Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

“We need to look around your apartment,” Ramona replied.

“I know my rights,” Mary Beth said, her trembling hand toying with the doorknob. “You can’t do that.”

“I have a court order from a judge, Mary Beth,” Ramona said.

“You’re lying. Where’s my Kurt?”

“I need to talk to you about him,” Ramona said.

Her eyes dilated. “Why?”

“Because something bad has happened. Kurt is dead.”

Mary Beth sagged against the door, dropped to her knees, her hand clutching the doorknob, and began rocking slowly back and forth.

Ramona stepped behind her, put both hands under her arms, and pulled her upright. She could feel the hardness of Mary Beth’s breast implants against the palms of her hands. She walked her to the couch and sat her down.

“You have to listen to me, Mary Beth,” Ramona said as she sat beside the woman.

Mute, Mary Beth clasped her arms around her waist and continued rocking, bending her torso back and forth, the movement building into a catatonic rhythm.

Nothing Ramona said broke through Mary Beth’s stupor. Uneasy with the situation, she asked Matt to fetch Joyce Barbero, who came hurrying in, breathless and exasperated. She glanced at Mary Beth and shot Ramona an annoyed look.

“What happened?” Barbero demanded.

Ramona explained that Larsen was dead and Barbero’s expression changed to angry condemnation. She asked Ramona to move aside, knelt down, and spent ten fruitless minutes trying to talk Mary Beth back to reality.

“She has to go to the hospital,” Barbero said, shaking her head as she got to her feet.

Ramona called for an ambulance and then dialed Barry Foyt to ask for guidance on the situation.

“You’re sure the woman isn’t faking it?” Foyt asked.

“Positive.”

“Did you tell her you had a search warrant?” Foyt asked.

“I did.”

“And she’s not a target of the investigation, right?”

“Correct.”

“Do the search and leave copies of the paperwork behind,” Foyt said. “I’ll research case law and see if there’s a precedent. If it gets challenged, we can deal with it later. Find something, Detective Pino. The Larsen shooting doesn’t look good. My boss is in Tesuque now and he’s plenty steamed about what happened.”

Ramona held off on the search until the ambulance took Mary Beth away with Barbero in attendance. She spent the next two hours searching for documents, checking with the phone company to get a record of outgoing calls-none had been made to Jack Potter’s office or home since the service had been connected-and looking through the files and e-mail on a laptop computer on a small table in the bedroom.

There was no e-mail to or from Potter, but next to the computer sat an ashtray with a roach clip, a hash pipe, and a closed tin box containing a stash of marijuana.

The only mention of Jack Potter was in Mary Beth’s diary on a bedside table. Several old entries written in a flowery hand expressed Mary Beth’s anger and disappointment with Potter.

Ramona made a final sweep and told Matt to fill out the inventory sheet for the diary, laptop, grass, and drug paraphernalia.

“That’s it?” Chacon asked.

Glumly, Ramona nodded as she surveyed the front room. No matter how meager and dismal, the apartment represented a new life that two emotionally damaged people had attempted to build together. Now, all of that had been destroyed.

As she closed the front door, she wondered-given the mistakes she’d made today-if the same now held true for her career.

Some time back at Sara’s urging, Kerney had moved out of his cramped quarters and rented a place on Upper Canyon Road that was more than sufficient to accommodate both of them and the baby while their new home was under construction. It was a furnished guest house on an estate property owned by a mega-rich Wall Street stockbroker who rarely visited Santa Fe. Tucked against a hillside behind high adobe walls, the estate looked down on a small valley that once had been farmland but was now a wealthy residential neighborhood.

On the opposite hillside, trophy homes were perched in full view of the road that circled the valley, so that all who passed by could see the fruits of the owners’ success. Only a very few of the homes on the valley floor were still owned by Hispanics, and those were mostly small and built on tiny plots of land where a half acre could sell for as much as a quarter-million dollars.

On the rear patio of the guest house, Sara waited impatiently for Kerney’s return. He knew damn well she was scheduled to pick up her new car this afternoon from a Santa Fe dealership.

She’d sold her old vehicle at Fort Leavenworth and bought a new one with her own money. Kerney had offered to pay for it. But Sara was unwilling to become dependent on any man, even one she loved and had married. She didn’t make a big salary as a lieutenant colonel, but she’d been raised by frugal ranching parents who’d taught her the value of living debt free. So she’d put aside money every month over the past several years to be able to pay cash when the time came to replace her car.

Kerney, who had also been raised on a ranch, was much the same way about money and had only recently begun, with Sara’s encouragement, to spend some of the wealth he’d inherited from the estate of an old family friend.

Sara thought about the qualities she shared with her husband. Both of them had been raised to value work, thrive on it, take pride in it. That figured into her reluctance to give up her military career for full-time motherhood, just as it kept Kerney unwilling to retire from police work.

Could she really fault him for wanting to continue working at a job he loved? Or for responding to the demands of his job, when she would have done exactly the same thing?

She called for a taxi and within twenty minutes was at the dealership signing the paperwork. The car, a small SUV, was the safest on the market, a perfect size for a small family, and it came with all the bells and whistles. It would serve her well either at the ranch or on the D.C. beltway.

She drove the SUV home, hoping Kerney would be there so she could show it off to him. Instead, she found a dead rat under the portal by the front door. She stepped around it, went inside, and called the part-time estate manager who looked after the property.

“A rat?” the woman said in surprise.

“Yes,” Sara replied. “Does this happen often?”

“No, it’s never happened before. I’ll have it removed.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Sara said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Have there been any workmen or exterminators on the premises today?”

“No one is scheduled to be there.”

“Do you have poisoned bait traps put out?”

“No,” the woman answered. “There’s never been a need for them.”

Sara thanked the woman, hung up, and went back outside to look at the animal more closely. With a small stick she turned the rat over. Its limbs were rigid and splayed out from the torso, the mouth was open, and there were no visible wounds. An experienced military police officer who’d commanded a criminal investigation unit, Sara had seen her share of death, including a few suicides by poison. She had a strong hunch the rat hadn’t crawled onto the front portal to die.

She called Tug Cheney, explained the situation, and asked him to come over.

“Don’t touch it,” Cheney said. “I’ll be there soon. What’s going on? First the horse and now this.”

“I think somebody doesn’t like us very much,” Sara said.

She thought about calling Kerney then dropped the idea, deciding it would be best to wait until Cheney finished his examination.

As a precaution, she locked all the doors and windows and took Kerney’s personal handgun from a box on the bedroom closet shelf. She sat on the living room sofa, checked the rounds in the. 38, and laid the weapon on the end table.