Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

Chacon paused and thought about giving Molina the word first. But since Drake had been a probation and parole officer, the lieutenant would want to know a hell of a lot more than just the woman’s identity. He quashed the idea of calling Molina and dialed the number for the regional probation and parole office instead.

Sal Molina drove while Matt Chacon briefed him. Victoria Drake, age forty-three, had recently been promoted to a central-office job in the corrections department after serving as a probation and parole officer in Las Cruces and then as the manager of the regional office in Socorro. Divorced with one grown son serving in the armed forces, Drake had moved to Santa Fe less than a month ago and lived alone in a rented town house in a middle-class neighborhood off Rodeo Road.

Molina thought it interesting that once again the compass pointed south. He wheeled into the subdivision with the crime scene techs following close behind. It was one of those developments with a homeowners association and restrictive building covenants that hadn’t existed in Santa Fe before the early seventies. Now they were sprinkled around the city and in several larger nearby bedroom communities in the county.

The streets were narrow curving lanes designed to create a tranquil feeling. The native landscaping in the common areas was the low-maintenance variety, with lots of carefully pruned pinon trees and gravel planting beds interspersed with artistically grouped boulders. The houses and town homes had been built in a standard cookie-cutter design, right down to the exterior plaster, trim paint, patio walls, walkways, and street-number signs outside each unit. Molina found it boring.

He barreled over the last speed bump, turned into Drake’s driveway, and parked behind a late-model imported sedan. “Let’s do a walk-around before we go inside,” he said to Chacon.

At the back of the unit, they found the gate to the patio ajar and the sliding glass and screen doors jimmied open. They entered the combination living and dining room, an open space with a corner beehive fireplace and a high ceiling of plank wood and beams. To the rear was a long counter that separated the space from a step-up galley kitchen.

Drake had arranged the furniture in the room but hadn’t finished unpacking from her move. Sealed cardboard boxes were stacked in a line under the counter, several framed posters leaned against a wall by the fireplace, crumpled newspaper littered the carpet, and knickknacks sat haphazardly on the dining table. It was impossible to tell if a struggle had taken place.

Molina scanned the stairs leading to a second-story landing that looked down on the living room and then dropped his gaze to the hallway off the kitchen that ended at the front door. “We’ll hold the techs outside until we do a visual search,” he said as he slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. “Take the upstairs and look around. See if the perp left us another love note.”

Chacon went upstairs and Molina started his tour by examining the sliding patio door, which showed tool marks on the jamb, probably made by a knife. The perp had picked the easiest, quietest, and quickest way to break into the house.

The galley kitchen was neat and clean. There was a kitty-litter box and food and water dishes on the tile floor, but no sign of a cat. In the small second bedroom off the adjacent hall, a computer and printer sat on a desk and three empty freestanding bookcases stood in the middle of the room surrounded by boxes of books. The linen closest in the guest bathroom at the end of the corridor held carefully folded towels. The tub was filled with empty cartons that had been broken down into bundles and tied with twine.

Molina entered the garage through a door perpendicular to the front entrance and hit the light switch with his elbow. Except for a large, cleared space in the center of the garage floor, it was filled with empty cardboard wardrobe boxes, trunks, lawn and garden tools, and miscellaneous pieces of furniture.

A small, open box sat in the cleared area. Molina looked inside and found a cat with a broken neck, a package of rat poison, a knife, some rope, and a note, which read:

KERNEY CAN’T WAIT TO MEET THE WIFE SEE YOU SOON

He bagged the note and carried it upstairs to Chacon. “Find anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” Chacon replied, gesturing at the orderly, organized master bedroom. “What have you got?”

Molina held up the note for Chacon to read. “Found it in the garage,” he said, “where I think he probably killed her. He’s a tidy fellow; he left everything behind he used to break in, tie her up, and poison her in a box for us to find.”

“How thoughtful,” Chacon said.

Molina nodded. “Get the techs started. Maybe he forgot something when he cleaned up after himself.”

Samuel Green’s mother, his second victim, was buried under some privet bushes that formed a hedge along the backyard wall of the house where she’d lived. He’d killed her five years ago, buried the body, planted the privets, faked her move to Arizona, and arranged for a property management firm to lease out the house and send the rent checks in her name to a post office box in Tucson, which he then easily forged and cashed. After the last tenant had moved out, he leased the property as Samuel Green and moved back to Santa Fe.

The house was in an older subdivision off Old Pecos Trail on a dead end dirt lane surrounded by a high wall that hid the house from sight. Territorial in style, with brick coping around the roof line, milled woodwork lintels, and a Victorian-style porch, it had been built in the 1960s. Upscale in its heyday, it was in need of serious modernization, particularly the kitchen and bathrooms. When Green was a boy, there had only been two neighbors along the lane. Now the area was built up with newer, expensive pueblo-style homes, all of them behind gated walls.

Green appreciated his neighbors’ need for privacy, although it was unlikely any of them could possibly know his true identity. Almost twenty years had passed since he’d lived in the house as a child and both of the original neighbors had moved away long before he’d murdered Mother.

He parked in the garage and walked into the house, his footsteps echoing through the dark, empty living room. After disposing of Noel Olsen’s car, he’d taken a morning flight from El Paso to Albuquerque, ridden the shuttle bus to downtown Santa Fe, and picked up his car from the parking lot at a city recreation center within walking distance of the Plaza.

In the bathroom he peeled off the fake nose, removed the blue-tinted contact lenses, took off the blond wig, washed away the adhesive that had held it in place, and inspected himself in the mirror. It didn’t take much to go from looking like Noel Olsen back to being Samuel Green. He put the disguise in the makeup kit, which also contained the black wig and matching mustache.

The stubble that had reappeared on his head made him frown. He shaved it with a razor until it was nice and smooth again, smiled at the results, and then stretched. It was time for a well-deserved nap.

He walked to the bedroom where his father, Ed, had tied a string around his penis and locked him in his room for wetting his bed. Where his mother had starved him for failing to do his chores or for bringing home bad grades. Where his few toys would be taken from him for the slightest infraction of any rule. Where if he “talked back” his father would put duct tape over his mouth. Where he’d been forced to sleep on the floor because he’d played with daddy’s tools or disobeyed him. Where he’d been tied up for running around the backyard pretending to be a choo-choo train.

The room was his prison until the day he’d told his second-grade teacher about it. After that, it had only gotten worse.