behind,” Foyt said. “I’ll research case law and see if there’s a precedent. If it gets challenged, we can deal with it later. Find something, Detective Pino. The Larsen shooting doesn’t look good. My boss is in Tesuque now and he’s plenty steamed about what happened.”
Ramona held off on the search until the ambulance took Mary Beth away with Barbero in attendance. She spent the next two hours searching for documents, checking with the phone company to get a record of outgoing calls-none had been made to Jack Potter’s office or home since the service had been connected-and looking through the files and e-mail on a laptop computer on a small table in the bedroom.
There was no e-mail to or from Potter, but next to the computer sat an ashtray with a roach clip, a hash pipe, and a closed tin box containing a stash of marijuana.
The only mention of Jack Potter was in Mary Beth’s diary on a bedside table. Several old entries written in a flowery hand expressed Mary Beth’s anger and disappointment with Potter.
Ramona made a final sweep and told Matt to fill out the inventory sheet for the diary, laptop, grass, and drug paraphernalia.
“That’s it?” Chacon asked.
Glumly, Ramona nodded as she surveyed the front room. No matter how meager and dismal, the apartment represented a new life that two emotionally damaged people had attempted to build together. Now, all of that had been destroyed.
As she closed the front door, she wondered-given the mistakes she’d made today-if the same now held true for her career.
Some time back at Sara’s urging, Kerney had moved out of his cramped quarters and rented a place on Upper Canyon Road that was more than sufficient to accommodate both of them and the baby while their new home was under construction. It was a furnished guest house on an estate property owned by a mega-rich Wall Street stockbroker who rarely visited Santa Fe. Tucked against a hillside behind high adobe walls, the estate looked down on a small valley that once had been farmland but was now a wealthy residential neighborhood.
On the opposite hillside, trophy homes were perched in full view of the road that circled the valley, so that all who passed by could see the fruits of the owners’ success. Only a very few of the homes on the valley floor were still owned by Hispanics, and those were mostly small and built on tiny plots of land where a half acre could sell for as much as a quarter-million dollars.
On the rear patio of the guest house, Sara waited impatiently for Kerney’s return. He knew damn well she was scheduled to pick up her new car this afternoon from a Santa Fe dealership.
She’d sold her old vehicle at Fort Leavenworth and bought a new one with her own money. Kerney had offered to pay for it. But Sara was unwilling to become dependent on any man, even one she loved and had married. She didn’t make a big salary as a lieutenant colonel, but she’d been raised by frugal ranching parents who’d taught her the value of living debt free. So she’d put aside money every month over the past several years to be able to pay cash when the time came to replace her car.
Kerney, who had also been raised on a ranch, was much the same way about money and had only recently begun, with Sara’s encouragement, to spend some of the wealth he’d inherited from the estate of an old family friend.
Sara thought about the qualities she shared with her husband. Both of them had been raised to value work, thrive on it, take pride in it. That figured into her reluctance to give up her military career for full-time motherhood, just as it kept Kerney unwilling to retire from police work.
Could she really fault him for wanting to continue working at a job he loved? Or for responding to the demands of his job, when she would have done exactly the same thing?
She called for a taxi and within twenty minutes was at the dealership signing the paperwork. The car, a small SUV, was the safest on the market, a
Ramona held off on the search until the ambulance took Mary Beth away with Barbero in attendance. She spent the next two hours searching for documents, checking with the phone company to get a record of outgoing calls-none had been made to Jack Potter’s office or home since the service had been connected-and looking through the files and e-mail on a laptop computer on a small table in the bedroom.
There was no e-mail to or from Potter, but next to the computer sat an ashtray with a roach clip, a hash pipe, and a closed tin box containing a stash of marijuana.
The only mention of Jack Potter was in Mary Beth’s diary on a bedside table. Several old entries written in a flowery hand expressed Mary Beth’s anger and disappointment with Potter.
Ramona made a final sweep and told Matt to fill out the inventory sheet for the diary, laptop, grass, and drug paraphernalia.
“That’s it?” Chacon asked.
Glumly, Ramona nodded as she surveyed the front room. No matter how meager and dismal, the apartment represented a new life that two emotionally damaged people had attempted to build together. Now, all of that had been destroyed.
As she closed the front door, she wondered-given the mistakes she’d made today-if the same now held true for her career.
Some time back at Sara’s urging, Kerney had moved out of his cramped quarters and rented a place on Upper Canyon Road that was more than sufficient to accommodate both of them and the baby while their new home was under construction. It was a furnished guest house on an estate property owned by a mega-rich Wall Street stockbroker who rarely visited Santa Fe. Tucked against a hillside behind high adobe walls, the estate looked down on a small valley that once had been farmland but was now a wealthy residential neighborhood.
On the opposite hillside, trophy homes were perched in full view of the road that circled the valley, so that all who passed by could see the fruits of the owners’ success. Only a very few of the homes on the valley floor were still owned by Hispanics, and those were mostly small and built on tiny plots of land where a half acre could sell for as much as a quarter-million dollars.
On the rear patio of the guest house, Sara waited impatiently for Kerney’s return. He knew damn well she was scheduled to pick up her new car this afternoon from a Santa Fe dealership.
She’d sold her old vehicle at Fort Leavenworth and bought a new one with her own money. Kerney had offered to pay for it. But Sara was unwilling to become dependent on any man, even one she loved and had married. She didn’t make a big salary as a lieutenant colonel, but she’d been raised by frugal ranching parents who’d taught her the value of living debt free. So she’d put aside money every month over the past several years to be able to pay cash when the time came to replace her car.
Kerney, who had also been raised on a ranch, was much the same way about money and had only recently begun, with Sara’s encouragement, to spend some of the wealth he’d inherited from the estate of an old family friend.
Sara thought about the qualities she shared with her husband. Both of them had been raised to value work, thrive on it, take pride in it. That figured into her reluctance to give up her military career for full-time motherhood, just as it kept Kerney unwilling to retire from police work.
Could she really fault him for wanting to continue working at a job he loved? Or for responding to the demands of his job, when she would have done exactly the same thing?
She called for a taxi and within twenty minutes was at the dealership signing the paperwork. The car, a small SUV, was the safest on the market, a
Similar Books
