the living room.
Detective Littledeer looked around the living room and kitchen. “It looks like they did a thorough search. What do you think they were looking for?”
Detective Sandoval nodded. “Good question. I’ll take a look in the bedroom.” He disappeared into the bedroom.
“Where’s your daughter?” Detective Littledeer asked Lilly, who was standing in the doorway.
“She left with my cousin. She didn’t need to be here. It upset her.” Lilly had called her cousin Allison and asked her to come and pick Penny up. Allison was one of the few family members left in town after her parents moved to Florida. Alison had a child younger than Penny. They’d been friends all their lives, and Penny needed a friend to help her redirect her thoughts.
Spying a digital picture frame on the floor, Lilly picked it up. “Peter bought this for Penny so she could see pictures of the two of them having fun.” She placed the frame on the coffee table.
“Can you think of why anyone would do this to your ex-husband’s apartment?”
“A couple of months ago, when Peter dropped off Penny, he told me that if anything happened to him, it wouldn’t be an accident.”
“Did he tell you what he meant by that?” Detective Littledeer asked, pressing her.
“Later, when I tried to question him about it, he simply shook his head, kissed my forehead and asked me to pray for him.” She looked down at the floor. “I tried to get him to explain a couple of times after that, asking him exactly what he meant, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. He acted like I had imagined it.”
“The bedroom’s in the same shape as the rest of the place,” Detective Sandoval informed them as he joined them in the living room.
“Was someone in there?” Lilly asked.
Detective Sandoval glanced at Detective Littledeer before turning to her. “Yeah.”
She stumbled to the sofa. “Penny almost went in that room.”
Detective Littledeer squatted in front of Lilly. “But you didn’t let her, did you?”
“No. I didn’t,” she replied.
He covered her hand with his. When she looked at him, he smiled. “A mother’s wisdom is from above.” He stood. “Ms. Burkstrom might have an angle on this,” Detective Littledeer told his partner.
“What’s that?” Detective Sandoval asked.
“Her ex had been threatened.”
Detective Littledeer motioned Lilly toward the kitchen table as the crime-scene people arrived and started taking prints. “Is there anything you can think of that your ex-husband was involved with that was risky?”
Lilly tried to come up with something suspect that Peter could’ve been involved with. “I really don’t know of anything. After we divorced, he started drinking and running around. He’d show up sporadically at the house and want to see Penny, and then he would disappear again for six months.
“About four years ago, he found a job and seemed to straighten up his life. He saw Penny regularly and paid his child support. Eighteen months ago, he started coming to church again and gave his life to Christ. He seemed very happy until—”
“Until when?” Detective Littledeer quizzed.
“It was last April. I remember when because it was right after tax time. He’d glanced at my tax return and got a funny look on his face. He turned to me and gave me that warning.”
Detective Sandoval walked into the kitchen and sat down next to Detective Littledeer. “The evidence team’s finding lots of prints.”
“How will you know if they are Pete’s or someone else’s?” asked Lilly.
The detectives looked at each other. Detective Littledeer met her eyes. “Your husband’s prints are on file.”
She paled.
“It was a drunk driving charge from four years ago,” he explained.
Lilly wondered if they were telling her everything. “Is that all?”
“Also, the company he was working for at the time of his death requires prints of all its employees,” Detective Sandoval added.
Frowning, Lilly asked, “Why would they do that?”
“Armored car personnel have to have their prints on file,” Detective Littledeer explained.
“We’ll also need your fingerprints,” Detective Sandoval added.
Her heart raced. “Why?”
Detective Littledeer frowned at his partner, but he turned to her. “Simply as a process of elimination. Also, bring your daughter with you so she can be fingerprinted. You can tell her that it is just a precaution. Schools now like to have the kids fingerprinted.”
He didn’t say why, but Lilly knew the sad reality of missing children. One of the women who worked with her at the church and the community garden had a child who’d gone missing.
“I’ll bring Penny by tomorrow and we both can have our prints taken.”
“What’s going on here?”
They looked up and saw a man standing in the doorway. In his early fifties, he stood with a military preciseness and his hair was cut in a burr.
“And you are?” Detective Littledeer asked.
“Mark Rodgers, the owner and manager of these apartments.” He glanced around the room. “What happened here?”
After informing the owner who they were and why they were there, Detective Littledeer asked, “Did anyone ask to see this apartment in recent days?”
“No. No one has been by to ask anything. Since Mr. Burkstrom’s lease was up at the end of the month, I wanted this place cleaned out so I could paint and recarpet. He bought a new condo off of Rio Grande Boulevard.”
“When was the last time you were in this apartment?” Detective Sandoval asked.
“I came by when this lady here got her husband’s clothes. I told her then when the lease was up.” The owner looked around at the mess. “This place wasn’t this way the last time I was here.”
“Did you see someone leave here in the last half hour?” Detective Littledeer asked.
“No. I just got back from a trip into Santa Fe. When I saw all the cop cars parked out front, I came up to see what was wrong.” He continued to look around. “You say it was a break-in?”
They nodded.
“I’ll keep an eye out. I don’t want my tenants put in any danger.” The owner shook his head. “When am I going to be able to rent this place?”
Both detectives
