Dead or Alive (3 page)

“How come you're wearing my old greasy shirt?” Kerry asked.

“Because I like it,” Larson answered.

Kerry laughed and held the screen door open. “Come on inside.”

The front room of the cottage was neat as a pin. An easy chair faced a flat-screen television that sat on a sturdy handmade stand. A framed photograph on the wall showed Larson and Kerry on horseback when they were kids.

“I need to know who you told that I was staying in Venice,” Larson said as he joined Kerry in the adjacent kitchen. After getting busted, he'd learned that a Crime Stopper tip out of New Mexico had led the cops to him. Only Kerry had known where he was staying.

“No one,” Kerry answered quickly with a shake of his head. He pointed at a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. “You want me to make you a sandwich?”

“No thanks. Somebody knew, Kerry. You told somebody where I was hanging my hat.”

Kerry looked down at his boots.

“Tell me who it was,” Larson demanded.

“Lenny,” Kerry replied slowly.

“I don't know anybody named Lenny.”

“Lenny Hampson. Came here from Texas. He's good people. Does auto body repairs out of his garage at his house. Sometimes we get together and have a beer at Josie's. He heard about you and thinks you're really cool. I told him you were laying low in Venice, but I didn't give him your address or anything like that. I swear to it.”

“I believe you, little brother. Did you tell anybody else?”

“Nope.”

“You're sure?”

“Yep.”

“Do you still have any of that money I sent you?”

Kerry nodded. “I paid cash for my truck like you told me, bought some tools and the new TV, and kept the rest for a rainy day.”

“Let me have it,” Lawson said, figuring Kerry had held on to a good ten thousand dollars. “I'll pay you back.”

Kerry's smile faded.

“What is it?”

“I've been thinking about getting a new deer rifle.”

“Keep what you need for that and loan me the rest,” Larson said.

Kerry's smile returned. He took a flour jar from a cupboard shelf, pulled out three thick wads of twenties and fifties, counted out what he needed for the rifle, and handed Larson the rest.

Larson smiled approvingly. “That's perfect. Now, if I were to visit your friend Lenny, where would I find him?”

Kerry gave Larson directions to Lenny's house. It was right in town, off a highway that ran east to the Oklahoma state line.

“Let me borrow a set of clean clothes, younger brother,” Larson said.

“You could use some fresh duds,” Kerry replied with a chuckle. “I never saw you looking so grubby.”

Larson washed up and picked out a pair of fresh blue jeans with razor-sharp creases, a long-sleeved cowboy shirt, and a pair of boots. Everything fit perfectly. In the front room he took one of Kerry's cowboy hats off a wall rack next to the door, pocketed the money, rolled up the clothes he'd been wearing and put them under his arm, stuck the sidearm in his waistband, and told Kerry that he had to get going. He stretched his free arm around his brother's shoulders, gave him a playful shake, and asked him not to tell anyone he'd stopped by for a visit.

Kerry made a zipped-lips motion with his fingers and smiled in his typical bland, gullible way.

“I'll call you from the road,” Larson said. “Does Lenny have anybody working with him?”

“He sure don't.”

Larson left his brother on the front porch, walked up the lane, got in the Honda, and drove away. It was time to find a new vehicle, and he knew just the man to help him make the switch.

 

 

The garage where Kerry's pal Lenny had his auto body repair shop was along an alley at the back of a house. Parked at the side of the garage were four cars with crumpled fenders, bashed-in front ends, or smashed door panels. Along the backyard fence, a sweet four-wheel-drive pickup with an off-road package was parallel parked.

The sound of a grinder on metal greeted Larson as he got out of the Honda. He spotted Lenny at the back of the garage, working on a rear rocker panel, and walked to him.

When Lenny looked up and saw Larson, he turned off the grinder, lowered his mask, and smiled. “What brings you by here in the middle of the day?” he asked. “You got some work for me?”

Larson had figured Lenny would mistake him for Kerry. He pulled out the semiautomatic and pointed it at Lenny's face. “You've got the wrong twin, my friend.”

Lenny pushed his safety goggles up to his forehead and blinked hard. His face flushed red and he started to breathe rapidly. “What's the gun for?”

“You're kidding, right?” Larson said. Lenny was short. In fact you could call him stubby. He had big round eyes and a thick neck that made him look porky.

Lenny put the grinder down. “I don't even know you, mister.”

Larson half-expected him to start stuttering like Porky Pig. “I'm going to kill you for calling Crime Stoppers on me.”

“I did no such thing,” Lenny blustered, almost stuttering.

“That's a lie, Lenny. Tell me one more lie and you're a dead man. Did you do it for the money?”

Lenny stared into Larson's eyes for a long moment and then slowly nodded. “Times are hard. I needed the cash. Ain't even got it yet.”

Larson smiled. “That's better, Lenny. It's always good to tell the truth.”

“Don't kill me.”

“We'll see about that. How about we get in your truck and go for a ride.”

“Take the truck, the keys are in it.”

“I need a driver, Lenny. Is it gassed up?”

“I filled the tank yesterday.”

“Excellent. Do a good job as my driver and I might let you live. But first, we need to bring that Honda in here and lock it in your garage. Let's go.”

Larson kept Lenny company with the handgun aimed at his chest while the Honda got put away out of sight. In the pickup, Larson stowed the rolled-up clothes under the passenger seat with the shotgun and told Lenny to head east on the state highway toward the town of Clayton.

“Where are you taking me?” Lenny asked. He was sweating through his shirt.

“On a scenic country drive.” Larson cranked up the air conditioner. “How long have you lived in Springer, Lenny?”

“Twelve years come this September. I got a wife and two teenage kids. That's why I needed the money.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Larson said amiably. “Do you know the back roads around here?”

“Some,” Lenny answered.

“Good. I'm gonna tell you what roads to take. If you get me to where I want to go, you may just live to spend that Crime Stoppers' money on your wife and kids. You savvy?”

Lenny gulped and nodded.

About twenty-five miles outside of town, Larson directed Lenny to an unpaved county road that headed south. They followed it to a few miles north of the village of Roy, where it joined up with a two-lane state highway. Past the village a turnoff took them near the famous Bell Ranch and across the Canadian River.

They were traveling in the least populated area of New Mexico, where cows outnumbered the people and traffic was almost nonexistent. A few miles beyond the small Hispanic settlement of Trementia, Larson ordered Lenny off the pavement onto a country road that wandered through a vast basin peppered with red-rock mesas. When the country road turned into a seldom used ranch road, Lenny's pickup truck with the off-road option package handled the washouts, deep ruts, and boulders without difficulty.

Ten miles beyond the cutoff to the ranch headquarters, Larson ordered Lenny to stop the truck. “Get out,” he said when Lenny killed the engine.

“What are you going to do?” Lenny asked in a shaky voice.

The bright afternoon sun bounced off the hood of the truck. It was getting on to the hottest time of the day. There were few clouds in the sky and virtually no shade on the parched basin. Heat waves rising from the ground distorted Larson's view of a few nearby stray cows that had raised their heads at the sound of the truck.

Larson waved the gun at Lenny. “Out.”

Lenny scrambled out of the truck.

Larson slid behind the wheel and opened the driver's-side window. “It's ten miles back to the ranch headquarters cutoff and about twelve miles to Santa Rosa. You get to pick which way you want to go.”

“Don't leave me out here without water,” Lenny pleaded.

“If you'd rather, I'll shoot you now and leave you for the buzzards.”

Lenny shook his head. “Don't do that.”

“My brother likes your company, Lenny, that's the only reason you're still alive. Buy him a beer when you get that Crime Stoppers check.”

Lenny nodded, lowered his eyes, and looked away.

Larson closed the window and drove off. The dust kicked up by the rear tires momentarily obscured Lenny as he stood at the side of the road. Larson thought about backing up and shooting Lenny just to be on the safe side, and he braked the truck to a stop. Through the rearview mirror he saw Lenny take off like a jackrabbit at a dead run cross-country.

He drove on, calculating it would take Lenny a good four or five hours to reach civilization on foot and get to a telephone, if he didn't die from dehydration first. He would have to ditch the truck and find another ride, but he had more than enough time to get to Santa Fe before then.

Larson pressed the accelerator and bounced the truck over some big rocks. If he remembered correctly, he had about another mile of rough road before it smoothed out.

Larson hadn't eaten since breakfast, and it was getting on toward late afternoon. In Santa Rosa, a town that catered to travelers on Interstate 40, a major east-west highway, he stopped, loaded up on snack food and soft drinks, and continued westbound. Traffic was fairly light and the big rigs pushed along at eighty miles an hour or more, only slowing to form convoys in the right-hand lane on the long hill climbs. Most of the passenger cars that passed him were from out of state.

Larson knew the route was heavily patrolled by state police, so he kept his speed at the posted limit and fell in behind a rancher in a big old diesel truck pulling a horse trailer. He tensed up when a black-and-white patrol car came at him traveling in the opposite direction, but it kept going and soon disappeared from sight.

He got off the interstate at the Clines Corner exit and headed north toward Santa Fe. He'd started the day in Albuquerque and was about to make almost a complete circle and end it in Santa Fe. There was no one behind him until he reached the White Lakes turnoff, when headlights appeared in his rearview mirror, coming up fast. He cut his speed in case it was a cop, and was quickly overtaken and passed by a black SUV with Texas plates.

Another set of headlights soon appeared in his rearview mirror, and Larson winced when the car closed and he saw the emergency light bar on the roof and the telltale spotlight mounted on the driver's-side door. On a straight stretch of pavement, Larson slowed slightly to give the cop car a chance to pass, but it hung back. He tried again at the next passing zone but still the cop stayed behind him.

Larson's mind started racing. If Trujillo had survived and the young family had been rescued, that would put the cops on to the Department of Corrections van and the Honda, but not Lenny's truck. Had some cowboy with a cell phone on his way back to the ranch picked up Lenny in the desert and called the cops? He groaned in disgust at himself. He should have killed them all.

He checked the rearview mirror, trying to see if the cop was talking on his radio, but he couldn't make anything out. If it was a tail and the cop had called for backup, somewhere up ahead there was sure to be a swarm of police blocking the highway. He decided to get off the pavement to see what the cop would do.

He crossed the bridge that spanned the railroad tracks near the village of Lamy, flashed his turn signal, and made a left onto a ranch road. He drove slowly for a quarter mile, constantly checking the rearview mirror for any sign of the cop car. The road behind remained empty, but that didn't mean anything.

Where the ranch road divided, he took the right fork, which dipped into a canyon and rose toward a house that sat on the crest. He topped out to find a truck and small SUV parked in front of the house. A horse barn with a corral stood about a quarter mile across a grassy field, and dirt tracks traveled up a small hill toward a big piñon tree. In the canyon below there was no cop car or sign of dust kicked up by tires.

Larson decided to switch vehicles. He pulled to a stop, honked the horn, got out, and rang the front doorbell. After waiting a minute, he rang again. When nobody answered, he checked the SUV and truck, only to find them locked.

Larson figured the ranch belonged to one of those rich easterners who liked to play part-time cowboy while the wife shopped Santa Fe. He smashed a glass patio door with the handgun and went looking for car keys. He snatched them from a wall rack in the mudroom just off the kitchen and came outside just as a pickup truck came down the dirt track.

He stuck the car keys in his pocket, hid the weapon behind his leg, and waved as the truck skidded to a stop. A perturbed-looking cowboy in his twenties piled out.

“What are you doing here?” the young man demanded.

“I just stopped by to visit and found that patio door busted,” Larson said, bluffing.

“Hogwash. I was here twenty minutes ago and everything was okay.”

“Well it ain't okay now,” Larson replied as he brought the handgun up and shot the cowboy twice in the chest.