said.
“I know it isn’t, Chief,” Matt replied. “But most people pay their monthly IP bills automatically through online checking or a charge to a credit card. Sergeant Pino is looking for banking and credit card statements. If we can determine the IP provider, we can get a court order and access e-mail account information.”
“Do the same with the cell phone and landline accounts.”
“It’s on the list,” Matt said. “I’m going to take both computers back to the office and go through everything again. Sometimes a recovery program will miss, skip, or write over an old file or folder. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”
“Okay.” Kerney gave Matt a pat on the back. Soon after becoming chief, he’d promoted Chacon to detective, and although the young officer didn’t know it, he was about to receive his sergeant stripes and be put in charge of the Property Crimes Unit. “Keep at it,” Kerney said.
“Will do, Chief.”
When Kerney returned to his police unit, Helen quizzed him about his conversation with Chacon. He short-circuited the facts and told her that Matt hadn’t yet found anything of interest on the computers, but would conduct a more comprehensive examination at police headquarters.
By daybreak, Ruben had talked his exhausted wife into going home. Inside the double-wide, Sergeant Ramona Pino, two SFPD detectives, and three sheriff’s investigators were continuing the house search. Kerney joined Chief Deputy Leonard Jessup in the RV that served as the sheriff’s office mobile command center, and asked him to talk about Tim Riley.
Jessup eased his bulk into a chair behind a small bolted-down table and motioned for Kerney to join him. Jessup’s pale blue eyes were weary. The deep creases below his chubby cheeks pulled down the corners of his mouth and gave him a perpetual hangdog expression. In contrast to his dour appearance, Jessup had a high-pitched voice. A true tenor, he was the mainstay of a barbershop quartet that performed locally and at regional competitions.
“Tim was a solid, dependable officer,” Jessup said, “and we were sorry to lose him.”
“No personality conflicts with other officers or problems with the brass?”
“None.”
“Then why did he leave?” Kerney asked.
Jessup shrugged his shoulders. “He didn’t give a reason other than to say he’d accepted a job with the Lincoln County S.O.” He handed Kerney a file folder. “That’s Riley’s personnel file. Look it over for yourself. He received solid performance evaluations, had no disciplinary actions, and received several commendations from his supervisors and one from the board of county commissioners.”
Kerney paged through the paperwork. “What about his personal and family life?”
“That I don’t know anything about,” Jessup replied. “He wasn’t one to socialize much with other officers. I met his wife maybe twice, once at a retirement party and once at some community fund-raising event. I didn’t even know she was Helen Muiz’s kid sister.”
Outside the RV window, detectives and investigators were loading boxes of evidence into the back of the S.O. crime lab van. On the driveway that led from the double-wide to the county road, S.O. patrol vehicles, state police units, and SFPD vehicles were arriving, along with members of a search and rescue team.
Jessup stood up and nodded toward an unmarked sedan that came to a stop near a staging area for searchers that had been set up in front of the stables. “The sheriff has arrived. He wants us to scour this area until we either find Denise Riley’s body or we know that she isn’t here to be found.”
Kerney followed Jessup out of the RV and looked at the mesa that rose above the narrow valley, much of it still in deep shadows. There was a lot of rugged country to cover and places where a body could be hidden so that no matter how exhaustive the search, it might never be found.
At the staging area, Kerney joined Leonard Jessup, Sheriff
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