Apache Country (3 page)

Although he had lived in New Mexico half his
life, his voice still had a trace of flat Ivy League twang, another
reason so many people still saw him as what the old timers called
an incomer. A polite way of saying, Not one of us.

“You all know why we’re here,” McKittrick
said. “So – as of now, the Casey murders are our number one
priority. Everything else goes on hold, and I do mean everything. I
don’t care who screams. We’ve got some bad dudes out there and I
want them caught, fast. I know you guys are with me on that.”

There was a little mutter of sure and mmm and
yeah, but nobody spoke. Easton glanced over at Lieutenant Tom
Cochrane, SO’s senior detective. Cochrane grinned. Another reason
McKittrick was unpopular with the troops was he liked to think he
talked like a cop. He didn’t.

“I say again, whatever your caseloads are,
this one gets absolute top priority,” McKittrick continued. “If
that means we have to work around the clock, we work around the
clock. Accordingly, all leave is canceled until further notice. No
exceptions – zero, nada, zip!” He dipped his head to glare at them
over his glasses. “Anyone got a problem with that?”

No one voiced a protest, but Easton felt the
team’s unspoken indignation. McKittrick knew as well as anyone
present how heavy SO’s caseload was. OK, Riverside wasn’t Detroit,
but it got its share of violence. They didn’t boast about it in New
Mexico Magazine, but the State had a pretty high per capita rate
for murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Last time Easton had
looked, the top States for getting killed in were Nevada and Texas.
California was sixth and New Mexico ninth, one place ahead of New
York. People tended to think the West wasn’t wild anymore, but they
were wrong.

Everyone knew McKittrick’s harangue wasn’t
about serving truth and justice. This was politics, baby.
McKittrick was first a politician, second a lawyer, and a human
being Somewhere down the line. A quick result would make him look
good and Olin was always in the business of looking good.

“Everyone here knows how important this case
is, Olin,” Easton heard Joe Apodaca saying, his expression and his
voice neutral. “And you can rely on all of us here giving it one
hundred and ten percent.”

As he finished speaking, Joe Apodaca caught
Easton’s eye and he got the unspoken message: your turn.

Easton stood up. “Okay, I’m going to ask Tom
Cochrane to bring everyone here up to speed on where we are right
now. Tom?”

Lt. Tom Cochrane was one of the savviest
detectives Easton had ever worked with, reliable, determined and
thorough. Been with the department since Adam had acne, as they
said in the squad room. The first thing Easton had done on his
return from Garcia Flat was to assign Cochrane and his partner,
Jack Irving, to head up the investigation. They were SO’s best and
most experienced team.

“McKittrick’s probably going to be even more
of a pain in the ass than usual,” Easton had warned them before the
meeting. “He knows if we don’t get him a result fast he’ll be back
chasing ambulances.”

“Almost an incentive to fail,” Cochrane
observed, drawing back his upper lip and showing his teeth in what
he fondly thought was a Bogart grin. Slat thin, with mournful eyes
and a hangdog expression, Tom Cochrane had a deceptively lethargic
air that had lulled a lot of suspects into thinking he wasn’t too
bright. The idea of some penny-ante thief so stupid he was a
penny-ante thief tagging him as dumb sourly amused him. Careful,
cogent and scrupulously fair, Cochrane had only one idiosyncrasy.
No matter how hot it got, he always wore a jacket and tie. It was
like the heat didn’t affect him.

“RPD covered all the bases,” he said, looking
at McKittrick as he spoke. “Set up an incident room, conducted a
pedestrian and vehicle survey near the school. Officers talked to
the family, checked Casey’s movements, spoke to everyone and anyone
he might have been with.”

“Try and move this along, please,
Lieutenant,” McKittrick said, making a performance of looking at
his watch. “I’ve got a TV interview scheduled in twenty
minutes.”

“We hear ya,” Cochrane said.

Although his face remained impassive, it was
clear what he was thinking: what a schmuck. Making it obvious you’d
give precedence to some TV show rather than confer with the troops
was no way to encourage them to bust their butts for you.

“Okay, just the headlines,” he said. “Adam’s
parents were in Santa Fe attending a convention. Kid was staying
with his grandparents while his folks were away. Same deal every
day. Casey would take Adam to school in the morning, pick him up in
the afternoon. Not everybody loved Casey, but everyone agrees him
and Adam were real close.”

Close didn’t begin to cover it, Easton
thought, remembering how the old man would say ‘Like to have you
meet my grandson.’ Anyone could see the pride in his eyes when they
were together. There wasn’t anything that boy couldn’t have had,
just by asking. If Robert Casey had had the slightest idea Adam’s
life might be endangered, he would have fought. Like a tiger. Any
hurt to himself would have been irrelevant. Whoever killed Adam
must have killed Casey first. They would have had to.

“Casey left the house at about three thirty
to pick up Adam from school,” he heard Cochrane saying. “He never
came back.”

“Yes, yes,” McKittrick said impatiently. “We
know all that. But no bells rang until around six thirty, when
Ellen Casey called RPD and reported her husband missing,
right?”

“Right,” Cochrane replied, deliberately
speaking slowly. TV interview or no TV interview, he wasn’t going
to let McKittrick stampede him. “Three minutes after the call came
in, RPD had a car on the way to the house, another to the school.
They retraced Casey’s route, checked all the places he might have
gone. His offices, the ranch, his daughter Kit’s place up in
Estancia. They didn’t miss a trick.”

McKittrick half turned to shoot a question at
Joe Apodaca. “Anybody contact NCIC?”

“Not yet, Olin,” Joe said imperturbably.
“Forty-eight hour rule, remember?”

It is a tenet of law enforcement that an
adult isn’t officially a missing person until forty-eight hours
have elapsed. Only then are the national crime organizations
contacted for assistance. Maybe RPD hadn’t been able to officially
post Casey and his grandson missing, but everything else they could
do they had done. By the book.

“But you’ll do it now. And VICAP?”

“Olin,” Joe said patiently, drawing out the
‘O.’.

He might as well have said what was written
on his face: Don’t insult our intelligence, for Chrissake. As if
anyone present needed telling it was SOP to contact the National
Crime Information Center and the Violent Criminal Apprehension
Program in any murder case.

“Make sure they know how urgent it is,”
McKittrick said, skating right past the protest without even
noticing it. “Okay – autopsy results?”

“Right here,” Jack Irving said, tapping a
file he was holding. Younger than Cochrane by five years, Irving
stood something under five eight in height, with the smooth skin,
clear eyes and trim body of an athlete. His laid-back sense of
humor made him a perfect foil for Cochrane, whose permanently
lugubrious expression was that of an accountant who has just found
something wrong with the books.

“Yes, and?” McKittrick said, looking at his
watch again.

“Doc Horrell estimates death occurred between
three p.m. Thursday and nightfall, best guess around five in the
afternoon. Casey was shot with a heavy caliber weapon but he can’t
give us much more than that because no slug was recovered. He found
powder grains imbedded in the scalp, carbon monoxide in the brain
tissue, indicating the shot was fired at very close range. No
bruises on the body, no signs of a struggle. Which suggests the
killer was someone the victim knew, someone who could just step up
behind him and blow his brains out. Moving on to Adam’s
injuries—”

“Spare us that,” McKittrick said stiffly.
“We’ve all seen the photographs. Did forensics get anything at the
scene, footprints, tire tracks?”

Jack shook his head. “You know what it’s like
out there,” he said. “Get a little rain, you can sometimes get a
halfway decent impression. No rain, nada. And this has been one of
the driest summers on record – ground’s as hard as rock. CSI
checked anyway – a quarter mile radius from the bodies, and every
inch of the track from where they were found to the highway. There
were some indentations that might or might not have been
footprints, but nothing meaningful. No tire tracks, either.”

“What about inside the car?”

“We got some latents,” Cochrane said. “It’ll
take a while to get elimination prints. Forensics are working on
that now.”

“Anything else?”

“Casey’s wallet was missing,” Irving said.
“Credit cards, driver license. His wife thought he had about two
hundred dollars cash on him.”

“His watch was gone, too,” Cochrane added. “A
gold Omega Seamaster. It’s all on the hotline.”

He took out a pack of cigarettes and put one
between his lips. He knew perfectly well SO had a no-smoking
policy, and everyone present knew he wasn’t going to light it
anyway. He was trying to quit. Once in a while the other deputies
would make bets on how many minutes before he went outside and lit
up.

“So we’re saying what?” McKittrick asked, as
if it were an intelligent question.

“We’re saying we’ve got diddlysquat, Olin,”
Joe Apodaca said harshly. “Excellent,” McKittrick said icily.
“Wonderful. And you want me to go down there and tell that to the
media, right?”

Joe remained silent. But again, what he
wanted to say was written clearly on his face. For my money, you
and the media can take a flying fuck at the Goodyear blimp.

“Tom?” McKittrick said, his voice almost
plaintive. “Jack? Can’t you guys give me something? Anything?”

Cochrane took the cigarette out of his mouth,
put it carefully back into the pack, and put the pack in his pocket
before speaking. Keeping his temper under control, Easton
thought.

“Here’s what we know, Olin,” Cochrane said
patiently. “Casey goes to the school, picks up his grandson a
little after three-thirty. Several people saw him there. And before
you ask, no, he didn’t give anyone a ride.”

Jack Irving took over. “University Middle
School is over on Alameda at Parkview. From there to where the
Caseys live it’s what, sixteen blocks east to Main, twenty three
blocks north, then half a mile east on Country Club. He drove the
same route every day. Never varied. So we have to ask ourselves,
did he pick someone up, was he car-jacked, just how and why on this
particular day does Robert Casey wind up dead on Garcia Flat?”

“And what do we answer?” McKittrick asked
sarcastically.

Irving drew in a deep breath, let it out
slowly. “We’re working with the probability he picked someone
up.”

“Someone he knew?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe the guy just stepped
in at a traffic light, stuck a gun in his ribs.”

“Why? What would be his motive?”

“On the evidence, robbery.”

“Pretty damned far-fetched,” McKittrick said,
not troubling to conceal his scorn. “He tells Casey to drive to
Garcia Flat, makes him get out of the car, hand over his wallet.
Then he kills him? Why?”

“Dead men tell no tales?”

“Then why doesn’t he shoot the kid too? Why
the knife?”

McKittrick’s questions had too much gotcha in
them and Cochrane lost it.

“Look, as soon as we find out, I’ll tell you,
okay?” he snapped.

It was insubordination and McKittrick reacted
predictably. “Then the quicker you get your ass out on the street
the better, Lieutenant,” he snarled, emphasizing the last word.
“And that goes for everyone else here. Beat the bushes, you people,
get the word out, talk to your snitches. If you want help, ask,
I’ll assign extra manpower. But for Chrissake get me something
better than a bunch of goddamn maybes.”

He snapped his briefcase shut to emphasize
his displeasure and stood up. “Joe, keep me posted, yes? Day or
night.”

“Sure, Olin.”

As McKittrick and Wally Paul hurried off to
their TV interview and the rest of the staff returned to their
duties, Easton followed Joe Apodaca into his office. The sheriff
threw himself into his chair, angrily spinning it left and then
right.

“Jesus, that guy!” he gritted, blowing out
his breath gustily. “Why is he always such an asshole?”

“And you caught him on his good day,” Easton
said.

Joe managed a grin. “You know, there was a
moment back there I thought Tom Cochrane was going to spit in his
eye.”

“There was a moment back there I thought you
were,” Easton said, and waited. Joe got around to things at his own
speed. He got up from his chair, poured coffee into two mugs and
handed one over.

“Been thinking,” he said, drawing it out. “I
figure someone ought to go over and see Ellen Casey.”

Easton frowned. “RPD already talked to her,
Joe. She’ll have told them everything she knows.”

“Ye-es,” Joe said, as if reluctant to say
more.

“She’s probably in shock. The whole family,
come to that,” Easton pointed out. “It would be an intrusion.”

Apodaca looked up, his eyes unreadable. “I
know. But I thought maybe you could, you know, talk to her, get
some sense of what was going on in her world.”

The penny dropped. “Let me see if I’m getting
this right,” Easton said. “What you mean is, go out there and be
supportive and understanding and tell her how much we all hate to
intrude on her grief, then sort of slip in a couple of personal
questions, like was Casey cheating on her or was she cheating on
him, that sort of thing?”

“Yeah, that sort of thing,” Joe said, not
looking at him. “You and Ellen used to be pretty close, didn’t
you?”