Forty-Nine

White crosses marched in neat rows up a grassy slope. At the top an American flag flew above veterans’ graves. The highway in front of the cemetery was empty, traffic diverted through downtown while crews swept the road of debris and an accident reconstructionist diagrammed the scene.

The track of Bronkowski’s Harley showed he left the blacktop forty feet before the overpass. A single furrow down the middle of the dirt and grass median, back tire in direct line with the front, aiming straight for tons of reinforced concrete.

Pieces of the Harley were crushed on the abutment and scattered beyond. The Beretta was found in a saddlebag snagged on a piece of exposed rebar. Ten yards away, a photograph of Linda Fager had been caught on the thorns of a cholla cactus.

Bronkowski was on life support. Walter Fager was still missing. His black Mercedes had not been sighted. The state police had taken the BOLO statewide.

A crowd of onlookers had clustered on slopes on either side of the highway. People placing flowers on veterans’ graves paused to watch. The news crews were content to get their film from a hundred feet away. Only one person pushed closer. Goff. Lewis went to where two uniformed officers had blocked him with their chests. He returned with a message.

“He’s got a point. No sign Bronkowski was trying to brake. A motorcycle would have fishtailed if he slammed on the brakes.”

Aragon spoke her thoughts. “He doesn’t use his own gun to kill Geronimo. He goes home to get his Harley, then tries to kill himself. Why here?”

She looked uphill at the crosses. Men, a few women, who had served in the nation’s wars were buried here. Many of those graves held New Mexicans who had survived the Bataan Death March, then died one by one as later generations fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. And in an undeclared war in a little country now called Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Aragon answered herself. “To die among other soldiers.”

“Goff’s still insisting Fager did it and Bronkowski’s paying a debt.”

She asked a member of the accident team for the Linda Fager photo. It was enclosed in a plastic sleeve. A drop of blood smeared the plastic. The upper left corner of the photo had been torn off.

Was Bronkowski in love with Linda Fager? Maybe this had nothing to do with Bosnia.

Lewis answered a call while she stared at white crosses.

“Fager’s house has been secured. And Bronkowski’s. The Camry’s there,” he reported.

“We need that bone.”

A beige Camry was parked at Bronkowski’s address on a residential street south of the Capitol building. One uniformed policewoman stood by the car, another at the door of the modest frame stucco house. Aragon put a hand to the driver’s side window to shield the glare. Inside, a cardboard Budweiser case, closed with duct tape, strapped into the passenger seat.

Lewis said they should get a warrant, and she agreed. The car wasn’t going anywhere. No reason to create legal issues. She would write it up. Lewis would shop judges.

They moved on to Fager’s house. A patrol car blocked the drive. An officer dozed in the sun on the front step, but came alert at steps on the gravel drive. Again they concurred on the wisdom of a warrant before entering the house.

But no warrant was needed for the garbage cans at the curb. Aragon kicked one over. A busted portrait frame spilled out, followed by a few stuffed, white plastic bags. The frame was made of oak. Its back had been ripped off, a triangle of photograph caught in the corner. She suspected it was the missing piece of the bloodstained Linda Fager portrait found in the debris of Bronkowski’s crash.

Her nails were cut too short to ease it out. Lewis freed it with tweezers on his Leatherman.

“Did we have this upside down?” she asked her partner. “Is Fager missing because he’s dead? Maybe that blood on this photo is his. Maybe Bronkowski killed him because he killed the woman Bronkowski loved, and Geronimo because … ”

She didn’t know how to finish.

Lewis sealed the piece of photograph in a plastic baggie. “This gives Marcy Thornton a whole new box of ammo to shoot up our case against Geronimo. I wonder if Tasha Gonzalez ever cleaned Fager’s office.”

“Just when we saw things winding down, they blow up again.” Aragon kicked over another trash can. Only sealed, white plastic bags spilled out. Cadets would search them later. They returned the bags to the cans and Lewis sealed lids with yellow tape.

“I’ve got something I need to check,” she said. “It might be nothing. But it might answer a lot of questions.”

First, she needed to speak with Mascarenas. She went off by herself behind Fager’s house and called her cousin. He was in a hospital lab having blood drawn, keeping his cell close for work. She told him about planting the surveillance camera on the property of Secret Canyon Gallery. Mascarenas asked his phlebotomist for a minute alone. Then he told her that what she had done was absolutely illegal.

“But you might as well take a look.”

Lewis was loading the garbage cans in his minivan when she returned to the front of the house.

“I need to get to my apartment to use my laptop. Can you take me to my car?”

They drove for three blocks before Lewis spoke.

“Whatever happened to that camera that caught you breaking into Geronimo’s ranch? That’s what you called Mascarenas about.” He kept his eyes on the road. “I never said a thing. Identified the camera for you. Explained how it worked. Then nothing.” Lewis lowered his chin. “I might as well have been breaking that window with you. How much worse can it get?”

“Working the grill at Blake’s for the rest of our lives.”

“Do you think my wife and I haven’t had this conversation? Have you heard me saying anything about wanting another partner so I don’t get hit with your blowback?”

She pulled the camera from her jacket.

“We need a laptop. With an SD reader.”

“On the floor behind the seat.”

He pulled to the curb. Trees gave them shade to view the screen. She removed the SD card and fed it into the slot on the side of his computer.

There was a separate video file for each instance the camera’s motion detector was activated. The first images confused them. A shapeless, shimmering ocean surface. Then it went dark. The next file was the same, and two more after that. Not until the fifth file did they see something recognizable.

“That’s a squirrel’s tail.” Lewis pointed. The full animal came into view. A black squirrel moved across the bottom of the screen, raised its tail and was gone.

“We’ve been seeing reflections of light and clouds in a window,” he said. “I don’t think the camera can see through glass, or be triggered by motion on the other side. Go to the last file. The one right before the shooting.”

“Probably more of the same. This wasn’t worth the risk.”

The last file was recorded earlier that day, at 3:11 a.m.

“Can they see in the dark?” she asked.

“What good’s a surveillance camera that doesn’t work when bad guys come out?”

“This isn’t the shooting. The call came in after seven.”

She clicked on the file and they saw something very different from the other clips. Light and colors rushed at them too fast, except for the final startling image. Lewis reached over and showed her how to replay the file at very slow speed. Now they could discern a square of light with a round hole almost dead center in the frame. The square began to fall apart, a sheet of ice cracking. Big pieces fell away until there was a jagged edge of glass in a window frame.

Now a view of a beamed ceiling, walls hung with paintings, the back of a man’s head, the scalp ripped open, a gaping hole, a ponytail dropping out of view to reveal the face of another man looking straight at the hidden camera. His extended arm held a semi-automatic handgun, the shadow inside its barrel lined up almost with the center of the screen. He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a stiff sheet of paper and let it fall. Then he turned and walked off camera.

“What are we seeing?” she asked. “I think I know, but I want to hear it from you.”

“It starts with the window, light coming from inside the gallery instead of being reflected on the outside. That round hole. The bullet that exited Geronimo’s head continued through the glass and triggered the camera’s motion activation. The window shatters and we’re looking into the gallery. We’re seeing Geronimo from behind, the instant after he’s been shot. He falls and we see the shooter.” Lewis drummed the steering wheel. “Can you make any sense of this?”

She turned away to think. They were outside a brewpub that had not yet opened. The sidewalk was littered with cigarettes from last night’s drinkers. An advertisement plastered to the light pole offered rides for people worried about driving with more than a point-eight in their system. “You Drink, You Drive, You Lose,” it said across the bottom.

“What was that name you wrote on the napkin?” she asked. “The last time at Juanita’s with Fager. Sherman? Sheldon?”

“Shelby.”