“You sent Pino out of town, and you knew I had an interview scheduled with her first thing this morning.”
“Outside, Lieutenant,” Molina said gruffly as he moved away from Casados.
The bright July sunlight made Molina blink. He walked Casados into some shade at the side of the garage. “Now, what’s your gripe?” he asked.
“You heard me. I’ve got a job to do and you’re messing with me.”
“I sent Detective Pino to Mescalero because I wanted to talk to you before this goes any further.”
“I could write you up for interfering with my investigation,” Casados said.
“Do you want to flex your muscles or hear me out?” Molina asked.
“What do you want to say?”
“I put pressure on Pino to find a suspect in the Potter homicide, but she isn’t going to tell you that. I told her to take a hard look at Mary Beth Patterson and Kurt Larsen, and she isn’t going to tell you that either.”
“That doesn’t excuse Pino’s lack of judgment,” Casados said.
“Ain’t hindsight a wonderful thing?” Molina shot back. “She had two mentally ill people known to hold a grudge against the victim, and one of them was armed and potentially dangerous.”
“She still fucked up,” Casados replied. “So did Sergeant Tafoya.”
“No, Bobby, I fucked up,” Molina said, poking himself in the chest. “I put the pressure on them. I requested the SWAT call-out. I wanted Larsen to be our perp, and because of that I didn’t ask the right questions.”
“Pino fed you misinformation because she didn’t do her job right.”
“She’s not a social worker, dammit, and the tip that Larsen and Patterson might be credible suspects came from Chief Kerney. Are you also going to write him up for feeding me misinformation?”
“That’s absurd.”
“Pino acted based on what she’d been told to do by me, and the reasonable suspicion she got from her conversation with Patterson. You want accountability for this screw-up? You’re looking at it.”
“You can’t cover for your people this time, Sal.”
“Why not? I did it for you when you were in my unit. More than once, if I recall correctly.”
“Are you asking me for a favor?” Casados demanded.
“No favor,” Sal replied. “But I will give you what you need to put this to rest. You recommend to the chief that I’m to be severely reprimanded and asked to retire. I’ll turn in my paperwork immediately.”
“Why scapegoat yourself?”
“I want to retire, Bobby. I haven’t slept in two days, haven’t seen my wife, haven’t even changed my shirt. I’m maxed-out on my pension benefits, so I’m not gonna get any richer. I just want to rest for a week and then go fishing.”
“Tafoya’s on the list for lieutenant and Pino’s next in line for sergeant stripes,” Casados said.
“Yes, they are, and you worked with both of them in my unit. Are they seasoned? Are they capable of command? Of course they are. But forget about all that. The final decision to promote rests with the chief. Let him sort it out. That’s his job, not yours.”
Casados bit his lip.
“There’s one more thing,” Molina said.
“What’s that?”
“Chief Kerney knows I sent Pino down to Mescalero and I haven’t heard a peep out of him about my decision. If he’d wanted to countermand my order and chew my butt out, it would have happened long before you got to work this morning.”
Casados stood with his hands on his hips, tapping his fingers against the butt of his holstered sidearm. “Are you telling me Kerney’s behind this scheme?”
“No, I’m telling you I know the man and I think he’ll want to make a decision that’s best for all concerned. All you have to do is give him the opportunity.”
“If I go with this, you can’t back out, Sal,” Casados said.
Molina laughed. “Hell no. I’m doing myself a favor, Bobby.”
“Okay.”
“Good,” Sal said as he walked back into the sunlight. “Now leave me alone. I’ve got work to do, and not much time to do it.”
Detective Matt Chacon knew that unlike the TV cop shows-where actors sit in front of a computer monitor and instantaneously pull up a digital fingerprint record that matches a perp or a victim-trying to ID someone using prints in the real world can be mind-numbing work. There are thousands of prints that have never been entered into the computer data banks, and thousands more on file that, because of poor quality, are virtually unusable for comparison purposes. On top of that, figure in the small cop shops who haven’t got the money, manpower, and equipment to transfer print records to computers, and the unknown number of print cards that were left in closed felony cases and sit forgotten in basement archives at police departments all over the country, and you’ve got a data-bank system that is woefully inadequate and incomplete. Finally, while each fingerprint is unique, the difference between prints can be so slight that a very careful analysis must be made to confirm a perfect match. Even then, different experts can debate the results endlessly, since it isn’t an exact science.
Chacon had started his career in law enforcement as a crime scene technician with a speciality in fingerprint and tool-mark identification, so of course Lieutenant Molina had sent him off to the state police headquarters to work the state and federal data banks to see if he could get a match.
He’d been at it all night long and his coffee was starting to taste like sludge, his eyes were itchy, and his butt was numb. Using an automated identification system, Chacon had digitally stored the victim’s prints in the computer and then started scanning for a match against those already on file.
The computer system could identify possible matches quickly, but then it became a process of carefully analyzing each one and scoring them according to a detailed classification system. So far, Chacon had examined six dozen sets of prints that looked like possible equivalents and had struck out. But there was another baker’s dozen to review.
He clicked on the next record, adjusted the monitor to enhance the resolution of the smudged prints, and began scoring them in sequence. Whoever had printed the subject had done a piss-poor job. He glanced at the agency indentifier. It was a Department of Corrections submission.
Chacon finished the sequence and used a split screen to compare his scoring to the victim’s prints. It showed a match. He rechecked the scoring and verified his findings.
For the first time, he looked at the subject’s name. The victim was Victoria Drake, a probation and parole officer with the Department of Corrections, assigned to a regional office in the southern part of the state.
He printed out a hard copy, moved his chair to another monitor, accessed the motor vehicle computer system, typed in the woman’s personal information from the record, and a driver’s license photograph of Drake appeared on the screen. The dead woman in the van was most definitely Victoria Drake, although she’d looked much better in life than in death.
Chacon glanced at the hard copy. Drake had been fingerprinted fifteen years ago. He wondered if she was still employed by the department. He reached for the three-ring binder that contained addresses and phone numbers of every federal, state, and local criminal justice agency in the state and paged through it until he found the listing for the regional office.
Chacon paused and thought about giving Molina the word first. But since Drake had been a probation and parole officer, the lieutenant would want to know a hell of a lot more than just the woman’s identity. He quashed the idea of calling Molina and dialed the number for the regional probation and parole office instead.
Sal Molina drove while Matt Chacon briefed him. Victoria Drake, age forty-three, had recently been promoted to a central-office job in the corrections department after serving as a probation and parole officer in Las Cruces and then as the manager of the regional office in Socorro. Divorced with one grown son serving in the armed forces, Drake had moved to Santa Fe less tha
n a month ago and lived alone in a rented town house in a middle-class neighborhood off Rodeo Road.
Molina thought it interesting that once again the compass pointed south. He wheeled into the subdivision with the crime scene techs following close behind. It was one of those developments with a homeowners association and restrictive building covenants that hadn’t existed in Santa Fe before the early seventies. Now they were sprinkled around the city and in several larger nearby bedroom communities in the county.
The streets were narrow curving lanes designed to create a tranquil feeling. The native landscaping in the common areas was the low-maintenance variety, with lots of carefully pruned pinon trees and gravel planting beds interspersed with artistically grouped boulders. The houses and town homes had been built in a standard cookie-cutter design, right down to the exterior plaster, trim paint, patio walls, walkways, and street-number signs outside each unit. Molina found it boring.
He barreled over the last speed bump, turned into Drake’s driveway, and parked behind a late-model imported sedan. “Let’s do a walk-around before we go inside,” he said to Chacon.
At the back of the unit, they found the gate to the patio ajar and the sliding glass and screen doors jimmied open. They entered the combination living and dining room, an open space with a corner beehive fireplace and a high ceiling of plank wood and beams. To the rear was a long counter that separated the space from a step-up galley kitchen.
Drake had arranged the furniture in the room but hadn’t finished unpacking from her move. Sealed cardboard boxes were stacked in a line under the counter, several framed posters leaned against a wall by the fireplace, crumpled newspaper littered the carpet, and knickknacks sat haphazardly on the dining table. It was impossible to tell if a struggle had taken place.
Molina scanned the stairs leading to a second-story landing that looked down on the living room and then dropped his gaze to the hallway off the kitchen that ended at the front door. “We’ll hold the techs outside until we do a visual search,” he said as he slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. “Take the upstairs and look around. See if the perp left us another love note.”
Chacon went upstairs and Molina started his tour by examining the sliding patio door, which showed tool marks on the jamb, probably made by a knife. The perp had picked the easiest, quietest, and quickest way to break into the house.
The galley kitchen was neat and clean. There was a kitty-litter box and food and water dishes on the tile floor, but no sign of a cat. In the small second bedroom off the adjacent hall, a computer and printer sat on a desk and three empty freestanding bookcases stood in the middle of the room surrounded by boxes of books. The linen closest in the guest bathroom at the end of the corridor held carefully folded towels. The tub was filled with empty cartons that had been broken down into bundles and tied with twine.
Molina entered the garage through a door perpendicular to the front entrance and hit the light switch with his elbow. Except for a large, cleared space in the center of the garage floor, it was filled with empty cardboard wardrobe boxes, trunks, lawn and garden tools, and miscellaneous pieces of furniture.
A small, open box sat in the cleared area. Molina looked inside and found a cat with a broken neck, a package of rat poison, a knife, some rope, and a note, which read:
KERNEY CAN’T WAIT TO MEET THE WIFE SEE YOU SOON
He bagged the note and carried it upstairs to Chacon. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Nope,” Chacon replied, gesturing at the orderly, organized master bedroom. “What have you got?”
Molina held up the note for Chacon to read. “Found it in the garage,” he said, “where I think he probably killed her. He’s a tidy fellow; he left everything behind he used to break in, tie her up, and poison her in a box for us to find.”
“How thoughtful,” Chacon said.
Molina nodded. “Get the techs started. Maybe he forgot something when he cleaned up after himself.”
Samuel Green’s mother, his second victim, was buried under some privet bushes that formed a hedge along the backyard wall of the house where she’d lived. He’d killed her five years ago, buried the body, planted the privets, faked her move to Arizona, and arranged for a property management firm to lease out the house and send the rent checks in her name to a post office box in Tucson, which he then easily forged and cashed. After the last tenant had moved out, he leased the property as Samuel Green and moved back to Santa Fe.
The house was in an older subdivision off Old Pecos Trail on a dead end dirt lane surrounded by a high wall that hid the house from sight. Territorial in style, with brick coping around the roof line, milled woodwork lintels, and a Victorian-style porch, it had been built in the 1960s. Upscale in its heyday, it was in need of serious modernization, particularly the kitchen and bathrooms. When Green was a boy, there had only been two neighbors along the lane. Now the area was built up with newer, expensive pueblo-style homes, all of them behind gated walls.
Green appreciated his neighbors’ need for privacy, although it was unlikely any of them could possibly know his true identity. Almost twenty years had passed since he’d lived in the house as a child and both of the original neighbors had moved away long before he’d murdered Mother.
He parked in the garage and walked into the house, his footsteps echoing through the dark, empty living room. After disposing of Noel Olsen’s car, he’d taken a morning flight from El Paso to Albuquerque, ridden the shuttle bus to downtown Santa Fe, and picked up his car from the parking lot at a city recreation center within walking distance of the Plaza.
In the bathroom he peeled off the fake nose, removed the blue-tinted contact lenses, took off the blond wig, washed away the adhesive that had held it in place, and inspected himself in the mirror. It didn’t take much to go from looking like Noel Olsen back to being Samuel Green. He put the disguise in the makeup kit, which also contained the black wig and matching mustache.
The stubble that had reappeared on his head made him frown. He shaved it with a razor until it was nice and smooth again, smiled at the results, and then stretched. It was time for a well-deserved nap.
He walked to the bedroom where his father, Ed, had tied a string around his penis and locked him in his room for wetting his bed. Where his mother had starved him for failing to do his chores or for bringing home bad grades. Where his few toys would be taken from him for the slightest infraction of any rule. Where if he “talked back” his father would put duct tape over his mouth. Where he’d been forced to sleep on the floor because he’d played with daddy’s tools or disobeyed him. Where he’d been tied up for running around the backyard pretending to be a choo-choo train.
The room was his prison until the day he’d told his second-grade teacher about it. After that, it had only gotten worse.
Now the old bedroom was Green’s war room, filled with all the tools and materials needed to carry out his plan. There were books on police procedures, homicide investigation techniques, and the latest developments in forensic science. Various photographs he’d taken of his targets were taped to one wall along with snapshots of where they lived and worked and corresponding hand-drawn diagrams he’d made of the various escape routes. He’d memorized, driven, and walked all of them repeatedly before striking.
On the large desk fashioned from plywood and lumber sat the police scanner, a laptop and printer, a camera with various lenses, his handgun, binoculars, a small color television, and brown accordion files that contained pertinent personal and background information on each subject.
On the wall above the box spring and mattress that served as his bed, Green had tacked up a large map that showed all the roads into and out of Santa Fe. He’d spent hours studying it on the off chance that something went wrong, so he could avoid roadblocks, lose pursuing cops, and get away successfully.
He grabbed a black marker from the desk, walked to the wall of photographs, and drew an X through all of Victoria Drake’s pictures. He wrote question marks on the ph
otos of Clayton Istee, his wife, and their two children and then quickly blotted them out. It didn’t matter if Kerney wasn’t around to see it. He would finish the job and wipe out Kerney’s bloodline completely. Besides, it gave him something to look forward to.
He stretched out on the bed and thought about his father, and how much fun it had been to find him in California years after his parents’ divorce, kill him, carve him up, and dump his body parts in the Pacific Ocean. How his mother had squealed when he strangled her. How Olsen had pleaded for his life, and Potter had frozen at the sight of the pistol. How Manning had watched in fright as the knife approached her throat while he held her down, and how Victoria Drake had convulsed on the garage floor like a headless chicken.
He smiled in the darkness as he thought about more good times to come, then curled up in a ball and went to sleep.
Chapter 10
K erney landed in Santa Fe and got briefed by radio as he drove to Andy’s house on Palace Avenue to check in with Sara. Andy and his wife, Gloria, lived within walking distance of the Plaza in one of the few houses that hadn’t been bought up by wealthy newcomers, turned into a bed-and-breakfast, or converted into upscale professional office suites. It was a low-slung, rambling adobe dwelling with a beautiful backyard garden tucked between two large Victorian mansions. The house had been in the Baca family for over a hundred years.
Gloria Baca greeted him at the door with a smile, took him into the kitchen, poured him a cup of coffee, gave his shoulder an affectionate squeeze, and left him alone with Sara. The room was bright and airy, with a skylight above the large, round oak kitchen table, and French doors that led to the portal and the tree-shaded yard beyond. Through the window over the sink, Kerney could see a state police agent roaming along the flower beds in front of the privacy fence at the back of the lot. Behind the closed kitchen door another agent stood guard in the living room. On the street, a city patrol officer was parked curbside at the front of the house.
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