The nursing notes from the afternoon shift reported that upon arrival, Mary Beth had been placed on a close watch. She had remained passive and verbally unresponsive until early evening, when she had requested some juice at the nursing station. Since then, she’d been observed in her room watching television, and had partially eaten her dinner meal-all good signs.
He reviewed summaries of Patterson’s prior admissions which detailed her self-destructive behavior, depressive episodes, and her sex-change operation, and read through the intake note prepared by the hospital social worker who’d interviewed Joyce Barbero, Patterson’s counselor at the independent living center.
Collier, who was covering for the mental health clinic’s psychiatrist, walked into Mary Beth’s room and introduced himself.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, as he approached the bed.
Mary Beth pushed herself to a sitting position. “I need to go home. My Kurt will be worried about me. He doesn’t know where I am.”
“Would you like to talk about what happened to Kurt today?”
“Nothing happened to him,” Mary Beth replied.
“Do you remember why you were brought to the hospital?” Collier asked.
“Why was I?” Mary Beth replied. “I wasn’t sick or anything.”
“You were upset,” Collier said.
“No, I don’t let things upset me anymore.” She tugged at the collar of her hospital gown. “I want my own clothes. I can’t let Kurt see me like this.”
Collier asked Mary Beth to tell him the day, month, and year. Her answers were way off.
“Do you know Joyce Barbero?” Collier asked.
“Is she one of the nurses?” Mary Beth replied, looking confused.
“I’m going to have the nurse bring you something to help you sleep,” Collier said, as he scribbled a prescription note on the chart and a remark that Mary Beth was disoriented, possibly due to emotional trauma. “Rest tonight and we can talk again in the morning.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
“We’ll see how you feel in the morning,” Collier replied as he smiled and left the room.
Mary Beth sank back against the pillow and started scratching her arm with her long fingernails, drawing blood as she went.
At police headquarters, Kerney asked dispatch to pull all the logs for animal control calls that had occurred on nights and weekends over the past sixty days. During normal weekday hours calls went directly to animal control, which was housed on the grounds of the humane society shelter but under the control and supervision of the police department.
Kerney knew Jack Potter’s house was inside the city limits. But he didn’t know if Potter and his partner, Norman Kaplan, owned a pet. Still, it was worth checking out. Dispatch called and reported no contact by Potter to animal control. He contacted the animal control supervisor at home and asked him to go to the office right away and search the phone logs for Kaplan’s or Potter’s name. The supervisor said he’d call back in thirty minutes.
Kerney used his time making a list of what else needed to be done to start identifying candidates who might reasonably be suspected to hold a grudge against Potter, Manning, and himself. Checking court records and case files only started the paper search. Data from the sex offender registration files, intelligence reports, jail and prison release reports, and confidential files needed to be pulled to see if any red flags popped up. He ended his list with the names of a dozen or so of the most violent offenders he’d busted during his career who were mostly likely to seek revenge.
He looked at the names on the list. The men were all hardcore felons with extensive criminal records. It would be foolish to assume the killer’s motivation could be tied to a single case that involved all three primary targets. A separate search would need to be done for threats against each one.
He scratched out a note amending the order he’d told Larry Otero to pass on to Sal Molina, and called Helen Muiz, his office manager. He asked to have her staff get all in-house documents gathered and on Sal Molina’s desk by mid-morning with instructions to conduct both a combined and separate assessment of perps who might have reason to seek revenge against any one of the targets.
Molina wouldn’t like getting Kerney’s orders through Helen Muiz, but right now he didn’t give a dead rat’s ass about Sal’s feelings. The SWAT screw-up still stuck in his craw and the jeopardy to Sara and the baby was too great to waste time worrying about protocol.
“I’ll call my staff and have them get to work early,” Helen said. “You’ve got me worried about you and your family, Kevin. Is Sara all right?”
Kerney smiled at her rare use of his given name. “She’s doing okay.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to have Larry Otero pass on your orders to Lieutenant Molina?”
“Larry’s got enough to do, and there isn’t time for niceties,” Kerney replied. “I’ll leave my note on your desk. Wave it at Molina if he gets uppity.”
“What a terrible day you’ve had,” Helen said.
“It hasn’t been a good one. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”
Soon after he hung up, the animal control supervisor called.
“We haven’t had any calls to that address, Chief,” he said. “But I just checked the animal shelter’s lost dog reports. Three days ago Jack Potter called asking if a five-year-old, mixed-breed, female Border collie named Mandy had been picked up or brought into the shelter. He said she’d gotten out of his backyard. She’s still active on the lost animal list.”
“You’ve been very helpful,” Kerney said, pushing back his chair.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Chief, first I get a call from your wife about a dead rat, and now you want to know about a lost dog. Does all this have something to do with Potter’s murder?”
“You’ll read about it in the papers soon enough,” Kerney said. “Thanks.”
Jack Potter’s house sat on a hill above the Casa Solana neighborhood, once the site of a World War II Japanese-American internment camp. A newer adobe structure with large glass windows, the house commanded a view of the mountains and downtown Santa Fe.
He could see headlights of cars traveling on Paseo de Peralta, a street that looped around the historical core of the city, and a few of the traffic lights along Saint Francis Drive, the state road that led north to Taos. Behind the city the mountains were soft, obscure shapes in a star-filled night sky, and the semicircular sliver of the moon looked like the cutting edge of an old-fashioned sickle suspended in the air.
Kerney didn’t bother ringing the doorbell; Norman Kaplan was still on a plane flying home from England. He walked around the darkened house and encountered a high six-foot fence and a locked wooden gate that enclosed the backyard. Kerney wondered how Potter’s mixed-breed collie, which wasn’t a big dog, could have jumped the fence. It didn’t seem likely.
The closest house was about a hundred yards away. Kerney spoke to Potter’s neighbors, a younger couple who were surprised to find him at their doorstep. He showed his shield and explained the reason for his visit.
“What does Mandy have to do with Jack’s murder?” the man asked. A chocolate-colored Labrador padded to the open door and sniffed at Kerney’s knee.
“Behave, Herschel,” the man said.
The dog sat and smiled up at Kerney.
“I’m just wondering how Mandy managed to go missing from the backyard,” Kerney said. “I didn’t see any evidence that she’d dug her way out under the fence. Was the gate left unlocked?”
“Mandy isn’t a digger, and Jack always kept the gate locked when he wasn’t home and Mandy was outside,” the woman replied.
“We don’t know how she got out,” the man said. “It’s never happened before, and we’ve been Jack and Norm’s neighbors for three years.”
“I think Mandy was stolen,” the woman said.
“What makes you say that?” Kerney asked.
“How else can you explain it? Mandy is an absolutely beautiful dog, very well behaved, and has a large, secure backyard to romp in when Jack and Norman are at work.”