“Patrick did that a half hour ago,” Sara replied, sounding perfectly normal. “We’ve had our breakfast and now he’s petitioning me to go horseback riding.”
“Are you feeling up to it?”
“I am. Have you found Helen’s missing sister?”
“Not yet. But we have learned that the woman’s husband, a police officer, was murdered last night in Lincoln County.”
“Does that mean you won’t be home anytime soon?”
“No,” Kerney replied. “This case is not under my jurisdiction. I’ve given the sheriff’s department all the help they’ve asked for and done as much for Helen Muiz as I can at this point. I don’t need to stay here watching other people work.”
“Too many chiefs?” Sara asked.
“Something like that. I’ll be home soon.”
Kerney disconnected and went to find Ramona Pino to tell her he’d be leaving. He found her in the tack room at the stables with Don Mielke, the major crimes unit supervisor for the sheriff’s department.
“Don’t come in, Chief,” Ramona said when Kerney appeared in the doorway.
Kerney looked around. An upended saddle was on the hard-packed dirt floor, some of the halters and bridles lay in a heap under the wall hooks, and there were scuff marks in the dirt that looked as if something had been dragged out into the corral, where the two horses whinnied and snorted for their morning oats.
“Any hard evidence of a struggle?” Kerney asked.
“Not yet,” Mielke replied.
Beyond the corral, next to a horse trailer, a medium-size black-and-white mutt with a long coat joined the chorus. “Do you know if the Rileys had a dog?” Kerney asked.
“There was a picture in the house of Riley’s wife kneeling next to a dog,” Ramona said.
Kerney pointed at the mutt who had taken up a position at the back of the trailer. “That dog?”
“Maybe,” Ramona said.
“Has it been here all night?”
“I didn’t see or hear it earlier,” Ramona replied.
“Has anyone checked that horse trailer?” Kerney asked.
“Not that I know of,” Mielke replied.
“Let’s do it,” Kerney said, stepping off in the direction of the trailer.
The barking dog fell silent and backed off when Kerney approached, but it stayed nearby, watchful, and seemed unwilling to scamper away. The trailer, built to haul two horses, was padlocked. Kerney turned to Mielke and asked him to find some bolt cutters. Ramona Pino dropped down on one knee and looked back at the stables and corral. Although it was impossible to tell for sure, what seemed to be drag marks in the dirt ran from the tack room to the horse trailer. She pointed them out to Kerney.
“Ten-to-one odds says we can call off the search as soon as Mielke brings those bolt cutters,” Kerney said.
Ramona shook her head. “I learned a long time ago never to bet against you, Chief.”
Mielke returned, snapped the locks with the bolt cutters, and swung open the doors. Inside one of the trailer stalls was the rigid body of a woman facedown on a bed of blood-soaked straw.
“Okay,” Kerney said as he exhaled and turned to Mielke. “You’d better get your bosses over here pronto.”
“Yeah,” Mielke replied.
Chapter Three
The discovery of the body set off a chain of procedural events common to all murder investigations. Kerney backed off so Ramona Pino and Don Mielke could work without his interference, and informed Sheriff Salgado about the unidentified female victim.
By radio, Salgado got the word out to the searchers and asked them to suspend operations and maintain their positions until a positive ID could be made. Kerney took Salgado and his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup, to the horse trailer, which had already been cordoned off, and from behind the police line the three men watched as Mielke and Pino established a wider crime scene perimeter.
After roping off a larger area that extended from the tack room to the horse trailer, they began documenting and processing the scene. Mielke photographed the body as it lay, leaving it untouched and unmoved. Although it was highly likely the dead woman was Denise Riley, protocol required the body remain as it had been found until the medical investigator arrived.
Mielke moved on to photograph the horse trailer, the drag marks in the dirt, and the interior of the tack room, while Ramona Pino inspected the victim and made a list of the woman’s clothing, which included notations of the condition of the garments and any visible damage and stains. The woman’s jeans barely covered her buttocks, and flecks of straw adhered to exposed skin at the small of her back.
Ramona wondered if the woman’s jeans had been rearranged by the perpetrator. If so, it signaled that the killer probably knew the victim. She made a closer visual inspection of the victim’s exposed right forearm and left hand and saw what appeared to be bruising—quite possibly defensive wounds. Had the crime started out as a sexual assault and escalated to murder?
She wrote down her observations and speculations, drew a rough sketch of the body in relation to the corral and tack room, measured off all distances, and then began a search for trace evidence on the surfaces of the horse trailer.
When the MI arrived and declared the victim dead, the body was turned faceup and two facts became readily apparent. First, comparison with the driver’s license photo Ramona had found in the purse inside the double-wide showed that the dead woman was indeed Denise Riley. Second, her throat had been cut.
Salgado promptly called off the search and released all off-duty and nonessential personnel who had volunteered their time. As the searchers returned to the staging area and quietly began to disperse, Kerney, Salgado, and Jessup thanked each of them personally for coming out. The three men silently watched as the searchers loaded gear and equipment into their police units and emergency vehicles and left the area in a line of cars that stretched the length of the long dirt driveway.
As the last vehicle turned onto the county road, Sheriff Luciano Salgado turned to Kerney. “Are you going to tell Helen Muiz?” he asked.
“I’ll go over to her house right now,” Kerney replied.
“Let her know that I’ll be in touch with her real soon,” Salgado said.
“Maybe you’ll have some answers for her by then.”
“God, I hope so,” Salgado replied with a sigh. “How long can I use Sergeant Pino and your detectives?”
“As long as you need them,” Kerney replied, thinking it was unlikely that the two separate homicides of Riley and his wife would be cleared anytime soon.
“Thanks,” Salgado said.
Kerney nodded in reply and headed to his unit. Before driving off, he tried reaching Sara at home by phone. There was no answer, so he called her cell phone and got a voice message that told him that Sara and Patrick were off on an early morning horseback ride.
The message pleased Kerney. Being with Patrick was the best medicine for what ailed Sara. That sweet, happy, smart-as-a-whip little boy buoyed her spirits and got her thinking about all the good things life had to offer.
He put the unit in gear and headed for town, his thoughts turning as dark as the gunmetal gray March sky that masked the morning sun. Far too often over the course of his career, he’d brought the news of a loved one’s death to family members. Most times, they had been complete strangers or only slightly known to him through the course of an investigation. But it was never an easy thing to do.
This time it would be worse. He would have to tell a woman he’d known, liked, and respected for over twenty years that the death of her brother-in-law was not the worst of it. The kid sister she’d adored was dead, murdered just as her husband had been hours ago in Lincoln County.
Ruben and Helen Muiz lived in a historic double adobe home that had been in her family since the early