Everyone Dies

Chapter 7

E xhausted but unable to sleep, Sara sat in the living room hoping the baby would either stop kicking or just get on with being born. She was weary of being pregnant, and thoroughly disgusted with the notion that, at such a supposedly wonderful time in their lives, she and Kerney were under siege.

Arriving home, she’d found no comfort in finding a state cop on guard duty outside, nor had she particularly enjoyed waiting in the car while Kerney conducted a room search before allowing her to go inside. The events of the last two days had become surreal and nightmarish.

Four hours ago, after an early light dinner, Kerney had gone into the bedroom to nap. He was still sleeping, stretched out on his side fully dressed except for his boots, his sidearm within reach on the night- stand.

The quiet house, the drawn shades, her reluctance to risk sitting on the patio to enjoy the cool night air made her feel caged. She sighed, got up, and went to the Arts and Crafts writing desk, one of a number of antique pieces she’d inherited from her grandmother, and tried to distract herself by studying the architectural drawings for the house.

Months ago, she’d shipped her heirloom furniture from Montana to Santa Fe and put it into storage, where-except for the desk and matching chair-it remained. But since Kerney had so few personal possessions, they would need a lot more than Sara’s contributions to outfit their new home.

She studied the floor plan, visualizing where she might want to arrange the pieces she had and those that needed to be selected and purchased. Since they wouldn’t be able to move in until well after Sara’s maternity leave ended, furnishing and decorating the house would be an ongoing task with many decisions delayed until she could get back to Santa Fe on weekend trips.

However, she could do a number of things after the baby came: buy linens and housewares, perhaps some lamps and end tables, order a custom-made piece or two, and get a freestanding kitchen center island she’d spotted in a local store. But putting the house in any kind of reasonable order would have to be accomplished in bits and pieces.

That sucked, and she wondered if everything-the marriage, the baby, the new house-was nothing but a big romantic daydream on her part that had gone badly awry.

She blocked the negative thoughts from her mind. It wasn’t like her to be so moody and disheartened. She did love Kerney and did want this baby. No matter that the task was daunting, she would turn the new house into a home, even if it took years.

The desk phone rang. Larry Otero needed to speak to Kerney. Sara asked why.

“We’ve got another homicide and another note,” Larry replied.

“I’ll get him.”

She walked to the bedroom thinking one down, one to go, and for once she really didn’t give a damn. The baby had stopped kicking and all she wanted to do was go to sleep.

She quietly opened the bedroom door, gently shook Kerney awake, and softly told him the killer had struck again.

Kerney rolled up to the crime scene. The blue van was awash in light and ringed off with police-line tape strung between the police cars that surrounded the vehicle. Andy Baca, Larry Otero, Russell Thorpe, and Sal Molina were standing at the perimeter with Officer Neal, all of them looking somber, watching the ME and two paramedics at the back of the van remove the body. Techs stood off to one side, waiting their turn at the vehicle, while two detectives videotaped and photographed the scene. Except for the sound of traffic coming from Cerrillos Road, silence hung thick in the air.

Kerney gave Andy and the others a quick nod. Nobody smiled. Sal Molina held out a bloodstained note encased in a clear plastic sleeve. It had a hole in it and read:

KERNEY, DO YOU KNOW ME YET? GUESS WHO’S NEXT.

“It was probably written with a fine-point permanent ink marker,” Molina said.

“Has anybody had a look inside the vehicle?” Kerney asked.

“I did a quick visual check, Chief,” Neal replied. “The victim is an unknown, naked white female, age probably late forties, I’d guess. Slender build, maybe five-six with long, light-brown hair. I saw no clothing or personal possessions inside the vehicle.”

“The killer posed her,” Otero said. “Wrapped her arms around the dog’s head and placed it on her chest. The note was attached to the body by a knitting needle driven into the lower abdomen below the navel.”

“Driven how deeply?” Kerney asked.

“Far enough to kill an unborn child,” Larry said.

The appalled look on Kerney’s face was palpable.

“We don’t know if he did it before or after she was dead,” Andy added, breaking the silence.

The men surrounding Kerney stared at the ground with expressionless eyes.

“Do we have an approximate time of death?” he asked, forcing himself to stay focused.

“According to the ME, it’s a fresh kill,” Larry said, lifting his gaze to Kerney’s face. “Two, maybe three hours.”

“And the cause of death?” Kerney asked.

“We don’t know, Chief,” Molina replied. “Except for the puncture wound to the stomach, there are no other visible traumas to the body. The ME thinks she may have been poisoned.”

“What about the van?”

“The tire tracks match the imprints I took at the horse barn,” Thorpe replied.

“Well, at least that’s nailed down,” Kerney said, trying to keep the alarm he felt out of his voice. He glanced at Larry. “What’s under way?”

“We’re running a records check on the van, and searching the missing-person database for a match,” Larry replied. “Plus, Lieutenant Molina has a man inside the courthouse pulling the tape from the parking lot surveillance camera.”

“Did he view it?” Kerney asked.

“We all did,” Andy answered. “The perp’s a ballsy bastard, Kerney. It shows him parking the van, opening the rear door, throwing a finger at the camera, and walking away. We’ll have the lab enhance it to see if we can get an ID.”

“What else was on the tape?”

“Nothing,” Molina said.

“So where did the perp go?” Kerney asked. “Did he have another car nearby? Did he walk away?”

“We don’t know,” Larry said. “But Chief Baca and I have every available officer from both departments hunting for him. We’re checking public transportation, cab companies, and all residential areas within walking distance.”

“What about nearby hotels and motels?” Kerney asked.

“We’re on it,” Molina said quietly.

“I’d like to go out on patrol and help find this guy, sir,” Thorpe said to Chief Baca, eager to get away from the tight-lipped gloom that permeated the group.

“Go ahead,” Andy replied.

Thorpe hurried to his unit. Kerney turned to Sal Molina. “When the ME is finished, I want people all over that vehicle, top to bottom. I want to know where it’s been and who’s been in it. I want to know the name of every person who ever owned it, ever rode in it. I want every fiber, every hair, every piece of dirt, mud, or pebble stuck in the tread of a tire found and analyzed. If there’s a leaf or twig caught in the undercarriage, I want it logged into evidence, and I want to know where it came from. Nothing comes out of or off that vehicle that isn’t bagged and tagged.”

“We’ll do it right, Chief,” Molina said.

“I want the entire vehicle dusted for prints: the engine compartment, wheel wells, and every other possible place that could have been handled or touched. When that’s done, tow it, have it stripped down, and put everything under a microscope.”

“My techs are on the way,” Andy said.

“Good,” Kerney said. “I want the autopsy started right now, and a plant biologist and soil expert looking at what we get off that vehicle as soon as possible. Let’s get that videotape enlarged and analyzed pronto. Wake people up if you have to.”

“Anything else?” Otero asked.

“That will do for starters. I’ll be in my office.”

They watched Kerney walk away, his back stiff with anger.

“God, I hated to tell him about the knitting needle,” Larry said.

In unison, the men nodded glumly and then turned to the business at hand.

What was he missing? Who was this guy? In the quiet of his office, Kerney started from scratch and went through every bit of information that had been assembled so far. Amid the reams of contacts, follow-ups, and closed-case research conducted by the teams of officers and detectives, there wasn’t one reasonable suspect in sight.

The phone rang and the light to his private line blinked. Kerney answered quickly, thinking it might be Sara calling to tell him the baby was on the way.

“Do you know me yet?” a man’s soft voice asked.

Kerney didn’t respond. He picked up a pen and started writing everything down.

The man chuckled at Kerney’s silence. “You know nothing.”

“You’d be surprised,” Kerney said.

“So who’s next?” the man asked.

“Let’s get together and talk about it,” Kerney said.

“There’s no need for this to go any further.”

The man laughed. “I can’t stop now, Kerney. I’m planning a two-for-one special, just for you. Haven’t you got that figured out yet?”

“Do you think I’m going to let that happen?” Kerney asked, biting back his exasperation.

“You can’t stop it. But before that, I’m going to make your world blow up in your face.”

“Meaning what?” Kerney asked, as he kept writing.

“Since you deserve to lose the most, I’ve decided to improvise a bit, expand my horizons, and add a few more people to my list. It’s time to wipe out your bloodline completely, Kerney.”

“Tell me more,” Kerney said.

“I can’t do that,” the man replied. “Time’s up, Kerney, and the clock is ticking.”

The line went dead. Quickly, Kerney reviewed his notes, which were almost a verbatim record of the conversation. He underlined the phrases “blow up” and “the clock is ticking.” Had the perp given him a hint? Was there a bomb planted somewhere ready to go off?

His first thoughts turned to Sara at their rental house on Upper Canyon Road. The impulse to go to her drove him to his feet. He anchored himself back in the chair, used his handheld radio, and made contact with the state police officer on duty outside the house.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Affirmative, Chief,” Officer Barney Wade replied. “I just made a sweep around the property. It’s all quiet.”

“Have you seen my wife?”

“Not since she came home with you earlier, Chief. I think she’s sleeping. I saw the bedroom light go off soon after you left. Do you want me to check on her?”

“The house may be rigged with a bomb. Wake her up, get her out of the house now, and move away from the property, and stay on the air while you do it,” Kerney said. “I’ll call out the bomb squad. Keep your microphone keyed open.”

“Ten-four, Chief,” Wade replied.

With a phone in one hand and his handheld in the other, Kerney listened to Wade pound on the door while the line to the bomb squad commander’s residence seemed to ring endlessly. Finally, Lieutenant Alan Evertson picked up.

“I want you over at my house, pronto, Al,” Kerney said as he listened to Wade talking to Sara. “The entire team, now. Call out SWAT on my command and clear the immediate neighborhood if you have to.”

“Roger that, Chief,” Evertson said. “Any idea of what kind of device we’re looking for?”

“Not a clue, Al. The house is on a concrete pad, so there’s no crawl space or basement.”

“I’m out the door, Chief.”

“Stay in close touch,” Kerney said as he disconnected and pressed the handheld’s talk button. “Wade?”

There was nothing but static from Wade’s open microphone. Kerney’s foot beat a tattoo on the carpet as he waited for the officer or Sara to say something. He could hear the sound of movement, the slamming of vehicle doors, the rumble of an engine turning over, but nothing else. He started breathing again when Wade spoke.

“Okay, we’re clear, Chief. I’ve got your wife in my unit and we’re proceeding down the street. She wants to talk to you.”

“Sara?”

“A bomb, Kerney?” Sara said, her voice anxious and tight.

“Possibly.”

“What now?”

“I’m at the office. Ask Officer Wade to bring you here after my people show up.”

“Then what do we do?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You are going to tell me what’s happening, aren’t you?” Sara asked.

“Yes, of course, when you’re here. I’ll talk to you then.”

Kerney cut off the handheld and grabbed the phone. The perp had said he planned to add people to his hit list and wipe out Kerney’s bloodline completely. Except for his adult son, Clayton Istee, and his family, Kerney had no other blood relatives.

Through an unusual set of circumstances, Kerney had only recently learned of Clayton’s existence. A sheriff’s sergeant in Lincoln County, Clayton, who was half Apache, lived with his family on the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico.

How could the killer know about Clayton when so few people did? Not even his staff knew, as far as Kerney could tell.

There wasn’t time to speculate. Rapidly, Kerney punched numbers on the keypad and gritted his teeth as the phone rang. The sleepy voice of Grace Istee, Clayton’s wife, greeted him on the fifth ring.

“Grace, it’s Kerney. Let me speak to Clayton.”

“He’s not here. He started working swing shift today.”

“When is he due home?”

“In a hour or so.”

“Take Wendell and Hannah and get out of the house now,” Kerney said.

“What?”

“Grace, just do it. Get far away from the house. Get in the car, go to your mother’s, and don’t stop for anything or anybody.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Grace asked, her voice rising.

“Grace,” Kerney snapped, “don’t argue. Gather up Wendell and Hannah and leave the house, dammit. Get your cell phone and give me the number. I’ll call you right back.”

Grace read off the numbers. Kerney disconnected and punched in the new digits.

“Where are you?” he asked when Grace came on the line.

“In the children’s bedroom,” she replied, fear cracking her voice.

“They’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Talk me through everything you’re doing.”

“You’re scaring me, Kerney.”

He could hear her rapid breathing. “You don’t have time to be scared. What are you doing?”

“Wendell’s awake and out of bed. I’m picking Hannah up right now.”

He heard Hannah’s soft moan as Grace lifted her from the bed. “Do you have your car keys?”

“Yes.”

“Go, go now.”

“Why am I doing this?” Grace asked hysterically.

“Are you outside?” Kerney demanded.

“Just about.”

“Don’t go to the car,” Kerney said, realizing it could easily be booby trapped.

“What? I can’t possibly walk to my mother’s.”

“Do as I tell you, Grace. Go to your neighbor’s. Walk there and wait for Clayton.”

“That’s a half a mile away,” Grace said. “Tell me right now what is going on.”

“Are you and the children outside?”

“Yes,” Grace shouted. “Answer my question.”

“Someone may be trying to kill you with a bomb,” Kerney said.

“We’re running,” Grace said.

“Good. Stay with me on the line until you get to your neighbor’s,” Kerney ordered.

In the earpiece he could hear Grace’s labored breathing as she ran down the dirt road that led to the state highway that cut through the reservation. It seemed to take forever for her and the children to reach the safety of the neighbor’s house.

Once they were inside, Kerney relaxed a bit, told her what he suspected, said he would contact Clayton right away, and asked her to stand by.

It took a few minutes for the sheriff’s dispatcher to patch Kerney through to Clayton, who was in his unit thirty miles from home. Kerney explained the situation and reassured Clayton that Grace and the children were all right.

“You’re sure about this?” Clayton asked, disbelief flooding his voice.

“I don’t have time to give you all the details, but this is a serious, credible threat,” Kerney snapped.

Kerney’s harsh tone erased Clayton’s doubts. “Okay, okay,” he said as he hit his siren and emergency-light switches.

“I’ll ask the state police to send out an explosive expert,” Kerney said. “You get on the horn to your boss and the tribal police and fill them in.”

“Ten-four,” Clayton said.

“Be careful,” Kerney said. “This killer is smart and dangerous.”

“I’ll talk to you later,” Clayton replied.

The phone went dead. Kerney called Andy Baca, who was still at the crime scene in front of the municipal court building, and gave him the rundown.

“Have you notified the feds?” Andy asked. “It’s their jurisdiction.”

“There’s no time for that,” Kerney answered. “They’d be way too slow in responding. I need the explosives expert who’s stationed at your Las Cruces office dispatched at once.”

“I’ll get him rolling code three immediately. It should take him about ninety minutes to get there, if he humps it. I’ll put patrol officers ahead of him to clear the route.”

“Thanks, Andy.”

“This dirtbag may just be fucking with you, Kerney,” Andy said.

“Maybe,” he replied, “but I can’t take that chance. Ask Sal Molina to meet me in my office ASAP.”

“Ten-four.”

Lieutenant Sal Molina arrived at the chief’s office within a matter of minutes. Kerney showed him the notes he’d taken of his phone conversation with the perp and then told him who was at risk and why.

Sal Molina sat quietly, his hands folded in his lap, and let Kerney talk. The chief, obviously distracted and on edge, constantly shifted his gaze from the wall clock to the telephone on his desk, as he laid out the facts about Clayton Istee, his family, and his very reasonable suspicion that the perp intended to kill them all.

Although he tried to stayed focused on the information pertaining to the investigation, Molina found Kerney’s tale riveting. Who would have ever thought it? It seemed like something right out of a novel or a movie. The college sweetheart, an Apache girl, who’d given birth to Kerney’s son and kept it a secret from him for almost thirty years. The chance meeting between father and son, both of them cops. Kerney’s discovery that he was a grandfather twice over. It was one hell of a story.

Molina wondered what kind of woman would deliberately get pregnant without a man’s knowledge, bear his child while the father served as a combat infantry officer in ’Nam, and keep it a secret for so many years. It seemed selfish at the very least, perhaps even heartless.

But was it? Sal didn’t know much about the Apache people or their traditions, so maybe it was a cultural thing. Or perhaps you had to know the woman to understand her reasoning.

Kerney cast another glance from the wall clock to the telephone and stopped talking. The handheld radio on his desk squawked traffic from bomb squad and SWAT team members en route to Upper Canyon Road.

“If your theory pans out, and I think it will, I’m going to have to let people know about this,” Molina said.

“That’s not a problem,” Kerney said.

“I want to send a detective down there to work the case with the local cops.”

“Of course.”

“Did you recognize the perp’s voice when he called?” Molina asked.

“No, but he seemed relaxed,” Kerney said, “like he was totally in control of himself. He also sounded educated, and not very old.”

“A young man?” Molina asked, as he started taking notes.

“Hard to say, but he didn’t sound old. He was more a tenor than a baritone.”

“He didn’t attempt to disguise his voice?”

“Not that I could tell,” Kerney replied.

“Why do you think he was educated?”

“He was articulate and had a good vocabulary.”

“There are a lot of well-read, educated ex-cons walking the streets courtesy of the taxpayers’ dollars.”

Kerney nodded. “There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, sort of a mocking tone. He thinks he’s smarter than all of us.”

“But he said nothing personal? Nothing that tied him to you?”

“I tried to get him to open up and talk, but he wouldn’t bite.”

“Do you think his call was designed to create a diversion?” Molina asked, putting his pen away. “To get you focused on something else?”

“No, I think he’s raising the stakes. Everything he’s done up to now has been carefully thought out.”

“How does he know so much about you?” Molina asked. “It isn’t like this thing with Clayton and his family is old news or common knowledge.”

Kerney shook his head. “For starters, I’d be happy if we could find out how he got the number to my private line. No more than a half-dozen people have it.”

“I’ll put somebody to work on that.”

“Was the videotape of the parking lot time and date stamped?” Kerney asked.

“Yes,” Molina replied, looking at his wristwatch. “The perp left the van outside the municipal court just over three hours ago.”

“That’s enough time to drive to the reservation if you push it.”

The phone rang. Kerney answered, listened for a moment, gave a hurried thanks, and hung up. “I asked for a trace on the perp’s call,” he said. “It was long distance, and made from Dora Manning’s cell phone.”

“Which means he could be in Clayton’s backyard,” Molina said, rising to his feet, “ready to carry out his threat.”

“Don’t wait to find out if this is a ruse,” Kerney said. “Send a detective down to Mescalero now.”

He reached for the handheld as Molina nodded and left the office, and called Evertson. The bomb squad and the SWAT team were on-site at his house.

“What have you got for me?” he asked.

“I’ll call you back, Chief,” Evertson said. “We’re just starting the search.”

A uniformed city police officer and Andy Baca were waiting for Sara at police headquarters when Wade dropped her off. The officer opened the back entrance, escorted them to Kerney’s second-floor office, and then left to return to patrol. Kerney tried to smile when they walked in, but it was more a worried grimace, and his normally clear blue eyes looked troubled and uncertain.

Sara walked to him as he rose and gave him a hug. He held her tight for a moment, patting her reassuringly on the back as though to soothe himself.

They sat at the small rectangular conference table as Kerney talked over the noise of the radio traffic coming from the handheld on his desk. He told them about the conversation with the perp that had triggered his course of action.

“I just heard from Clayton,” he added. “He’s with Grace and the children, the tribal police are on-site in force, and Paul Hewitt, the sheriff, is with them for added protection.”

“That’s good,” Andy said with a nod. He was one of the handful of people Kerney had told about Clayton. “Everyone’s safe.”

“For now,” Kerney replied. “When will your man arrive?”

“He’s got about a sixty-minute ETA.”

“So now we wait,” Kerney said.

“While we’re waiting, tell me about the latest murder victim,” Sara said, trying to rid her mind of the panic Grace Istee must have felt during Kerney’s phone call.

Andy cleared his throat and Kerney’s gaze moved away from her. “What is it?” she demanded, reading their hesitancy. Andy smiled but his eyes didn’t.

“What are you hiding?” she asked, switching her attention to Kerney. A hand covered his mouth. “Dammit, tell me.”

“The killer posed his victim,” Andy said, his smile vanishing. “He wrapped her hands around the decapitated head of Potter’s dog.”

“Wrapped her hands how?” Sara asked.

“As though she was cuddling a baby against her chest,” Andy replied.

Instinctively, Sara’s hands traveled to her stomach. She could feel the hard-stretched skin under the fabric of her loose top. “Did he leave a note like before?”

Kerney nodded. “It was addressed to me, and asked if I knew who he was and who was next to die.”

Sara’s hands trembled. “That son of a bitch.”

“The note was found on her lower abdomen,” he continued, “attached by a knitting needle that had been driven, we think, through the stomach wall into the uterus.”

A sharp pain coursed up Sara’s spine to her neck, as if all the tension of the last few days had suddenly been compressed into one enormous jolt that froze her muscles and immobilized her body.

“This can’t go on,” she said, forcing her mouth to work. “It has to stop.”

The phone rang. Kerney turned the handheld radio volume down, punched the button to the blinking line, and activated the speaker function. “Go ahead,” he said.

“It’s Lieutenant Evertson, Chief. The house is clean, inside and out, and we didn’t find anything on the grounds. No explosives. But the perp broke the utility company seal on the outside electrical box and left a note. It says, ‘Bang you’re dead.’ ”

Kerney’s hand squeezed the receiver. He paused a beat before responding. “Get the note to Lieutenant Molina, give everyone my thanks, and send the teams home.”

“Will do. I’ve got a couple of reporters down at a road-block asking questions. Want me to tell them to call you?”

“Fuck ’em,” Kerney said without thinking. He rarely cursed, but the words burst out of him as though he was voiding something rancid.

“Would you repeat that, Chief?”

“Be nice, but say there is no statement at this time, Lieutenant.”

Kerney hung up, and Sara said, “I’m not going back to that house tonight.”

“You can stay with me and Gloria,” Andy said. “Besides, she needs the company and has lots of baby stories that will keep you entertained.”

“Good idea,” Kerney said before Sara could respond. “Raise your right hand, Sara.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m swearing you in as a police officer. If anyone approaches you in a threatening manner, blow the sucker away.”

“I can do that,” Sara replied as she raised her hand.

Clayton’s closest neighbors, Eugene and Jeannie Naiche, were an older couple with grown children living on their own. Until his retirement, Eugene had run the tribal youth recreation program. Jeannie, a skilled basketmaker, operated a studio and gallery out of the house. Built almost forty years ago, the rambling ranch-style residence had a pitched roof, a stone fireplace, a large deck off the back patio door, and a family room filled with books on the history and art of Native Americans.

Clayton sat on a couch in the family room with Hannah on his lap, Grace next to him, and Wendell snuggled close to his mother’s side. All of them seemed emotionally empty, as though the experience of fleeing the house had transformed them into instantly displaced persons facing a strange, uncertain, and dangerous world.

Eugene Naiche sat in a rocking chair with a determined look on his usually jovial face, his hunting rifle resting against an end table. He rocked slowly with his hands on the arm rests, his stocky legs planted firmly on the floor.

Clayton’s boss, Sheriff Paul Hewitt, stood at the side of a curtained window, peering out at the driveway, his face washed by the colors of the flashing emergency lights of vehicles passing by on the dirt road. In the kitchen, Jeannie Naiche was making coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the children.

Outside, tribal officers patrolled the dirt road and conducted foot searches in the woods around Clayton’s house. Volunteer fire department personnel were deploying equipment a safe distance away from the house, and the state police explosives expert, Perry Dahl, was walking a bomb-sniffing dog named Clementine around the outside of the structure. He hadn’t reported in yet.

Clayton’s handheld radio crackled. He let go of Hannah and turned up the volume.

“Clementine smells something,” Dahl said. “Hold on.”

Clayton peeled one of Hannah’s arms from around his neck.

“Don’t go, Daddy,” Hannah said.

“It’s all right, honey,” he said gently, as he put his daughter on Grace’s lap and stood. “I’m staying right here with you.”

He walked to Paul Hewitt, and spoke softly into his radio. “Where are you?” he asked Dahl.

“At your back door about to take the cover off the entrance to the crawl space,” Dahl replied. “Clementine’s really excited. We’re going in.”

Clayton waited.

“Have you been under your house lately?” Dahl asked.

“Not for a while,” Clayton replied.

“Well, someone has. There’s a lot of disturbed dirt, and the insulation and plastic vapor barrier between the floor joists has been pulled out in places. Okay, I’ve found some wires, and Clementine just sniffed out a device. Make that two devices.”

“What kind?” Clayton whispered, looking at Grace, who’d gone rigid, her arms locked around Hannah.

“Give me a minute,” Dahl answered. “I have to crawl on my back to get to them.”

Clayton turned away from his family and lowered the handheld’s volume.

Paul Hewitt turned his radio down, put a hand on Clayton’s shoulder and looked at his young sergeant. “Let’s go outside.”

Clayton nodded and glanced at Grace. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wendell pushed himself off the couch. “Can I come, too?”

“Stay with your mother,” Clayton replied.

Grace grabbed Wendell’s hand and jerked him close to her, her eyes filled with apprehension.

Clayton smiled at his family reassuringly, his heart pounding, and walked out of the room with Paul Hewitt. On the front step he could see the spotlight of a tribal police cruiser slowly moving down the dirt road. The flashing lights of fire department vehicles up ahead cut through the stand of trees, casting broken red beams that fractured the darkness.

“We’ve got a pound of plastique planted under the floorboards at each end of the house,” Dahl said. “They’re wired together and attached to a radio receiver.”

“Can you disarm them?” Paul Hewitt asked.

“Hold it,” Dahl replied. “Yeah, but not easily. Whoever built this thing added what looks like a pulse detonator wired into the radio battery. Any power interruption will set off one or the other packs of plastique. It’s pretty sophisticated work.”

“How long will it take you?” Hewitt asked.

“I’m gonna have to get my tools and try to figure it out. An hour, maybe more, once I get started. This is all miniature equipment.”

“What’s the range of the receiver?” Hewitt asked, the handheld an inch from his lips.

“I’d say maybe five miles,” Dahl replied. “No more than ten.”

Clayton glanced up at the heavily forested peaks that loomed over the narrow valley. He knew every gully, wash, stream, outcropping, and clearing in those mountains. There were countless places within a couple of miles that a man could easily hike to and have a clear line of sight into the settlement below.

“Get out of there now,” Hewitt snapped. “The Sante Fe PD has advised that the perp may already be at our location, and there’s no way we can clear that kind of radius at night.”

“Ten-four,” Dahl said. “I’m exiting the crawl space now.”

“Roger that.”

Paul Hewitt looked at his sergeant. “Now, do you want to tell me what this is really all about?”

“Some shithead wants to kill Kerney and his entire family.”

“I know that. What’s it got to do with you?”

“I’m his son,” Clayton replied.

For once, Paul Hewitt couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

Clayton keyed his handheld and asked the tribal police to start patrolling the roads into the mountains.

For years, the bald-headed man had prepared to become a successful killer. On his own, in public and university libraries across the western states, he’d read the works of behavioral profilers, criminologists, psychologists, and forensics specialists. He’d delved into the history of crime and the psychiatric studies of the criminal mind, scrutinized all the relevant journals for articles on criminal behavior, reviewed the latest developments in the classification systems used to target potential suspects, and pored over volumes that dealt with the use of scientific evidence in criminal investigations.

He knew the current literature on revenge killers was at best nothing more than rudimentary. About all the cops had to go on, if the murders were skillfully planned and carried out, was the belief that the killer would have openly brooded or bragged about revenge to others.

He’d never done that. His revenge was a private, personal obsession that, since the age of seven, had formed the core of his identity, right down to the name he’d chosen for himself from a little-known footnote in American history: Samuel Green. The country’s first mass murderer, Green had gone to the gallows in 1822, unrepentant, without admitting guilt, and leaving all to wonder exactly how many people he’d murdered during his two-year crime spree.

He admired those qualities, so Samuel Green he’d legally become, shedding his past but never the memory of it. He enjoyed his new name’s legacy and the innocuous sound of it.

Green hiked from the Indian Health Service Hospital parking lot to the hillside outcropping that overlooked the Istee residence, thinking he’d diverted Kerney’s attention to Sara and the unborn baby and away from Clayton, who should be just getting home from his shift. When he arrived, the sight through the night-vision scope of police vehicles patrolling the roads and a cluster of fire trucks parked on the dirt lane caught him by surprise.

At the neighboring house, all the interior and exterior lights were on. Two Lincoln County sheriff’s vehicles-one of them assigned to Sergeant Istee-and a state cop car sat outside.

From the look of things, Green assumed that Istee had his family safely out of the house. It was the first time anything had gone wrong with his plan. Was it a setback? Perhaps his phone call to Kerney had been too precipitous, too revealing.

Green decided against that kind of thinking. After all, he’d led Kerney by the nose to his next targets, and the man had taken the threat seriously and acted quickly. That was to be expected.

He sat down and considered his options. Perhaps he should just walk back to the car and let the cops spend the next two or three hours trying to figure out how to disarm the explosives and blow themselves up in the process. But he hated the idea of chancing everything to fate and possibly seeing all his hard work go to waste. Better to salvage something then to walk away empty-handed.

Killing Potter and Manning had been nothing but a prelude, although they both deserved to die for their part in ruining his life. On the other hand, the woman he’d killed with the rat poison had been an innocent victim. But her death was essential to his plan.

Now it all came down to Kerney, who’d destroyed Green’s manhood and taken away any chance for a family or a normal relationship with a woman. That should cost Kerney everything and everybody, although if Green had to settle for taking out the pregnant wife that might still be good enough.

Green retraced his way to his car, drove down the highway, made sure he wasn’t being followed, and pressed the transmitter button. In the rearview mirror a sudden flash of light erupted into the night sky just as the sound waves from the explosion rolled through the open window.

The spectacle made Samuel Green smile. Maybe it would start a big fire on the Rez.