Death Song (11 page)

“Because I had no desire to deal with your false pride.” Grace rose, approached Clayton, and looked up at him with serious eyes. “So tell me, in this matter, who has been the better Apache? Kerney, who in spite of your pride, found a way to help us
as part of his family
? Or you, who has rejected most of his attempted kindnesses as though he were the enemy?”

Grace’s words struck home. As a child, Clayton’s uncles had taught him the four laws of the Mescalero Apaches: honesty, generosity, pride, and bravery. But a man could not be proud, brave, or honest unless he was first and foremost generous.

From the time he’d turned down Kerney’s offer to help him rebuild his home, Clayton had felt ill at ease with his decision. Whether Kerney knew it or not, in the ways of the Apache people, Clayton had insulted him. To repeat such an offense would show Clayton to be a man who’d lost his dignity.

“I will stay with Kerney and his family while I’m in Santa Fe,” he said with great seriousness.

Grace giggled. “Don’t make it sound like you’ve been sentenced to a week in the county jail.”

Clayton laughed in spite of himself and gave Grace a hug. The sound of the school bus horn outside the building ended the conversation. Grace and Clayton walked their children to the entrance, watched them board the bus, and waved when it drove away.

“I’ll call you tonight,” Clayton said.

“See that you do.”

Grace raised her face for a kiss and Clayton brushed her lips with his.

“You can do better than that,” she said as she grabbed his arm and pressed closely against him.

He gave her the full treatment—lips, corners of her eyes, tip of her nose, nape of her neck, a nibble on her earlobe—and left her smiling at the door.

There was no doubt in Clayton’s mind that the nervous man sitting outside the New Mexico chief medical investigator’s office, thumbing through an open file folder was Major Don Mielke of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. He was thin and haggard-looking with long legs, a narrow frame, slightly rounded shoulders, and the rosy complexion of a man who drank too much.

Clayton stepped up to Mielke and introduced himself. Mielke nodded, gestured to an empty chair, and shook Clayton’s hand after he sat down.

“My chief deputy said you’d be here for the autopsies,” Mielke said.

Clayton caught the faint scent of a cough drop on Mielke’s breath. “When do we get started?” he asked.

Mielke looked at his watch. “The chief MI and his senior pathologist will be here in ten minutes. They’ll do the autopsies simultaneously, so I’m glad you showed up on time. I’ll cover Denise Riley, you take Tim Riley.”

Clayton nodded. “Did you know them well?”

Mielke shot Clayton a sharp look. “Yeah, you could say that, but let’s save your interrogation into my relationships with the deceased until after we finish up here.”

Clayton smiled apologetically. Mielke’s annoyance at his innocent-sounding question signaled that the fun and games had begun. “I only asked because I thought you might have an idea, a theory, or maybe even a half-baked guess about why they were killed.”

Mielke shook his head. “If I had one single, off-the-wall, scatterbrained notion about who did this or why, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, Istee.”

Clayton kept smiling. The major’s answer was a neat feint that gave absolutely nothing away. “That’s good to know.”

A lab assistant opened the swinging door and invited Clayton and Mielke to enter. Inside the autopsy room, a stark, brightly lit, spotlessly clean space, Tim and Denise Riley had been reunited for what might be the very last time, unless they were to be buried together. Their stiff bodies were stretched out on adjoining tables still clothed in the garments they’d worn dying.

All that had been human about them was gone. Under the harsh light Tim Riley’s mangled face looked even more gruesome, and although Clayton could see that Denise Riley had once been lovely to look at, her slashed throat spoiled the image.

He stepped up to the table for a closer inspection of the fatal wound. It was a straight, clean cut that severed the jugular and showed no evidence of hesitation. The incised cut had edges that were sharp and even, which made Clayton suspect that the killer had struck from behind his victim with one swift swipe of his knife. He wondered why there had been no mention of such a clean kill in the reports he’d received from the Santa Fe S.O.

The two pathologists who entered the room were suited up and ready to go to work. After introductions were made, Clayton stepped back and watched the procedure. Talking quietly into the overhead microphones above the tables, the doctors dictated their findings as they first noted the state of the victims’ clothing, the physical characteristics of the bodies, and the visible evidence of injuries and wounds.

Although he would never admit it, Clayton had a hard time staying for any length of time in the presence of death. He forced himself to remain still. It wasn’t the autopsy that got to him as much as it was the Apache belief that before the dead went to where the ancestors dwelled they could infect you with a ghost sickness that could kill.

To ward it off, it was an Apache custom to wear black, and Clayton had come to the autopsies fully protected. He wore a black leather jacket, black jeans, black cowboy boots, and a sturdy black belt with a silver buckle that held up his holstered sidearm. Even the white cowboy shirt he wore had black stitching around the cuffs, collar, and pockets, and his shield, clipped to his belt, had a diagonal black stripe to signify the death of a fellow officer.

The doctor assigned to Tim Riley had worked his way through the last phase of his external examination. The lab assistant, who’d been photographing both bodies, swabbing cavities, combing for pubic hairs, and taking fingernail clippings, began to bag and tag Riley’s clothing.

When he got to the shield that had been pinned above the left pocket of Riley’s uniform shirt, Clayton stepped forward and held out his hand. “Let me have that,” he said.

The tech gave the pathologist a questioning look.

“I don’t think keeping the badge in evidence will help catch the officer’s killer,” the doctor said. “Give it to the sergeant. Just note where it went on your evidence log.”

The tech did as he was told.

Clayton pocketed the shield, which he would return to Paul Hewitt, who would in turn eventually give it to Riley’s son. He stepped back out of the way just as the pathologist made the first long incision down Riley’s naked torso.

The doctor working on Denise Riley’s body had already cut her open and was busy inspecting the internal organs. Slowly, he raised his head, looked at Don Mielke, and said, “This woman was pregnant. She was almost at the end of her first trimester when she died.”

Clayton considered whether or not Riley had known that his wife was pregnant. Tim hadn’t mentioned it, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything more than it was none of Clayton’s business. However, surely a wife thrilled to be having a baby would give her husband the joyful news and tell family and friends of the upcoming blessed event.

Clayton watched Mielke speed-dial his cell phone, turn his head away, and whisper so as not to be overheard. Obviously, Mielke thought the pregnancy was important news that might have a direct bearing on the case.

Without additional information from Mielke, Clayton didn’t know what to think. Maybe Denise hadn’t known that she was pregnant. The possibility couldn’t be discounted without further probing.

Mielke closed his cell phone, looked at Clayton, glanced in the direction of the double doors, and stepped outside the autopsy suite. Clayton followed.

“I just advised my people about the pregnancy,” Mielke said.

“I figured as much,” Clayton said. “Was this the first you’d heard of it?”

Mielke nodded.

“What made you jump on it so fast?”

“Tim told me that after his first wife gave birth to their son, she demanded that he get a vasectomy, which he did. As far as I know he never tried to have the procedure reversed.”

“So Denise was carrying somebody else’s child.”

“I’d say it’s very likely.” Mielke paused. “But what’s interesting is that Denise always made the point of telling the other officers’ wives how much she enjoyed not being a mother, and she made no bones about being pleased that Tim couldn’t get her pregnant.”

“And that was okay with Tim?” Clayton asked.

“Yeah. He said at his age he had no desire to start a new family.”

Mielke rubbed his chin as though he was trying to wipe away a bewildered look that crossed his face.

“You seem surprised by all of this,” Clayton said.

“They acted like the perfectly happy couple, but you never know.”

“You never do,” Clayton echoed. “So maybe now we have a motive.”

“We’ve got something,” Mielke said, sounding decidedly upbeat.

“We’ll need DNA testing done on Denise and the fetus,” Clayton said, somewhat surprised by Mielke’s positive reaction.

“As soon as possible,” Mielke added. “I’m sure you’ll want every male officer of my department to voluntarily provide a mouth swab sample for DNA analysis.”

“I’ll want a sample from every male
employee
, sworn or civilian,” Clayton said, “and it will have to be taken in my presence or by someone I designate from outside your department.”

“Agreed.” Mielke walked to the swinging doors, paused, turned, and gave Clayton a tight smile. “In a way, I’m glad she was pregnant.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I honestly don’t believe Denise would have had an affair with anybody at the S.O.”

Clayton gave Mielke a questioning look.

“Except for Tim, I don’t think she liked cops,” he explained. “At least not the officers in my department.”

“Including you?” Clayton asked.

Mielke scoffed as he pushed his way back into the autopsy suite. “Let me be the first in line to give you a DNA sample, Sergeant Istee,” he said in a low voice.

“That would be great,” Clayton whispered in reply, thinking that once again Mielke had handily jumped over a seemingly innocuous question.

The pathologists had made good progress during Clayton and Mielke’s absence from the suite. Internal organs had been removed, analyzed, and weighed, and fluid specimens from the gastrointestinal tracts had been collected for toxicology testing. The doctor working on Denise Riley reported no vaginal or anal bruising or tearing, but didn’t rule out sexual contact prior to death.

Mielke asked to have DNA testing done on Denise and her fetus as soon as possible.

“I’ve already dictated a priority request to have it done ASAP,” the doctor replied.

Clayton stepped up to the table where the other doctor was busy placing some of Tim Riley’s detached internal organs into his chest cavity. “Will you look and see if he had a vasectomy?”

“He sure did,” the doctor replied, glancing up at Clayton, “and it was a done by a darn good surgeon, too.”

“Is there any evidence that the procedure was reversed?’

“Nope, the part of the vas deferens that was removed hasn’t been toyed with, at least not surgically.”

Clayton shook his head in dismay at the bad joke. “Thanks.”

The doctor looked over at Denise’s body on the adjoining table. “These two were husband and wife, right?”

“Correct.”

“Well then, Detective, I’d be looking for the guy who got the wife pregnant.”

“That’s a great idea,” Clayton replied.

When Clayton arrived at the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office the March sun was low in the west, pallid in a windblown, dusty sky. He’d followed Mielke up from Albuquerque and used the time to speculate about the major. Mielke had shared a good deal of personal information about Tim and Denise Riley, which made Clayton wonder about the exact nature of his friendship with the couple. Was it Tim who’d been Mielke’s buddy, or had Denise been the primary object of the major’s attention?

It was a question that needed an answer, and Mielke’s willingness to be first in line to give a DNA sample didn’t necessarily put the issue to rest.

Clayton parked next to Mielke’s unit in the rear lot and followed him through the restricted access employee entrance, down a brightly lit corridor, and into a large briefing room that had been set up as a command center for the investigation. Mielke introduced him to several uniformed deputies who were filling out paperwork at a worktable, and it earned Clayton measured looks and freeze-dried smiles. News of the nature of his mission had obviously preceded him.

After Mielke excused himself to go find the sheriff, Clayton used his time waiting to study the investigation task and duty assignments that had been posted on a large chalkboard mounted on the rear wall of the room.

Mielke came back before Clayton could digest all the information, to tell him that Sheriff Salgado was in the workout room and would meet with him there. He followed Mielke down another hallway, marveling at the space, the relative newness of the building, the number of individual offices that lined the corridors, the existence of an actual walk-in evidence storeroom, and a secure armory for weapons and ammunition. By comparison, it made the cramped space of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in the county courthouse in Carrizozo seem like a shabby suite of low-rent offices.

The workout room for the deputies was nothing less than a fully equipped gym, with lockers, showers, and bathrooms and every piece of exercise equipment needed for weight training and cardiovascular fitness. It was as nice as the private gym in Ruidoso that Clayton paid money to every month and never got to use half as much as he should have.

Dressed in sweats and putting in some time on a motorized treadmill, Sheriff Salgado was the only person in the gym. He jogged at a pace no faster than a slow walk, sweating heavily, red in the face and panting hard.

Salgado’s thick waist and inner tube–size love handles bulged against his sweatshirt, and his double chin jiggled up and down as he moved. Clayton half expected the man to stroke out or collapse from a heart attack at any moment.