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  He hoped to God only one shooter was left. He didn’t have enough ammunition to take one man out and keep up a running gun battle with another.

  He steadied himself and waited.

  • • •

  Ramon slipped into the dining room and checked the bodies. “Javier and Raul are dead,” he whispered into his headset. “The house is empty.”

  “Are the targets down?” Carlos demanded.

  “No.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In the garage.”

  “Do you have an advantage?” Carlos asked.

  “No.”

  “Can you see into the garage?”

  “No. The door is closed.”

  Carlos moved down the driveway. The exterior garage door had a row of shoulder-high small windows. “When I tell you, put heavy fire into the garage through the door. I will do the same from outside.”

  “We haven’t much time,” Ramon said.

  “Then we must do it quickly,” Carlos replied. He stopped near the garage, pulled a night-vision viewer from the pouch at his waist, and scanned through the windows. The device could not magnify, but it did show a man’s outline behind an open car door.

  “I have him,” Carlos said into his headset. He kept the viewer fixed on Kerney and braced the assault rifle against his shoulder. “Move down the passageway. Aim high and to the right. Tell me when you’re in position.”

  “I’m there,” Ramon whispered.

  “Fire now,” Carlos said as he squeezed the trigger.

  • • •

  Officer Yvonne Rasmussen heard automatic-weapons fire as she rolled into the lane with the unit headlights off and the window open. She ground to a stop, hit the quick-release button to the racked shotgun, grabbed the weapon, and tumbled out of her unit. She keyed her handheld radio as she ran down the lane.

  “Shots fired,” she said. “Officer needs assistance.” She gave her location and asked for backup.

  The automatic-weapons fire continued to come from the direction of Fletcher Hartley’s house. She cut across the property at an angle and stopped before she broke cover at the driveway. A man in tactical garb wearing a headset stood spraying the garage door with an AK-47.

  She chambered a round into the shotgun and dropped to a kneeling position. The distance was too great to be effective, but maybe she could draw fire away from Sergeant Martinez. She pulled off a round, and the shooter wheeled and fired back. She felt something slam into her thigh, lost her balance, and fell. She looked down at her leg in stunned surprise. Her uniform trousers had a bloody hole in them. It was a brand-new pair. When she looked up, the man was gone.

  “Get out, now,” Carlos said into the headset as he ran to the back of the house. “The police are here.”

  “Did we get them?” Ramon asked.

  “It’s done,” Carlos replied. “Meet me at the car.”

  Rasmussen limped across the driveway and down the path to the front door. She could feel blood dripping down her leg. The front door was smashed and almost off the hinges. She got on her belly, cradled the shotgun in her arms, and started crawling down the dark hallway. The numbness in her leg was gone, replaced by a hot pain that made her clench her teeth to keep from groaning aloud.

  A silhouette entered the hallway from a side room.

  Rasmussen stopped crawling and aimed the shotgun. “Don’t move.”

  The figure turned toward her and the barrel of a weapon swung around. She fired once and the blast caught the man full force in the chest.

  She keyed her handheld radio. “Officer down,” she mumbled. From outside she could hear sirens in the distance. She crawled to the body and checked it. The man was dead. She moved over the body into a dining room and switched on her flashlight. The beam caught two more bodies under the kitchen archway. She checked them both before moving into the kitchen. An overturned table, thick legs peppered with bullet holes, blocked a short passageway. At the end of the hall, a door had been virtually blown apart by heavy fire.

  Yvonne switched off the flashlight and pulled herself down the passageway. “Police officer,” she called out.

  “In here,” Fletcher said.

  “Identify yourself.”

  “Fletcher Hartley.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No. Gilbert Martinez is with me. He’s been shot.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “No.”

  “Stay where you are. I’m coming in.”

  She pulled her handgun, hobbled to the garage, and fumbled for the light switch. She searched low and saw Fletcher Hartley huddled at the front tire of a bullet-riddled car. The arm of a man holding a nine-millimeter was draped over Hartley’s back. She approached cautiously. The man was lying on his side with his face blown away.

  As shock from her wound kicked in, Officer Rasmussen realized the faceless dead man was Sergeant Martinez.

  10

  Carlos finished briefing DeLeon just as the jefe’s airplane reached cruising altitude. The takeoff, which he hated as much as landings, had distracted Carlos and sweat trickled down his armpits. He jiggled his false teeth with a thumb and tried to remember if he’d forgotten anything in his report.

  DeLeon sat at the desk in the private compartment of his airplane examining the statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He seemed more interested in the statue than he did in the details of the firefight. Carlos waited for a reaction from DeLeon as he turned the bulto in his hands and carefully inspected it. All the other stolen items had been left locked in the wine cellar of the Santa Fe house.

  Finally, DeLeon spoke. “I did not think Kerney would be so easy to kill.”

  “I could not determine if the old man is dead,” Carlos said. “The police arrived too quickly. Ramon may also be alive.”

  “Ramon is dead and Fletcher Hartley is alive,” DeLeon said as he concentrated on the intricate elements of the statue.

  The statement came as no surprise to Carlos. The jefe frequently had important information at his disposal within a very short period of time.

  “You are not dismayed?” Carlos asked.

  DeLeon placed the bulto on the desktop. “The most important goal of killing Kerney was accomplished. The loss of the team is of no consequence. None of them can be traced to me. They were men without identities. Did you enjoy your assignment?”

  “It gave me great pleasure, patrón.”

  “I am glad.” DeLeon waved a hand in the direction of the compartment door. “You are sweating heavily, Carlos. This fear you have of flying makes your smell intolerable. Go have a drink, relax, and ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to carry you safely home.”

  Carlos nodded apologetically and left.

  Enrique turned his attention back to the wooden statue. It was beautifully fashioned and wore an elaborate blue-colored robe. A gesso over the wood smoothed out the figure, and tempera paints created a creamy flesh tone to the face and hands. The wood-carver had added arched eyebrows and wide, staring eyes. The circular base contained a filigree of delicate flowers and stems.

  The unknown New Mexico artist had followed the Spanish tradition of crafting an esplendor—a rayed nimbus of gold prongs—around her head, which made the statue exceedingly rare.

  DeLeon estimated the piece to be three hundred years old. A treasure, he thought. It would add much to the chapel at his hacienda.

  • • •

  Fletcher’s studio was the only room in the house not overflowing with cops, medical examiners, and crime scene technicians. He sat in a paint-splattered armchair in front of an easel that held an unfinished painting of fluttering magpies alighting on a tree branch. He had a thousand-yard stare in his eyes and a drained, empty expression.

  Kerney stood by quietly.

  “Did you see Gilbert?” Fletcher finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “His face is gone.” Fletcher shuddered slightly at the thought.
>
  “Yes.”

  “Who will tell his parents?”

  “It will be taken care of.”

  “He has a wife. Do you know her?”

  “No,” Kerney answered. “I don’t.”

  “And children. Two girls.”

  “I know.”

  “I have his blood all over me. Why did this happen, Kevin?”

  “Because of my stupidity.”

  A plainclothes officer holding a notebook knocked at the studio door and stepped inside.

  “What is it?” Kerney asked.

  “The police chaplain wants to know if Mr. Hartley would like to see him.” He smiled sympathetically in Fletcher’s direction.

  Fletcher shook his head.

  “Send him away,” Kerney said.

  “I need to take Mr. Hartley’s statement,” the officer added.

  “Do it tomorrow,” Kerney replied.

  The officer nodded, turned on his heel, and retreated.

  “I can’t stay here tonight,” Fletcher said.

  “We’ll find you a place.”

  “No need. I’ll make arrangements with friends. Someone will take me in. Why do you blame yourself for Gilbert’s death?”

  “Because the men who came here wanted to kill me, not Gilbert.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s get you ready to go. You need to clean up and change your clothes.”

  Fletcher nodded sluggishly, got to his feet, and tried to pull himself together. An expression of self-loathing crossed his face. He looked at Kerney and shook his head as color rose on his cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I started worrying about the mess that needed to be cleaned up. Isn’t that crass of me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I think it is.”

  Kerney stayed with Fletcher until the body in the hallway had been removed, and Fletcher could get to his bedroom without distraction. Fletcher made telephone arrangements to stay with a friend, picked out some fresh clothes from the closet, placed them under his arm, and walked toward the bathroom. He paused at the door.

  “I may stay away for a while,” he said.

  “There will be officers posted here round-the-clock, while you are gone and after you return.”

  “Thank you.”

  • • •

  In the hallway, near a pool of blood on the floor under the shattered frames of the Peter Hurd lithographs hanging on the wall that had been damaged by Rasmussen’s shotgun blast, Kerney corralled an officer. He asked the uniform to keep Fletcher sequestered and get him quietly out of the house without fanfare.

  “Wait until the reporters are gone,” he added.

  Crime scene tape blocked Kerney’s passage into the dining room. A technician working near the bodies by the kitchen archway bagged and tagged spent shell casings and empty ammunition clips. Blood stained the carpet and walls near the bodies. A photographer took pictures of the corpses.

  Kerney could see into the kitchen. Bullet holes riddled the pantry next to the passageway, and the garage door had taken sustained heavy fire. Outgunned and outnumbered, Gilbert had put up one hell of a fight.

  Outside, the driveway had been cordoned off and the garage door was open. Portable gas-operated klieg lights washed away the night. Officers and technicians swept the grounds, searching for additional evidence.

  Inside the garage, Fletcher’s car looked as though it had been attacked by a heavy-weapons squad. The windows were shattered and dozens of bullet holes pierced the vehicle. A storage shelf had been strafed, and paint and solvent from demolished cans dripped onto the bloodstain on the concrete pad.

  Gilbert’s body had been moved to an ambulance. Kerney looked inside the open doors. The body bag was zipped shut. Without thinking, Kerney reached in and gently touched Gilbert’s leg. He pushed away the thought that he was the one who needed some consolation, not Gilbert.

  At the entrance to the lane, television crews stood in a semicircle around Andy, their camera-mounted lights raw beacons in the night. Kerney checked by radio with the hospital on Officer Rasmussen’s condition while he waited for Andy to finish with the media. An ER nurse reported that Rasmussen required surgery, but a full recovery was expected. It was the only bright spot in an otherwise terrible night.

  The camera lights went dark and Kerney spotted Andy coming down the lane toward the house. He met him halfway.

  “Thank God, that’s over,” Andy said.

  “Do you want me to notify Gilbert’s wife?” Kerney asked.

  Andy paused momentarily. “I’ll do it. Do you know what pisses me off, Kerney?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t even know her name. What does that tell you?”

  “I don’t know her name, either.”

  “That makes us both shitheads. Will you be able to tie the hit men to DeLeon?”

  “I don’t think DeLeon is that sloppy. But I’ll find a way to get to him.”

  “Squeeze Bucky Watson,” Andy said.

  “I plan to, just as soon as I get all my ducks lined up.”

  • • •

  Agent Joe Valdez sat in the conference room and watched Kerney read through the file on Matador Properties. Kerney had called Joe at home and pulled him back to the office without explanation. He had heard about Gilbert’s murder from the radio traffic on his drive to headquarters, and the news had stunned him into an angry silence.

  His silence didn’t matter; Chief Kerney wasn’t asking any questions or talking. He had his elbows on the table, fingers at his temples, head lowered, and his eyes focused on Joe’s paperwork. His mouth was a hard, thin line. He finished reading, closed the file, and looked up.

  “What else have you got?” he asked tersely.

  Valdez consulted his notebook. “Matador Properties owns some thirty commercial buildings in the city. Mostly high-end or historic buildings on the plaza, Canyon Road, and in the Guadalupe District. The company leases space to galleries, restaurants, retail shops, and various professionals. It owns two major apartment complexes on St. Francis Drive.”

  “What’s Watson’s ballpark net worth?”

  “I’m still digging to get those numbers. But it appears Matador has had sufficient cash assets to lend big bucks to Rancho Caballo. If Matador controls any subsidiary companies, Watson’s total net worth could jump considerably.”

  “Is Watson carrying a heavy debt on his businesses?”

  “If he is, I haven’t found it yet.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “I’d say so. I’ve talked to all the commercial lenders in the area who offer jumbo mortgages. None of them are doing business with Matador. But he may be using out-of-state financing.”

  “What do you think?” Kerney asked.

  “Money laundering would be a good guess.”

  “How can you get a handle on it?”

  “If Matador is a holding company, it might have one master casualty-and-loss policy with an insurance underwriter for all its properties, including subsidiaries.”

  Joe reached for the file, tapped the papers into a neat pile, and stood up. “Once I know exactly what the corporate structure is, I’ll start looking at how the money gets moved around.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “I’ll start calling insurance agents right away.”

  “Do we have a list of local security companies?” Kerney asked.

  “I’ve got one in my office.”

  “Get it for me, would you?”

  “Sure thing, Chief.” Joe hesitated. “I’d like to start a collection for Gilbert’s family. They’re going to have a lot of expenses.”

  Kerney dug for his wallet, extracted all the currency, and put the bills in Joe’s hand.

  • • •

  Retired city police officer Toby Apodaca watched the unmarked police cruiser stop in front of his Cerrillos Road office. He unlocked the door and held it open as Kerney got
out of the car and approached.

  “There aren’t too many people who can get me out of a warm bed in the middle of the night,” Toby said after Kerney stepped inside the Guardsafe Security office. “How are you, Kerney?”

  “Fine, Toby,” Kerney answered. “And yourself?”

  “I’m doing okay,” Toby said, brushing an errant eyebrow hair back into place. His bushy eyebrows flared wildly in every direction. He scratched the thick stubble on his chin and ushered Kerney around a counter, past a bullpen for security guards that was shielded by portable partitions, and into a back office.

  “I heard you were back in harness,” Toby said. “Do you like it?”

  “I can’t seem to avoid it,” Kerney answered as he studied Apodaca. Toby had spent his last ten years as a cop on the Santa Fe Plaza, chasing purse snatchers and giving directions to disoriented tourists. He’d retired a few years before Kerney’s shoot-out with a drug dealer.

  “And carrying a deputy chief’s shield,” Toby noted. “That’s pretty impressive.”

  “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

  Toby had aged well, Kerney decided. In his late fifties, he carried about 150 pounds on a five-six frame. He had a full head of hair, and light brown eyes accentuated by wire-rim glasses.

  Toby chuckled. “I hear you. The thing I hated most about the job was the chickenshit politics. I don’t miss being a cop at all. Now I’ve got my own company, with regular hours, weekends off, and a personal life again. Well, most of the time, anyway.”

  “Sounds sweet.”

  “It is. So what’s up with Matador Properties?”

  “The owner may be a target of an investigation,” Kerney said.

  “That doesn’t tell me jackshit,” Toby said with a smile. “Deputy chiefs don’t pull peace-loving private citizens out of bed after midnight to talk about the possibility that a rich guy like Bucky Watson may have done something illegal.”

  “We think Bucky may be connected to a Mexican drug lord.”

  “Connected how?”

  “I’m not sure. But if he is, it means he’s working with a man who just had one of my officers assassinated.”