The Judas judge kk-5 Page 21

  "Yeah."

  "How's the new job treating you?" Kerney asked.

  "There's a lot to learn. But I like it so far."

  "Have you given Andy any grief yet?"

  Nate grinned. "That starts when I tell him what you plan to do. I was supposed to shut you down immediately."

  "Andy slicked me into staying on for this case in the first place," Kerney said, "and he gave me thirty days. Remind him of that."

  Nate nodded. "Eric Langsford could have been lying. The videotape doesn't prove anything."

  "I know it."

  He left Hutch and spent a few minutes working out team reassignments with Lee Sedillo. Sedillo had found Hobeck's Ruidoso cabin and put an agent onsite.

  "Keep him there and have our agents relieve the field officers covering Hobeck's residence and office in Albuquerque," Kerney said. "Have them pull double shifts."

  "That spreads me thin, Chief."

  Kerney nodded in the direction of the trailer. "When the techs finish, do a full search, and let's take another look at Eric's cabin in Pinon."

  "I'll give it to Agent Lovato; she's the primary on the suicide."

  "I want a full background check on Danny and Margie Hobeck, plus information of their whereabouts at the time of the murders."

  "Senior citizens usually don't commit spree murders, Chief. Especially premeditated ones." Lee shook his head. "Jesus, is that a contradiction in terms, or what?"

  "Nothing about this case is ordinary, Lee. Nothing fits makes or any sense.

  "Man, I'm glad to hear you say that. I've been starting to think I was the only one totally bewildered by it. Are you going to tell Linda Langsford about her brother?"

  "I'm leaving now."

  "Do you have a few minutes?" Kerney asked.

  Linda Langsford gave him a weary, exasperated once-over. Her port-red tunic-length shirt magnified a careworn expression and ashen complexion. Without a word, she turned and walked from the screened porch into the living room.

  "What is it?" she asked, as she arranged herself on the couch and pushed her hair away from her face.

  "I've come to tell you about Eric."

  Interest flickered in her eyes. "Have you found him?"

  "Have you arrested him?"

  "No."

  "Then what do you have to say?"

  "Eric is dead," Kerney said. "He shot himself. We found him several hours ago."

  Linda's eyes lost focus. She covered her face with her hands and sucked in a deep breath. When she looked at Kerney her eyes snapped with anger.

  "Eric wouldn't have killed himself if you'd left him alone."

  "He videotaped his suicide. On it, he said something I thought you should know."

  "What did he say?"

  "He thought the whole family was better off dead. What did he mean by that?"

  Linda's mouth barely moved. "I don't know."

  "He wanted you to watch the tape."

  "Did you bring it with you?"

  "No. Why would he want you to see his death?"

  Linda forced herself to her feet, her body taut. "I don't know."

  "It might help if you talked to me about your family, Ms. Langsford."

  "Don't play therapist with me. It's insulting."

  "Eric said his death would make you happy. Does it?"

  "He was sick in the head. Can't you see that?"

  "You gave him money: large sums delivered to him by Kay Murray."

  "I had it to give, and Eric needed help financially."

  "You had no other reason?"

  "He was my brother, Mr. Kerney. Family."

  "Why did you use Kay Murray as an intermediary?"

  "Eric wanted it that way. Besides, he didn't like me. Surely, you noticed."

  "There's one more point that concerns me, Ms. Langsford. I believe Arthur's death was a homicide, not an accident."

  Linda recoiled, visibly shaken. "Impossible."

  "Four violent deaths in one family worries me. I can't help wondering what could have caused it."

  "What kind of fiction are you concocting?"

  "I'm sorry to raise the issue right now, but I'm concerned for your safety. Can you think of any reason why Arthur may have been murdered? His death was the first in the family, and it could be an important link to what has happened since."

  Linda's face hardened. "I can't take any more of these ridiculous speculations. Please go."

  "I know it's difficult, but when you're able, think about it, Ms. Langsford."

  "I'll try. Now, please, leave me alone."

  Kerney had seen many people deny reality when given the devastating news of the unexpected, violent death of a loved one. It was an instinctive human response. Kerney hadn't seen that reaction in Linda Langsford until he'd raised the possibility that Arthur had been murdered. He wondered why it had surfaced for Arthur only.

  Kerney caught Dr. Joyce, Eric's former shrink, between sessions and told her about the suicide.

  Joyce let out a resigned sigh. "How tragic."

  "I need to know more about Eric and his family relationships," Kerney said.

  "You know I can't disclose that."

  "Your former patient is dead, Dr. Joyce. What harm can it do?"

  "But his sister is very much alive," Dr. Joyce replied. "Is Linda Langsford in treatment with you?"

  "I have a patient to see, Chief Kerney."

  "When did you start seeing her?"

  "You need to be going."

  Joyce's deflection convinced Kerney that Linda had recently started treatment. He leaned forward in his chair. "Help me out with some analytic theory, Doctor. I've been focused on family dynamics ever since we last talked, but I'm not a psychiatrist."

  Lillian Joyce adjusted the hem of her skirt and shifted her weight in the chair. "I can do that. Generally speaking, most serious emotional problems are rooted in late infancy and early childhood, Chief Kerney.

  The bond between parent and child is of particular importance in psychosocial development. If the healthy growth of a child is corrupted, most likely the individual becomes a maladjusted adult, unable to achieve close personal relationships."

  "Corrupted?"

  Dr. Joyce stood and ushered Kerney to the door. "My secretary has an office dictionary. Feel free to look the word up. Pay particular attention to the first entry."

  Dr. Joyce had flagged the dictionary page with a yellow tab. The first entry read, "Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved."

  Kerney smiled. Not only had Joyce expected him back, but she'd found a clever way to give him another hint.

  Motorcycles dominated the traffic traveling to Ruidoso. Vintage hogs, expensive touring cycles, bikes with sidecars, and customized racing machines flowed around Kerney's unit, tailpipes rumbling.

  Riders traveled solo, in pairs, or as part of a convoy, many of them carrying female passengers wearing club leathers.

  Kerney dialed up the Ruidoso PD frequency and learned that the annual weekend motorcycle rally was under way. On the main drag in town, choppers snarled traffic, hundreds of them moving slowly in both directions. All the parking spaces along the street were filled with gleaming, polished motorcycles, carefully arranged in neat rows.

  People wandered the sidewalks checking out the impromptu exhibition and talking to the bikers.

  Stalled in traffic, Kerney consulted a street map and found an alternative route to Kay Murray's town house. After crawling slowly to the next intersection he peeled away from the snarl of motorcycles and down an arrow side canyon road that crossed the river.

  Houses, cabins, and vacation retreats filled the hillside under a canopy of tall pines, and the warm afternoon had brought people out onto their decks and porches and into their yards. Small groups ambled along the roadside on their way to the event on the main street.

  It all looked very pleasant and festive, and Kerney yearned for a quiet weekend with Sara, far removed from anything to do with murder.

  Kay Murray opene
d her front door and shook her head as though the act would make Kerney disappear.

  "No," she said flatly.

  "We have more to talk about, Ms. Murray."

  "If I give you a blow job, will you leave me alone?" The offer stopped Kerney cold. "What?"

  "I'm serious."

  "No, thank you," Kerney said. "Do you know that Eric Langsford committed suicide?"

  "Really?"

  "Linda didn't call to tell you?" Murray looked away. "Did she call?"

  "Yes."

  "Was Eric blackmailing Linda?"

  "That's the way he liked to put it, but I always considered it an other one of his sick jokes."

  "Did he ever tell you why Linda gave him money?"

  "Why would you stay with Eric in a motel room for two hours, when all you needed to do was deliver Linda's money and score some grass?"

  "He liked to talk to me."

  "He never asked you to shower in the motel bathroom while he watched?"

  Murray laughed harshly. "Does that sort of thing interest you?"

  "Answer the question."

  "You helped Eric rob his father, didn't you?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "How else could he have known exactly what Vernon had in the house?"

  "I don't know how he knew."

  Kerney took a step toward Murray, breaking into her personal space. She pulled her chin back as if she expected to be hit, and a vein throbbed rapidly in her neck.

  "I know you want to stop playing this game with me," he said softly. "It's wearing you down. I can see it. You don't have to protect anybody."

  "I haven't lied to you."

  "I'm not talking about that. Help me get this settled and you can walk away from it."

  "You don't need my help and I don't want yours," Murray said, as she pushed against the front door, forcing Kerney back.

  It closed in his face with a thud.

  Cushman's house sat on a crest-line road with a view of Sierra Blanca Mountain, where the Mescalero Apache Tribe operated ski lifts and ran a lodge as part of their resort amenities.

  Contemporary in style, the residence had a tile roof, stucco exterior, and a privacy wall that hid the entryway from view. Both cars in the driveway wore bumper stickers that read JESUS LOVES YOU. Kerney rang the front doorbell.

  The door opened, and the smile on Joel Cushman's face collapsed into a distressed grimace. "Why have you come here?" he asked in an anxious whisper.

  "You weren't at your office," Kerney replied. A pathetic fear showed in Cushman's eyes.

  Cushman stepped outside and closed the door. "I'm home with my family. Can't this wait?"

  "Why were you treating Kay Murray? Your answer could allow you to remain in practice, Doctor."

  Cushman kept walking, his breath coming fast in his chest. He stopped next to the privacy wall and looked at Kerney with frightened eyes.

  "She had a relationship problem with Vernon."

  "What kind of problem?"

  "A sexual one. Vernon began wanting Kay to do things she wasn't comfortable with. Some of it was sadistic, some masochistic, but mostly it was a simulated bondage fantasy associated with bizarre imagery."

  "What kind of imagery?" Kerney asked.

  "He wanted Kay to dress and act like a prepubescent girl."

  "Did she comply?"

  "No. She stopped him from even touching her until he gave up trying."

  "And after he quit making his demands?"

  "According to Kay, she never slept with him again, nor did he ask her to. He was a paraphiliac without the proper imagery or paraphernalia, he simply wasn't aroused."

  "Isn't that pathological?" Kerney asked.

  "It can be," Cushman answered. "If he had forced Kay to be a nonconsenting partner in the fantasy, it would have been. But he didn't. They settled into a nonsexual relationship after that, primarily because Kay began setting strict limits."

  "Why would she tell me that she was still his lover up until the time of this death?"

  "I don't know."

  "She never explained her reasoning to you?"

  "No," Cushman said, stepping into the driveway.

  "Speculate about it," Kerney prodded.

  Cushman cast a worried glance over Kerney's shoulder at the front of his house. "She was protective about Vernon, in her own way. She started therapy to learn how to manage his peccadilloes without alienating him. She wasn't bothered by Vernon's sexual needs; some of them simply didn't suit her tastes. For Kay, everything is basically a control issue."

  "If you knew Kay had ended the sexual part of her relationship with Vernon, why did you tell me she was still his lover?"

  "Because she asked me to."

  Kerney studied the hangdog look on Cushman's face. "Didn't you find that odd? Usually people want to hide love affairs, not have them revealed."

  "All I can think is that she did it for Vernon's sake."

  "To preserve his reputation as a womanizer?"

  "It would seem so."

  "Isn't that somewhat off the wall, Doctor?"

  "The dynamics are unusual."

  "What is your clinical impression of Ms. Murray?"

  Cushman's face turned red. "She's a highly sexual, intelligent, extremely dominant woman who knows how to meet her needs."

  "Did she talk about her childhood in therapy?"

  "No, she kept the issue focused on managing Vernon. I'm not proud of what happened between Kay and me, Mr. Kerney, and I've asked God for forgiveness." Kerney nodded, wondering if Cushman had asked his wife for the same degree of understanding. He didn't think so.

  Cushman licked his lips and gave Kerney a pleading look. "What happens now?"

  "I'll get back to you," Kerney said, unwilling to let Cushman completely off the hook.

  He left Cushman standing in the driveway and checked with Lee Sedillo by radio, who reported everything was quiet at the stakeouts, nothing had turned up at the trailer search, and the ball was rolling on the Danny and Margie Hobeck background investigations. "I've got a message from your wife here, Chief," Lee added. "What is it?"

  "It says pick her up at the Albuquerque airport tomorrow morning or she'll file for divorce. Have you got trouble on the home front, boss?"

  Kerney laughed. "Not yet, Lee. Give me her flight number and ETA."

  After driving the state highway bordering the northern edge of the White Sands Missile Range, Kerney picked up the interstate in the Rio Grande Valley and passed by the suburban communities that oozed along the interstate south of Albuquerque. On once-empty desert rangeland housing tracts now mushroomed, lining either side of the road. To Kerney's eye it was uncontrolled sprawl that lacked any sense of scale, sensibility, or harmony with the land.

  He grumbled about it, thinking the world needed fewer roads, fewer cars, and most important, fewer people.

  Early in the evening he arrived at Bill Kendell's adobe-style house in Corrales, a semirural community sandwiched between Albuquerque and the burgeoning city of Rio Rancho. Linda's ex-husband, an affable man who seemed settled and comfortable with himself, introduced Kerney to his wife and son, and then took him into a small rear bedroom that had been turned into a home office. A glass door opened onto a covered backyard patio that provided an unobstructed view of the Rio Grande bosque and the distant Sandia Mountains.

  "I don't have much time," Kendell said, easing his lanky frame into an overstuffed reading chair. "I've got a city league basketball game in about an hour."

  "Tell me about your ex-wife," Kerney said.

  The congenial look on Kendell's face vanished. "Boy, that was a mistake."

  "In what way?"

  Kendell struggled a moment to find the right words. "We were just incompatible."

  "I sense there was more to it than that."

  "How is knowing about my marriage to Linda going to help you find Vernon's killer?"

  "I think the killer knew the judge, and his murder is tied to something in his past, or to his family."<
br />
  "I'm not real comfortable talking about my problems with Linda."

  "What you tell me may help keep her safe. Both parents have been murdered, we have reason to believe the death of her older brother Arthur was a homicide, and Eric has committed suicide."

  "Jesus, what a mess," Kendell said, shaking his head. "I'll keep whatever you tell me confidential."

  Kendell took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and nodded. "Nobody deserves that kind of grief, not even Linda."

  "I take it your relationship with her is less than cordial."

  Kendell adjusted his position. "You could say that. We parted on pretty harsh terms. I'm old-fashioned when it comes to marriage. My parents raised me that way."

  "And Linda wasn't?" Kerney asked.

  "I thought she was before we got married," Kendell replied. "We messed around a lot before the wedding, if you know what I mean, but we never actually had intercourse. She didn't want to before the wedding, and I respected her decision."

  "What went wrong?" Kerney asked, when Kendell stopped talking.

  Kendell blushed. "This isn't easy to talk about."

  "I understand."

  "No, I don't think you do."

  "I really need your candor, Mr. Kendell."

  "She said she wanted to make me happy-please me sexually-and she did." Kendell shook his head as though warding off an unpleasant memory. "But looking back on it, it wasn't right."

  "How so?"

  "Well, she would…" Kendell stopped and smiled uneasily. "Shit.

  Okay. She'd give me hand jobs or oral sex. But it wasn't reciprocal, if you know what I mean. I could touch her, but only above the waist. I thought things would change after the wedding. You know, the virgin thing. But she wouldn't let me make love to her. She kept wanting to please me without any intercourse. At first, I just thought she was scared about it-some women are that way. But it never changed."

  "When did things start to go sour?" Kerney asked.

  "When I told her I wanted children. She said we could adopt. I didn't want that. I wanted a wife and a family in the full sense of the words."

  "Were you aware of Linda's feelings before the wedding?"

  "We never talked about having children. But I assumed we would. Otherwise, why get married? Looking back on it, I think she did it to prove something to herself."