Everyone Dies (6 page)

The moment passed with no more pains. Her legs ached, so she went back into the bedroom and put up her swollen, ugly-looking feet.

By the time Kerney arrived, police cars and emergency vehicles filled the driveway at the Tesuque house. Several detectives and a search-and-rescue team were busy strapping on backpacks, organizing gear, and getting ready to move out. Kerney spoke to one of the detectives who told him the trail from the house into the mountains was the quickest access to the shooting scene. They would hike up to the officers at the scene, conduct an investigation, and carry out Larsen’s body.

Noting a conspicuous absence of other essential personnel who should have been assembling, Kerney walked up the driveway hoping to find them at the house. All he found were Larry Otero and Sal Molina watching Cruz Tafoya conduct a search of Larsen’s truck. Kerney doubted that Tafoya had secured a signed warrant, but with the suspect dead it probably didn’t matter.

“Are any of our people hurt?” Kerney asked.

“No,” Larry Otero replied.

“What do you know so far?” Kerney asked.

“Larsen ran, Chief,” Molina replied. “Detective Pino had reason to believe he was armed. We sent SWAT into the mountains to track him. They took fire and had to stop the action.”

“Can you tie him to Potter’s murder?” Kerney asked.

Tafoya pulled his head out of the cab of the truck. A box of 9mm rounds sat on the bench seat. “Only circumstantially at this point, Chief,” he said. He gave Kerney a quick rundown of the facts.

Kerney shook his head in dismay. There were times when a criminal investigation went badly off track, and this smelled like one of them. “You’d better hope Larsen killed Potter,” he said flatly.

“He was armed, and he fired at our people,” Otero said.

“That alone doesn’t make him a credible suspect,” Kerney said. “From what I’ve heard, we have a possible motive, conjecture that Larsen could have been at the Potter crime scene this morning, and no hard evidence that puts him there.”

“We have his handgun in custody,” Molina said.

“Do you have the round that killed Jack Potter, so we can make a comparison?” Kerney asked.

Molina shook his head.

“Detective Pino is getting a search warrant for Larsen’s apartment,” Tafoya said.

“To look for what?” Kerney demanded.

“Any papers, documents, phone calls, or electronic mail concerning or pertaining to Jack Potter,” Molina replied.

“That sounds like a fishing expedition to me,” Kerney said. “Patterson has a history of serious mental illness. Did anyone stop to consider that when she called Larsen she may have over-dramatized her meeting with Detective Pino and scared him into running?”

“So why did Larsen shoot at our people?” Tafoya asked.

“Perhaps because he’s also not right in the head,” Kerney said through clenched teeth. “What instructions did you give SWAT?”

“To proceed with caution and attempt to apprehend only,” Molina replied. “It was my call, Chief.”

“Were they advised of his mental condition?”

“Yes, sir,” Molina said.

“And told he was wanted for questioning only?”

“Yes, but they never got the chance to talk to him, Chief,” Molina said. “According to the officers on the scene, Larsen spotted them on the trail, took cover, and started squeezing off rounds before they even saw him.”

Kerney turned his attention back to Sergeant Tafoya. “Did you talk to any of Larsen’s clients who saw him today?”

“Three of them, Chief,” Tafoya answered.

“And?”

“The first two said that Larsen seemed okay. He got to his jobs on time, did his work, and left without incident. The third said that Larsen seemed agitated when he told her he needed to take a break and go meet with a prospective client.”

Kerney looked hard at Tafoya. “Did it occur to you that a spooked ex-vet with a mental condition might not react rationally to being the target of a homicide investigation?”

Silence greeted Kerney’s question.

“Or that it might have been smart to just hold back and wait for Larsen to come down out of the mountains on his own when he got tired, hungry, cold, and thirsty?”

Tafoya lowered his head.

Kerney looked at the sky. July was the monsoon month in New Mexico, and thick cumulus clouds were building over the mountains. “Or that maybe the rainstorm that’s coming before nightfall would have driven him out of the forest?”

“What do you want to do, Chief?” Otero asked, in an attempt to buffer Kerney’s displeasure.

“I’m assuming command,” Kerney said. “I want the DA here now. Tell him we’ve got a police shooting that requires his personal attention. I want the crime scene techs rolling and at the shooting site before it starts to rain and destroys or contaminates the evidence. Bring up the mobile command unit. I want it operational in twenty minutes. Have you called for a medical examiner?”

“There’s one on the search-and-rescue team,” Otero said. “Anything else?”

“Hold search and rescue and the detectives back until the crime scene techs arrive. Get the Internal Affairs commander up here pronto. I want an internal investigation started immediately on both the shooting and the SWAT call-out. Get some uniforms to set up a roadblock below the house before the news media show up. They’re gonna be on us like flies. I’ll call the city manager and brief him.”

As Molina and Otero reached for their handhelds, Kerney turned on his heel and walked away.

Ramona Pino knew that her affidavit for a search warrant didn’t come close to establishing sufficient probable cause that Larsen had murdered Jack Potter. Barry Foyt, the ADA, approved the affidavit only because Larsen had bolted to elude questioning and had been killed in a shootout by officers attempting to locate and detain him. Likewise, the judge who signed the order had been equally unimpressed with Ramona’s scanty facts, but went along with it because the suspect was dead.

Knowing she’d been cut a break, Ramona left the courthouse with an order in hand that made Larsen a bona fide murder suspect. Whether it would stand up under close scrutiny was another matter.

She made radio contact with Detective Matthew Chacon and asked him to meet her at Larsen’s apartment. It was an ironclad rule to have at least two officers serve a search warrant, one to gather the evidence and the other to inventory seized items and control anyone on the premises, which in Mary Beth Patterson’s case could well turn out to be a handful.

Ramona arrived at the apartment building before Chacon and spoke to Joyce Barbero in the office. She told Barbero about the search warrant, but made no mention of the Larsen shooting.

“Haven’t you upset Mary Beth enough?” Barbero asked disapprovingly as she came to the front of her desk.

Through the open office door, Ramona saw Matt Chacon pull up to the curb in his unit. “I’ll let you know when we’re finished with the search,” she said as she stepped outside.

Barbero watched from the doorway as Ramona warned Matt Chacon about Mary Beth’s mental condition and went over the specifics of the warrant.

Thin with bushy brown hair, Chacon chewed on a toothpick as he listened and pulled the forms he needed out of his briefcase. He tapped his shirt pocket for his pen, found it, and uncapped the top.

“Are you gonna tell Patterson about Larsen?” he asked.

“I’m going to have to,” Ramona said. “She’s next of kin.”

“Let’s do it,” Chacon said.

At the apartment, Mary Beth opened up the door and winced at Ramona. “Why are you back here?” she asked in a thin voice as her questioning gaze traveled to Matt Chacon.

“We need to look around your apartment,” Ramona replied.

“I know my rights,” Mary Beth said, her trembling hand toying with the doorknob. “You can’t do that.”

“I have a court order from a judge, Mary Beth,” Ramona said.

“You’re lying. Where’s my Kurt?”

“I need to talk to you about him,” Ramona said.

Her eyes dilated. “Why?”

“Because something bad has happened. Kurt is dead.”

Mary Beth sagged against the door, dropped to her knees, her hand clutching the doorknob, and began rocking slowly back and forth.

Ramona stepped behind her, put both hands under her arms, and pulled her upright. She could feel the hardness of Mary Beth’s breast implants against the palms of her hands. She walked her to the couch and sat her down.

“You have to listen to me, Mary Beth,” Ramona said as she sat beside the woman.

Mute, Mary Beth clasped her arms around her waist and continued rocking, bending her torso back and forth, the movement building into a catatonic rhythm.

Nothing Ramona said broke through Mary Beth’s stupor. Uneasy with the situation, she asked Matt to fetch Joyce Barbero, who came hurrying in, breathless and exasperated. She glanced at Mary Beth and shot Ramona an annoyed look.

“What happened?” Barbero demanded.

Ramona explained that Larsen was dead and Barbero’s expression changed to angry condemnation. She asked Ramona to move aside, knelt down, and spent ten fruitless minutes trying to talk Mary Beth back to reality.

“She has to go to the hospital,” Barbero said, shaking her head as she got to her feet.

Ramona called for an ambulance and then dialed Barry Foyt to ask for guidance on the situation.

“You’re sure the woman isn’t faking it?” Foyt asked.

“Positive.”

“Did you tell her you had a search warrant?” Foyt asked.

“I did.”

“And she’s not a target of the investigation, right?”

“Correct.”

“Do the search and leave copies of the paperwork behind,” Foyt said. “I’ll research case law and see if there’s a precedent. If it gets challenged, we can deal with it later. Find something, Detective Pino. The Larsen shooting doesn’t look good. My boss is in Tesuque now and he’s plenty steamed about what happened.”

Ramona held off on the search until the ambulance took Mary Beth away with Barbero in attendance. She spent the next two hours searching for documents, checking with the phone company to get a record of outgoing calls-none had been made to Jack Potter’s office or home since the service had been connected-and looking through the files and e-mail on a laptop computer on a small table in the bedroom.

There was no e-mail to or from Potter, but next to the computer sat an ashtray with a roach clip, a hash pipe, and a closed tin box containing a stash of marijuana.

The only mention of Jack Potter was in Mary Beth’s diary on a bedside table. Several old entries written in a flowery hand expressed Mary Beth’s anger and disappointment with Potter.

Ramona made a final sweep and told Matt to fill out the inventory sheet for the diary, laptop, grass, and drug paraphernalia.

“That’s it?” Chacon asked.

Glumly, Ramona nodded as she surveyed the front room. No matter how meager and dismal, the apartment represented a new life that two emotionally damaged people had attempted to build together. Now, all of that had been destroyed.

As she closed the front door, she wondered-given the mistakes she’d made today-if the same now held true for her career.

Some time back at Sara’s urging, Kerney had moved out of his cramped quarters and rented a place on Upper Canyon Road that was more than sufficient to accommodate both of them and the baby while their new home was under construction. It was a furnished guest house on an estate property owned by a mega-rich Wall Street stockbroker who rarely visited Santa Fe. Tucked against a hillside behind high adobe walls, the estate looked down on a small valley that once had been farmland but was now a wealthy residential neighborhood.

On the opposite hillside, trophy homes were perched in full view of the road that circled the valley, so that all who passed by could see the fruits of the owners’ success. Only a very few of the homes on the valley floor were still owned by Hispanics, and those were mostly small and built on tiny plots of land where a half acre could sell for as much as a quarter-million dollars.

On the rear patio of the guest house, Sara waited impatiently for Kerney’s return. He knew damn well she was scheduled to pick up her new car this afternoon from a Santa Fe dealership.

She’d sold her old vehicle at Fort Leavenworth and bought a new one with her own money. Kerney had offered to pay for it. But Sara was unwilling to become dependent on any man, even one she loved and had married. She didn’t make a big salary as a lieutenant colonel, but she’d been raised by frugal ranching parents who’d taught her the value of living debt free. So she’d put aside money every month over the past several years to be able to pay cash when the time came to replace her car.

Kerney, who had also been raised on a ranch, was much the same way about money and had only recently begun, with Sara’s encouragement, to spend some of the wealth he’d inherited from the estate of an old family friend.

Sara thought about the qualities she shared with her husband. Both of them had been raised to value work, thrive on it, take pride in it. That figured into her reluctance to give up her military career for full-time motherhood, just as it kept Kerney unwilling to retire from police work.

Could she really fault him for wanting to continue working at a job he loved? Or for responding to the demands of his job, when she would have done exactly the same thing?

She called for a taxi and within twenty minutes was at the dealership signing the paperwork. The car, a small SUV, was the safest on the market, a perfect size for a small family, and it came with all the bells and whistles. It would serve her well either at the ranch or on the D.C. beltway.

She drove the SUV home, hoping Kerney would be there so she could show it off to him. Instead, she found a dead rat under the portal by the front door. She stepped around it, went inside, and called the part-time estate manager who looked after the property.