The Judas judge kk-5

by Michael McGarrity

  "How long did it take you to get to the accident?"

  "About twenty minutes. State police were tied up at another collision and I was the only unit available."

  "Was it dark when you arrived?" Kerney asked.

  "Just about."

  "Then how did you know the sky was clear and the sun was setting at the time of the incident?"

  "Witness report. A driver traveling east out of the mountains was first on the scene. He stopped and directed traffic until I got there. Another driver drove to a gas station outside of town and called it in."

  "Did you inspect the cardboard boxes?"

  "I gave them a look. They weren't crushed or run over, if that's what you're asking."

  "You assumed the boxes were originally in the road."

  Waxman nodded. "Probably dropped out of the back of a pickup truck hauling trash."

  "Any garbage, newspaper or packing material in the boxes?"

  "They were empty."

  "Any lettering on them?"

  "Just the manufacturer's name. They were plain brown boxes, like the kind used by moving companies."

  "Did you preserve the boxes as evidence?"

  "I saw no reason to."

  "How long was it from the time Langsford got hit to the time the first driver stopped?"

  "I'd say no more than five minutes. The driver told me Langsford was bleeding freely from the head when he got there."

  "Was Langsford alive when the driver arrived?"

  "The guy didn't know," Waxman said. "All he told me was the bicyclist looked dead and he didn't want to touch him. Langsford sure wasn't alive when I got there. His helmet had been split open and his brains were seeping out of a deep wound in his left temple."

  "Did your witness pass any cars traveling in the opposite direction before he arrived at the scene?"

  "He didn't think so, but he couldn't remember for sure. He was pretty shook up. You know how most civilians get when they see a fresh corpse for the first time. Especially one all torn to hell."

  "Did you get a name and address of the guy who found Langsford?"

  "I didn't have time. I had to block both lanes with flares and cones, handle traffic, and preserve the scene until backup and the first responders arrived. There were cars pulled off to the side for a hundred yards in either direction, and about twenty people trying to see what happened. It took volunteer firefighters and EMTS a good ten minutes to reach my location."

  "You got nothing on the witness?" Kerney asked.

  "He was a local. Said he worked at a furniture store in Roswell."

  "Give me a description."

  Waxman rubbed his chin and thought about it for a minute. "Late sixties, gray hair, above average height, mustache. That's all I can remember."

  Kerney glanced over Waxman's shoulder at the single wide mobile home. It didn't look like much to live in for anyone, especially a retired cop pushing sixty.

  Waxman read the look on Kerney's face and waved a hand in the direction of the mobile home. "Not much, is it? I spent twenty years in the Air Force and twenty more with the county sheriff's department The ex-wife got half of both my pensions. Is this a great country or what?"

  "That's too bad," Kerney said. "Did you ID Arthur Langsford at the scene?"

  "Nope. He wasn't carrying any identification, just a small fanny pack with some change, bills, a few bike tools, and a first-aid pouch.

  His family reported him overdue from his cycling trip about three hours after he got turned into roadkill. We made the ID based on the information they provided."

  "In your follow-up, you reported forensics came up empty on any physical evidence."

  "That's right. I think the vehicle that hit him had one of those vinyl front end covers and a composition grill and bumper to absorb impacts. I never could determine the make or the model."

  "Did you put the word out to auto dealers and repair shops?" Kerney asked.

  "You bet. I did phone calls, bulletins, drop-bys, and got zilch."

  Waxman watched Kerney thumb through the paperwork. "Any more questions?" he asked, when Kerney looked up.

  "That's it."

  "This is about the judge's murder, isn't it?"

  "Three deaths in one family raise interesting questions," Kerney replied.

  "That accident was a clear-cut hit and run."

  "You're probably right," Kerney said. "But I'd love to know who was behind the wheel of the car."

  Kerney toured the Roswell furniture stores looking for an elderly salesman with gray hair and a mustache. At a downtown family-owned establishment he met up with Harry Bodecker, a part-time employee who matched Waxman's description. Bodecker nodded his head vigorously when Kerney asked about the hit-and-run accident.

  "How could I forget that," Bodecker said. "It was just awful. Seeing that young man with his brains splattered on the pavement."

  "Not a pretty sight," Kerney said. "You told the deputy you didn't recall a vehicle passing in the opposite direction just before you came upon the accident."

  Clearly nervous for some reason, Bodecker cast a glance at the back office, looked around the empty showroom, and fiddled with the cuff of his shirt. "Let me ask the boss if I can take a break. He wouldn't want me talking to you on company time, and I don't want to lose my job. It's hard to get by on Social Security."

  "No problem," Kerney said.

  "I'll wait."

  Bodecker made a short trip to talk to someone in the office and then beckoned Kerney to follow him through double swinging doors into a storage room.

  Outside on the loading dock, Bodecker smiled and lit a cigarette. "Too addicted to stop and too old to care," he said, as he sucked in the smoke. "I didn't see a car pass me."

  "Are you positive?" Kerney asked.

  "Almost certain. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road. I think the snowstorm in the mountains may have had something to do with it. It was coming down really heavy when I left Ruidoso."

  "Didn't you tell the deputy the sun was setting when you got to the accident?"

  "It was. You know how it goes out here. Snowing in one place and clear twenty miles away."

  "No clouds?"

  "Sure, but the sun broke through for a little while right around dusk."

  "For how long?"

  "About the time I found the bicyclist on the road."

  "Did you give this information to the deputy?"

  "The only thing he asked me is what time I got there and what the weather was like when I arrived. Then he got busy setting up things so people wouldn't pile into each other."

  "You directed traffic until the deputy arrived."

  "On the eastbound lane. Another driver stopped and did the same in the opposite lane."

  "Did you let cars go through before the deputy arrived?" Kerney asked, wondering if any evidence could have been scattered or destroyed by vehicles passing by.

  Bodecker nodded and took another drag. "On the shoulders. It wasn't my place to stop them."

  "About how many cars went by?"

  "Maybe ten or twelve."

  "Did you see anything in the road? A hazard, any litter?"

  "Not in the road. There were some cardboard boxes off to one side. I moved them so the cars could get by."

  "Where were the cardboard boxes before you moved them?"

  "When I first got there? Near the dead man. Then the wind picked up and blew them across the highway."

  "Into the eastbound lane?"

  "Did you tell that to the deputy?"

  "No," Bodecker replied. "Like I said, he was real busy. As soon as the first firefighters showed up I left."

  "What about the other driver who stopped?"

  "He drove away the same time I did." Bodecker brushed ashes off his jacket, ground out his smoke with the toe of his shoe, and kicked it off the loading dock. "I've gotta get back. I work only the slowest sales days of the week, so I don't earn much in commissions. And the salary isn't all that great, either."


  "That doesn't sound fair."

  Bodecker smiled ruefully and shrugged his slightly stooped shoulders. "Old geezers like me don't get the gravy jobs. But it beats eating canned pork and beans for a week before my Social Security check arrives."

  Kerney sat in the newsroom with the meteorologist of a local television station and asked him to confirm weather conditions on the day of Arthur Langsford's death. Round-faced, with a toothy smile and a swept-back stylish haircut, the man swung his attention to his computer punched up data from the National Weather Service, pointed a stubby finger at the monitor, and traced a series of contour lines.

  "A fast-moving low pressure front from the Gulf of Mexico entered the state that morning, crossed the southwest quadrant, stalled over the Sacramento Mountains, dumped eight inches of snow on Ruidoso, and then petered out," he said.

  "Did it move east toward Roswell at all?" Kerney asked.

  The man shook his head. "It was dry as a bone on the plains. Compared to Ruidoso we had a twenty-degree difference in our high temperature that day. Warm and sunny."

  "What about the cloud cover around sunset in the foothills?"

  "By the ten o'clock news that night, Roswell was mostly cloudy with a sharp drop in temperature. I'd say we probably had the same conditions in the foothills at sunset. The front slowed as it broke up."

  "So with the winter sun low in the sky, it's likely there wouldn't have been a problem with glare or blinding sunshine in late afternoon."

  "That would be my bet," the meteorologist said, as he swung the task chair to face Kerney, his television-camera smile firmly in place.

  "This is a first for me. I've never been asked by the police to verify weather conditions. It must be important. What kind of case is it?"

  The man's interest put Kerney's guard up. He didn't need a TV weatherman passing along a hot tip to the newsroom staff. "It's an internal matter."

  Recognition showed on the man's face. "Wait a minute, aren't you the officer who shot the state police sergeant in Alamogordo? Yeah, you are. Deputy Chief Kerney. Now I've got it."

  "I'll let you get back to work," Kerney said, as he crossed to the door.

  "Thanks for your help."

  Behind him, Kerney heard footsteps. At the door, he glanced back and saw the man whispering to a young female reporter at a nearby desk. She looked at Kerney with blatant curiosity, reached for a notebook, and dogged him out of the building, calling his name and firing questions.

  He made it to his unit without comment, waved, cranked the engine, and drove off. She trotted alongside the unit shouting questions as he picked up speed. In the rearview mirror he watched her slap the notebook against a leg in frustration and hurry back inside. He doubted that her interest in pursuing the story had cooled.

  Senior Patrol Officer Tim Dwyer had a brisk, intelligent look, a self-confident manner, and a straightforward style. Had he been wearing a business suit instead of his state police uniform, Kerney would have pegged him as an up-and-coming corporate executive. One of a handful of accident reconstruction experts in the department, Dwyer was frequently used to handle complex vehicular investigations.

  In a small office at the Roswell district headquarters, where Dwyer was assigned, Kerney laid out the facts and his suspicions surrounding Arthur Langsford's death.

  Dwyer had greeted him with guarded detachment, which Kerney figured to be directly related to the Shockley incident and the back channel gossip about it circulating within the department. When he finished telling Dwyer want he wanted, the officer nodded curtly, asked for the accident report, and read it without comment. Kerney watched in silence as Dwyer spread Waxman's photographs, field sketch, and his field reconstruction drawing on the desk, and gave them a close look.

  When he was done he stacked the paperwork in a neat pile and looked up.

  "Ninety percent of all vehicle accidents are caused by driver error," he said. "This one fits the profile, but what made the driver swerve is anybody's guess. If those cardboard boxes were empty, the wind could have been blowing them back and forth across the road between the fence lines like Ping-Pong balls. Or maybe the driver was daydreaming or changing stations on the car radio."

  "Waxman was wrong about glare blinding the driver," Kerney said.

  Dwyer shrugged. "That takes away a contributing factor, but you can add a dozen more guesses. Like the driver's state of mind, for instance. Was the driver drunk, angry with a spouse, or pissed off at a boss? Since the driver left the scene and Waxman had no witnesses, his hypothesis was as good as any others."

  "Am I spinning my wheels?" Kerney asked.

  "The typical reason for leaving an accident scene is to avoid arrest. Beyond that, trying to determine driver intent gets real iffy, especially when there's a lack of physical evidence."

  "Is it worth your time to take another look?"

  Dwyer nodded. "I'll visit the site and rework Waxman's figures, just to make sure he did them the right way. Distance, speed, skid resistance, the radius of the curve, the coordinates-that sort of stuff."

  "According to the highway department, the roadway hasn't been changed since the accident," Kerney said.

  "That's good to know. I'm going to need to use the same reference points." Kerney's bum knee had locked up. He stretched his leg and rubbed the aching tendon. "There's nothing in the report that piques your interest?"

  "One thing," Dwyer replied. "Waxman should've gone back to the accident scene the next day to re-photograph the skid marks in full light, and he didn't do it. These prints you brought along don't show me anything. For example, I can't tell where the skid marks changed. Without that, determining point of impact is almost impossible."

  "Waxman's report says the driver braked ten feet prior to impact,"

  Kerney said.

  "I'd like to see the proof, and the pictures don't show it. Since it's still an open case, the sheriff's department should have the negatives in evidence. I'll get them, scan them into the computer, and do enhancements. It might tell us something."

  "Good enough. Thanks for your help."

  "Anytime, Chief."

  Tim Dwyer watched Kerney limp out. He had wanted to ask why the chief deputy was working a homicide instead of running his division. And why was Major Hutchinson sitting in Kerney's office up in Santa Fe? Was Kerney on his way out, as many officers hoped? Or was the speculation true that Chief Baca was protecting his old friend's ass and retirement pension?

  Dwyer decided he didn't want to know. He picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff's office.

  Once a residence, the funeral home near downtown Roswell looked like a southern plantation manor house. A two-story portico was supported by large Georgian columns, and the building was painted a pristine white. It sat in the middle of a carefully manicured lawn enclosed by an ornate wrought-iron fence.

  Kerney introduced himself to the funeral director and asked to see the guest book for Vernon Langsford, who was on display in the main viewing parlor.

  "We've had literally hundreds of guests," Barry Bishop said as he handed Kerney the guest book. "I expect a great many more will come to visit before tomorrow's service."

  Close to Kerney in age, Bishop had a puffy face, wore a suit jacket that hung loosely on his skinny frame, and spoke in hushed tones.

  Kerney scanned the book. It would be impossible to attempt contact with everyone who'd been by to pay their respects. "When is the service?" he asked.

  "Tomorrow morning at nine, with interment to follow," Bishop said, noting the name of the church.

  "Has Ms. Langsford given you a preferred seating list for family and friends?"

  "I'd like a copy."

  Bishop's eyes stopped smiling. "Surely, you're joking."

  "I can get a court order, if need be," Kerney said.

  "That's not necessary. I'll get it for you." Bishop stalked into a office, returned with a typed piece of paper, and handed it over.

  Twenty names were on the list. Kerney didn't recog
nize any of them.

  "Do you know any of these people?" he asked. "Those who are local, I do," Bishop replied.

  "Run them down for me," Kerney said.

  "People are grieving," Bishop said stiffly. "I don't think this is an appropriate time to be conducting police interviews."

  "Would you rather have me stop them for questioning outside the church?" Kerney asked.

  Bishop blanched at the thought, and Kerney left with the lowdown on twelve of Linda Langsford's preferred guests.

  Rather than wait for the evidence officer at the sheriff's department to find the film negatives and call him back, Tim Dwyer decided to use his time at the accident scene. The state highway was a major east-west artery and big trucks and motorists roared by in both directions, only marginally slowing down when they caught sight of the warning lights flashing on Dwyer's unit.

  He parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up the asphalt shoulder.

  At the top of the incline he looked down the road in the direction Arthur Langsford had been traveling. Even at top speed on a bicycle, coming out of the curve, the rider should have been able to stay on the shoulder, see the oncoming car, and make an adjustment. Waxman had made no mention of bike skid marks in his report, which Dwyer found interesting. The most common panic reaction to avoid a crash is to hit the brakes.

  At the bottom of the curve, Tim located the culvert and the county line sign Waxman has used as his reference points. As traffic allowed, he ran measurements to verify Waxman's distances and found the spot Waxman had identified as the point of impact. He sprayed the location with orange paint, and photographed it from various angles.

  Back at his unit, he punched in numbers on a pocket calculator, entered the formulas, and checked Waxman's math. Waxman had been right on, if he'd found the true point of impact.

  Tim looked back up the hill. What was the first point where the driver could spot a hazard in the road? He popped the trunk of his unit, grabbed his metal file case, carried it up to the impact point, and placed it on the shoulder. At the bottom of the hill, he could see the case clearly, and it was less than half the size of one of the three cardboard boxes.