Slow Kill

Chapter 15

K erney’s time with Sara and Patrick passed quickly, but not without incident. By the end of his first week in Arlington, Sara seemed preoccupied and distant. She slept poorly at night but wouldn’t talk about what was bothering her. As a result, their evening conversations kept to chitchat about Patrick, her plans to build a covered patio in the backyard, the events of Kerney’s day at the academy, and similar mundane subjects.

Over the weekend, Kerney forced down every instinct he had to confront her uncharacteristic reserve. Sunday night, he could no longer contain himself.

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong,” Sara said in response to his question. She shifted her position on the couch to look at him and put her after-dinner liqueur on the coffee table.

“That covers a lot of ground,” Kerney said from the other end of the couch.

“Meaning?”

Kerney sipped his cordial. “You’re not one to leave things unsaid.”

Rain began pattering on the side of the house and coming in through the old wooden window screens. Sara got up and closed the windows. “Don’t get bullheaded on me, Kerney. Just give it a rest. Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re irritable, not sleeping well, and evasive every time I ask you what’s wrong.”

She returned to the couch. “If so, it’s for good reason.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

She gave him a feisty look. “Okay, I’ll make it short and sweet. I don’t want to tell you what’s going on because you’ll harangue me about resigning my commission.”

“I harangue you?”

“You have a tendency to lecture.”

Kerney shook his head in rebuttal. “I don’t mean it to sound that way.”

“I believe that’s true,” Sara said. “But you knew what you were getting into when you married me. I’m career Army, and that fact alone makes family life hard. We live apart by your choice, and that makes it even more difficult. But never once have I asked you to quit your job, leave Santa Fe, and follow me from post to post until I retire. You could give me the same consideration.”

Kerney was silent for a time. Finally he said, “I can see how you might think I’ve been pestering you to quit the Army. I won’t do it anymore.”

“Thank you.”

“But I don’t think you’re telling me the whole story. Does it have something to do with that assignment on the rape of servicewomen?”

“Mostly,” Sara replied.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.” She slid closer to Kerney and ran her hand up his leg. “I know I’ve been a bit preoccupied with work, but I haven’t been unapproachable, have I?”

“Are you trying to distract me with sex?” Kerney asked, breaking into a smile.

“Is it working?” Her hand moved to his crotch. “Oh my, what’s this?”

Late in Kerney’s second week at Quantico, Claudia Spalding was still on the loose despite intensive efforts to locate her, and Ramona Pino, who was back in Santa Fe, had been unable to find a money trail between Clifford Spalding and any past or present members of the Santa Barbara Police Department. However, fresh information about the George Spalding investigation had begun to come in. First, Jerry Grant, the forensic anthropologist, called.

“The narrowly angled pelvis, the rounded head of the femur, and the length of the femur, confirm it to be the skeleton of a male, slightly less than six feet in height,” Grant said.

“You already told me this in Albuquerque,” Kerney said.

“But I needed to verify my observations,” Grant replied. “Now it’s fact. The joints were completely fused with the bones and showed only slight wear, which is consistent with an age range of thirty to thirty-five years.”

“Did you find anything that would help ID the remains?” Kerney inquired.

“Nothing,” Grant said, “and lacking a skull, I couldn’t even determine race. But there were no tool marks that would indicate the body had been dismembered.”

“That’s interesting.”

“I thought so. What I did find was microscopic evidence that the body had decomposed badly before interment.”

“I thought you said the bones had been cleaned.”

“Yes, but not well enough. The evidence suggests the remains were exposed to the elements for a period of time. In Vietnam, a body could decompose down to cartilage, bone, and sinewy ligaments in a matter of a few weeks. That could explain why the skull, hands, and feet were missing. Predators could have easily scattered those bones.”

“But you’re sure the man was shot?”

“Absolutely. My best guess is by an automatic weapon, but I couldn’t swear to it in court. I asked the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to run all the information through their database. It yielded a list of seventy-six military and civilian Americans and thirty-nine foreign nationals who fall within the parameters. I’ll fax it to you.”

“Great.”

“By the way, the Armed Forces DNA lab at Walter Reed has the results from the bone sample I took. They said they were expecting it when I called to tell them it was on the way. You must know people in high places.”

“I do,” Kerney said. “Has the lab in Albuquerque finished the mitrochondrial DNA comparison tests?”

“You should hear from them today,” Grant replied. “I’ll fax my report to you along with the list from Hawaii.”

Sara called shortly afterward. “Vincent DeCosta, the sergeant George Spalding served with in Vietnam, has a cousin. He says DeCosta’s younger brother, Thomas, emigrated to Canada during the Vietnam War to avoid the draft, and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”

“Where in Canada?”

“I don’t know,” Sara replied. “We’ve asked the Canadian authorities to locate him if possible.”

“Debbie Calderwood said she lives in Calgary, Canada.”

“That’s why I thought you’d like to know. I’ve got to run. I’m a busy girl.”

Kerney called Ramona Pino. “Was there a Canadian connection in any of Clifford Spalding’s personal or corporate financial records?”

“He owns several hotels in Canada, and a third of the proceeds from his estate will go to a foundation he established in Canada, the High Prairie Charitable Trust.”

“What do you know about the foundation?” Kerney asked.

“Nothing, Chief.”

“Look into it,” Kerney said. “I want as much information as you can get. When it was incorporated, who directs it, what its purpose is, who the board members or trustees are, and any financial statements and annual reports.”

“Didn’t Debbie Calderwood tell her old college roommate that her husband ran a philanthropic organization in Calgary?” Ramona asked.

“She did,” Kerney replied. “Query the Calgary police for information about her, her husband, a man named Vincent DeCosta, and his brother Thomas. They may have changed their names. Fax them the police sketch of Debbie.”

“Who’s this DeCosta?” Ramona asked.

“He’s an Army deserter who served with George Spalding in Nam.”

“I’ll get on it, Chief.”

Kerney put the phone down and went back over his notes on Ed Ramsey. During the past few days he’d used his free time at the academy checking into Ramsey’s background.

Ramsey had started his law enforcement career in Missouri and worked briefly for a small department in Illinois, before moving to California and joining the Santa Barbara Police Department as a patrol officer and then moving up through the ranks. The police standards and certification boards in all three states had no disciplinary reports or formal complaints about him on file.

Ramsey’s credit history proved to be more interesting. He had a sizable mortgage on his Stafford home, as well as personal loans for a boat, motorcycle, and two automobiles. Additionally, the report showed another real estate loan in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars for property in Maine. The bank that held the note reported it was for a summer home on the coast near the town of Camden and that Ramsey had purchased it two years ago. Ramsey’s total loan payments added up to a six-figure annual nut.

He used his credit cards frequently, occasionally for big ticket items, but always paid the balances in full each month.

From the FBI Personnel Office, Kerney learned that Ramsey’s civil service position was rated as a GS 12. From the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Kerney learned how much Ramsey received annually through the pension fund. Even if Ramsey was at the top end of his salary scale, his combined income from wages and retirement pay fell far short of the money needed to fuel his lifestyle. It pointed to an additional income stream that Kerney couldn’t find until he knew where to look.

That afternoon, Kerney sat in on Ramsey’s media relations class and did a Q amp;A about his efforts to improve coordination between his department and community agencies serving chronically mentally ill patients. Kerney explained how the deaths of two seriously mentally ill individuals had prompted him to appoint an ad hoc citizen task force to develop and implement a special training program for all sworn personnel.

After class, Ramsey shook Kerney’s hand and thanked him for his participation.

“When do you head home to Santa Fe?” Ramsey asked as they walked down the hallway.

“I’m at work Monday morning, with a full plate waiting for me.”

Ramsey flashed an understanding smile. “Isn’t that always the case? From what I’ve been reading in the newspapers, you’ve still got the Spalding homicide hanging fire.”

“She’s still out there, but we don’t know where. I understand you met her husband some time back.”

Ramsey laughed and nodded. “When he was married to his first wife. We called her Crazy Alice. I spoke to him a few times.”

“How did that come about?” Kerney asked as they descended the stairs to the ground floor.

“The woman had some hare-brained idea that her dead son was still alive. She was obsessed by it, and kept calling my department to report alleged sightings. Spalding found out what she was doing and came in to set the record straight. He brought full documentation with him of his son’s death in Vietnam. He said he couldn’t control her behavior, and asked for my understanding in the matter. From that point on, I had my detectives humor her whenever she called with a new lead.”

Kerney nodded knowingly. “Cranks and crazies, they’re everywhere.”

“That’s what makes a chief’s job so much fun. But when they’re rich and influential, you’ve got to placate them a bit more than the average civilian. Any ideas of why the current Mrs. Spalding killed her husband?”

Kerney stopped in front of his office. “A few.”

“Probably for the money,” Ramsey said. “He had a shitload of it.”

“Interestingly, that hasn’t popped up as a motive.”

Ramsey shrugged. “I guess there are as many motives to kill as there are victims. We need to get you back here to teach again.”

“I’d like that.”

“Good. I’ll make it happen.”

After Ramsey waved good-bye and disappeared around a corner, Kerney smiled. From what he’d said about Alice Spalding, Ramsey clearly knew Kerney had been snooping into the case, and his most likely informant was Dick Chase. Ramsey had stopped short of probing the subject more deeply, but his curiosity about it had been real. It was also interesting that Ramsey had focused on money as a motive for Clifford Spalding’s murder. Did he have a personal interest in Spalding’s wealth that made him jump to that conclusion?

Kerney was now convinced, in spite of what Ramona Pino had told him to the contrary, that there had to be a money trail connecting Clifford Spalding, Ed Ramsey, and Dick Chase.

On his desk he found a note to call the lab in Albuquerque. He dialed the number and spoke to a senior tech, who gave him the results of the DNA comparison testing. The remains were not those of George Spalding.

Friday night, Sara came home at a reasonable time with news from the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory at Walter Reed. As she fed Patrick his dinner in his high chair, she told Kerney what had been discovered.

“The remains in Spalding’s casket belong to a chief petty officer. He was lost overboard when his strike assault boat came under fire during a mission to pick up a SEAL team operating near the Cambodian border in 1972. According to eyewitness reports, he took rounds in the chest. Several other sailors were wounded.”

“At least he wasn’t a murder victim,” Kerney said, “which means we have one less crime to worry about. How was his body retrieved?”

Sara wiped Patrick’s chin with a napkin. “There’s no record that it was, at least by our personnel. The file does show that South Vietnamese naval commandos mounted several search and recovery missions for his body after the SEAL pullout. But there are no follow-up action assessment reports. They were probably burned before Saigon fell. Lots of official documents were destroyed to keep them out of the hands of the North Vietnamese.”

“What about mortuary records?”

Sara held out the spoon to Patrick. He took it and banged it on the high chair. “According to the quartermaster corps, the sailor ’s remains were never received at either Da Nang or Tan Son Nhut. From what we now know, the likely scenario is that after Spalding faked his death, someone at the mortuary sent the body bag home under Spalding’s name, and whoever processed it stateside made sure no questions were asked.”

“I wonder how many gemstones were in the body bag, and how Spalding left Nam without getting caught.”

“Given his job, it would have been easy for him to assume a dead soldier ’s identity. He probably came home on a chartered troop transport flight.”

“He would have needed orders to do it.”

“Which a processing clerk could have provided for a hefty bribe.”

“That makes sense,” Kerney said. “Has the sailor ’s family been notified?”

Sara shook her head as she tried to get Patrick to eat more dinner. He pushed the spoon away. “No, but when they are told, there will be no mention of the fact that his remains were unearthed in a casket buried over thirty years ago under another man’s name.”

“I think he’s finished eating.” Kerney took Patrick out of his high chair and plopped him on his lap. “That would be an embarrassment to the military.”

Sara gave him a guarded look. “Do you think they should be told the truth?”

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Kerney said. “The family has had over thirty years to wonder, hope, and grieve. Let them bury him and move on. What are the Army’s plans to find George Spalding?”

“JAG and CID have mounted a full-scale investigation into the entire gemstone smuggling operation. It’s quite possible that a quartermaster officer, who has since retired at a fairly high rank, may have been involved.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The officer in question authorized the release of the remains to Clifford and Alice Spalding and logged in the body bag containing the gemstone shipment that was intercepted.”

Patrick smeared a sticky hand on Kerney’s shirt and burped. “Are you still in the loop on the case?”

Sara shook her head. “Only peripherally, but I’ll keep an eye on it. When will you tell Alice Spalding about her son?”

“Not right away,” Kerney replied. “Although with her deteriorating mental condition it might not matter when I did. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

“Of course not, it’s Saturday.”

“Good. I’ve booked dinner reservations at a Georgetown restaurant. Afterward, we have tickets for a chamber music concert in the city. I’ve already arranged for a babysitter.”

Sara smiled. “That sounds nice.”

Kerney lifted a very smelly Patrick off his lap. “I think our young friend needs his diaper changed.”

“Your turn,” Sara said. “I’ll do the dishes.”

Kerney took Patrick away and cleaned him up. Through the open door he could hear Sara loading the dishwasher. She was still a bit preoccupied and overworked, and not her usual self. But the tension between them had diminished.

Kerney thought it best to let the situation ride. He didn’t want anything to spoil his last two days in Arlington.

He put a clean diaper on Patrick and tickled his belly. “Let’s have a great weekend, Champ, before I head back to Santa Fe.”

Patrick giggled in agreement, burped, and kicked his little feet in the air.

A late afternoon summer sky greeted Kerney upon his return to New Mexico. The sun flooded golden light on the desert and made the distant peaks behind Santa Fe flutter miragelike against a hot blue horizon.

The thought of returning to the solitude of his empty ranch house depressed Kerney. After two weeks with Sara and Patrick, he didn’t want to face the feeling of loneliness that would surely come as soon as he got home. Instead, he went to his office. On his desk was a memo from Ramona Pino and some material on the High Prairie Charitable Trust. According to the memo, the Calgary Police Department and Canadian federal authorities had not yet completed background checks on the staff and board members of the trust. Efforts to locate Debbie Calderwood, George Spalding, and the DeCosta brothers had just gotten under way.

Kerney turned to the charitable trust documents. Established twenty-eight years ago as a private foundation, its mission was to conserve, protect, and restore native prairies in Alberta and Saskatchewan, preserve historical sites in both provinces, and provide scholarships to agricultural students at Canadian colleges.

A small staff of four people ran the organization: a CEO, a director of development, a grants manager, and an administrative assistant. The board consisted of three individuals, including Clifford Spalding. It met twice annually to make grant awards and allocate funds. Except for Spalding, no familiar names were listed as staff or board members.

The permanent endowment came solely from gifts made by Spalding, and in the last two years, he’d tripled his annual contribution of cash and investments to the trust, which currently exceeded sixty million Canadian dollars.

The most recent annual report showed funding of program activities by category only. Over four million dollars had been disbursed in the reporting period, but there was no breakout of the organizations that had received funding or the amounts allocated.

Kerney eased back in his chair. The last light of evening had passed, along with his hope Pino would have found a money connection between Clifford Spalding, Ed Ramsey, and Dick Chase through the foundation. If one existed, it was hidden. He’d ask Pino to dig deeper.

Kerney had also hoped that the Canadian connection would lead him to George and Debbie, but nothing had surfaced. Still, it was conceivable that Clifford had been secretly bankrolling his son through the trust over the past twenty-eight years. Or perhaps, as Sara had suggested, George had bankrolled his father, and the trust was a blind used to launder and deliver George’s cut of the corporate profits.

Kerney had strong evidence that Clifford Spalding had falsified his son’s military records, probably with George’s help. Did the two men do it to keep Alice Spalding in the dark about their ill-gotten gains? By making George out to be a good soldier who’d died in combat, did they hope she’d accept his death more readily? If so, it had back-fired.

But what motivated Alice to keep searching for George? Did she have suspicions about Clifford’s sudden financial windfall that got him started building his hotel chain? Or had Clifford tripped himself up in the lies he’d told to keep the truth from her? And why had she been kept from knowing the truth in the first place?

Kerney figured with Clifford dead and Alice mentally out of it, only George could answer those questions, if he could be found. Otherwise the reasons would stay buried in the past.

Kerney wondered why Spalding had tripled his contributions to the trust during the last two years. His will divided his estate in thirds, shared equally by Claudia, the trust, and Alice, who was entitled to her slice through the divorce settlement.

Had Spalding been moving cash and investments into the foundation to reduce the amounts Claudia and Alice stood to inherit? Did he want to penalize Alice for being a thorn in his side for so many years, and punish Claudia financially for violating the terms of their amended prenuptial agreement?

Kerney wrote out his questions, knowing he might never learn the truth. He attached them to a note to Ramona Pino asking her to look deeper into the trust, put it on her desk, and went home.

At the ranch, he heard the whinny of a horse through the open truck window. He drove toward the barn, and the two geldings he’d bought in California, a red roan and a gray, scampered to the far end of the corral away from the glare of the truck headlights. There was a note taped to the barn door from Riley Burke saying he had put Comeuppance in a stall across from the geldings to keep the animals separated, and the brood mare was stabled at his father ’s place.

Kerney walked to the corral on the opposite side of the barn and Comeuppance trotted over to check him out. He spoke to the horse in low, reassuring tones, but Comeuppance didn’t buy it, and moved away, shaking his mane.

Kerney checked the stalls. They were clean, with a fresh mat of straw laid down, and the doors were latched open to give the animals access to shelter. The geldings were friendlier, and Kerney spent some time talking to them and feeding them a few horse biscuits.

He went to the house thinking that having the animals on the ranch made the place seem a whole lot less lonely. He’d call Riley in the morning and thank him for his good work.

There was only one phone message on the answering machine and it was from Sara, reminding him not to forget that she loved him. Although he still worried about her, it put a smile on his face.

In the morning, Kerney found it unnecessary to call Riley Burke and thank him. At first light through the kitchen window, he could see the young man inside the corral working with the gray gelding. The horse had a halter on, and attached to it was a lightweight, thirty-foot line.

Riley stood behind the horse outside of the kick zone and flicked the line against the gray’s hindquarters. The startled horse took flight and Riley followed along, pitching the line gently against the gray’s rear quarter until the animal broke into a canter.

After the gray made a half dozen turns around the corral, Riley reversed its direction and repeated the exercise. Finally, the gray slowed and lowered its head. Riley approached the horse at an angle, coiling the line as he moved in, and the gray retreated, refusing to join up. Riley backed off, flicked his line against the gray’s hindquarters, and set the horse in motion again.

Kerney liked what he saw. Riley was starting from scratch with the gray, training it his way, gauging its agility, responsiveness, and temperament. He watched for a few more minutes, then showered, dressed in his uniform, and walked to the corral. Riley released the gray and met Kerney at the fence.

Tall and slim, Riley had his father’s square jaw and deep chest, and the same widely spaced brown eyes and button nose as his mother. His sandy-colored hair was hidden under his cowboy hat.

They exchanged greetings and Kerney nodded in the direction of the gray. “What do you think?”

“Both geldings are well balanced,” Riley said. “They got good, long muscles for stride and mobility, and their front legs match up nicely with their chests. All in all, I’d say they’ll make fine cutting horses. But it will be a while before we know how good they are.”

Kerney nodded, quietly pleased that Riley approved of his selections.

“You only bought one mare,” Riley said as he climbed the fence and dropped down next to Kerney.

“I’m hoping your dad will sell me one of his.”

Riley nodded. “I think he might consider it. Comeuppance is going to need a firm hand if you’re planning to ride him.”

“I already have,” Kerney said.

Riley hitched a boot on the low railing. “I can’t understand why he wasn’t raced. He’s got the bloodlines and the conformation for it.”

“According to the trainer, he does fine on an empty track, but doesn’t like running in a crowd. I appreciate the work you’ve done while I was gone.”

“I wish I could have done more,” Riley replied. “My dad’s trail-riding business picked up last week, and he corralled me to take some tourists out on half-day trips.”

Kerney knew that Riley’s parents worked hard to keep their ranch afloat, and trail rides during the tourist season brought in some much-needed income. “That’s okay.”

Riley’s comment about trail riding made Kerney think about Kim Dean’s cabin in the Canadian River canyonlands. Last night at the office, he’d reviewed the status report on the hunt for Claudia Spalding and no one had thought to look for her there. According to Lucky Suazo, the Harding County sheriff, it would make a perfect hideout.

“I’ve got to go,” Kerney said abruptly, turning on his heel. “We’ll talk later. Thanks again.”

Riley watched Kerney walk briskly to his house. In less than ten minutes, he came back out the front door, dressed in jeans, boots, and a work shirt, with his sidearm strapped to his belt. He got into his pickup truck and drove away, kicking up a trail of dust on the ranch road.

Riley wondered what had made Kerney switch getups so quickly and leave in such a big hurry. Behind him, the gray snorted quietly and he turned to find it had come closer, no more than three feet away. He moved slowly away from the animal, showing his back, and the gelding followed along.

Riley stopped as the gray closed the distance. He reached out, and rubbed the animal between the eyes. The gelding didn’t flinch. Now the training could begin.

Only one highway traversed the Canadian Gorge, a state road that ran from the town of Wagon Mound to the village of Roy. A tangle of canyons and mesas, the gorge dropped off the high plains of northeastern New Mexico into breaks over a thousand feet deep in places. Cut by rivers and streams, most of the Canadian was remote and wild, virtually empty of people, sprinkled with the remains of failed Hispanic and Anglo settlements.

Other than the locals, some hunters, and occasional tourists, few people visited the gorge, a forty-five mile swath of box canyons, slippery rock mesas, boulder-strewn streambeds, sandstone chutes, rock slides, and bottom land meadows. But there were signs that a more ancient civilization once used the gorge. Caves cut into the soft sandstone mesas were littered with pottery shards and flint. Rock art of birds, animals, feet, abstract symbols, and fantastic creatures were engraved in the perpendicular vermillion walls. Cliff overhangs were thick with the black smoke from a thousand years of campfires.

Kerney crossed the canyon and entered the most sparsely populated county in New Mexico. About eight hundred people lived in Harding County, an area larger than the state of Delaware, and just about all of them resided and worked on the high plains grasslands.

He passed quickly through Roy, a village with a post office, school, one restaurant, a few small businesses, and a lot of shuttered, empty buildings. Not too many years ago, there had been a state park with a lake near the village, which had drawn tourist traffic and put some money into the local economy. But the lake dried up and the park was closed. To Kerney’s eye, Roy looked about as dead as the lake.

North of the village, the Kiowa National Grasslands spread out over the prairie that rolled toward a flat, endless horizon. To the west, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rose up into a sky peppered with enormous puffball cumulus clouds that crowded the peaks.

Kerney turned off at Mills, once a small hamlet that had served dryland farmers. A victim of drought, it was reduced to a few scattered buildings along the highway. Eight miles in on a dirt road, he dropped into the canyon. Juniper-studded mesas towered over the slow-moving, shallow river that snaked through the valley, parts of it hidden from view by stands of invasive salt cedar trees that lined the banks and sapped up precious water.

Instead of drought, a long-ago flash flood had wiped out the agricultural settlement of Mills Canyon. The torrent had left behind rock wall ruins of a few buildings, including an old hotel, and had inundated the bottom land crop fields, now reclaimed by junipers, yuccas, and cactus.

Kerney found Sheriff Lucky Suazo waiting for him near the hotel ruins. He’d brought along two saddled mounts in a horse trailer. Suazo ran a small cow-calf operation when he wasn’t busy enforcing the law. Built close to the ground, he had a narrow face and a thick mustache that covered his upper lip.

Lucky’s department consisted of himself and one chief deputy. Together, the two men policed over 2,100 square miles. Fortunately, crime wasn’t rampant in Harding County.

“You made good time,” Suazo said as he shook Kerney’s hand. “How sure are you that this Spalding woman is at the cabin?”

“It’s nothing more than a guess,” Kerney said.

Suazo nodded and raised his chin at the mesa across the river. Flat-topped, with a wide band of sandstone that ran horizontally along the base, it was capped with rock.

“We’ll skirt that mesa through a side canyon,” he said. “The trail is good for a spell, but then it gets rough. Keep an eye out for rattlers. We’ve got plenty of them.”

On the ride in, they followed a jeep trail that was much too rocky to accommodate a horse trailer. They saw signs of deer, bear, and mountain lion along the rocky trail cut.

Suazo briefed Kerney on Kim Dean’s cabin. “It’s on a little spit of high ground at the end of a small canyon near a clear spring,” he said. “There’s a cleft behind it where the trees thin out, but it would be a damn near impossible climb to the top. The cabin faces the canyon mouth, so we better go in on foot.”

“Is there any cover and concealment?” Kerney asked.

Suazo reined in his horse where the jeep trail petered out. “Some mountain mahogany, a few cottonwoods and box elders, some pinons and junipers. We can leave the horses at a sandstone chute just outside the canyon, and get fairly close on foot without being seen. But the last quarter mile beyond a rock slide is all meadow, part of it fenced. If Spalding is there, she should see us coming.”

Kerney swatted a mosquito. “Does she have a back door out?”

“If she can climb the cleft, she does,” Suazo said. “But it would take her deep into the back country, miles from anywhere. Outsiders who go in there often get lost and some don’t ever come out.”

He pointed at the rimrock mesa six hundred feet above their heads. “We’ll ride single file from here. The cabin was originally an old line camp on two sections surrounded by state trust land. Hadn’t been used for years until Dean bought it and fixed it up. Got it dirt cheap, according to county records.”

They moved slowly ahead, climbing the mesa, until the horses started lunging and stumbling on the trail, kicking up stones and puffs of gray dust. They dismounted and finished the ascent on foot, pulling the animals along.

At the top, they paused and sipped water from Suazo’s canteen. Kerney could see Hermit’s Peak, fifty miles distant, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Beyond, the Colorado Rockies were dense and black against the horizon.

Suazo remounted and Kerney followed suit. They rode down an easy switchback trail off the mesa, cut across a dry streambed, and stopped at the sandstone chute at the mouth of the canyon.

“You don’t sit a horse like a city cop,” Suazo said as he swung out of the saddle.

Kerney dismounted and pulled his rifle out of the scabbard. “I’ve been riding some recently.”

“You’re thinking Spalding’s armed and dangerous?” Suazo asked as he reached for his rifle.

Kerney studied recent boot prints in the sand. They were small, the right size for a woman. “Best to err on the side of caution. But my hunch that she’d be here looks like it was a pretty good guess.”

“Let’s go find out for sure,” Lucky said as he started into the canyon.

From behind a pinon tree, Suazo covered Kerney’s back, as he ran zigzag across the meadow toward the cabin. A redtail hawk screeched out of a pine tree, and Kerney looked up to see the figure of a woman climbing the cleft in the canyon wall.

He motioned Suazo forward, skirted the cabin, laid his rifle aside, and started up the cleft.

“There’s no way out, Spalding,” he yelled. “Climb down.”

Spalding shook her head and kept moving. Kerney paused for a better look at her. She carried a backpack strapped to her shoulders and had a canteen on her hip. He didn’t see a weapon. He glanced back at Suazo, who’d rounded the cabin and pointed at an outcropping twenty feet above Spalding’s head.

“One round,” he called out.

Suazo got the message and fired once. The round tore into an outcropping and showered rock fragments down on Spalding, who froze momentarily.

“Come down,” Kerney ordered. “Do it now.”

Spalding shook her head and started climbing again.

Kerney went up the split, using footholds where he could find them. Spalding cleared the outcropping before he could reach her and disappeared from sight. He looked down at Suazo, eighty feet below, with his rifle aimed and ready.

“Where is she?” he called.

“Standing on the ledge, staring at me,” Suazo said. “She can’t go any farther. It’s slick rock from there to the top.”

“Any weapons?”

“Nothing in her hands,” Suazo answered. “I think she wants to jump.”

“If she moves toward the edge, blow her fucking head off,” Kerney yelled.

“She’s at the edge now.” Suazo raised his sights a bit, but held his fire.

Kerney reached for the lip of the outcropping, and felt Spalding’s boot come down hard on the fingers of his left hand. She looked down at him, red-faced and angry.

He pulled his hand free, found a crevice for his foot, swung up and over the ledge, kicked out a leg, and knocked Spalding back. He scrabbled to his feet, spun her around, and pushed her hard against the slick rock wall.

Spalding yelled in pain and slammed her boot down on Kerney’s instep. She turned, and broke for the edge of the outcropping. Kerney grabbed for her with his injured hand but couldn’t hold on. He lunged and caught her around the waist as she stood staring down at the barrel of Suazo’s rifle. He pulled her back to safety.

He put her facedown on the outcropping, planted his knee on her neck, cuffed her using his uninjured hand, and raised her to a sitting position, holding on tight to the cuffs.

She turned and looked at him. Her nose and forehead were scraped raw and bleeding, and her eyes were riveted on Kerney’s face.

“How are you going to get us off this ledge?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I’m handcuffed, and your hand looks broken.”

Kerney’s left hand ached badly. Except for the thumb, his fingers were swollen. He tried to move them, and pain shot up his arm. He wondered how many Spalding had broken. He tried to wiggle his wedding band off his finger with his thumb, but it wouldn’t budge.

“We’ll use rope and rig a sling.”

“You’re an interesting bastard,” Spalding said. “Blow my fucking head off, indeed. How could you possibly know that would make me hesitate?”

“Call it a lucky guess,” Kerney said.

“Seriously,” Spalding said, “how did you know?”

“I read your diary,” Kerney replied.

Above him, the redtail hawk swooped across the canyon, skimmed above the far rim, and veered out of sight.