The Big Gamble - Michael Mcgarrity [46]
“You’ll have it in two hours. Thanks, Hat.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Hat said as he adjusted his bolo tie. “I’ll get back to you.”
Relieved by the outcome of the meeting, Hewitt stayed behind and ordered breakfast.
Kerney went to work in his blues and spent the morning trying to concentrate. Pleased by the possibility of what a new artificial knee could mean, Kerney clock-watched as he ran through the paperwork on his desk, calling at the earliest possible moment to schedule the MRI test and then to speak to the architect about the swimming pool.
The architect said he’d get right on it and have a plan done by the end of the day. Kerney gave the architect the go-ahead to have a survey crew spot the corners for the house and hung up.
He visualized the setting. The house would be nestled below the ridge overlooking a red sandstone canyon capped with a thin line of gypsum rock. Large windows would face south down the canyon to a stand of old cottonwood trees and a meadow cut by a sandy arroyo. To the north, behind the ridge, an expanse of pastureland dotted with piñon and juniper trees undulated toward the foothills and mountains behind Santa Fe.
It would be fun to cut a new driveway from the nearby ranch road to the building site with a grader. Kerney had learned to operate one under the watchful eye of his father. He could probably borrow or rent a neighbor’s machine and rebuild the entire ranch road from the highway to the house site by himself. He would crown it, slope it, cut bar ditches for runoff, and pack it down with base course gravel to make it all-weather. It would be a welcome change of pace from his normal routine and give him a feeling that the dream of actually owning a ranch was underway. He could get the job done over a couple of weekends if he planned it right.
In between administrative staff meetings he called the remaining names on Osterman’s list and learned none of them had known Anna Marie in college—or so they said. After the last meeting, he walked to Lieutenant Sal Molina’s office and asked for a few minutes. It was time to put his ego aside and let the department work the Montoya case instead of trying to do it all by himself.
Molina, the major felony unit supervisor, nodded and gestured at an empty chair. Kerney filled him in on his stunning lack of progress in the Montoya case.
“I’m kicking it back to your unit,” he said, “but I want to stay in the loop.”
“We’ll start with background checks on Osterman and the people on the list he gave you,” Molina replied, “just to see if anything unusual or kinky shows up.”
“Do the same with Cassie Bedlow,” Kerney said. “And see if you can find out who Montoya roomed with during her college years in Albuquerque.”
Molina nodded. “Anything else?”
“Can you free up Detective Piño?”
Ramona Piño was Molina’s only female detective. She was petite, cute, perky, and weighed all of a hundred and five pounds. Molina had watched Piño put a straight-arm takedown move on a perp almost twice her size. The perp had been too busy screaming in pain to be embarrassed.
“That’s possible,” Molina said.
“Send her undercover as a prospective student to Bedlow’s modeling and talent agency,” Kerney said. “I’d like her to get a feel for Bedlow’s operation, and learn what she can about the freelance photographer Bedlow uses.”
“You said the APD vice supervisor thought Bedlow was legit,” Molina replied.
“Everybody’s legit until they get caught,” Kerney said, rising to his feet, his knee protesting as he did so. “I may be getting the leg fixed and losing the limp for good.”
“Really?” Molina replied. “When?”
“Don’t know. Soon, I hope.”
Molina laughed. “That’s good news for you and bad news for us, Chief.”
“Now why would you say something like that?”
Molina thought about all the good things Kerney had accomplished in a very short time: pay raises starting in July, improved officer training, streamlined operating procedures, promotions