Dead or Alive

Chapter Three

At ten minutes after two in the morning, Russell Thorpe dropped Clayton off at the budget motel on Cerrillos Road where Grace had rented a room. Clayton got a key from a drowsy front desk clerk and quietly unlocked the door to find Wendell and Hannah asleep in one of the double beds and Grace fully dressed sitting wide awake in a chair at a small table by the window. Grace put a finger to her lips, picked up the keys to the sedan, and motioned for Clayton to join her outside.

They sat in the car with the windows open, cooled by a slight breeze. There was just enough illumination from the parking lot lights for Clayton to see that his wife wasn’t happy.

“Well?” Grace asked. She avoided looking at Clayton, her eyes glued on the door to their room.

“I’m not canceling our vacation, if that’s what you’re worried about. Sheriff Hewitt ordered me to have nothing more to do with the investigation after tonight, and that’s fine with me.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m due in class at the academy in a little under seven hours.”

“What took you so long tonight?”

“I had to break the news to Riley’s wife, Lynette, and his parents, brief the state police chief, call Kerney in London, give a statement to the investigating officers, and talk to a city detective about another homicide by the same perpetrator.”

“And that took you hours and hours?”

“Yes, sometimes it does,” Clayton replied. “I don’t want to argue with you about this at two in the morning.”

“What did Kerney say when you spoke to him?”

“He’s very angry and upset. He’s leaving for Santa Fe as soon as he can get a flight out. He wants us to stay at the ranch as planned.”

“Are Sara and Patrick coming with him?”

“No,” Clayton answered. “He’ll let me know later in the day when he’s due to arrive.” Grace still hadn’t looked at him—not a good sign. “How are the children doing?”

Grace sighed. “They were completely hyper until exhaustion set in and they couldn’t keep their eyes open for another second. I’m not sure I want to take them back to the ranch so soon after what they saw.”

“They didn’t see anything,” Clayton replied.

“They’re children,” Grace shot back.

“And the best thing we can do for them right now is not make a big deal about what happened at the ranch. If we stay away, it will only make them think that we fear this death, and that would be wrong for us to do. Riley Burke’s wife and family will help him travel from this world to the next, so there is no witchery or ghost sickness to worry about.”

Grace looked at her husband. He’d made a valid point. She’d been thinking purely as an Apache, which wasn’t completely necessary for her to do. After all, this was a situation where Mescalero rituals didn’t really apply.

“You’re right,” she said. “Have the police finished their work at the ranch?”

Clayton nodded. “Except for a broken patio door, everything has been put right. Chief Baca assigned a patrol officer to keep an eye on the place until we show up. I told him we’d be there around eight.”

“You were sure I’d go back?” Grace asked.

“Not really. But I figured if you did want to return to Mescalero with the children, I’d have to stay behind to complete the academy course, get the broken patio door fixed, and look after the place until Kerney arrived.”

“You’ll go with us to the ranch before you start your class?” Grace asked.

Clayton smiled. “Absolutely, but if I’m going to be worth a plugged nickel, I’d better get some shut-eye.”

Grace leaned over and kissed Clayton’s cheek. “You look tired.”

“I am,” Clayton said as he pulled her close for a hug.

Grace tucked her head against Clayton’s chest. “All of us should wear something black tomorrow.”

Clayton nodded. Black helped to protect the living from the dead who might want company on their journey. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

Kerney had gotten the call from Clayton at six A.M. London time just as he was rousing Patrick out of bed. The two of them had been on their own for the last two nights while Sara was at a Royal Army base in the Midlands.

The news of Riley Burke’s murder had stunned him into silence. He liked Riley immensely, trusted him completely, and had come to rely upon him as the driving force in their partnership to raise, train, and sell world-class competition cutting horses. He saw a good bit of his younger self in Riley. Both were ranch-raised, loved the land, and grew up dreaming of making a livelihood as ranchers like their parents and grandparents before them. Kerney’s parents had lost their ranch when the government took it over to expand White Sands Missile Range on the Tularosa Basin in south central New Mexico, while Riley’s parents had managed to hang on to most of their Galisteo Basin property in spite of the financial ups and downs of cattle ranching.

Kerney had worked side by side with Riley long enough to know that if Patrick grew up anything like him, he would be about as proud as a father could get.

As he fixed breakfast, Kerney didn’t say a word to Patrick about Riley’s death. Over the course of the last few months the family had been in Santa Fe, Riley had spent a lot of time at the ranch working with the horses, and Patrick had become quite fond of him, often tagging along at his heels asking endless questions that Riley handled graciously. During those months, Riley and his wife, Lynette, had come to dinner at the ranch several times and the friendship among all of them had deepened.

Breakfast over, Patrick washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and dressed for preschool. In the drizzle that seemed to be a permanent fixture of the London cityscape, Kerney walked with Patrick through the streets of Knightsbridge to the school, which was housed in a Georgian mansion.

Patrick was still adjusting to living in London, and Kerney wasn’t all that much ahead of him. The city was a marvelous place, vibrant, chock full of things to do and see, and they hadn’t even scratched the surface. But what father and son both loved best was those afternoons after school when they hurried to the Knightsbridge station, took the tube to Lancaster Gate, walked a few short blocks to Bathurst Mews, and rented horses to ride in Hyde Park.

Tucked on a cobblestone lane in an upscale neighborhood, the mews was a hidden-away combination of stables and small houses converted from stables. Before Kerney and Patrick were allowed to ride in the park without an escort, both had had to show that they were proficient on horseback, which they demonstrated with ease for the certified riding instructor, who’d voiced serious doubts about Patrick’s ability to handle the spirited pony he’d picked out.

At the school, Kerney gave Patrick a hug, turned him loose, and watched as he skirted the group of children who had already arrived in favor of a quiet corner where storybooks were arranged on a row of low shelves. According to the school’s director, Patrick had to be urged to join in group activities and play, and Kerney was beginning to worry some about his usually very gregarious son. When he turned four in a few months, he’d attend a nearby private junior school with an excellent reputation that charged a hefty quarterly tuition. His curriculum as a beginning student in what was called the Small School Department, for children ages four to six, would include English, mathematics, reading, and handwriting, along with exposure to history, geography, French, art, music, religious studies, and sports.

It was a far cry from the early education Kerney had received at the elementary school in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, when he was growing up on the west slope of the San Andres Mountains near the White Sands Missile Range boundary. He hoped time would help Patrick adjust to his new school and surroundings.

Kerney walked home, his thoughts returning to the murder of Riley Burke. Although it wasn’t logical, he felt partially responsible for Riley’s death. If he hadn’t asked him to look after the ranch, the young man might be alive today. Kerney knew it made no sense to feel that way, since their partnership required Riley to be at the ranch routinely to care for, exercise, and train the cutting horses. Still, guilt gnawed at him.

He needed to get back to Santa Fe as soon as possible, both to pay his respects and to give whatever support he could to Jack and Irene and Riley’s wife, Lynette. But before he could book a flight, he had to let Sara know what had happened, and he had to arrange for a nanny to care for Patrick until Sara returned from southeastern England the day after tomorrow. Fortunately, there was a housing board at the U.S. Embassy that could speedily secure the services of a nanny on short notice.

Kerney stopped in front of the house the U.S. government had leased for them. He’d been amazed to learn they were not required to pay rent or utilities for the property. Instead, Sara’s housing allowance went into a special government pool used to lease quarters for all U.S. personnel living in the UK.

The house they’d been assigned was part of a nineteenth-century mansion block that came with its own private communal gardens accessed through a locked gate. A redbrick building with tall casement windows, it had a steep pitched roof, a tall brick chimney, and a completely updated interior on three floors. On the open market, the house would easily rent for much more than what an army colonel could afford under any circumstance.

In the living room—what the Brits called the lounge—Kerney called Sara’s cell phone, got her voice mail, left a message about Riley Burke’s murder, and started checking the Internet for available flights. It was the height of the tourist season and every outgoing flight to the states was fully booked until tomorrow, and even then only business-class tickets were available.

He made a reservation on the earliest flight out of Heathrow, and arranged through the embassy for a nanny to take care of Patrick until Sara returned. He was about to call Clayton when Sara called.

“What terrible news,” she said. “What else do you know about it?”

“Not much,” Kerney replied. “Clayton said Riley was shot twice in the chest at close range and that the perp was an escaped fugitive. Clayton, Grace, and the kids discovered Riley’s body at our front door.”

“Wendell and Hannah saw Riley’s body?”

“Of that I’m not sure.”

“Grace surely wouldn’t have allowed it. I’ll call her as soon as I can. When are you leaving for Santa Fe?”

“You know me too well,” he said. He gave Sara his flight information and told her he’d arranged for a nanny until her return to London. “I’m meeting with the nanny early this afternoon. If she’s not suitable, I’ll asked the embassy to refer another.”

“Have you told Patrick that Riley is dead?” Sara asked.

“I don’t have the heart to do it.”

“Best leave it to me. When will you be back?”

“I don’t know. Sometime soon after the funeral services, I would guess. In a week at the most.”

“Don’t raise my hopes with false promises,” Sara said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that unless this homicide is solved quickly, I don’t see you walking away from hunting down Riley’s murderer. You don’t have that kind of temperament.”

“I’m not a law enforcement officer anymore.”

“I’m sure Andy Baca will gladly correct that minor technicality.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Lynette, Jack, and Irene deserve to have Riley’s killer caught—”

“Dead or alive,” Sara said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Kerney said.

“When the funeral services are set, let me know right away. If I can wrangle emergency leave, Patrick and I will fly over. We should all be there to pay our respects.”

“I’d like that. So would the Burke family.”

“It’s all about family, Kerney. Give my boy big kisses and hugs for me.”

“I’ll do it.”

Before calling Clayton, Kerney spoke first to his old friend Andy Baca at the New Mexico State Police.

“Have you caught the dirtbag?” he asked when Andy came on the line.

Andy snorted in disgust. “Not yet. He seems to have gone to ground.”

“Can you break away from the office, drive to Albuquerque, and pick me up when I arrive?”

“Of course I can, I’m the chief. Give me the particulars.”

Kerney read off his flight number and arrival time and Andy said, “I’ll see you then.”

Kerney’s call to Clayton went unanswered, so he left a message on his voice mail, went upstairs to the master bedroom, and started packing for his flight the next day.

Although Riley Burke’s murder was more than enough motivation to return to Santa Fe, Kerney knew his eagerness to leave also came from the feeling of being a total outsider in London and among the families of the military officers and enlisted personnel assigned to the embassy. It was a small, tight-knit group, and none of them, including the civilian support staff, knew what to make of the only male spouse in the crowd, not to mention one who was an ex-police chief to boot.

He was beginning to doubt his ability to be a retired, stay-at-home parent in London over the next thirty-four months and counting, and he felt shitty about his deteriorating attitude. Sara and Patrick deserved better.

After preschool in the afternoon, Kerney had promised Patrick a boat ride on the Regent’s Canal and then a visit to the London Zoo. Until then he would surf the Internet to see what he could learn about the investigation into Riley Burke’s murder. By now, there had to be news reports about it. He sat at the desk in a small upstairs bedroom that he’d outfitted as a home office and powered up the laptop.

Among her many duties as the U.S. Army military attaché at the U.S. Embassy to the Court of St. James’s, Sara was responsible for overseeing the activities of forty-plus army personnel detached on special liaison duty with Royal Army units throughout the United Kingdom. For the past two days, she’d been touring bases in the southern part of the country, working her way back toward London. Last night, she’d stayed over at the Winchester Army Training Regiment base in order to make an early morning meeting with a U.S. Army intelligence captain who was briefing the Brits about the latest top-secret version of a battlefield imagery system.

It was her first out-of-town trip since landing behind her desk at the embassy two months ago, and although she missed Patrick and Kerney, she was enjoying the break from being office-bound or scrambling from one meeting to the next with Ministry of Defence command staff and planners.

The job demanded long hours to keep up with all that needed her attention. Fortunately, her boss, the senior military attaché, Rear Admiral Thomas Lincoln Foley, had been supportive and helpful.

Her meeting with the captain went well, and after a tour of the training facilities and the campus, she went back to her quarters, packed, consulted her road map for the next leg of her tour, a briefing at a Royal Armored Corps garrison, and left the post.

As she drove through the cathedral city of Winchester, she let her thoughts return to the murder of Riley Burke. Her first impulse after hearing the news from Kerney was to hunt down and shoot the murderer herself, and she’d all but told Kerney to do exactly that.

Sara wondered if Iraq had turned her into one of the walking wounded who’d survived combat but lost their moral compass. Dead or alive. She’d both said it and meant it, especially the dead part.

In Iraq, she had been shot at and wounded, and she had killed and wounded the enemy in return. She had watched young soldiers die in firefights, examined strewn bloody body parts of civilians blown up by suicide bombers, witnessed soldiers burned alive in Humvees, and seen women and children gunned down by errant fire in skirmishes, until she no longer reacted to the carnage.

She had finished her tour in a cold rage about war, killing, politicians who sacrificed others at no risk to themselves, and the gutless generals who told the politicians whatever they wanted to hear. She came home emotionally numb, disinterested in most of what happened around her, and feeling estranged from a country that seemed untouched by the war. Only Patrick and Kerney truly mattered, and even with them she occasionally shut down.

Until Iraq, she had always bounced back. Even after her Gulf War One tour, she’d returned home without suffering any long-lasting ill effects. She knew she had post-traumatic stress disorder, and after months of trying and failing to cope with it on her own, she’d finally made an appointment to see a shrink.

Going into therapy put a stopper on any future advancement in the military. But she’d reached 0-6, bird colonel, before anyone else in her West Point class, had a job that rarely led to stars on the collar, and planned to retire at the end of the three-year embassy tour of duty, so it really didn’t matter.

Still a little uneasy driving on the left side of the road, Sara entered the motorway traffic, got up to speed quickly, and zipped along with the insane English motorists who seemed to enjoy playing their own version of Formula 1 and World Rally drivers on public roadways.

She looked down at her hands gripping the steering wheel and realized they were shaking, and that it didn’t have a thing to do with driving on the left side of the road with the crazy Brits on the motorway.

After a long, hard sleep, Craig Larson woke up refreshed, turned on the motel room television, and surfed through the early morning news broadcasts. His photograph and the Crime Stoppers toll-free number were being shown on every channel. One station had a camera crew at Jeannie’s house, another had a team at the rest stop where he’d taken the young family’s SUV and locked them in the Department of Corrections van, and a third was interviewing Lenny Hampson with “Exclusive Breaking News” scrolling across the bottom of the screen. They were all playing up his brutality big-time and repeating a warning that “Escaped fugitive Craig Larson is armed and dangerous.”

Larson found it interesting that Lenny Hampson had walked out of the desert, the young couple and their baby hadn’t died from heat exhaustion, and the Department of Corrections screw had survived, although he was in intensive care. That meant out of seven people, he’d only killed two: Jeannie and the young cowboy at the ranch, whose names hadn’t been released to the press. That didn’t seem an unreasonable number. He could have easily killed them all.

He wondered why TV news wasn’t showing the crime scene at the ranch where he’d shot the cowboy. Probably the rich owner didn’t want the publicity.

With his photograph on the television and probably in every newspaper statewide, his plans to have a big breakfast at a nearby diner, study the paper to find a car to buy from a private party, and use his twin brother’s identity would have to be changed.

He opened the window curtains and scanned the half dozen parked cars within his line of sight for out-of-state license plates. There was a blue Chevrolet from Oklahoma parked on the left, two spaces down from his room.

He tucked the semiautomatic in his waistband, concealed it with his shirttail, and stepped outside. The motel was an L-shaped building with the office close to the street, under a big neon sign. There were no maid carts on the walkway that bordered the rooms and nobody going to or from the vehicles in the lot.

He walked down to the room where the Chevy with the Okie plates was parked, and knocked on the door.

“What is it?” a man’s voice asked.

Larson smiled at the peephole. “Management. We’ve got a report of a gas leak in one of the rooms, so we’re doing a safety check of all the wall heaters. It’s probably nothing.”

“There’s no gas smell in here.”

Larson widened his smile and shrugged his shoulders. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing, but I’ve got to check. Fire marshal rules, you know.”

“Okay. Give me a minute.”

The man who opened the door was in his fifties, with rounded shoulders, a gut that hung over his belt, and a puffy face.

Larson nodded politely as he stepped inside the room. “Hope I’m not disturbing the missus.”

“There is no missus,” the man replied. “Hurry it up, will ya.”

“Sure thing.” Larson walked to the wall heater, took off the vent plate, and pretended to inspect it. “Just passing through?” he asked over his shoulder as he twisted the gas valve a couple of times for effect.

“Heading home to Tulsa,” the man replied as he moved toward Larson.

“Nice town, I hear,” Larson said as he turned and coldcocked the man with the butt of the semiautomatic.

The man hit the floor facedown with a thud.

With his finger on the trigger, Larson stood over the unconscious man debating whether to shoot him in the back of the head or not. If he hadn’t let all those other people live yesterday, maybe the cops wouldn’t be so hot on his trail and his face all over the television.

He decided not to shoot him. The motel walls were paper thin, and even if he used a pillow to muffle the sound, a gunshot could still attract unwanted attention. He straddled the man’s body, bent down, and with both hands, broke his neck. The snap sounded good.

Larson pulled a wallet from the dead man’s pocket and took the credit cards, three hundred and twenty-two dollars in cash, and a driver’s license issued to Bertram Roach. Larson wondered if people had called him Bertie.

In Roach’s luggage, he found five hundred dollars in traveler’s checks in a side pocket, and a loaded, nickel-plated .38-caliber pistol under two sets of clean clothes. He set aside the fresh shirts, dumped the remaining contents on the bed, pawed through them, and didn’t find anything else useful.

The keys to Roach’s blue Chevy were on the nightstand. He scooped them up, got Roach’s toilet kit from the bathroom, put it into the empty suitcase along with the clean shirts and the pistol, hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, and went back to his room. He packed quickly, paused for a moment at the window to make sure the coast was clear, hurried to the Chevy, and drove away.

Checkout time at the motel was noon, so Larson figured he had a good four hours before anyone would be looking for Bertie Roach from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bertie Roach. Bertie Cockroach. La cucaracha. Larson hummed a few bars of the melody.

On the visor was a pair of sunglasses. Larson put them on, feeling pretty good about the start of his day. He now had wheels that would get him out of the city without drawing any attention, and the rest of the morning to head down the road before the cops started looking for the cucaracha’s vehicle.

Larson’s stomach grumbled as he cruised up Central Avenue searching for a fast-food joint with a drive-through window.

In his early fifties, born and raised in the town of Carrizozo, the Lincoln County seat, Paul Hewitt had been in law enforcement for slightly over thirty years. He’d started out as a patrol officer in Roswell and worked there for five years before transferring to the Alamogordo PD, where he rose to the rank of captain before retiring. After returning to Carrizozo, Hewitt ran for sheriff, got elected in a close race, ran for reelection four years later, and won by a wide margin. Limited to two consecutive terms, he was stepping down in January. This time he’d promised his wife, Linda, his retirement would be permanent.

Both of them were longtime horse owners who loved camping, trail riding, fly-fishing, and backpacking. With two children raised and launched, they planned to spend a good deal of time fishing in New Mexico’s mountain lakes and streams, riding the high country, and hiking the wilderness while they were still fit and young enough to enjoy it.

But that was next year, after winter had passed and they’d returned from two weeks at a Mexican beach resort where they would celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Today, Paul Hewitt was filling in on patrol while Clayton Istee was away at training and taking annual leave for the rest of the week.

A small department, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office had only a few sworn personnel to patrol a county larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined and then some. When first elected, Hewitt had pledged to the voters that his department would provide round-the-clock coverage. Although at times he was stretched thin by officer vacancies, family emergencies, and mandatory training and annual leave requirements, he’d managed to keep that promise, mostly by going out and pulling patrol shifts himself.

Hewitt actually enjoyed working patrol when the occasion arose. It got him back in touch with the rigors of the day-to-day grind his deputies faced and the law enforcement issues and needs that mattered most to his constituents. It also gave him an opportunity to connect with the residents of some of the smaller settlements and villages scattered throughout the county, which often got overlooked until something bad happened.

With three decades of policing under his belt, Hewitt was alert and watchful by second nature as he cruised the county roads in and around the settlements of Tinnie, Hondo, San Patricio, and Glencoe. It had been a quiet morning. He’d stopped several tourists on state highways for speeding, and because he was driving an unmarked, slick-top unit, he issued verbal warnings to them instead of tickets. He’d helped a young woman on her way to work change a flat tire, made a close patrol of several neighborhoods in the fast-growing residential community of Alto, outside of Ruidoso, where some recent burglaries had occurred, and taken a coffee break at a roadside diner owned by a buddy who’d once been a fellow officer in the Alamogordo PD.

Back in his vehicle, which had everything but official police markings and an emergency light bar on the roof, Hewitt drove a long loop that took him from Lincoln to Fort Stanton and on to Capitan, before heading back toward Carrizozo. Traffic had been light all morning, with an occasional big rig on the main east-west, north-south roadways, a few recreational vehicles slowly navigating the climb through the hills to the mesa behind Fort Stanton, and some of the rural folks on their way to town.

Throughout the morning he’d paid close attention to state police radio traffic, listening for an update on the status of the dragnet for Craig Larson. Although Larson had subsequently killed two people, there had been no confirmed sightings of him since he kidnapped the owner of a Springer auto body shop, left him in the desert, and stole his truck.

Hewitt parked on the shoulder of the highway a few miles north of Carrizozo, near the White Oaks turnoff, checked in with dispatch, asked if there were any updates on Larson, and got a negative reply. He was about to start up the road to the old mining town, which was trying to reinvent itself as an arts and crafts center and tourist attraction, when a blue Chevy with Oklahoma plates flew by.

Hewitt’s radar clocked the vehicle at 85 in a 55-mph zone, way above his tolerance level for speeders. He swung around and followed the Chevy, closed the gap, and called dispatch.

“This is S.O. One,” Hewitt said. “I got a blue Chevy with Oklahoma plates traveling south at a high rate of speed on Highway 54 past the White Oaks turnoff. Requesting wants and warrants.” He read off the license plate information.

“Ten-four, S.O. One. Stand by.”

“Ask Carrizozo PD to assist in making a traffic stop,” Hewitt added. He needed a uniformed officer in a marked unit to write the citation in order to make it stick in court.

“Ten-four.”

Less than a mile outside of the town limits, the Chevy slowed. Hewitt came up behind the driver unannounced just as Carrizozo Police Chief Oscar Quinones’s unit came into view with emergency lights flashing.

Hewitt hit the switch to the emergency lights mounted in the grill of his unit and gave a short siren blast to get the driver’s attention. He was close enough to see the driver’s head snap in the direction of the rearview mirror. But instead of slowing and pulling off the highway, the driver accelerated, swerved into the oncoming traffic lane to pass a slower moving vehicle, and headed right for Oscar’s police cruiser. Quinones turned sharply to avoid the crash and his vehicle left the pavement, slammed into a guard-rail, and nose-dived into an arroyo.

Hewitt tried to contact Oscar by radio as he gave chase. At the town limits the driver blew through the traffic light, made a wide turn on U.S. 380 heading west, and accelerated around a tractor-trailer pulling out from a gas station at the intersection. Hewitt stayed on the Chevy’s tail and tried reaching Quinones again with no luck. He told dispatch to send first responders and emergency personnel to Oscar’s twenty ASAP, and requested backup assistance from any and all available units.

Hewitt sat right on the Chevy’s rear bumper, with his speedometer at 110 mph. The Chevy veered over the centerline, forcing oncoming traffic off the pavement. Hewitt eased off, hoping the driver would move back into his lane, but instead the driver braked hard, spun the Chevy around in a tight one-eighty, and came at him head-on.

Paul cursed and turned to avoid the impact, but the Chevy swerved and torpedoed into the side of his unit. Side and front air bags deployed, metal crunched, buckled, and squealed. The unit tilted up on two wheels, did a complete flip, and landed right-side-up with a bone-shaking jolt.

Stunned and shaken, Hewitt reached for the seat-belt latch, but it was wedged tight against the mangled door. He reached for the glove box, found the pocketknife he always kept there, cut through the seat-belt webbing, and was about to scramble out the passenger door when a shadow in the rear window made him reach for his sidearm and duck. Glass shattered with the booming retort of a large-caliber handgun. Hewitt freed his weapon and tried to plaster himself against the floorboard under the steering wheel, which proved impossible.

The sharp sounds of gunfire continued, the rounds tearing into the Plexiglas-and-metal cage behind the seat back. Hewitt opened the passenger door and scrambled out just as something hit him like a sledgehammer in the back of his neck. In an instant, a shock wave of searing pain ran through his body before he passed out.

Still somewhat groggy from the Chevy’s impact with the unmarked police cruiser, Larson threw the empty handgun away when he saw the unconscious cop with a bullet hole just below his neck lying half-in, half-out of the vehicle. He grabbed the cop under the arms, pulled him the rest of the way out of the vehicle, and flipped him over on his back. He looked dead, but even if he wasn’t, it didn’t matter. In fact, nothing much mattered to Larson anymore.

From the corner of his eye he saw an older woman in blue jeans and a Western shirt climb out of a pickup truck parked on the other side of the highway and hurry toward him. From inside the wrecked police vehicle he could hear the dispatcher on the radio talking in “ten”codes.

Larson reached down, grabbed the .45 semiautomatic from the cop’s hand, turned, and from a distance of ten feet, blew the woman away. He snatched the badge clipped to the cop’s belt, paused to pick up the keys the woman had dropped in the dirt, and gave her a quick look. Spurts of blood running out of the hole in her chest told him she was as good as dead.

He could hear the sound of a vehicle approaching a bend in the road a quarter mile distant. He ran to the wrecked Chevy, grabbed his stuff, hurried to the woman’s truck, and drove away before the car showed up in the rearview mirror.

All he could do now, Larson decided, was run and hide, until his luck or the money ran out and he couldn’t go any farther. It wasn’t much of an option, but it was still a hell of a lot better than spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement, or being executed by injection.

Larson eased the truck over to the shoulder of the highway and rolled to a stop when he saw two cop cars racing at him with lights flashing and sirens wailing. They passed by without slowing, and Larson continued on his way, traveling back toward Carrizozo, thinking he needed to find a place to hide out, and soon.

Kevin Kerney arrived in Albuquerque to find Andy Baca at the terminal gate in his state police uniform with his four stars on his collars. They shook hands and started down the long corridor toward the public waiting area behind the security screening checkpoint. Kerney’s plane out of Chicago was the last flight of the night, and except for the footsteps of the passengers hurrying toward baggage claim and the exits, the terminal was quiet and empty.

“How’s Paul Hewitt?” Kerney asked. When he’d last spoken to Clayton, Hewitt was out of surgery, still unconscious, and in critical condition. “Has he pulled through?”

“Barely,” Andy replied.

“Meaning?”

“He’s permanently paralyzed from the neck down.”

Kerney stopped in his tracks as the color drained from his face. “What?”

“He’s conscious, in full possession of his faculties, and a quadriplegic.” Andy gave Kerney a minute to collect himself and said, “Did you check any luggage?”

Kerney shook his head and started moving again. “I’ve got a closet full of everything I need at the ranch. Are Clayton and his family still there?”

“No, they’re back home in Lincoln County. Paul’s number-two man retired two months ago and moved to Arizona. The job has been vacant ever since, but this morning Paul appointed Clayton to be his chief deputy.”

“Good choice,” Kerney said. “Clayton can handle the job. Have you spoken to Paul directly?”

Andy nodded. “I saw him earlier in the evening at University Hospital. He said that with Clayton’s help he’s going to serve out his term in office. He’s trying to be positive, but it isn’t easy on him or Linda. The doctors say he won’t be going home for a while. They want to get him started on a physical therapy program before he’s released.”

“What about Larson? Have you found him? Last I heard, he was the prime suspect in Paul’s shooting.”

Andy shook his head. “We’ve lost his trail again, but we do know for certain that he shot Paul and killed the woman who stopped at the crash site. His fingerprints were on the weapon found at the scene and all over the blue Chevy.”

Andy stepped around two women who’d stopped in front of him to hug and greet each other. “By the way, the semiautomatic he used on Paul is also the weapon he used to kill Riley Burke. He used Hewitt’s gun to kill the woman, Janette Evans, a rancher’s widow, aged sixty-eight.”

“What else can you tell me?” Kerney asked.

“We traced the stolen blue Chevy that Larson crashed into Paul’s unit to a man from Oklahoma named Bertram Roach. The Albuquerque Police Department found his body in a cheap motel room on East Central Avenue. The night clerk at the motel—it’s one of those fleabag establishments used by hookers, pimps, and their johns—gave them a positive ID on Larson as a paying guest.”

They were outside in the dry, cool high desert night where Andy’s unmarked unit was parked at the curb, hazard lights flashing.

Kerney took a deep breath and knew he was back home. He looked at Andy over the roof of the vehicle. “How many people has this guy killed?”

“Four so far that we know about. A couple more of his victims could easily have died.”

“And he just tossed his murder weapon when he ran out of ammo, took Paul’s sidearm, iced a lady who stopped to help, and stole her truck?”

“Affirmative. This dirtbag just doesn’t give a shit.”

Kerney opened the passenger door. “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“The ranch. I need to take care of the horses and get some shut-eye before I pay my respects to Riley’s wife and parents in the morning. And then I have to check in with Clayton and Grace, let Sara know what’s happening, and come back down to Albuquerque to see Paul and talk to Linda.”

“And after that?”

“If Larson hasn’t been captured by the time we bury Riley Burke, I want a commission card and a shield.”

Andy opened the driver side door. “I figured as much.”