Dead or Alive Page 3

  Larson’s mind started racing. If Trujillo had survived and the young family had been rescued, that would put the cops on to the Department of Corrections van and the Honda, but not Lenny’s truck. Had some cowboy with a cell phone on his way back to the ranch picked up Lenny in the desert and called the cops? He groaned in disgust at himself. He should have killed them all.

  He checked the rearview mirror, trying to see if the cop was talking on his radio, but he couldn’t make anything out. If it was a tail and the cop had called for backup, somewhere up ahead there was sure to be a swarm of police blocking the highway. He decided to get off the pavement to see what the cop would do.

  He crossed the bridge that spanned the railroad tracks near the village of Lamy, flashed his turn signal, and made a left onto a ranch road. He drove slowly for a quarter mile, constantly checking the rearview mirror for any sign of the cop car. The road behind remained empty, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Where the ranch road divided, he took the right fork, which dipped into a canyon and rose toward a house that sat on the crest. He topped out to find a truck and small SUV parked in front of the house. A horse barn with a corral stood about a quarter mile across a grassy field, and dirt tracks traveled up a small hill toward a big piñon tree. In the canyon below there was no cop car or sign of dust kicked up by tires.

  Larson decided to switch vehicles. He pulled to a stop, honked the horn, got out, and rang the front doorbell. After waiting a minute, he rang again. When nobody answered, he checked the SUV and truck, only to find them locked.

  Larson figured the ranch belonged to one of those rich easterners who liked to play part-time cowboy while the wife shopped Santa Fe. He smashed a glass patio door with the handgun and went looking for car keys. He snatched them from a wall rack in the mudroom just off the kitchen and came outside just as a pickup truck came down the dirt track.

  He stuck the car keys in his pocket, hid the weapon behind his leg, and waved as the truck skidded to a stop. A perturbed-looking cowboy in his twenties piled out.

  “What are you doing here?” the young man demanded.

  “I just stopped by to visit and found that patio door busted,” Larson said, bluffing.

  “Hogwash. I was here twenty minutes ago and everything was okay.”

  “Well it ain’t okay now,” Larson replied as he brought the handgun up and shot the cowboy twice in the chest.

  The man coughed, clutched his chest, and collapsed to his knees. Blood stained his shirt and hands as he fell forward on his face.

  Larson stepped up and turned the man over. This one was dead. Now for sure he’d be facing a murder one charge if he got caught.

  He got into the SUV and drove back to the fork in the road where the vast Galisteo Basin spread out before him. The other branch of the road paralleled a broad, sandy arroyo. Should he return the way he’d come or take a chance on finding another outlet?

  He decided to find another way to Santa Fe. If necessary, he’d drive cross-country and bust through fences. Once he got to Santa Fe, he’d leave the SUV in the mall parking lot at the south end of the city, take a bus downtown, and walk to Jeannie Cooper’s South Capitol apartment.

  He’d given her a hefty sum of money to keep something for him and now he needed to collect it.

  Chapter Two

  Jeannie Cooper rented a small one-bedroom apartment on a dead-end street in Santa Fe within shouting distance of the state capitol. Larson’s knock at the door went unanswered. From a small enclosed patio at the rear of the apartment, he peered through the kitchen window. There was no movement inside.

  Larson figured breaking in to search for the property he’d left with Jeannie would not be wise. He had ditched the SUV and was on foot. Without transportation, making a quick getaway if he had to would be impossible. He settled into an old lawn chair on the patio, out of sight from any nearby nosy neighbors, and waited for Jeannie to come home.

  Larson had met Jeannie when he’d been working for Melvin and Viola Bedford as their personal assistant. He’d carefully murdered the elderly couple one at a time over a two-year period while embezzling money from their estate. He’d blown most of it on women and vacations at luxury resorts, and had even spent a few bucks on Jeannie, an employee of the landscape company that maintained the grounds at the Bedford residence. As far as Larson knew, she was still watering flowers, pruning shrubs, and pulling weeds for a living.

  She was also manic-depressive, what the shrinks called bipolar. When she was up, she could be great fun. But when her dark moods hit, she became self-destructive and impossible to deal with.

  Around dusk, the sound of a vehicle pulling into the parking space at the front of the apartment building brought Larson to his feet. He intercepted Jeannie as she unlocked her front door and turned the doorknob.

  She looked at him with wide-eyed surprise. “Craig. I thought you were in jail. That’s what the paper said.”

  Larson pushed the door open and put a hand on her back to hurry her inside. “I’m out on bail. I need that strongbox I left with you.”

  He turned on the ceiling light and looked around the small, tidy living room. A shipshape apartment meant that Jeannie was probably stabilized on her medication and neither manic nor depressed.

  “What strongbox?” Jeannie asked.

  “Don’t give me that crap.” Larson pushed her down on the couch. “You know what I’m talking about. I gave you a box of papers to keep for me.”

  Jeannie gave him a belligerent look. “I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”

  Larson stared at her. When Jeannie got stubborn, she completely shut down, and he didn’t have time to wait her out. Better play nice. He sat next to her, sighed, and said, “Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought for sure I’d left a strongbox with you for safekeeping.”

  Jeannie smiled tentatively. “Not that I remember.”

  Larson patted Jeannie’s hand. “I guess my legal problem has my head all screwed up,” he said as an apology. “I still can’t believe I was convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”

  He’d left Jeannie a locked strongbox supposedly containing his important personal and family papers. In fact, it held over two hundred thousand dollars in jewelry Larson had stolen from Viola Bedford after he’d murdered her, a year before he’d killed her husband, Melvin.

  He had erased the jewelry from the inventory of property owned by the Bedfords and destroyed the paper trail. Since Melvin and Viola had no living heirs, the jewelry was now clean as a whistle, and Larson had been counting on it to go into deep hiding.

  Jeannie relaxed a bit. “After you jumped bail, a cop came to ask if I knew where you were. He said they knew you’d murdered Melvin and Viola but just couldn’t prove it.”

  “Those assholes,” Larson said. “They make stuff up all the time to scare people and get them to talk. You don’t believe that crap, do you?”

  “I didn’t used to,” Jeannie said, “until you came into my apartment, put your hands on me, and called me a liar.”

  “I’m really sorry, Jeannie.” Larson flashed a warm smile. “But like I said, I’ve been through a meat grinder with these trumped-up charges the cops laid on me and the bullshit conviction.” He shook his head sadly. “Now you tell me they’re accusing me of murder. It all makes me a little crazy.”

  Jeannie squeezed Larson’s hand. “That’s okay, I forgive you.”

  “Thanks. Are you doing okay?”

  “Most of the time,” Jeannie replied. “I’ve been taking vitamins, some natural supplements, eating strictly vegetarian, and not drinking alcohol. It’s helping.”

  “You look great,” Larson said with conviction. He’d always liked her looks. Jeannie was tall, had a tiny waist, round, inviting hips, perky breasts, and big, blue, slightly wild-looking eyes.

  She laughed and looked down at her grimy hands and dirty fingernails. “Yeah, I just bet I do. I’m tired and grubby.”

  “Still digging in the dirt for a liv
ing?” Larson asked.

  Jeannie’s eyes lit up. “Yep, but now I’m working for myself. I started my own landscape business this spring, and I’ve been putting in twelve-hour days ever since.”

  “Really?” Larson knew Jeannie had no money. She got by on her hourly wages and the occasional small check from her father, a retired postal worker who lived somewhere back east.

  That meant she must have started her new business by dipping into the jewelry he’d left with her. He gave her a hard look.

  “What?” Jeannie said, flinching at the meanness in Larson’s gaze.

  He grabbed her neck and squeezed. “You sold my jewelry, didn’t you, bitch?”

  Jeannie choked and turned red.

  Larson squeezed harder. “Didn’t you?”

  Jeannie’s fingers clawed at Larson’s hand.

  “Tell me or you’re dead.”

  Jeannie’s eyes welled with tears as she nodded.

  Larson eased off on the chokehold a little and Jeannie gasped for air.

  “I only sold some of it,” she gasped. “Just what I needed to get my business started.”

  “Where’s the strongbox?”

  “Let go of me and I’ll get it.”

  Larson squeezed Jeannie’s neck and lifted her off the couch, until her feet dangled in the air. “Let’s go get it together. Where?”

  Jeannie pointed at the small, adjacent galley kitchen.

  Larson marched her into the kitchen, released his grip, and pointed the semiautomatic at her. “Get it for me,” he ordered.

  She opened the cupboard under the sink, reached in, and pulled out the box. “Here.”

  The box had been pried open. Half the jewelry was gone, but his brother’s wallet with his driver’s license was still inside. Larson had stolen it from Kerry two years ago and it was still current.

  He didn’t doubt for a minute that Jeannie had looked inside the wallet, and that was bad news for her. He’d planned to make a clean getaway by assuming his brother’s identity, and that meant nobody could know about it, at least not for a day or two.

  He put the wallet in his back pocket. “How much did you get for the jewelry you sold?” he asked.

  “Twenty thousand.”

  “You got ripped off. Now tell me where you keep the prescription meds you hoard for those rainy days when you want to kill yourself.”

  “I don’t have any,” Jeannie replied. “I’m not suicidal anymore.”

  Larson had heard her rap before and knew she’d overdosed at least twice after proclaiming she was never going to try to kill herself again. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he said.

  “I told you I’m using vitamins and natural supplements now.”

  He forced the barrel of the handgun into her cheek and twisted it.

  Jeannie blinked and started crying.

  “Where are the drugs, Jeannie?”

  She took a coffee canister out of the pantry and dumped a large stash of barbiturates on the kitchen counter.

  Larson smiled. “Time for you to get mellow.”

  Jeannie shook her head. “Don’t you do that to me.”

  Larson raked the gun barrel across her nose. “Don’t you tell me what to do, bitch.”

  He took her into the living room, sat with her on the couch, and started forcing pills down her throat until she was too out of it to care. He kept force-feeding her the pills, slapping her to keep her awake. Finally, she passed out.

  Larson stayed with her until breathing slowed and then stopped. He checked for a pulse to make sure she was dead, found a travel bag in the bedroom closet, packed it with the strongbox, the handgun, and the money Kerry had given him, wiped his fingerprints from every surface inside the apartment he’d touched, and let himself out.

  Because of the damage he had done to her face, Jeannie’s death probably wouldn’t go down as a suicide, but at this point he didn’t care one way or the other. He had almost ten grand in cash, over a hundred thousand in jewelry he could convert into a sizable amount of money, and the use of his twin brother’s identity. That would give him some running room if he could get out of Santa Fe quietly.

  He decided to take the shuttle bus that ran from the downtown Santa Fe hotels to the Albuquerque airport. Once in the city, he’d find a place to crash and figure out his next step.

  Lieutenant Clayton Istee of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office finished his shift and hurried home to pick up Grace and the kids, who were packed and ready to start a ten-day vacation in Santa Fe. At the house, he parked his patrol vehicle and changed into civvies while Grace, Wendell, and Hannah loaded luggage and a picnic dinner Grace had fixed into the family sedan.

  They locked up the house and started out from the Mescalero Apache Reservation in high spirits. Wendell told “knock-knock” jokes that made Hannah giggle and Clayton groan, until Grace told him to save the next joke for later. After the children settled down, Grace read out loud from a travel guide about some of the interesting things to do and see in northern New Mexico.

  They could afford to vacation in pricey Santa Fe because they were staying at the ranch outside of the city owned by Clayton’s father, Kevin Kerney, who had recently retired as chief of the Santa Fe Police Department. Kerney was now living in London, England, with his wife, Colonel Sara Brannon, who was a military attaché at the U.S. Embassy, and their young son Patrick.

  It was a three-year assignment for Sara, who planned to retire from the army at the end of her tour of duty, when the family would return to Santa Fe. Until that time, they hoped to make at least yearly trips back home. In their absence, the ranch was being looked after by Jack and Irene Burke, friends who ranched nearby, and their son, Riley, who was Kerney’s partner in a cutting horse breeding enterprise.

  Kerney had given Clayton a set of keys to the ranch with instructions to stay there as much as he liked while the family was overseas. Clayton hadn’t planned on taking Kerney up on the offer so soon, but his boss, Sheriff Paul Hewitt, had assigned him to take a two-day seminar on advanced interrogation techniques at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy and ordered him to burn a week of leave before showing his face at work again. So for the first two days of the Istee family vacation, Grace and the kids would be on their own while Clayton attended the seminar.

  Halfway into the road trip, late afternoon turned into evening and Clayton pulled off at a roadside picnic table on the lightly traveled two-lane highway. Grace served up a spread of homemade fried chicken, potato salad, and double chocolate brownies, and the family ate dinner in the cool of the gathering darkness without one vehicle passing by the whole time they were there.

  Back in the car, the children fell silent and soon nodded off. It was pitch dark by the time they left the highway and rattled over the cattle guard and ruts in the dirt-and-gravel road that led to Kerney’s ranch southeast of the state capital. The motion jarred Wendell and Hannah awake.

  “Are we there yet?” Wendell asked in a sleepy voice.

  “Almost,” Grace answered.

  “I need the bathroom,” Wendell said.

  “Can you hold your water for a few minutes?” Clayton asked.

  Wendell shook his head. “I need to go really bad.”

  “Me too,” Hannah said.

  “Okay.”

  Clayton slowed to a stop and everyone piled out. Wendell relieved himself at the side of the road while Grace took Hannah in search of some privacy behind a tree. Above, at the lip of the canyon where Kerney’s ranch house sat, a small pack of coyotes screeched, chattered, howled, and snapped. The commotion lasted a long minute.

  “Are they hunting something?” Wendell asked his father.

  “I think they may have caught their prey.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “From the sound of it. Now they’re fighting over the kill.”

  “Maybe we’ll get to see it,” Wendell said.

  “Maybe.”

  With everyone back in the car, Clayton drove through the canyon
and up the hill.

  “Grandfather’s house is just ahead,” Clayton said.

  “Can we see Grandfather’s horses?” Hannah asked as the headlights briefly illuminated the horse barn across the wide pasture.

  “In the morning,” Grace replied.

  Clayton wheeled into the driveway, and the headlights of the sedan froze a pack of coyotes surrounding a form lying on the ground in front of the house. The animals turned toward the sound, their eyes glistening in the reflected light.

  “What is that?” Grace asked as she tensed up.

  Clayton braked to a stop. “I’m not sure.”

  “That’s a body out there,” Grace said.

  “We’re too far away to tell what it is.”

  “A body?” Wendell asked. He unbuckled his seat belt and hung over the back of the front seat. “Where?”

  Clayton backed up quickly, killed the headlights and engine, reached across Grace, and grabbed a flashlight from the glove box. “Everybody stay here.”

  “If that’s a body, you have to take us away from here right now,” Grace insisted.

  Clayton touched Grace gently on the arm. Her demand was not unreasonable. It was especially important to avoid ghost sickness with children, and doubly important to protect them from being taken by the dead, who often wanted company to travel to the other world.

  “I will, but not yet,” he said.

  “Now, Clayton.”

  “You know I can’t do that.” Clayton got out of the car and looked at Grace through the open window. “Stay here and keep the children with you.”

  “Let me go with you, Dad,” Wendell pleaded.

  “Stay in the car with your mother.”

  Wendell sulked and slumped against the backseat of the sedan.

  “Stay put, sweetie,” Clayton said to Hannah.

  “Can I sit with Mother?” Hannah asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  She climbed into the front seat and sat on Grace’s lap.

  As Clayton approached the coyotes, he picked up some rocks and started pelting them. The animals, three adults and a juvenile, backed off a few yards and then held their ground. He reached the body lying faceup and looked at it. Not much had been eaten, but the man’s face was a mess, and some feeding had been done where the man’s shirt had been shredded around the chest and two entry bullet wounds were visible.