Joseph Stibbe was a man in his middle forties, and his trim physique reflected the miles he hiked in the Sandia Mountain Range. He kept his brown hair cut short, and his piercing green eyes were generally obscured behind a pair of darkly tinted Ray-Ban sunglasses. On this early August day, as was his practice once a month, he drove the side roads near the Sandias. Employees of the New Mexico Game and Fish Department were required to make sure that roads remained passable and that gates to restricted areas were secured. Neither task was easy; poachers repeatedly cut through fences with lock cutters to gain access.
It had been a month since Stibbe patrolled this area, which included only a few privately owned cabins. The rest of the land was owned by the government and accessible to hunters, fishermen and hikers. In the late afternoon, he reached the road in front of Max Leyba’s cabin. Recent rains had spurred the growth of grass and wildflowers, and both spilled onto the road with a profusion of color. Traffic was light in the area—only one set of tracks besides his own—and those, which led to the cabin, appeared to be weeks old. A white SUV was parked behind the building. He pulled his truck into the driveway, got out, stretched his legs and sauntered toward the door. It stood ajar. Stibbe hollered out for Max. No answer. He shuffled across the porch to the back and checked the SUV. The keys were in the ignition, the windows rolled down. He figured a hiker had parked there while he hiked up one of the nearby trails. Idiot forgot to close the windows. The seats were damp from recent rains.
Max Leyba had recently reported several break-ins at his cabin to local law enforcement. At the time of their last conversation, he had complained that whoever was breaking into the cabin was walking off with his belongings and treating the place like a dumpster. Even the metal coffee pot he had used for years was gone, and the floor was covered with discarded beer cans and cigarette butts. Max didn’t spend much time in the cabin, but he resented it being mistreated. He owned a few cattle that grazed nearby, so anytime a thunderstorm caught him off guard, he took shelter in the cabin. Sometimes, while hunting deer, he spent the night.
As Stibbe crossed the porch, a sweet, cloying odor overwhelmed him. He was familiar with the smell. He again called out for Max, then kicked the door open, keeping his right hand on his weapon. A man wearing Levis, boots and a long-sleeved checked shirt lay on his side, curled into a fetal position. Both his knees were bloody, and under his chin was a gaping wound. The pool of blood around his head had dried. Stibbe gasped, turned, and almost fell in his rush to the door. He held onto the porch railing and vomited over the side. It took ten minutes before he regained his composure enough to dial 911 on his cell phone. He reported his findings and gave the operator directions. For a while he waited in front of the cabin, but then took a seat in his vehicle. It was a few hours before dark. He felt nervous about being alone with a human body and hoped the police would show up before too long. He fiddled with the radio, trying to find a station to get his mind off what he had just seen. No luck. Mostly static.
He sat in his car for what seemed like a long time before a State Police cruiser entered the driveway. Captain Jeff Whitney, a twenty year veteran of the New Mexico State Police force and a friend of Stibbe’s, stepped from the vehicle.
“Joseph Stibbe,” Whitney said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time. Still with Game and Fish, huh? What’s that make, about twenty years?”
“Just about, Jeff,” Stibbe said. “I thought you’d be Chief by now. Or don’t they let a Gringo run the show in Santa Fe?”
Whitney laughed, took a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and offered one to Stibbe. He blew a puff of smoke upwards and said, “Let’s take a look-see at what we’ve got here. The ME shouldn’t be too far behind.”
Stibbe pointed him in the direction of the door. He didn’t want to look again. Whitney walked through the door, careful to not disturb the scene. When he came out, he looked around the yard and peered into the SUV in the back. The car had New Mexico plates. He jotted down the numbers and called them in. There was a .243 rifle in a leather case stuffed in the space between the back seat and the rear window. While they waited, Whitney filled out his initial report. Stibbe told him what he knew about the cabin and the owner.
The State Police Crime Scene tech crew—a group of respected field officers—showed up first. Whitney directed them up the driveway to the front door of the cabin. They unloaded their equipment and taped off the area from the driveway to the cabin and around the back. Two of the crime scene techs conducted a perimeter search and then focused on the vehicle. The other went inside to photograph the room and the body and found Charlie Cooper’s wallet in the back pocket of his pants. For the next four hours the crew videotaped, bagged and tagged evidence, and searched every corner of the room.
The lead tech motioned to Whitney. “Hey, Whit, come here and take a look.”
Whitney doused his cigarette carefully and sauntered over to the center of the room. “Before I bag it up, what do you make of this? Looks like some kind of trap. See, the shotgun is tied to the chair with a long cord, which stretches all the way to the door.”
“I’ve seen something like this before,” said Whitney. “Never saw it in operation though. Looks like the trap was rigged up so that when the door was opened, the shotgun would go off as a warning. This one might have malfunctioned. The guy probably pushed the door open too fast. Instead of the pellets hitting the door, they blew out his knees. Ouch!”
“I took plenty of photographs,” the tech said.
“I’ll make sure to include this in my notes,” said Whitney.
The shotgun trap was dismantled, tagged and boxed, and taken to the van along with Charlie’s pistol.
In the midst of the evidence gathering, the ME from Sandoval County and his assistants arrived in a blue minivan. Captain Whitney led them to the body.
“Looks like this guy was shot through the knees,” the ME said.
“You don’t say,” Whitney responded, his tone sarcastic. “Never would have guessed. What else can you tell us?”
“More interesting, looks like he committed suicide sometime after. Maybe he couldn’t take the pain of getting his knees shot out. Hard to say.”
“The pain got to him?” Whitney asked.
“Doesn’t he have a cell phone on him so he could call for help?”
“Don’t see any. If he had one, the perpetrator—if indeed there was one—took it away from him.”
Whitney whistled. “Real son of a bitch. How long do you think he’s been decomposing?”
“Over a week, maybe. Since today is Friday, it will be a few days before we can start on the autopsy. I’ll fax a copy of the report to the Chief when it’s done.”
His assistants marked the location of the corpse with chalk. The ME motioned to them to remove the body. They carefully pulled the body bag over Charlie’s head, zipped it up, and placed him on a gurney.
Whitney called in for a tow truck to cart Charlie’s SUV back to Santa Fe and began to secure the crime scene. Sometime later, the tow truck came up the hill. Whitney hailed the driver and gestured for him to back up.
Stibbe still looked green around the edges. Whitney walked him to his truck and told him to take some deep breaths. The vehicle report had just come back and matched the driver’s license. Charlie Cooper was the person of interest the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department had been looking for last week. There was a BOLO on him. Whitney called it back in to Captain Suazo, who relayed the information back to Detective Romero.
A spectacular sunset was on the horizon. The red-orange glow of the half-circle sun blended into the blue-gray skies of evening. Lately, the beauty of these moments had been eclipsed by dark shadows.