reworked fabrications.
The fact that the federal government had no record of Denise ever applying for a passport, being issued one, or traveling outside of the United States had piqued Kerney’s interest. Once he finished analyzing the letters, he would deliver them to the Department of Public Safety crime lab and ask the Questioned Documents specialist to do a thorough analysis. He wanted to know what type of pens and inks were used, the manufacture of the paper and envelopes, if the stamps and cancellation marks were authentic, whether the handwriting was Denise’s, and if so, was consistent throughout the letters—everything the specialist could tell him.
And of course, he wanted to have the answers right away.
Chapter Nine
Loud pounding at the motel room door brought Clayton out of a deep, dreamless sleep. He rolled over, opened an eye, and tried to focus on the tabletop clock radio. It was exactly three hours since his head had hit the pillow. Light-headed and groggy, he got out of bed, padded barefoot to the door, and looked through the security peephole. Detective Lee Armijo was about to pound away again on the door.
“Okay, okay,” Clayton yelled, hitting the light switch and opening up. “Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked as Armijo stepped inside.
“I’m a narc,” Lee replied. “We all take drugs to stay awake.” There were dark rings under his eyes. “Get dressed while I make the coffee. I figure that’s probably your drug of choice.”
“I rarely self-medicate,” Clayton replied.
Armijo guffawed, took the in-room coffee carafe off the machine on the dresser next to the cheap twenty- inch color TV, went to the bathroom, and filled it with water.
“What are you doing here, Detective?” Clayton asked as he stuck a leg into his jeans.
“Please, Sergeant, call me Lee. After all, we did spend last night together.” Armijo returned from the bathroom, stuffed two individually wrapped packs of coffee in the machine, poured in the water, and pushed the button. The machine sighed and started to gurgle.
“But to answer your question,” Armijo continued, “I started thinking that maybe Brian Riley might be involved in the drug trade as a user, given his association with Robocker, in spite of the fact that our good pal Mort Birch told us he didn’t know him. So I called some of my snitches.”
Clayton sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on his boots. “And?”
“One of them, Ed Duffy, a good Irish-American lad who sadly turned to a life of crime as a juvenile, swears that Brian Riley is crashing at a house on Cornell Drive near the university. Duffy says he saw him there two nights ago.”
Clayton tucked in his shirt. “How reliable is your snitch?”
Armijo poured Clayton a cup of coffee and handed it to him. “Duffy, bless his heart, provides very good intel because I have him on a short leash and he can’t afford to screw up. If he pisses me off for any reason, I’ll have his probation officer violate him on a commercial burglary beef. He’ll go straight to the slammer and pull a dime.”
Clayton took a sip of coffee, made a face, and put the cup on the bedside table. “This stuff is terrible.”
“It’s my super high-octane formula,” Armijo explained as he threw Clayton his coat, “designed to get your motor running. Let’s go. Bring your coffee with you. On the way, I’ll tell you what else I learned from Duffy. It’s all very interesting stuff.”
Seated in Armijo’s unit, Clayton drank his coffee and blinked against the harsh, cloudless sky, made slightly hazy by a low thin brown cloud of pollution that hung over the city. Albuquerque looked no better to him at midday than it did at night or early in the morning. Central Avenue still had a string of cheap motels near the Interstate, rows of small businesses in a hodgepodge of uninteresting buildings still bordered the boulevard all the way up the hill to the university, and the sounds of traffic on the busy street filled the air like the dull hum of a swarm of angry insects. In truth, Clayton didn’t like cities much.
As Armijo drove, he filled Clayton in. Riley had told Duffy he’d gone into hiding because of something he’d learned that could get him killed.
“At first,” Lee added, “Duffy thought it was just some paranoid, drug-induced bullshit Riley was laying on him. But Riley went on and on about how his father and stepmother had been murdered, and he was next in line unless he could stay out of sight.”
“Maybe it was just paranoia,” Clayton ventured.
“I put the same thought to Duffy myself and he strenuously disagreed. He said Riley told him he knew things about his stepmother that could get him killed.”
“Did Riley say what it was he’d learned about his stepmother?”
Armijo shook his head and slowed as a driver pulled into traffic from a side street and swerved immediately into the left-hand lane. “Nope. Duffy and Riley. Doesn’t that sounds like an old Irish vaudeville song-and dance- team?”
“And this conversation took place two nights ago?” Clayton asked, just a bit weary of Lee’s wisecracking style.
“According to Duffy, that’s a roger.” A break in the traffic flow allowed Armijo to swing into the right lane. “Duffy also told me that Riley gave the guy he’s crashing with money to let him hide out there until things cool down. He’s been laying low since the night his father’s murder made the evening news, and he hasn’t once left the house.”
“So if Riley is supposedly in hiding, how did this Duffy character manage to connect with him?” Clayton asked.
Armijo signaled a right turn. “When he isn’t busy burglarizing homes and businesses, Duffy peddles cannabis to a select group of people he knows and trusts. Brian Riley’s host, Benjamin Beaner—I swear on a stack of Bibles that’s his name—is one of Duffy’s regular customers. Beaner called Duffy, placed an order, and asked him to deliver it. When Duffy arrived with product in hand, Beaner and Riley were already half-wasted. Duffy joined the party, and as the evening progressed Riley started talking.”
“What do you know about Beaner?”
“I found one intel report on him,” Lee replied. “Late thirties, bisexual, single, college dropout, heavy grass user with an off-the-charts IQ. Works as a salesclerk at a national chain home electronics and appliance store. In other words, he’s a middle-aged, switch-hitting, pothead geek.”
“Did Riley mention to Duffy or Beaner who he thinks is trying to kill him?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Armijo replied.
“Well?”
“Agents of a foreign government.”
“What?”
Armijo eased to the curb in front of a cottage situated at the back side of a large, packed-dirt lot with one leafless, forlorn, thirty-foot-tall ash tree that overarched the driveway. Large cracked and partially broken limbs dangled dangerously from high branches above the roof of a beat-up silver Honda Civic.
“That’s all I know.” Armijo opened the car door. “Now lets go and see if any of it is true.”
The officers approached slowly, eyeing the cottage as they crossed over the partially exposed, charred foundation of a structure—probably a house—that had burned. The cottage had a screened-in porch, but most of the screens were either missing or badly tattered. The front door, which had been partially painted dark green a long time ago, had a bumper sticker pasted on it that read “Free Tibet.”
Clayton guessed the cottage had probably started life as either a garage, a shed, or an outbuilding for the main house that had once stood along a leafy lane, back in the days when the university was on the outskirts of town.
As he closed in on the front porch, he scanned the windows, looking for any sign of movement, while Lee Armijo kept his gaze locked on the door. They circled the cottage, found no rear exits, and returned to the front. Clayton knocked on the door and called out for Benjamin Beaner. When he heard movement inside, he knocked again.
“Yeah, what do you want?” a voice replied.
“I need to speak to Brian Riley.”
“There’s nobody here by that name.”
