Nothing But Trouble Page 32

  “That would be hard to do without a spotter,” Kerney said.

  Leo handed Kerney a bottle of chilled water through the open window. “If he misses, the helicopter will force the plane to stay on the ground. Take a load off. It’s two hours until sundown.”

  “Is your deputy really a trained Marine sniper?”

  “Fowler? You bet. One shot, one kill. He’s a Gulf War One vet. I call him my one-man SWAT team.”

  “What’s his weapon?”

  “A civilian version of an M40A1 with a ten-power scope and tripod.”

  “Let’s have him leave his ATV behind and low-crawl into position at sunset. Tell him to get within five hundred meters of the landing strip. Closer, if he can manage it. He can hide in the tall grass.”

  Leo nodded in agreement and called Fowler.

  After sunset Buster Martinez arrived at the Harley homestead on the Granite Pass Ranch to find Shaw waiting for him outside the barn next to his panel van. In the beam of the truck headlights he could see that Walt was wearing a holstered sidearm.

  “Why the pistola?” he asked as he got into the van.

  Shaw wheeled the van onto the ranch road. “With Kerney snooping around I’m taking no chances.”

  “You’d shoot a cop?” The thought of it made Buster’s stomach churn.

  “It’s just a precaution,” Shaw replied. “Chances are we’re the only two people in the Bootheel not at the Playas ballpark for the free concert.”

  “That’s where I’d like to be,” Buster grumbled.

  Shaw braked to a stop. “Go ahead and go.”

  “I just meant it would be something nice to see.”

  “Then just shut up about it.” Shaw gunned the engine and accelerated. The van jarred over the ruts as it picked up speed.

  Buster clamped his lips together. The van headlights froze a rabbit in the road and a front tire thumped over it. He glanced at Shaw. In the glow of the instrument panel Shaw looked pissed off. He’d been acting that way toward him all day. Probably still steamed about the saddle, Buster thought.

  He unwrapped a piece of gum, popped it in his mouth, and started chewing. It kept him from asking Shaw what in the hell the big hurry was all about.

  To keep himself alert and entertained Kerney used night-vision goggles to watch Fowler, Leo’s deputy sheriff, ex-Marine sniper, one-man SWAT team, crawl toward the landing strip. In the gathering darkness, with the waning moon yet to rise, he wondered if Fowler’s effort would be worth it. Other than the officers on the stakeout there had been no hint of human activity in the valley since their arrival. Additionally, the operation was premised on nothing more than an educated guess. There was no guarantee that a plane would be landing at the strip tonight.

  Fowler was good; he stayed low, used his elbows, knees, and belly, and moved to the best concealment points. Soon he’d be in position, five hundred meters out, covered in sand and grit, pricked by cactus spines, bitten by fire ants.

  Inside the four-by-four Leo had his headset on and was talking with the troops in a low voice. Throughout the wait he seemed perfectly content to remain sedentary and had exited the vehicle only once to relieve himself. Kerney didn’t know how the man could sit so long without getting antsy.

  So why was he on edge? Over the years he had calmly pulled more than his fair share of stakeout and surveillance assignments. He should be sitting back waiting for events to unfold, not prowling restlessly back and forth under the camouflage netting. Like a spasm the thought hit him that he had no business putting himself in potential danger, not with Sara in a war zone. What if Patrick lost both parents in the line of duty?

  What in the hell had he been thinking? he asked himself angrily.

  The door to the four-by-four opened. Leo eased himself out and handed Kerney a headset. “Time to plug in. Fowler is in position.”

  “Let’s hope we’re not wasting our time.”

  Beyond the landing strip headlights flashed into view and dipped out of sight.

  “I don’t think we are,” Leo said.

  Walt Shaw made a hard turn at the fence line, sped to the gate at the foot of Chinaman Hills, and ground the van to a stop. Buster jumped out to open the gate and Shaw went with him, shining the beam of a flashlight on the rutted dirt road. The recent rain had washed away all the old tracks and there was no fresh sign that any vehicles, horses, or people had passed by.

  Shaw gunned the van through the gate and Buster had to pull himself inside on the run.

  “We’re gonna be way too early,” he said, trying to make small talk. He’d never seen Shaw so uptight.

  “Not tonight.” Shaw downshifted as the van bounced through a sandy trough in the road.

  Buster put his hand on the dashboard to brace himself as the van jitterbugged down the road. Through the windshield he could see the flashing warning lights of the plane as it came over the Big Hatchet Mountains.

  Shaw stopped at the end of the eighteen-hundred-foot dirt strip and blinked the headlights. The plane banked, descended, and engine noise filled the night air. It touched down, taxied to a stop, and the pilot cut the engine. Buster walked to the cargo door and cranked the latch. The hold was empty.

  “There’s nothing here.” Befuddled, Buster turned and looked at Shaw.

  Shaw laughed in his face and shot him twice in the chest at close range.

  Through his night vision goggles Kerney watched Buster go down. In his headset he heard Fowler swear as Shaw picked up Martinez and dumped him in the airplane.

  “Everybody go, go, go,” Leo yelled to the teams. “Lights and sirens.” He ground gears, jumped the four-by-four out of the arroyo, and hit the gas.

  Engines revved and roared in concert with the slow thud of chopper rotors and first whine of the airplane propeller cranking up. Sirens wailed, adding to the din. Emergency lights splintered the darkness. For an instant Shaw stood frozen in the glare of the van as the backwash from the propeller rippled over him.

  “I’ve got a head shot on the shooter,” Fowler said.

  “No, disable the plane,” Kerney said.

  “Ten-four,” Fowler replied.

  Kerney counted seconds as he watched Shaw scramble into the open cargo hold. The plane swung around for takeoff, but before it could gather speed, Fowler put three rounds in the engine and two in the front landing-gear tire. The engine sputtered, died, and the plane tipped forward. Shaw and the pilot bailed out and ran for the van.

  Behind Kerney the chopper went airborne, its floodlight washing over the four-by-four. The teams from Chinaman Hills and the windmill bore down on the landing strip. By the time Shaw and the pilot were in the van and moving, they were boxed in.

  Leo skidded to a stop on the landing strip. Kerney rolled out the passenger door, crouched behind it, and leveled his weapon at the van windshield.

  Under similar cover Leo grabbed the radio microphone and hit the PA switch. His voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Throw out the weapon, turn off the engine, drop the keys on the ground, and exit the vehicle with your hands clasped behind your heads. Do it now.”

  Slowly the men complied, and Leo put them through a by-the-book felony takedown. Surrounded by officers, they were cuffed and pulled into a sitting position. While Leo checked the pilot’s ID, Kerney went to the airplane and took a look at Buster Martinez. He was facedown, leaking blood, and very dead.

  He walked over to Shaw, hunkered down, and looked him in the eyes. “Six officers will testify that they saw you murder Buster Martinez in cold blood,” he said. “I seriously doubt any lawyer could mount a defense against such overwhelming evidence. Want to tell me what this was all about?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Walt Shaw wasn’t talking, so Kerney decided to take a crack at the pilot of the airplane, Craig Gilmore. He walked Gilmore to Leo’s unit in handcuffs and sat with him in the backseat.

  A man in his fifties, soft in the face with a dimpled chin, Gilmore looked like the arrest had hit him hard.


  “Is that your airplane?” Kerney asked.

  Gilmore looked out the window at the disabled aircraft. “Yeah, I bought it ten years ago when business was good.”

  “What kind of business is that?” Kerney asked.

  “I own a regional wholesale cigarette and tobacco company in El Paso. But I almost lost everything when the tech stock bubble burst in 2000. I took a real beating.”

  “How do you know Shaw?”

  “We were in the navy together and stayed in touch over the years. I brought him in on the deal.”

  “When did you partner up with Shaw?”

  “Four years ago. It was either that or declare bankruptcy.”

  “Tell me how your scheme works,” Kerney asked.

  “It’s real simple,” Gilmore replied. “I forge documents showing that American-made cigarettes have been exported, and then sell them at cut-rate prices to several distributors in New Mexico and Arizona. Because custom and state taxes aren’t levied, we make a substantial profit on each pack.”

  “How much profit?”

  “It depends on the state, and we split it sixty-forty with the distributors. In New Mexico our cut is fifty-five cents a pack, and in Arizona it’s seventy cents.”

  “How many packs have you sold?”

  “Eight million, more or less.”

  Kerney did a quick mental calculation. Gilmore and Shaw had each cleared seven figures from the scheme. “Domestic cigarettes are sold with state excise stamps,” Kerney said. “How do you get around that?”

  Gilmore leaned forward to ease the pressure of the handcuffs that ground into his wrists against the seat back. “The local distributors mix the unstamped stock in with the taxed goods and charge full price to the retailer. Nobody pays any attention to the stamp when they buy smokes.”

  “Where do the goods wind up for sale to the public?” Kerney asked.

  “Convenience stores, gas stations, smoke shops, small grocery chains, mom-and-pop stores.”

  Because Gilmore and Shaw weren’t bringing counterfeit cigarettes into the country, legally it wasn’t smuggling. It was a theft, fraud, and contraband operation. “Who are your distributors?” Kerney asked.

  Gilmore named them.

  “Why run the risk of flying the goods here yourself?”

  Gilmore snorted. “Until now there wasn’t any risk. Customs doesn’t give a damn about general aviation planes that stay north of the border. It’s a hell of a lot safer to use a plane than to try to truck the product through the highway checkpoints around El Paso.”

  “Do you warehouse your inventory in Virden?”

  Gilmore nodded. “Yeah. We keep fresh stock of the most popular brands on hand there for the Arizona run. It’s our biggest moneymaker.”

  Kerney opened the door. “Okay, you’ll need to make a complete statement to the sheriff.”

  “What will I be charged with?”

  “Murder one.”

  Gilmore looked shocked. “I didn’t kill anybody. Can you help me out here? I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Then tell me this,” Kerney said. “What were you going to do with Martinez’s body?”

  Gilmore flinched at the question.

  “Well?” Kerney prodded.

  “Fly to San Diego and dump it in the ocean.”

  “In my book that’s murder one.”

  “I swear I’ll cooperate.”

  “Take it up with the prosecutor.”

  “Can you loosen the handcuffs? They’re hurting my wrists.”

  “Sorry, I can’t do that.” Kerney got out and looked at Gilmore through the open door. “Try to relax. It will be a while before you go to jail.”

  He locked Gilmore in the backseat cage and joined Leo at the airplane, where he was watching a deputy take photos of Buster Martinez’s body.

  “Who’s doing the Q and A with Shaw?” he asked.

  Leo nodded toward a sheriff’s unit. “Fowler, but Shaw’s still not talking, except to say unkind things about you. The ME and an ambulance are on the way. I’m releasing the state police officers.”

  “I’ll catch a ride with them back to Lordsburg,” Kerney said. “Gilmore is going to tell you about their contraband cigarette scheme.”

  “It’s not smuggling?” Leo asked.

  “Nope. They’ve been stealing name-brand domestic cigarettes and selling them cut rate to distributors.”

  Leo’s forehead wrinkled. “Who would have guessed?”

  “They keep their inventory at the Virden barn.”

  “I’ll get a warrant. Was Martinez a smoker?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Leo glanced at Buster’s body. “Well, cigarettes turned out to be hazardous to his health anyway.” Leo laughed at his joke. “I’m really going to enjoy making phone calls to ATF and Customs.”

  “Rub their noses in it, Leo.”

  Leo grinned. “You don’t get many chances to do that to the feds.”

  Kerney didn’t see Leo for several days, until the filming of the finale to the chase sequence at the smelter. He showed up in time to see a stunt driver roll out of a squad car just before it went airborne and landed on the flatbed railroad car.

  When the car exploded into flames, Leo nodded in approval. “Now that’s more like it,” he said. “I told you they needed to blow something up.”

  Kerney laughed. “It’s a realistic slice of police work, Hollywood style.”

  They watched the crane camera shoot a crash between two cop cars before Leo launched into an update on the investigation. Over a half-million dollars’ worth of cigarettes had been recovered in the barn in Virden, along with almost a million dollars in cash. Shaw had been charged with murder one and denied bail. He’d lawyered up and still wasn’t talking. Craig Gilmore was also being held without bond on the same charge.

  “I don’t think the DA is going to let Gilmore cop a plea,” Leo said. “We’ve got enough eyewitness testimony to sink them both. If it goes to trial, you’ll be called as a witness for the prosecution.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Kerney said. “What are the feds up to?”

  “They’re shutting down the network and arresting the distributors. Then they’ll take their evidence to a federal grand jury. I’m guessing Shaw and Gilmore will get hit with multiple federal felony counts.”

  “Good deal.”

  “This case is going to get me reelected by a landslide next year.”

  “You deserve to be reelected. But do you really think, in spite of your good work, that the citizens of Virden are going to vote for you?” Kerney asked.

  Leo guffawed. “Hell, no, but I’ll win anyway.”

  The two men watched moviemaking magic for a while more before Leo shook Kerney’s hand, thanked him, and left. Kerney hung around until the police-related shots were done and then headed back to Playas. Sara had e-mailed him last night. In two hours she would be calling from Iraq. He couldn’t take the chance that the call would be dropped because of poor reception. He’d pick up Patrick, drive to Deming, and take her call there.

  Although the conversation with Sara was long and upbeat, talking to her only served to drive home her absence. It gut-wrenched Kerney, and Patrick took it no better.

  “I want to go home to the ranch, Daddy,” he said tearfully after the call ended.

  “You know Mommy won’t be there, sport.”

  “I know. But I don’t like it here anymore.”

  “Let’s see what we can do about it.”

  That evening after dinner, with Patrick at his side, Kerney approached Susan Berman and asked if he could be released from the remainder of his contract.

  “I thought coming down here would be a good distraction for Patrick and me,” he added. “But I think it’s time for us to go home and try to get back to a normal life.”

  Susan nodded sympathetically. “Of course. Can you stay on until we shoot the mob scene in front of the police station tomorrow? Malcolm wants the police reaction to be as realist
ic as possible.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” Kerney said.

  “Good,” Susan said. She paused as if to say more, thought better of it, smiled down at Patrick, and walked toward the production office.

  “We go home tomorrow, champ,” Kerney said to Patrick as he hoisted him into his arms.

  Patrick lit up. “When do I get my pony?” he asked.

  “Very soon.”

  The script called for the mob sequence at the police station to be shot in the evening, after the rancher and his cohorts had been arrested at the smelter. Kerney, who had no intention of staying in Playas another night, packed up and loaded the luggage in the truck before rehearsals began. He dropped Patrick at the nanny’s with a promise get him as soon as he finished, so they could leave immediately for Santa Fe.

  At the set a hundred extras who played angry citizens, reporters, and bystanders milled around. The script called for all the lead actors and the supporting cast who’d participated in the cattle drive to be perp-walked to the police station. The mob would rush the cops in an attempt to gain the prisoners’ release. Once the prisoners were inside, the crowd would overturn a squad car and break the police-station windows before order could be restored.

  Kerney spent an hour with Usher as he blocked the sequence, and answered his questions about how the police would react to protect the prisoners and quell the mob. When Usher was satisfied with the blocking, he went to the bank of TV monitors and called for a run-through of each shot. Kerney stood next to him and watched the screens.

  Usher made camera adjustments and lighting changes, and by watching the monitors Kerney got a director’s view of the complexities of moviemaking. It was all about point of view, capturing different perspectives, and heightening the tension.

  When it was over, Kerney said good-bye to Susan Berman and went to his truck, where he found Agent Fidel waiting for him.

  “Bratton tells me you’re leaving,” Fidel said.

  Kerney nodded. “I’m heartbroken that I couldn’t be of any help to you.”