Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel Page 15

  For a moment, Kerney’s constant worry over an uncertain future lifted. His world had exploded at Fort Leonard Wood, but with the unwavering help of his incredible family, everything had to turn out right.

  One by one, Kerney hugged them all.

  Gabe Medina, supervising sergeant in the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office Investigations Unit, sat in his unmarked unit outside a popular roadside diner on the Old Las Vegas Highway. Juan Ramirez was already fifteen minutes late. Punctual by nature, Gabe hated being kept waiting, and he was bored watching geriatric transplants to Santa Fe climb out of their shiny SUVs and hobble inside for breakfast. Ramirez arrived just in time to grab one of the last parking spaces.

  “What took you so long?” Gabe grumbled as Juan got in his unit.

  “I got a job, you know,” Ramirez replied.

  “What have you got for me?” Gabe countered.

  “Everybody left the ranch this morning. Nobody’s there.”

  Gabe gave Juan a disgusted look. Every state, county, and local cop knew about the convoy of four vehicles leaving the ranch through a neighbor’s adjoining acreage. After a scramble by law enforcement agencies, all those vehicles and their occupants now had tails. Kerney’s in-laws were browsing the aisles at a southside discount store after dropping the grandkid off at school. Kerney was driving south on I-25. Clayton Istee was also southbound on a secondary highway that would take him to Alamogordo, if he didn’t veer off. Kerney’s wife was taking the scenic route through the Jemez Mountains on her way to who knew where.

  “That’s it?” Gabe asked.

  “No, Kerney called me to say I need to look after the place this coming weekend, starting Friday afternoon. Until then, Patrick and the boy’s grandparents will be there.”

  Gabe’s interest spiked. “Go on.”

  “They’ve got a weekend planned away, that’s all I know.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  Juan shrugged. “He didn’t tell me nothing more.”

  “Does he usually let you know where they’ll be?”

  “Yeah, but not this time.”

  Gabe sighed. “What did you do to make him suspicious?”

  “Nothing, I swear. It’s just this murder thing has him not himself. All uptight and everything.”

  “You think he murdered that girl?” Gabe asked.

  Juan licked his lips. “Man, I don’t know. I didn’t think so until I saw on some TV show he’d shot and killed six people while he was a cop. Killer with a badge is what some people are saying.”

  The breakfast crowd was emptying out. “I need to know where Kerney is going today, and I need to know as soon as possible. Also, find out where everybody is going for the weekend.”

  “I’ll talk to Patrick after he gets home from school,” Juan proposed.

  “But be cool about it,” Gabe cautioned.

  Juan nodded. “What about my sister’s kid?”

  “I’m not ready to talk to the judge about him. You got a few more things to do for me.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you when the time comes.”

  Juan shook his head. “I’m not happy about doing this.”

  “Yeah, well, you won’t be very happy if you have to tell your sister you blew getting her son out of juvie.”

  Juan grunted and opened the passenger door.

  “Call me as soon as you know anything,” Gabe ordered.

  “Hijo de puta,” Juan muttered under his breath as he walked to his truck.

  Gabe pulled out of the parking lot just as the geriatric early lunch crowd began arriving.

  Halfway between Las Cruces and Lordsburg along the Interstate 10 corridor in the southwest quadrant of the state, the small city of Deming sits in the Chihuahuan Desert with the menacing skyline of the barren Florida Mountains as a backdrop. Only when Sara drew close did the mountains appear less formidable, but still no more inviting.

  Last night she’d read in a guidebook that before the 1854 Gadsden Purchase of almost thirty thousand square miles of land from Mexico, there was nothing here other than an unmarked border crossing, which was now thirty-three miles south in the small village of Columbus, made famous by Pancho Villa’s 1916 murderous attack against unwary American citizens.

  Even in April, Deming was hot, dry, sun-blasted, and windy. Gusty winds peppered her Jeep with fine sand, and the air-conditioning kept her from sweltering. To get oriented, she made a tour of the town. It was tidy and unpretentious, with modest houses, an assortment of mobile home trailer parks, and some appealing older buildings in the downtown core. A four-lane street paralleled the interstate and ran through the heart of the business district past the usual assortment of gas stations, car dealerships, small businesses, fast-food franchises, and moderately priced family-style chain motels.

  It was too early to meet up with Kerney, so she drove south of town, where farms and ranches predominated. There were irrigated fields of chili, cotton, and hay, and dryland ranches watered by windmills and stock tanks. But the desert still dominated, with vistas of far-off shimmering mountains and expanses of sand-encrusted scrublands.

  Kerney called her with his ETA and she rendezvoused with him in the parking lot of a motel on the main strip. Clayton would arrive later. He’d stopped off in Las Cruces to see if he could tease out information from his former staff about the status of the investigation. They made a reservation for Clayton and checked into their room. Hungry, Sara called the front desk clerk and asked about a good place to eat. The clerk recommended a nearby diner famous for its green chili cheeseburgers and home fries.

  With state police in an unmarked vehicle following in plain sight, they drove together in Sara’s Jeep to the diner, a retro 1950s eatery off the main drag with chrome and red leatherette counter stools and booths. Over lunch, Sara asked Kerney if he’d been back to Deming since his high school rodeo days.

  “Not really,” he answered. “Occasionally I’ve driven through it on my way to someplace else.”

  “No nostalgia about the old days?”

  Kerney smiled and shook his head. “Not since the cops barged into our hotel room at Fort Leonard Wood. Before that, I had pleasant recollections about my youthful indiscretions.”

  Sara grinned. “Is your sense of humor returning?”

  Kerney squeezed her hand. “It’s possible.”

  They munched on the remaining home fries, and discussed how to use the remainder of the day. Kerney would track down the three area telephone listings for Page, and Sara would try the county courthouse and school administration to find any historical and current information about Loretta Page.

  Sara crossed her fingers. “Let’s hope we get lucky.”

  Outside the booth window, an RV with British Columbia plates eased to a stop, engulfing three parking spaces. “I’d settle for the truth,” Kerney replied. “It’s out there somewhere.”

  Growing up on the Mescalero Reservation, Clayton knew Alamogordo well. It was a raw, unpolished city, dependent on the huge federal payroll from nearby Holloman Air Force Base and adjacent White Sands Missile Range. A growing community of thirty thousand due to an influx of military retirees, it continued to expand along a raggedy commercial corridor that stretched for miles. Only the rugged escarpment of the Sacramento Mountains towering to the east above the city, and the Tularosa Basin with its billowing sand dunes and distant mountains to the west, saved it from drabness.

  In the early evening, on a middle-class residential street in the foothills, Clayton parked inconspicuously behind a pickup truck and waited for Agent Carla Olivas to arrive home. He’d ditched his tail in Las Cruces by borrowing Wendell’s twelve-year-old Jeep Wrangler and using unpaved, rough back roads to leave the city.

  Carla’s spouse, Monica Shaw, had just pulled into the driveway, returning from her job as a civilian systems analyst at Holloman. Clayton hoped Carla wouldn’t be far behind. As a sergeant in the state police uniform division, he’d been her field-training officer dur
ing her probationary year with the department. He’d guided her through a couple of personal rough patches, including a temporary breakup with Monica, then only her girlfriend, before his promotion to lieutenant and transfer to criminal investigations. After Carla had served two years on patrol, Clayton had recommended her for transfer to investigations, where she’d quickly blossomed into a fine agent. She was his best chance to learn any fresh information in the Kim Ward murder investigation.

  When the familiar silhouette of her unmarked unit turned onto the street, he left his truck and hurried to meet her.

  “Got a minute?” he asked, as she opened the car door.

  “Lieutenant,” Carla said, stifling her surprise. “I can’t be talking to you.”

  “Then don’t talk, just listen,” Clayton replied. “If I say something that’s true, nod. Did Avery look at the Fergurson photography archives at the university?”

  With an angry stare, Carla nodded.

  “Did it yield anything new?”

  Carla remained motionless.

  “Has anything developed with the search for Lucille Ward?”

  Carla nodded, her expression darkening.

  “Have you found her?”

  Carla didn’t react. “Stop this,” she said sharply. “I can’t help you. You know that.”

  “One more question,” Clayton pleaded. “Have you located Todd Marks or any trace of him?”

  “I’m going inside my house and calling in your location,” Carla replied with a slight, negative headshake, looking around for Clayton’s pickup truck. “I brushed you off and we didn’t speak to each other. Do you understand?”

  Clayton nodded. She was giving him a short head start before a new surveillance tail could pick him up. “Thanks.”

  As he hurried away, he heard her whisper, “Good luck.”

  After Clayton checked into the Deming motel, he met Kerney and Sara at a nearby Mexican restaurant to compare notes. The constant sound of tire rubber on the pavement from I-10 drifted through the thin walls of the diner, adding a whiny background hum to the surrounding patrons’ chatter.

  “Apparently they’ve made progress on finding Lucille Ward,” Clayton reported after the waitress passed around menus and left to get them water. “But that could mean anything from a good lead to her confirmed death. Todd Marks is still MIA, and Fergurson’s photo archives at the university proved unhelpful. That’s all I got.”

  “They’re stalled,” Kerney declared. “Which is good.”

  Sara leaned across the table toward Clayton. “What were your reasons for chasing down Lucille Ward and Todd Marks?”

  “I was looking for anything that would punch holes in Kerney’s defense,” Clayton replied. “If Marks is found and swears he hadn’t seen Kim either before or after she was with Kerney at Erma’s, and we could prove it, that would weaken his case. Also, if the mother knows of any contact between Kerney and Kim after his arrival at Erma’s but before Kim’s sudden disappearance, that would further damage the defense.”

  “Good points, but still not conclusive proof of guilt,” Sara observed.

  “No, but every little bit helps,” Clayton countered. “What have you got?”

  The waitress returned with water and took their orders. On her way to the kitchen, she skipped around a four-year-old boy who was loitering on the floor behind his mother’s chair.

  “At the high school, I posed as a distant relative looking for Loretta Page,” Sara said as she slid a copy of a page from a high school yearbook to Clayton. “That’s her photograph. All I learned is that she dropped out and failed to graduate for reasons unknown.”

  “Pregnant?” Clayton suggested.

  “Likely,” Sara replied. “For many small-town girls, the sixties free-love hippie movement didn’t eliminate the shame of being pregnant and unmarried.”

  “I wonder if she had an abortion, which is why she went to live with Kim Ward’s mother for a time,” Kerney speculated.

  “That makes sense,” Sara said. “If she chose to have an abortion, it was still illegal in most states.”

  “But not in nearby Mexico,” Clayton noted.

  “Exactly,” Sara replied, consulting her notes. “Loretta had an older brother who school officials told me died while serving in Vietnam. Through the Armed Forces Records Center, I confirmed that army Private First Class Louis Page of Deming died from wounds he received in combat at Long Binh during the 1968 Tet Offensive. His parents—Loretta’s as well—Jack and Jann Page, also of Deming, were beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. The proceeds were mailed to them at a residential address here in town. It’s a small house now owned by a retired railroad engineer and his wife. They’d never heard of the Page family.”

  Clayton studied Loretta Page’s photo. With her curly hair and upturned nose, perky-looking was the best way to describe her. “I wonder if there may have been another reason she wound up leaving her parents’ home and staying with Kim Ward’s mother.”

  Kerney shrugged. “Unknown. But I can tell you the people named Page listed in the phone book have no family connection to Loretta. One is a retired, widowed nurse from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, another is an African-American man who works at the local green chili pepper processing plant. He lives with his Mexican-born wife and her two children in a trailer park. The last listing was for Kenneth Page. Originally from California, he’s a vintner who owns a small winery on some acreage outside of town. Runs it with his second wife. His only child, a son, is grown, married, and living in North Carolina.”

  Kerney paused for a sip of water. “He said when he first moved here some twenty years ago, the old-timers asked if he was any relation to Jack and Jann Page.”

  “So, we’ve got that tidbit to follow up on,” Clayton concluded. “At least it’s something.”

  “Everything we know, the police will also know by tomorrow,” Sara added. “They’ll be out looking for who and what we’re searching for.”

  The waitress, tray in hand, delivered plates of enchiladas smothered in green and red chili, smiled, and left, again sidestepping the ignored four-year-old boy on the floor behind his mother.

  They ate in silence, their spirits slightly dampened, until Clayton smiled across the table at Kerney and Sara and said, “We’re smarter than the cops.”

  Kerney nodded in agreement. “Plus, we have a head start.”

  Sara pushed aside her half-eaten meal. “Stop congratulating each other, gentlemen, and start thinking of what we’re going to do next. I want this over with, so I can start enjoying my retirement.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kerney and Clayton replied in unison.

  CHAPTER 13

  Early in the morning, still half asleep in his Pecos single-wide, Juan Ramirez got yelled at when Sergeant Medina called and discovered he still didn’t know where Kerney and his family were going for the weekend. Ramirez wanted to tell Medina to stuff it, but didn’t have the bolas to do it. Instead, he said he’d find out right away.

  He was microwaving a cup of leftover coffee when his sister stopped by to bitch at him about not getting her boy out of juvie. Gritting his teeth while she dumped her frustrations on him, Juan didn’t mention that the cops were threatening to keep her hijo locked up indefinitely. Madre de dios, he’d be in deep shit with the familia, especially his mother, if he let that happen.

  To make the start of the day even worse, he was badly hungover from too much cerveza. He had to hurry, or he’d be too late to talk to Patrick before his grandparents drove him to school.

  He splashed water on his face, yanked on his boots, found his truck keys, and barreled down Interstate 25 through Cañoncito at Apache Canyon. On U.S. 285, he crested the hill overlooking the Galisteo Basin and turned off the pavement onto a gravel road that led to Kerney’s ranch gate, where the security guard waved him through.

  He came out of the canyon, saw Kerney’s old truck parked in front of the horse barn with the doors wide open, and sighed in relief. He’d made it in time.
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  He ground to a stop in front of the open barn doors, saw Patrick and his abuelo inside, and called out a buenos dias.

  “Juan,” Patrick replied with a smile, replacing his pitchfork on the wall rack by the doors. “Que pasa?”

  “I got salt for the cows, Patricio,” Juan replied, getting out of his truck and nodding a wordless greeting to Patrick’s grandfather. It was no lie. He had several fresh salt licks in the truck bed. “And I came to look after the ponies, tambien. I thought you were going away.”

  Patrick shook his head. “Not yet. I think my dad told you Friday.”

  Juan shrugged sheepishly, stuck his shaking hands into his pants pockets. He quickly looked away from Patrick’s grandfather, who was standing inside one of the stalls staring at him. “I guess I forgot.”

  “We’ll leave from town after school,” Patrick replied.

  “Okay, I’ll be here after that.”

  “Thanks.”

  The headache in the back of Juan’s skull made it impossible to be subtle. It wasn’t his strong suit anyway. He forced a smile. “Where are you going again?” he asked bluntly, gritting his teeth at his stupidity. “I think I had too much cerveza last night.”

  “Mescalero,” Patrick answered with a big grin. “The whole family is gathering.”

  Fuzzy-headed, Juan couldn’t remember where that was, but decided not to ask. With a tense smile, he stepped back to his truck. “Bueno. Have fun. See you.”

  “Adios,” Patrick replied. He turned to his grandfather and whispered, “I’ve never seen Juan hungover like that before.”

  “That vaquero seemed nervous as well as hungover,” Dean commented as Juan drove away.

  “About what?”

  Dean shook his head. “I don’t know, but it’s not a good sign. Best we tell your father about it.”

  In Clayton Istee’s former office, Paul Avery sat and listened with deep misgivings as Agent Carla Olivas described her encounter with Clayton the previous evening. Advised by dispatch as soon as Olivas called in Clayton’s location, Avery didn’t like the way she’d handled it.