Dead or Alive

Chapter Five

Officer Leroy Alfred Ordonez’s body sat upright behind the steering wheel of the state police black-and-white, his head resting against the seat back. His right eye and mouth were open and there was a hole where his left eye used to be. A gooey blood stream from the wound had trickled down his cheek, coagulated on his uniform shirt, and dribbled on the clipboard lying in his lap. The size of the entry wound and apparent absence of an exit hole indicated that the killer had used a small-caliber weapon, probably a .22, most likely a rifle.

Clayton swallowed hard and stepped away from the black-and-white. Flashing emergency lights hurled brilliant colors into a midnight sky. Behind him, Gene Walcott, the only Lincoln County deputy on roving patrol duty, walked up the highway with a flashlight looking for evidence the killer might have left. In front of him, Captain Steve Ramsey, the district state police commander, stood with another officer viewing a laptop computer monitor Ramsey had placed on the hood of his unit.

Clayton glanced back at Ordonez’s body. Some time back, after four seasons playing minor league baseball, Leroy had returned home to Ruidoso. He’d worked construction for a time before attending the state police academy and graduating first in his class. Leroy liked to joke that he could have made the big leagues if he had only learned to hit sliders, field grounders cleanly, and run the bases without being thrown out.

When their shifts coincided and time allowed, Clayton and Leroy met for coffee or a meal break. Although they never socialized much away from the job, Clayton considered Leroy a friend. At home on his refrigerator was an invitation to attend Leroy’s upcoming marriage to Kathleen Ann Pennington. Grace had circled the date on their calendar and begun searching for a wedding gift. Now a gift wouldn’t be necessary.

Clayton looked away from Leroy. He’d bottled up the image of a paralyzed Paul Hewitt staring at him from his hospital bed, and now he had to clear his mind of Leroy Ordonez. He walked over to see what Steve Ramsey had discovered on the video taken by the camera in Leroy’s unit. Ramsey shifted his large frame to one side so Clayton could look at the laptop monitor, and pointed at the frozen image of a blurry, washed-out pickup truck.

“The killer was driving this truck,” he said, looking down at Clayton from his six-foot-six height. “It’s the only vehicle that passed through the roadblock around the time of the shooting. The driver blasted through the orange cones without stopping. We can’t make out anything inside of the cab.”

Clayton leaned forward for a closer look. What appeared as a blob on the passenger side door might be a magnetic business sign or a logo. “Can you zoom in on the passenger-side door?”

“Until the lab can enhance the video, this is the best picture quality we have right now,” Ramsey replied.

“Go back a few frames,” Clayton said.

The officer operating the laptop did as Clayton asked and froze the image again. The passenger door showed two slightly distinct but very wavy horizontal lines.

“Those lines could be nothing more than shadows,” Ramsey said.

“Can you zoom out?” Clayton asked.

“It’s a late-model Ford,” Ramsey offered as his officer made the adjustment. “Probably a four-wheel-drive F-150.”

“That’s a Twin Pines Bible Camp pickup truck,” Clayton said, flipping open his cell phone.

“Are you sure?” Ramsey asked.

“Let’s make sure,” Clayton said as he pulled up Gaylord Wardle’s phone number from the recently dialed list of calls on his cell phone and pressed send. After twelve long rings, Wardle picked up.

“Where are the camp’s pickup trucks usually parked?” Clayton asked Wardle after he’d quickly identified himself.

“At the maintenance building. Why?”

“What are the makes and models?”

“We have three Ford F-150s, four-by-fours. They’re a couple years old. Why?”

“One may have been stolen. Go to the maintenance building right now, find out if a vehicle is missing, and call me back immediately.” Clayton rattled off his cell phone number.

Five minutes later a very upset Wardle called back to say a truck was gone and the camp’s youth minister, Greg Cuddy, who was supposed to be on security patrol, was nowhere to be found.

Clayton calmed Wardle down enough to get a description of Gregory Cuddy and a license plate number for the truck. “Wake up everyone at the camp and do a head count,” he ordered Wardle. “We need to know if anyone else is missing. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“Is a head count at this time of night absolutely necessary?” Wardle demanded.

“Either you do it, or I will,” Clayton replied.

“All right,” Wardle replied without enthusiasm.

Clayton disconnected, filled in Ramsey on what he’d learned, corralled Deputy Walcott, and told him to stop searching for evidence and follow him to the Bible camp. He got in his unit, switched on his emergency lights, and drove away. As the crime scene faded in Clayton’s rearview mirror, a dispatcher issued a five-state regional BOLO on the truck, citing an officer down and the possible abduction of one Gregory Cuddy.

Back at the roadblock, not a word had been spoken about the impact of Leroy’s death on the men who’d found him. In order to cope, every officer at the crime scene had wiped away all personal feelings. Grief would have to wait. Anger would have to wait. The shrinks called it depersonalization, but to Clayton and the others it was simply an issue of their own emotional survival.

According to the time and date stamp on the video, the cop killer had a good ninety-minute head start in the middle of the night, when there were few if any officers patrolling highways, and absolutely none roaming the many unpaved rural country roads of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. It would take a miracle to catch him before daybreak, and chances of a capture after that weren’t much better. He could be long gone before a dragnet could be launched.

Clayton had no doubt the killer was Craig Larson, but he had to prove it before he could announce it. With the speedometer hovering at ninety-five miles an hour and the emergency lights of his deputy a hundred yards behind him, Clayton raced down the highway.

In his hurry to go home, had he missed something during his visit to the Bible camp? Just thinking that made Clayton wince. He also wondered what would have happened if Grace had woken him when he’d asked her to. Would he have been at the roadblock with Ordonez when Larson arrived? Would his presence have been enough to make Larson turn around and find another route? Or would he also be dead with a bullet in his head?

As he drove the winding road through the hills west of Lincoln, he slowed, concentrated on the road, and tried not to think about all the maybes. Yet he felt negligent. When he turned onto the gravel country road, the dust from his wheels partially obscured the lights of Walcott’s unit. In front of the open Twin Pines gate, Clayton stopped, got out, and took a look around with his flashlight while Deputy Walcott waited at the side of the road.

He quickly spotted very recent tire tracks and two sets of fresh footprints. One set matched those he’d seen earlier in the day and thought belonged to somebody from the camp. But as he followed them up the county road away from the gate, he began to have doubts.

He dropped down and looked at them more closely. The prints looked similar to a set he’d seen at Kerney’s ranch, next to Riley Burke’s lifeless body. Had his lack of sleep made him miss the connection earlier?

On the access road inside the gate, he took another careful look. Tread marks and footprints told him a vehicle had stopped, the driver had left the vehicle, walked to the gate, and returned. Additionally, he found more footprints similar to those of Larson’s that came out of the woods, traveled around the back of the vehicle to approximately the driver’s door, and stopped. There both sets of prints were partially obliterated, but the set that had come out of the woods continued on to the gate before returning to the truck.

Clayton picked a distinct clean impression of each of the footprints, made a quick measurement to determine shoe sizes, and took digital photographs, before proceeding to Gaylord Wardle’s residence with Walcott following in his unit. He slowed to a stop in front of Wardle’s house, to find him standing under the front porch light, a .22 rifle cradled in his arms.

Clayton had Walcott stand fast, approached Wardle, told him to put the weapon down, and asked if anyone other than Cuddy was missing.

“No,” Wardle said as he rested the rifle against the porch railing. “We’ve checked everyone twice. Only Gregory is unaccounted for.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.” Wardle looked past Clayton at Deputy Walcott, who was waiting next to his unit. “I have a lot of very upset young people here. Can’t you spare more officers for their protection?”

“Just keep everyone inside until we tell you it’s safe, and you’ll all be fine,” Clayton said.

“How long will that be?” Wardle asked.

“Until we tell you it is safe,” Clayton repeated, fast losing patience with the man. He reached out and picked up the rifle. “Yours?”

Wardle nodded.

It was a lever-action. Clayton emptied it, the rounds clattering onto the wooden porch deck. “Do you have a gun cabinet?”

Wardle nodded again.

He handed the weapon to Wardle. “Lock it up, call everyone at the camp who owns any kind of firearm, and tell them to empty their weapons and put them away. I don’t want to see any civilians carrying, and I want an inventory of every gun in your armory as well as those that are in private hands as soon as you can get it to me.”

Red faced with anger, Wardle opened his mouth to speak but Clayton cut him off.

“I don’t need a lecture on your constitutional right to bear arms, Reverend Wardle. A state policeman has been shot dead, and the weapon the killer used may have come from Twin Pines.”

“Oh, my,” Wardle said. “First the sheriff and now this. Of course, we’ll do everything you ask.”

“Excellent. Where are Cuddy’s quarters?”

Wardle gave Clayton directions, and handed him a master key that would open the front door.

Clayton thanked Wardle, left him on the porch, rejoined Deputy Walcott, gave him the key, and pointed him toward Cuddy’s rooms. “I doubt Cuddy was abducted from his rooms, but check anyway. Let me know what size shoe he wears. Call me by radio.”

“What’s that going to tell us?” Walcott asked.

“I found two sets of footprints by the gate, and only one of them is a nine and a half. That’s Larson’s shoe size. The other print is a size ten and a half. If that’s what Cuddy wears, you can bet we’re not going to find his body here.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because the driver of the camp pickup was attacked at the gate while in his vehicle.” Clayton handed Walcott the digital camera. “Do a quick search and then take this camera to Captain Ramsey.”

Clayton climbed into his unit. “Tell him the last four images are of the footprints by the Bible camp gate. Have him download them to his laptop, transmit them to the state police crime lab computer, and ask if they can match them to any of the footprint evidence found at Larson’s known crime scenes.”

“Where are you headed off to?” Walcott asked.

“I’m going to see where Larson’s footprints on the Forest Service road take me.”

Clayton left the Bible camp and drove slowly up the forest road, using his unit’s spotlight to follow the plainly visible footprints. If they were Larson’s footprints, Clayton figured he must have planned to steal a vehicle at Twin Pines. No attempt had been made to hide the tracks on the way down the mountain.

Where the road turned rocky, Clayton dismounted his unit and walked, scanning for partial prints, broken twigs, scuff marks, trampled grass, or crushed leaves. Born and raised in the mountains of Mescalero, taught to hunt and read sign by his Apache uncles, Clayton was one of the best trackers in the state. As a police officer on the Rez, he’d chased and caught poachers and illegal trespassers, and taught his knowledge and skills to officers throughout the southern part of the state.

He was a good half mile away from his unit when the beam of his flashlight picked up a shoe partial next to an old hoofprint impression at the side of the road. He dropped down for a closer look and found some fairly fresh, broken tiny juniper twigs and evidence that tire tracks had been brushed away.

Clayton stepped off into the undergrowth and quickly found more tire tracks that led him directly to Janette Evans’s truck and Larson’s improvised campsite.

He felt no sense of accomplishment as he called it in. If he’d followed the trail hours ago instead of going home for dinner and a nap, maybe Ordonez wouldn’t be dead, the youth minister wouldn’t be at the very least kidnapped, and Larson wouldn’t still be at large.

It made him physically sick to think about it.

Without pushing it too hard, Craig Larson made good time to the Texas state line. A dozen miles farther on, he passed through the dark and shuttered town of Plains, where the water tank, the tallest structure in the village, pierced the night sky. On the outskirts of town, he pulled off the pavement on the eastbound side of the highway and glanced over at his passenger. Kid Cuddy, the KO’d Kid, hadn’t budged an inch since Larson had coldcocked him before gunning down the cop at the roadblock with a perfect head shot. He checked the kid for a pulse, couldn’t find one, and glared at the body in disappointment. The KO’d Kid had up and died on him, spoiling all the fun.

Larson hauled the kid’s muscular body out of the truck, started to drag it into some tall weeds, changed his mind, and instead propped it against a nearby utility pole where it wouldn’t be missed come daylight. He hoped when the cops arrived they would concentrate their search to the east, but if not, so be it.

He turned the truck around, drove back to Plains, and headed north on a state road that would get him a good distance away from Kid Cuddy before Larson crossed back into New Mexico. The two-lane highway was empty, and except for some oil pump-jacks casting shadows from a dim quarter moon on a flat prairie, and a few pieces of farm machinery sitting in irrigated fields, the land was empty as well. In the several small villages Larson passed through, there was absolutely nobody out on the streets and no sign of life in the houses fronting the main drag.

He let his mind wander back to those tasty-looking teenage Christian girls he’d seen at the Bible camp, bouncing and jiggling on their horses. It got him hungry for a woman, and he decided that he’d be really pissed off at himself if he let the cops shoot and kill him before he got some girly action. He grinned at the anticipation of some good sex and a running gunfight with the cops.

At three in the morning, just south of Muleshoe, Texas, the dial to the gas gauge quivered at the empty line. Larson slowed way down, hoping he could make it to town and find a twenty-four-hour convenience store or a gas station where he could fill up. In town, on a tacky-looking street named West American Boulevard, he drove past an open stop-and-rob twice before he spotted the exterior surveillance cameras pointed at the parking spaces in front of the entrance and at the gas pumps. He made a turn onto a side street, pulled to the curb, and considered what to do next.

The pickup truck had two pine trees and the name of the Bible camp painted on both doors, which was going to make it far too easy to spot once the cops started seriously looking for it. Better to ditch the pickup now and get new wheels. An older model Toyota sedan at the side of the convenience store probably belonged to the clerk on duty. He decided to make an even trade, the Ford pickup for the Toyota, whether the clerk liked it or not.

He sat and watched traffic on West American Boulevard for five minutes and only two cars passed by. If the trend held, that would give him adequate time to do what he had in mind. If not, he would just have to deal with whatever came along. He drove to the store, parked at one of the pumps, stuck the semiautomatic in his waistband at the small of his back, went inside, smiled at an overweight Mexican man behind the counter, and handed him some money.

“Fill up on pump one,” he said genially.

The bored clerk grunted, put the money next to the cash register, and turned on the gas pump.

“Is that your Toyota outside?” Larson asked.

“It’s my sister’s car,” the clerk answered in a thick Mexican accent, looking at Larson with a bit more interest.

“But you’re driving it, right?”

“Yeah.”

Larson pointed the semiautomatic at the Mexican’s head. “Give me the car keys,” he said.

With a shaking hand, the clerk hastily fished the keys out of his pocket and dropped them on the counter. “Take it,” he said. “Take anything you want.”

“Thanks.” Larson scooped up the keys. “Is there gas in it?”

“I just filled the tank.”

“That’s great,” Larson replied as he squeezed off a round. The Mexican’s head snapped back from the impact of the bullet as blood speckled the packs of cigarettes in the rack on the wall.

Larson jumped the counter, pushed the Mexican out of the way, grabbed a pack of smokes from the rack, a disposable lighter from the counter, and the cash he’d given the Mexican. He went outside to the Toyota and fired up the engine; the gas gauge read full. He left the motor running, hurried to the gas pump, got his stuff out of the cab, and hosed down the pickup with gasoline. As the vapor fumes filled the air, he spewed a full stream of regular unleaded toward the store entrance and watched it seep under the glass doors. He dropped the hose on the ground, went to the Toyota, backed away from the store, and lit a cigarette. When the gasoline oozed within range, he flicked the cigarette through the open window, floored the Toyota, and pushed it to the limit down the street.

The fireball explosion that followed rocked the small car, lit up the night sky, and threw debris onto the roadway. Larson smiled in satisfaction. It was just like in the movies. He made a U-turn so he could get a better look at the fire. The pickup truck and store were masked by a wall of flames.

It was gonna be a hell of a mess once the fire was extinguished. It would probably take the cops days before they could piece any evidence together. By then, he would be settled in someplace where he could hunker down for a while and find a woman to party with.

Larson hadn’t felt so good since the day he decided to murder Melvin and Viola Bedford. Back then, he thought he was doing it for the money, but now he realized that he just flat-out enjoyed killing people.

The New Mexico State Police helicopter carrying Captain Steve Ramsey and Clayton Istee touched down on the highway east of Plains, Texas, just as the sun on the eastern horizon began to light up the prairie. Yellow crime scene tape enclosed a body resting against an electric utility pole, roadblocks had been set up in both directions of the highway, and a small team of police officers was searching the area.

Ducking under the chopper’s rotors, Clayton and Steve Ramsey hurried over to a thin man wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat and a Western-cut sport coat, with a sheriff’s badge hanging from a lanyard around his neck, and introduced themselves.

“Brownlow Clauson, Yoakum County Sheriff. Folks call me Brownie,” the man said, shaking hands with each of them. He pointed at the dead young man. “Got the photo y’all sent and it looks to me that there’s your missing boy. An oil field crew getting an early start spotted the body about four this morning.”

“What else can you tell us?” Steve Ramsey asked.

“Cause of death appears to have been blunt trauma to the head. The boy got bashed at least three times. There are no other visible wounds on the body. Time of death is probably no more than four to six hours. ’Course, we won’t have anything definitive until the autopsy.”

“Have you found any hard evidence?” Clayton asked.

“Just footprints and tire tracks so far.” Clauson led them to some evidence cones placed on the soft shoulder of the highway.

Clayton bent down for a look. “That’s our man,” he said as he recognized both the footprints and tire treads, “and he’s still driving the Twin Pines pickup truck.”

“Not any more he ain’t,” Sheriff Clauson said. “I got a report out of Muleshoe just before you landed. A gasoline explosion and fire at a convenience store burned up a truck parked at the pumps, and probably killed the store clerk and maybe a customer or two inside the place. The VIN off the engine block matches that of the stolen Ford 150 four-by-four from that Bible ranch.”

“Are you sure the vehicle ID numbers are the same?” Clayton asked.

Clauson took a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Clayton. “I had the Muleshoe police chief read the VIN off to me twice to make sure I got it right. Could well be your cop killer is now nothing more than some crispy critter body parts strewn around the wreckage of that stop-and-rob.”

“We should be so lucky,” Steve Ramsey replied. “Were you told the cause of the explosion?”

Clauson rubbed the tip of his nose with a forefinger and shook his head. “‘To be determined’ was what was said. The fire chief has an arson investigator on-scene.”

Clauson glanced from Ramsey to Clayton to the chopper sitting in the middle of the highway. “I guess you boys will want to take that whirlybird of yours up to Muleshoe. I’d sure appreciate it if you did so pronto. Traffic is starting to back up and I’d like to get a lane open for those vehicles.”

“Sure thing,” Clayton said as he looked down the highway in both directions. At one roadblock there were three pickups, one semi, and two cars waiting. At the other, two empty yellow school buses, delayed from making the morning run to pick up students, idled behind the barrier.

Clayton handed Clauson his card. “You might want to have your people look for a .22 Marlin rifle.”

“We’re fairly sure it’s the murder weapon used to kill my officer,” Steve Ramsey added, giving Clauson his card as well.

Clauson pocketed the cards and gave Clayton and Ramsey each one of his own. “I’ll let y’all know if anything turns up. Bad business, killing a lawman.” He glanced over at the dead boy. “This is the first homicide victim I’ve seen in Yoakum County since I got elected.”

“Let’s hope it’s the last,” Clayton replied.

“Amen to that, brother,” Clauson intoned solemnly. “I’ll let the boys up in Muleshoe know that you’re on your way for a look-see.”

The pilot of the New Mexico State Police whirlybird made short work of getting Clayton and Steve Ramsey up to Muleshoe, a small town of no more than five thousand people, close to the New Mexico border. From the air, it was apparent that agriculture dominated the economy. Dairy farms, with irrigated fields in sharp contrast to the checkerboard sections of brown prairie, and tall grain elevators ringed the community. Within the town limits, motels and eateries were clustered along one main drag, and smack in the middle of it were the cordoned off, blackened roofless ruins of a cement-block building. A large hole in front of the building was most likely all that remained of the gasoline pumps. Around the perimeter were blasted-apart remnants of a vehicle, including an engine that had been severed from the chassis. From the size of the crowd kept back by police officers and firefighters, Clayton figured half the population of the town had gathered to watch events unfold.

He wondered out loud about the origin of the town’s name, and the pilot, a native of an eastern New Mexico village within spitting distance of Muleshoe, told him it had come from a nearby ranch that had been homesteaded long before the town was established. He set the chopper down in a vacant lot behind the destroyed building, killed the engine, and reported their arrival by radio as Clayton and Steve Ramsey left the bird.

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.