The man who hurried to meet them was no more than forty but almost totally bald except for buzz-cut sidewalls. He had square shoulders and one of those permanently etched, hard-nosed expressions some cops liked to adopt as their public persona. He introduced himself as Police Chief Billy Pruitt in a dour tone that matched his expression. He had smudges on his face, and gray soot dirtied his white shirt and once polished boots.
As he shook Pruitt’s hand, Clayton wondered if the chief’s full name might be Billy Bob. He resisted the impulse to inquire. “What have you learned so far?” he asked over the sounds of the thudding chopper rotors slowing to a stop.
“It’s been a real mess,” Pruitt answered as he walked Clayton and Ramsey to a panel truck with a Muleshoe PD logo on it, which served as a mobile command post. “After the explosion, the fire burned hot and long. Once the firefighters put it out, it took a while for it to cool down enough for a look-see. The only one who’s been inside is the arson investigator. So far, he’s found the badly burned remains of one individual. But the place is such a shambles, who knows, there may be more.”
Clayton gazed at the ruined structure, looking for signs of movement. “Is he in there now?”
Pruitt nodded. “At the back of the building, where there was less damage.”
“I take it you got the VIN off that engine block sitting at the edge of the crater,” Ramsey said.
Pruitt nodded. “Yep, and that’s the sum total of the evidence we’ve recovered so far.” He stopped talking to answer a cell phone clipped to his belt. As he listened he got an exasperated look on his face. Finally he said, “I don’t care how long it takes, dammit, find his sister.”
“Whose sister?” Clayton asked when Pruitt disconnected.
“There was a new clerk working when the store blew up. According to the manager, he’s an older Mexican named Bernardo Ulibarri who used to work in a local dairy until he injured his back. The manager says Ulibarri has a green card, but that could be a bunch of BS. Supposedly, he lives with his sister, but the address he gave the manager was bogus, and the manager doesn’t remember the sister’s name. I’ve got an officer out looking for her.”
Pruitt paused and looked at the crowds behind the police lines. “You’d think she’d be here,” he said. “Everyone else in town seems to be.”
A figure emerged from the innards of the destroyed building and walked slowly toward the police van, pulling off his gloves, a pair of goggles, and his breathing mask.
“That’s Eloy Miramontes, our arson investigator,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt waited to make introductions until Miramontes, a man in his thirties with a weight lifter’s body, pulled off his boots and tossed them inside the cab of a fire engine with his other gear.
“What have you got for us, Eloy?” Pruitt asked after hand-shakes all around had been completed.
“There are no other bodies inside,” Miramontes replied. “I had to move a lot of debris to get into the bathrooms at the back of the structure, but they were both empty. I took a closer look at the victim and there’s a bullet hole in his forehead.”
“You’re sure of that?” Pruitt asked.
Miramontes nodded. “Shrapnel from an explosion is messy and the entry wound is circular, consistent with what you’d normally see from a gunshot. Also, outside the building I found fingering. That’s the splash effects of the gasoline being spewed around before it ignited. The fire was deliberately started away from the fuel pumps on the side of the structure. There’s even some melted material from the fuel hose embedded in the paving. That tells me it was dropped on the ground prior to the explosion. We’ve got ourselves a felony arson and a homicide.”
Ramsey glanced at Clayton and Pruitt. “Did our perp just walk away from the explosion? Larson obviously isn’t driving the Bible camp pickup anymore.”
“Did the clerk have a vehicle?” Clayton asked.
Pruitt shook his head. “Not one that he owned, as far as we know. That’s why we’re looking for the sister. The store manager said Ulibarri would either walk to work, borrow his sister’s car, or get rides from her. He thinks it’s an older model Toyota, but isn’t sure.”
“We need to know about that vehicle,” Clayton said.
Pruitt grunted in agreement.
Clayton watched a heavyset woman push her way to the front of one of the barriers and wave both hands over her head in his direction.
“Somebody wants your attention, Chief,” Clayton said as he nodded at the woman.
“Wait here,” Pruitt said as he hurried toward the woman.
Out of earshot, Clayton, Ramsey, and Miramontes watched. The woman said something to Pruitt as he approached, gesturing frantically at the rubble of the convenience store. He took her away from the crowd and a TV reporter holding a microphone who’d elbowed her way up to the woman and leaned close to say something. When he finished talking, the woman’s knees buckled, and Pruitt grabbed her arm to keep her upright.
“It seems the sister of our vic may have arrived,” Miramontes said.
“Let’s hope she didn’t get here in an older model Toyota,” Ramsey said. “Because if she did, we’re screwed.”
“So much for our compassion for the bereaved,” Clayton said grimly.
“We’re a sorry lot,” Steve Ramsey replied as the image of Officer Leroy Ordonez’s fiancée flashed before his eyes.
Several hours before dawn, on a rural two-lane state highway, ten miles beyond the village of Logan, New Mexico, the piece-of-shit Toyota died on Craig Larson. Of course, there was no frigging flashlight in the car, and no tools either, for that matter, even if he could see what in the hell needed fixing. He stayed with the car for a while, with the hood up and the parking lights flashing, hoping some good Samaritan would come along and stop. Be it a cop or civilian, it didn’t matter, Larson was prepared to blow away whoever came to his rescue for their wheels.
After an hour passed and the chill of the high desert summer night had seeped into his bones, Larson realized that the chances were slim that anyone would be out on the road until first light. He gave up on the idea of waiting for help to arrive, closed the hood of the car, turned off the flashers, and pushed the car off the shoulder of the highway, next to a tree. Hopefully, anyone passing by would think nothing of seeing a disabled vehicle at the side of the road.
He grabbed his stuff out of the car and started walking. A good mile or more down the road, he threw the .22 Marlin rifle into a culvert. Carrying the weapon in daylight would only spook any driver passing by.
From the village of Logan north, Larson was virtually on his home ground. He set a steady pace, and by sunup, he was closing in on the hills to the west and knew the tiny ranching settlement of Gallegos on Ute Creek was just ahead. The first vehicle he saw was a school bus traveling from that direction, It had to be on the way to gather up the ranch kids and take them to school farther north in Mosquero, the county seat. As a boy, he’d ridden buses with classmates who spent three hours a day or more traveling to and from school, and he knew it was no different now.
In Gallegos, ranch wives and their children waited in pickup trucks for the school bus to swing back around, and several men were out in a pasture digging what appeared to be a water line trench. Larson didn’t stop, and although his passage earned him some curious glances, no one seemed disturbed to see a wandering vagrant plodding along.
A half hour outside of Gallegos, the school bus whizzed by on its way to Mosquero. He had half a mind to run after it and abduct the entire kit and caboodle, thinking it’d be fun to terrorize a bus full of children and young teenagers, especially the girls. He’d bet even money there were a couple of tasty thirteen-year-olds on it. But the bus moved quickly on, and he was too bone-weary tired to chase after it and try to wave it down.
He topped the crest of a small hill and saw the school bus stopped with lights flashing to pick up some kids. When Larson reached the ranch road where it had stopped, he laughed out loud in delight at
the sight of a thirty-year-old pickup truck parked behind the locked gate.
A sign posted at the side of the gate announced that the Dripping Springs Ranch headquarters was eight miles off the pavement. The truck had to be used by the ranch kids to drive themselves to and from the school bus stop.
Larson climbed the gate and found the truck to be unlocked, just as he’d suspected. He searched for an ignition key hidden above the visor, under the rubber floor mat, or in the glove box or the ashtray, without any luck. But there was a small toolbox under the bench seat, with a couple of screwdrivers, pairs of pliers and wire cutters, electrical tape, and assorted other stuff. Larson took what he needed from it, pried the ignition lock off the steering column, and easily hot-wired the truck. The engine turned over and purred.
Larson used the wire cutters on the barbed wire fence and drove north on the highway thinking about his next move. He would have to hide this truck so it wouldn’t be easily found, just as he’d done with the pickup owned by the former Lincoln County clerk and newly deceased Janette Evans.
He had the perfect place in mind. Below Taylor Springs, a few miles east of Springer on the Canadian River, stood the headquarters of the Lazy Z Ranch. The Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail ran right through the center of it. Started by a man who had once owned shares in the Maxwell Cattle Company, it had been passed down to Martha Boyle, one of Larson’s high school classmates.
As a teenager Larson had cowboyed on the ranch during spring and fall works, and he knew it well. It was off the beaten path, and best of all was used only as a private retreat when Martha needed a respite from living the big-city life. He could hole up there for months without raising any suspicions.
He wondered if Martha was at the ranch. If she was, he wouldn’t have to go looking for a woman. If not, he’d go out trolling one night and collect one.
Either way, it was all going to work out just fine. He turned on the radio and drove down the highway listening to George Strait sing about true love and a broken heart.
Chapter Six
For three days, Jack Burke dealt with the loss of his son by working himself into a state of exhaustion. Friends, neighbors, and relatives who stopped by the ranch to voice their sympathy, or offer support, found Irene at home while Jack labored outside at some task that suddenly, desperately needed doing. During those days, from sunup to sundown, Kerney worked alongside his friend. He showed up at the ranch house early in the morning, learned from Irene where Jack had gone, joined him, and along with several of Jack’s close buddies from neighboring ranches, pitched in to help. Talking only when absolutely necessary, the men cut fire-wood for the winter, repaired fence lines, patched water tanks, greased windmills, tuned up the ranch vehicles, and replaced rotted wood siding on the horse barn. It seemed that whatever needed fixing around the ranch, Jack Burke was determined to get done before he had to bury his son.
Not once during those days did any friend, neighbor, or family member suggest that Jack needed to get in touch with his feelings, see a counselor to deal with his grief, or have himself a good, long cry. Everyone saw that Jack was coping the best way he knew how.
Each day at lunch, Kerney sat with Jack and his pals at the table in the Burkes’ kitchen and talked about the tasks ahead in the afternoon, while Irene, red-eyed and hollow-looking, occupied herself cooking food to feed all the folks who kept dropping in during the day to offer help, comfort, and sympathy.
So Jack toiled, Irene cooked, and Lynette, Riley’s widow, escaped to Kerney’s ranch to care for the horses her husband had been raising and training, so that she could grieve privately. One evening, Kerney came upon her in the tack room of the horse barn on his ranch, leaning against the wall, eyes closed, hands to her mouth, sobbing quietly. He backed away unnoticed, wondering why grief always seemed to be such a solitary affair, no matter how many people surrounded you. His passing inquiry into the nature of personal suffering didn’t make Kerney feel one damn bit better about Riley’s death. Each time he saw the spot in front of his house where Riley had been senselessly gunned down, he winced.
On the morning of Sara and Patrick’s scheduled late afternoon arrival at the Albuquerque airport, Kerney worked with Jack and his friends clearing out some invasive young juniper trees in otherwise good pastureland that bordered a wide arroyo. After the last of the junipers had been chained, pulled out by the roots, and piled in mounds at the edge of the pasture, he told Jack he needed to go home, clean up, and get down to the airport.
Jack pulled off his work gloves and shook Kerney’s hand. “Thanks for your help. It’s meant a lot to me.”
“Anytime,” Kerney replied, looking at Jack’s tired and empty face. “I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah,” Jack replied. “Tomorrow, I guess.”
“Tomorrow,” Kerney repeated, thinking that was about as close as Jack could get to admitting that he would soon bury his son.
At the airport, Kerney learned that the connecting flight out of Chicago had been delayed by bad weather. He passed the time people watching, unscientifically proving to himself once again that the majority of Americans, as recent statistics indicated, were indeed overweight, if not outright obese.
When Sara and Patrick finally came through the security checkpoint, it was getting on to dusk. He greeted them with hugs and kisses, grabbed their carry-on luggage, and walked them to the short-term parking garage where he’d left the rental car. A hot yellow sun hung on the western horizon, lighting up a dust-laden golden sky.
After Sara strapped Patrick into the child’s seat of the car, he asked Kerney what had happened to his mother’s Jeep.
“A bad man took it and broke it,” Kerney replied.
“Why?” Patrick asked.
“Because he does bad things, like stealing your mother’s Jeep. But it’s getting fixed.” Kerney paid the parking lot attendant and waited for his change.
“Can I take Pablito for a ride when we get home?” Patrick asked as the attendant raised the gate and Kerney drove on.
“No, it will be dark by then,” Sara replied.
“In the morning?” Patrick asked hopefully.
Sara shook her head. “Tomorrow morning we have something else to do, remember? We talked about it on the airplane because it’s the reason we came home to Santa Fe so unexpectedly.”
Patrick nodded seriously. “We have to go to church and say good-bye to Riley, because he died.”
“That’s right,” Sara said.
“And he can’t work with Daddy anymore.”
“Right again,” she noted.
“But I can help Daddy with the horses,” Patrick said brightly.
“Only until we go back to London,” Kerney said as he merged into northbound traffic on I-25.
“I don’t want to go back. I don’t like London.”
“You like horseback riding in Hyde Park,” Kerney countered.
“Yeah, but . . .”
“And you like the zoo,” he added before Patrick could continue, “and London is where your mother has her job. We promised that we would all stay together, remember? Not like the last time when she went to Iraq all by herself.”
“I don’t want Mom to be a soldier anymore,” Patrick announced. “She doesn’t even wear her uniform to work, so why does she have to stay in the army?”
“Let’s change the subject,” Kerney said, thinking his son was no slouch when it came to mounting an argument, no matter how unreasonable it might be.
“Okay.” Patrick yawned in reply and fell silent. Through the rearview mirror, Kerney saw his son’s eyes close and his head droop.
Sara turned her head and looked back at Patrick. “He’s almost asleep,” she whispered.
“Good,” Kerney whispered back.
“What’s happening with the manhunt for the killer?”
“Officially, it’s still going full bore. Unofficially, it has stalled. Larson may have gone into hiding up in his old stomping grounds around Colfax County. That
’s the theory, anyway. As far as the police know, he hasn’t murdered anybody since the Muleshoe, Texas, killing. Because the hunt is concentrated up north, most of the smaller departments in the central and southern part of the state have scaled back on the search. But Andy Baca is keeping dozens of his state police officers, agents, and investigators assigned to the case. He’s even pulled central office supervisors away from their desks and sent them into the field hunting for Larson.”
“He’s lost an officer, so he’ll be a bulldog on this one,” Sara said. “What’s Paul Hewitt’s status?”
“Not good,” Kerney said glumly. “I’ve seen him once and I’ve talked to Linda by phone several times. He knows that he’ll never have the use of his arms and legs again, and according to Linda he’s been talking a lot of negative crap about not wanting to live. Clayton’s driving up to Albuquerque tomorrow from Lincoln County to see him. He said he’d call and fill me in afterwards.”
“That’s so sad,” Sara said. “It must be scary for both of them.”
“I’d hate to be facing their future,” Kerney said.
“And Jack, Irene, and Lynette? How are they holding up?”
“They’re coping in their own way,” Kerney answered in a somber tone. “Jack works himself to a nub sunup to sundown, Irene cooks frantically in her kitchen day and night, and Lynette hides out with the horses at our place and falls apart when no one is looking.”
“Have you signed on with Andy to join the hunt for Larson?”
Kerney shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve been sticking pretty close to Jack these last few days. Family and friends will be gathering at Jack and Irene’s after the burial. They’re expecting quite a crowd.”
“I’ll call Irene when we get home and offer to help,” Sara said.
“I’m sure she’d like that. Did you tell Patrick the particulars of how and where Riley died?”
“No, I thought it best not to until he’s older.” Sara reached out and touched Kerney’s cheek. “Are you still feeling responsible for Riley’s death?”
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