Dead or Alive kk-12 Read online

  Dead or Alive

  ( Kevin Kerney - 12 )

  Michael Mcgarrity

  Living in London while his wife serves as a military attaché at the American Embassy, recently retired Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney gets an early morning phone call that changes everything and sends him hurrying home to his New Mexico ranch. Riley Burke, his partner in a horse-training enterprise, has been mowed down on Kerney's doorstep by an escaped prisoner cutting a murderous swath through New Mexico.

  As the killings mount, Kerney teams up with his half-Apache son, Lieutenant Clayton Istee of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department, to hunt for a psychotic murderer with a growing appetite for blood—who has no intention of being taken alive.

  Copyright © 2009 by Michael McGarrity

  All rights reserved

  For Flynn Raven McGarrity

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks go to Chief Rick Sinclair and Officer Mitch Sutton of the Springer Police Department; Officer Christopher Blake of the New Mexico State Police; Adriane DeSavorgnani of the United States Embassy, London; and Colonel Anita M. Domingo, United States Army attaché at the United States Embassy, London, who provided me with invaluable help during the research phase for the book.

  A very special thanks to Ms. Angela Gill of Kent, England, a dear friend who served brilliantly as my research assistant during my fact-finding trip to London.

  Chapter One

  Craig Larson stood in the middle of the crowded Bernalillo County Detention Center recreation yard and listened in disbelief as a dumb-ass guard told him he was going to be transported immediately to a minimum security prison outside his hometown of Springer, New Mexico. As it sunk in, Larson wondered if he was just about to become one of the luckiest jailbirds in the whole frigging world. Speechless, he stood rooted to the ground, looking at the guard with his mouth open.

  “Come on,” the guard said. “Get moving.”

  Larson nodded agreeably and followed alongside the guard, who explained that he would be processed out and turned over to a Department of Corrections officer for the trip to Springer.

  “Got any personal stuff in your cell?” the guard asked.

  Larson shook his head. Convicted but not yet sentenced, Larson knew there was no way in hell he was supposed to be going to the minimum security facility. All he could figure was that some dip-shit jail employee or retarded court clerk had screwed up. If that was the case, maybe lady luck was smiling.

  Larson had jumped bail on the day of his sentencing hearing just over a year ago, after being convicted of embezzling over two million dollars from the estate of an elderly art dealer he’d once worked for. He’d been a fugitive from justice until last month, when cops busted him in an apartment two blocks from the beach in Venice, California, where he’d been shacking up with a divorced, thirty-something schoolteacher with thick ankles and a willing disposition to please.

  Extradited back to New Mexico and booked into the county lockup, Larson had cooled his heels for two days before his attorney, Terry Foster, showed up. When Larson told Foster he didn’t like being in jail at all and asked if there was any way in hell he could make bail, the mouthpiece choked back a laugh.

  Without attempting to hide his disdain, he told Larson that he faced additional counts for unlawful flight, and because of that the judge would most likely sentence him to the maximum time for his embezzlement conviction. With a touch of glee, Foster also noted that Larson’s fugitive status for more than a year would probably put him in the super-max prison outside of Santa Fe with the hard-core, badass cons. Foster concluded the meeting by telling Larson to find another attorney.

  Larson figured Foster was pissed at him because he’d never been paid. But he also believed Foster had given him the straight scoop, because it jibed with what the old jailbirds in the county lockup had been telling him.

  Until the guard said he was being transferred to Springer, Larson had contemplated faking alcohol addiction and a suicide attempt to see if he could get sent to a rehab program rather than prison. He knew he wasn’t the type to thrive in an iron-pumping, career-criminal, alpha-male penal institution.

  Larson didn’t think of himself as overly aggressive or cruel. As he saw it, using guile, charm, and smarts was a much better way to commit crimes than violence. He resorted to that only when absolutely necessary.

  The embezzlement conviction was nothing more than a one-time misstep on his part. Fortunately, the investigators on the case had been as dumb as most cops. Otherwise he would probably be looking at life without parole on death row.

  In the processing area, Larson saw enough of the paperwork in front of a bleary-eyed guard to learn that he had been mistaken for another inmate with the same name who was slated to do eighteen months at Springer for a hit-and-run DWI accident.

  The guard looked like he’d been held over to work a second shift. He barely glanced at Larson as he processed him out. The state correctional officer cuffed Larson’s hands behind his back and marched him to the sally port where an empty Department of Corrections van waited.

  “Am I your only passenger today, Officer?” he asked as the guard pushed him into the passenger compartment behind the steel cage that protected the driver. The name tag on his uniform shirt read “D. Trujillo.”

  “You’re it,” Trujillo replied gruffly.

  Larson immediately started thinking that a breakaway might be possible. How to make it happen was the question. “Could you handcuff me at the front rather than behind my back?” he asked. “My arms and wrists really start to hurt when I’m cuffed this way.”

  Trujillo thought about it. Larson was a middle-aged white guy with no priors who’d been convicted of nonviolent crimes. “Okay, step out of the vehicle.”

  Trujillo made the switch, put Larson back in the van, locked his feet to leg shackles bolted to the floorboards, closed the side door, and got behind the wheel.

  The sally port door opened and sunlight poured into the dimly lit space. Larson did some mental calculating as Trujillo drove outside into the glare of a hot, cloudless July day. Springer was a good two hundred miles up the interstate from Albuquerque. The drive gave him about three hours to figure out how to persuade Trujillo to stop, unshackle him, and let him out of the van. Even then, how would he get away?

  Trujillo packed a semiautomatic sidearm and had a shotgun in a rack attached to the dashboard within easy reach. Both weapons were formidable obstacles to any escape attempt.

  Larson listened as Trujillo advised a radio dispatcher that he was under way, transporting one prisoner. He held his breath, half-expecting to hear Trujillo ordered back to the jail, but the radio remained silent. In a few minutes, they were beyond the perimeter of the jail grounds, cruising toward the interstate, and Larson started breathing easier.

  “I get really, really car sick sitting in the back,” he said.

  “You can shit your pants and throw up all over yourself back there. Makes no matter to me,” Trujillo replied. “I’ll just crank up the air conditioner to get rid of the smell and hose down the inside of the vehicle after we get to Springer. I don’t stop until we get there.”

  “You’d do that rather than let me puke outside?”

  “Yeah,” Trujillo said with a slight smile. “And if you puke on yourself, you’ll get hosed down too.”

  “Wonderful,” Larson replied. “I thought Springer was a boys’ school for juvenile delinquents.”

  “It was, up until a couple of years ago,” Trujillo answered as he drove the van onto the northbound I-25 onramp.

  Trujillo looked like he was in his mid-fifties, which made him ten to twelve years older than Larson. He had a round head, cauliflower ears, pudgy cheeks, and didn’t resemble any
of the Trujillos that Larson had known in his youth. But he’d been away from his hometown for almost twenty-five years and how people looked back then was pretty much a dim memory.

  Larson decided to probe. “Are you from Springer, Officer Trujillo?”

  Trujillo shot him a hard glance in the rearview mirror. “I don’t need you trying to make small talk with me.”

  Larson shrugged, smiled pleasantly, and looked out the window. In a few minutes, they would be on the outskirts of Albuquerque heading north. Assuming the identity mix-up at the jail stayed undiscovered, what could he do to get free?

  He’d lied about getting carsick, but that ploy hadn’t worked. Getting Trujillo to cuff his hands in front gave him more use of his hands and arms. But that would be of no advantage unless he got unshackled and out of the cage. Other than the puking idea, nothing came to him.

  He turned away from the window to find Trujillo checking up on him in the rearview mirror, and the thought hit him that the man couldn’t possibly be from Springer, a town of no more than thirteen hundred people. Unless he’d only just moved there, he would have seen the resemblance to Larson’s identical twin brother, Kerry, who lived on a ranch five miles outside of town.

  Larson smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” Trujillo asked.

  “I just bet you’re not from Springer,” Larson said.

  Trujillo grunted in reply.

  “Come on,” Larson prodded with a easy smile. “Am I right or am I wrong?”

  Trujillo sighed. “I’m from Raton, okay? Now just shut up and let me drive.”

  “Whatever you say,” Larson replied as he turned his head to look back out the window. Trujillo kept the van in the right-hand lane of the interstate, and a steady flow of vehicles, including big-rig trucks, passed them by. Larson leaned forward and glanced through the cage at the dashboard speedometer. Trujillo had the van cruising along at a safe and sane seventy miles per hour.

  They reached a long stretch of open road and Larson told Trujillo he was getting really sick to his stomach.

  “Like I said before,” Trujillo replied, “go ahead and puke all over yourself. I ain’t stopping.”

  Larson made a couple of gagging sounds, tried to look sour, which wasn’t all that difficult, leaned back, and closed his eyes. Unless lady luck dealt him a couple more good cards, he was doomed to ride all the way to Springer only to be sent right back to Albuquerque and then on to the super-max with the hard-core badasses after sentencing. The thought made him shudder.

  Beyond Santa Fe the traffic thinned out considerably. In an attempt to wear Trujillo down, Larson complained again about being sick, but got no response. He stared at his shackled feet and wondered if he could yank his legs free, kick the cage apart, and wrap his cuffed hands around Trujillo’s neck and strangle him without getting himself killed in a car wreck.

  He pulled hard at a shackle with his leg. The steel ring bit into his ankle and made him wince.

  Halfway between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, the van blew a rear tire and slewed wildly. Trujillo steered into a spin, got the van straightened out, and braked gradually as he pulled to the shoulder of the highway. He got out to inspect the damage, then called dispatch, gave his location, and reported the tire failure.

  “Do you need assistance and backup at your twenty?” the dispatcher asked.

  “Negative,” Trujillo replied. He clipped the microphone to the dash and opened his door.

  “Since we’re stopped, will you let me out so I can throw up behind a tree?” Larson asked.

  Trujillo eyed Larson through the cage. He would much rather not have the vehicle smelling of puke. “Okay.”

  He stepped out of the van, opened the sliding passenger door, unlocked the leg shackles, unbuckled Larson’s seat belt, and motioned him out of the van. “Let’s go. I’m right behind you.”

  Trujillo prodded Larson toward a big cedar tree near a wire fence twenty feet from the shoulder of the roadway. “Get it over with,” he said, his hand resting on the butt of his holstered sidearm.

  Larson dropped to his knees under the branch of the tree. He brought some bile up and spit it out as his hand reached for a small stick lying in the duff.

  “Is that it?” Trujillo asked derisively, leaning over Larson’s shoulder.

  “Give me a minute,” Larson said. He grasped the stick so that the end protruded from his closed palm, and with his head lowered, he gagged some more for effect and faked throwing up. He shivered, coughed, spit, and waited until he couldn’t hear the sound of any cars on the interstate.

  “Are you done?” Trujillo asked.

  Larson nodded but stayed put, hoping Trujillo would step closer and look down to see whether or not he’d been faking it. Just as he lifted his head, Trujillo came closer, within striking distance. Larson uncoiled and sprang, jamming the stick into Trujillo’s left eye. The stick protruding from his eyeball snapped off and Trujillo screamed as he hit the dirt.

  Larson stepped back, kicked him hard in the balls, leaned down, and drove an elbow into Trujillo’s left eye. He straddled Trujillo, snatched his semiautomatic from the holster, slapped the barrel against his head, and pulled the limp body out of sight of the roadway, just before a car whizzed by. He fished a key ring out of Trujillo’s pants pocket, undid the handcuffs, and looked down. Blood poured from Trujillo’s mangled eye but he was still alive.

  Larson thought about finishing Trujillo off and decided against adding a murder charge to his sheet. He shed his orange jail jumpsuit, pulled Trujillo’s pants off, then rolled him on his stomach and cuffed his hands behind his back.

  The pants were way too big around the waist and about three inches too short. Larson cinched them tight with Trujillo’s belt, tapped the officer one more time on the head with the semiautomatic to keep him unconscious, and set to work changing the flat tire on the van.

  As Larson tightened the last lug nut on the spare, a voice over the radio inside the van asked Trujillo to report in. Larson got behind the wheel and keyed the microphone several times to make static noises, hoping it would sound like a radio transmission failure. Then he floored the accelerator and drove away.

  There was an undeveloped rest stop a few miles farther up. Larson knew he needed to ditch the Department of Corrections vehicle as soon as possible and find new wheels. Hopefully, a trucker would be parked there for a mandatory rest break or some motorist who couldn’t hold his water would be making a quick pit stop behind a tree.

  The only vehicle at the rest stop was a Honda SUV. A young, good-looking woman in shorts and a halter top stood at the open tailgate at the back of the vehicle, changing a baby’s diaper. Nearby, a young man walked a small dog on a leash near a tree.

  Larson pulled in next to the Honda to shield it as much as possible from motorists passing by, ripped the microphone cord off the radio in the van, and jumped out. The young woman turned. The startled look on her pretty face turned to anger when he grabbed her around the neck, pressed the semiautomatic against her head, and told her not to move. The man walking the dog froze.

  “Don’t be stupid if you want this pretty lady to live,” Larson called out. “Walk toward me.”

  The young man had dark, curly hair; scared eyes; and a face that looked like it hadn’t been used yet. He dropped the leash and the yappy dog took off after a rabbit on the other side of the fence.

  Larson cocked the hammer for effect. “Now,” he ordered.

  The man took a few cautious steps and stopped. “Don’t hurt my wife and baby,” he said anxiously, his voice cracking.

  “Do as I say and you all might live.” Larson backed up to the van, pulling the woman with him, and told her to open the side door. “Pick up your baby and bring it over here,” he ordered the man.

  Larson glanced at the naked infant. It was a girl, maybe six months old, lying on a dirty diaper that was soaked in gooey, mustard-colored, stinky shit.

  The man came forward, picked up the baby, and walked toward Larson.
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  “Get in the vehicle and slide all the way over to the far side.”

  Cradling the baby in his arms, the young man climbed in the van and scooted across the seat.

  Larson put the barrel of the handgun under the woman’s right arm and pressed it against her breast. “Get in beside them,” he ordered.

  Flashing a look of pure hate, the woman climbed into the van. She wore a wedding band that matched the one on the man’s ring finger.

  “Give me your car keys,” Larson said.

  “They’re in the ignition,” the woman said before her husband could respond.

  Larson smiled at her. She was the one who had the balls in the marriage. “If they’re not in the ignition, I’ll kill you all.”

  The man dropped his eyes, but the woman didn’t even flinch. “Like I said,” she replied, “they’re in the ignition.”

  “Good.” Larson pointed the semiautomatic at the man. “Toss me your cell phone.”

  Wordlessly, the man unclipped the phone from his belt and tossed it to Larson.

  Larson ground it under his foot as he smiled at the woman, thinking she would probably be dynamite in bed if someone made her pay attention properly.

  “See the sets of shackles at your feet.” He pointed his handgun at the floorboard. “Lock them around your husband’s ankles and then do the same to yourself.”

  The woman snapped on the shackles and then looked Larson squarely in the eye. “Please leave the door open. Otherwise it will get too hot in here for the baby.”

  Larson laughed. Even with a gun in her face, she’d scoped out the fact that a van for transporting convicts had passenger doors and windows that couldn’t be opened from the inside. “You’re a piece of work, sweetie, I’ll give you that.”

  He got in the driver’s seat, drove the van behind a large juniper tree where it was hidden from the interstate, cut the engine, turned his head, and looked at the young family through the cage.