Hermit_s Peak kk-4 Page 16

  Frustrated, Gabe leaned against the front fender of the truck, and scanned the meadow and the buildings waiting for inspiration. What was he missing? He was about to give up when his gaze settled on the gas-powered electric generator installed on a concrete pad halfway between the cabin and the greenhouse.

  He walked to it and took a closer look. The generator, expensive and fairly new, sat on two long metal runners that were bolted to the pad.

  He found the manufacturer's plate and a metal tag from an electrical supply company in Lubbock, Texas.

  Why would Boaz buy a generator from a company hundreds of miles away when he could get the same item locally? He wrote down the information, went to the greenhouse, and climbed on the roof to inspect the bank of south-facing solar panels. All of them were tagged by the same Lubbock company.

  At the water well, he disconnected the power supply, removed the housing cover, pulled up the submersible pump, and found another tag from the Lubbock supply house.

  In the cabin, Gabe sat at the table and went through Boaz's cancelled checks, cash purchase receipts, and lists of expenditures for construction costs he'd checked out of the district office evidence room. Boaz had kept detailed records of his costs to get the operation up and running. None of the items from Lubbock showed up as purchases.

  Gabe looked around the cabin. The propane refrigerator and the propane stove looked new. He ran through Boaz's records again and found no documentation for the purchase of either item.

  Where did Boaz get all this stuff?

  He pulled the stove and refrigerator away from the wall, wrote down the make, model, and serial numbers, and used his cellular phone to call Russell Thorpe.

  "Where are you?" Gabe said, when Thorpe answered.

  "Lunch break at the Roadrunner."

  "I need you to run some information through NCIC.

  Have you got a pen and paper?"

  "Roger that."

  Gabe read off the make, model, and serial number for each item and had Thorpe repeat the information back to him.

  "How soon do you want this, Sarge?"

  "ASAP."

  "I'll call you right back."

  Gabe used the time waiting for Thorpe to call going over Boaz's journal line by line, looking for anything that might give him an insight into the murder.

  The phone rang and Gabe answered.

  "What have you got?"

  "Three hits, Sarge. The gas-powered generator, solar panels, and the pump were stolen from a Lubbock electrical supply company. The propane refrigerator was boosted from a freight car on a railroad siding in Amarillo and the propane cooking stove was taken from an appliance store in Midland, Texas. All within the last year. All major heists."

  "Good deal," Gabe said.

  "Where did you find this stuff?" Thorpe asked.

  "I'll tell you later."

  "You got something else you need me to do?"

  "I'll call you back," Gabe said as he hurried out the cabin door to his vehicle. Angie Romero had a large-screen television in her living room that he wanted to check out.

  Angie opened the front door a crack and gave Gabe a sour look.

  "What is it?"

  "Can I come in?" Gabe asked "What for?"

  "We need to talk about your car."

  "When do I get it back?" Angie asked, swinging the door wide.

  "Tomorrow," Gabe said, stepping inside.

  Angie's smell almost made him retreat to the front porch. She wore a frayed bathrobe, dingy gray pajamas, and a pair of tattered slippers.

  She ran a shaky hand through her tangled hair and looked at Gabe with bloodshot eyes.

  "Mind if I look at your television?" Gabe asked as he walked to the set that stood against a wall.

  "Why?"

  "Did Rudy buy it?" Gabe pulled the set away from the wall.

  "He gave it to me as a present."

  "When?" Gabe found the manufacturer's information and wrote it down.

  "You can't do that," Angle said as she crossed the room.

  Gabe pushed the set back to its original position.

  "When did Rudy bring home the TV, Angie?"

  "Maybe six months ago. You can't come in here and paw through my property."

  "Where did Rudy buy it?"

  "I don't know. He just brought it home one day."

  Angle's closeness made her smell almost unbearable.

  Gabe moved quickly toward the open door.

  "Sorry to bother you."

  Angie followed at his heels.

  "I want my car back."

  "Tomorrow, Angie." Gabe stepped off the porch.

  "It damn well better be here."

  "It will be," Gabe said with a smile.

  He called Thorpe with the information on the television as soon as he was out of Angle's driveway.

  Thorpe called back just as Gabe pulled onto the interstate.

  "The TV was stolen from the same store in Midland where the stove was boosted," he reported.

  "Ten-four. Get me complete reports from the Texas authorities on all three heists."

  "What have you got, Sarge?"

  "I'll let you know as soon as I figure it out. Do one more thing for me."

  "What's that?"

  "Have Angle's Mustang towed back to her house tomorrow morning."

  "That car can't be driven until it's fixed. The front end is totalled."

  "I know it."

  Before leaving for his class, Richard Bingham provided Kerney with his friend Nancy's full name and address.

  The girl lived in a dormitory on the college campus.

  A private institution with a small enrollment, the school was situated in the Santa Fe foothills. The nearby mountains, million-dollar homes, and an adjacent private prep school insulated the campus and its carefully tended grounds.

  Kerney found Nancy Rubin in her dorm room, introduced himself, and asked a few questions. No more than nineteen years old. Nancy had a slim, lanky body, short curly blonde hair, and a heavy New York accent.

  She wore three diamond studs in her right earlobe.

  The girl confirmed Richard's version of the events at the ranch involving Luiza, and Kerney left feeling fairly certain that he'd gotten candid answers. m Las Vegas, Kerney stopped at the county sheriff's office and got directions to the Box Z Ranch, where Luiza San Miguel had once been employed. The route took him along a state highway that cut through high, rolling plains and onto a narrow two-lane road that provided a panoramic view of the mountains. Where the dun-colored plains ended, massive, dark opal peaks swept beyond the limits of perception and faded into a rippling, mirage like vagueness.

  The road curved away from the view and Kerney saw the first sign of a deep trough that pierced the hilly grasslands. Soon he was hugging the lip of a canyon that cut a thousand feet below the plains and opened out in a widening valley flanked by red-rimmed tabletop mesas.

  The pavement turned to dirt, and the road crossed and recrossed a rocky, shallow river, and then rose to expose an expanse of rangeland that seemed to push back the mesas. After navigating a boulder-strewn bypass bulldozed around the remnants of a washed-out wooden bridge, Kerney topped out at a small rise, and stopped to take a look around.

  Ten miles south, a lone butte towered where the canyon lands ended.

  Stands of pifion and juniper trees peppered lush pastures filled with blue stem and Indian rice grass. Patches of spring wildflowers threw color against the foot of the mesas.

  Kerney drove toward the butte, taking it all in. Here the land dominated, making the small herds of cattle moving across the valley look like dots; turning the ranch road into a vague incision that faded away to nothing in the distance; putting fences, windmills, feed troughs, and stock tanks into a perspective that made man's efforts seem inconsequential.

  Sheltered at the foot of the butte, the Box Z headquarters was surrounded by groves of cottonwood trees. The houses, barns, sheds, outbuildings, and corrals were made of rock and in perfec
t condition.

  Behind the barn stood a pitched-roof garage with a red 1930s gasoline pump off to one side. The main ranch house was a two-story Queen Anne "Victorian. The roofline was broken by two shingled dormers, and round columns supported the deep front porch.

  The man who opened the front door wore a straw cowboy hat pushed back to reveal a high forehead and eyeglasses with plastic frames. Somewhere in his sixties, he had straight lips beneath a pudgy nose and deep creases in his cheeks mat ran down to his chin.

  Tm looking for the owner," Kerney said.

  "You found him," the man replied, glancing at Kerney's open badge case.

  "I'm Arlin Fullerton. What brings you out this way, Officer?"

  "I have a few questions to ask you about Luiza San Miguel."

  "Is something wrong?"

  "I just need to find her," Kerney replied.

  "She took a job last year at Horse Canyon. My wife sure hated to lose that girl," Arlin said.

  "If she's not there, I don't know where she's working now. We haven't kept track of her. Have you checked at Horse Canyon?"

  "Yes. What was her reason for leaving the Box Z?"

  "She just decided to move on, I guess."

  "Did you hear from her after she left?"

  "We got a card from her sometime back."

  "What did it say?"

  "Just that she liked her new job."

  "How did you come to hire her?"

  "I pay a fair wage, but not too many locals-especially the younger ones-want to work six days a week on a remote ranch. So most of my employees are Mexican.

  They've got their own grapevine when it comes to finding work. My wife was looking for a housekeeper when Luiza showed up."

  "How did she learn about the job?"

  "Word of mouth would be my guess."

  "Not one of your employees?"

  "She didn't know a soul when she started here."

  "Did Luiza talk about herself or her family in Mexico?"

  Fullerton shook his head.

  "Not much. She's a shy girl.

  Quiet. Keeps to herself."

  "Did she have any dashes with other employees? Any friction, disagreements, dissension?"

  "Not that I know about. She was pretty even tempered.

  Got along with everybody."

  "Everybody?"

  "Except when she got pestered."

  "Who pestered her?"

  "Well, it wasn't pestering to start; it was more like skirt chasing.

  One of the neighboring ranch boys took a shine to her. Luiza didn't like him at all. But the kid wouldn't take no for an answer. It really got Luiza's back up."

  "What's the kid's name?"

  "Bernardo Barela. He works on the next spread over with his uncle."

  "Nestor Barela's grandson?"

  "That's him."

  "How do I get to their place?"

  "Take the left fork out of my gate and follow the road ten miles due west. They use an old homestead as their line camp. You can't miss it. They come down from Las Vegas most days. You should find them there. They borrowed my bulldozer this morning to do some road work."

  "Thanks."

  "Mind telling me what this is all about?"

  "You've got a nice place here, Mr. Fullerton," Kerney said as he turned and stepped away.

  "Thanks, again."

  At home, Gabe waited restlessly for Russell Thorpe to deliver the burglary reports that the Texas law enforcement agencies had faxed to the district office. Now that Orlando had announced his intentions to move away, the house seemed too big, and Gabe felt vaguely uncomfortable in it.

  Thorpe arrived and hung around with an eager look on his face, hoping to learn what was up. Gabe thumbed through the papers, verified that the stolen items matched the information out of Texas, and looked at Thorpe.

  "Go recover the stolen property at Boaz's cabin, and see what else you can find," he said.

  Thorpe could barely contain a grin.

  "How do I keep you out of it?"

  "If anyone asks, say you got an anonymous tip. Also, write up a search warrant for Angie Romero's house, get it signed, and toss the place.

  Take somebody with you. Who is the shift commander on duty?"

  "Art Garcia is filling in for you."

  "Tell him-and only him-what's up, and ask him to go with you."

  "What's my probable cause for the warrant?"

  "You have reason to believe that items taken in a Texas burglary are in Angle's house. Cite the Midland Police Department report. Art can help you fill in the blanks."

  Gabe waved the Midland Police Department report at Thorpe.

  "Did you make copies for yourself?"

  Thorpe nodded.

  "You bet."

  "Good. Now go do your job."

  Thorpe strode through the front door and almost bounced his way down the front porch to his unit. Gabe smiled at Thorpe's rookie enthusiasm, knowing that soon it would get washed away by harsh reality.

  He read the reports again. All three Texas burglaries were professional scores, and the MO on each case was nearly identical. He wondered if the cops in West Texas even knew they had a crime ring operating in their backyards.

  Maybe, maybe not.

  The thought slipped away as he reached for the ringing telephone.

  Several miles west of the Box Z headquarters the ranch road was freshly graded and crowned. Not yet packed down and compressed, the loose dirt was soft under Kerney's tires, and his vehicle drifted into the old ruts hidden under the fresh topping spread by the bulldozer.

  The road took him away from the open rangeland toward a somber line of steep-walled, forested mesas tinged purple and red. In places the mesa clifis had been scoured bare by rock slides of massive proportions, and large boulders littered the canyon floor.

  Halfway to the line camp he passed an unattended bulldozer, and the road became a worn indentation of tracks in ground-up sandstone and powder-dry day. The road veered toward a blocky rimrock mesa, and the day and sand gave way to shale and cobbles.

  The line camp consisted of a battered mobile home on concrete blocks and a pump shed behind a falling-down single-story house with a spindle work porch. All the windows and doors were missing and part of the brick diimney had crashed through the roof. Across a bare patch of ground, next to a weathered corral containing two saddled mounts, was a horse trailer.

  Kerney recognized the truck in front of the mobile home as one of the ve hides he'd seen at Nestor Barela's family compound. The sound of his arrival brought two men out on the three-step, rough-cut stairs to the trailer.

  The men studied Kerney as he approached the trailer.

  The older man stepped down to meet him. Kerney ignored the kid, who had to be Bernardo, and kept his attention fixed on Roque.

  Built along the same lines as his father, Roque sported a well-fed belly tightly cinched by a belt. A large silver buckle dug into his midsection.

  "You must be really lost," Roque said with a shake of his head.

  Tm Kevin Kerney."

  The amused expression vanished from Roque's face.

  "You're the cop who lied to my father."

  "That's one way to look at it."

  "What do you want?"

  "I'm investigating the disappearance of Luiza San Miguel." Over Roque's shoulder Kerney saw Bernardo stiffen.

  "I know the girl," Roque said.

  "Haven't seen her around. I heard she went back to Mexico."

  "You knew her, too, didn't you?" Kerney called out to Bernardo.

  "Yeah, I did." A frown line crossed Bernardo's forehead and the corners of his eyes tightened.

  Kerney stepped around Roque toward Bernardo.

  "I understand you were interested in Luiza."

  "Me? No way."

  "Really?"

  Bernardo shrugged.

  "Yeah, well maybe for a little while. But she wasn't interested in me."

  Roque snorted.

  "That
's no lie."

  Bernardo shot his uncle a dirty look as he walked down the steps.

  "So I liked her and she didn't like me. Big deal."

  "Was it a big deal?" Kerney asked.

  "I don't have to waste my time with babes that don't like me."

  "So, it wasn't a big deal."

  "That's what I said."

  "Did you see her after she went to work at the Horse Canyon Ranch?"

  "Yeah, once or twice. But not to talk to."

  "How about last April, outside Ojitos Frios, on the road to Romeroville? Did you see her walking?"

  Bernardo shook his head.

  "Is that a no?"

  "No, okay?"

  "You were seen on that road in your grandfather's truck with a passenger the day Luiza disappeared."

  "Maybe I was, but I don't remember seeing her."

  "Who was with you?"

  "I don't know, man, that was a year ago. It could have been a lot of people-one of my bros, one of the family, anybody."

  "Think back, Bernardo. It was a weekend evening last April. A Saturday." Kerney gave him the exact date.

  "Do you have any idea what you might have been doing in the area?"

  "Going to work, throwing a cruise, giving somebody a ride home. What's the big deal?"

  "What would take you to the mesa in the evening?"

  Kerney closed in on Bernardo. The boy flinched but held his ground.

  "Maybe I left the gate unlocked. I could have been going to check it.

  Maybe we had some cattle on the road. That happens a lot."

  "That all makes sense." Kerney moved even closer to break into Bernardo's personal space. He used his height advantage to force Bernardo to raise his head and look him in the eye.

  "But you didn't see Luiza?"

  "I already said that," Bernardo replied, stepping off to one side.

  "You'd remember if you did?"

  "Sure."

  "Look," Roque said, "if Bernardo was driving my father's truck, he was working. That's the only time he gets to use it."

  "But it wasn't you in Nestor's truck with Bernardo?"