After Kerney, his wife, and the vet went into the barn, Thorpe gathered soil samples, sketched and photographed the impressions, and mixed up a batch of dental plaster to do the castings.
Thorpe had recently transferred to Santa Fe from the Las Vegas district. He’d first met Kerney soon after his graduation from the academy when body parts of a decomposed butchered female had been found on land Kerney had inherited and then later sold to the Nature Conservancy.
At the time, Kerney was deputy chief of the state police. He took charge of the investigation and Russell worked on the homicide with him. In the course of that assignment, Thorpe fell asleep while on surveillance, causing him to lose contact with the murder suspect, who was later caught and convicted. Kerney saved Russell’s budding career by giving him a butt-chewing rather than an official reprimand. Now Thorpe hoped to pay back the favor by doing thorough work and maybe even catching the bad guy.
He cleaned out the loose material from the indentations, sprayed a plastic coating on each, built a form around every impression, and carefully poured the plaster in stages, building each form up as he went to avoid letting the material run off and spoil the casting.
Russell left the forms to dry and walked to the barn. The veterinarian had cut into the hide of the horse, sawed through some ribs, and sliced and pinned back the stomach muscles. Now he was probing for a spent round with a pair of forceps. The concrete pad under his feet ran blood red, and the smell from the exposed guts wasn’t pleasant.
A grim Kerney and his equally unhappy-looking wife stood behind the vet watching. Tug Cheney grunted, gently extracted a slug and dropped it into Kerney’s gloved hand.
He inspected it, marked it, and put it in a plastic bag.
Thorpe asked to see the bullet and Kerney handed him the bag. The tip of the slug was dented, probably from hitting a rib. Other than that, Thorpe wasn’t sure what he was looking at.
“Is it from a handgun?” he asked.
Kerney nodded. “Probably a. 38-caliber revolver.”
“How can you tell?”
“From the diameter of the slug and the fact that a semi-automatic round is usually fully encased in a one-piece metal jacket. The bullet you’re holding doesn’t have a jacket covering the lead core and it shows spiral grooves from the rifling of the barrel. It explains why we didn’t find any spent cartridges.”
Thorpe nodded and handed back the bag. “Anything else?”
“The hair around one of the entry wounds was blistered,” Kerney replied. “That means the shooter fired from close range, no more than two inches. He deliberately gut shot Soldier, then fired two more rounds to finish the job.”
“That sucks,” Thorpe said.
Kerney nodded. Years ago, he’d been gut shot by a drug dealer, so he had a fairly good idea of the pain Soldier had suffered before dying. He wondered if there was a connection between the two events. That was unlikely: Kerney had put the drug dealer down permanently before passing out, so that particular dirtbag couldn’t possibly be a suspect. So, who was?
If the way Soldier was killed wasn’t a coincidence, Kerney thought, then the shooter was telling him that he knew his personal history, what he cared about, where he lived, and how easy it would be to get to him or those he loved.
“What do you want me to do next, Chief?” Thorpe asked.
“Get me a large plastic bag,” Kerney said, noticing for the first time that Soldier was wearing a halter. Yesterday, he’d removed it and put it on a hook inside the stall.
He stepped to the head of the horse, took out a pocket knife, cut through the halter to avoid touching the buckle, and slipped it off. He held it by the edges of his gloved fingertips until Thorpe returned with the bag.
“When you’re finished here, have the lab check for prints and compare them to mine,” he said to Thorpe as he eased it into the bag and zipped it shut.
“Got another one,” Tug said, lifting out the forceps and dropping a bullet into Kerney’s hand. “I think the last one went straight through the stomach cavity. We’ll have to lift him up to see.”
Kerney marked and bagged the round. “We can use the contractor’s backhoe to do that.” He turned to Thorpe. “Have it brought over here, and then check the crew members’ shoes and their vehicle tires against the castings.”
“What about the subcontractors?” Thorpe asked.
“Good point. Trujillo can provide us with names and addresses. I’ll follow up with them later.”
“I can do it,” Thorpe said. “Chief Baca said I’m assigned to the case until you release me.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
Russell smiled. “I owe you one, Chief.”
“Okay, it’s yours. Take statements, too.”
“Affirmative,” Thorpe said, as he left to get Trujillo.
“What do we do with Soldier?” Sara asked.
“You can either have the carcass shipped to Albuquerque for disposal or you can bury him here on your property,” Tug said.
“We’ll bury him,” Sara said, before Kerney could respond.
Kerney bit his lip and nodded in agreement.
Tug stripped off his gloves and gave Kerney a solemn look. “I’m done here. Sorry for your loss. He was a fine animal. Whoever did this should be shot.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Sara said.
She put her arm around Kerney’s waist as they walked Cheney to his truck and thanked him. Across the field, Trujillo cranked up the backhoe while Thorpe checked the tires of the parked vehicles against the plaster castings.
“What’s this all about?” Sara said as Tug drove away.
“I don’t know yet.”
“It’s freaky.”
“I know,” Kerney said, looking at Sara with sad eyes. “About this morning…”
“We don’t have to talk about that now.”
“I want to. Whatever you decide to do is fine with me, as long as I can keep you and the baby in my life.”
“That’s a sweet sentiment,” Sara said, turning to look Kerney in the eye. “But it doesn’t get you out of really talking things through with me.”
Kerney nodded. “We don’t have to have an ordinary marriage. Maybe that’s best.”
“Meaning?”
Kerney smiled weakly. “I’m not sure.”
Kerney’s deep-set blue eyes moved from her face to the barn. He pulled himself ramrod straight, his six-one frame accentuated by big shoulders, a broad chest, and a slim waist set off by a rodeo belt buckle he’d won in a high school competition. Only a touch of gray at his temples and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes hinted at his true age. He cleared his sad expression and replaced it with a look of detachment that tightened his square jaw. But the corded muscles in his neck showed the pain and anger he felt over the loss of Soldier.
“I have to take care of Soldier,” he said. “Bury him.”
“I know you do,” Sara said, as she lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek.
“What’s that for?”
“For being who you are,” Sara said, squeezing his hand.
Bobby Trujillo arrived with the backhoe and some chains. Kerney guided him into the barn, and Bobby used the forks of the bucket to lift Soldier’s hindquarters so Kerney could wrap a chain around the animal and secure it to the bucket. They repeated the process at Soldier’s shoulders, then Bobby raised the animal a few inches off the pad and backed slowly out of the barn.
Under the bloody mess, Kerney could see the third flattened bullet embedded in the concrete, but retrieving it would have to wait until everything got cleaned up.
“Where do you want the horse to go?” Bobby asked, when Kerney came out of the barn.
“I’ll take care of it,” Kerney said, “if you’ll let me borrow the backhoe.”