Confessions

“You do that. I’ll check in after I neutron the Senator.”

J.D.’s eyes widened. “You’re going to test the senator for gunpowder residue?”

“He was at the scene of a murder.”

“But he was shot.”

“So was his wife. His dead wife,” Trace said patiently.

“But he’s a senator.”

“And we’re cops. With a job to do. Which includes checking out all possible suspects.”

“Christ, the shit’s really going to hit the fan when this gets out,” the young man muttered.

“Don’t look now, J.D.,” Trace drawled, jerking his head in the direction of the ranch house. “But it already has.”

Chapter Three

Trace arrived at the hospital on Ponderosa Street just as the technician he’d requested from the Department of Public Safety was pulling into the parking lot.

They were forced to wait while the physician on call conducted a cursory examination of the wounded senator. After the exam, X rays were taken. Throughout it all, Alan Fletcher remained conscious and coherent.

“The wound isn’t life threatening,” the doctor advised Trace, “but I need to remove the bullet and stitch up any damage to internal organs.” He frowned. “Small caliber bullets have an unfortunate tendency to bounce around like pinballs once they’re inside the body.”

“Sounds as if you’ve spent some time on the front lines.”

“I worked ER for eight years at Oakland’s Highland Hospital.” The doctor shook his head. “I figured I put all that behind me when I moved here.”

“Join the club,” Trace said dryly.

“Getting back to the senator, there’s no way to tell how much damage was done until we open him up. And we’ll need to clean the wound to prevent peritonitis.”

“I know the drill, Doc.” Trace glanced over to where the senator was lying on the gurney. A pretty blond nurse in a white pantsuit was holding his hand and assuring him that he’d be all right. “But since the guy’s not critical, I’ll need to test for residue before you take him into surgery.”

The doctor, too, knew the drill. “Of course.”

Alan Fletcher didn’t. “You want to test me?” he asked unbelievingly. “Why?”

“It’s nothing to take personally, Senator,” Trace said, accustomed to such protestations. “It’s strictly policy.”

“It’s policy to harass shooting victims?”

“It’s policy to test everyone involved in a crime. Once we eliminate you as a suspect, Senator, we can get on to the business of apprehending the perpetrators.” Trace had switched to the tone he used in the old days whenever it became necessary to appease police department brass.

“Well, since you put it that way...” Beads of sweat glistened on the senator’s forehead and above his top lip. “Go ahead.” Alan Fletcher invited magnanimously. He held out his hands. “Do whatever you have to do.”

“Thank you, Senator,” Trace said politely. He watched as the DPS technician opened the kit and used a cotton swab to wipe a weak solution of nitric acid over the senator’s hands, concentrating heavily on the palm and the webbing between the thumb and first finger. Fletcher’s gold wedding band gleamed in the fluorescent overhead light.

After she was done, the technician peeled the protective seal from a piece of paper, pressed it against those same parts of his hands, then sealed the samples in an evidence jar.

“Thank you, Senator,” Trace said again, once the test was finished and he’d gotten the wounded man’s signature on a consent-to-search form. This case was too high profile not to be played strictly by the book. “Have you remembered anything else about the man who attacked you? Height, weight, clothing?”

Fletcher shook his head, then winced as if the gesture were painful. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Perhaps after your surgery, when you’re feeling stronger, things might come back.”

“Do you think so?” The senator looked hopeful and sounded doubtful.

“Sure. It happens all the time,” Trace said, not quite truthfully. More often than not time only faded memory. He closed the notebook and returned it to his shirt pocket. “I’ll keep in touch.” The statement, spoken with a deliberate lack of inflection could have been a promise. Or a threat.

As he watched Alan Fletcher being wheeled off to surgery, Trace considered the fact that during the more than thirty minutes Senator Fletcher had been in the emergency room, he hadn’t again asked about his wife.

Trace recalled his own experience after the shooting that had ended his homicide career and almost his life. He remembered lying on a gurney, furious that the trauma team wasn’t working on Danny. His concern for his partner had been so strong he hadn’t even experienced pain from his own near-fatal wounds until much later.

Daniel Murphy had been his partner for five years. During that time they’d become closer than most brothers. But though they’d known almost everything there was to know about one another, their bond had still not been as intimate as a man and wife.

Trace had been divorced for ten years. But even during that last year of marriage, when his home had felt like an armed camp, if Ellen had been injured in any way—let alone shot in the head by masked intruders—a SWAT team wouldn’t have been able to stop him from being with her.

“Different strokes,” he murmured as he walked over to the nurses’ station. Trace also could not discount the possibility that the senator’s lack of curiosity regarding his wife’s condition was because he was guilty.

Worried that the shooting may have been some cockeyed attempted political assassination plot, he telephoned Ben Loftin at home, instructing him to get to the hospital and stand guard outside the senator’s door.

When he returned to the ranch, Trace saw that J.D. had followed his instructions, securing the crime area with yellow plastic police tape. The Evidence Technical Unit had arrived on the scene.

As primary investigator, Trace was in charge of supervising the meticulous search of the premises. Sticking to the old adage that a victim could only be killed once, but a crime scene could be murdered in countless ways, he kept the pace slow and methodical. He’d witnessed too many occasions when speed had resulted in the destruction of vital evidence.

Without a detailed description of the armed intruders, he put out an APB on anyone seen driving in the vicinity of the ranch that night. The mayors of the nearby communities of Pine, Payson and Strawberry had offered to send additional police to join in the search of Rim backroads and the sheriff from neighboring Coconino County had volunteered additional manpower.

The much appreciated cooperation allowed Trace to remain at the house with the ETU crew. He watched the photographer snap away on a 35 mm, then shoot a videotape record of the scene.

Eager to help, J.D. had donned a pair of surgical gloves and was on his hands and knees, combing the bedroom carpet for fibers.

“We need to contact Matthew Swann before he hears the news on the radio,” Trace said.

“Cora Mae called Swann’s ranch right after the 911 call came in,” J.D. revealed. “The housekeeper says he’s in Santa Fe. Some livestock convention or something.”

“Does she have the name of the hotel?”

“She did. She also called it. But the desk clerk said Swann got into some kind of argument with the night manager over room service hours so he checked out.... Bingo!”

The deputy happily plucked a blue thread from the carpet, dropped it into a plastic bag and carefully labeled it. Trace observed the action with mild amusement thinking how you never forgot your first homicide. Trace hoped like hell this would be J.D.’s last one for a very long time.

“The clerk didn’t know what hotel he moved to. But Cora Mae’s on the case,” J.D. assured him as he resumed his methodical carpet combing. “She’ll track him down.”

Of that, Trace had no doubt. The woman had a tongue like a razor blade, cursed like a lumberjack at spring thaw and guarded her precious records as if they were the Holy Grail.

But she was remarkably efficient. She also made the best cup of coffee west of the Pecos and could bluff at poker with the best of them.