Dead or Alive (13 page)

“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.