By daybreak, Ruben had talked his exhausted wife into going home. Inside the double-wide, Sergeant Ramona Pino, two SFPD detectives, and three sheriff’s investigators were continuing the house search. Kerney joined Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup in the RV that served as the sheriff’s office mobile command center, and asked him to talk about Tim Riley.
Jessup eased his bulk into a chair behind a small bolted-down table and motioned for Kerney to join him. Jessup’s pale blue eyes were weary. The deep creases below his chubby cheeks pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave him a perpetual hangdog expression. In contrast to his dour appearance, Jessup had a high-pitched voice. A true tenor, he was the mainstay of a barbershop quartet that performed locally and at regional competitions.
“Tim was a solid, dependable officer,” Jessup said, “and we were sorry to lose him.”
“No personality conflicts with other officers or problems with the brass?”
“None.”
“Then why did he leave?” Kerney asked.
Jessup shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t give a reason other than to say he’d accepted a job with the Lincoln County S.O.” He handed Kerney a file folder. “That’s Riley’s personnel file. Look it over for yourself. He received solid performance evaluations, had no disciplinary actions, and received several commendations from his supervisors and one from the board of county commissioners.”
Kerney paged through the paperwork. “What about his personal and family life?”
“That I don’t know anything about,” Jessup replied. “He wasn’t one to socialize much with other officers. I met his wife maybe twice, once at a retirement party and once at some community fund-raising event. I didn’t even know she was Helen Muiz’s kid sister.”
Outside the RV window, detectives and investigators were loading boxes of evidence into the back of the S.O. crime lab van. On the driveway that led from the double-wide to the county road, S.O. patrol vehicles, state police units, and SFPD vehicles were arriving, along with members of a search and rescue team.
Jessup stood up and nodded toward an unmarked sedan that came to a stop near a staging area for searchers that had been set up in front of the stables. “The sheriff has arrived. He wants us to scour this area until we either find Denise Riley’s body or we know that she isn’t here to be found.”
Kerney followed Jessup out of the RV and looked at the mesa that rose above the narrow valley, much of it still in deep shadows. There was a lot of rugged country to cover and places where a body could be hidden so that no matter how exhaustive the search, it might never be found.
At the staging area, Kerney joined Leonard Jessup, Sheriff Luciano Salgado, the state police captain who commanded the district office, and an emergency room doctor who also served as the search and rescue director. Together, they went over the sheriff’s search plan, which consisted of a concentrated sweep of the valley and surrounding area before moving into the higher country. When the searchers had assembled, Salgado divided the personnel into teams and gave out grid assignments. A sober and silent group of three dozen men and women fanned out in all four directions, the quiet broken only by the rough, querulous sound of Mexican jays in the tall pines and the low whine of a commercial jet thirty thousand feet overhead.
Kerney spent a few minutes alone with Luciano Salgado, who had retired as a SFPD patrol sergeant six years ago to accept an appointment as chief deputy for the S.O, and was now serving his first term as the duly elected sheriff. Luciano asked if he could continue to use Kerney’s detectives throughout the day. He wanted Ramona Pino to work with his major crimes unit supervisor on an evidence search of the stable and the P.D. detectives to assist in a follow-up neighborhood canvass of all residents.
Kerney readily agreed and passed on the assignments to Sergeant Pino. Back at his unit he called Sara on his cell phone.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked.
“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.