“We get scant rain down here,” he added, “and the monsoons that do come are fickle, putting moisture on one ranch and bypassing another. Grass banking allows us to move cattle to neighboring ranches where there’s ample forage. How much of the ranch did you get to see?”
Kerney laughed. “Not a hell of a lot, given the size of the spread. I stopped near some westerly hills.”
Shaw nodded. “Those are the Chinaman Hills on the Sentinel Butte Ranch. Joe tells me you’re the police chief up in Santa Fe.”
“Not for long,” Kerney said with a grin. “I’m about to retire. This trip is sort of a dry run to see what it feels like to be a civilian again. I think I’m going to enjoy it.”
“You’ll be coming back down when they start filming the movie?” Shaw asked.
“With my family,” Kerney replied. “We’re going to make a vacation out of it.”
“I’ll look to see you then,” Shaw said, extending his hand.
After a handshake and a good-bye Kerney left thinking Shaw continued to come across as a pleasant fellow with nothing to hide. But why had he come back to the ranch on a rare day off? Had one of the day hands called to let him know Kerney was poking around unescorted? If so, that meant it wasn’t a chance encounter.
Shaw had hauled ass down from Virden in time to intercept Kerney and find out where he’d been. As before, he’d acted cordial and not in the least uptight. But then Kerney had played the innocent, had carefully omitted mentioning all that he’d seen, and had deliberately reassured Shaw that he wasn’t into any kind of cop mode.
If Shaw was into something illicit, chances were good that he would backtrack on Kerney.
Where the ranch road curved out of sight of the horse corral, Kerney stopped the truck, got his binoculars out of the glove box, hustled up to a small rise, and stretched out in the tall bunch grass. Through the binoculars he could see the dust trail of Shaw’s pickup heading south toward Chinaman Hills on the Sentinel Butte Ranch.
Chances were that Shaw would lose Kerney’s tire tracks in a hard rock portion of the ranch road that curved around the base of Chinaman Hills. If not, so be it.
Eager to get to Virden, Kerney returned to his pickup and drove away. He’d never been to the settlement before and knew nothing about it. Although he was a native of the state and enjoyed exploring it, Kerney had yet to see it all and probably never would.
New Mexico was larger than the combined landmass of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Within its boundaries were the soaring southern Rocky Mountains, the bone-dry Chihuahuan Desert, the windswept high eastern plains that butted up against deep canyonland gorges, the stark, majestic northwestern Navajo Nation, and the tangled western Mogollon Plateau that rose to meet wild mountains of dense climax forests.
Over the years he’d ridden, hiked, backpacked, and camped from his boyhood haunts near the Tularosa to the high country above Taos, four-wheeled in the desert, and deliberately detoured to see isolated hamlets, ghost towns, and remote archeological sites. He looked forward to the time when he could show Sara and Patrick the wonders he already knew and discover new ones together. Johnny’s movie would be their first opportunity to do that as a family.
As he left the Bootheel, the mountains receded and gave way to mesquite flats, playas of sand, and stretches of irrigated cotton fields that were startlingly green against the dun-colored terrain. He passed through Lordsburg, a dusty ranching and railroad community that drew its lifeblood from the interstate traffic with little to offer other than fast food, cheap motels, and self-serve gas stations.
Beyond the town the desert continued to dominate. Flatlands were interrupted by an occasional mesa or the knobby spines of low hills. In the distance barrier mountains rolled skyward, promising relief from the heat of the day. It was raw country, where monsoon rains ran over the hard-baked soil and spilled into deep-cut arroyos, the sun cracked the earth into spiderlike fissures, and harsh volcanic mountains stood, weathered and desolate, above the expanse of sand and scrub.
Soon after the cutoff to Virden the road dipped into a valley and revealed the narrow ribbon of the Gila River, the last free-flowing river in the state, barely discernible through thick stands of cottonwoods that bordered its banks. On the far side of the river Kerney could see a swath of irrigated fields that stretched along the bottomland. Contained by low brown hills the valley was a green carpet of hay- and cornfields, some of which were punctuated by bright orange pumpkins that had been planted in among the long, straight rows.
Fat cattle grazed along fence lines in mowed fields, and in the sky above a black hawk, clearly identifiable by the broad white band on its tail, swooped down toward the wooded stream bottom. Mountains rose up behind the hills, one peak soft as a rounded shoulder, another shaped like a citadel carved out of solid rock.
Virden consisted of several dozen tidy farms and houses that lined the roadway paralleling the valley floor or fronted several side lanes flanked by orderly rows of mature shade trees. The only business in the settlement was a quilt shop in a single-wide trailer that stood near an old abandoned schoolhouse with a rusty, hipped metal roof, boarded-up windows, and an overgrown playground containing a broken swing set.
Kerney cruised the area, looking for Shaw’s van. He followed a farm road that led into the hills, where he found a derelict homestead and the hulk of an old tractor behind a locked gate posted with a No Trespassing sign. Back in the village he stopped on a lane where an older man was working on a truck parked under a shade tree in front of a house.
The man looked up from the engine compartment and nodded when Kerney approached. In his late sixties, he had a deeply seamed face and a semicircle of thin gray hair that crowned his bald, freckled head.
“Engine trouble?” Kerney asked with a smile.
“Busted thermostat,” the man said. “You lost, or just passing through?”
“Poking around is more like it.” Kerney extended his hand and told the man his name. “This is really an out-of-the-way, beautiful valley you live in.”
The man put a screwdriver in his back pocket and shook Kerney’s hand. “Name’s Nathan Gundersen. If you like the quiet life, it’s the right place to be. You looking to buy some property?”
“Is anything for sale?” Kerney asked.
Gundersen shook his head. “Not really. Folks here tend to hold on to what they’ve got.”
“Do you know Walt Shaw?”
Gundersen leaned against the truck fender. “He grew up in these parts. What’s your interest in him?”
“A friend of Shaw’s told me that he came here and went deer hunting with him,” Kerney said, “so I thought I’d check out the area before the season got started.”
“Maybe they were hunting up in the mountains,” Gundersen said, “but not down here. We don’t allow it. The whole valley to the Arizona state line is posted.”
Kerney shrugged. “I guess I must have misunderstood.”
“Not necessarily,” Gundersen said. “Walt owns a farm in the valley, about two miles down the highway toward Duncan. Little white house that sits just back from the road. He leases out the acreage and uses the place as a retreat of sorts. Don’t see much of him. Comes here occasionally to check on things and stay overnight. During deer season he sometimes brings a friend along to go hunting in the mountains.”
“He grew up in the valley?” Kerney asked.
“He came here as a foster child the state placed with an older couple. They adopted him and found out they got more than they bargained for.”
“How so?”
“Let’s just stay he had a hard time adjusting to our ways. He went straight from high school into the service and didn’t come back much after that. His adoptive parents died in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning about fifteen years ago. A leak in the bedroom wall heater is what killed them. Walt inherited the property.”
“I enjoyed passing the time with you,” Kerney said. “Good luck replacing that thermostat.”
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br /> “I’ll get it done,” Gundersen said as he pulled the screwdriver out of his pocket.
Kerney left Gundersen to his chore and went looking for Shaw’s house, which he spotted without difficulty from the highway. There was no sign of activity and no vehicles parked outside, although a nearby barn could easily house the van. He cruised by slowly and continued a mile down the road before turning around for another pass.
Shaw kept his property in good repair: both the house and barn were freshly painted, and although there were several barren flower beds in front of the porch, the grounds were free of junk and the grass had recently been mowed.
Kerney decided a closer inspection of the house and grounds wouldn’t be wise. Driving onto the property would raise the interest of the farmer on a tractor tilling a nearby field, or the woman across the highway hanging out the wash at the side of her house.
What he’d learned about Shaw from Gundersen was interesting but added no weight to his suspicions. A couple of hours of research into Shaw after he was back in Santa Fe might give him a better handle on the man. He was particularly intrigued by the way Shaw’s adoptive parents had died, and wanted to do a records search to see what kind of an investigation had been mounted and what the official findings had been.
Kerney left the valley wondering whether he’d be able to drop his cop mentality when he retired. He’d spent his career questioning motives, digging into dirty little secrets, unraveling crimes, probing for guilty knowledge, and holding people accountable for their wrongdoings.
Would he ever be able to step aside from the ingrained reflex he had to want to set everything right? He wasn’t sure it would be easy, but he would damn sure try. Although, so far, he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t doing a very good job of letting go.
All in all Johnny Jordan was pleased with how the scouting trip had gone. Usher loved the rodeo grounds location in Duncan, and they had worked out a sequence of shots based on the new material from the Hollywood screenwriter that gave Johnny’s clients more lines and time in front of the cameras.
Besides that, the new scenes strengthened the backstory conflict between the rodeo cowboy and his father and, as Usher put it, contrasted the hard-living hedonism of the son with the rock-solid decency of the father. Usher likened it to the clash between Paul Newman and Melvyn Douglas in Hud.
Johnny also thought the brawl sequences between the cops and cowboys during the stampede at the smelter would be outstanding. About the only thing he didn’t like was Usher’s decision to cut some of the locations from the cattle drive.
After returning from Duncan, Johnny tried to get Usher to restore the cattle-drive scenes, but his pitch fell on deaf ears. He left Usher and his team, who were about to finish up for the day, went back to the apartment, and tried to call his mother at the ranch. When the answering machine clicked on, he hung up without leaving a message. He tried Julia’s number, hoping he could recruit her as an intermediary to soothe Bessie’s anger with him, and got no response.
He threw the cell phone on the couch and decided it didn’t really matter. He’d endured his father’s cold rejection for years, hadn’t been close to Julia since high school, and would probably never again need his mother’s help to get money out of the old man.
He was on the verge of becoming a major player. Foreign distribution rights for the movie had sold for big bucks, and the sports-cable-channel rodeo deal was in the bag. Sponsors were warming up to the idea of signing his clients to advertising contracts, which would put a fifteen-percent commission in Johnny’s pocket.
Entertainment-industry buzz about the movie had generated talks with a major network about the possibility of a spin-off series. It would basically be an updated version of the old Stoney Burke television drama of the early 1960s that starred Jack Lord and Warren Oates as two maverick rodeo cowboys vying to make it to the national championship and win the buckle. But now one cowboy would be Hispanic and the other a high-stakes poker player, and they’d spend a lot of time at rodeos in Reno and Las Vegas.
The positive reaction by the network bigwigs to his slightly twisted, fun-loving, rodeoing, poker-playing characters, which he’d thought up while watching the World Series of Poker on ESPN, convinced Johnny that he was going to make a killing in Hollywood. After all these years he’d finally found something he could do as well as ride. Rodeo was my first love, Johnny joked to himself, but now it’s all going to be about residuals.
In an matter of weeks Johnny would be able to stop floating loans to himself by maxing out his credit cards, pay off the shyster who masqueraded as a divorce lawyer, and settle accounts with his soon-to-be ex-wife, Madeline. But until then he still needed Brenda.
After a series of telephone conversations Johnny had managed to convince her that his father’s “stroke” had left him foggy headed and confused about his medical condition. Johnny figured he would stay with Brenda until just before filming began and then pack his bags and go.
Johnny picked up the cell phone and clipped it on his belt. Usher’s meeting with the production team was about to start. He left the apartment and fell in behind Susan Berman, who was on her way to the community center where the group would convene.
She was a tasty-looking piece in spite of her no-nonsense, all-business manner. He couldn’t help but wonder what it would take to get her in the sack. He quickened his pace, caught up with her, flashed a big smile, and asked if she’d ever been to a rodeo.
“No, I haven’t,” Berman replied.
“Maybe I could get my boys together and put one on for you after the film wraps,” Johnny said, feeling remarkably expansive.
“That would be unusual,” Berman said, trying hard not to laugh at the man’s unbelievable grandiosity.
“We could do a barbecue at the ranch with live country music, tubs of longneck beer on ice, and some good sipping whiskey. Do you know how to two-step?”
“No, I don’t,” Berman replied.
“I’ll teach you,” Johnny said.
Susan Berman arched an eyebrow. “Will you, now?”
Johnny smiled broadly. “Private lessons.”
Susan smiled sweetly and quickened her pace. “That would be hard to pass up.”
He watched her scurry ahead of him and grinned. Long ago, Johnny had tired of the easy pickings he found with the buckle bunnies. He liked women who showed a little spunk, put up a few barriers, and made the chase worthwhile. At first Brenda had acted that way, but in truth she was nothing but a gushy, gullible, tiresome chatterbox.
Experience had taught Johnny that aloof women were totally hot in bed. He followed along behind Berman and pondered the moves he could make, promising himself that he would have her before filming ended. He had months to wear her down.
Chapter Seven
Sara parked the rental car next to Kerney’s unmarked police cruiser, carried a sleepy Patrick inside the house, and quickly put him to bed. As she tucked him in and kissed his warm cheek, he asked for his father.
“You’ll see him in the morning,” Sara said.
Patrick smiled. “Can I go riding with Daddy in the morning?” “Daddy has to work tomorrow and you may have to go with him.”
“Why?”
“To keep him company,” Sara said as she gave him his favorite stuffed animal, a palomino pony with a bushy tail. “Now go to sleep.”
Clutching the pony, Patrick turned on his side and closed his eyes.
Outside, the horses in the paddock gently whinnied as Sara opened the trunk of the car and removed the luggage. In the stillness of the night she could hear the sound of their hooves as they trotted expectantly along the fence. She crossed the pasture to the barn and gave each of the four geldings a horse biscuit and a nose rub before taking the luggage inside. In the living room she dropped the bags on the oversized sofa and walked into the adjoining study. She sat at the original mission desk that she’d inherited from her grandmother and looked out through a picture window onto the canyon below, wher
e the ranch road crossed an arroyo and rose toward the house. From here she would be able to see the headlights of Kerney’s pickup truck long before he reached the house.
She opened her briefcase and took our her laptop before speed-dialing Kerney’s cell-phone number. The call didn’t go through. Since leaving Arlington for the flight to Albuquerque, she’d repeatedly tried to contact him without success. Kerney was way overdue from his weekend trip to the Bootheel and it was unlike him to be unreachable. As Santa Fe police chief he was on call virtually all of the time, no matter where he was or what he was doing. Until now Sara had always been able to contact him without difficulty.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d encountered some trouble on the road or had been caught up in an emergency at work. To ease her mind she dialed his direct office number and got no answer. With growing concern she called the regional emergency dispatch center and asked to be put through to him. The dispatcher advised her that he was not on duty and had last been heard from by telephone earlier that morning.
Trying hard not to sound like a worried wife, Sara asked the dispatcher to let Kerney know, if he made contact, that she was at the ranch.
“Is everything all right, Colonel Brannon?” the dispatcher asked.
“Perfectly,” Sara replied. She thanked the woman, disconnected, and powered up her laptop.
Kerney had no idea she was about to leave Patrick in his care for the next two weeks. It would be a first for father and son, and she wasn’t happy about springing the situation on him unannounced. Fortunately, Patrick was thrilled about seeing his father, although she doubted he had really taken in the fact that Sara would be gone for two weeks, the first time they’d been separated for more than a few hours. Even on the busiest days she had always managed to look in on him at the Pentagon day-care center.
She stared at the laptop screen for a long moment searching out the folder containing the case file that had led to her special orders. She would be out of the country for the next week, but her mind kept wandering back to Kerney. Where was he? What was he doing? What if he arrived home without checking in with dispatch, saw lights on inside the house, and assumed a crime was in progress?
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