Kerney got two shovels and handed one to Clayton. They removed most of the snow quickly, slowing the pace when they reached the last few inches, and then set aside the shovels and brushed away the last of the powder with gloved hands. At the edge of the two-foot-long trench they’d dug there was a heel print clearly visible in the frozen ground. They cleared away more snow until the entire print was visible.
“It could be Brian Riley’s shoe print from an earlier visit,” Kerney said.
Clayton hunkered down for a closer look.
He’d found partial shoe prints on the porch to Tim Riley’s rented cabin in Capitan, and the print in front of his eyes looked identical. “Did Brian Riley have small, narrow feet?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is an impression of a boot that is no more than a narrow size eight. That’s small for a man, plus it looks a hell of a lot like the partial impression I found at the Capitan crime scene.”
“Can you make a definitive comparison?” Kerney asked.
“I took photographs of them. They’re in my briefcase in your truck.”
Kerney called Ramona and asked her to bring Clayton’s briefcase to the well house.
“Will do, Chief,” Ramona replied.
“Also, where is Brian Riley’s body right now?” Kerney asked.
“It’s being held at a local mortuary until tomorrow, when it will be sent down to the OMI in Albuquerque for an official autopsy.”
“Send an officer to the mortuary ASAP. I want to know what shoes or boots Riley was wearing at the time of his death, and what the size is. Have the officer check Riley’s personal effects to see if he had any other footwear, take pictures of the soles of all left-foot shoes, and send them to me at my cell phone number.”
“Ten-four, Chief. Anything else?”
“What’s happening on your end?”
“No fingerprint hits so far, and there are no open or cold cases we can find in the national data banks that match the gold coins we uncovered. Sergeant Chacon is querying Interpol and a number of law enforcement agencies in foreign countries.”
“Very good. See you in a few.”
While they waited for Ramona to arrive, Clayton photographed the impression, removed what loose material he could from around it, and then used Ramona’s casting kit to build a form. He mixed up a batch of plaster using melted snow, sprayed oil on the form so the material wouldn’t bind to it, and poured the mixture into it.
“It should set up in a few minutes,” he said as he got to his feet.
Ramona appeared in the clearing. They joined her at the oil barrel, where the fire had burned down almost to embers. As Clayton searched through his briefcase for the photographs, Kerney threw more wood into the barrel and stirred the flames to life with a stick.
“We have a match,” Clayton said, handing the photograph to Kerney.
Kerney threw the stick into the fire, looked at the photograph, nodded, and handed it back.
“And if the impression turns out to be from Brian Riley’s shoe, that puts him at the Capitan crime scene,” Ramona said, “which makes him a very dead prime suspect.”
Clayton waved off the possibility with his hand. “You can’t convince me that Brian Riley was a natural-born psychopath who killed his father, his stepmother, a police officer, and a young woman who had befriended him, for no apparent reason other than the enjoyment of it.”
“He returned to the Robocker crime scene, concealed his identity, and ran from the police,” Ramona countered.
“Okay, let’s assume for the sake of argument that he is the killer,” Clayton said. “He’s down to his last five thousand dollars and needs a lot more money than that if he’s going to disappear for a very long time. So he lies about his identity to a cop at the Robocker crime scene, jumps on his motorcycle, and drives here through a gathering blizzard to get the gold coins hidden in the well house.”
“That makes sense,” Ramona said.
“Up to a point it does. But if the coins were here yesterday when Riley came for them, the only logical place they would be today is at the Talbott ranch house. Have the deputies searched it?”
Ramona nodded. “From top to bottom and there wasn’t one gold coin to be found.”
“So if it wasn’t the coins that drew him back here, what did?” Kerney asked.
In response, Clayton shrugged his shoulders and Ramona shook her head.
Kerney’s cell phone rang. The incoming call was from the officer who had been sent to the mortuary to take digital photographs of Riley’s shoes. He looked at the screen for a moment and then passed the phone to Clayton.
“They aren’t a match with the footprint,” Clayton said.
“So we’re back to zero suspects,” Ramona said.
“Not necessarily,” Clayton replied. “We need to find someone connected to Tim or Denise Riley who wears men’s narrow size eight shoes.”
“Oh, goodie,” Ramona replied in her sweetest voice. “That
Kerney laughed in spite of himself. “Let’s get back to work,” he said.
Halfway through Kerney’s shift inside the well house, Matt Chacon arrived with news about the coins.
“The Saint-Gaudens is from a ten-year-old heist of an art dealer’s personal collection in Brisbane, Australia. The entire collection, a hundred coins worth over two million in Australian dollars, was taken out of a safe in his house. A Brisbane police detective is faxing the case file to us.”
“Any suspects?” Clayton asked.
“None,” Matt replied.
“Exactly when did the robbery take place?” Kerney asked.
Matt checked his notes and read off the dates.
“If I’m not mistaken, that’s when Denise Riley was allegedly living in Australia. What about the Krugerrand?”
“There is nothing unusual enough about the coin to help connect it to a specific robbery,” Matt replied, “so I queried Interpol again and asked for a list of all unsolved heists of large quantities of coins that included Krugerrands. I made a similar request of law enforcement agencies in the Asian rim countries and the Australian Federal Police.”
Kerney nodded in approval.
“One more thing, Chief. I examined the plastic sleeve used to protect the Saint-Gaudens. There’s an indistinct but recognizable partial thumbprint on the inside of the flap. I powdered it, and it could be a match to a thumbprint Sergeant Pino lifted from inside the well house, but that’s just a guess. However, it doesn’t appear to belong to Brian Riley, Tim Riley, or Denise Riley. It’s going to take a special lab technique to get results that will allow us to make a definitive comparison.”
“Okay,” Kerney said.
“Let’s hope the thumbprint can identify a male subject who wears a size eight narrow shoe,” Ramona said.
“Is that who we’re looking for?” Matt asked. “Those are some really tiny feet.” Matt had met or seen somebody recently with feet like that, but couldn’t remember who or where. “Would he be small in height as well?”
“Not necessarily,” Clayton answered.
Kerney’s phone rang. It was Claire Paley, the questioned documents expert with the state crime lab.
“I didn’t expect you to be at work today,” Kerney said.
“You wanted quick results,” Claire said in her lilting, girlish voice. “Besides, I was born and raised in northern Minnesota. Three feet of snow is hardly enough to keep me from getting to work.”
“What kind of results do you have for me?”
“Come to my office and I’ll show you,” Claire answered. She disconnected before Kerney could question her in detail.
Kerney and Clayton left Matt Chacon and Ramona Pino behind to finish up at the well house and made the
