Mexican Hat Page 18

  The young man chuckled and his dark eyes flashed in amusement. With high cheekbones, slightly curved eyebrows, and an oval face that tapered to a round chin, he looked quietly fun-loving. “I wouldn’t be talking about it if I did it, Mr. Kerney. You’ve got a rookie on your hands—probably a virgin—and not a very talented one at that.”

  “You know me?”

  The man laughed. “Hell, man, you’re headline news at Cattleman’s Café.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage,” Kerney said.

  “I’m Alan Begay,” he replied, raising his chin in a quick greeting. “From the Navajo Pine Hill Chapter at Ramah.”

  “What brings you to this party?”

  “I’m a surface-water specialist with the state. I work in the Gallup field office. I’ve been down here for the last three weeks. I heard the explosion and tagged along with the crowd.”

  “Do you have time to stick around and take a look at the trailer after things calm down?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” Begay replied, his smile widening. “It would be fun.”

  Kerney chatted with Begay for a few minutes to reassure himself that the man was who he seemed before skirting the fringe of the crowd. He found Sheriff Gatewood by the fire engine, occupying his time watching firefighters roll up hoses and shovel debris from inside the trailer.

  Gatewood didn’t notice Kerney until he was at his side. He cast a glance at Kerney and stifled a reaction of surprise by clamping his mouth shut. It made his chubby cheeks puff out even more. “Damn, Kerney,” he said, “we figured you were burned up inside.”

  “No such luck. Who got killed?”

  “Your landlord, Doyle Fletcher, the poor son of a bitch.”

  “What happened?”

  “Fire chief thinks someone planted a device. She put a call into the state fire marshal to send an arson investigator up from Las Cruces.”

  Gatewood kept talking, and Kerney’s attention wandered. The medical examiner and a paramedic were moving Fletcher’s body from the truck hood onto a gurney. He stepped over and pulled the blanket down. Fletcher’s face, seared and unrecognizable, made Kerney choke down bile. He flipped the cover back over the face and spent a minute considering whether it had been the blast or the fire that had killed Fletcher. He decided it didn’t really matter.

  The crowd began to thin out. Slowly people walked away in tight, chatty little groups. Gatewood moved off to speak to a deputy. Soon only a few hangers-on and official personnel remained, most with nothing to do. Kerney found himself wondering what had happened to the mice, and decided his sense of humor had gone stale.

  At the rear of Fletcher’s truck a deputy sheriff was using his bulk to block Alan Begay from getting closer to the trailer.

  Kerney intervened. “Sorry for wasting your time,” he apologized, as they stepped out of the deputy’s earshot. “But the sheriff has sealed the crime scene. I can’t get you in.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Begay said. “Let me show you something.” He walked Kerney thirty feet behind Fletcher’s truck, stooped down, and used a stick to turn over the partially melted remains of a light socket. “Here’s your trigger,” he said with satisfaction.

  Kerney bent over, peered at it, not quite sure what he was looking at, and waited for Begay to explain.

  “You take the bulb out and solder filament wire to the hot post. When you turn on the juice it sparks, ignites the gas, and detonates the dynamite,” Begay said. “You can see where its been soldered.”

  “What about fingerprints?” Kerney asked.

  “Don’t hold your breath.” Begay tossed the stick away, brushed his hands, looked at Kerney, and shook his head. “So now you’re unemployed and homeless.”

  “I didn’t even think about that,” Kerney said, as reality sank in.

  “I’ve got a spare bed in my motel room, if you need a place to crash for the night.”

  Reserve boasted only one motel, so Kerney didn’t have to ask where Begay was staying. “I may take you up on the offer.”

  Begay nodded. “I’ll tell the desk clerk to give you a key.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem, man,” Alan said as he walked away.

  The television crew arrived. A cameraman unloaded equipment while the reporter—one of those bright-eyed, perky women who smiled at the camera no matter what the subject matter might be—hustled off to find Gatewood. It brought the few remaining onlookers who were leaving scurrying back for more entertainment.

  As soon as everyone clustered around Gatewood and the reporter to watch the interview, Kerney took off.

  MOM’S SURGERY had gone well—better than expected, according to the doctor—and Karen sat in the waiting room with her father. Even with the good news, his face was filled with worry, and he was fidgety, running his fingers through his gray hair and pacing back and forth across the waiting room, taking big strides with his long legs.

  Karen wanted to pass it off as nothing more than Edgar’s desire to see Mom as soon as the doctor would let him. She wondered if the love that her parents had—a sweet, absolute devotion—had melted away with their generation and was now nothing more than a cultural icon. The idea of being joined at the hip to a man had always felt stifling to Karen.

  Elizabeth and Cody were much calmer than their grandfather. They were playing with a puzzle in the corner of the room with the pieces spread out on the floor between them. Elizabeth was lying on her stomach, knees bent and legs in the air, fitting pieces together, while Cody, stretched out on his side, played tiddledywinks with his pile of the puzzle, trying to vex his sister by skipping shots at her.

  The only other person in the room, a woman waiting to take her husband home from outpatient surgery, sat in front of a television at the far end of the room, watching a mindless talk show. The station broke away from the network for a news bulletin.

  Karen got to her feet as soon as the anchorman in Albuquerque started talking about more violence in Catron County. A trailer had been bombed and a man was dead. There would be a full report on the evening news.

  “Daddy,” she called.

  Already at her side, Edgar scowled at the television.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said.

  “Go ahead. I’ll take care of the children,” Edgar replied.

  Karen grabbed her purse, kissed Cody and Elizabeth, and flew out the door.

  THWARTED BY MOLLY’S REFUSAL to drive him around because she had to work for a living, and because his face would cause a massive traffic accident if she took him out in public, Jim Stiles was forced to do detective work by telephone. The mining company confirmed Steve Lujan’s story about his settlement, and the Catron County Bank reported no large amounts of money going in or out of Lujan’s accounts. The disappointment continued. No record of a divorce for Eugene or Louise Cox was on file in any of the district courts throughout the state.

  Molly came home for lunch, bringing the telephone directories he’d asked for from the library, and questioning his sanity. When he told her what he planned to do, she told him he’d damn well better have the money to pay her phone bill. After sharing a quick, thrown-together sandwich and giving him a smooch on the lips, Molly said he kissed very well for a man with an ugly face and went back to work.

  Jim’s plan was simple. He would call every damn person who lived in or between Pie Town, Quemado, Magdalena, Reserve, and Luna until he found somebody who knew something about Louise Blanton Cox.

  KAREN ARRIVED AT the trailer and quickly grilled Gatewood. She was relieved to learn that Kerney wasn’t dead. The devastated trailer had been braced up with scrap lumber so that the crime scene specialists, flown in from Santa Fe by the state police, could work inside the structure. They were laboring cautiously, bagging evidence, dusting for prints, and taking photographs. Karen logged in with the officer in charge and toured the outside area with Gatewood, an arson investigator, and the state police agent assigned to the Padilla homicide. The wall studs of the trailer had be
en fractured into giant toothpicks, and melted ceiling tiles, warped by heat into bizarre shapes, dangled from the gaping hole in the metal roof. A couch, consumed down to the metal frame, sat next to a badly charred and smoldering mattress.

  The arson investigator, in from Las Cruces, took Karen and Omar up a plank board to the hole where the front door had been. His rumpled jacket caught on the sharp edge of a piece of metal, and as he turned to free it, the trailer settled a bit. The movement froze Karen in her tracks.

  The man coughed, shook his head, and stepped back down the plank, forcing Gatewood and Karen to retreat. “Maybe I should just tell you what I found,” he said.

  “That’s a good idea,” Karen replied.

  On solid ground he inspected the tear in his jacket and tried to pull out a loose thread without success before pointing at the trailer. “We’ve got a dynamite explosion triggered by propane gas.” He wheezed, took out a tissue, and blew his nose. “Enough material was used to guarantee nobody inside would survive the blast. Whoever did this wanted to send a message that it was no accident. I’d say the tenant was the target, and revenge or retaliation was the motive.”

  “Was it a professional job?” Karen asked.

  “No way,” the investigator replied.

  “Does it fit any kind of profile?”

  The investigator shrugged. “Sure. My bet is that we’ve got a male perpetrator. Women tend to use flammables and burn personal objects, like clothes or bedding. Men go for accelerants and explosives. The perp was organized about it. Knew what he wanted to do. This is a flat-out murder case.”

  “Anything else?”

  The investigator nodded. “The landlord probably wasn’t the target. I understand the tenant is a single man who worked for the Forest Service. I’d be looking for either an extremist or a jealous husband or boyfriend. Something along those lines.”

  Karen turned to Gatewood and gave him a searching look. “Where is Kerney?”

  Omar looked sheepish. “He was here earlier.”

  “Find him,” she ordered, thinking that maybe the democratic system of electing sheriffs was a stupid idea. “I want a full statement from him on my desk as soon as possible. Does he know anybody angry enough to want to kill him? Concentrate on his investigation. Find out if he has been threatened or harassed. If you come up empty, ask if he has a girlfriend. What was his relationship to Doyle Fletcher? Fletcher’s wife?”

  Stung by her crisp manner, Gatewood sent two deputies to look for Kerney.

  Satisfied that the investigation was a little less scattered, Karen went to her office to call her boss in Socorro. Then she stood at the window for a very long time, looking at the sorry row of buildings across the road. Reserve had no charm other than the natural beauty of the valley and mountains. Most of the tourists stayed in Silver City or at resort ranches when they came to the region. There were no sidewalks or streetlights on the road. In front of an empty house across the way, once used as a real estate office, a pile of trash had collected against the sagging porch. Next door, she could see into the vacant modular building that had housed the weekly local paper before it went belly-up. Waist-high weeds covered the bottom half of the door.

  The town felt like it was dying. Maybe they needed to keep track of the population: five hundred and counting—down.

  She brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek and thought about the three dead men, Fletcher, Hector Padilla, and his grandfather. How were the deaths connected? What linked them to her family and a sixty-year-old secret? Would Kerney uncover the link before she could prepare her parents for the repercussions?

  FAR PAST THE RANCHES along Dry Creek Canyon, at the point where the forest road separated, Kerney took the fork that led away from the Slash Z summer grazing land, where he had first met Phil Cox. The road dipped into a canyon before climbing the slope toward the hogback ridge.

  Jim had discovered engine oil in the mine shaft before he was shot. That meant Padilla Canyon had been used as a staging area to scout out the hunter’s prey. Maybe another look would turn up similar evidence on the black bear poaching.

  At the ridgeline he shifted the truck into low gear and descended slowly into a second canyon. Bracketed by box elder and walnut trees that thrived in the moisture-rich ecosystem, the canyon was an oasis compared to Dry Springs. The road, or what was left of it, crossed several small springs that trickled over river rock. It seemed to give out as sheer canyon walls closed in and the stream widened. He sloshed the truck through a pool of water three feet deep, past downed trees rotting in the undergrowth, and picked up the bare outline of the route moving sharply upland. Crawling slowly to the summit, he topped out to find a cabin in a secluded hollow, sheltered by pine trees and protected by the mountains that filled the eastern skyline. Made of hand-hewn logs, it had a tin roof that sagged in the middle and a rock chimney that leaned precariously at an angle over the roof. The windows and doors had been boarded up with sheets of plywood.

  Kerney made a quick outside inspection before approaching the cabin, and found no sign of human activity. A strong odor of skunk grew as Kerney approached the door carrying a tire iron. He tapped hard and listened for scurrying sounds. All was quiet inside. From the high country above, he heard an elk bugle its presence with a thin, clear whistle that echoed into the hollow. On the plywood covering the door a Forest Service No Trespassing sign was posted.

  He wedged the tip of the tire iron under the edge of the plywood next to a nail, yanked hard, and almost fell on his ass as the board pulled easily away from the doorjamb. There were imprint marks in the wooden doorframe, probably from a pry bar. Someone else had been here before him. A padlocked steel grate in front of the closed door barred the way. He gave up on the door and went to work on a boarded-up window, jimmying the plywood free only to discover it was shuttered on the inside. He broke the pane of glass, cleaned out the fragments embedded in the sill, pushed open the shutters, and climbed inside. The structure was a single room with a stone fireplace and four built-in bunks.

  Kerney smiled when he saw the four-wheel ATV in the middle of the cabin. He pulled a flashlight out of his hip pocket and took a closer look at the tires. The wear on the rear tires matched exactly with the tread pattern he’d seen on the mesa and at the bottom of the meadows. A carrying rack had been welded behind the rear seat, and some rope was wrapped around the support posts that attached it to the frame. There were animal hairs in the fibers, some from a cougar. He bent low and shined the light under the ATV. The oil pan, crusted with a film of dirty oil, had a small leak. Holding the flashlight between his teeth, he dug into the sticky substance with a finger and rubbed it on the palm of his hand. There were small particles of rock dust and tiny wood chips embedded in the liquid. He put his hand to his nose and sniffed. Mixed with the smell of oil was the fragrance of fresh-cut pine.

  Outside the cabin he cleaned up the signs of his forced entry and replaced the plywood over the window and the door, trying to decide who to tell about his find. It wouldn’t be Charlie Perry or Omar Gatewood, and after a few minutes of inner debate, he also rejected telling Karen Cox, for now. An anonymous call to the state police was the best bet. At least that way he could hope the information would get to someone who didn’t have a personal agenda.

  He called the state police from Glenwood. On the highway a few miles south of the village, a surveillance car picked him up again, staying with him all the way to Deming, dropping out of sight only when Kerney waved down a patrolling cop inside the city limits to ask him how he could find Mike Anderson. The officer located Anderson by radio, and Mike agreed to meet Kerney at the entrance to Rock Hound State Park.

  The Floridas, a short but prominent range southeast of Deming, broke twenty-five hundred feet above the desert. The road to the state park ran straight toward the stark, arid range. At the turnoff to the park, Anderson was waiting in his Bureau of Land Management truck. The car following Kerney continued on, moving too fast for Kerney to read the plate.
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  He pulled up next to Anderson’s truck and rolled down his window.

  “Heard your trailer got bombed,” Anderson said, looking at him from inside his vehicle. “You’re having trouble making friends up in Catron County, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not very popular,” Kerney agreed.

  “Sounds like you’ve got a war on your hands,” Anderson replied. “Who did you piss off so royally?”

  “I wish I knew,” Kerney answered.

  “I hear you. Could be any one of those radical groups that want the government to butt out so they can clear-cut the forests, overgraze the land, and reopen the mines. What do you need?”

  “Answers. Tell me what you know about Leon Spence.”

  “Don’t know anything about the man.” Anderson shifted his weight and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “I already told you that.”

  “You never met him?” Kerney probed.

  “Never.”

  This time Anderson was telling the truth, but he was also holding something back.

  “Come on, Mike, level with me on this. You never met Spence. I believe you, but I’ve got a situation with three dead men, a wounded partner, and someone trying to kill me. I need help.”

  Anderson removed his hat, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked Kerney in the eye. “Okay, but I don’t know what good it will do you. Spence set up his trailer at that old rock shop about two years ago. Nothing strange about it—people come and go with their trailers on those frontage lots along the highway all the time.

  “A few months after he moved in, I started noticing unusual activity. Folks visiting at odd times driving vehicles with Arizona and Texas license plates, panel trucks towing rental trailers—that kind of stuff. I thought maybe it was a drug-smuggling operation, so I did a little snooping, found out what I could, and passed it along to my supervisor.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” Anderson retorted. “I was ordered to back off, make no more inquiries, and drop it completely.”

  “Why?”