Dead or Alive (19 page)

“Andy will jump at the chance to put a shield in your hand. I'll even bet you a steak dinner that, before this is over, he'll offer you a permanent position.”

“We're not about to move away from the Rez. Not yet, anyway.”

“That's your call to make,” Kerney replied.

“You haven't asked for details about what went down at the S.O.”

“I don't need to. Paul Hewitt called me, told me he'd resigned and was putting in his retirement papers, and mentioned what he thought might happen to you as a result. From what he said about the slacker the county commission appointed as the interim sheriff, I figured you'd turn in your walking papers sooner or later.”

Clayton laughed. “Tell me truthfully, did you call in a favor from Chief Baca to get him to agree to hire me?”

“If that had been necessary, I might have,” Kerney replied. “But you don't need a leg up; your record speaks for itself. See you tonight.”

 

 

The following morning, Kevin Kerney and Clayton Istee arrived in Andy Baca's spacious office at the Department of Public Safety building on Cerrillos Road.

After greeting his visitors, Andy perched on the edge of his big oak desk, built for a predecessor years ago by convicts at the old penitentiary before it erupted into a murderous riot, and studied his visitors.

Kerney and Clayton sat on the leather couch facing the desk and waited him out.

“We have evidence of one sort or another that links Larson to a whole slew of crime scenes,” Andy finally said. “From the attack on the corrections officer, to a kid on the schoolbus who saw him walking along the highway just north of Gallegos where the pickup truck was stolen from the Dripping Springs Ranch two days ago, we've got solid physical evidence, substantial eyewitness accounts, and excellent circumstantial evidence. What we don't have is a single sighting of Larson or the stolen Dripping Springs vehicle during the last forty-eight hours.”

He picked up two thick case files, brought them to the large coffee table in front of the couch, and plopped them down. “That's everything we've got on Larson, including the crime scene investigations, and all the field interviews and interrogations from every participating law enforcement agency in New Mexico and West Texas. The page count is just slightly less than
War and Peace
but we're adding to it every day.”

Kerney lifted one of the bulky files wrapped with thick rubber bands. “Well, by volume it certainly does show a good-faith effort to catch him.”

“And isn't that just hunky-dory,” Andy replied sarcastically as he sat in an easy chair at the side of the coffee table. “I have over two dozen officers and investigators spread out over the northeastern quadrant of the state, trying to get a line on Larson. As you know, once you get outside of the towns, villages, and settlements, it's remote, isolated, and largely unpopulated country up there. I could put two hundred officers in the field and it would still take months to cover all the ground. We can't really be sure that Larson is still even in New Mexico.”

“What do you want us to do?” Clayton asked.

Andy nodded at the case files on the conference table. “First, read the case files and get up to speed. Second, target any gaps in the investigation needed to be filled in, people who need to be interviewed again, and do the necessary follow-up. Talk to the lead investigators on the various cases to see if there are any loose ends that might give us a clue to Larson's whereabouts. I want you two operating independently from the task force. But coordinate with it as needed and keep me personally informed of your activities.”

“Okay,” Clayton said.

Andy went to his desk, returned with two special investigator shields, and handed one each to Clayton and to Kerney.

Kerney weighed the shield in his hand. “From what I can see, Larson is spiraling more and more out of control with each fresh kill. He's become totally erratic and unpredictable. I think we need to dig into his personal history to get a handle on him.”

“And completely bypass the existing investigations?” Andy asked.

“Not at all,” Kerney answered. “We'll analyze both the historical and the current facts.”

“Okay,” Andy said. “What else?”

“If we turn up anything of value,” Clayton said, “I want in on the hunt.”

Kerney nodded in agreement.

Andy looked hard at both men. Because of Larson, he had lost an excellent young officer, Kerney had lost a young friend and partner, and Clayton's boss, Paul Hewitt, a fine man and a super cop, was now totally dependent upon his wife and caregivers for every aspect of his continued existence. It was ugly all the way around.

“Personal vendettas cloud judgments,” he cautioned.

“Don't worry about me, Chief Baca,” Clayton replied. “If I find Larson, I promise to bring him back, dead or alive.”

“Me too,” Kerney chimed in.

Andy shook his head in mock dismay. “I've never hired a father and son act—I mean team—before. I hope I'm not making a big mistake. Stand up so I can swear you two in.”

Kerney and Clayton got to their feet, raised their hands, and took the oath of office as special investigators with the New Mexico State Police.

At his desk, Andy signed the commission certificates and asked his secretary to send in a lieutenant who would take Kerney and Clayton to have official photo identifications made, get department weapons and equipment issued, have vehicles assigned, and qualify with their weapons at the range.

“I'll have an empty nearby office set up for your use when you get back,” he added, “and my secretary will make sure you have any and all support and assistance you need.”

“Let's get started,” Kerney said as a young female lieutenant in a crisp uniform knocked and entered the office.

“Good hunting,” Andy said as the lieutenant ushered Clayton and Kerney out.

 

 

Craig Larson woke up lying on a Navajo rug in a pool of vomit. He pushed himself to a sitting position and tried to figure out where he was, but his spinning head and fuzzy vision made it hard to focus. He rolled away from the pool of puke, closed his eyes, and tried to think. All he could concentrate on was a pounding ache in his head that made him want to scream.

Slowly he opened his eyes, sat up again, and recognized the hunting lodge living room. There were two empty Scotch bottles on the end table next to the leather couch. The bolt-action Weatherby he'd used to bring down Ugly Nancy sat on the fancy Mexican tile-top coffee table. On the opposite side of the room, the big-screen television had a bullet hole in it. Larson tried to think of what had made him want to kill the TV, but he drew a blank. There must have been something on the tube he really didn't like.

He got to his feet, went to the kitchen, soaked his head in the sink, and sucked down water from the faucet. Partially revived, he sat at the kitchen table and tried to sort out what he'd done before he started hitting the sauce. As far as he could recollect, he'd walked across the mesa, fetched the truck, driven Ugly's body to the water tank, dumped it, and returned to the lodge.

Just to make sure he didn't dream it all up, Larson looked out the kitchen window. The truck was there all right, parked next to the propane tank, baking in the harsh light of a blazing afternoon summer sun. He mixed up a can of frozen orange juice concentrate from the freezer and started a pot of fresh coffee. The stove clock read 1:10.

While the coffee brewed, he slugged down some orange juice, gobbled some aspirin from the bathroom medicine cabinet, brought the clock radio from the bedroom into the kitchen, and plugged it in. With the TV out of commission, he'd have to rely on the radio to stay updated on the manhunt.

He poured hot coffee into a mug, sipped it, fiddled with the dial, and found five AM stations but only static on the FM band. Of the AM stations, three were playing country music, one was broadcasting a canned talk radio show, and one was a pulpit for an evangelical Christian preacher asking for money.

The noise hurt his head. Larson turned off the radio, washed down more aspirin with orange juice, and considered what to do. He'd originally planned to torch the lodge and burn the truck before leaving in Ugly's Subaru, but smoke from a fire like that would be seen for miles and draw a lot of attention in a big hurry.

As he abandoned that idea, he walked to the bathroom, stripped off his clothes, and stood under a hot shower. He needed to move on before someone came looking for Ugly, and find a place where he could hide out for a couple more days until he was sure the manhunt had fizzled out.

He toweled off. If he recalled correctly, he'd seen a laptop in Ugly's office at the ranch headquarters. One of the tricks he'd used when he first started running from the law was to research houses for sale on the Internet. Because real estate agents posted so much information about and so many photographs of properties on websites, it was easy to find vacant houses to case and break into for a night. He decided to drive back to the ranch house, surf the Internet, and see what he could turn up.

Larson dressed, went to the kitchen, raided the cupboards for packaged and canned food, and put it all in a pillowcase. He did the same with whiskey from the liquor cabinet and carried everything to the Subaru. He transferred his money and jewelry stash from the truck to the car, went back inside the lodge, unwrapped all the freezer food from the refrigerator, and spread it throughout the house. Then he scattered dry cereal, sugar, crackers, flour, and rice on the floors, topped it off with the contents of several cans of tomato sauce, opened the doors and windows, and removed all the screens.

By nightfall the building would be crawling with all sorts of insects, birds, snakes, and four-legged critters. If and when the police came looking for Ugly, they would find one godawful mess.

Larson put the weapons and ammunition in the Subaru and took off for the ranch house. He stopped on the mesa and did a quick surveillance on foot just to be sure no surprises awaited him below. Satisfied that all looked okay, he drove down, used Ugly's keys to open the front door, powered up the laptop in her office, and clicked on the Internet icon on the screen. Within minutes he was scrolling down a real estate agency's website listings for homes, land, and ranches in northeastern New Mexico.

Larson found three properties in the Springer area to his liking, but the one that stood out was a small ranch on the Canadian River east of town, off a country road with no close-by neighbors. Larson knew exactly where the property was located, figured he could get there without getting back onto the pavement, and best of all the pictures on the website showed the property to be vacant.

He shut down the computer and went scavenging through the house, found a top-quality sleeping bag, an inflatable air mattress, a high-powered flashlight, a camp stove, a portable battery-operated radio, and all the other gear he would need to stay comfortable for a few days. He supplemented his foodstuffs from the kitchen cabinets, and from the gun cabinet in the living room he added a .357 Colt pistol and a 9mm Glock autoloader to his arsenal, along with a hundred rounds of ammo for each handgun.

After closing all the curtains and drapes, Larson locked up the house and left the ranch feeling upbeat. The place where he was going was remote, but not too far away from several working ranches. After settling in, he would reconnoiter the neighbors to see if he could locate a vehicle to replace Ugly's car when it was time to move on.

Two more days of hiding out should do it, Larson thought with a smile as he fiddled with the car radio and found a country station playing an old Marty Robbins tune. Larson hummed along until he remembered he'd forgotten to chase down Ugly's mare, unsaddle her, and put her in the stable. He slowed the Subaru to turn around but then decided to blow it off. Whoever found the mare and went looking for Ugly Nancy was in for a big surprise.

 

 

Since the day Craig Larson escaped from custody and started his rampage, Everett Dorsey, chief of the Springer Police Department, had gotten very little sleep. Along with his three officers, Dorsey had been putting in eighteen-hour days trying to turn up any shred of information from Larson's hometown friends and acquaintances that might help get a fix on the fugitive's whereabouts. An eyewitness had sighted Larson in and near the settlement of Gallegos, less than seventy miles from Springer as the crow flies, which had convinced Dorsey that Larson had been heading home to familiar turf to lie low for a while. But where?

Dorsey had redoubled his efforts to find out where Larson might be hiding by concentrating his attention on the twin brother, Kerry. After three intensive interview sessions he had started to break through when his efforts had been sabotaged by a contract psychologist with the state police sent up from Santa Fe to draw information out of Kerry. But what the shrink didn't know was that while Kerry looked as normal as the next person, he had a few loose screws, wasn't very bright, didn't relate well to strangers, and was as stubborn as a mule when it came to protecting his brother.

Blown off by the psychologist, Dorsey had complained to the major in charge of the state police task force, but to no avail. Condescendingly, the major had advised Dorsey to leave the head stuff to the shrink.

Dorsey eased into his desk chair and rubbed his tired eyes. Housed in a separate three-office suite of the town hall building one block off the main north-south drag, the Springer Police Department headquarters was a dismal place to spend any time. Battered old desks, ancient filing cabinets, and frayed miscellaneous office furniture filled the small rooms. Clutter added to the mess.