“There’s nothing up there,” Clayton said before Hewitt had a chance to ask.
Hewitt handed Clayton a piece of paper. “This is a list of the people we know Riley had contact with since he moved down here. There may be more.”
There were over thirty names on the list. Some worked at local businesses, several were real estate agents, and a few were people Clayton had introduced to Riley earlier in the week.
“Use whomever you want to help you work that list,” Hewitt added.
“Thanks,” Clayton said. “Any word on Riley’s missing wife?”
“Not yet. Maybe something will break on that end.”
“Yeah,” Clayton said without enthusiasm, wondering if his father, Kevin Kerney, was involved in the Santa Fe investigation.
“Where is Cañoncito?” he asked Hewitt.
“I have no idea,” Hewitt replied.
In Cañoncito, the news that Deputy Riley had been shot dead turned a missing person case into a full-scale homicide investigation. Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup of the Santa Fe S.O. called out his major felony investigators, his crime scene team, and asked Kerney to provide additional detectives to assist. Aside from Detective Matt Chacon, who was already on his way, Kerney had Sergeant Ramona Pino and two more detectives roll to the scene.
Helen Muiz rejected Kerney’s suggestion to go home and await further developments. Although the double-wide and surrounding area were now part of a homicide investigation and thus closed to civilians, Kerney didn’t force the issue. Helen’s long and distinguished record of service with the department, the strong support she’d given him during his tenure as chief, and their friendship that extended back to Kerney’s rookie year as a cop entitled her to all due consideration.
To make way for the investigators and the techs, Kerney took Helen and Ruben to his police vehicle, where they sat with the dome light on, the motor running, and the heater cranking out warm air.
Kerney asked Helen to tell him about her baby sister, and he learned that Denise had lived with five or six men during her wanderlust years, none of whom the family had ever met. According to both Helen and Ruben, Denise had volunteered very little information about her past relationships and would brush off any serious attempt to discuss her time away from Santa Fe. It was as if she had erased from scrutiny a dozen years of her life.
Kerney did learn that Denise had left Santa Fe two days after her high school graduation party, taking with her all of the money she’d saved for college, cash she’d received as presents from relatives, plus two hundred dollars she’d stolen from her mother’s purse. There had been gossip at the time that Denise had taken the money and left town to get an abortion, but those rumors soon died away.
Kerney asked for clarity about Denise’s rapid departure. Helen said Denise left because of conflict with her father that centered around his refusal to let her go away to college. Because of her rebellious nature, he wanted her to live at home and go to the community college for her first two years.
“Was going away to college a financial issue?” Kerney asked.
Helen, who sat on the front passenger seat next to Kerney, shook her head. “Not at all. Daddy just wanted to keep an eye on her. He’d just sold his plumbing and heating business and had settled my grandfather’s estate. Each of us children received money from the sale of Grandfather’s foothills property, although Denise had to wait until she was twenty-one to receive her share.”
“Why would Denise leave home because of a spat over where she could go to college?” Kerney asked.
“It went deeper than that,” Ruben said from the backseat of Kerney’s cruiser.
Kerney turned to Ruben. “Do you think she was pregnant when she left home?”
“She may have been, but it’s one of those topics that’s never discussed in the family,” Ruben replied.
Helen shook her head. “Because it wasn’t true.”
“Then why is the topic always such a sore spot with you and Denise?” Ruben countered.
“Go on,” Kerney said to Ruben before Helen could reply.
“Denise was super smart, totally bored with Santa Fe, and very unchallenged in high school. You could call the crowd she hung out with a fringe, arty group. They were into theater, film, acting, music, art, and smoking a little pot. Denise had aspirations; she wanted to strike out on her own, see the world, and she didn’t want to be held back. She had big dreams to make it as a singer or actress.”
“You seem to know a great deal about your sister-in-law’s teenage years,” Kerney said.
Ruben smiled. “I was the head of the guidance and counseling department at the high school during the time Denise was enrolled. As Helen’s husband, I couldn’t counsel her directly, but I did stay informed of her progress. She dropped out of the gifted program her sophomore year, although she continued to take advance placement classes in subjects that interested her.”
Kerney was about to direct the conversation to Denise’s relationship with her husband when Detective Matt Chacon stepped onto the deck of the double-wide and motioned to him. Kerney excused himself and went to see what Chacon had discovered.
“Did you find anything interesting on the computers?” he asked. Through the open door Kerney could see deputies and detectives carefully examining the furnishings, carpet, walls, and curtains, looking for trace evidence.
“It’s what I didn’t find that’s interesting, Chief,” Matt replied. “Both computers have had the hard drives completely erased and reformatted using what I think was a bootleg recovery system that can’t be traced back to a manufacturer. Everything on the computers was wiped clean. Whoever did this didn’t want whatever was on the computers to be retrieved.”
“Can’t you restore the hard drive data?”
“It’s not a question of retrieval,” Matt replied. “The drives have been scoured and sterilized of all information. It doesn’t take a computer geek to do it. An hour or two of Internet research can give anyone the information they need to permanently purge files, folders, and data. However, I can tell you that this was done twenty-four hours ago.”
“What about any removable storage devices?”
“Both computers have CD and flash drive capacity, but I haven’t found any compact disks or portable storage devices in the house. I’m assuming whoever erased the hard drives took them. I dusted both machines for fingerprints. They’d been wiped clean.”
“This is not good news,” Kerney said.
“I know it isn’t, Chief,” Matt replied. “But most people pay their monthly IP bills automatically through online checking or a charge to a credit card. Sergeant Pino is looking for banking and credit card statements. If we can determine the IP provider, we can get a court order and access e-mail account information.”
“Do the same with the cell phone and landline accounts.”
“It’s on the list,” Matt said. “I’m going to take both computers back to the office and go through everything again. Sometimes a recovery program will miss, skip, or write over an old file or folder. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“Okay.” Kerney gave Matt a pat on the back. Soon after becoming chief, he’d promoted Chacon to detective, and although the young officer didn’t know it, he was about to receive his sergeant stripes and be put in charge of the Property Crimes Unit. “Keep at it,” Kerney said.
“Will do, Chief.”
When Kerney returned to his police unit, Helen quizzed him about his conversation with Chacon. He short-circuited the facts and told her that Matt hadn’t yet found anything of interest on the computers, but would conduct a more comprehensive examination at police headquarters.