Death Song by Michael McGarrity

mother’s purse. There had been gossip at the time that Denise had taken the money and left town to get an abortion, but those rumors soon died away.
    Kerney asked for clarity about Denise’s rapid departure. Helen said Denise left because of conflict with her father that centered around his refusal to let her go away to college. Because of her rebellious nature, he wanted her to live at home and go to the community college for her first two years.
    “Was going away to college a financial issue?” Kerney asked.
    Helen, who sat on the front passenger seat next to Kerney, shook her head. “Not at all. Daddy just wanted to keep an eye on her. He’d just sold his plumbing and heating business and had settled my grandfather’s estate. Each of us children received money from the sale of Grandfather’s foothills property, although Denise had to wait until she was twenty-one to receive her share.”
    “Why would Denise leave home because of a spat over where she could go to college?” Kerney asked.
    “It went deeper than that,” Ruben said from the backseat of Kerney’s cruiser.
    Kerney turned to Ruben. “Do you think she was pregnant when she left home?”
    “She may have been, but it’s one of those topics that’s never discussed in the family,” Ruben replied.
    Helen shook her head. “Because it wasn’t true.”
    “Then why is the topic always such a sore spot with you and Denise?” Ruben countered.
    “Go on,” Kerney said to Ruben before Helen could reply.
    “Denise was super smart, totally bored with Santa Fe, and very unchallenged in high school. You could call the crowd she hung out with a fringe, arty group. They were into theater, film, acting, music, art, and smoking a little pot. Denise had aspirations; she wanted to strike out on her own, see the world, and she didn’t want to be held back. She had big dreams to make it as a singer or actress.”
    “You seem to know a great deal about your sister-in-law’s teenage years,” Kerney said.
    Ruben smiled. “I was the head of the guidance and counseling department at the high school during the time Denise was enrolled. As Helen’s husband, I couldn’t counsel her directly, but I did stay informed of her progress. She dropped out of the gifted program her sophomore year, although she continued to take advance placement classes in subjects that interested her.”
    Kerney was about to direct the conversation to Denise’s relationship with her husband when Detective Matt Chacon stepped onto the deck of the double-wide and motioned to him. Kerney excused himself and went to see what Chacon had discovered.
    “Did you find anything interesting on the computers?” he asked. Through the open door Kerney could see deputies and detectives carefully examining the furnishings, carpet, walls, and curtains, looking for trace evidence.
    “It’s what I didn’t find that’s interesting, Chief,” Matt replied. “Both computers have had the hard drives completely erased and reformatted using what I think was a bootleg recovery system that can’t be traced back to a manufacturer. Everything on the computers was wiped clean. Whoever did this didn’t want whatever was on the computers to be retrieved.”
    “Can’t you restore the hard drive data?”
    “It’s not a question of retrieval,” Matt replied. “The drives have been scoured and sterilized of all information. It doesn’t take a computer geek to do it. An hour or two of Internet research can give anyone the information they need to permanently purge files, folders, and data. However, I can tell you that this was done twenty-four hours ago.”
    “What about any removable storage devices?”
    “Both computers have CD and flash drive capacity, but I haven’t found any compact disks or portable storage devices in the house. I’m assuming whoever erased the hard drives took them. I dusted both machines for fingerprints. They’d been wiped clean.”
    “This is not good news,” Kerney