have her handwriting compared and analyzed.
A bright eagerness lit up Montoya's eyes. 'What do these letters say?'
'It won't matter what they say if Anna Marie didn't write them,' Kerney replied.
'But you think maybe she did,' Montoya said.
'It's worth checking into.'
'Why do you tell me so little?'
'Because I want to give you facts when I have them, not unfairly raise your expectations with speculation.'
Montoya's eyes shifted away and his shoulders sagged a bit. 'We want so much for there to be justice.'
'It can happen,' Kerney said. 'Always believe that.'
Montoya nodded, pulled himself together, gave Kerney a weak smile, and gestured at his house. 'Come inside and take what you need.'
With a handwriting sample and the letters in hand, Kerney met with the state-police-lab documents specialist and asked for a quick turnaround. In Kerney's case, it paid to be a former deputy state police chief. The man said he'd have a preliminary comparison done in an hour.
Kerney spent his time waiting by questioning Nick Salas, a fifteen-year veteran who now served as a lieutenant in the district headquarters housed next door to the Department of Public Safety. Salas remembered the Norvell DWI incident that had been swept under the rug by the sheriff's department.
'How did you hear about it?' Salas asked, cocking an eye at Kerney.
'Ellsworth Miller,' Kerney answered.
'You got something going on Norvell, Chief?'
'Maybe.'
Salas laughed. 'What do you need to know?'
'Date, time, place, name of the woman with Norvell-if you've got it-name of the deputy who made the DWI stop.'
Salas snorted. 'You think I can remember all of that?'
'No, but I bet you've got the information stashed somewhere. You're one of the biggest pack rats in the department.'
Salas grinned and got up from his desk. 'That's affirmative, Chief. Like I tell the rookies, hold on to everything. You never know when you might need stuff you once thought was useless. Give me a few minutes to search through my old paperwork.'
Salas was back in fifteen minutes with a dog-eared pocket notebook in hand. He rattled off the day, time, and place. 'The deputy was Ron Underwood. He's still with the sheriff's department. He got bumped up to patrol sergeant about the same time I made lieutenant. We tipped a few together at the FOP to celebrate. I've been catching his radio traffic lately so he's back on day shift. I didn't ID the woman.'
'Did you see Norvell?' Kerney asked.
'Yeah. I watched Underwood put him through field sobriety tests. He was almost falling-down drunk.'
'Thanks, Nick.'
'No problem,' Salas said, reaching for the phone. 'Where are you going from here, Chief?'
'I should be back in my office in thirty minutes.'
'I'll give Underwood a call. Maybe he can dig out his report and get it to you today.'
'That would be a big help,' Kerney said.
Kerney returned to the crime lab to wait for the document specialist's report, and spent his time chatting with the officers and civilian staff who passed him in the small waiting area. During his tenure as deputy state police chief, he'd worked with all of them, so even though he cooled his heels longer than expected, he enjoyed catching up and making small talk.
Stan Kalsen, the document specialist, a burly man with a raspy voice, finally appeared and led him back to his office.
'Sorry to make you wait,' Stan said as he spread out the documents, which had been placed in clear plastic sleeves. 'I took a quick look at slant, connection, formation of letters, size of letters, punctuation, and embellishments on the questioned documents.' He pointed out each element he'd reviewed with a pair of tweezers. 'Comparing the two samples, I'd say they were written by the same individual. If you can get the subject to write out the complete texts of the documents again, I'll probably be able to make an unqualified judgment to that effect.'
'I can't do that,' Kerney replied. 'The subject was murdered.'
Kalsen nodded. 'I thought so. The note written to her mother was signed Anna Marie, so I figured it had to do with the Montoya homicide. I took photographs of the anonymous documents under oblique light to pull up any indentations on the paper. That's what slowed me down. Take a look at this one.'
Kalsen held up a photograph of the second unsigned note. Down at the bottom were the indentations of Anna Marie's signature. 'It's identical to the standard you gave me,' he said.
For the first time, Kerney had a bonafide suspect. Surely, as a newly elected state senator, Tyler Norvell might have had reason to silence a woman who had knowledge of his prior criminal activities. But proving that would be a whole different matter.
Still the information made Kerney smile. 'Excellent,' he said. 'Thanks, Stan.'
'Anytime, Chief.'
His cell phone rang as he left the lab. Helen Muiz reported that Detective Pino was on her way back to Santa Fe with an APD vice sergeant in tow, Sal Molina had just returned to the office looking to speak with him, and a sheriff's sergeant had dropped off an envelope for him.
'I'm on my way,' Kerney said. 'Anything else?'
'As always, we're in complete disarray without you,' Helen said. She hung up before Kerney could think of a comeback.
Chapter 10
To save money, a new police headquarters had been built some years before on city-owned land near the outskirts of Santa Fe, which of course made it inconvenient for everybody except south-side and some west-side residents.
During the prior administration, two community policing substations-one in a closet-size space in the downtown library, the other in a building that looked like a large tool shed in a city park-had been established.
Kerney had shut them both down. The city needed a real substation to serve the north and east sides, not cops on duty standing behind a counter fielding chamber-of-commerce-type questions, Monday through Friday, nine to five.
He was hoping that if the city ever got around to demolishing the old downtown high school gym next to city hall-it now served as a woefully inadequate convention center-he could put a real substation on the site in at least part of the space. That would alleviate the cramped conditions at headquarters and reduce patrol response times on the east and north sides of the city.
Kerney doubted it would happen on his watch, but he'd started the planning process anyway in hopes that the concept would survive and eventually come to fruition.
In the first-floor headquarters conference room, he met with Sal Molina, Ramona Pino, and Jeff Vialpando, the APD sergeant, and Helen Muiz, who was present to take notes. Detective Pino summarized the information she'd gained about Cassie Bedlow, Sally Greer, Thomas Deacon, and Adam Tully.
Vialpando explained why Tully's club was a target of investigation, and made a pitch to let him use Pino on a temporary undercover assignment. Kerney tabled the request until later in the meeting.
Molina added some preliminary information about Norvell's Colorado business dealings. Then Kerney went over what he'd learned from Mark Shuler and the anonymous letters.
'Maybe we've got a hard target,' Molina said.
'Maybe that and a whole lot more,' Kerney said. 'Let's back up and outline everything we now know.' He
