People at the reception remembered Montoya leaving the gathering alone. All in attendance had strong alibis for their whereabouts during the remainder of the night. Family, friends, and coworkers knew of no troubles which would have made Montoya want to go missing. Her fiance, who'd spent the night Montoya vanished in the company of his roommate, reported no problems with their relationship. Faculty members at the school of social work disclosed that Montoya stood near the top of her class academically, had congenial relationships with instructors and fellow students, and had evidenced no signs of stress, unhappiness, or depression.
With nothing that pointed to a motive or a suspect, Kerney had dug for some dirt on Montoya, hoping to uncover a shady tidbit about her past or a shabby little secret. Nothing incriminating had surfaced. Anna Marie had been a solid, upstanding young woman who'd lived a respectable life.
He'd interviewed casual male acquaintances and all the men who lived in the apartment complex where Montoya resided in the hopes of finding someone who fit a stalker profile, but nothing emerged.
He studied the woman's photograph, taken just a few weeks before she vanished. She had round, dark eyes that looked directly at the camera and seemed to hide nothing, full lips that smiled easily, a quizzical way of holding her head, and long curly hair that fell over her shoulders. It was an intelligent face that held a quiet, sincere appeal.
The telephone rang and Kerney picked up.
'I thought you might be working late,' Sara said.
Kerney smiled at the sound of his wife's voice. 'How are you?'
'Tired of being a pregnant lieutenant colonel in the army,' Sara replied. 'Emphasis on the word pregnant.'
'Protecting the country from known and unknown enemies while having a baby does seem a bit inconvenient,' Kerney said.
Sara laughed. 'The pregnant part is slowing me down and I don't like it. I have to sleep for two, eat for two, and basically think for two. It's distracting me from my career path.'
'Does that mean you won't be the honor graduate at the Command and General Staff College ceremony?'
'I will be the biggest blimp of an officer to ever waddle up to the stage and receive that high honor,' Sara said.
Kerney let out a whoop. 'You got it!'
'You're first supposed to say that I will look beautiful at the ceremony, pregnant or not. Indeed I did, by two- tenths of a percentage point. And if you're not here to see me graduate, I'm divorcing you for mental cruelty and emotional abandonment.'
'You are beautiful,' Kerney said. 'I promise to be there. But it's still a whole month off.'
'And you won't see me until then,' Sara said.
'You can't break away for a weekend at all?' Kerney asked.
'I've way too much to do. Besides I'm not sure you want to see me minus my girlish figure.'
'I'll stare at your chest,' Kerney said.
'Even that has enlarged a bit.'
Kerney laughed. 'I've heard from Clayton in a roundabout way.'
'Really? Tell me about it.'
Kerney gave her the facts about the missing person case he'd handled eleven years ago, and Clayton's discovery of Anna Marie Montoya's remains.
'Sometimes fate smiles on you, Kerney,' Sara said when Kerney finished.
'Meaning what?'
'Now you have a perfect opportunity to connect with Clayton. Use it.'
'I tried that before, remember?'
'You've had three, maybe four conversations with Clayton in your lifetime, all in the space of a few very intense days. That hardly constitutes a major effort.'
'The effort has to be mutual,' Kerney said.
'You cannot tell me that Clayton isn't at least a little bit curious about who you are on a personal level.'
'He hasn't shown any interest,' Kerney said.
'Oh, stop it, Kerney,' Sara said. 'You sound like a little boy with hurt feelings. Just because Clayton didn't follow through on a dinner invitation he hastily suggested, after you left him speechless by establishing a college fund for his children, doesn't mean he's cold to knowing you.'
'Maybe you're right.'
'So?'
'So, I'll try to be a grown-up.'
'Good. If I were with you, I'd be giving you sweet kisses right now.'
'As a reward for trying to be a grown-up?' Kerney asked.
'No, as a prelude to wild, abandoned sex. I'll talk to you soon, cowboy.'
Kerney hung up smiling and returned his attention to the Montoya case file. What had he missed in the original victim profile? Unless Anna Marie had been abducted and killed randomly by a complete stranger, events in her life should point to a motive for murder.
He'd found nothing when the case was fresh, and now surely people had scattered, memories had dimmed, and hard physical evidence-if any was to be found-had vanished.
Kerney sat back in his chair and inspected the two framed lithographs Sara had helped him select for his office. One, a winter scene with a solitary horse grazing in a pasture, was centered above a bookcase on the wall opposite his desk. The second image showed an old cottonwood in summer, branches dense with leaves. It hung next to the office door.
At the time, he'd teased Sara about picking out such serene, idyllic images to hang on a police chief's office walls.
'These are reminders,' she'd replied.
'About?'
'Places we need to find when we're together.'
'For what purpose?' Kerney had asked.
'Are you dense, Kerney? Look at that cottonwood tree. Look at that pasture. What would we most want to do in either setting?'
'Just checking.'
Kerney put the remembrance aside and flipped through the Montoya case file one more time. It was Deputy Sheriff Clayton Istee's homicide investigation now. He'd heard through the cop-shop grapevine that Clayton had recently switched from the tribal police to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. He called the sheriff's dispatch number, left a message advising Clayton he'd be available to discuss the Montoya case first thing in the morning, locked up his office, and walked downstairs through the quiet, almost empty building to his unmarked unit.
Clayton bypassed the office and started work interviewing ranchers and home owners he'd missed yesterday. By the fifth stop, the responses became predictable. The canvass had turned into a see-nothing, know-nothing Q- and-A exercise. Nobody knew diddly or had a shred of useful information. Once the formality of being questioned was out of the way, everybody tried to get some juicy gossip-talk going. He just smiled and shook his head in reply.
He contacted Sergeant Quinones and Deputy Dillingham by radio, who reported similar dead-end results. Dispatch called to advise that the local crime-stoppers organization had put up a thousand-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Anna Marie's killer. The news gave Clayton a touch of renewed enthusiasm.
When asked if he'd ever noticed anyone suspicious hanging around the fruit stand, one old rancher took off his cowboy hat, scratched his head, gave a Clayton a sly smile, and allowed that sometime back he'd seen Paul Hewitt nailing an election sign on the building. With a straight face Clayton promised to question the sheriff. In response the rancher grinned and said he'd like to be there to see it.
At the end of a ranch road a pickup truck outfitted with a rack of emergency roof lights and sporting a volunteer-firefighter license plate pulled off the pavement and stopped just as Clayton closed the gate behind his patrol unit. Shorty Dawson, the medical examiner, got out and hurried toward him.
