Everyone Dies (5 page)

“I have to take care of Soldier,” he said. “Bury him.”

“I know you do,” Sara said, as she lifted her head and kissed him on the cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“For being who you are,” Sara said, squeezing his hand.

Bobby Trujillo arrived with the backhoe and some chains. Kerney guided him into the barn, and Bobby used the forks of the bucket to lift Soldier’s hindquarters so Kerney could wrap a chain around the animal and secure it to the bucket. They repeated the process at Soldier’s shoulders, then Bobby raised the animal a few inches off the pad and backed slowly out of the barn.

Under the bloody mess, Kerney could see the third flattened bullet embedded in the concrete, but retrieving it would have to wait until everything got cleaned up.

“Where do you want the horse to go?” Bobby asked, when Kerney came out of the barn.

“I’ll take care of it,” Kerney said, “if you’ll let me borrow the backhoe.”

Bobby nodded and climbed down.

“I’ll follow you in the truck,” Sara said.

Kerney pulled himself into the cab, raised the backhoe, swung the machine around, and started for the rutted ranch road that led to the ridge top. He stared down at Soldier’s stiff legs and exposed innards and looked quickly away to force down his anger.

Sara caught up with him in the truck as he climbed the ridge. He topped out and found a spot off the ranch road where a massive old pinon tree stood near a fair-sized boulder. He lowered Soldier to the ground, unchained him, and dug a deep trench. He used the forks of the hoe to nudge Soldier into the trench, put the chains away, and began covering up the hole.

Sara stood by Kerney’s truck with moist eyes studying the intense expression on Kerney’s face, thinking how hard it had to be for him to maintain his composure. Under much more tragic circumstances, he’d done this before when his parents had been killed in a head-on traffic accident while traveling to meet him at the Albuquerque airport upon his return from ’Nam. He’d placed his military decorations in their caskets, dug their graves by hand, and buried them in a beautiful grove of trees on Dale Jennings’s ranch, where his parents had lived and worked for many years. Surely, that memory had to be coursing through his mind.

She watched him dig out the boulder, move it to the grave site, and place it on top of the mound of dirt. She could see his stiff hands working the levers and the hard set of his jaw as he packed and smoothed the earth around the rock.

It was a lovely spot to put Soldier to rest, with a view of the expansive ridge-top pasture land and the surrounding mountain vistas.

Sara thought about the new set of military decorations she’d requested and received through official Army channels to replace the ones Kerney had buried with his parents so many years ago. They were in her suitcase. Kerney knew nothing about them. She planned to give them to him after the birth of their baby. Not for Kerney to keep, but to pass on to his son. Now, more than ever, it felt like the right thing to do.

He waved to her that he had finished, spun the backhoe around, and started for the ranch road. Sara followed as Kerney moved slowly down the ridge. The baby kicked her hard in the stomach.

She placed her hand on her belly. “I know you’re there, little one,” she said softly.

Ramona Pino met up with Sergeant Cruz Tafoya at the end of the driveway to a two-million-dollar estate in the hills behind Tesuque. Stout and balding with a scraggly black mustache and a toothy grin, Cruz greeted her with a quick nod of his head. He was wearing a Kevlar vest over his white cowboy shirt.

“So Larsen’s armed and dangerous,” he said.

“Armed at least,” Ramona replied.

“Same thing,” Tafoya said. “Is he a credible suspect?”

“We won’t know until we talk to him,” Ramona said. “But from what the girlfriend told me, he left home in plenty of time to kill Potter before heading off to work.”

“Well, let’s do it,” Tafoya said. “Larsen got a phone call while he was here and told the estate manager he had to bid on a gardening job at a neighbor’s house and would be back later to finish up. His tools are still here. The road dead ends on the hill behind us, and Larsen’s truck is parked at the last house. Put on your vest and follow me.”

“Let’s hope he’s there,” Ramona said. “He may have been tipped off that we’re looking for him.” She popped the trunk of her unit and strapped on her body armor.

“By the girlfriend?” Tafoya asked.

“Yeah,” Ramona replied.

“Is she really a girl?” Cruz asked.

“From the top of her curly head right down to her little red toenails. She’s a marvel of modern medicine.”

Cruz shook his head in disbelief. “Santa Fe, the city different.”

The hilltop house had a steep driveway that curved to a level parking area overlooking the road. Larsen’s truck was in plain view in front of a three-car garage. The garage doors were closed and no other vehicles were present. Ramona left her unit angled to block the driveway and walked up the driveway to Cruz, who’d positioned his unit behind Larsen’s truck. Together they walked up stone steps through a patio door and into a large courtyard, where a fountain of cut polished stone columns trickled water into a bed of pebbles. An L-shaped portal covered both the entrance and a large living room with glass doors and windows that looked out on the courtyard.

They stood on either side of the oversized hacienda-style double doors. Cruz rang the bell while Ramona kept her eye out for movement inside the living room. The doorbell brought no response.

Tafoya tried again with the same result. “See anything happening inside?”

“Nothing.”

Tafoya unholstered his sidearm. “Perimeter search,” he said, pointing the direction he wanted her to go.

Ramona took out her weapon and began her sweep. Staying as concealed as possible, she checked every door and window, finished the circle, and met up with Tafoya at the back of the house, where a patio provided a spectacular view of the Jemez Mountains to the west and the Tesuque Valley below.

Ramona shook her head to signal no contact. Beyond the valley she could see the soaring roof of the Santa Fe Opera and the white tents of the adjacent flea market that bordered the highway.

“Some place,” Tafoya said.

“There’s a trail off the master bedroom door that leads up towards the mountains,” Ramona said. “I saw some fresh footprints.”

Cruz flipped open his cell phone and dialed the number of the alarm company he’d written down from the sign posted at the end of the driveway. He identified himself, gave his shield number, and asked for information about the owners and any occupants, employees, or personnel with authorized access to the property.

He listened and shrugged as though what he’d heard was no big surprise. “Can you let us inside?” he asked, nodding at Ramona as he listened to the response.

“Good deal,” he said as he disconnected. “The alarm system is satellite linked. They’re gonna shut it down and open the front door for us. The owners are in California, nobody is in residence, and the grounds are maintained by a landscape company. Larsen had no reason to be here.”

They did a room by room search, found the house empty, and returned to the patio.

“Seems like our boy is on the run,” Tafoya said, holstering his weapon.

“Do we call out the troops?” Ramona asked, as she pivoted to look at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that filled the eastern horizon, most of it heavily forested wilderness roughly fifty miles long and twenty-five miles wide.

“Yep,” Cruz said, reaching for his handheld. “He’s a credible suspect now.”

Four hours into his trek, Kurt Larsen stopped to get his bearings. After leaving the foothills, the trail had taken him deep into the forest, up a steep grade, over thick underbrush, and into a dense stand of pine trees where he had no line of sight to any familiar landmarks.

Not that he’d recognize anything but the highest peaks of the mountains. Since coming back from ’Nam, Larsen had never set foot in a forest. The jungle had hammered into his mind the dangers of closed-in spaces, which made him crazy with anxiety.

He waited until his breathing slowed, then listened for any sound that would tell him he was being followed. All he heard were birds chirping, squirrels scampering, wind whistling through the trees, and the dull whine of a jet passing overhead.

He looked up the trail, if you could call it that, and all he saw were more trees ascending a punishing slope. He hadn’t encountered anyone since entering the mountains and hadn’t seen any signs of recent use, such as footprints or litter. Maybe it was a hiking trail the forest service had shut down years ago, or an old game trail.

He sat with his back against a tree and tried to calm down. He’d skedaddled right after Mary Beth’s phone call with nothing but his handgun, a pocket knife, and his lunch. He opened the bag, peeled the meatloaf off the slices of bread, and chewed them slowly to let the juices wet his dry mouth. He would need to find water before too long.

Did the cops really think he’d killed Potter? Sure, he’d talked about beating the shit out of him for emotionally messing up Mary Beth. But that was in group sessions that were supposed to be confidential. Did Barbero fink on him? Did Mary Beth tell the cops he had a gun?

Larsen knew he wasn’t supposed to own a handgun. But law or no law, it made him feel safe. So what if he was mentally ill? He wasn’t psychotic or something like that, and nobody was gonna take his right to bear arms away from him. Not after what he’d done for his country.

He took the weapon, a Glock 9mm semiautomatic, out of the holster and checked the magazine. The weight of it in his hand felt reassuring.

He put it away, rewrapped the bread slices in wax paper to save for later, and started up the incline. If he just kept climbing he would eventually break through the timberline and get a bearing on the ski basin, where he was sure there was water.

The eggbeater sound of helicopter rotors made him freeze. He hated that sound. Startled, he could feel the panic building. He scanned a patch of sky through a break in the trees looking for the chopper, waiting for incoming enemy mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades to start blowing through the canopy, waiting to get knocked off his feet and feel shrapnel take a three-inch slice out of his left triceps.

Hyperventilating and sweating like a pig, he scrambled off the trail looking for cover, rolled over a dead log, and took out the Glock. The sound of the chopper receded only to be replaced by the crunching of feet through the underbrush.

Come on, you slope gook motherfuckers.

He saw the shape of a man dressed in black, just like a North Vietnamese dink. Saw the muzzle of his automatic weapon.

Where the fuck was his unit?

Three more shapes emerged from the shadows. Larsen squeezed off two rounds at the point man. Bark flew off the tree above the man’s head, and the figure dropped to the ground. The three remaining slopes disappeared in the underbrush. He could hear them crawling toward him.

He screamed profanities at them and they answered with heavy fire from automatic weapons, the slugs pulverizing the decayed log, blowing through it. He belly-crawled backward toward a rock outcropping, firing two more rounds. Above him the chopper’s rotors swayed tree branches and swirled pine needles and dirt into the air.

Larsen saw the point man rise to a kneeling position, saw him bring the weapon to his shoulder. He twisted his body and rolled toward the safety of the rocks.

The last thing he felt were bullets shattering his back.

M idday turned hot, so Sara sat in the truck with the engine running and the air conditioning on waiting for Kerney to finish his investigation and take her home. The baby had shifted position and was now pressing against her bladder, making her feel a constant need to pee. On top of that, her feet were swollen, her backside hurt, and all she wanted to do was stretch out and take a nap.

Before retreating to the truck, she’d watched Kerney clean up the mess in the barn, dig out the third bullet imbedded in the concrete slab, and dust for fingerprints around Soldier’s stall. Now, he stood next to the patrol car talking to Russell Thorpe, who’d finished taking statements from the construction crew and was loading all the collected evidence into the trunk of his unit.

Sara slipped her shoes off and looked up to see Kerney on his way to the truck. It was wonderful to see him walking without a limp. Some years before she met him, a gunfight with a drug dealer had shattered his right knee and blown a hole in his stomach. The original artificial knee had recently been replaced with a new high-tech model that smoothed out his gait, gave him greater mobility, and squared his shoulders a bit, now that he no longer favored his bum leg.

He got in the truck and gave her the once-over. “I’d better get you home,” he said.

“I do need to put my feet up,” Sara said.

“Sorry it took so long.”

Sara shook her head. “Not to worry. I’m fine.”

At the house, after a late lunch that Kerney prepared, Sara stretched out on the bed and fell asleep for what seemed to be a few minutes. The baby kicked hard and woke her. She went looking for Kerney and found a note from him on the refrigerator. He’d been gone for over an hour, called out to another shooting. This time, a suspect in the murder case had been killed by officers who’d tracked him into the national forest.

She stared at Kerney’s scribbling, wondering if he’d ever have any time for her before the baby was born. She had combined some annual and maternity leave to give them a mere six weeks together before she was scheduled to report back to duty.

She felt a contraction, grabbed her stomach, and held her breath. Dammit, was she going into labor? Would she have to call for an ambulance to take her to the hospital? Anger about Kerney’s absence welled up and made her teary-eyed in frustration. This supposedly happy time in her life was really starting to suck.