Michael McGarrity - Death Song

“I know,” Kerney replied. He reined up next to Pablito and put Patrick on his saddle.

“Can we come back to see the birds tomorrow?” Patrick asked.

Sara swung into the saddle, and Gipsy pranced sideways next to Pablito. “Yes, we can.”

“Does anybody besides me want blueberry pancakes when we get home?” Kerney asked. It was one of Patrick’s favorite meals.

“I already had breakfast,” Patrick said glumly as the three-some wheeled their horses toward home. “Cereal.”

“Is there a rule that you can only eat breakfast once a day?” Kerney asked his son.

Patrick shrugged and gave his mother a questioning look.

“I think there are special times when breakfast is a meal you can have twice a day,” Sara said with a laugh.

“The boss says yes to blueberry pancakes,” Kerney said.

Patrick grinned and spurred Pablito into a trot. “Okay,” he yelled, taking the lead on the trail.

Clayton Istee always looked forward to evening meals with his family. As a police officer, he’d missed far too many of them over the years, and now that the children were getting older—Wendell had turned eight and Hannah was approaching six—he knew it was more important than ever to be home for dinner as much as possible. He didn’t want to become one of those cops who sacrificed their personal lives or lost their families through divorce all for the sake of the job.

He’d called Grace late in the day to tell her he’d be home for dinner no matter what, and when he finally broke away from the investigation he was fairly certain that there would be no new developments that would interfere with his plans. In fact, in terms of developing leads, identifying suspects, and collecting any useful evidence, the day had been a complete and utter bust.

Clayton rolled the unit to a stop next to his pickup truck, which Sheriff Hewitt had arranged to have brought back to his house, and beeped the horn twice to announce his arrival. As he dismounted the vehicle, his son, Wendell, threw open the front door, bounded across the porch, and ran to the unit to greet him.

“I saw you on TV,” Wendell said, looking up at his father. “The evening news.”

Clayton nodded and said nothing. Earlier in the day, a camera crew from an Albuquerque television station had filmed him and the state police crime scene techs carrying evidence from the cabin.

Politely, Wendell waited a moment to see if his father was taking his time to consider a response. Clayton said nothing.

“The man who died,” Wendell said. “The deputy…”

Clayton pressed his forefinger against his son’s mouth before he could say more. “It is best for us not to speak about that. What has your mother fixed for dinner?”

“Spaghetti,” Wendell said. “With meatballs.”

Clayton rubbed Wendell’s head. “Good. I’m hungry.”

“Me too,” Wendell said.

In the kitchen, Grace was ladling spaghetti sauce onto plates of pasta while Hannah set the table. Without being asked, Wendell pitched in and helped his sister.

Clayton got quick kisses from his wife and daughter, along with instructions to go wash up for dinner. He locked his sidearm away in the gun cabinet where he kept his hunting rifles, gave his hands and face a good scrub, and returned to find his family seated at the table awaiting his arrival.

He eased into his chair and glanced from Wendell to Hannah. “Whose turn is it to tell us everything they did at school today?”

“It’s my turn,” Hannah said as she twisted her fork around some pasta.

“Okay,” Clayton said, smiling at his beautiful daughter, who had her mother’s eyes, small bones, and finely chiseled features. “Let’s hear all about it.”

Hannah took a bite of spaghetti and then began recounting her day at school.

After the table had been cleared, the dishes done, and the children put to bed, Clayton and Grace snuggled together on the living room couch.

“Your mother wants you to call her,” Grace said.

Clayton raised an eyebrow. Isabel Istee, a former member of the tribal council, continued to exert considerable influence over government affairs and was always pushing Clayton to get involved in politics. “Did she say what was on her mind?” he asked.

“No,” Grace replied, “but I can hazard a guess. Rumor has it that the tribal police chief position is about to open up, and after your close encounter with Bambi’s father yesterday, Isabel wants you off the streets and safely ensconced behind a desk. Today’s murder of the deputy only makes it a more urgent issue for her.”

“But not for you?” Clayton queried.

“I know you love your job.”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

Grace shifted her weight and sighed. “I want you to be safe. Last night and today have been scary for me.”

Clayton pulled back his head and scanned Grace’s face. “In spite of my mother’s agenda, I have never wanted to be the tribal police chief.”

Grace placed her hand gently on Clayton’s chest. “I know. Let’s not get into a fight over this. Just call your mother.”

“Maybe later. Just so you know, over the next week I’ll be gone most of the time. I’m driving to Albuquerque in the morning for the autopsy, and from there I’m going up to Santa Fe.”

“Will you see your father?” Grace asked.

Clayton shook his head in mock disbelief. Until several years ago, he’d never known who his father was, but a chance meeting with Kerney on the Mescalero Reservation had forced his mother to admit to the truth. “You just love referring to Kerney as my father, don’t you?” he said.

“Well, he is your father,” Grace replied sweetly, “and I do my best to encourage you to think of him that way.”

“I’m working on it,” Clayton said with a smile. “Yes, I will see him, and also pay my respects to Sara and say hello to Patrick if time allows.”

Grace poked him in the ribs with a stiff finger. “You make sure that time allows, Sergeant Istee.”

Clayton laughed. “The hardest part of being a Mescalero is dealing with the matriarchy.”

Early in the morning over coffee in an eatery on Cerrillos Road near police headquarters, Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino asked Detective Matt Chacon to give her an update on his attempt to recover data from hard drives taken from the computers at the Riley residence.

“Nada, zip, zilch,” Matt replied, chewing on a toothpick, which was his habit, “but all may not be lost, to turn a phrase.”

“That’s cute, Matt,” Ramona said. “Give me details.”

“Details, I don’t have, but I do have an idea about what it took to scour those hard drives, which can tell us something about the person who did it.”

“Explain,” Ramona said.

“Most of your typical computer users will either purchase or download a free hard-drive eraser utility that does a fairly adequate job of destroying data. However, a good computer forensic specialist can often find information that hasn’t been overwritten in clusters because of something called file slack.”

Ramona rolled her eyes skyward. “This is all so very riveting.”

Matt laughed. “Be patient, Sarge, I’m getting there. In this particular case, both hard drives were cleaned and sanitized to the max.”

“How is that done?”

“Simply put, by repeatedly overwriting and replacing hard-drive surface information with random numbers or characters. On hard drives that have been cleansed by your typical software end user, I’ll normally find file slack that has been dumped from the computer’s memory, which makes it possible to identify passwords, log-on information, and prior computer usage we call legacy data. But not this time. Everything was as clean as a whistle. I’m betting whoever did this is no average user when it comes to computers. In fact, it could well be the individual is an IT specialist. But if not, he or she is a gifted amateur techie.”