“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.
“A rat?” the woman said in surprise.
“Yes,” Sara replied. “Does this happen often?”
“No, it’s never happened before. I’ll have it removed.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Sara said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Have there been any workmen or exterminators on the premises today?”
“No one is scheduled to be there.”
“Do you have poisoned bait traps put out?”
“No,” the woman answered. “There’s never been a need for them.”
Sara thanked the woman, hung up, and went back outside to look at the animal more closely. With a small stick she turned the rat over. Its limbs were rigid and splayed out from the torso, the mouth was open, and there were no visible wounds. An experienced military police officer who’d commanded a criminal investigation unit, Sara had seen her share of death, including a few suicides by poison. She had a strong hunch the rat hadn’t crawled onto the front portal to die.
She called Tug Cheney, explained the situation, and asked him to come over.
“Don’t touch it,” Cheney said. “I’ll be there soon. What’s going on? First the horse and now this.”
“I think somebody doesn’t like us very much,” Sara said.
She thought about calling Kerney then dropped the idea, deciding it would be best to wait until Cheney finished his examination.
As a precaution, she locked all the doors and windows and took Kerney’s personal handgun from a box on the bedroom closet shelf. She sat on the living room sofa, checked the rounds in the. 38, and laid the weapon on the end table.
This was no time for someone to be threatening her or her family. Without hesitation, she would blow away anyone who came to do them harm.
She patted her tummy and hummed quietly as she waited for Tug Cheney to arrive.
With the information Bobby Trujillo had provided, Patrol Officer Russell Thorpe found it relatively easy to locate the subcontractors who’d worked on Kerney’s new house. By the end of his shift, he’d interviewed everybody who’d been involved with site preparation, earth moving, concrete pouring, and the rough-in plumbing and electrical work. He’d also checked every possible vehicle for a tread mark match. The sum total of his efforts resulted in excluding everybody he’d interviewed as a likely suspect in the case, which wasn’t a bad thing.
At state police headquarters, Thorpe dropped off the evidence at the lab for analysis. On his way out the door the thought occurred to him that it might be wise to talk to the building suppliers. He called Trujillo on his cell phone, got the names and addresses of the companies that had delivered materials to the site, and set out to make the rounds.
A bachelor with no one waiting for him at home, Thorpe didn’t mind putting out the extra effort. He wanted to show initiative and make an arrest in the case. Besides pleasing Kerney, it would earn him some points with Chief Baca, which might help when he had enough time on the job to apply for a transfer to criminal investigations.
The suppliers consisted of an adobe manufacturer, a lumber company, and a ready-mix concrete outfit. The ready-mix plant and the lumberyard were nearby, so Thorpe checked there first and talked to the drivers, both of whom reported seeing no traffic on the ranch road or any suspicious activity at the job site. The adobe works was run by a tribal outfit on a pueblo outside of Espanola, a small city north of Santa Fe.
The drive to the pueblo took Thorpe along a busy highway that eventually ran north to Taos and then on to Colorado. He passed by two Indian casinos, through some badlands where the roadside businesses looked junky and languishing, and got caught in stop-and-go traffic as the road funneled down to the main drag in Espanola, which seemed to offer nothing more than a combination of strip malls, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, and mom-and-pop businesses housed in dilapidated buildings.
On the other hand, the pueblo outside of town had some charm. Located along the river in thick bosque with ancient cottonwoods lining the roadway, the main village was virtually hidden from the outside world.
In a large fenced clearing away from the village, Thorpe found the yard where the adobes were made. It consisted of a metal building and long rows of freshly made mud and straw adobe bricks that were drying in the sun. Bales of straw and mounds of clay were strategically located next to several large, motor-driven mixing tanks used to stir the ingredients to the right consistency. Hundreds of empty wooden forms were lined up ready to be used in the next production run, and a fully loaded flatbed truck was parked in front of the office.
Inside the building he introduced himself to a middle-aged man who didn’t look happy to see a state cop in uniform on tribal land.