The Big Gamble (14 page)

“Just working. I saw my orthopedic surgeon today.”

“And?”

He told her about the newly developed artificial knee, how it would perform, and the idea of building a swimming pool at the new house to use for exercise.

“But I’m thinking maybe a lap pool would be better,” Kerney said. “It would use less water.”

“No way, Kerney,” Sara replied.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t teach both you and our child to swim in a lap pool, and I want something all of us can enjoy. Get that knee fixed and I’ll have you ready to compete in a Senior Olympics swimming event within a year.”

“You say the sweetest things.”

Sara giggled. “I know it. Make sure the pool is heated, so we can use it year-round.”

“I didn’t think of that. When should I schedule the surgery?”

“At the latest, before your son learns to walk, so you can keep up with him. Preferably sooner.”

“Son?” Kerney asked, caught completely off guard.

“That’s what I said. The ultrasound confirmed it today.”

Kerney sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Is that all you can say?” Sara asked.

“I’m flabbergasted. I’m grinning from ear to ear. I don’t know what to say, except let’s try for a daughter next time.”

“One of each would be great, wouldn’t it? But slow down, Kerney. Let me get through one pregnancy at a time. Besides, we might find that one child is all we can handle. Just ask the architect to revise the plans to include the swimming pool. I want to make sure that it’s perfectly sited.”

“I’ll call him in the morning.”

“Say good night.”

Kerney did as told and went to bed thinking of what it would be like to raise a son, and actually get to be a father.

 

Finished with a review of all the evidence and information that had been gathered during the day, Clayton and Paul Hewitt lapsed into silence. Except for an on-duty dispatcher, the men were alone in the offices. It was deflating when all of the known suspects in a homicide investigation had airtight alibis, and that seemed to be the situation.

Luis Rojas and Ned Halloran, the two men who’d flown to the game in private planes, had arrived home before Ulibarri had been killed, and their whereabouts had been accounted for by no fewer than three independent sources each, including airport personnel in Phoenix and El Paso and business associates.

One of the guests at Casey’s Cozy Cabins admitted to taking Ulibarri to the Ruidoso Downs Racetrack about ten in the morning and said they’d played video poker at the track casino for several hours. The second guest showed up to play the ponies just before televised off-track betting from California began. Surveillance tapes showed that both men were still at the track long after Ulibarri left to go back to his cabin to get himself murdered.

Neither man professed to know where Ulibarri had gone or what he’d planned to do after leaving the racetrack casino.

Tredwell had agreed to let his client account for his activities during the time of the murder. Staggs had taken his car in for warranty service at the dealership, where the discovery of a leaky oil pan made it necessary to keep the vehicle for several hours beyond the scheduled appointment. Staggs had waited until it became apparent that parts would have to be ordered and the car kept overnight, getting a ride home from the lot boy. The parts manager, service manager, mechanic, and the lot boy all put Staggs at the car dealership before, during, and after Ulibarri’s estimated time of death.

“All we’ve got is a staged crime scene,” Clayton finally said, looking at the photograph of Ulibarri’s body with his belt undone, his pants unzipped, and his cowboy boots placed neatly together on the floor. “Telling us what?”

“Don’t know,” Hewitt said, rubbing an eye. “Maybe it’s not a message meant for us. Maybe it’s not even staged. Tomorrow, let’s see what we can learn about Johnny Jackson.”

Clayton nodded. “I’ll also contact the FBI to see if any similarly staged homicides have been reported.”

“Yeah,” Hewitt said.

“Yeah,” Clayton echoed, his mind blank, his body weary.

 

A quiet, dark house greeted Clayton upon his arrival home. In the living room he removed his weapon, ejected the magazine, and locked both in the gun cabinet where he kept his hunting rifles. He heard Grace shush him, turned around, and found her sitting in the recliner with Hannah cradled in her arms, fast asleep. She shook her head to warn him not to talk, and carried Hannah to her bedroom.

Seeing Hannah out of bed so late at night worried Clayton; she was usually a sound sleeper.

“It’s just a cold and a small cough,” Grace said when she returned.

Clayton nodded and sank into the recliner.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in days,” Grace said, turning on a table lamp.

“The ways things are going, it probably would’ve been better if I had just stayed home,” Clayton said.

“Problems?”

“Mistakes,” Clayton replied. “Too many of them, and all mine.”

He told her about Tredwell’s threat to sue him for the false arrest of Harry Staggs. “Paul Hewitt even went so far as to say he thought Tredwell could probably win the suit,” he added.

“Was that the extent of his comments?” Grace asked, as she sat on Clayton’s lap and pulled his arm around her waist.

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound like very harsh criticism.”

“Maybe not, but I bet he has second thoughts about hiring me.”

“Now you’re jumping to a conclusion.”

“Not only did he pull me out of the fire with Tredwell, but he showed me a thing or two about interrogating a witness. Hewitt’s sharp.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Grace said, looking into his tired eyes.

Hannah started coughing before Clayton could respond. Grace got up quickly, checked on Hannah for a few minutes, and returned to find Clayton with his boots pulled off, fast asleep in the recliner.

She covered him with a blanket, turned out the light, and went to bed, fretting about her husband. He seemed so down lately, which wasn’t like him at all.

 

 

 

 

H
omicides in Lincoln County were rare, so when Paul Hewitt arrived early at his office he fully expected major print coverage about the Ulibarri case. But he wasn’t prepared to have it be front page news in the morning papers from El Paso to Albuquerque, Las Cruces to Roswell. Headlines read:

There were sidebar articles about the Anna Marie Montoya and Joseph John Humphrey cases, and a story that summarized Ruidoso’s well-deserved reputation during the Prohibition era as a wide-open boot-legging, speakeasy, and gambling town.

Although the quotes were anonymous, Hewitt figured the leak about Harry Staggs and his decision to keep the city cops out of the investigation came from the Ruidoso police chief. The man had been privately denigrating the sheriff’s department for years, and resented Hewitt’s role as the county’s chief law-enforcement officer.

Fuming, he closed his office door, turned on a small portable television, and surfed the network channels for the early morning local newsbreaks. All of them featured the story at the top of the telecast, with video of the cabin where Ulibarri had been killed.

Tredwell called, pissed and wanting an explanation about how the story hit the papers. Hewitt told Tredwell he didn’t control the news media and to direct his outrage at the Ruidoso police chief. The district attorney called, pissed and wanting a meeting so Hewitt could explain why he’d cut a deal with a felony suspect’s attorney on his own authority.

Two county commissioners called to tell Hewitt the Ruidoso mayor was talking about asking for a grand jury probe of the sheriff’s department. Reporters called wanting interviews. Hewitt put them off.

The only good news was Artie Gundersen’s telephone report that the bloodstain on Ulibarri’s boot, which Clayton had fished out of the dumpster behind the western-wear store, was a match to Humphrey’s, as were the traces of blood on the knife found in cabin three. Additionally, Ulibarri’s latents were all over the blade handle, and the murder weapon conformed nicely to the entry wound in Humphrey’s chest.

Hewitt called the reporters back and issued a statement: forensic analysis of the evidence gathered by lead investigator Deputy Clayton Istee and state police crime technicians proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Ulibarri was Humphrey’s killer, and the case had been closed. He gave specifics, brushed aside questions about the ongoing Montoya and Ulibarri investigations, hung up, and wrote a quick note for Clayton Istee telling him about Gundersen’s findings.

He wondered what was bothering Clayton Istee. Over the last several days, he’d seemed wary and constrained in his dealings with others, including Dillingham and Quinones. Were his slipups troubling him? There were all kinds of judgment errors that could occur during a major felony investigation, and no cop was immune to them. But getting bogged down by becoming overly cautious or trying to be perfect could quickly derail an investigation, especially a homicide case where time was of the essence.

He decided to keep a close eye on his deputy, and went off to meet with the DA, wondering how hard it would be to get his butt out of the crack it was in. Fortunately, the DA was an old friend, a hunting buddy, and a member of the same political party. They actively supported each other in their races for office in every election. If necessary, he would call in every personal and political chit he possessed to make the problem go away.

 

The sheriff’s note about the blood match on the knife and Ulibarri’s boot didn’t make Clayton feel any better about himself. If he had thought to search the resort parking lot for Humphrey’s car, Ulibarri might still be alive and in custody, charged with murder one.

He started the day doing paperwork and writing reports. Assembling a homicide casebook was no simple task, and he worked hard to make it thorough, thinking he could at least put together a comprehensive file without screwing it up.

He filled out an offense report, his supplemental reports, the investigation worksheets, and a crime scene worksheet, and completed the last of his canvass field notes. He redrew his crime scene sketches, compiled a witness list, labeled and arranged in sequence all crime scene photographs he and the rest of the team had taken, and updated his investigative narrative. He played back the taped interview with Harry Staggs and decided he needed a better, more detailed description of Johnny Jackson.

He called Harry Staggs on the phone and got him to answer specific questions about Johnny Jackson’s physical characteristics. He recorded each response Staggs made on a blank piece of paper.

He placed the telephone in the cradle thinking that for somebody who’d repeatedly denied knowing Jackson personally, Staggs either had a remarkable memory for details or was lying through his teeth.

Clayton suspected the latter. He wondered if Staggs was leading him astray with a false description. Maybe the name was phony, too. If he could come up with an eyewitness who put Staggs and Jackson together, socially or otherwise, he might be able to break Staggs down and discover why he seemed so scared of a pimp, even a high-class one.

He worked up a wanted-for-questioning bulletin on Jackson, did the violent-crime analysis report for the FBI, called the Bureau to ask for an expedited comparison to any similar crime scenes, and left the completed paperwork with the sheriff’s secretary, who started faxing it right away.

With the more detailed description Staggs had provided, Clayton used a computer program to create a composite likeness of Johnny Jackson’s face. He printed it, made copies, gave some to Quinones and Dillingham, and asked them to start looking for Jackson.

Outside, the wind was blowing hard in an angry gray sky and snow clouds masked Carrizo Mountain. The bleak morning completely matched Clayton’s gloomy mood.

He headed back to the Mescalero Reservation and the resort to begin his own search for the mysterious Johnny Jackson, thinking that if he turned out to be a figment of Staggs’s imagination there would be hell to pay.

 

Paul Hewitt had a theory about how people became lawyers, and it had to do with the names parents gave their children. Hang a couple of colorful monikers on a newborn and it was a lead pipe cinch that another budding lawyer would eventually be launched into the world. In the DA’s case, the name was Roland Hatley Moore, Hat to all his friends.

Hewitt sipped his coffee at a back table in the Dugout Bar & Grill, waiting patiently for Hat to make his appearance. The Dugout opened early for breakfast, which could consist of either the house special of home fries, eggs smothered in green chile with a side of bacon, or a double shot of whiskey for those who drank their meals.