Dead or Alive (23 page)

Fingerprints lifted from the lodge, the ranch house, and the stolen truck left no doubt that the brutal rape and deliberate murder of Trimble were the work of Craig Larson.

With the sun at high noon and a hot breeze freshening from the southwest, Kerney and Clayton stood on the porch of the hunting lodge.

“This kill was different,” Kerney said. “He's changing.”

Clayton squinted against the windblown sand. “I don't see it. He shot Officer Ordonez at the roadblock from a distance with a long gun.”

“I would argue that his motive in shooting Ordonez was to escape capture,” Kerney said. “But with Trimble, he first turned her into wounded prey. He's killing for vicious pleasure now and that's an entirely different MO.”

“I figured him to be a head case right from the start.” Clayton glanced at the sky. The clear blue morning had given way to a gritty, dusty afternoon.

“Agreed,” Kerney said. “But I think he's about to take it in a whole new direction.”

“Like what?”

Kerney shook his head. “I don't know. But let's assume he's well provisioned, heavily armed, and is obviously proficient with firearms. That combination scares me. Let's go down to the ranch headquarters and see what we can discover there.”

Clayton reached down and brushed off some red fire ants that had crawled up his pant leg. The stench from the inside of the lodge was nasty. “I could use a change of scenery,” he replied.

 

 

In his cubicle, Sergeant Joe Easley, a twelve-year veteran of the Raton Police Department, read the note that had been brought to him by a secretary. Claudia Tobin was in the reception area waiting to speak to someone about her missing daughter.

From the daily logs, Easley knew that officers had already gone to Tami Phelan's home and place of business. Although no contact with Tami had been made, nothing suggested any mishap had occurred.

As a longtime cop in a city of under ten thousand people, Joe Easley personally knew by sight or by name virtually every permanent resident of the community. Thus, Claudia Tobin, who'd for years operated a day-care center in Raton before moving to Albuquerque with a husband dying of cancer, was not a stranger to him. Neither were Tami Phelan and her ex-husband, Brodie.

Until Brodie had moved to Trinidad to shack up with a very hot-looking young barmaid, he'd played second base on Easley's softball team, and Tami was a member of Easley's Downtown Rotary Club, which met monthly at Suzy's Sizzlin' Steakhouse.

Joe Easley also knew that since being dumped by Brodie, Tami had been throwing herself at every eligible male in town—and there weren't that many of them—between the ages of twenty-five and sixty, almost as an act of revenge for being done wrong. Or was it an act of self-loathing? Whatever it was, she was most likely shagging somebody in or around the area, which accounted for her being missing.

Furthermore, since the sighting of Craig Larson in the northeast part of the state, there had literally been hundreds of calls to his department reporting strangers resembling Craig Larson lurking about, hiding in the foothills, camped out at a nearby state park, breaking into vacant houses, stalking women and children, cruising by in cars, or eating in the restaurants and registering in the motels near the interstate.

Each and every call had been thoroughly checked out and found to be unsubstantiated. Easley had taken to thinking of the undercurrent of panic that gripped the community as the “Craig Larson Bogeyman Days.”

A distraught-looking Claudia Tobin got to her feet when Easley came into the reception area.

“Mrs. Tobin,” Easley said pleasantly. “Good to see you. I understand that you're concerned about Tami.”

Tobin nodded. Easley had remembered her as once being a good-looking older woman with some flesh on her bones. Now she was skinny to the point of seeming anorexic, her dyed blond hair was thinning on top, and she was heavily wrinkled around her mouth and eyes.

“Something terrible has happened to my daughter,” Claudia said. “I just know it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She's not at home, her office is locked, her car was left at work, and her license plate has been removed and replaced with another one.”

Easley's interest level rose a thousand percent. Tami's “COWGIRL” vanity plate was a common sight in Raton. She even billed herself as the “Cowgirl Realtor” in all her print advertising.

“What kind of license plate is on her car now?” he asked.

“It's a New Mexico plate.” Claudia opened her purse and handed Easley a piece of paper. “I wrote it down.”

Joe Easley gave Claudia an approving smile. “That's great. Wait right here. I'll be back in a jiffy.” He paused at the security door. “Would you like some coffee?”

Claudia Tobin smiled weakly. “Yes, please.”

After getting Claudia some coffee, Easley sat at his computer, accessed the Motor Vehicles Division database, and typed in the license number Claudia Tobin had supplied.

In New Mexico, drivers own their license plates, and when Easley got a hit that the plate belonged to Nancy Trimble, the murdered caretaker at the Lazy Z, his eyes widened. He reached for the phone and dialed dispatch.

“I want two officers at Tami Phelan's real estate office right now,” he said. “Have them secure her office and vehicle, and await my arrival. Advise Major Vanmeter of the state police that I have evidence pertaining to the Lazy Z murder investigation and need his assistance at that twenty immediately.”

“Ten-four,” dispatch replied.

 

 

At the Lazy Z Ranch headquarters, Clayton and Kerney went through every room of the rambling house, which was filled with the sort of expensive, oversize Western-motif furnishings favored by rich people from somewhere other than the West. Looking for anything that might have been missed by the investigators and crime scene techs, they dug into nooks and crannies. From what they could tell, except for the probability that Larson had taken weapons, provisions, and some camping gear, nothing else appeared to have been stolen. A wall safe behind a painting in the master bedroom hadn't been tampered with, many valuable rifles and handguns had been left behind, and an unlocked petty-cash box in the office adjacent to the kitchen held over three hundred dollars in currency.

“I wonder why Larson didn't take the money,” Kerney said as he closed the lid to the petty-cash box and watched Clayton power up the office laptop. “Aside from that,” he added, “why did he feel the need to leave? Trimble was dead and out of the way. Nobody else was around. Did something or someone scare him off?”

Clayton shrugged in response as he accessed the Internet and began scanning the most recently visited websites. “What did the medical investigator give as Trimble's estimated time of death?” he asked.

Kerney read it off the briefing document.

Clayton smiled.

“What?” Over Clayton's shoulder, Kerney could see the home page of a northeastern New Mexico real estate company.

“This computer was used hours after Trimble died.” Clayton called up all the web pages that had been recently accessed. “He looked at three rural Springer properties posted for sale. I bet he was surfing for his next hideout.”

“The question is which one he chose,” Kerney said.

Clayton started printing the pages. “The vacant ranch on the Canadian River is the one I'd pick. The other two look occupied.”

Kerney used the office telephone to call the real estate firm. When a man answered, he identified himself as a police officer and asked for directions to the ranch property on the Canadian River.

“It's off a county road a few miles east of Taylor Springs on Highway 56. About three miles in you'll see a ranch road on the left. Take that due west. About four or five miles farther, you'll reach the gate to the property.”

“Thanks.”

“Is there a problem there?” the man asked.

Kerney sidestepped the question. “When was the last time you showed the ranch?”

“About a month ago. There's a small ten-acre inholding on the ranch owned by a family member who refuses to sell, so that's been putting off prospective buyers. The place has been vacant for six months. But it's a multiple listing, so I don't know who else has been showing it.”

“Okay, thanks.” Kerney dropped the office phone in the cradle and said, “Let's go.”

“Where is this place?” Clayton asked as he grabbed the web pages he'd printed.

“Off the highway out of Springer that runs to Clayton, near the Texas state line,” Kerney replied as they hurried to their units.

“Ah, yes,” Clayton said, “that's the town that's named after me.”

“I don't think it was named after you. It's been around a lot longer than you have.”

“Yeah, I know that, but I like to think of it as my town. Actually, it was named for the son of Stephan Dorsey, a former U.S. senator from Arkansas. He built a mansion near the Santa Fe Trail Cimarron Cutoff. I understand it's still standing and owned privately.”

Kerney veered toward his unit. “I didn't realize you were such a font of historical knowledge about New Mexico.”

“I was forced to study white man's history in school,” Clayton replied somberly as he climbed into his vehicle. “To further your education, you might like to know that the town of Clayton got its name in the late nineteenth century. Wasn't that about the time when you were born, old-timer?”

Kerney looked over the roof of his unit and grinned at Clayton. “Just about, wise guy. Just about.”

The vehicles kicked up clouds of dust along the dirt road until they hit the pavement, and more dust flew when they left the highway and rattled their vehicles over the county road to the ranch turnoff. They stopped short of the gate to the ranch property, at the bottom of a small rise in the road that hid them from view.

Clayton joined Kerney in his unit, passed him the pages he'd printed off the real estate website, and pointed to the photograph of the exterior of the ranch house. “If Larson is here, he's got a clear line of fire from the house to the gate. Plus, he's got a high-ground advantage once we enter the property.”

“There's not much cover going in,” Kerney said, flipping to the picture of the barn. “Unless we leave the road, cut the fence behind the barn, drive through, and use the barn as cover to get within striking distance of the house.”

“Then what?” Clayton asked. “Charge the ranch house with our sidearms and shotguns against his high-powered hunting rifles?”

“If he's got a rifle, that wouldn't be a good idea,” Kerney said. “Better we should entreat him to give up.”

Clayton opened the passenger door. “Let me take a look at the tire tracks up ahead before we decide anything.”

“While you do that, I'll call for some backup firepower. Be careful.”

“Always.”

Bent low to stay out of sight, Clayton reached the crest of the small rise in the road, dropped prone to the ground, and belly-crawled in a circle, studying the tire tracks. He returned to Kerney's unit and brushed a layer of dust off his clothing before settling onto the passenger seat.

“Well?” Kerney asked.

“Two vehicles recently went in, but only one came out. The size of the tread marks show that the vehicle still on the property is a compact or sub-compact passenger car. The vehicle that came and went is either a full-size light duty truck or SUV.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. Blowing dust from the ranch road has barely begun to fill in the tread marks.”

“Trimble owned a small Subaru that was missing from the Lazy Z,” Kerney noted.

“Let's assume Larson drove it here,” Clayton replied. “Have you called for backup?”

“Yep, and as a result I had an interesting conversation with a Raton PD sergeant named Joe Easley. He's ten minutes out from our ETA with a state police SWAT team and Frank Vanmeter in tow. Seems Easley found evidence that a missing female real estate agent named Tami Phelan brought a client out here yesterday, and hasn't been seen since. Craig Larson's fingerprints were found all over her vehicle.”

“Let me guess,” Clayton said. “The lady drives a full-size SUV.”

“You got it. A Jimmy Yukon. Which vehicle entered the ranch property first?”

“The passenger car,” Clayton replied.

“So what do you think we have waiting for us up ahead at the ranch—a firefight with Craig Larson, dead bodies, or both?”

“Dead bodies,” Clayton replied solemnly.

“You're probably right.” Kerney gave Clayton a cautionary look. “But we're still going to wait for Sergeant Easley, Frank Vanmeter, and SWAT before we go in.”

Clayton chuckled. “Gee, thanks for looking out for me, Dad.”

Kerney winced. “Ouch. I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Sorry.” Through the rearview mirror Kerney saw a dust cloud on the ranch road, signaling the impending arrival of reinforcements. “Vanmeter and his troops are almost here.”

Some number of police vehicles arrived to disgorge a heavily armed SWAT team of eight officers in full regalia, Major Frank Vanmeter, two uniforms from the Raton PD, and a short, wiry cop wearing jeans, boots, a white shirt, and a Western-cut sport coat, who introduced himself as Joe Easley.

“How did you fellows beat us here?” he asked Kerney as they shook hands.

Kerney nodded at Clayton. “Agent Istee did some cybertracking of Larson on the Internet at the Lazy Z. And you?”