Death Song by Michael McGarrity Page A

legend—Ramona wasn’t sure which—Thomas Edison, the inventor of the lightbulb, had experimented with a precious metal extraction method he’d devised. When the effort failed, Edison shut down his operation and returned to his laboratory in New Jersey to invent other wonderful gadgets.
    However, miles before travelers reached Cerrillos or the other old mining towns, they had to pass a cluster of institutional buildings outside the city limits that paid homage to a decision that had been made by the city fathers years before statehood. When the legislature had given Santa Fe first choice of either being home to the territorial prison or the college, the city officials had picked the pokey. At the time it had supposedly been a no-brainer; the prison would bring many more jobs to the community than a college ever could. Which meant that Santa Fe missed out on being the home of the largest university in the state, which Ramona saw as a slow-growth blessing in disguise.
    Travelers on the Turquoise Trail thus encountered the stark and foreboding old prison a short distance from Santa Fe. The scene of a bloody, ghastly riot in 1980, it was now closed and rented out to filmmakers as a movie set. Visible nearby were the modern, high-security penitentiary that had been built to replace it, enclosed by towering fences topped with concertina wire; the neat and tidy Corrections Department headquarters and training academy, where the bureaucrats looked after the welfare, safety, and rehabilitation of their incarcerated clients and trained their guards to manage and control the inmate population to keep them from rioting again; and finally, across the road, the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center and the separate law enforcement complex that housed the S.O.
    Inside the county law enforcement building, a group of deputies, sheriff’s investigators, and several state police agents were milling around in a large conference room waiting for the meeting to begin. At the front of the room behind a large table, the sheriff; his chief deputy, Leonard Jessup; and Don Mielke, who ran the major crimes unit for the S.O. and carried the rank of major, were engaged in quiet conversation. On the table was a stack of folders.
    Ramona took a seat at the back of the room, where she was soon joined by her two detectives. After a few late stragglers wandered in, Sheriff Salgado convened the meeting while Mielke and Jessup distributed the folders, which contained copies of the briefing report.
    Ramona flipped though the document as Sheriff Salgado highlighted preliminary findings from the crime scene and subsequent follow-up activities. All in all, the S.O. had done a creditable job, and Ramona didn’t see any missteps or gaps in the work that had been carried out on the case so far.
    Salgado ended his presentation by announcing that the autopsy on Denise Riley would be conducted in Albuquerque later in the afternoon. He turned the meeting over to Major Mielke, who passed out copies of an initial criminal investigation report of the murder of Deputy Tim Riley, prepared by Sergeant Clayton Istee of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
    Ramona read through the report, wondering how many people in the room other than herself knew that Clayton was Chief Kerney’s son. While it wasn’t a secret, it wasn’t common knowledge either.
    She stopped speculating about it and returned her attention to the case. Mielke was warning the group not to let the investigation stall because there was no motive and no suspect.
    “Don’t pin your hopes on forensic evidence solving this case,” he said as he leaned against the table, “and in spite of the different modus operandi, we agree with the Lincoln County S.O. that there is a strong likelihood that the murders are linked.”
    One of the state police agents raised a hand. “What about this theory by the Lincoln County S.O. investigator that the killer is probably a male, approximately five-seven to five-eight