Hermit's Peak (10 page)

Orlando left and Gabe worked until his eyes gave out and his mind was fuzzy. He left his paperwork on the kitchen table and climbed the stairs with the ornate carved banister. At the end of the long hallway he could see light shining under the door to Orlando's room.

Except for Orlando's possessions, Theresa had taken most of the furniture when she'd moved out. Gabe had been replacing it a piece at a time, as he could afford to. He had a television and a couch in the downstairs front room. But the dining room was empty, as was the library, except for the collection of his grandfather's old books. His bedroom contained one double bed, a reading lamp clipped to the headboard, and a dresser he'd picked up at a garage sale. He needed to buy a rug or a picture to hang on the wall.

In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, stripped down to his underwear, and dumped his clothes in the laundry hamper. The alarm clock was on the floor near his bed, next to the telephone. He set it, got under the covers, and was asleep within minutes.

 • • • 

After dinner, Kerney and Sara went back to his apartment. Kerney got the fireplace going, exiled Shoe to the patio, lit some candles, put a Brahms piano concerto on the stereo, and poured some brandy.

They never made it to the bedroom.

“Chilly?” Kerney asked later.

“Just a bit.”

He padded into the bedroom. Lean with a small butt, a slim waist, square shoulders, and a nice chest, Kerney looked very sexy naked.

Their clothes were scattered on the furniture and the floor. They'd certainly been in a hurry; the brandy hadn't been touched.

He came out of the bedroom holding a robe and a heavy flannel shirt. “Your choice.”

Sara took the shirt, slipped it on, picked up her brandy glass, and stretched out on the carpet in front of the fireplace. She felt delightfully ravished and a little weak in the knees.

Kerney joined her on the carpet.

“Take me camping, Kerney,” she said, reaching for Kerney's hand. He had perfectly proportioned fingers.

“Are you burned out on Santa Fe already?”

“I need to wake up to the smell of pine needles and the sight of a New Mexico sunrise.”

“Did you bring your gear?”

“It's in the Cherokee.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Take a guess.”

Kerney nodded. “Give me the morning to get a few things done.”

“That's fine with me. Plan on being late for work.”

“Again?” Kerney asked with a grin.

“Oh, yes.”

Kerney arrived at his office to find a phone message from a detective at the Arcadia PD waiting for him. He called back and spoke to Det. Sgt. George Broom.

“I wish all my assignments were this easy,” Broom said. “The address you gave us for Wanda Knox turned out to be a residential treatment center for addicted mothers. They call it a therapeutic community. It specializes in working with women and their children. It's one of those places that's run sort of like a commune. Kids, pets, and toys everywhere; everybody does chores and goes to group therapy. That sort of stuff.”

“What kind of drugs does Wanda Knox use?” Kerney asked.

“Cocaine. She says Boaz got her started. She's twenty-eight and still a looker, Chief. She used to be a cheerleader in high school. She worked as a secretary in the philosophy department at the university where Boaz was a teaching assistant. That's where she met him. She and the kid started living with Boaz about a year before they
pulled up stakes and moved to New Mexico. She didn't act upset when I told her Boaz had been murdered. I guess the romance soured.”

“Did she ID Rudy?”

“She doesn't know his last name. She said Rudy paid Boaz to give him access to the land where he cut the wood. Does that kind of shit really go on out there? Poaching and stuff like that?”

“All the time. Did you get a description of Rudy?”

“That, and a composite drawing. Rudy is Hispanic, in his mid-to-late thirties, clean shaven, about five foot ten. He's stocky—weighs in at between two-twenty and two-forty pounds—and has brown eyes and brown hair cut long below the ears.”

“That's helpful.”

“Do you want something even better?”

“Are you holding out on me, Sergeant?”

Bloom laughed. “I couldn't resist, Chief. Wanda's kid is a miniature toy car nut. You know, those Hot Wheels you can buy just about anywhere. Lane—that's the kid's name—is eight years old. He told me Rudy drove a dark blue, three-quarter-ton, long-bed Chevy pickup truck, with a winch on the front bumper, and a hydraulic lift mounted in the bed. The kid really knows his vehicles.”

“That narrows the field.”

“You want the license number?”

“Does your sense of humor get you in trouble, Sergeant?” Kerney asked.

“All the time.” Broom read off the numbers and letters for the license plate. “According to the kid, the truck
has permanently installed wrought-iron side railings that extend above the cab. He even drew me a picture of the truck.”

“Fax everything you've got to me.”

“It's on the way. That question you had about those cactus plants you found in the greenhouse?”

“What about them?”

“Wanda said she found them in the canyon where Rudy was woodcutting and transplanted them to the greenhouse. She was going to give them as presents. I don't think you've stumbled on a new hallucinogenic.”

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

“What do you want to do with Wanda? From what she told me, you can have her arrested for conspiracy to commit a felony.”

“I take it she was cooperative?”

“You bet.”

“Let's cut her a break, unless something more develops.”

“Good deal.”

Melody Jordan stood in the doorway of Kerney's office. He waved her inside as he hung up the telephone.

“Here's your copy of my follow-up report, Chief,” she said, placing the file folder on his desk. “Do you want a summary?”

“Please,” Kerney replied.

“We found no trace evidence or foreign matter. Soil samples revealed nothing to suggest the body had been moved, but that doesn't mean anything. X rays of the bones showed nothing other than the old fracture to the
upper arm. It was impossible to match the saw marks to a specific cutting instrument. We don't have a complete catalogue of hand or power saws. Nobody does; there are just too many of them. The comparisons we could make came up negative.”

“Fiber samples?” Kerney asked.

“The denim we were able to identify. It's either one of two labels marketed by the same maker. The fibers embedded in the bone turned out to be a wool and cashmere blend, light brown in color. There's no way to tell what type of upper garment it was.”

“Do you still think the victim's clothes were expensive?”

Melody nodded her head. “It's the kind of clothing I'd like to wear if I could afford it. I've got a question about the old fracture to the left humerus. The way the bone was set looks odd to me.”

“How so?”

“Either the doctor who did the job wasn't very good or there was a considerable period of time before the victim received medical attention. I'd like to consult an outside expert.”

“Whom do you have in mind?”

“There's a physical anthropologist from Indiana University in residence at the School of American Research, on a sabbatical. He's also a medical doctor. I attended one of his seminars on human remains identification. He's top-notch in the field. I'd like to get his opinion.”

“How soon can you set it up?”

Melody's cheeks colored slightly. “I've already spoken
with him. He can see me this morning. He'll do the examination gratis.”

Kerney wondered what the blush on Melody's cheek was all about. “Keep me informed.”

Melody hurried out and Kerney went to the fax machine, where the last pages of Sergeant Broom's report were spilling onto the tray. As he waited, he asked the office secretary to run a motor vehicle check on the license plate Broom had provided. He picked up the loose sheets, returned to his office, and started reading through the material. The last page was a handwritten letter from Wanda's son. It read:

Dear Chief Kerney,

Sgt. Broom said that I could rite to you. If you find my dog Buster please send him back to me. He's mostly black with some brown and white on his legs and tummy. He has realy long hair. He ran away the day my Mom and I left New Mexico.

I love Buster very much. He is the best dog in the hole world.

I hope you find him. Thank you.

LANE KNOX

He looked up to find Charlotte Flores standing in front of his desk.

“Here's the motor vehicle report you wanted, Chief,” Charlotte said.

Kerney took the papers from the secretary's outstretched hand. He scanned it, put Lane Knox's letter to one side, and gave Charlotte the rest of Broom's report,
along with the file he'd received from Melody Jordan. “Fax everything to Sergeant Gonzales at the Las Vegas office. Give it top priority.”

Charlotte studied Kerney's face. Usually the chief was cordial and polite. Today he sounded abrupt and distracted. “Are you feeling all right, Chief?”

Kerney forced a smile. “I'm fine.”

Charlotte gave him a quizzical look and left.

Kerney went to the window and watched traffic on the Old Albuquerque Highway. Across the road, the huge American flag at the entrance to the new car dealership flapped and billowed in a gusty wind. Spring winds in New Mexico often rose up without warning, drove dust along at gale force, and threw a brown haze into the sky. He could barely see the foothills below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and all the shiny new vehicles lined up in rows were dulled by a coat of sand. A truck passing down the road had a huge tumbleweed pinned against its grille. The tumbleweed broke free, bounced against the truck windshield, and rolled across the highway, where it landed against a chain-link fence.

Lane Knox certainly deserved to have his dog back. But sending Shoe, or rather Buster, off to California wasn't a happy thought. Kerney really liked that mutt.

 • • • 

In the small conference room at the Las Vegas district state police office, Gabe Gonzales thumbed through and rearranged the multiple copies of his case files, thinking he must have been really hammered with fatigue the night before. He'd gone to bed sure that everything had been sorted the way he wanted it for the presentation to
his team. He'd made copies for each officer before discovering that Melody Jordan's preliminary forensic report was out of order in the packet.

He corrected the error in each packet, held one copy back for Ben Morfin, and passed the rest out to his team. “Look this over and then we'll talk,” Gabe said.

Gabe's team consisted of Russell Thorpe, Ben Morfin—who was off meeting with a botanist at the university—and two agents sent up from Santa Fe, Robert Duran and Frank Houge.

Gabe didn't speak until the men finished reading the material. “Let's get started,” he said. “Technically, we have four different crimes. A homicide of an unknown female, the murder of Carl Boaz, the illegal production of a controlled substance, and wood poaching. Ben Morfin will handle the narcotics case.”

“Where is Ben?” Frank Houge asked. Houge was a thick-bodied man with a bit of a gut, and a high nasal voice.

“He went to Boaz's greenhouse to get the cactus plants we found. Then he's meeting with a botanist at New Mexico Highlands University to have them identified.”

“What's Ben going to be doing after that?” Robert Duran asked. The opposite of Houge, Duran was small in stature. He stayed lean by running in long-distance and cross-country races.

“He'll spend today back at the Boaz crime scene with the lab techs, and then start probing Boaz's drug contacts on the West Coast, through the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

“Where do you want us?” Duran asked.

“I need a man on the mesa looking for more bones. We've got some good initial findings from forensics, but I'd be a whole lot happier if we could complete the skeleton.”

“I'll take that,” Duran said.

“Good. I've put together a grid sketch of the areas that have already been covered. Don't go over old ground. You can use the Dodge four-by-four to get up on the mesa. I've marked a county map that will take you to the site.”

“What do you have for me?” Houge asked.

“I want you to work a short list of missing women. Forensics reports that the upper left arm bone suffered an old fracture. That, along with the age estimate of the victim and the fiber analysis, may help us make an ID.”

“I'll contact the victims' families, get medical records, and double-check what the women were wearing at the time of their disappearance,” Houge said.

“Don't get the families' hopes up,” Gabe said.

Houge nodded in agreement.

“Thorpe will help me develop a list of area woodcutters and firewood sellers,” Gabe said, getting to his feet. “We spend today—and today only—on information and evidence gathering. We've got enough right now to suspect that the man who killed Boaz is the wood poacher. Maybe Ben can turn up Rudy's last name with a second search, or the California authorities will come through with more information from Wanda Knox. But with or without it, tomorrow we go looking for Rudy.”

Houge waved his paperwork at Gabe. “From what
you've got here, Rudy could be the key to all these felonies.”

“Wouldn't that be a nice early Easter present?” Gabe replied.

Gabe held Thorpe back after Houge and Duran left. “I want a complete search of newspapers, city directories, and telephone books. Get me names, addresses, and numbers of all the firewood sellers and woodcutters you can find from Santa Fe to Las Vegas.”