Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel

by Michael McGarrity

  “What politics?” Clayton asked. “The governor’s supposed to be a shoe-in for reelection.”

  “The Spanish ambassador’s visit is a great opportunity to show off Vigil’s statesmanlike potential,” Mondragon said, sounding more like a political analyst than a cop. “The protection detail gives the event today some additional media razzamatazz, and will help put him in the national spotlight. Besides it’s good, free publicity before the primary.”

  Mondragon wasn’t engaging in idle speculation. He had a direct pipeline to his brother-in-law, a former sports reporter for an ­Albuquerque television station who was currently serving as Governor Vigil’s press secretary.

  “You almost sound like you know what you’re talking about, Cap,” Clayton joked.

  Mondragon ran a hand over his almost totally bald head and grinned. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  The handheld radio sitting on Mondragon’s desk announced the arrival of Agents Avery and Garcia. He pointed at his office door. “Your team is here. Go forth and protect the honorable Spaniard. And when you get home, tell Grace I’m sorry your wedding anniversary trip got loused up.”

  “She holds you personally responsible.”

  “Ouch,” Mondragon said with a fake grimace. Mondragon said with a fake grimace.

  Paul Avery and James Garcia were complete opposites in appearance. Garcia, short, stocky, barrel-chested, with a dark complexion, was Mexican-American, but looked more Apache than Clayton. Avery, as lanky and lean as a long-distance runner, had movie-star good looks, with high cheekbones and deep-set brown eyes. Appearances aside, both men shared a real love for their jobs. Nothing was more satisfying to them than getting the bad guys off the streets. They were exactly the kind of cops Clayton wanted working for him.

  He intercepted Avery and Garcia in the reception area of the district office, ran down the assignment, and gave them the skinny on why the Spanish ambassador suddenly needed dignitary protection.

  As they walked to their units, Avery laughed. “Politics. Now it makes sense. I Googled the guy looking to see if he was involved in some kind of political controversy, or was a member of the royal family or something, but found nothing.”

  Clayton shrugged. “Let’s keep him safe anyway.”

  “Do you think we can?” Garcia deadpanned.

  With Avery and Garcia following, Clayton led the way on the drive through the foothills, soon leaving the pavement and following a bumpy, dusty county road to the turnoff to the center, a gently winding, freshly graveled lane bordered by mature desert willow and New Mexico locust trees swaying in the slight April morning breeze.

  A quarter of a mile in, the center came into view. The adobe house had sharp, clean lines and a typical flat pueblo-style roof with a low parapet that anchored it to the land. The tan stucco blended with the scrubby, rock-strewn foothills. The needle-like spires of the Organ Mountains towered behind on the eastern horizon.

  A row of tall, southwest-facing windows looked out on the sprawling city of Las Cruces. Ever-expanding subdivisions peppered the foothills, and the city now crowded the green ribbon of the Rio Grande Valley. A good distance away on the northeast side of the house, a pine tree windbreak protected a fenced, fallow garden accessed by a pea-gravel walkway.

  Large boulders and extensive rockwork accented a circular driveway in front of the house. Stands of bear grass, Apache plume, and three-leaf sumac, artfully placed among the boulders, splashed a soft green against the hardscape. Interspersed were beds of pale yellow ground cover that nestled up against the rocks.

  All in all, it was a spectacular place, in its day probably one of the most expensive houses in the entire county.

  Kerney had once spoken to Clayton of Fergurson as his mother’s best friend and his surrogate aunt. Never married, she’d amassed a fortune thanks to the increasing prices her paintings commanded, and her astute investments. Kerney had inherited a northern New Mexico ranch from Fergurson, which had ultimately made him financially well off.

  Clayton had never given any of it serious thought. Seeing the house, he realized that Erma had made herself one very rich lady.

  Two vehicles were parked outside, a landscaper’s pickup truck with a magnetic sign on the driver-side door, and a commercial van with a broom, mop, and bucket painted on both side panels. A man at the corner of the house worked at smoothing out a gravel pathway with a rake, while a woman on a stepladder busily washed the southwest-facing windows.

  Clayton called in their arrival to dispatch, and as they approached the front door an older woman in her fifties stepped outside to greet him. Wearing jeans and a long-sleeved pullover, she stood framed in the open doorway, looking somewhat testy.

  No more than five-three, she had short brown hair, an oval face, and carried a few extra pounds around the waist.

  “I was called and told you were coming,” she said with a frown. “Is this absolutely necessary?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Istee,” Clayton replied with a smile, ignoring her question and displaying his credentials. “Agents Avery and Garcia will be assisting me. Are you Cynthia Davenport?”

  In the face of Clayton’s civility, Davenport’s expression softened slightly. “Yes, I’m the director of the center, but really I don’t see the need for all of this.”

  Clayton nodded sympathetically. “I understand, but the ambassador’s attendance at the event requires more security than usual. We’ll try not to be too intrusive.”

  Davenport’s expression lightened a bit more. She stepped aside and gestured for the officers to enter. “I’d appreciate that. What do you need to do?”

  Clayton didn’t immediately respond. On a table inside the foyer sat a model of what the center would look like upon completion. The hideaway estate in the foothills was about to be transformed into a compound with a sunken amphitheater separating the new studios from the original residence, all echoing the mid-1950s feel of the place.

  He told Davenport he liked the look of it, which earned him a small smile, and asked for a copy of the evening’s program, the guest list, and the names of the vendors hired for the event. He explained they would first do a thorough visual inspection of the house and immediate grounds, to be followed by a wider perimeter search.

  “We’ll need access to every room,” Clayton added.

  Davenport’s sour look returned. “How long will it take? I have people coming to set up for the ceremony, caterers arriving later—there’s so much to do.”

  Clayton glanced into the long living room, empty of any furnishings, with a wide tile floor. Opposite the windows overlooking the city, a low rectangular fireplace without a mantelpiece or a visible chimney was nestled in the wall. On a sidewall that led to the kitchen, linen cloth covered what Clayton assumed to be either a framed picture or a plaque.

  “We’ll work as quickly as we can,” he replied.

  With a curt nod, Davenport disappeared into the kitchen and quickly returned with a key ring and some papers, which she handed to Clayton before excusing herself to make some phone calls.

  Clayton divided up the tasks. He would do a walk-through of the premises, Avery got the grounds, and Garcia would start checking the guests and vendors.

  Garcia frowned as he paged through the guest list. “Besides the governor and ambassador, there are two hundred names on this list, including most of the local politicians, university big shots, government officials, and even the commanding general of White Sands Missile Range. Maybe you should call out more troops.”

  Clayton shook his head. “We’re not here to protect two hundred people, just the ambassador.”

  “I was only trying to make things more interesting,” Garcia said with a smile.

  “What else have you got?” Clayton asked, shaking his head in mock dismay.

  Garcia scanned the vendor, media, and caterer list. “Three TV stations are sending remote satellite broadcast trucks, cameramen, and reporters,” he said. “Also, reporters from the Las Cruces, Albuquerq
ue, and El Paso newspapers will be here. Then there’s the caterers, servers, cleaners, setup crew, representatives from the construction company, the architectural firm, and so on and so on.” He waved the papers at Clayton. “That’s a chinga lot of folks to run through the system.”

  Avery gave Garcia a look of feigned disgust and left through the front door.

  “Most of the people coming to this party are the elite of Las Cruces,” Clayton replied. “Cross out those you know by sight or reputation, and get started on the rest.”

  “Think I’ll find any assassins or domestic terrorists?”

  “You never know what will turn up,” Clayton replied, as he turned away to track down Cynthia Davenport, who’d failed to provide him with a copy of the program for the groundbreaking ceremony.

  He found her standing on the rear portal of the house, talking on her cell phone while gazing across an open swath of cleared ground at a shiny-clean yellow backhoe loader sitting behind an orange mesh construction fence that stretched in a circle for a good fifty yards, completely enclosing it.

  A medium-sized piece of heavy equipment, it had a shovel in front to move dirt and backfill, and a bucket in back for digging and trenching. In front of the fence, facing the portal, were six gold-painted garden shovels on a portable rack.

  “Is the backhoe out there for show?” Clayton asked, after Davenport took the phone away from her ear.

  Davenport gave him a real smile. “Yes and no. After the governor and the other dignitaries dig their symbolic spadeful of dirt, the machine will roar into action for a few minutes, signaling the start of real construction.”

  “That should be very dramatic,” Clayton noted.

  Davenport’s smile broadened. “That’s the whole idea. I had the contractor fence the approximate site of the future amphitheater to keep the guests and media from getting too close. We don’t want any accidents or injuries.”

  “Very smart.” Beyond the fencing, a good hundred yards from the house, Clayton could see three sets of survey stakes with pink ribbons fluttering in a light, intermittent breeze, likely designating the placement of the planned studios.

  “We’ll get great television coverage out of it,” Davenport replied, sounding pleased with herself.

  “I bet you will. Do you have a copy of the program?”

  Davenport nodded. “Yes, in my office. I was about to get one for you. You can start your search, or whatever you call it, there.”

  He followed Davenport around the side of the house to the attached garage, where an exterior staircase led to her office above. As they climbed the stairs he asked her how much land the center owned and learned it was a hundred and sixty acres, all bought by Fergurson over the course of many years.

  Davenport ushered him into the front room, a small rectangular space furnished with a desk, chair, and a side table parked next to the front door piled high with copies of the program. A partial wall with a built-in bookcase separated the room from a narrow galley kitchen. The door on the back wall probably led to a bedroom and bath.

  This had to be Kerney’s apartment, Clayton thought as he tried to envision Isabel and Kerney snuggling on a couch, or sharing a meal in the breakfast nook at the back of the tiny kitchen. Nothing came to him.

  Davenport handed him a program. “Do you need to see the rest of the office?”

  “Yes, I do.” Without waiting for permission, Clayton checked the bedroom, which had been turned into a cramped conference room with a table, chairs, and a fax machine in a corner. The closet was filled with office supplies. The out-of-date bathroom had pale green tile, matching floor linoleum, and a recessed medicine chest behind a mirror above the sink containing some over-the-counter remedies, lipstick, and makeup. The windowsill above the claw-foot bathtub had bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion. On the shower curtain hung a sleeveless black and ivory dress with a slightly flared skirt. Davenport’s outfit for the ceremony, Clayton guessed.

  Before returning to the front room, Clayton looked over the program. The governor would arrive at four p.m., and after some face time with the guests he’d unveil a plaque honoring Erma Fergurson and make a few remarks to the assembled guests. The entire party would then move outside to the construction site for the groundbreaking ceremony. Joining the governor would be the president of the university, the president of the NMSU Foundation, the mayor of Las Cruces, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and the local state senator.

  Back in the front room, Davenport stood next to her desk talking on the phone. Clayton slipped two copies of the program into the jacket of his sport coat for Avery and Garcia. When she hung up, he asked where the living room furniture had been stored.

  “Below my office in the garage,” she answered.

  He held up the key ring with four keys. “What do these open?”

  She explained one was for a shed behind the house that held yard and garden tools, one for a locked kitchen pantry that contained fine china, crystal stemware, and silverware used for special events, one was for the closet in Erma’s studio that held her work that wasn’t on display, and one was for the garage.

  “Please don’t disturb the studio in the house,” she asked. “I’ve had it carefully staged to look just the way it did when Professor Fergurson lived here.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Clayton promised as he left.

  After five minutes of squeezing around looking under the Danish modern living room furniture stacked in the garage and examining the half-full cans of paint and boxes of screws and nails on the built-in shelves along the back wall, Clayton locked the door and went looking for Garcia, who was sitting in his unit busily entering names in the computer.

  “No hits on dangerous people yet,” he commented with a bored sigh.

  Clayton handed him a program through the open unit window. “Keep trying. There has got to be at least one lawbreaker on those lists we can arrest.”

  “Jesus, I hope so,” Garcia called out as Clayton turned away.

  In the living room, Clayton discovered portable rectangular tables had been set up in front of the bank of windows, along with a podium positioned by the fireplace. On the walls were four of Erma Fergurson’s oil paintings, each one with a typed label next to it describing the scene and year it was painted.

  Fergurson used heavy, repetitive brushstrokes in her work, and Clayton had to stand back from the landscapes to see them clearly. They had a vibrancy that drew him in. The one of Hermit’s Peak up by Las Vegas in northeastern New Mexico appealed to him the most. He’d hiked to the top of it with Grace and the kids back when Wendell and Hannah were still young enough to enjoy doing things with their parents.

  Clayton peeked behind the linen veil on the sidewall that separated the living room from the kitchen. The bronze plaque honoring ­Fergurson consisted of a relief profile of her as a mature woman. Inscribed on it were the years of her tenure at the university, the distinctive signature she used to sign her paintings, and a brief statement honoring her talent and generosity.

  Fergurson’s studio was down a short passageway off the living room. Soft light poured in from two large windows that framed the tall spires of the Organ Mountains. An unfinished watercolor sat on an easel, pencil drawings were haphazardly arranged on top of a large print table, art books were stacked on an old Spanish Colonial writing desk, and a paint-splattered artist’s smock was draped over the arms of a tattered upholstered easy chair. There were tubes of paint on a small side table next to the easel, along with several wadded-up rags.

  Clayton gave Davenport credit for a good staging job. The studio looked like Fergurson would appear at any moment.

  He unlocked the closet, which held two dozen or more large framed Fergurson landscapes. He’d seen no evidence of an alarm or security system in the building and wondered what kind of insurance the center carried. Any wannabe criminal who knew what he was looking for could easily break open the closet door and make off with valuable paintings, many worth six fig
ures each.

  He finished his sweep with a plain-view inspection of the two bedrooms and the adjoining bathrooms, stepped onto the rear portal, and called Grace to tell her he’d be home in plenty of time to take her to dinner at her favorite restaurant.

  “The governor and the ambassador are due to leave here at five,” he added. “We can still celebrate our anniversary. Go ahead and make reservations for us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, this is all political theater.”

  “The bed-and-breakfast in Santa Fe is holding our room.”

  “We’ll leave early in the morning.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I love you.”

  Clayton smiled at the thought of being alone with Grace. “Me, too. I’ll be home after five.”

  He disconnected just as Paul Avery came around the corner of the building.

  Avery pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “There’s a locked shed back there.”

  Clayton tossed him the key ring. “Did you check the backhoe?”

  “It’s clean, no bomb or explosives. In fact, everything appears perfectly normal. I don’t think the ambassador has anything to worry about.”

  “Finish up, return the keys to Davenport, and meet me at your unit.”

  “What’s next?”

  “We’ll take a ride together around the property. You drive. I’ll ride shotgun.”

  Avery twirled the key ring on his index finger. “Ten-four.”

  There were several old jeep trails on the land that put the suspension on Avery’s unmarked unit to the test.

  “We should have taken your vehicle,” he grumbled as the right front tire bounced in and out of a gully that cut across the rutted trail.

  Too busy looking for signs of human activity, Clayton didn’t respond. Considered the best tracker in the department, he conducted an annual training session at the law enforcement academy in Santa Fe to teach the basics of reading sign and tracking fugitives.