Traffic along the highway from Ruidoso to Roswell was light. Kerney parked near the mile-marker post where Arthur Langsford had been killed by a hit-and-run driver and studied the accident investigation report. The incident had occurred just inside the Chaves County line in low foothills that once defined the edge of a shallow inland sea. The long flowing mountains beyond looked serene and inviting. But in the high country away from the villages, towns, and settlements there were narrow zigzag canyons, deep unbroken cliff walls, and sharp elbow passages that could disorient the unsuspecting and the unprepared.
Kerney walked on the shoulder of the road thinking he needed to find out from the highway department if any changes or alterations to the right of way had occurred since the accident. He checked the photographs in the accident report and eyed the bend in the road where Arthur Langsford had been hit head-on. It wasn’t a blind curve by any means. Supposedly a road hazard had caused the driver to swerve into Langsford’s lane, and a setting sun had impaired the driver’s vision. He wondered how, without any witnesses, the now-retired sheriff’s deputy had ascertained his facts.
Motor vehicle collision analysis wasn’t one of Kerney’s special interests or skills, and it had been years since he’d handled a traffic accident. He consulted the deputy’s field sketch and located the approximate spot in the road where skid marks showed the driver had braked and swerved into the opposite lane. Why had the driver veered across the center line in a no-passing zone when the most typical reaction would’ve been to steer away from any oncoming traffic?
The report noted that three empty cardboard boxes, each twenty by eighteen inches, had been found on the shoulder of the road approximately twenty feet beyond the point where the skid marks began. The deputy had assumed the boxes had been in the road prior to impact, but there was no substantiation of that finding. Further, he’d concluded that inattention had caused the driver to swerve quickly to avoid the apparent hazard.
Looking down the highway from the impact point, Kerney wondered how inattentive the driver had been. Even with a low, setting sun, the obstacles should have been visible in time for the driver to slow and approach with caution.
The report of conditions on the day of the accident indicated that the road was dry, traffic was light, and the weather was clear. No debris or paint particles from the vehicle had been found at the scene, either on the road or—according to the forensic analysis—embedded in Arthur Langsford’s flesh, bicycle, or clothing.
Kerney decided he needed to find and talk to the retired deputy who handled the call, and locate an expert to reconstruct the accident.
In a traditional sense, Midway couldn’t be called a village or a settlement. Just south of Roswell, close to a newly expanded four-lane highway built to carry radioactive shipments to the underground Waste Isolation Pilot Project eighty miles down the road, Midway consisted of a sprinkling of aging mobile homes and houses on flat, dirt-packed acre-size lots. The absence of lawns and trees, the presence of half-finished or abandoned attempts by residents to build sheds, decks, and carports, and the rundown condition of the neighborhood generally gave it a feeling of depleted energy.
Delvin Waxman, the retired deputy, lived in a trailer that looked no better or worse than any others. He was bent over the engine compartment of an old black-and-white state police cruiser that had been stripped of all decals and equipment and sold at auction. He raised his head when Kerney drove up, wiped his hands on a rag, and approached the unit. He had a small head, a narrow face, and a slightly off-center nose. From the lines and wear on his face, he looked to be pushing sixty.
Kerney showed his shield and introduced himself.
“What can I do for you?” Waxman asked.
“Tell me about Arthur Langsford’s death.”
“I remember that case. It would be hard to forget, seeing that the victim was a judge’s son and all.” Waxman stuffed the rag in a back pocket and glanced at the file in Kerney’s hand. “You’ve read my report?”
“I have.”
“Then there’s not much to tell. It’s all there.”
“How long did it take you to get to the accident?”
“About twenty minutes. State police were tied up at another collision and I was the only unit available.”
“Was it dark when you arrived?” Kerney asked.
“Just about.”
“Then how did you know the sky was clear and the sun was setting at the time of the incident?”
“Witness report. A driver traveling east out of the mountains was first on the scene. He stopped and directed traffic until I got there. Another driver drove to a gas station outside of town and called it in.”
“Did you inspect the cardboard boxes?”
“I gave them a look. They weren’t crushed or run over, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You assumed the boxes were originally in the road.”
Waxman nodded. “Probably dropped out of the back of a pickup truck hauling trash.”
“Any garbage, newspaper or packing material in the boxes?”
“They were empty.”
“Any lettering on them?”
“Just the manufacturer’s name. They were plain brown boxes, like the kind used by moving companies.”
“Did you preserve the boxes as evidence?”
“I saw no reason to.”
“How long was it from the time Langsford got hit to the time the first driver stopped?”
“I’d say no more than five minutes. The driver told me Langsford was bleeding freely from the head when he got there.”
“Was Langsford alive when the driver arrived?”
“The guy didn’t know,” Waxman said. “All he told me was the bicyclist looked dead and he didn’t want to touch him. Langsford sure wasn’t alive when I got there. His helmet had been split open and his brains were seeping out of a deep wound in his left temple.”
“Did your witness pass any cars traveling in the opposite direction before he arrived at the scene?”
“He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t remember for sure. He was pretty shook up. You know how most civilians get when they see a fresh corpse for the first time. Especially one all torn to hell.”
“Did you get a name and address of the guy who found Langsford?”
“I didn’t have time. I had to block both lanes with flares and cones, handle traffic, and preserve the scene until backup and the first responders arrived. There were cars pulled off to the side for a hundred yards in either direction, and about twenty people trying to see what happened. It took volunteer firefighters and EMTs a good ten minutes to reach my location.”
“You got nothing on the witness?” Kerney asked.
“He was a local. Said he worked at a furniture store in Roswell.”
“Give me a description.”
Waxman rubbed his chin and thought about it for a minute. “Late sixties, gray hair, above average height, mustache. That’s all I can remember.”
Kerney glanced over Waxman’s shoulder at the single wide mobile home. It didn’t look like much to live in for anyone, especially a retired cop pushing sixty.
Waxman read the look on Kerney’s face and waved a hand in the direction of the mobile home. “Not much, is it? I spent twenty years in the Air Force and twenty more with the county sheriff’s department. The ex-wife got half of both my pensions. Is this a great country or what?”
“That’s too bad,” Kerney said. “Did you ID Arthur Langsford at the scene?”
“Nope. He wasn’t carrying any identification, just a small fanny pack with some change, bills, a few bike tools, and a first-aid pouch. His family reported him overdue from his cycling trip about three hours after he got turned into roadkill. We made the ID based on the information they provided.”
“In your follow-up, you reported forensics came up empty on any physical evidence.”
“That’s right. I think the vehicle that hit him had one of those vinyl front end covers and a composition grill and bumper to absorb impacts. I never could determine the make or the model.”
“Did you put the word out to auto dealers and repair shops?” Kerney asked.
“You bet. I did phone calls, bulletins, drop-bys, and got zilch.” Waxman watched Kerney thumb through the paperwork. “Any more questions?” he asked, when Kerney looked up.
“That’s it.”
“This is about the judge’s murder, isn’t it?”
“Three deaths in one family raise interesting questions,” Kerney replied.
“That accident was a clear-cut hit and run.”
“You’re probably right,” Kerney said. “But I’d love to know who was behind the wheel of the car.”
Kerney toured the Roswell furniture stores looking for an elderly salesman with gray hair and a mustache. At a downtown family-owned establishment he met up with Harry Bodecker, a part-time employee who matched Waxman’s description. Bodecker nodded his head vigorously when Kerney asked about the hit-and-run accident.
“How could I forget that,” Bodecker said. “It was just awful. Seeing that young man with his brains splattered on the pavement.”
“Not a pretty sight,” Kerney said. “You told the deputy you didn’t recall a vehicle passing in the opposite direction just before you came upon the accident.”
Clearly nervous for some reason, Bodecker cast a glance at the back office, looked around the empty showroom, and fiddled with the cuff of his shirt. “Let me ask the boss if I can take a break. He wouldn’t want me talking to you on company time, and I don’t want to lose my job. It’s hard to get by on Social Security.”
“No problem,” Kerney said. “I’ll wait.”
Bodecker made a short trip to talk to someone in the office and then beckoned Kerney to follow him through double swinging doors into a storage room.
Outside on the loading dock, Bodecker smiled and lit a cigarette. “Too addicted to stop and too old to care,” he said, as he sucked in the smoke. “I didn’t see a car pass me.”
“Are you positive?” Kerney asked.
“Almost certain. There wasn’t a lot of traffic on the road. I think the snowstorm in the mountains may have had something to do with it. It was coming down really heavy when I left Ruidoso.”
“Didn’t you tell the deputy the sun was setting when you got to the accident?”
“It was. You know how it goes out here. Snowing in one place and clear twenty miles away.”
“No clouds?”
“Sure, but the sun broke through for a little while right around dusk.”
“For how long?”
“About the time I found the bicyclist on the road.”
“Did you give this information to the deputy?”
“The only thing he asked me is what time I got there and what the weather was like when I arrived. Then he got busy setting up things so people wouldn’t pile into each other.”
“You directed traffic until the deputy arrived.”
“On the eastbound lane. Another driver stopped and did the same in the opposite lane.”
“Did you let cars go through before the deputy arrived?” Kerney asked, wondering if any evidence could have been scattered or destroyed by vehicles passing by.
Bodecker nodded and took another drag. “On the shoulders. It wasn’t my place to stop them.”
“About how many cars went by?”
“Maybe ten or twelve.”
“Did you see anything in the road? A hazard, any litter?”
“Not in the road. There were some cardboard boxes off to one side. I moved them so the cars could get by.”
“Where were the cardboard boxes before you moved them?”
“When I first got there? Near the dead man. Then the wind picked up and blew them across the highway.”
“Into the eastbound lane?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell that to the deputy?”
“No,” Bodecker replied. “Like I said, he was real busy. As soon as the first firefighters showed up I left.”
“What about the other driver who stopped?”
“He drove away the same time I did.” Bodecker brushed ashes off his jacket, ground out his smoke with the toe of his shoe, and kicked it off the loading dock. “I’ve gotta get back. I work only the slowest sales days of the week, so I don’t earn much in commissions. And the salary isn’t all that great, either.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.”
Bodecker smiled ruefully and shrugged his slightly stooped shoulders. “Old geezers like me don’t get the gravy jobs. But it beats eating canned pork and beans for a week before my Social Security check arrives.”
Kerney sat in the newsroom with the meteorologist of a local television station and asked him to confirm weather conditions on the day of Arthur Langsford’s death. Round-faced, with a toothy smile and a sweptback stylish haircut, the man swung his attention to his computer, punched up data from the National Weather Service, pointed a stubby finger at the monitor, and traced a series of contour lines.
“A fast-moving low pressure front from the Gulf of Mexico entered the state that morning, crossed the southwest quadrant, stalled over the Sacramento Mountains, dumped eight inches of snow on Ruidoso, and then petered out,” he said.
“Did it move east toward Roswell at all?” Kerney asked.
The man shook his head. “It was dry as a bone on the plains. Compared to Ruidoso we had a twenty-degree difference in our high temperature that day. Warm and sunny.”
“What about the cloud cover around sunset in the foothills?”
“By the ten o’clock news that night, Roswell was mostly cloudy with a sharp drop in temperature. I’d say we probably had the same conditions in the foothills at sunset. The front slowed as it broke up.”
“So with the winter sun low in the sky, it’s likely there wouldn’t have been a problem with glare or blinding sunshine in late afternoon.”
“That would be my bet,” the meteorologist said, as he swung the task chair to face Kerney, his television-camera smile firmly in place. “This is a first for me. I’ve never been asked by the police to verify weather conditions. It must be important. What kind of case is it?”
The man’s interest put Kerney’s guard up. He didn’t need a TV weatherman passing along a hot tip to the newsroom staff. “It’s an internal matter.”
Recognition showed on the man’s face. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you the officer who shot the state police sergeant in Alamogordo? Yeah, you are. Deputy Chief Kerney. Now I’ve got it.”
“I’ll let you get back to work,” Kerney said, as he crossed to the door. “Thanks for your help.”
Behind him, Kerney heard footsteps. At the door, he glanced back and saw the man whispering to a young female reporter at a nearby desk. She looked at Kerney with blatant curiosity, reached for a notebook, and dogged him out of the building, calling his name and firing questions.
He made it to his unit without comment, waved, cranked the engine, and drove off. She trotted alongside the unit shouting questions as he picked up speed. In the rearview mirror he watched her slap the notebook against a leg in frustration and hurry back inside. He doubted that her interest in pursuing the story had cooled.
Senior Patrol Officer Tim Dwyer had a brisk, intelligent look, a self-confident manner, and a straightforward style. Had he been wearing a business suit instead of his state police uniform, Kerney would have pegged him as an up-and-coming corporate executive. One of a handful of accident reconstruction experts in the department, Dwyer was frequently used to handle complex vehicular investigations.
In a small office at the Roswell district headquarters, where Dwyer was assigned, Kerney laid out the facts and his suspicions surrounding Arthur Langsford’s death.
Dwyer had greeted him with guarded detachment, which Kerney figured to be directly related to the Shockley incident and the back channel gossip about it circulating within the department. When he finished telling Dwyer what he wanted, the officer nodded curtly, asked for the accident report, and read it without comment. Kerney watched in silence as Dwyer spread Waxman’s photographs, field sketch, and his field reconstruction drawing on the desk, and gave them a close look.
When he was done he stacked the paperwork in a neat pile and looked up. “Ninety percent of all vehicle accidents are caused by driver error,” he said. “This one fits the profile, but what made the driver swerve is anybody’s guess. If those cardboard boxes were empty, the wind could have been blowing them back and forth across the road between the fence lines like Ping-Pong balls. Or maybe the driver was daydreaming or changing stations on the car radio.”
“Waxman was wrong about glare blinding the driver,” Kerney said.
Dwyer shrugged. “That takes away a contributing factor, but you can add a dozen more guesses. Like the driver’s state of mind, for instance. Was the driver drunk, angry with a spouse, or pissed off at a boss? Since the driver left the scene and Waxman had no witnesses, his hypothesis was as good as any others.”
“Am I spinning my wheels?” Kerney asked.
“The typical reason for leaving an accident scene is to avoid arrest. Beyond that, trying to determine driver intent gets real iffy, especially when there’s a lack of physical evidence.”
“Is it worth your time to take another look?”
Dwyer nodded. “I’ll visit the site and rework Waxman’s figures, just to make sure he did them the right way. Distance, speed, skid resistance, the radius of the curve, the coordinates—that sort of stuff.”
“According to the highway department, the roadway hasn’t been changed since the accident,” Kerney said.
“That’s good to know. I’m going to need to use the same reference points.”
Kerney’s bum knee had locked up. He stretched his leg and rubbed the aching tendon. “There’s nothing in the report that piques your interest?”
“One thing,” Dwyer replied. “Waxman should’ve gone back to the accident scene the next day to rephotograph the skid marks in full light, and he didn’t do it. These prints you brought along don’t show me anything. For example, I can’t tell where the skid marks changed. Without that, determining point of impact is almost impossible.”
“Waxman’s report says the driver braked ten feet prior to impact,” Kerney said.
“I’d like to see the proof, and the pictures don’t show it. Since it’s still an open case, the sheriff’s department should have the negatives in evidence. I’ll get them, scan them into the computer, and do enhancements. It might tell us something.”
“Good enough. Thanks for your help.”
“Anytime, Chief.”
Tim Dwyer watched Kerney limp out. He had wanted to ask why the chief deputy was working a homicide instead of running his division. And why was Major Hutchinson sitting in Kerney’s office up in Santa Fe? Was Kerney on his way out, as many officers hoped? Or was the speculation true that Chief Baca was protecting his old friend’s ass and retirement pension?
Dwyer decided he didn’t want to know. He picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office.
* * *
Once a residence, the funeral home near downtown Roswell looked like a southern plantation manor house. A two-story portico was supported by large Georgian columns, and the building was painted a pristine white. It sat in the middle of a carefully manicured lawn enclosed by an ornate wrought-iron fence.
Kerney introduced himself to the funeral director and asked to see the guest book for Vernon Langsford, who was on display in the main viewing parlor.
“We’ve had literally hundreds of guests,” Barry Bishop said as he handed Kerney the guest book. “I expect a great many more will come to visit before tomorrow’s service.”
Close to Kerney in age, Bishop had a puffy face, wore a suit jacket that hung loosely on his skinny frame, and spoke in hushed tones.
Kerney scanned the book. It would be impossible to attempt contact with everyone who’d been by to pay their respects. “When is the service?” he asked.
“Tomorrow morning at nine, with interment to follow,” Bishop said, noting the name of the church.
“Has Ms. Langsford given you a preferred seating list for family and friends?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like a copy.”
Bishop’s eyes stopped smiling. “Surely, you’re joking.”
“I can get a court order, if need be,” Kerney said.
“That’s not necessary. I’ll get it for you.” Bishop stalked into a office, returned with a typed piece of paper, and handed it over.
Twenty names were on the list. Kerney didn’t recognize any of them. “Do you know any of these people?” he asked.
“Those who are local, I do,” Bishop replied.
“Run them down for me,” Kerney said.
“People are grieving,” Bishop said stiffly. “I don’t think this is an appropriate time to be conducting police interviews.”
“Would you rather have me stop them for questioning outside the church?” Kerney asked.
Bishop blanched at the thought, and Kerney left with the lowdown on twelve of Linda Langsford’s preferred guests.
Rather than wait for the evidence officer at the sheriff’s department to find the film negatives and call him back, Tim Dwyer decided to use his time at the accident scene. The state highway was a major east-west artery and big trucks and motorists roared by in both directions, only marginally slowing down when they caught sight of the warning lights flashing on Dwyer’s unit.
He parked at the bottom of the hill and walked up the asphalt shoulder. At the top of the incline he looked down the road in the direction Arthur Langsford had been traveling. Even at top speed on a bicycle, coming out of the curve, the rider should have been able to stay on the shoulder, see the oncoming car, and make an adjustment. Waxman had made no mention of bike skid marks in his report, which Dwyer found interesting. The most common panic reaction to avoid a crash is to hit the brakes.
At the bottom of the curve, Tim located the culvert and the county line sign Waxman had used as his reference points. As traffic allowed, he ran measurements to verify Waxman’s distances and found the spot Waxman had identified as the point of impact. He sprayed the location with orange paint, and photographed it from various angles.
Back at his unit, he punched in numbers on a pocket calculator, entered the formulas, and checked Waxman’s math. Waxman had been right on, if he’d found the true point of impact.
Tim looked back up the hill. What was the first point where the driver could spot a hazard in the road? He popped the trunk of his unit, grabbed his metal file case, carried it up to the impact point, and placed it on the shoulder. At the bottom of the hill, he could see the case clearly, and it was less than half the size of one of the three cardboard boxes.
Figuring driver distraction, Tim cut the distance in half, and found himself thinking there was still time to slow and veer to avoid hitting the boxes or Langsford.
He returned his file case to his unit just as his call sign came over the radio. The sheriff’s office had found the negatives and still had the pieces of the bicycle in evidence.
“Good deal,” Tim said to the dispatcher. “I’m on my way.”
In the sheriff’s department evidence room, Tim sifted through the box containing the mangled parts of Arthur Langsford’s mountain bike. The struts, front wheel, and handlebars were crumpled, and the control levers connected to the brake and gear shift cables dangled from the handlebars. Deep scratches in the metal showed that the bike had skidded across the pavement for a considerable distance before coming to a stop.
Tim opened the manila envelope attached to the lid and read through Waxman’s forensic analysis request and the lab’s results. Waxman had asked only for the identification of any foreign paint, and none had been found.
The back wheel, tire, and the support piece that anchored the rear brakes to the frame were intact. Tim took a closer look. The brake pads were frozen in a closed position against the sidewall of the tire, which was pretty good proof that Langsford saw the car coming and reacted. That, coupled with the fact that most of the road damage to the handlebars was concentrated on one side, made it very likely that Langsford had both braked and turned to avoid the collision.
Coming down that hill at thirty-five or forty miles a hour, Langsford must have put skid marks on the pavement. Waxman had flat-out missed them.
Tim’s interest in the negatives jumped several notches. He dumped the bike parts in the box, resealed the lid, signed the evidence slip, and got back to district headquarters in a hurry. At the computer terminal, he scanned in the negatives and punched them up on the screen one at a time. He played with background colors until he had the right mix that highlighted the vehicle skid marks.
He looked, and looked again. The tread marks were thick and conspicuous on the outer side of the left front tire, and on the inner side of the right front tire, but otherwise barely discernible. What Waxman had taken to be skid marks was clearly a hard turn of the front wheels. But at what speed?
He punched up another image and the slender lines of the bicycle skid marks jumped out at him. He put the two photographs side-by-side on the screen, leaned back in his chair, and studied them intently before thumbing through the autopsy report. Then he factored in the new information and reworked Waxman’s original calculations.
The new figures didn’t work. He checked his wristwatch, printed hard copies of the negatives, and headed for the door. He needed to take new measurements at the site and visit with Marcos Narvaiz, the first volunteer firefighter on the scene, to see if he could fill in any of the remaining blanks.
Working the list of locals for preferred seating at the funeral services didn’t yield anything of value. Death had cleansed Vernon Langsford of all human frailties, and Kerney found himself listening to clichéd eulogies that gave no true sense of the man, the most notable ones coming from a sitting district court judge, a former district attorney, and a retired city police chief.
He called around to motels and bed and breakfast inns and located six of the eight out-of-town guests who were on Linda Langsford’s list. He got to the Bitter Lake Bed and Breakfast just as Leonora Wister was leaving her Santa Fe-style cottage accommodations.
“Vernon was my first cousin,” Leonora said, as she stood next to a late-model white Cadillac with Texas plates. “We grew up together.”
“Were you close as children?” Kerney asked, trying not to stare at Leonora’s blue gray curly hair. She clutched a large purse against her stomach in an attempt to hide her thick waist from view.
“Yes, until high school, when my family moved to San Antonio. After that, I would see him during occasional visits to Roswell.”
“What kind of kid was he?”
“Wild,” Leonora replied.
“In what way?”
“He became interested in girls at a very early age.”
“Can you give me specifics?”
“Not really. Maybe Danny Hobeck can. He was Vernon’s best friend all through school.”
Kerney scanned his list. Hobeck was one of the out-of-town guests he’d been unable to locate. “Do you know where he’s staying?”
“With his sister,” Leonora replied.
Kerney asked for and got a name and address.
“How can prying into Vernon’s childhood possibly help you catch his killer?” Leonora asked.
“I’m not sure it will,” Kerney said.
Danny Hobeck was out renewing old acquaintanceships, but his sister, Margie, was home. A thin, nervous woman in her late sixties with rounded shoulders and apprehensive eyes, she reluctantly let Kerney in. He sat with her in a living room entirely given over to her three cats. There were scratching poles in each corner for the tabbies to use. Rubber mice, tennis balls, and pet toys were scattered across the oak floor. Next to the pet door that offered access to and from the front porch, three food bowls were lined up, each inscribed with a name—Frisky, Mellow, and Violet. Framed photographs of the cats were prominently displayed on top of a television set.
The tabbies padded back and forth across the room, tails upright, giving Kerney a wide berth.
“I understand Vernon and Danny were best friends,” Kerney said.
“I wouldn’t call it a friendship.”
“What would you call it?”
“Vernon led Danny around by the nose,” she said after some hesitation.
“You don’t sound well-disposed toward Vernon.”
“He wasn’t a very nice boy.”
“Care to tell me why you feel that way?” Kerney asked.
Margie leaned forward in her easy chair and snapped her fingers. One of the cats turned and jumped into her lap. She stroked it and said nothing.
“How much younger are you than Danny?” Kerney asked.
“Five years.”
“Does he have a family?”
“Two grown children. His wife died last year.”
“And your family?”
Margie recoiled slightly and wet her lips. “I never married.”
“Will you be attending the funeral services?”
Margie scratched the cat’s chin while the ignored felines converged at her feet. “No.”
“Care to tell me why?”
She patted the arm of the chair and the animals jumped into her lap. “I don’t want to go.” She ran a hand over the yellow cat’s back, and it arched and purred.
“Would Danny be able to tell me why you don’t like Vernon?”
“He would never do that.” Her tone was biting.
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll call for him this evening.”
“He won’t talk to you.”
Kerney let himself out wondering why so many people in Langsford’s life, past and present, needed to keep secrets.
“I remember that call,” Marcos Narvaiz said. He poured Tim Dwyer a cup of coffee at his kitchen table, returned the pot to the stove, and ran a hand over his shaggy, curly gray hair.
“Tell me about it,” Tim said.
“I was the first responder on the scene. The whole thing was a mess. Waxman did the best he could under the circumstances.”
Narvaiz’s house was in the high foothills on the highway to Ruidoso. It sat between the village post office and the volunteer fire department. Marcos served as fire chief, a position he’d held for ten years, and his wife ran the post office. Tim had worked many accidents with Marcos and knew him well.
“I know the victim was separated from the bicycle, but Waxman didn’t get a photograph of where it came to rest,” Tim said.
Marcos laughed. “He ran out of film after he did the three-sixty shots of the victim and the skid marks. You should have heard him cursing about it.”
Tim pulled out Waxman’s field drawing. “So where did the bicycle wind up?”
Marcos pointed to a spot. “About here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I helped him inventory and bag the bike parts for evidence. He wanted the debris cleaned up fast so he could reopen the highway.”
“How long was the debris trail?”
“The bike shattered on impact,” Marcos said. “From the rear wheel to the handlebars, I’d say it was a good thirty feet.”
Tim marked the spot on the field drawing Marcos had pointed to and nodded. “About the same distance Langsford was catapulted over the vehicle.”
“What are you looking for?” Marcos asked. “It was a clear-cut hit-and-run.”
“The driver’s intent,” Tim replied.
“What kind of magic do you use to figure that one out?”
“It’s guesswork, and I can’t prove it, but I think the driver deliberately ran into that bicycle.”
“What if the driver was drunk?” Marcos countered.
“Even drunks hit the brakes and take evasive action before impact. Their reactions are way too late and slow, but they do it.”
“You got the skid marks from the car,” Marcos said.
“They’re front-end yaw marks from a hard turn of the wheels into the cyclist,” Tim said. “I calculated distance, speed, and zero skid resistance at the scene. The vehicle was traveling at sixty miles an hour. Langsford went flying, landed on his head, and bounced like a deflated rubber ball, according to the autopsy. His internal injuries were equivalent to falling from a three-story building.”
“Jesus,” Marcos said. “You’re saying this was murder, not vehicular manslaughter.”
Tim nodded. “I’d never be able to prove criminal intent in a court of law, but Waxman blew the investigation, big time.”
After talking with the on-duty motel employees, all of them women except for the manager and the cook in the restaurant, Robert Duran left fairly well satisfied that none had a vendetta against Chief Kerney. Most of them recognized Kerney only as part of the state police contingent staying at the motel, and the few who knew the chief had been responsible for shooting Randy Shockley didn’t act distressed about it. On top of that, no one admitted to personally knowing Randy Shockley.
He started working the businesses along the strip across the street from the motel, concentrating on those within easy walking distance. He stopped in at a fast-food joint, a service station, a package goods store, and a run-down motel that catered to low-budget travelers, and then took a break at a mom-and-pop restaurant. He sat at the counter and ordered a cup of coffee. When it came he asked the woman if she’d heard any talk about the shooting of Sergeant Shockley.
“Everybody talks about it, but a little less each day,” the woman said.
Maybe pushing fifty, the woman had a pudgy nose and very tiny ears. She swatted at a fly with a counter rag and missed.
“Are people still upset about it?” Robert asked.
“I wouldn’t say that. Most of them just think cops are plain stupid. They steal and then shoot each other. It doesn’t make folks feel real safe and protected, if you know what I mean. Why do you ask?”
Robert took a sip of his coffee before answering. “I’m a cop.”
“Hey, I’m not one of those people who badmouths the police.”
“I can see that. Have you heard anybody express outrage about the shooting? Somebody who felt sympathetic toward Sergeant Shockley?”
“Henry Waters comes to mind. But nobody pays any attention to him.”
“Why is that?”
“He’s obsessed about police work. He’s in his forties and has always wanted to be a cop. He’s a sweet guy but not too bright. He once had a job as a security guard some years ago but got canned. He usually stops in before and after work for a cup.”
“Has he been here today?”
“Yeah, this afternoon. He usually sits at the counter, but today he drank his coffee at a window booth and then left in a hurry.”
Robert looked out the window. It had a clear view of the motel parking lot. He asked the woman if Henry had been in for coffee on the mornings Kerney’s unit had been vandalized.
“He’s been here every morning this week and last,” the woman answered.
“What did he say about the Shockley shooting?” Robert asked.
“Something like no police officer deserved to die just because he did a little stealing, and that a cop killer, no matter who he is, was the worst kind of animal.”
“Know where Henry lives?” Robert asked.
“I sure don’t, but it’s in the neighborhood.”
“Where does he work?”
“He’s a bagger and stock boy at Shop n’ Save Hardware.”
“Mind if I look in your outside trash bin?”
“Sure. What for?”
Robert put a five-dollar bill on the counter. “You make a good cup of coffee.”
Outside in the trash he found a partially used quart of while latex paint and a cheap fifty-nine-cent brush, the bristles stiff with dried paint. Shop n’ Save price stickers were still attached.
He bagged them, tagged them, and went looking for Henry Waters.