Everyone Dies

by Michael McGarrity

  He listened and shrugged as though what he’d heard was no big surprise. “Can you let us inside?” he asked, nodding at Ramona as he listened to the response.

  “Good deal,” he said as he disconnected. “The alarm system is satellite linked. They’re gonna shut it down and open the front door for us. The owners are in California, nobody is in residence, and the grounds are maintained by a landscape company. Larsen had no reason to be here.”

  They did a room by room search, found the house empty, and returned to the patio.

  “Seems like our boy is on the run,” Tafoya said, holstering his weapon.

  “Do we call out the troops?” Ramona asked, as she pivoted to look at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that filled the eastern horizon, most of it heavily forested wilderness roughly fifty miles long and twenty-five miles wide.

  “Yep,” Cruz said, reaching for his handheld. “He’s a credible suspect now.”

  Four hours into his trek, Kurt Larsen stopped to get his bearings. After leaving the foothills, the trail had taken him deep into the forest, up a steep grade, over thick underbrush, and into a dense stand of pine trees where he had no line of sight to any familiar landmarks.

  Not that he’d recognize anything but the highest peaks of the mountains. Since coming back from ’Nam, Larsen had never set foot in a forest. The jungle had hammered into his mind the dangers of closed-in spaces, which made him crazy with anxiety.

  He waited until his breathing slowed, then listened for any sound that would tell him he was being followed. All he heard were birds chirping, squirrels scampering, wind whistling through the trees, and the dull whine of a jet passing overhead.

  He looked up the trail, if you could call it that, and all he saw were more trees ascending a punishing slope. He hadn’t encountered anyone since entering the mountains and hadn’t seen any signs of recent use, such as footprints or litter. Maybe it was a hiking trail the forest service had shut down years ago, or an old game trail.

  He sat with his back against a tree and tried to calm down. He’d skedaddled right after Mary Beth’s phone call with nothing but his handgun, a pocket knife, and his lunch. He opened the bag, peeled the meatloaf off the slices of bread, and chewed them slowly to let the juices wet his dry mouth. He would need to find water before too long.

  Did the cops really think he’d killed Potter? Sure, he’d talked about beating the shit out of him for emotionally messing up Mary Beth. But that was in group sessions that were supposed to be confidential. Did Barbero fink on him? Did Mary Beth tell the cops he had a gun?

  Larsen knew he wasn’t supposed to own a handgun. But law or no law, it made him feel safe. So what if he was mentally ill? He wasn’t psychotic or something like that, and nobody was gonna take his right to bear arms away from him. Not after what he’d done for his country.

  He took the weapon, a Glock 9mm semiautomatic, out of the holster and checked the magazine. The weight of it in his hand felt reassuring.

  He put it away, rewrapped the bread slices in wax paper to save for later, and started up the incline. If he just kept climbing he would eventually break through the timberline and get a bearing on the ski basin, where he was sure there was water.

  The eggbeater sound of helicopter rotors made him freeze. He hated that sound. Startled, he could feel the panic building. He scanned a patch of sky through a break in the trees looking for the chopper, waiting for incoming enemy mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades to start blowing through the canopy, waiting to get knocked off his feet and feel shrapnel take a three-inch slice out of his left triceps.

  Hyperventilating and sweating like a pig, he scrambled off the trail looking for cover, rolled over a dead log, and took out the Glock. The sound of the chopper receded only to be replaced by the crunching of feet through the underbrush.

  Come on, you slope gook motherfuckers.

  He saw the shape of a man dressed in black, just like a North Vietnamese dink. Saw the muzzle of his automatic weapon.

  Where the fuck was his unit?

  Three more shapes emerged from the shadows. Larsen squeezed off two rounds at the point man. Bark flew off the tree above the man’s head, and the figure dropped to the ground. The three remaining slopes disappeared in the underbrush. He could hear them crawling toward him.

  He screamed profanities at them and they answered with heavy fire from automatic weapons, the slugs pulverizing the decayed log, blowing through it. He belly-crawled backward toward a rock outcropping, firing two more rounds. Above him the chopper’s rotors swayed tree branches and swirled pine needles and dirt into the air.

  Larsen saw the point man rise to a kneeling position, saw him bring the weapon to his shoulder. He twisted his body and rolled toward the safety of the rocks.

  The last thing he felt were bullets shattering his back.

  Chapter 3

  Midday turned hot, so Sara sat in the truck with the engine running and the air conditioning on waiting for Kerney to finish his investigation and take her home. The baby had shifted position and was now pressing against her bladder, making her feel a constant need to pee. On top of that, her feet were swollen, her backside hurt, and all she wanted to do was stretch out and take a nap.

  Before retreating to the truck, she’d watched Kerney clean up the mess in the barn, dig out the third bullet imbedded in the concrete slab, and dust for fingerprints around Soldier’s stall. Now, he stood next to the patrol car talking to Russell Thorpe, who’d finished taking statements from the construction crew and was loading all the collected evidence into the trunk of his unit.

  Sara slipped her shoes off and looked up to see Kerney on his way to the truck. It was wonderful to see him walking without a limp. Some years before she met him, a gunfight with a drug dealer had shattered his right knee and blown a hole in his stomach. The original artificial knee had recently been replaced with a new high-tech model that smoothed out his gait, gave him greater mobility, and squared his shoulders a bit, now that he no longer favored his bum leg.

  He got in the truck and gave her the once-over. “I’d better get you home,” he said.

  “I do need to put my feet up,” Sara said.

  “Sorry it took so long.”

  Sara shook her head. “Not to worry. I’m fine.”

  At the house, after a late lunch that Kerney prepared, Sara stretched out on the bed and fell asleep for what seemed to be a few minutes. The baby kicked hard and woke her. She went looking for Kerney and found a note from him on the refrigerator. He’d been gone for over an hour, called out to another shooting. This time, a suspect in the murder case had been killed by officers who’d tracked him into the national forest.

  She stared at Kerney’s scribbling, wondering if he’d ever have any time for her before the baby was born. She had combined some annual and maternity leave to give them a mere six weeks together before she was scheduled to report back to duty.

  She felt a contraction, grabbed her stomach, and held her breath. Dammit, was she going into labor? Would she have to call for an ambulance to take her to the hospital? Anger about Kerney’s absence welled up and made her teary-eyed in frustration. This supposedly happy time in her life was really starting to suck.

  The moment passed with no more pains. Her legs ached, so she went back into the bedroom and put up her swollen, ugly-looking feet.

  By the time Kerney arrived, police cars and emergency vehicles filled the driveway at the Tesuque house. Several detectives and a search-and-rescue team were busy strapping on backpacks, organizing gear, and getting ready to move out. Kerney spoke to one of the detectives who told him the trail from the house into the mountains was the quickest access to the shooting scene. They would hike up to the officers at the scene, conduct an investigation, and carry out Larsen’s body.

  Noting a conspicuous absence of other essential personnel who should have been assembling, Kerney walked up the driveway hoping to find them at the house. All he found were Larry Otero and Sal Molina watchin
g Cruz Tafoya conduct a search of Larsen’s truck. Kerney doubted that Tafoya had secured a signed warrant, but with the suspect dead it probably didn’t matter.

  “Are any of our people hurt?” Kerney asked.

  “No,” Larry Otero replied.

  “What do you know so far?” Kerney asked.

  “Larsen ran, Chief,” Molina replied. “Detective Pino had reason to believe he was armed. We sent SWAT into the mountains to track him. They took fire and had to stop the action.”

  “Can you tie him to Potter’s murder?” Kerney asked.

  Tafoya pulled his head out of the cab of the truck. A box of 9mm rounds sat on the bench seat. “Only circumstantially at this point, Chief,” he said. He gave Kerney a quick rundown of the facts.

  Kerney shook his head in dismay. There were times when a criminal investigation went badly off track, and this smelled like one of them. “You’d better hope Larsen killed Potter,” he said flatly.

  “He was armed, and he fired at our people,” Otero said.

  “That alone doesn’t make him a credible suspect,” Kerney said. “From what I’ve heard, we have a possible motive, conjecture that Larsen could have been at the Potter crime scene this morning, and no hard evidence that puts him there.”

  “We have his handgun in custody,” Molina said.

  “Do you have the round that killed Jack Potter, so we can make a comparison?” Kerney asked.

  Molina shook his head.

  “Detective Pino is getting a search warrant for Larsen’s apartment,” Tafoya said.

  “To look for what?” Kerney demanded.

  “Any papers, documents, phone calls, or electronic mail concerning or pertaining to Jack Potter,” Molina replied.

  “That sounds like a fishing expedition to me,” Kerney said. “Patterson has a history of serious mental illness. Did anyone stop to consider that when she called Larsen she may have over-dramatized her meeting with Detective Pino and scared him into running?”

  “So why did Larsen shoot at our people?” Tafoya asked.

  “Perhaps because he’s also not right in the head,” Kerney said through clenched teeth. “What instructions did you give SWAT?”

  “To proceed with caution and attempt to apprehend only,” Molina replied. “It was my call, Chief.”

  “Were they advised of his mental condition?”

  “Yes, sir,” Molina said.

  “And told he was wanted for questioning only?”

  “Yes, but they never got the chance to talk to him, Chief,” Molina said. “According to the officers on the scene, Larsen spotted them on the trail, took cover, and started squeezing off rounds before they even saw him.”

  Kerney turned his attention back to Sergeant Tafoya. “Did you talk to any of Larsen’s clients who saw him today?”

  “Three of them, Chief,” Tafoya answered.

  “And?”

  “The first two said that Larsen seemed okay. He got to his jobs on time, did his work, and left without incident. The third said that Larsen seemed agitated when he told her he needed to take a break and go meet with a prospective client.”

  Kerney looked hard at Tafoya. “Did it occur to you that a spooked ex-vet with a mental condition might not react rationally to being the target of a homicide investigation?”

  Silence greeted Kerney’s question.

  “Or that it might have been smart to just hold back and wait for Larsen to come down out of the mountains on his own when he got tired, hungry, cold, and thirsty?”

  Tafoya lowered his head.

  Kerney looked at the sky. July was the monsoon month in New Mexico, and thick cumulus clouds were building over the mountains. “Or that maybe the rainstorm that’s coming before nightfall would have driven him out of the forest?”

  “What do you want to do, Chief?” Otero asked, in an attempt to buffer Kerney’s displeasure.

  “I’m assuming command,” Kerney said. “I want the DA here now. Tell him we’ve got a police shooting that requires his personal attention. I want the crime scene techs rolling and at the shooting site before it starts to rain and destroys or contaminates the evidence. Bring up the mobile command unit. I want it operational in twenty minutes. Have you called for a medical examiner?”

  “There’s one on the search-and-rescue team,” Otero said. “Anything else?”

  “Hold search and rescue and the detectives back until the crime scene techs arrive. Get the Internal Affairs commander up here pronto. I want an internal investigation started immediately on both the shooting and the SWAT call-out. Get some uniforms to set up a road-block below the house before the news media show up. They’re gonna be on us like flies. I’ll call the city manager and brief him.”

  As Molina and Otero reached for their handhelds, Kerney turned on his heel and walked away.

  Ramona Pino knew that her affidavit for a search warrant didn’t come close to establishing sufficient probable cause that Larsen had murdered Jack Potter. Barry Foyt, the ADA, approved the affidavit only because Larsen had bolted to elude questioning and had been killed in a shootout by officers attempting to locate and detain him. Likewise, the judge who signed the order had been equally unimpressed with Ramona’s scanty facts, but went along with it because the suspect was dead.

  Knowing she’d been cut a break, Ramona left the courthouse with an order in hand that made Larsen a bona fide murder suspect. Whether it would stand up under close scrutiny was another matter.

  She made radio contact with Detective Matthew Chacon and asked him to meet her at Larsen’s apartment. It was an ironclad rule to have at least two officers serve a search warrant, one to gather the evidence and the other to inventory seized items and control anyone on the premises, which in Mary Beth Patterson’s case could well turn out to be a handful.

  Ramona arrived at the apartment building before Chacon and spoke to Joyce Barbero in the office. She told Barbero about the search warrant, but made no mention of the Larsen shooting.

  “Haven’t you upset Mary Beth enough?” Barbero asked disapprovingly as she came to the front of her desk.

  Through the open office door, Ramona saw Matt Chacon pull up to the curb in his unit. “I’ll let you know when we’re finished with the search,” she said as she stepped outside.

  Barbero watched from the doorway as Ramona warned Matt Chacon about Mary Beth’s mental condition and went over the specifics of the warrant.

  Thin with bushy brown hair, Chacon chewed on a toothpick as he listened and pulled the forms he needed out of his briefcase. He tapped his shirt pocket for his pen, found it, and uncapped the top.

  “Are you gonna tell Patterson about Larsen?” he asked.

  “I’m going to have to,” Ramona said. “She’s next of kin.”

  “Let’s do it,” Chacon said.

  At the apartment, Mary Beth opened up the door and winced at Ramona. “Why are you back here?” she asked in a thin voice as her questioning gaze traveled to Matt Chacon.

  “We need to look around your apartment,” Ramona replied.

  “I know my rights,” Mary Beth said, her trembling hand toying with the doorknob. “You can’t do that.”

  “I have a court order from a judge, Mary Beth,” Ramona said.

  “You’re lying. Where’s my Kurt?”

  “I need to talk to you about him,” Ramona said.

  Her eyes dilated. “Why?”

  “Because something bad has happened. Kurt is dead.”

  Mary Beth sagged against the door, dropped to her knees, her hand clutching the doorknob, and began rocking slowly back and forth.

  Ramona stepped behind her, put both hands under her arms, and pulled her upright. She could feel the hardness of Mary Beth’s breast implants against the palms of her hands. She walked her to the couch and sat her down.

  “You have to listen to me, Mary Beth,” Ramona said as she sat beside the woman.

  Mute, Mary Beth clasped her arms around her waist and continued rocking, bending her tors
o back and forth, the movement building into a catatonic rhythm.

  Nothing Ramona said broke through Mary Beth’s stupor. Uneasy with the situation, she asked Matt to fetch Joyce Barbero, who came hurrying in, breathless and exasperated. She glanced at Mary Beth and shot Ramona an annoyed look.

  “What happened?” Barbero demanded.

  Ramona explained that Larsen was dead and Barbero’s expression changed to angry condemnation. She asked Ramona to move aside, knelt down, and spent ten fruitless minutes trying to talk Mary Beth back to reality.

  “She has to go to the hospital,” Barbero said, shaking her head as she got to her feet.

  Ramona called for an ambulance and then dialed Barry Foyt to ask for guidance on the situation.

  “You’re sure the woman isn’t faking it?” Foyt asked.

  “Positive.”

  “Did you tell her you had a search warrant?” Foyt asked.

  “I did.”

  “And she’s not a target of the investigation, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Do the search and leave copies of the paperwork behind,” Foyt said. “I’ll research case law and see if there’s a precedent. If it gets challenged, we can deal with it later. Find something, Detective Pino. The Larsen shooting doesn’t look good. My boss is in Tesuque now and he’s plenty steamed about what happened.”

  Ramona held off on the search until the ambulance took Mary Beth away with Barbero in attendance. She spent the next two hours searching for documents, checking with the phone company to get a record of outgoing calls—none had been made to Jack Potter’s office or home since the service had been connected—and looking through the files and e-mail on a laptop computer on a small table in the bedroom.

  There was no e-mail to or from Potter, but next to the computer sat an ashtray with a roach clip, a hash pipe, and a closed tin box containing a stash of marijuana.