Dead or Alive

by Michael McGarrity

  He went over and greeted the men, who talked in low voices so Kerry couldn’t hear. When the jawboning stopped, the two men came around the counter, stood him up, and took off his handcuffs.

  “I’m Kevin Kerney,” the rancher-looking cop said. He nodded at the Indian. “And this is Clayton Istee. Let’s go in that office and talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Why you were drinking and driving,” the Indian cop named Istee said.

  Kerry stared suspiciously at him. “You Navajo?”

  “Apache.”

  “I’m not gonna say anything to you about my brother.”

  “You don’t have to,” the rancher cop named Kerney said with a smile.

  “Then what are we going to talk about?”

  “How we can keep you out of jail.” Kerney led Kerry by the arm into the office. “Did you know the law has changed since your last DWI conviction?”

  “Changed?” Kerry asked, rubbing his wrists.

  Clayton Istee sat him in a chair. “Jail time is mandatory now,” he said. “So paying a fine won’t keep you out of the pokey. Because this is your second offense, you could get six months to a year.”

  Kerry looked startled. “I can’t go to jail for a year.”

  Kerney nodded sympathetically as he perched on the edge of the desk. “I understand. You’d probably lose your job at the ranch and get kicked out of your house to boot.”

  Kerry lowered his gaze and shook his head. “That’s not good. Not good.”

  “No, it’s not,” Kerney said. “But it could get even worse for you.”

  Kerry looked at Kerney cautiously. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “Not at all. We believe that you didn’t know Craig was on the run from the police when he came to see you.”

  “Well that’s the truth of it,” Kerry replied hotly.

  “But if you know where he is now, or where he might be, that’s a totally different story,” Kerney said.

  “I told you I’m not talking about my brother.” Kerry sounded much less emphatic.

  “We’re not talking about Craig,” Clayton said, picking up a cue from Kerney to take the lead. “We’re talking about you. Your life, your freedom.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong to nobody.”

  “We believe you,” Clayton said. He pulled up an empty chair and sat close to Kerry. “But if Craig keeps breaking the law, kidnapping and killing people, stealing and destroying property like he has been, and you have helped him in any way, or even refused to tell the police what you knew about his whereabouts, that makes you guilty of all those crimes.”

  Kerry gave Clayton a sullen look but said nothing.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?” Clayton prodded, leaning closer.

  “Yeah. That’s crazy.”

  “No, that’s the law,” Kerney chimed in.

  Kerry bit his lips. “Show me.”

  Clayton got to his feet. “Wait right here.”

  He left the office, got a New Mexico criminal statutes book from Sergeant Shaya, found the appropriate sections, and flagged them with pieces of paper. He returned to the office and gave the book to Kerry.

  “Go ahead,” Clayton said, “read them for yourself.”

  Kerry lowered his head, ran a finger along the page, and read, his mouth forming words as he went along.

  He finished one excerpt, stopped, and looked up at Clayton. “This uses different words than you did.”

  “But it means the same thing.”

  Kerry closed the book. “What if I didn’t want to help him so instead I just ran away?”

  Kerney leaned forward. “Is that what happened?”

  “Maybe,” Kerry replied softly.

  “What made you want to run away?” Kerney said.

  “Nothing.”

  “When did this happen?” Clayton asked.

  “Today, just after quitting time.”

  Kerney and Clayton exchanged glances. The surveillance logs on Kerry Larson, summarized at the debriefing meeting, indicated that he’d stayed at the ranch all day, spending most of his time repairing a truck.

  “Come with us,” Kerney said, lifting Kerry by the elbow to his feet.

  “Where to?”

  “The ranch,” Kerney said. “That’s where you saw Craig today, right?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Kerney replied. “And I’ll make sure everyone knows that you didn’t squeal on your brother.”

  On their way toward the front door, Clayton told Sergeant Shaya to alert the officer on surveillance duty at the ranch that Craig Larson might be on the property and to get a lot of people rolling to that twenty pronto.

  “Are you kidding me?” Shaya asked, reaching for his handheld radio.

  “Not even,” Clayton said.

  “Do I still have to go to jail?” Kerry asked.

  “Not even,” Kerney echoed as he hustled Kerry out the door to the unit.

  Even with every law enforcement agency in the northeast quadrant of the state on high alert, it took a fair amount of time to put enough officers in place to surround the immediate buildings and grounds where Kerry Larson lived and worked. Once the perimeter was sealed, a SWAT team cleared the garage, barn, stable, and corral before moving on to the main house. Once that had been cleared, Frank Vanmeter set up his command post at the top of the lane overlooking the main house and cottage, ordered the cordon tightened around Kerry Larson’s residence, and brought a state police helicopter on standby in Springer to light up the exterior with its high-powered searchlight.

  With the chopper rotors thudding in the night sky a hundred feet overhead, the cottage washed in harsh, white light, and sharpshooters zeroed in on every window and door, Vanmeter waited for his SWAT commander to report on any sign of visual or thermal movement.

  “The only thing giving off a significant heat signature inside that structure is the kitchen refrigerator,” the SWAT commander said by radio after checking with his team. “Are we good to go?”

  Vanmeter turned to Kerry Larson, who stood between Kerney and Clayton. “Does your cottage have a basement?”

  Kerry shook his head.

  Vanmeter keyed his radio. “Go.”

  The SWAT commander gave the word, and the team moved in under the protection of covering snipers. Within minutes the cottage was declared clear.

  Vanmeter pulled SWAT back and ordered the chopper pilot to sweep and light up the surrounding area, in the hope that Larson might be hiding nearby.

  “Did you see which way your brother came from?” Clayton asked Kerry.

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Clayton motioned to a nearby uniformed officer to come forward. “Wait with this officer in his vehicle.”

  “Why can’t I stay here?” Kerry demanded.

  “You can,” Clayton replied, “if you want me to forget we weren’t going to bust you for that DWI.”

  “You said I didn’t have to go to jail.”

  Clayton nodded at Kerney. “He said that, not me. Go with the officer.”

  After the officer and Kerry moved away, Clayton said, “That’s twice we’ve come up empty.”

  “But now we’re only hours behind him,” Kerney said. “Let’s take a look around the cottage.”

  Shining his flashlight on the ground, Clayton took the lead as they walked down the lane. When he got to the parking area in front of the cottage, he squatted down, looked closely at some tread marks and hoofprints, and quickly stood up.

  “What is it?” Kerney asked.

  “Ten-to-one odds our man is on horseback,” Clayton said. “There are hoofprints on top of Kerry Larson’s tire tracks, and they’re very recent.”

  He followed the tracks up the backside of the hill with Kerney following. “Two horses,” he said.

  Vanmeter’s voice came over Kerney’s handheld radio. “The chopper pilot has spotted a vehicle under a grove of trees. Says it looks like the stolen Buick. I’m g
oing in with SWAT.”

  “Ten-four,” Kerney replied as he kept pace with Clayton, who continued to move up the hill in the direction of the horse barn. “It’s likely Larson left the ranch on horseback, trailing another animal. Have Kerry brought to us at the barn.”

  “Will do.”

  At the barn, they found ten tidy, clean stalls, only eight horses, and empty spaces in the tack room for a saddle and a pack frame. Kerney met Kerry at the barn door and asked how many horses were stabled inside.

  “Ten,” Kerry answered.

  “Two are missing,” Clayton said, “along with some tack.”

  Kerry stepped past them. “Let me see.”

  Clayton pulled him back by the arm. “Only if you tell us what else is missing here and at your house.”

  “No jail?” Kerry asked, looking at Kerney.

  “No jail,” Kerney replied with a smile.

  “Okay.”

  After a quick tour, Kerry told Kerney and Clayton that the best riding horse and pack animal were gone, along with the necessary tack to load up and travel cross-country. At his cottage, a pillowcase had been removed from his bed, and the venison steaks he’d taken out of the freezer were gone, along with a bunch of food from his pantry and refrigerator.

  After reassuring Kerry once again that he wouldn’t go to jail, Kerney turned him over to a uniform, got on his handheld, and asked Vanmeter what was happening at the Buick.

  “The Buick is empty and it looks like you were right about the horses. He took whatever he had in the vehicle and left. The tracks head west as far as we can tell.”

  “Frank, we need eyes in the sky at daybreak,” Kerney said. “As many as we can get. State Police aircraft, Civil Air Patrol, State Forestry, Game and Fish—whoever’s willing. Have Andy ask the governor for Air National Guard assistance. If Larson gets to the mountains before we find him, it’s going to be a hell of a lot tougher to track him. Let every rancher in the area know that Larson may be traversing their property. Tell them to hunker down overnight and stay close to home tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got a lieutenant making those calls right now,” Vanmeter replied.

  “Can you get Kerry’s boss to outfit Clayton and me with good horses and enough gear and supplies to stay on Larson’s trail for a week, minimum?”

  “Starting when?”

  “Right now,” Kerney replied. “But we want good, sturdy, endurance trail horses, not the ones for the tenderfoots that are stabled here at this barn.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Vanmeter said.

  “Better have your lieutenant tell the folks at the scout ranch that they should mother hen all their Boy Scouts for a day or two.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Thanks.” Kerney keyed off his handheld and looked at Clayton. “Are you ready for a midnight trail ride?”

  Clayton nodded. “More than ready.”

  When Larson reached Miami Lake, he checked the time on the nice Omega wristwatch he’d taken off Carter Pettibone’s pudgy dead body. It was just coming up on midnight and he was a little behind schedule, slowed down by the darkness, broken terrain, and a few locked gates he’d been forced to skirt. As he watered the horses, he kept an ear tuned to the sound of any traffic along the two-lane highway that passed by the lake, but all was quiet.

  A little west of the lake, the dim outline of Kit Carson Mesa jutted into the night sky, barely lit by the Milky Way. Behind it stood the Cimarron Range, an inky black swath that Larson could feel more than see. But that would soon change, for in the east, the first hint of a rising three-quarter moon broke over the horizon. With it, Larson would have enough light to pick up the pace. He’d have to be careful of badger holes, but figuring six to eight miles per hour riding at a steady trot, he should be across Rayado Creek, beyond Hagerdon Lake, past Coyote Mesa, and entering Dawson Canyon well before dawn.

  He decided to throw any trackers off by crossing the highway and heading in the opposite direction, toward the mesa south of the farming settlement of Miami before correcting course. Hopefully, if a search for him was mounted at first light, it would be concentrated there, while he would be a good twenty miles away, about to enter the high country.

  Larson mounted up and spurred his horse into a trot, the pack horse following behind. For a time he’d actually be riding in the ruts of the Old Santa Fe Trail, crossing some of the most famous ranching land in the West.

  He thought about the Clay Allison plaque in the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. If he remembered it correctly, along with the names of the men Allison had killed, it listed a number of unnamed Negro soldiers he’d gunned down.

  While there weren’t any more Buffalo Soldiers around to kill, the idea of riding over to Philmont Scout Ranch and shooting a parcel of Boy Scouts held a certain appeal. But Larson dropped the idea. He’d already racked up one kill down at that Bible-thumping church camp in Lincoln County, and he didn’t like the notion of repeating himself by shooting more clean-cut all-American boys. Besides, his true calling now was to kill more cops.

  All he had to do was find the perfect place and then draw them in.

  Chapter Ten

  Arranging for the horses and gathering all their supplies and equipment held Kerney and Clayton up well past midnight. They delayed pushing off for another twenty minutes while a just-arrived state game and fish officer briefed them on the major trails into the mountains, the best places to find good water and forage for the horses, and the location of several line camps and old cabins to use in case of severe bad weather. He gave them a set of clearly labeled keys that would get them through locked gates on private and public land, some Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps to guide them, and a global positioning system receiver loaded with more maps.

  “The GPS should keep you from getting lost,” the officer said with a smile. “Watch out for the black bears. It’s the tail end of their mating season, and they get seriously irritated when interrupted.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Clayton said, throwing a leg over the saddle of the roan gelding he’d picked out to ride.

  Kerney mounted a buckskin quarter horse and took the reins of the two packhorses from Frank Vanmeter’s outstretched hand.

  “I’ll have aircraft in the air before first light,” Vanmeter said.

  Clayton looked skyward. “Maybe not.”

  Both Vanmeter and Kerney looked at the clear night sky and then glanced at Clayton questioningly.

  “The wind has shifted, the pressure is dropping, and we’re in for a blow,” he explained.

  “And you know this how?” Vanmeter asked.

  “At dusk, the crows were cawing, the swallows stayed close to the ground, and the hawks weren’t soaring as high as usual.”

  “So, it’s like some Apache insight into the natural world, right?” Vanmeter said.

  Clayton laughed. “Actually, I learned it in a wilderness survival class I took years ago.” He turned to Kerney. “Let’s go. We’re a good five hours behind Larson, and I want to close the gap before the rain comes.”

  “Lead on, Chief,” Kerney replied as he waved a good-bye to Vanmeter.

  Clayton shot him a look over his shoulder. “I hope you mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  “I do,” Kerney replied as he fell in behind Clayton. “I’m sure you know it was the gringos who came up with the idea of calling the leaders of the Apache bands chiefs. They couldn’t grasp the concept of a warrior society without one person holding absolute authority.”

  “And it’s still true today,” Clayton replied. “Have you been studying Apache history?”

  “I figured with an Apache son, I’d better learn something about it,” Kerney said.

  After a pause, Clayton said, “I think my mother was wise to choose you to mate with.”

  “Now that’s a compliment I bet a father rarely hears,” Kerney replied with a laugh.

  The two men fell silent as they followed Larson’s trail
west across the rolling rangeland. In the deepest part of the night, the wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and the short prairie grasses swirled in cross breezes that whipped through the plains. Soon, lightning flashes were cutting the night sky, illuminating the mountaintops as cascading rolls of thunder roared down the slopes.

  Massive, boiling clouds that had been hidden from view came over the peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Clayton and Kerney broke their horses into a fast trot.

  “We’re going to have to take shelter before this storm comes in,” Kerney said as he came up alongside Clayton.

  “We can hole up in Miami,” Clayton said, “but we’re gonna get wet along the way.”

  Damp but safe under shelter in an empty barn on the outskirts of Miami, they shook the rain off their ponchos, hung them over the door to a stall, and watched the deluge start. Lightning strikes lit up the sky and wind-driven rain battered the cottonwood trees that bordered the road through the settlement.

  “This weather sure doesn’t help us any,” Kerney said as he wiped down his horse with an old towel he’d found in a rag bin. When he finished, he got more dry rags and moved on to the pack animals.

  “It shouldn’t delay us that much,” Clayton said as he dried his mount. “If Larson hasn’t found shelter, he’s been slowed way down on making tracks. When it clears, we’ll circle the village, cut his trail, and follow his tracks. After this storm, fresh hoofprints won’t be hard to find.”

  “Plus,” Kerney added, “Larson didn’t do a good job of loading his packhorse. The animal’s left rear hoofprint is deeper than the others.”

  “You noticed that, did you?”

  “I grew up on a ranch, remember, so I’m not a complete novice when it comes to tracking livestock,” Kerney said as he spread a blanket on a bed of straw and stretched out on it. Some distance away on the open prairie a big lightning bolt struck. “Wake me when it’s time to move.”

  “How can you sleep through this?” Clayton asked.

  Kerney closed his eyes. “Watch me.”

  Drenched and cold to the bone, Craig Larson dug his heels into the flanks of his frightened horse and pushed on. He tugged at the reins of the reluctant packhorse and it grudgingly raised its head and picked up the pace. When he crested a small rise, he stopped and listened. Although he couldn’t see it through the sheets of rain, close by he could hear the roar of the usually dry creek that wandered along the foot of Coyote Mesa.