Michael McGarrity: Under the color of law

Alonso Herrera, nicknamed Cloudy by his fellow Santa Fe police officers because of his piss-poor attitude and constant complaining, cursed as he rolled his unit to a stop in front of the metal security gate at the front end of a dirt driveway. He didn't like working day shifts, didn't like driving through snow and slush, and didn't like checking on some rich-bitch citizen an out-of-state relative was worried about.

He opened the window and punched the call button on the speaker box. An early-morning storm had left two inches of snow on the ground, and the cold wind felt raw against his face.

Fuck February, Herrera thought.

The absence of tire tracks in the driveway probably meant that Mrs.

Phyllis Terrell wasn't at home. He would have to hoof it up the driveway and get his feet wet and his shoes dirty, just to report he'd been unable to make contact with the occupant.

He reviewed the notes he'd scribbled when dispatch had assigned him the call. He was looking for Mrs. Phyllis Terrell, age fifty-two, five four, blond and blue, weight 120, health excellent.

When Terrell had failed to show up on an early-morning flight from Albuquerque to Washington, D. C." her sister, who had been waiting at the airport for her, immediately called the house only to get an answering machine.

The sister, Susan Straley, had then called the shift commander, made a big deal about how Terrell was an ambassador's wife, and asked to have an officer sent to check on the woman.

Ambassador to what, Herrera wondered. Santa Fe had more than its share of media celebrities, movie stars, trust funders, and rich arty-farty types, but the politicians who lived in the city were the local garden variety, not prominent national figures.

After buzzing again with no response, Herrera got out of his unit. The ex-chief of police had purchased white patrol cars for the department, which always looked like shit in bad weather. He hated driving a dirty unit, and today his vehicle was splattered with mud and road slush.

Herrera couldn't even begin to count the wasted hours he'd spent in this neighborhood. The high-tech security systems in these houses went off whenever some damn rodent ran across a floor or a lightning storm came too close.

He keyed his handheld radio, reported he would be on foot at the Terrell residence, and climbed over the four-foot gate. A snarling dog came out of nowhere. Before Herrera could retreat, it nipped hard at his leg. He shook it free, his trousers tearing as the dog let go. The mutt backed up, snarled again, and started another run at him. Herrera squirted it with pepper spray and scrambled back over the gate. The dog yelped, went prone, whined, and started working both paws at its eyes, trying to clear out the spray.

Herrera looked down at his leg and lifted the torn flap of fabric. His skin had been broken by the animal's teeth. He decided he hated fucking dogs and thought about shooting this one, but instead called for animal control.

The dog had wandered off by the time Matt Garcia, the animal control officer, arrived. After getting his snare from the truck, he looked at Herrera's leg. The puncture wound wasn't deep and the blood had stopped running.

Garcia raised his eyes to Cloudy's pinched, sour-looking face.

"What breed of dog was it?" he asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Herrera said.

"Big, about sixty pounds. At least knee high. Short hair. Black with a white chest. It just looked like an ugly mutt."

"You better hope I find it, and it has a current rabies vaccination,"

Garcia said.

"Otherwise, you're not gonna like what happens next."

"I don't want to hear that shit," Herrera said with a worried glance at his leg.

"Go find the damn dog."

"Don't you want to help round him up?" Garcia asked with a grin.

"Just do your job," Herrera snapped.

He watched the young man swing easily over the gate and trot up the steep driveway that had been cut into the granite rock of the hillside.

He sucked in his thick gut and decided to add animal control officers to the list of people he didn't like, which up to now had only included his ex-wife, any and all civilians, and his asshole shift commanders.

While Garcia scrambled around trees and over rock outcroppings calling for the dog, Herrera turned his attention to the Terrell house. At least six times larger than his small subdivision tract home, it sat a hundred feet above him, sited to take advantage of the valley view and Atalaya Mountain across the way.

It had a deep portal bordered by a high patio wall that was under construction.

He heard a dog bark and switched his gaze to the driveway in time to see Garcia turn a corner, yanking the muzzled mutt along by the handle of the snare.

"You gotta go up there," Garcia called in a shaky voice as he approached.

"What's wrong?"

Garcia stopped at the driveway gate. He was flustered.

"There's a dead woman inside the house lying next to the front door with a pair of scissors stuck in her chest. Some guy came out of the back of an RV parked by the garage and ran off when he saw me."

"Shit," Cloudy said, reaching across his chest for the microphone to the handheld that was clipped to his shirt.

"You went in the house?"

"I just followed the dog," Garcia said.

"The patio door was open."

"Describe the woman for me."

"Dead, for Chrissake," Garcia said.

"I didn't stop to take a close look."

Herrera stared at the dog.

"Does that piece-of-shit mutt have a current rabies tag?"

"Yeah, you're in luck," Garcia said.

"Walk him around to the road, put him in your truck, and stand by."

"I've got three pending calls," Garcia said.

"Not anymore you don't," Herrera said. He keyed the microphone and called in the homicide.

Lieutenant Salvador Molina, special-investigations commander, peered inside the open patio door of the Terrell residence. The victim lay on her back approximately three feet inside the house, with her feet pointing south toward the door. A blood pool darkened a thick Oriental rug. Dog tracks and human footprints wandered erratically across the floor of the expansive living room.

The expression on Phyllis Terrell's face seemed peaceful. It was a strong, attractive face with even features. She wore expensive diamond studs in her ears, and a larger single diamond on a gold chain around her neck. The scissors protruding from Terrell's chest looked like the type Molina's wife used whenever she tried to sew something.

Molina heard footsteps on the flagstone patio behind him. He'd been waiting for the crime-scene unit and the medical examiner to arrive, so he didn't look back.

"This area is off limits," he said.

"Go in through the garage door."

"What have you got so far, Lieutenant?"

Kevin Kerney asked.

Molina stiffened and turned. Kerney, the new Santa Fe police chief, looked past him at the body on the floor.

Kerney had been appointed at the first of the year over the muttered dismay of many officers who didn't like having a cop-killer for a boss no matter what the reason. The incident had happened last fall while Kerney was serving as a deputy chief of the New Mexico State Police.

The official story was that a dirty cop had started a gunfight he couldn't finish, but some on the force didn't buy it.

Kerney had been cleared by an independent internal-affairs investigation. But his resignation soon after the event fueled the flames of speculation. Now people were saying that the chief had managed to get hired through some political string-pulling.

If true, another good old boy had been made police chief by the mayor and city manager, which was enough to cause Molina to think about starting a short-timer's calendar. He had eight months and sixteen days left before he could retire with a maximum pension.