Dead or Alive (22 page)

“Other than the psychologist's theory, is there any reason to believe that Kerry is protecting or harboring Larson?” Kerney asked.

“No, but Everett Dorsey, the Springer police chief, thinks Kerry would have a pretty good idea where his brother might go to hide out if he's still in the area.”

“That makes sense,” Kerney said.

“Casados is going to take another crack at Kerry today,” Vanmeter added.

“We know Larson has no other blood relatives in the area,” Clayton said, “but what about old friends and acquaintances? Would they have any ideas about Larson's whereabouts?”

“Dorsey is working a list of locals who knew the Larson brothers before Craig left town. Former friends and folks they went to school with, people they once worked for, old school teachers and coaches. It's a long shot.”

Kerney pushed back his chair and dropped some bills on the table to cover the coffees and tip. “But worth pursuing, given the fact that the Lazy Z once belonged to the family of Craig Larson's teenage girlfriend. His familiarity with the ranch is probably one of the factors that drew him there.”

He glanced at Clayton. “We need to visit with Chief Dorsey and take a look at the Lazy Z crime scene.”

“Except for the vermin-infested hunting lodge on top of the mesa, there's not much left to see,” Vanmeter said as he nodded at a file folder in Kerney's hand. “The briefing packet I passed out this morning brings you up to speed on what happened there.”

Kerney stood. “And it does so very nicely, Frank. But I want to take a gander for myself.”

Vanmeter smiled and shrugged. “According to Chief Baca, you both have carte blanche.”

“We won't step on any toes unless we have to,” Clayton said as he got to his feet.

Vanmeter's smiled widened. “That's not the back-channel traffic I heard about what you did when you departed the Lincoln County S.O., Agent Istee.”

Clayton smiled back at Vanmeter. “Those were bruised egos I left behind, Major, not sore toes.”

Vanmeter laughed as he followed Kerney and Clayton to the parking lot.

 

After dark, Larson had transferred his stuff to Pettibone's Buick, driven Tami's SUV to her office, left it in the reserved space at the back of the building, and put the magnetic signs on the doors. He'd forgotten to bring along Tami's vanity license plate, so he left the Subaru plate on the Yukon and walked back to the motel, where he spent the night in Pettibone's room. In the morning, he'd risen early, got breakfast at a fast-food drive-through window, and parked the Buick back in the lot at the motel so he could watch what was happening at the nearby budget lodge where all the cops were staying.

Things were quiet at first, but soon officers started coming out the front entrance and driving away in their patrol vehicles. Along with cops in civvies, there were cops in at least five or six different kinds of uniforms.

Between bites of his breakfast egg-and-bacon sandwich, Larson used his finger as a handgun and pretended he was blowing them away as they hurried to their patrol cars. He figured with a real gun, he could've taken down three, maybe four of them, before drawing any fire.

Overnight, his plan to assassinate cops had changed from an absolute thing he was going to do to a definite maybe. The plan hadn't lost its appeal; he just needed to do more head work before taking that first shot.

A bald-headed cop in a state police uniform and two men in blue jeans and cowboy boots with semiautomatics strapped to their belts came out the sliding glass motel doors just as Larson was about to drive away. There was something familiar about the taller of the two men wearing civvies. Larson checked him out carefully as he walked toward an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria. Damned if it wasn't the cop who'd been the police chief in Santa Fe when he had first been busted.
What was his name?

He'd never seen the other plainclothes cop who was getting into his own unmarked car. He was younger, a few inches shorter, and definitely Indian looking, with dark hair that covered his ears. Larson didn't recognize him.

He watched the two unmarked cars enter traffic and turn toward the interstate on-ramps. Just for the hell of it, he decided to follow them for a while to see where they were going. Watching how they operated might give him some good ideas on how he should kill them.

 

 

Ever since Tami's husband had walked out on her late last year for a twenty-five-year-old bimbo barmaid who lived just across the state line in Trinidad, Colorado, Claudia Tobin had talked to her daughter on the telephone every day. Tami would mostly call in the evenings from home, but sometimes she'd call from her office or from the car on her cell phone when she was out and about.

When Tami didn't call, which happened very rarely, Claudia, a widow who now lived in Albuquerque and worked as a part-time home health aide to supplement her Social Security check, always called her. Last night, she'd tried repeatedly to reach Tami without success, and she'd gone to bed worried about her daughter.

Very early in the morning Claudia again called Tami's home, work, and cell phone numbers. After getting no response other than voice mail and answering machines, she called the Raton Police Department and reported her daughter as missing.

A polite-sounding officer gathered some basic information about Tami and, upon learning of the recent dissolution of her marriage, suggested it might be possible that Tami had gone out of town on a mini vacation or business trip, or might have spent the night with a friend.

In no uncertain terms, Claudia told him that she had a very close relationship with her only child and would have known if Tami had decided to do any of those things.

The officer promised to send a patrol vehicle to Tami's house and place of employment for a welfare check and advised Claudia not to get too worried. He told Claudia that people sometimes act out of character or impulsively after a major upheaval in their personal lives, and that Tami was probably perfectly all right. Before disconnecting, he took Claudia's phone number, said they would have Tami call her once they made contact, and once again told her not to worry.

Claudia wasn't having any of it. She called in sick, showered and dressed quickly, got into her ten-year-old imported subcompact coupe, and started the two-hundred-mile road trip on Interstate 25 to Raton.

 

 

While serving as the Santa Fe police chief, Kerney had met Everett Dorsey several times during legislative hearings on a concealed-carry bill that eventually passed and was signed into law. Kerney had opposed the bill along with the vast majority of top cops in the state. Dorsey had spoken in favor of it.

A brief conversation with Dorsey had left Kerney with the clear impression that the man was marking time as the Springer police chief until he could retire and pull a full pension.

He slowed to a stop in front of the Springer municipal building and in the rearview mirror watched Clayton glide in behind him. The building was a single-story structure with a brick façade, on a residential street just up from a house that had been converted into the town library. The town hall was sandwiched between the police and fire stations. A lone cop car was parked in front of a walkway that led to a windowless steel door with a “Springer Police Department” sign above it. With Clayton at his side, Kerney tried the door, found it locked, pushed the doorbell, and waited.

Dorsey opened up, let them in, and Kerney introduced him to Clayton. For a moment, they stood and talked in the small, dingy front office, which was badly in need of a paint job and some housecleaning; then Dorsey ushered them into his equally shabby private office.

Kerney asked how the interviews with Craig Larson's former friends and associates were going and Dorsey shook his head.

“All the publicity has made people around here tight-lipped,” he said. “Folks that knew him in the old days aren't talking. I don't think they're hiding anything from me. It's more like they don't want to admit any kind of past personal association with a cop killer who has a price on his head.”

The reward for Craig Larson had started at ten thousand dollars after the shooting of Paul Hewitt and had now climbed to twenty-five thousand.

“Major Vanmeter says the psychologist thinks Kerry Larson knows something about his brother's whereabouts,” Clayton said.

Dorsey perched on the edge of the dinged-up surplus desk that dominated his cramped office. “That well may be. I told Vanmeter to send that psychologist packing and leave Kerry to me if he wanted to get anywhere with it, but he wouldn't listen. Kerry suffered brain damage at birth. He looks as normal as anybody, but he isn't real bright, can be as stubborn as a four-year-old, and he's real suspicious when it comes to strangers. I don't see him opening up to a shrink, especially when it comes to his brother.”

“I take it the psychologist knows all this?” Clayton asked.

“I told him so to his face.”

“What if you were allowed to take another crack at Kerry?” Kerney asked. “Could you get him to open up?”

“Possibly, but not with the shrink present,” Dorsey replied.

“I'll talk to Vanmeter,” Kerney said. “Now, before we go out to the Lazy Z, walk us through what you saw when you first arrived on the scene.”

Dorsey grunted in disgust. “You've seen the crime scene photos I took?”

Kerney and Clayton nodded in unison.

“I don't ever want to see anything like that again,” Dorsey said before beginning his narrative.

 

 

Parked a block away from the Springer town hall, Larson watched and waited. Following the two cops from Raton had been a breeze, and although he'd been a little uneasy about driving into Springer, people in their cars and those few ambling down the sidewalks had paid him no mind.

After watching the morning exodus of cops at the motel, he'd expected the town to be crawling with police. But there weren't any fuzz on the streets. Maybe he'd stay better hidden if he broke into some old lady's house right here in town, took her hostage, and just laid low until the pigs gave up and called off the manhunt.

Larson's attention swung back to the two plainclothes cops, who'd left the police department and were about to get in their vehicles. He remembered the older cop's name, Kerney or something like that. They drove away but he didn't follow. Best not to push his luck.

He figured the cops were keeping a close watch on his brother, Kerry, hoping he'd show up. Well, there were a couple of ways to get to Kerry's place the cops didn't know about. Maybe it was time to get his younger brother to help him out. When it came to killing, two shooters would be better than one, and he'd never known Kerry to go against his wishes. Like Jesse and Frank James, the Larson brothers would show Malvo and Muhammad how to do it.

Larson fired up Pettibone's Buick, made a U-turn, and headed for an old, seldom-used dirt road that would take him within a half mile of Kerry's digs.

 

 

Late in the morning, Claudia arrived in Raton and used her own key to let herself into Tami's house, which was located in a foothill subdivision overlooking the small city. Quickly she checked for any signs that her daughter had packed for an out-of-town trip or had left in a hurry. All her clothes were in order, the house was tidy, and nothing seemed disturbed. Stacked in the two-car garage were boxes of Tami's husband's things he'd yet to pick up.

Last month, Claudia had told Tami to have Goodwill come and take it all away. That Tami hadn't done so confirmed Claudia's suspicion that she still wasn't over the SOB.

In the kitchen, the message light on the wall phone blinked. Claudia pushed the play button. All she heard was breathing for a few seconds before the caller hung up. It gave her an eerie feeling.

She tried hard to contain her growing anxiety by telling herself she was just being silly. Maybe the police were right and Tami had spent the night with a new boyfriend or gone to Colorado Springs or Denver for a real estate conference or some such.

Claudia dialed Tami's office and let the phone ring until the message machine clicked on and she heard her daughter's cheery voice say she was out of the office but could be reached on her cell. But she couldn't get a connection when she tried the cell phone number.

Back in her car, Claudia drove to the real estate agency Tami owned. The door was locked. Through the big plate glass window Claudia could see clearly that the front room Tami used as her office was unoccupied.

Tami had no employees, so it wasn't unusual for the building to be locked when she was out showing property or getting new listings. And on the wide open spaces of the northeastern plains, cell phone reception was spotty at best.

At the rear of the building Claudia expected to see an empty space where Tami always parked her Yukon. But to her surprise the SUV
was
there, missing Tami's vanity license plate, “COWGIRL,” which she'd had for almost twenty years.

Claudia had seen enough. With her hands shaking on the steering wheel, she drove directly to the Raton Police Department and told the civilian receptionist that her daughter was in danger and she needed to speak to an officer “right now.”

 

 

Starting with the crime scenes on the mesa, Clayton and Kerney took their time at the Lazy Z. Using the briefing document supplied by Major Vanmeter, they walked through the trashed-out hunting lodge, looked over the pickup stolen from the Dripping Springs Ranch, examined the spot where Nancy Trimble had fallen, shot dead from behind, and then drove to the site where her body had been dumped.