Kerney drove to the address. No one answered his knock at the main house, but two cars were parked in front of a large detached studio. A sign over the door read BUCKAROO DESIGNS.
Inside, two Hispanic women were working at sewing machines, and an Anglo woman was pinning pattern paper to some fabric at a large worktable in the center of the room. Racks of custom cowboy shirts, embroidered blue jeans, western-style dresses, and fringed jackets were lined up along a back wall. Bolts of fabric were neatly arranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Scraps of cloth littered the floor.
The Anglo woman looked up, set aside a pincushion, and crossed the room. About forty, she had brown hair cut short, delicate features, and wore no makeup other than lipstick. The face of a film actress flashed across Kerney's mind, but he couldn't put a name to it.
"Helen Pearson?" he asked.
"That's me," the woman replied cheerily.
Kerney showed Pearson his shield and her smile faded. "What is it?"
"I've a few questions about Tyler Norvell."
Pearson broke off eye contact and her voice rose. "What kind of questions?"
"You do know him?" Kerney asked, keeping an agreeable look on his face.
"Past tense," Pearson said. "I haven't seen him in many years."
The palpable tension in Pearson's body made Kerney want to probe more. But the shut-down look in her eyes argued against it. He moved off subject. "This is quite the enterprise you've got going," he said, looking around the studio. "How long have you been in business?"
"Eight years," Pearson said, still frowning.
Pearson wore a plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. "Do you run the business with your husband?" Kerney asked.
She glanced at the ring as though it had betrayed her. "No, he's a landscape architect."
On a bulletin board behind a nearby desk were crayon drawings signed by Melissa and Stephen. "Do you have children?" Kerney asked.
Pearson's tension rose again. Her hand fluttered to her neck and her eyes looked frightened. "Why are you asking me all these things?"
"How long have you been married?" Kerney asked.
"Stop it," Pearson hissed. She turned away to glance at the two women. "Why are you questioning me like this?" she whispered.
"Would you be more comfortable if we talked outside?"
Pearson nodded stiffly, her eyes dark with worry. She walked through the open door and led Kerney a good distance away from the studio.
Pearson had reacted to Kerney's innocuous questions in a way that made him believe she was hiding something. A straight-out lie just might shake it loose. "I know you worked for Norvell," he said.
"What do you mean?"
"Do I really need to be more graphic? I'll put it another way: Norvell pimped for you."
Pearson trembled, hugged herself, and said nothing.
Kerney stepped in closer. Pearson backed up. "It looks like you've built a new life for yourself," he said. "Talking to me doesn't have to ruin it."
She laughed, harshly, shallowly. "Oh, so you're the good cop, right?"
"Or the bad cop," Kerney replied, "depending on how you want to play it."
"What would the bad cop do?" she asked, struggling for composure.
"You have a husband, children, a thriving business, a reputation, new friends…"
Pearson finished Kerney's thought. "Do I want them to know I was once a whore, a hooker, a prostitute?" The words spilled out of her.
"Something like that."
She caved, lost her poise, buried her head in her hands. Kerney stayed back and let her cry. She forced herself to straighten up, composed her face, and spread her arms wide, as if to embrace the hilltop house, the views of the mountains in the distance, her reinvented, respectable life.
"If I hadn't done what I did, I would have none of this," Pearson said. "Can you understand that?"
Kerney nodded.
"How can you possibly protect me?"
"When the time comes, I'll ask the DA to have you appear before a grand jury. Your testimony will be sealed and never made public."
Kerney knew he might be making a false promise, and while he didn't want to cause Pearson any pain, getting to Norvell was much more important than preserving the woman's secret.
"It's your call," he said.
Pearson's slight nod of agreement gave Kerney no sense of satisfaction. She had the look of a small animal about to be eaten by a predator.
"Come inside the house," she said.
It took an hour for Pearson to tell her story. Part confession, part rationalization, it spanned the years just before Norvell's return to New Mexico and his election to his first term in office. Pearson had been the number-one girl in Norvell's Denver stable; the most expensive, the most in demand, the one with the most repeat customers.
She had made money, spent money, gotten high, lived the good life: designer clothes, weeks at luxury resorts with wealthy men, extravagant gifts, world travel. She explained what it had meant to a girl from a dysfunctional family who'd felt worthless and stupid.
She told him how watching Norvell's older girls get dumped as they lost their bloom made her realize she had to do something with her life before it was too late. How coming to Santa Fe on working weekends to be with clients, she found a place where she thought it would be possible to turn things around.
Kerney didn't interrupt. He heard her out as she talked about breaking away from Norvell, moving to Santa Fe, going into therapy, apprenticing with a clothing designer, opening her business, meeting her future husband, starting a family. Finally, she stopped, exhausted by the outpouring. But her eyes looked clearer, less troubled.
Kerney decided not to press too much for specifics. That would come later in an in-depth interview. He brought up Adam Tully and Luis Rojas and got confirmation that both were Norvell's partners. He learned that Rojas lived in El Paso. She had no knowledge of Cassie Bedlow, Gene Barrett, or Leo Silva.
"We'll need to meet again," he said. "You can pick the time and place, but it must be soon."
"How did you find me?" Pearson asked.
"Luck," Kerney replied.
"Here at the house is best, in the mornings after eight. My husband goes to work and drops the children off at preschool on his way."
"Tomorrow, then," Kerney said. "I think we can wrap things up in one session."
Pearson's eyes bored into Kerney with the hardness of a con who'd been trumped. "You suckered me with this bullshit about the grand jury, didn't you?"
"Not necessarily," Kerney replied. "I'll try to work something out on your behalf."
She snorted in disbelief. The sound stripped away the last shred of her sophisticated veneer. "Yeah, right. Son of a bitch. Have you got a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke."
"Neither do I."
"If you change your mind about tomorrow, our deal is off."
"No kidding," Pearson said.
Outside, the glare of sunlight bounced off the roofs of the houses in the valley below, washed out the roughness of the mountains beyond, and pulled most of the color from the sky. Kerney drove away from Helen Pearson thinking that the siren call of Santa Fe had always drawn searchers, dreamers, nonconformists, and oddballs looking to transform their lives. Why not a hooker? Considering everything, Pearson had done a damn good job of it.
His cell phone rang. At Kerney's request, the fiscal officer who kept the records of legislators' travel and per diem reimbursement payments had searched Senator Norvell's old files. Norvell had attended a three-day meeting of a joint-house finance committee in Santa Fe that coincided with the date Anna Marie Montoya had disappeared.