Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel

by Michael McGarrity

  Patrick frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.” Restless, Pablito raised his head. Patrick nudged him toward the pasture. “What withers away?”

  Kerney turned Hondo to follow. “Your innocence, the good inside of you—call it what you will. You carry what you did like an invisible yoke.”

  “Is it like feeling guilty?” Patrick asked, as he dismounted to close the gate.

  “Are you asking me about the murder of Kim Ward?”

  “It’s all over the Internet that you killed her, but I don’t believe it.”

  “And you shouldn’t.”

  Patrick remounted. “I’ll get asked about it when I go back to school.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  Patrick flung a leg over Pablito and loped the pony ahead. “That my father’s not a murderer, and he’ll prove it.”

  “Think I can?”

  “I know you will,” Patrick yelled over his shoulder as he urged Pablito forward.

  Kerney held Hondo back slightly to watch his son—still so innocent, so caring, so effortlessly light in the saddle—joyfully gallop across the pasture through the fading light of early dusk. And for just a moment, the weight of the invisible yoke lightened.

  An unsettling call from Dalquist that the district attorney was considering a high-powered special prosecutor to try the case ended Kerney’s enthusiasm to continue his Internet search. Weary of sitting, he stepped outside on the portal. At the far end, lights were on in the guest wing, a two-bedroom suite with a full bath and combined kitchen, dining, and living area. It was comfortable and private, with great views of the Galisteo Basin.

  Sara’s family used it often on brief and extended visits. However, only twice over the years had Clayton and his family stayed there, and for a single night each time.

  For a minute, Kerney took in the fresh evening air and deepening shadows before wandering to the guest wing, where Sara and Patrick were keeping Dean and Barbara company. They all sat together on the couch watching the local television news.

  Kerney stepped inside, and Dean, his father-in-law, greeted him with a smile on his deeply tanned face. He had a mild manner, seasoned by decades of caring for big and small critters, working in bad weather, and dealing with the everyday disasters of ranch life.

  His wife Barbara, her eyes glued to the screen, watched a report, broadcast live outside the Department of Public Safety headquarters, that Lieutenant Clayton Istee had resigned his position from the state police. The department’s public relations officer refused to comment when asked if the resignation had anything to do with the ongoing Kim Ward murder investigation.

  “Good,” Kerney growled, his expression darkening.

  “How can you say that, Kevin?” Barbara snapped. “He’s your son. From what I’ve read, it was some woman he arrested who accused him on social media of covering up for you.”

  Kerney shrugged. Barbara was the ramrod of the Brannon outfit, running herd on her clan with the skills of a career diplomat and an army top sergeant. He loved her, but knew better than to quarrel with her.

  “Give Clayton a chance to explain himself,” Sara added.

  “He knows how to reach me,” Kerney replied. He retreated to the portal while the reporter droned on about the unusual circumstance of a police officer investigating his own father for murder.

  He closed the door, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Even during the stormiest days of their truncated relationship, he’d respected Clayton, felt proud of him. It would take a hell of a lot of explaining on Clayton’s part to restore any of those good feelings. Kerney wasn’t sure it was possible.

  CHAPTER 10

  Paul Avery drove south out of Santa Fe feeling frustrated and angry. He’d met with Deputy Chief Serrano to request more agents to work the case. Instead of an expanded team or even a remotely sympathetic ear, Serrano had given him a lecture about the one hundred vacancies within the department’s sworn personnel ranks, which might soon necessitate putting non-uniform officers temporarily back on patrol.

  Even worse, Serrano had ordered him to reduce his team by the end of the week to James Garcia, Carla Olivas, and Charlie Epperson. Captain Wayne Upham, the IA commander who’d interviewed Clayton, would interrogate Kerney at Santa Fe headquarters. With a barely discernible smile, Serrano urged Avery to continue evidence collection, full speed ahead. Closure on the case was the department’s top priority.

  Avery couldn’t tell if Serrano actually expected him to solve the case with inadequate resources, or if he was deliberately setting him up to fail. Regardless, it left him muttering curses under his breath on the long drive to Las Cruces.

  It was late when he arrived at district headquarters. The building was quiet except for the occasional sound of radio traffic issuing from a monitor in an empty office. At his desk, he ran through all the daily field reports and logs, hoping somebody had finally tracked down credible information about the whereabouts of Kim Ward’s mother or Todd Marks. He finished reading only to be disappointed once again. In a world filled with billions of people, vanishing wasn’t all that hard to do. At times, reality sucked.

  The door to Clayton’s office was open. He’d moved out in the wee morning hours when no one was around to make things awkward. Given his forced resignation, it had been the smart thing to do.

  Avery picked up the phone and dialed his buddy Sergeant Gabriel Medina at home. “Give me something substantial from Juan Ramirez,” he begged when Gabe answered. “I’m drowning in a swamp of worthless leads and useless information with little ammunition and a big, hungry alligator circling.”

  Gabe laughed. “Don’t sound so pathetic, amigo. Zero out the day, and be done with it. I’ve got nothing for you, other than Ramirez doesn’t have to stop at security anymore to get onto Kerney’s ranch. I’ll see him tomorrow and give him a little goose.”

  “Well, at least Kerney still trusts him.”

  “There you go, then, progress.”

  “The high point of my day.” Avery disconnected, wandered into Clayton’s office, and turned on the lights. With everything personal cleared out, the room had been returned to institutional dullness, except for some scribblings in Clayton’s hand on a calendar desk pad. On it, he’d written “Fergurson Photographs?” and circled it.

  The question intrigued Avery and he thought for a long minute about what to say before dialing Clayton’s home telephone. He decided to say nothing schmaltzy. When Clayton answered, he kept it light.

  “Got a quick question. What were you thinking when you wrote a note to yourself about Fergurson’s photographs?”

  Clayton paused before replying. “Fergurson made numerous journal entries about photos she took of people she knew and places she visited. I was going to ask at the university library if they had any archives of her photography. If they did, I figured it would be worth a look.”

  “I bet they do,” Avery predicted happily, smiling for the first time in hours. Any fresh bit of information that would strengthen the circumstantial evidence against Kerney would be invaluable. “We’ll get on it in the morning. Thanks.”

  Without comment, Clayton disconnected, and Avery went from not being schmaltzy to feeling like a full-blown schmuck.

  Clayton sat at the kitchen table, head bent over a pocket calculator, punching in numbers, the tabletop overflowing in bills, receipts, and sheets of paper from a yellow tablet filled with budgetary computations.

  Grace took the accordion file organizer that held the family’s financial records off a chair seat, put it on the floor, and joined him. “What are you doing?” she asked, knowing full well the answer.

  Clayton looked up, his eyes narrowed with worry, his lips tight. “With my accrued leave time that’s coming, my final paycheck, some—but not all—of our savings, and cutting back a bit here and there, I’ve got three to four months to find a new job.”

  “I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Grace replied. “Who called earlier?”

/>   “Paul Avery, he had a question about the investigation.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “I answered his question.”

  Grace shook her head in dismay. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “What?”

  “Help your father, not Paul Avery.”

  Clayton leaned back and grimaced. “He’d probably shoot me on sight.”

  “No, but he might give you a good talking-to.” Grace caressed Clayton’s arm. “You’re one of the most fair-minded people I know, but this time your judgment is clouded.”

  Clayton pulled his arm away. “Whose side are you on? I just wanted to find the truth.”

  “You’ve never once asked Kerney for the truth, have you?”

  “Eventually that would have happened.”

  Grace sighed. “Why can’t you get over your resentment of a man who has never done you harm—only good—and help him, now that you no longer have the power to hurt him?”

  The sting of Grace’s words was like a slap in the face. “I thought I was being impartial.”

  “No, you weren’t. Will you help your family, or not?”

  Her question struck Clayton’s core. He’d never thought of Kerney as kinfolk, never included him as part of his Apache family. In his heart, he’d treated him with disrespect. And yet he was family, had been generous and honest in all his dealings with the family.

  Clayton carefully cleared the table of all the papers and put them away in the file organizer. “I will help him,” he finally said.

  “Call him, tell him,” Grace suggested, smiling approval.

  “No, I will speak to him in person. I’ll leave for Santa Fe in the morning.”

  “He will appreciate the gesture,” Grace predicted.

  “Or send me packing,” Clayton replied ruefully.

  Grace smiled and reached across the table to hold his hand. “I don’t think so.”

  Dalquist called Kerney in the morning, just before he left with Patrick to feed and water the ponies.

  “You’re to be at state police headquarters at nine a.m. I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

  “Who am I up against?”

  “Wayne Upham, Internal Affairs commander. Know him?”

  “Slightly,” Kerney answered, thinking back to his days as deputy chief of the department, and remembering Upham as a spit-and-polish, up-and-coming officer who liked things neat and tidy.

  “My source tells me Upham conducted Clayton’s interrogation.”

  “Interesting,” Kerney replied. “See you there.”

  After cleaning the horses’ stalls, feeding them, and shoveling horse apples out of the corral with Patrick, Kerney fixed the clogged water line to the outside trough and had just enough time for another cup of coffee before leaving to meet Dalquist.

  Sara looked him up and down as he reached for his truck keys. He was unshaved, his hair limp around his ears, and wearing dirty jeans, a sweat-stained plaid shirt, and horse-dung-encrusted boots. He didn’t smell pretty, either.

  “My, my, aren’t the state police in for a bit of a surprise,” she commented with a look of approval.

  “That’s the whole point,” Kerney replied, jamming his rattiest cowboy hat on his head. He threw her a kiss on his way out the door.

  The exterior of the New Mexico Department of Public Safety building on Cerrillos Road, which housed the state police headquarters, showed no love to the thousands of motorists who passed by daily. Plopped on a small hillock, buffered by a parking lot, and surrounded by a security fence, it reminded Kerney of a fortified blockhouse rather than a government office building. So much for the notion of community policing.

  He arrived ten minutes early and parked his truck next to Dalquist’s BMW. On the short walk to the visitors entrance, Dalquist gave him a once-over, a sniff, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “It always helps to know your opponent,” Kerney answered cryptically.

  “I guess I should have worn a stronger aftershave,” Dalquist mused.

  At the reception window, they showed their IDs, signed the visitors log, and were buzzed through the electronic door to the main lobby. A young, uniformed female officer escorted them down a hallway to a bank of chairs along a wall opposite a row of interview rooms. As she hovered near where they sat, Kerney glanced at his wristwatch. They were right on time.

  “Upham will make us wait,” he commented softly to Dalquist.

  “It’s all strategy, isn’t it?” Dalquist ruminated. “I’ve sometimes wondered how many of my clients survived the psychological onslaught by police interrogators.”

  “Sometimes being innocent helps,” Kerney suggested.

  Dalquist suppressed a smile.

  Twenty minutes later, Upham appeared, wearing a crisp uniform and highly polished shoes, but was otherwise not the man Kerney remembered. A potbelly spilled over his waistband, and his face was puffy and sour-looking, with an unhealthy gray tinge. He clutched a thick file folder in his beefy hand.

  He stepped close, wrinkled his nose, and looked at Kerney, who immediately got to his feet to keep Upham from establishing a dominant position.

  He examined Kerney with a look of pure distaste. “You know the drill. Once inside, I’ll Mirandize you again, and everything will be video- and voice-recorded.”

  “With my lawyer present,” Kerney added.

  Upham shot Dalquist an unhappy glance, wrinkled his nose again, and opened an interrogation room door. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  In the bleak, harshly lit room, after all were seated, Upham went through the legal formalities before he slowly opened the file, patting it affectionately as though it contained all he needed to send Kerney away for murder.

  “If you don’t mind, let’s start with Clayton. What I don’t understand is why he went after you so hard only to flip-flop and warn you.”

  “Is there a question?” Dalquist asked.

  Ignoring Dalquist, Upham stared at Kerney.

  “He didn’t warn me,” Kerney said.

  “Well, if true, that’s got to stick in your craw big-time. What kind of son would want to see his father go to prison for murder? I can’t even imagine how steamed you must be at him. He thinks you’re a killer, and worked hard to prove it. What does he know about you that we don’t?”

  Upham paused, looking perplexed. “Whether Clayton warned you or not—and I think he did—he must have some real, big emotional issues with you to be willing to throw his career away.”

  Kerney shrugged. “Can’t say. I don’t know him that well.”

  Upham leaned toward Kerney, nose wrinkling at the barnyard smell. “Maybe there was a time when you shared something with Clayton that gave him reason to believe you killed Kim Ward. Something said privately between a father and a son.”

  Dalquist raised a hand to stop the exchange. “Unless you stick to germane questions, Captain Upham, I see no reason for this interview to continue.”

  Upham leaned back and ran a forefinger over his nose. “What’s not germane, counselor? All I’m asking Kerney is, did he ever confess to Clayton Istee that he murdered Kim Ward?”

  “We’ll not go down that slippery slope,” Dalquist snapped, cutting Kerney off. The picture Upham wanted to paint of a son’s knowledge of his father’s crime could become an important weapon in the prosecution’s arsenal, no matter what Kerney said to deny it.

  Dalquist continued, “My client didn’t kill Kim Ward, and therefore had no reason to engage in such an exchange with Mr. Istee, as you suggest. Now, can we get on with it?”

  Upham nodded and patted the open file. He smiled agreeably at Kerney, but his nose kept wrinkling at the palpable stink of horse shit. “Walk me through how you first came to know Kim Ward.”

  Comfortable and relaxed, Kerney returned Upham’s smile and told him about a pretty girl, a dance, and a high school rodeo in Deming, New Mexico.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kerney’s ploy to throw Upham off with his barnyard attire and the smel
l of horse apples wasn’t a complete success, although the interrogation did end sooner than he expected. Upham called a halt after Kerney’s disclosure of his early relationship with Kim and her flight from Erma’s the night she disappeared. He showed Kerney and Dalquist the door, promising many more questions to come.

  Standing between his BMW and Kerney’s truck in the parking lot, Dalquist said, “Upham would have kept going, if he’d liked what he was hearing from you. He stopped so he could regroup and restrategize.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Kerney said, smiling broadly.

  “You seem smug,” Dalquist commented. “Is this a facet of your personality I’ve somehow missed?”

  Kerney leaned against the door of his truck and laughed. “Upham did me a big favor, and I don’t know whether to send him a dozen donuts or a bottle of whiskey. He jogged my memory about someone I’ve been trying to remember, a girl who was one of Kim’s best friends in high school.”

  “Who might she be?” Dalquist inquired.

  “I don’t recall her name, but I know somebody who probably does. If it pans out and we can find her, we just might get some information the police don’t have about Kim, her mother, and Todd Marks.”

  “That could be very beneficial.” Dalquist stepped around to the driver’s door of his BMW. “I retract my earlier remark.”

  “Retraction accepted,” Kerney replied.

  With a wave, Dalquist drove off. Kerney sat in his truck and called his oldest friend, Dale Jennings. Widowed, Dale still lived on the Rocking J Ranch in the San Andres Mountains, hard up against the White Sands Missile Range boundary, only now the outfit was run by his oldest daughter and her husband.

  “I wondered if you were ever gonna call,” Dale said when he picked up.

  “I saw no reason to trouble you with my problems,” Kerney replied.

  “I figure if they do send you to prison, I’ll have to come and break you out.”

  “I’d be counting on it.”

  “But you didn’t call to chitchat.”