The Kessler residence was a Victorian classic with a steeply pitched roof running front to back and exposed timbering on the upper story. It had a Palladian window centered in a wall projection that jutted out above a narrow gabled porch supported by heavy square-cut posts.
Kerney climbed the broad porch stairs and turned the crank of the mechanical doorbell attached to the paneled oak front door. The tinny, weak trill of it made him crank the bell again a bit harder.
A few minutes passed before the door opened to reveal a small, lean, elderly woman with sharp features magnified by a peevish expression.
Kerney held out his badge case. “Mrs. Kessler, I’m with the Santa Fe Police Department.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Mrs. Kessler said, without a hint of humor. “Whatever do you want?”
“I’d like you to tell me what you know about Debbie Calderwood.”
Kessler’s slate-gray eyes registered no expression, but she wrinkled her nose a bit at the mention of Debbie’s name. “Debbie?” she said. “I haven’t seen or heard from her in over thirty years.”
“Is she related to you?” Kerney asked.
Kessler bared her tiny teeth in a tight, polite smile. “Why are you asking me about her?”
“I’m attempting to locate her,” Kerney replied.
“Well, I’m certainly not someone who can help you,” Kessler said, her voice tinged with displeasure.
“Learning about Debbie’s family could be very helpful. I’d appreciate hearing whatever you can tell me.”
Kessler stayed silent for a long moment, so Kerney prodded her a bit. “This is an official police investigation, Mrs. Kessler.”
“Debbie was my first husband’s niece,” Kessler said tonelessly. “Her parents relocated to Arkansas after she finished high school. She stayed behind to go to college and moved into a dormitory on campus. Then she got caught up in all that antiwar, free speech movement that was going on at the time, and started using drugs.”
“You didn’t approve of her behavior?”
“No, we didn’t. Her parents laid the blame for her poor judgment on our doorstep, said we hadn’t looked out for her enough. It caused a rift between my husband and his brother that never healed.”
Mrs. Kessler obviously wasn’t one to forgive and forget. Kerney played into it. “That must have been very unpleasant for you and your husband.”
“Indeed, it was. We tried to help Debbie as much as we could. We gave her things to furnish her dorm room, had her over for Sunday dinners, even paid to have her car fixed when it broke down. All it got us was criticism from her parents, especially after Debbie dropped out of college and ran away.”
“Did she ever correspond with you after she left Albuquerque?”
“Not a word of thanks or anything else,” Kessler said emphatically.
“Young people can be so thoughtless,” Kerney said. It earned him a surprised look of approval. “Did she maintain contact with her parents?”
“I don’t know,” Kessler said as her expression cooled. “After Debbie left, we had nothing more to do with them other than a polite exchange of Christmas cards each year.”
“Are they still living in Arkansas?”
“They’re both deceased.”
“Does Debbie have any siblings?”
“She was an only child.”
“What about a boyfriend?” Kerney asked.
“If she had one, we never met him,” Kessler answered.
“Does the name George Spalding mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Did she ever talk about boys?”
“Not with us,” Kessler said. “She wasn’t close to us in that way.”
“What about girlfriends, or her college roommate?”
She made a bitter face. “In truth, except for the help we provided, Debbie wanted very little to do with us. We were much too conventional and uptight, as she so often liked to remind us.”
“You never met any of her friends?”
“She often brought someone with her when she came to get a free meal. But the only one we saw more than once was her roommate, Helen. She at least had been brought up well enough to say thank you and offer to help with the dishes.”
“What else can you tell me about her?”
“She was from Santa Fe. She was studying art history. My husband liked to tease her about doing something more practical.”
“Have you seen Helen since those years?” Kerney asked.
“Once, in Santa Fe, when I was there for the day with a friend. She was working in an art gallery on Canyon Road. Somehow she recognized me and asked for news of Debbie. They’d lost touch with each other. Of course, I could tell her nothing.”
“When was that?”
“At least ten years ago.”
“Do you remember where you saw her?”
“No, but I do recall we had lunch right next door to the gallery.”
Kessler named the restaurant. It was one of the oldest and finest restaurants in the city.
“Thank you,” Kerney said.
“Why are you trying to find Debbie?”
“It’s a police matter.”
Mrs. Kessler nodded as though it was of no importance and closed the front door.
On the drive back to Santa Fe, Kerney couldn’t shake the image of the rigid, unforgiving Mrs. Kessler from his mind. Surviving a Sunday meal at the Kessler home must have been pure agony for Debbie.
Although he tried to seem impassive, Kim Dean knew that his fear showed through. Whenever an inmate looked at him, he averted his eyes. His face felt like a frozen death mask, his upper lip was wet with sweat, and he was constantly swallowing, rubbing his nose, or fidgeting with his hands.
A big Hispanic guy with tattoos on his arms and the back of his neck kept eyeing him, as did a black Cuban who grabbed his crotch and smiled wickedly every time Dean glanced in his direction.
He sat by himself at a table in the communal area of the living pod and stared at the wall-mounted television tuned to a Spanish language station no one else was watching. Clusters of inmates were playing cards or talking in tight-knit little groups.
All the metal tables, fabricated with attached benches, were secured to the floor, as were the beds in the cells, the sinks-everything that ordinarily could be disassembled or dislodged was bolted, welded, or fastened down. The stairs to the upper-level cells, the security grates covering a high row of frosted windows, and the bars on the cell and pod doors were gleaming steel.
Four young, tough-looking inmates-kids really-stood in front of the lower tier of a semicircular wall of cells singing rap in low voices, flashing gangbanger signs, and laughing. Two older inmates who were mopping floors and cleaning tabletops moved slowly across the room.
The guy wielding the mop, a small, stoop-shouldered man who looked like a character from a Dickens novel, appeared to be perfectly content with his task. In fact, everyone in the pod seemed completely at ease, like it was no big deal to be locked up. It only served to make Dean more apprehensive.
He kept glancing at the glassed-in guard station and the locked pod door, hoping someone would come to fetch him to meet with his new lawyer, Scott Ingram.
Ingram had called hours ago to say he’d spoken with Howard Stubbs, the inexperienced lawyer Dean had fired, and would be out to see him as soon as he’d received and reviewed the arrest affidavits, warrants, and charges, and talked to the district attorney.
He was about to return to his cell, which Dean figured was the safest place to be if he never fell asleep, when a guard appeared and motioned him to approach the pod door.
“Is my lawyer here?” Dean asked.
The guard nodded as the door slid open. After being patted down and cuffed, he was walked down the main corridor and deposited in an interview room where Scott Ingram waited. Neither man spoke until the cuffs came off and the guard left the room.