of the snowplow to stay warm. Stiff from the cold, Mielke gestured to his senior investigator, Tony Morales, to join him.

  Morales killed the engine to his snowmobile and grabbed his equipment bag. After a quick look at the license plate on the Harley to confirm that the motorcycle belonged to Brian Riley, and a glance at the broken porch door glass, the two men drew their sidearms and cautiously entered the ranch house. The corpse in the easy chair was clearly dead, so they did a fast sweep of the premises before returning to the front room.

  The slug from a hunting rifle, which was on the kitchen counter just where Talbott said he’d left it, can do lethal damage to a target several hundred yards away. From a range of less than ten feet, the results were lethal and god-awful. The entry wound above Brian Riley’s eyes from the round of Talbott’s bolt-action Remington .30–06 was almost perfectly cylindrical. But the exit wound in the back of his head was an explosion of blood, brains, and bone that had penetrated and saturated the upholstery of the easy chair and blown a pulse of blood splatter onto the far wall.

  Riley’s bowels had released at the time of death, and the stench of Talbott’s vomit still lingered, so the room smelled as bad as it looked.

  Mielke gave the body a careful once-over while Morales took photographs. Riley’s hand was wrapped around the pistol grip of the revolver, and an empty, handmade leather-tooled holster was in his lap. He was wearing a heavy wool sweater at least two sizes too big and had an old faded barn coat draped over his shoulders. On the floor to his right, next to a leg of the chair, was a backpack.

  Mielke left the backpack untouched and made a thorough search of the small house. In the bedroom, dresser drawers had been pulled out and left open. In the kitchen cabinets, dust on the shelves had been disturbed. A dirty plate, a gummy fork, and a pot with the remains of gooey macaroni and cheese stuck to the sides sat on the counter. In the bottom of the trash bucket was the empty macaroni and cheese box. A pot of water that had boiled down to almost nothing sat on the woodstove, and an empty coffee mug was on the lamp table next to the easy chair.

  On the front porch Mielke found an adjustable wrench that Riley had likely used to break the glass to the door. Back inside, Tony Morales was busy bagging and tagging the cookware, plate, utensils, and trash.

  “Have you finished photographing the body?” he asked.

  Morales nodded.

  He handed Morales the wrench to bag and tag, went to Riley’s body, took the Smith & Wesson revolver out of the dead boy’s hand, and opened the cylinder. The handgun was fully loaded. Mielke held it up for Morales to see.

  “I think this is just what it appears to be, Major,” Morales said. “Straightforward self-defense.”

  “Apparently so.” Mielke reached down, picked up the backpack, opened it, dumped the contents—which looked to be only clothing—on the floor. He searched through the smaller side pockets, found a large envelope containing currency, put the envelope aside, and pawed through the wadded-up, dirty, smelly clothing looking for anything in the pockets. All he found was a pack of matches advertising a nightclub in downtown Albuquerque and a plastic bag with a small amount of grass. He dropped the empty backpack on top of the pile of dirty clothes.

  “Nada?” Morales asked.

  “Nada.” Mielke flipped open his cell phone. Although Talbott had told him it wouldn’t work, he tried to call out anyway, but there was no signal. He keyed his handheld, got dead air on the S.O. frequency, and switched through the remaining police and emergency channels with the same results.

  “Are we cut off from radio contact?” Morales asked.

  “That’s affirmative.” The room had cooled down quite a bit since their arrival. Mielke checked the woodstove, opened the vent to increase the airflow, and added some wood to the bed of hot embers. “You’re going to have to stay here while I go back and report in. If the medical investigator is there, I’ll send him to you right away. Meanwhile, dust for prints. Make sure you get the handgun, the rifle, and the wrench.”

  “Ten-four, Major.”

  Morales had used both a digital camera and a 35mm Pentax to photograph the crime scene. Mielke asked Morales for the digital camera so Kerney and Clayton could see what the crime scene looked like. With the camera safely zipped into an inside pocket of his parka, he stepped over to the kitchen cabinet that contained foodstuffs, reached to the back of the top shelf, pulled out a
full pint bottle of whiskey he’d spotted earlier, unscrewed the top, and took a swallow. It felt good and warm going down. He held the bottle out to Morales. “Go ahead, we’ve earned it.”

  Morales hesitated, took the bottle from Mielke’s hand, tilted it to his lips, and let the liquid run down his throat, wondering if the major would be taking the whiskey bottle with him. On more than one occasion he’d watched Mielke down eight shots in a row at the FOP and get totally stinking drunk.

  Morales held the bottle out to Mielke.

  Mielke shook his head as he went to the door. “Clean off the fingerprints and put it back in the cupboard. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  After returning to the double-wide with Ramona Pino, Clayton forced himself to stay awake. He wanted direct confirmation from Don Mielke that the dead man in Clifford Talbott’s ranch house was truly Brian Riley.

  In the mobile command vehicle, he talked with Ramona for a while until she left to go home and get some sleep. Then he spent some time with Kerney filling him in on how close he’d come to finding Riley in Albuquerque, and how an Albuquerque cop had let Riley waltz right into the Minerva Stanley Robocker crime scene and drive away on the Harley.

  Kerney, in turn, told Clayton about his analysis of the letters Denise Riley had written to her sister during the years she’d supposedly lived far away from Santa Fe, at times in foreign countries.

  “When will you hear something?” Clayton asked.

  “Tomorrow, hopefully.” Kerney looked at his wristwatch. “But maybe not. With all this snowfall, except for essential personnel, the governor will probably shut down all state offices. I imagine the mayor and the county commission will do the same.”

  Clayton suddenly remembered he’d high-ended the Lincoln County S.O. unit on a boulder and had asked Mielke to send a tow truck to free it. “Do you know the status of the vehicle I was driving?” He wasn’t about to claim Riley’s assigned S.O. 4×4 as his own.

  “It’s at the county yard in Santa Fe,” Kerney said, “and not going anywhere for a while. It has a broken front axle, a leaking radiator, two flat front tires, and a bent wheel. Paul Hewitt told me you ran into a deer recently and put your marked unit in the shop. Seems you’re rather hard on your assigned vehicles.”