Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

Lynch’s expression darkened. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” Kerney said as he headed for the door, eager to get back to Santa Fe.

Sal Molina didn’t have to wait until he got back to headquarters to have Robert Casados in his face. Casados stomped into the garage, curled his lip and said in a loud voice, “Stop fucking with me, Sal.”

All the techs quit what they were doing and glanced at the two men.

“Let’s take it outside,” Molina said to the young lieutenant. He put down the inventory sheet of all the parts from the van that had already been inspected by the techs and got to his feet.

“You sent Pino out of town, and you knew I had an interview scheduled with her first thing this morning.”

“Outside, Lieutenant,” Molina said gruffly as he moved away from Casados.

The bright July sunlight made Molina blink. He walked Casados into some shade at the side of the garage. “Now, what’s your gripe?” he asked.

“You heard me. I’ve got a job to do and you’re messing with me.”

“I sent Detective Pino to Mescalero because I wanted to talk to you before this goes any further.”

“I could write you up for interfering with my investigation,” Casados said.

“Do you want to flex your muscles or hear me out?” Molina asked.

“What do you want to say?”

“I put pressure on Pino to find a suspect in the Potter homicide, but she isn’t going to tell you that. I told her to take a hard look at Mary Beth Patterson and Kurt Larsen, and she isn’t going to tell you that either.”

“That doesn’t excuse Pino’s lack of judgment,” Casados said.

“Ain’t hindsight a wonderful thing?” Molina shot back. “She had two mentally ill people known to hold a grudge against the victim, and one of them was armed and potentially dangerous.”

“She still fucked up,” Casados replied. “So did Sergeant Tafoya.”

“No, Bobby, I fucked up,” Molina said, poking himself in the chest. “I put the pressure on them. I requested the SWAT call-out. I wanted Larsen to be our perp, and because of that I didn’t ask the right questions.”

“Pino fed you misinformation because she didn’t do her job right.”

“She’s not a social worker, dammit, and the tip that Larsen and Patterson might be credible suspects came from Chief Kerney. Are you also going to write him up for feeding me misinformation?”

“That’s absurd.”

“Pino acted based on what she’d been told to do by me, and the reasonable suspicion she got from her conversation with Patterson. You want accountability for this screw-up? You’re looking at it.”

“You can’t cover for your people this time, Sal.”

“Why not? I did it for you when you were in my unit. More than once, if I recall correctly.”

“Are you asking me for a favor?” Casados demanded.

“No favor,” Sal replied. “But I will give you what you need to put this to rest. You recommend to the chief that I’m to be severely reprimanded and asked to retire. I’ll turn in my paperwork immediately.”

“Why scapegoat yourself?”

“I want to retire, Bobby. I haven’t slept in two days, haven’t seen my wife, haven’t even changed my shirt. I’m maxed-out on my pension benefits, so I’m not gonna get any richer. I just want to rest for a week and then go fishing.”

“Tafoya’s on the list for lieutenant and Pino’s next in line for sergeant stripes,” Casados said.

“Yes, they are, and you worked with both of them in my unit. Are they seasoned? Are they capable of command? Of course they are. But forget about all that. The final decision to promote rests with the chief. Let him sort it out. That’s his job, not yours.”

Casados bit his lip.

“There’s one more thing,” Molina said.

“What’s that?”

“Chief Kerney knows I sent Pino down to Mescalero and I haven’t heard a peep out of him about my decision. If he’d wanted to countermand my order and chew my butt out, it would have happened long before you got to work this morning.”

Casados stood with his hands on his hips, tapping his fingers against the butt of his holstered sidearm. “Are you telling me Kerney’s behind this scheme?”

“No, I’m telling you I know the man and I think he’ll want to make a decision that’s best for all concerned. All you have to do is give him the opportunity.”

“If I go with this, you can’t back out, Sal,” Casados said.

Molina laughed. “Hell no. I’m doing myself a favor, Bobby.”

“Okay.”

“Good,” Sal said as he walked back into the sunlight. “Now leave me alone. I’ve got work to do, and not much time to do it.”

Detective Matt Chacon knew that unlike the TV cop shows-where actors sit in front of a computer monitor and instantaneously pull up a digital fingerprint record that matches a perp or a victim-trying to ID someone using prints in the real world can be mind-numbing work. There are thousands of prints that have never been entered into the computer data banks, and thousands more on file that, because of poor quality, are virtually unusable for comparison purposes. On top of that, figure in the small cop shops who haven’t got the money, manpower, and equipment to transfer print records to computers, and the unknown number of print cards that were left in closed felony cases and sit forgotten in basement archives at police departments all over the country, and you’ve got a data-bank system that is woefully inadequate and incomplete. Finally, while each fingerprint is unique, the difference between prints can be so slight that a very careful analysis must be made to confirm a perfect match. Even then, different experts can debate the results endlessly, since it isn’t an exact science.

Chacon had started his career in law enforcement as a crime scene technician with a speciality in fingerprint and tool-mark identification, so of course Lieutenant Molina had sent him off to the state police headquarters to work the state and federal data banks to see if he could get a match.

He’d been at it all night long and his coffee was starting to taste like sludge, his eyes were itchy, and his butt was numb. Using an automated identification system, Chacon had digitally stored the victim’s prints in the computer and then started scanning for a match against those already on file.

The computer system could identify possible matches quickly, but then it became a process of carefully analyzing each one and scoring them according to a detailed classification system. So far, Chacon had examined six dozen sets of prints that looked like possible equivalents and had struck out. But there was another baker’s dozen to review.

He clicked on the next record, adjusted the monitor to enhance the resolution of the smudged prints, and began scoring them in sequence. Whoever had printed the subject had done a piss-poor job. He glanced at the agency indentifier. It was a Department of Corrections submission.

Chacon finished the sequence and used a split screen to compare his scoring to the victim’s prints. It showed a match. He rechecked the scoring and verified his findings.

For the first time, he looked at the subject’s name. The victim was Victoria Drake, a probation and parole officer with the Department of Corrections, assigned to a regional office in the southern part of the state.

He printed out a hard copy, moved his chair to another monitor, accessed the motor vehicle computer system, typed in the woman’s personal information from the record, and a driver’s license photograph of Drake appeared on the screen. The dead woman in the van was most definitely Victoria Drake, although she’d looked much better in life than in death.

Chacon glanced at the hard copy. Drake had been fingerprinted fifteen years ago. He wondered if she was still employed by the department. He reached for the three-ring binder that contained addresses and phone numbers of every federal, state, and local criminal justice agency in the state and paged through it until he found the listing for the regional office.