Dead or Alive

Chapter Eight

In spite of her good looks, sex with Tami was a real bummer. Larson figured her to be a frigid, hysterical bitch. The only hole that worked on her was her mouth. He finished quickly, zipped up his pants, and slapped her hard repeatedly to get her to quit begging for her life. When she wouldn’t quiet down, he stuck her head in the toilet and held her under until she went limp.

As he laid Tami’s body out on the living room floor next to Porky, he decided it would have been more fun to send her out into the cactus patch behind the barn to use as target practice. Blindfolded and barefoot, just like Ugly Nancy, except that he wouldn’t have let Tami put any clothes on. Shooting people was far more enjoyable than drowning them.

He searched Tami’s purse. She carried a New Mexico voter identification card for the Republican Party and held memberships in the Toastmasters, the Rotary Club, and the Raton Chamber of Commerce. Her business card showed an address on a downtown street of Raton’s so-called historic district near the train tracks and old railroad station. Her home address on her driver’s license didn’t ring any bells, but he’d last been in Raton half a lifetime ago, so who knew what had changed?

He leafed through Tami’s day planner. The final entry for the day was a notation to meet Carter Marion Pettibone in the lobby of a Raton motel, to tour several ranch properties. The wallet in Porky’s back pocket confirmed he was Pettibone, age sixty-six, of Omaha, Nebraska. It also contained a key card to a room at the motel where Tami had picked him up.

Larson looked down at the bodies he’d neatly arranged side by side. Tami Phelan and Carter Marion Pettibone. What a pair. He could just imagine them as a Bible-thumping husband-and-wife team, evangelizing the back-road, dusty villages of West Texas door to door and on dinky public access television stations.

He went to the kitchen, sipped from the bottle of twenty-year-old whiskey he’d taken from the Lazy Z Ranch, and pondered his next move. For sure, staying put wouldn’t work. There was always the chance that Tami, Pettibone, or both had told somebody where they were going.

Larson retrieved Tami’s cell phone from her purse, found her home number on the speed-dial list, and punched in the number. The phone rang, went unanswered, and switched over to a voice message recorded by Tami. He disconnected, speed-dialed her office number, and got another message from Tami. There was no wedding ring on Tami’s finger and her business card showed her to be the broker who operated the real estate agency. Maybe she lived alone and even worked alone.

Outside, Larson searched Tami’s GMC Yukon. If Pettibone had a cell phone, he hadn’t brought it with him. Back inside, Larson paged through Tami’s day planner and found a two-week-old entry for Pettibone showing his home address and phone number in Omaha circled in red, with a note that he was interested in ranch land of less than 320 acres.

Larson dialed the Omaha number on Tami’s cell and a woman answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello,” she said, in a breathless voice as though she’d run to answer the telephone.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Pettibone,” Larson said, trying not to crack up at the absurdity of his request.

“I’m sorry, my husband’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”

“When would it be best to call back and speak to him?”

“He’s out right now, but I can take a message for him.”

“I’m just passing through town. Do you expect him back anytime soon?”

“No, he’s away on business.”

“For how long?”

“He’ll be back in three days.”

“Tell him Ted Landry called. He’ll remember who I am.”

“Ted Landry?”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you”

Larson disconnected and went through Tami’s day planner more carefully. There was nothing in it about picking up the kids from school or meeting the hubby for lunch or drinks. The only names that showed up repeatedly other than clients seemed to be those of a few women friends Tami would meet for dinner or a movie.

The car keys in Pettibone’s pocket were for a Buick, probably with Nebraska plates, which was most likely in the motel parking lot. If Porky’s wife wasn’t going to start missing him for the next three days, the cops wouldn’t be looking for the Buick anytime soon. Larson decided to ditch the piece-of-shit Subaru on the off chance that what was left of Ugly Nancy had been discovered, drive to Raton in Tami’s GMC Yukon, and use Porky’s Buick as his new set of wheels.

Back at the Yukon, he removed the magnetic real estate signs from the driver and passenger doors. Tami had a vanity license plate that read “COWGIRL.” Larson discarded it in favor of the Subaru’s plate, thinking that Tami the cowgirl hadn’t even been as good at giddyup as Ugly Nancy. He loaded the Yukon with all the gear he’d carted into the house, figuring that under the cover of darkness he would transfer his stuff to Pettibone’s Buick.

Finished with his tasks, Larson downed another couple of fingers of whiskey before returning to the living room. What to do with Tami and Porky was nagging him. His druthers were to burn the house down around them, but that would just draw quick attention and bring a slew of volunteer firefighters to the place. He could bury the bodies, but that felt like too much work. Instead, he brought the Subaru from the barn where he’d stashed it, opened the hatchback, folded down the backseats, and manhandled Tami’s body into the car. To get her to fit inside, he had to pull her head up between the front bucket seats and place it on the center armrest. He spread her legs, raised her knees, dropped Porky’s drawers down around his ankles and, grunting under the effort, wrestled him on top of naked Tami. Larson doubted that Pettibone, in life, had ever been on top of such a good-looking piece of tail. That was the downside. In death, however, the upside was that Porky would never know what a bum fuck she was.

He put the Subaru back in the barn, carefully closed the gate to the property, and drove away in the Yukon, with a low-hanging western sun in his eyes. Tami’s cell phone, which hadn’t rung once, was on the front passenger seat, along with the 9mm Glock, the .357 Ruger, and the .357 pistol. The two hunting rifles, the Weatherby and a Remington 700 Safari that fired a .458 Magnum bullet with great stopping power, were on the backseat, along with the lever-action Winchester 30.06. If the cops found him and wanted to party, the firepower he had at hand would make it possible for him to oblige them greatly.

Larson turned north toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which rose up to fill the horizon from east to west. It seemed he had a knack for killing people, but so far his victims had been random folks who’d stood in his way. Maybe it was time to get more serious and up the ante.

Some years back, Larson had been mesmerized by the two snipers who had killed all those people in Maryland and Virginia. He even remembered their names, Muhammad and Malvo. At the time they seemed unstoppable, and he’d paid close attention to the details of the manhunt and their eventual capture.

He knew they had used a Bushmaster XM15 E2S to take down their targets. Patterned after the M-16, it had a ten-shot magazine and fired .223-caliber rounds. He knew the car they’d driven, a Chevy Caprice, had been checked out by the police seven times before the pair were finally arrested, that they used a stolen laptop to navigate around the D.C. area, and that they took turns as the shooter and the spotter, sometimes firing from the vehicle and sometimes not.

Supposedly, Malvo and Muhammad had killed for money: some ten million dollars they’d hoped to get from the cops. In truth, Larson knew it had to be all about the blood sport, not the money. He was starting to feel that way about his own killing spree.

On the interstate heading north toward Raton, a state police car passed him without slowing, and Larson toyed with the idea of assassinating cops. That would be a hell of a lot more entertaining than shooting unarmed housewives at gas stations or in front of grocery stores, like Malvo and Muhammad did. It could also be a lot more challenging too, because cops could shoot back.

Not that Larson planned to give them the chance. The Weatherby and the Remington would provide plenty of range and give him time enough to disappear, just like Malvo and Muhammad. The more he thought about killing cops, the more it appealed to him. After all, cops gave him the most grief, not Pettibone, Tami, Ugly Nancy, Cuddy the KO’d Kid, or most of the other folks he’d wasted. Those poor suckers had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the Lincoln County sheriff, the cop at the roadblock, and the horde of cops looking for him were all trying to bring him down.

Maybe it was time to stop the cops.

Larson liked the sound of that. Stop the cops. He said it over and over. If he really went through with it, he would be bigger than Malvo and Muhammad. Way bigger.

In Raton, along the motel strip, Larson made up his mind to do it. All the cop cars parked outside a budget franchise motel sealed the deal. He passed by slowly, watching a small group of uniformed officers talking as they stood next to a patrol vehicle.

Larson felt invisible. He was no more than twenty-five feet away from them, driving slowly as he passed by, and the cops ignored him completely. And why shouldn’t they? He was in Tami’s Yukon nobody was looking for, and with his shaved head and new beard he now had a completely different look.

He was invisible, maybe even invincible.

Larson grinned as he wheeled into the motel entrance where Porky Pettibone, now lying dead on top of cold and frigid Tami in the back of Ugly’s Subaru, had booked a room.

He’d seen a television show where the cops found a body carefully arranged on a bed and called it staging. He mulled over a way to kill a whole bunch of cops and stage their bodies in a circle jerk. He laughed out loud at the idea of it.

He parked next to the Buick with Nebraska plates and let himself into Porky’s room. The bedside telephone message light was blinking. Larson followed the instructions on the placard next to the phone and dialed to retrieve the message. It was from Pettibone’s wife, reporting that a man named Ted Landry had called for him, and asking if he liked the ranch he’d gone to see with the Realtor.

Larson closed the window curtains and checked the time. It was a good two hours before nightfall, when it would be safe to move his gear to Porky’s car. Until then, he would stay put and do some serious cogitating about ways to kill cops.

After attending an early morning state police task force meeting, Kerney and Clayton talked privately over coffee in the motel restaurant with Major Frank Vanmeter, the task force commander. Barely in his forties, Vanmeter was a twenty-year veteran of the department. He’d been a lieutenant during Kerney’s brief stint as a deputy chief of the state police.

Kerney asked him how the psychologist, Dr. John Casados, had made out talking to Larson’s twin brother.

Vanmeter pursed his thin lips and shook his bald head. “Kerry Larson clammed up. But Casados thinks it likely that he could be deliberately withholding information about his brother’s whereabouts.”

“What makes Casados think that?” Clayton asked as he spooned some sugar into his coffee cup.

“Hero worship,” Vanmeter replied. “Kerry Larson idolizes his brother, who in his mind can do no wrong. He’s an identical twin and the spitting image of his brother, Craig, but slow in the head.”

“Other than the psychologist’s theory, is there any reason to believe that Kerry is protecting or harboring Larson?” Kerney asked.

“No, but Everett Dorsey, the Springer police chief, thinks Kerry would have a pretty good idea where his brother might go to hide out if he’s still in the area.”

“That makes sense,” Kerney said.

“Casados is going to take another crack at Kerry today,” Vanmeter added.

“We know Larson has no other blood relatives in the area,” Clayton said, “but what about old friends and acquaintances? Would they have any ideas about Larson’s whereabouts?”

“Dorsey is working a list of locals who knew the Larson brothers before Craig left town. Former friends and folks they went to school with, people they once worked for, old school teachers and coaches. It’s a long shot.”

Kerney pushed back his chair and dropped some bills on the table to cover the coffees and tip. “But worth pursuing, given the fact that the Lazy Z once belonged to the family of Craig Larson’s teenage girlfriend. His familiarity with the ranch is probably one of the factors that drew him there.”

He glanced at Clayton. “We need to visit with Chief Dorsey and take a look at the Lazy Z crime scene.”

“Except for the vermin-infested hunting lodge on top of the mesa, there’s not much left to see,” Vanmeter said as he nodded at a file folder in Kerney’s hand. “The briefing packet I passed out this morning brings you up to speed on what happened there.”

Kerney stood. “And it does so very nicely, Frank. But I want to take a gander for myself.”

Vanmeter smiled and shrugged. “According to Chief Baca, you both have carte blanche.”

“We won’t step on any toes unless we have to,” Clayton said as he got to his feet.

Vanmeter’s smiled widened. “That’s not the back-channel traffic I heard about what you did when you departed the Lincoln County S.O., Agent Istee.”

Clayton smiled back at Vanmeter. “Those were bruised egos I left behind, Major, not sore toes.”

Vanmeter laughed as he followed Kerney and Clayton to the parking lot.

After dark, Larson had transferred his stuff to Pettibone’s Buick, driven Tami’s SUV to her office, left it in the reserved space at the back of the building, and put the magnetic signs on the doors. He’d forgotten to bring along Tami’s vanity license plate, so he left the Subaru plate on the Yukon and walked back to the motel, where he spent the night in Pettibone’s room. In the morning, he’d risen early, got breakfast at a fast-food drive-through window, and parked the Buick back in the lot at the motel so he could watch what was happening at the nearby budget lodge where all the cops were staying.

Things were quiet at first, but soon officers started coming out the front entrance and driving away in their patrol vehicles. Along with cops in civvies, there were cops in at least five or six different kinds of uniforms.

Between bites of his breakfast egg-and-bacon sandwich, Larson used his finger as a handgun and pretended he was blowing them away as they hurried to their patrol cars. He figured with a real gun, he could’ve taken down three, maybe four of them, before drawing any fire.

Overnight, his plan to assassinate cops had changed from an absolute thing he was going to do to a definite maybe. The plan hadn’t lost its appeal; he just needed to do more head work before taking that first shot.

A bald-headed cop in a state police uniform and two men in blue jeans and cowboy boots with semiautomatics strapped to their belts came out the sliding glass motel doors just as Larson was about to drive away. There was something familiar about the taller of the two men wearing civvies. Larson checked him out carefully as he walked toward an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria. Damned if it wasn’t the cop who’d been the police chief in Santa Fe when he had first been busted. What was his name?

He’d never seen the other plainclothes cop who was getting into his own unmarked car. He was younger, a few inches shorter, and definitely Indian looking, with dark hair that covered his ears. Larson didn’t recognize him.

He watched the two unmarked cars enter traffic and turn toward the interstate on-ramps. Just for the hell of it, he decided to follow them for a while to see where they were going. Watching how they operated might give him some good ideas on how he should kill them.

Ever since Tami’s husband had walked out on her late last year for a twenty-five-year-old bimbo barmaid who lived just across the state line in Trinidad, Colorado, Claudia Tobin had talked to her daughter on the telephone every day. Tami would mostly call in the evenings from home, but sometimes she’d call from her office or from the car on her cell phone when she was out and about.

When Tami didn’t call, which happened very rarely, Claudia, a widow who now lived in Albuquerque and worked as a part-time home health aide to supplement her Social Security check, always called her. Last night, she’d tried repeatedly to reach Tami without success, and she’d gone to bed worried about her daughter.

Very early in the morning Claudia again called Tami’s home, work, and cell phone numbers. After getting no response other than voice mail and answering machines, she called the Raton Police Department and reported her daughter as missing.

A polite-sounding officer gathered some basic information about Tami and, upon learning of the recent dissolution of her marriage, suggested it might be possible that Tami had gone out of town on a mini vacation or business trip, or might have spent the night with a friend.

In no uncertain terms, Claudia told him that she had a very close relationship with her only child and would have known if Tami had decided to do any of those things.

The officer promised to send a patrol vehicle to Tami’s house and place of employment for a welfare check and advised Claudia not to get too worried. He told Claudia that people sometimes act out of character or impulsively after a major upheaval in their personal lives, and that Tami was probably perfectly all right. Before disconnecting, he took Claudia’s phone number, said they would have Tami call her once they made contact, and once again told her not to worry.

Claudia wasn’t having any of it. She called in sick, showered and dressed quickly, got into her ten-year-old imported subcompact coupe, and started the two-hundred-mile road trip on Interstate 25 to Raton.

While serving as the Santa Fe police chief, Kerney had met Everett Dorsey several times during legislative hearings on a concealed-carry bill that eventually passed and was signed into law. Kerney had opposed the bill along with the vast majority of top cops in the state. Dorsey had spoken in favor of it.

A brief conversation with Dorsey had left Kerney with the clear impression that the man was marking time as the Springer police chief until he could retire and pull a full pension.

He slowed to a stop in front of the Springer municipal building and in the rearview mirror watched Clayton glide in behind him. The building was a single-story structure with a brick façade, on a residential street just up from a house that had been converted into the town library. The town hall was sandwiched between the police and fire stations. A lone cop car was parked in front of a walkway that led to a windowless steel door with a “Springer Police Department” sign above it. With Clayton at his side, Kerney tried the door, found it locked, pushed the doorbell, and waited.

Dorsey opened up, let them in, and Kerney introduced him to Clayton. For a moment, they stood and talked in the small, dingy front office, which was badly in need of a paint job and some housecleaning; then Dorsey ushered them into his equally shabby private office.

Kerney asked how the interviews with Craig Larson’s former friends and associates were going and Dorsey shook his head.

“All the publicity has made people around here tight-lipped,” he said. “Folks that knew him in the old days aren’t talking. I don’t think they’re hiding anything from me. It’s more like they don’t want to admit any kind of past personal association with a cop killer who has a price on his head.”

The reward for Craig Larson had started at ten thousand dollars after the shooting of Paul Hewitt and had now climbed to twenty-five thousand.

“Major Vanmeter says the psychologist thinks Kerry Larson knows something about his brother’s whereabouts,” Clayton said.

Dorsey perched on the edge of the dinged-up surplus desk that dominated his cramped office. “That well may be. I told Vanmeter to send that psychologist packing and leave Kerry to me if he wanted to get anywhere with it, but he wouldn’t listen. Kerry suffered brain damage at birth. He looks as normal as anybody, but he isn’t real bright, can be as stubborn as a four-year-old, and he’s real suspicious when it comes to strangers. I don’t see him opening up to a shrink, especially when it comes to his brother.”

“I take it the psychologist knows all this?” Clayton asked.

“I told him so to his face.”

“What if you were allowed to take another crack at Kerry?” Kerney asked. “Could you get him to open up?”

“Possibly, but not with the shrink present,” Dorsey replied.

“I’ll talk to Vanmeter,” Kerney said. “Now, before we go out to the Lazy Z, walk us through what you saw when you first arrived on the scene.”

Dorsey grunted in disgust. “You’ve seen the crime scene photos I took?”

Kerney and Clayton nodded in unison.

“I don’t ever want to see anything like that again,” Dorsey said before beginning his narrative.

Parked a block away from the Springer town hall, Larson watched and waited. Following the two cops from Raton had been a breeze, and although he’d been a little uneasy about driving into Springer, people in their cars and those few ambling down the sidewalks had paid him no mind.

After watching the morning exodus of cops at the motel, he’d expected the town to be crawling with police. But there weren’t any fuzz on the streets. Maybe he’d stay better hidden if he broke into some old lady’s house right here in town, took her hostage, and just laid low until the pigs gave up and called off the manhunt.

Larson’s attention swung back to the two plainclothes cops, who’d left the police department and were about to get in their vehicles. He remembered the older cop’s name, Kerney or something like that. They drove away but he didn’t follow. Best not to push his luck.

He figured the cops were keeping a close watch on his brother, Kerry, hoping he’d show up. Well, there were a couple of ways to get to Kerry’s place the cops didn’t know about. Maybe it was time to get his younger brother to help him out. When it came to killing, two shooters would be better than one, and he’d never known Kerry to go against his wishes. Like Jesse and Frank James, the Larson brothers would show Malvo and Muhammad how to do it.

Larson fired up Pettibone’s Buick, made a U-turn, and headed for an old, seldom-used dirt road that would take him within a half mile of Kerry’s digs.

Late in the morning, Claudia arrived in Raton and used her own key to let herself into Tami’s house, which was located in a foothill subdivision overlooking the small city. Quickly she checked for any signs that her daughter had packed for an out-of-town trip or had left in a hurry. All her clothes were in order, the house was tidy, and nothing seemed disturbed. Stacked in the two-car garage were boxes of Tami’s husband’s things he’d yet to pick up.

Last month, Claudia had told Tami to have Goodwill come and take it all away. That Tami hadn’t done so confirmed Claudia’s suspicion that she still wasn’t over the SOB.

In the kitchen, the message light on the wall phone blinked. Claudia pushed the play button. All she heard was breathing for a few seconds before the caller hung up. It gave her an eerie feeling.

She tried hard to contain her growing anxiety by telling herself she was just being silly. Maybe the police were right and Tami had spent the night with a new boyfriend or gone to Colorado Springs or Denver for a real estate conference or some such.

Claudia dialed Tami’s office and let the phone ring until the message machine clicked on and she heard her daughter’s cheery voice say she was out of the office but could be reached on her cell. But she couldn’t get a connection when she tried the cell phone number.

Back in her car, Claudia drove to the real estate agency Tami owned. The door was locked. Through the big plate glass window Claudia could see clearly that the front room Tami used as her office was unoccupied.

Tami had no employees, so it wasn’t unusual for the building to be locked when she was out showing property or getting new listings. And on the wide open spaces of the northeastern plains, cell phone reception was spotty at best.

At the rear of the building Claudia expected to see an empty space where Tami always parked her Yukon. But to her surprise the SUV was there, missing Tami’s vanity license plate, “COWGIRL,” which she’d had for almost twenty years.

Claudia had seen enough. With her hands shaking on the steering wheel, she drove directly to the Raton Police Department and told the civilian receptionist that her daughter was in danger and she needed to speak to an officer “right now.”

Starting with the crime scenes on the mesa, Clayton and Kerney took their time at the Lazy Z. Using the briefing document supplied by Major Vanmeter, they walked through the trashed-out hunting lodge, looked over the pickup stolen from the Dripping Springs Ranch, examined the spot where Nancy Trimble had fallen, shot dead from behind, and then drove to the site where her body had been dumped.

Fingerprints lifted from the lodge, the ranch house, and the stolen truck left no doubt that the brutal rape and deliberate murder of Trimble were the work of Craig Larson.

With the sun at high noon and a hot breeze freshening from the southwest, Kerney and Clayton stood on the porch of the hunting lodge.

“This kill was different,” Kerney said. “He’s changing.”

Clayton squinted against the windblown sand. “I don’t see it. He shot Officer Ordonez at the roadblock from a distance with a long gun.”

“I would argue that his motive in shooting Ordonez was to escape capture,” Kerney said. “But with Trimble, he first turned her into wounded prey. He’s killing for vicious pleasure now and that’s an entirely different MO.”

“I figured him to be a head case right from the start.” Clayton glanced at the sky. The clear blue morning had given way to a gritty, dusty afternoon.

“Agreed,” Kerney said. “But I think he’s about to take it in a whole new direction.”

“Like what?”

Kerney shook his head. “I don’t know. But let’s assume he’s well provisioned, heavily armed, and is obviously proficient with firearms. That combination scares me. Let’s go down to the ranch headquarters and see what we can discover there.”

Clayton reached down and brushed off some red fire ants that had crawled up his pant leg. The stench from the inside of the lodge was nasty. “I could use a change of scenery,” he replied.

In his cubicle, Sergeant Joe Easley, a twelve-year veteran of the Raton Police Department, read the note that had been brought to him by a secretary. Claudia Tobin was in the reception area waiting to speak to someone about her missing daughter.

From the daily logs, Easley knew that officers had already gone to Tami Phelan’s home and place of business. Although no contact with Tami had been made, nothing suggested any mishap had occurred.

As a longtime cop in a city of under ten thousand people, Joe Easley personally knew by sight or by name virtually every permanent resident of the community. Thus, Claudia Tobin, who’d for years operated a day-care center in Raton before moving to Albuquerque with a husband dying of cancer, was not a stranger to him. Neither were Tami Phelan and her ex-husband, Brodie.

Until Brodie had moved to Trinidad to shack up with a very hot-looking young barmaid, he’d played second base on Easley’s softball team, and Tami was a member of Easley’s Downtown Rotary Club, which met monthly at Suzy’s Sizzlin’ Steakhouse.

Joe Easley also knew that since being dumped by Brodie, Tami had been throwing herself at every eligible male in town—and there weren’t that many of them—between the ages of twenty-five and sixty, almost as an act of revenge for being done wrong. Or was it an act of self-loathing? Whatever it was, she was most likely shagging somebody in or around the area, which accounted for her being missing.

Furthermore, since the sighting of Craig Larson in the northeast part of the state, there had literally been hundreds of calls to his department reporting strangers resembling Craig Larson lurking about, hiding in the foothills, camped out at a nearby state park, breaking into vacant houses, stalking women and children, cruising by in cars, or eating in the restaurants and registering in the motels near the interstate.

Each and every call had been thoroughly checked out and found to be unsubstantiated. Easley had taken to thinking of the undercurrent of panic that gripped the community as the “Craig Larson Bogeyman Days.”

A distraught-looking Claudia Tobin got to her feet when Easley came into the reception area.

“Mrs. Tobin,” Easley said pleasantly. “Good to see you. I understand that you’re concerned about Tami.”

Tobin nodded. Easley had remembered her as once being a good-looking older woman with some flesh on her bones. Now she was skinny to the point of seeming anorexic, her dyed blond hair was thinning on top, and she was heavily wrinkled around her mouth and eyes.

“Something terrible has happened to my daughter,” Claudia said. “I just know it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She’s not at home, her office is locked, her car was left at work, and her license plate has been removed and replaced with another one.”

Easley’s interest level rose a thousand percent. Tami’s “COWGIRL” vanity plate was a common sight in Raton. She even billed herself as the “Cowgirl Realtor” in all her print advertising.

“What kind of license plate is on her car now?” he asked.

“It’s a New Mexico plate.” Claudia opened her purse and handed Easley a piece of paper. “I wrote it down.”

Joe Easley gave Claudia an approving smile. “That’s great. Wait right here. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” He paused at the security door. “Would you like some coffee?”

Claudia Tobin smiled weakly. “Yes, please.”

After getting Claudia some coffee, Easley sat at his computer, accessed the Motor Vehicles Division database, and typed in the license number Claudia Tobin had supplied.

In New Mexico, drivers own their license plates, and when Easley got a hit that the plate belonged to Nancy Trimble, the murdered caretaker at the Lazy Z, his eyes widened. He reached for the phone and dialed dispatch.

“I want two officers at Tami Phelan’s real estate office right now,” he said. “Have them secure her office and vehicle, and await my arrival. Advise Major Vanmeter of the state police that I have evidence pertaining to the Lazy Z murder investigation and need his assistance at that twenty immediately.”

“Ten-four,” dispatch replied.

At the Lazy Z Ranch headquarters, Clayton and Kerney went through every room of the rambling house, which was filled with the sort of expensive, oversize Western-motif furnishings favored by rich people from somewhere other than the West. Looking for anything that might have been missed by the investigators and crime scene techs, they dug into nooks and crannies. From what they could tell, except for the probability that Larson had taken weapons, provisions, and some camping gear, nothing else appeared to have been stolen. A wall safe behind a painting in the master bedroom hadn’t been tampered with, many valuable rifles and handguns had been left behind, and an unlocked petty-cash box in the office adjacent to the kitchen held over three hundred dollars in currency.

“I wonder why Larson didn’t take the money,” Kerney said as he closed the lid to the petty-cash box and watched Clayton power up the office laptop. “Aside from that,” he added, “why did he feel the need to leave? Trimble was dead and out of the way. Nobody else was around. Did something or someone scare him off?”

Clayton shrugged in response as he accessed the Internet and began scanning the most recently visited websites. “What did the medical investigator give as Trimble’s estimated time of death?” he asked.

Kerney read it off the briefing document.

Clayton smiled.

“What?” Over Clayton’s shoulder, Kerney could see the home page of a northeastern New Mexico real estate company.

“This computer was used hours after Trimble died.” Clayton called up all the web pages that had been recently accessed. “He looked at three rural Springer properties posted for sale. I bet he was surfing for his next hideout.”

“The question is which one he chose,” Kerney said.

Clayton started printing the pages. “The vacant ranch on the Canadian River is the one I’d pick. The other two look occupied.”

Kerney used the office telephone to call the real estate firm. When a man answered, he identified himself as a police officer and asked for directions to the ranch property on the Canadian River.

“It’s off a county road a few miles east of Taylor Springs on Highway 56. About three miles in you’ll see a ranch road on the left. Take that due west. About four or five miles farther, you’ll reach the gate to the property.”

“Thanks.”

“Is there a problem there?” the man asked.

Kerney sidestepped the question. “When was the last time you showed the ranch?”

“About a month ago. There’s a small ten-acre inholding on the ranch owned by a family member who refuses to sell, so that’s been putting off prospective buyers. The place has been vacant for six months. But it’s a multiple listing, so I don’t know who else has been showing it.”

“Okay, thanks.” Kerney dropped the office phone in the cradle and said, “Let’s go.”

“Where is this place?” Clayton asked as he grabbed the web pages he’d printed.

“Off the highway out of Springer that runs to Clayton, near the Texas state line,” Kerney replied as they hurried to their units.

“Ah, yes,” Clayton said, “that’s the town that’s named after me.”

“I don’t think it was named after you. It’s been around a lot longer than you have.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I like to think of it as my town. Actually, it was named for the son of Stephan Dorsey, a former U.S. senator from Arkansas. He built a mansion near the Santa Fe Trail Cimarron Cutoff. I understand it’s still standing and owned privately.”

Kerney veered toward his unit. “I didn’t realize you were such a font of historical knowledge about New Mexico.”

“I was forced to study white man’s history in school,” Clayton replied somberly as he climbed into his vehicle. “To further your education, you might like to know that the town of Clayton got its name in the late nineteenth century. Wasn’t that about the time when you were born, old-timer?”

Kerney looked over the roof of his unit and grinned at Clayton. “Just about, wise guy. Just about.”

The vehicles kicked up clouds of dust along the dirt road until they hit the pavement, and more dust flew when they left the highway and rattled their vehicles over the county road to the ranch turnoff. They stopped short of the gate to the ranch property, at the bottom of a small rise in the road that hid them from view.

Clayton joined Kerney in his unit, passed him the pages he’d printed off the real estate website, and pointed to the photograph of the exterior of the ranch house. “If Larson is here, he’s got a clear line of fire from the house to the gate. Plus, he’s got a high-ground advantage once we enter the property.”

“There’s not much cover going in,” Kerney said, flipping to the picture of the barn. “Unless we leave the road, cut the fence behind the barn, drive through, and use the barn as cover to get within striking distance of the house.”

“Then what?” Clayton asked. “Charge the ranch house with our sidearms and shotguns against his high-powered hunting rifles?”

“If he’s got a rifle, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” Kerney said. “Better we should entreat him to give up.”

Clayton opened the passenger door. “Let me take a look at the tire tracks up ahead before we decide anything.”

“While you do that, I’ll call for some backup firepower. Be careful.”

“Always.”

Bent low to stay out of sight, Clayton reached the crest of the small rise in the road, dropped prone to the ground, and belly-crawled in a circle, studying the tire tracks. He returned to Kerney’s unit and brushed a layer of dust off his clothing before settling onto the passenger seat.

“Well?” Kerney asked.

“Two vehicles recently went in, but only one came out. The size of the tread marks show that the vehicle still on the property is a compact or sub-compact passenger car. The vehicle that came and went is either a full-size light duty truck or SUV.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. Blowing dust from the ranch road has barely begun to fill in the tread marks.”

“Trimble owned a small Subaru that was missing from the Lazy Z,” Kerney noted.

“Let’s assume Larson drove it here,” Clayton replied. “Have you called for backup?”

“Yep, and as a result I had an interesting conversation with a Raton PD sergeant named Joe Easley. He’s ten minutes out from our ETA with a state police SWAT team and Frank Vanmeter in tow. Seems Easley found evidence that a missing female real estate agent named Tami Phelan brought a client out here yesterday, and hasn’t been seen since. Craig Larson’s fingerprints were found all over her vehicle.”

“Let me guess,” Clayton said. “The lady drives a full-size SUV.”

“You got it. A Jimmy Yukon. Which vehicle entered the ranch property first?”

“The passenger car,” Clayton replied.

“So what do you think we have waiting for us up ahead at the ranch—a firefight with Craig Larson, dead bodies, or both?”

“Dead bodies,” Clayton replied solemnly.

“You’re probably right.” Kerney gave Clayton a cautionary look. “But we’re still going to wait for Sergeant Easley, Frank Vanmeter, and SWAT before we go in.”

Clayton chuckled. “Gee, thanks for looking out for me, Dad.”

Kerney winced. “Ouch. I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Sorry.” Through the rearview mirror Kerney saw a dust cloud on the ranch road, signaling the impending arrival of reinforcements. “Vanmeter and his troops are almost here.”

Some number of police vehicles arrived to disgorge a heavily armed SWAT team of eight officers in full regalia, Major Frank Vanmeter, two uniforms from the Raton PD, and a short, wiry cop wearing jeans, boots, a white shirt, and a Western-cut sport coat, who introduced himself as Joe Easley.

“How did you fellows beat us here?” he asked Kerney as they shook hands.

Kerney nodded at Clayton. “Agent Istee did some cybertracking of Larson on the Internet at the Lazy Z. And you?”

“A missing-person report got us started. She’s a woman named Tami Phelan, a real estate agent in town, reported missing by her mother. We found her vehicle at her place of business, and when we searched her office, we found an entry on her computer that she was scheduled to show this property to a prospective client yesterday afternoon.”

“Have you got a lead on the client?”

“Just a name.” Easley consulted a pocket notebook. “Carter Pettibone. As far as we can tell, he’s not a local. I have officers contacting all the area motels to see if we can run him down.”

Kerney nodded. “Very good.” He turned to Frank Vanmeter, who stood nearby with the SWAT commander and his seven officers. “How do you want to do this?”

Vanmeter laid out a plan that started with a plea over a bullhorn asking Larson to give himself up. If there was no response in five minutes, the request would be repeated one more time before the SWAT team was sent in.

Using the webpage photographs of the ranch property Clayton had downloaded and printed, it was decided the SWAT team would first clear and secure the barn, place a sniper in the hayloft to lay down covering fire, and launch tear gas into the ranch house before moving on the target.

To get into position behind the barn without being seen from the house, the SWAT team would backtrack on foot down the ranch road, follow a shallow, winding arroyo to the fence line, and use the barn as cover to get into position.

“Okay,” Vanmeter said, “let’s do this. And remember, nobody except Larson gets killed.”

The SWAT team nodded in unison and moved out. When they reached the fence line, the SWAT commander gave Vanmeter a heads-up over the radio. Vanmeter made his bullhorn pitch twice to Larson, and when there was no response, SWAT moved to the barn.

Near the assembly point on the ranch road, Kerney, Vanmeter, Clayton, and Joe Easley spent an anxious few minutes flat on their stomachs at the rim of the rise, binoculars trained on the barn, waiting in silence for either a radio report or the sound of gunfire. Finally, the radio crackled and the SWAT commander reported that the barn had been cleared.

“We’ve got two dead victims in the back of a Subaru,” the commander said. “A male and female. The scene has been staged. Naked female on bottom, male with pants around his ankles on top. Vehicle matches the description of Trimble’s car. The license plate is missing.”

“Dammit,” Vanmeter said. “Take the house.”

“Roger that.”

Just as the sniper opened up and started shooting out windows, Joe Easley’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened for a minute, and disconnected.

“We’ve located the motel where Pettibone is registered,” he said. “According to the housekeeper, the room was slept in last night.”

“Well, if Pettibone and the real estate agent are in the backseat of the Subaru,” Clayton said, “it sure wasn’t him who stayed there last night.”

“I’m thinking it might have been Larson who used the room,” Easley said as he watched the SWAT team launch the tear gas canisters through the windows of the ranch house. “Because it sure doesn’t look like he’s here.”

“What motel is Pettibone registered at?” Kerney asked.

Easley told him.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Kerney said. “That’s where we’re staying.”

The SWAT commander gave an all-clear over the radio.

Fuming at the thought that Larson had been so close at hand last night, Kerney got to his feet and started for the barn just as the SWAT team fanned out and started a field search of the property.