Dead or Alive

by Michael McGarrity

  Larson cocked the hammer for effect. “Now,” he ordered.

  The man took a few cautious steps and stopped. “Don’t hurt my wife and baby,” he said anxiously, his voice cracking.

  “Do as I say and you all might live.” Larson backed up to the van, pulling the woman with him, and told her to open the side door. “Pick up your baby and bring it over here,” he ordered the man.

  Larson glanced at the naked infant. It was a girl, maybe six months old, lying on a dirty diaper that was soaked in gooey, mustard-colored, stinky shit.

  The man came forward, picked up the baby, and walked toward Larson.

  “Get in the vehicle and slide all the way over to the far side.”

  Cradling the baby in his arms, the young man climbed in the van and scooted across the seat.

  Larson put the barrel of the handgun under the woman’s right arm and pressed it against her breast. “Get in beside them,” he ordered.

  Flashing a look of pure hate, the woman climbed into the van. She wore a wedding band that matched the one on the man’s ring finger.

  “Give me your car keys,” Larson said.

  “They’re in the ignition,” the woman said before her husband could respond.

  Larson smiled at her. She was the one who had the balls in the marriage. “If they’re not in the ignition, I’ll kill you all.”

  The man dropped his eyes, but the woman didn’t even flinch. “Like I said,” she replied, “they’re in the ignition.”

  “Good.” Larson pointed the semiautomatic at the man. “Toss me your cell phone.”

  Wordlessly, the man unclipped the phone from his belt and tossed it to Larson.

  Larson ground it under his foot as he smiled at the woman, thinking she would probably be dynamite in bed if someone made her pay attention properly.

  “See the sets of shackles at your feet.” He pointed his handgun at the floorboard. “Lock them around your husband’s ankles and then do the same to yourself.”

  The woman snapped on the shackles and then looked Larson squarely in the eye. “Please leave the door open. Otherwise it will get too hot in here for the baby.”

  Larson laughed. Even with a gun in her face, she’d scoped out the fact that a van for transporting convicts had passenger doors and windows that couldn’t be opened from the inside. “You’re a piece of work, sweetie, I’ll give you that.”

  He got in the driver’s seat, drove the van behind a large juniper tree where it was hidden from the interstate, cut the engine, turned his head, and looked at the young family through the cage.

  “I should kill you all,” Larson said.

  “Please leave the doors and windows open,” the woman said.

  Larson grinned at the woman. “You say please, but you don’t mean it. I should take you with me and teach you how to say it, honey.”

  The woman gave him the finger.

  “That wasn’t nice,” Larson chided.

  He took the shotgun from the dashboard rack and put it on the backseat of the Honda. Then he closed all the van doors and windows, locked the man, woman, and child inside, and drove away. Since he was almost halfway to Springer, he decided to stop in and see his twin brother, Kerry. He had a quick question to ask him.

  There weren’t any good alternate routes to Springer so Larson stayed on the interstate, keeping an eye out for cops. He made it to the Springer exit without a problem and drove directly to find his brother, who worked on a ranch along a two-lane highway that looped through open range to the town of Cimarron, some thirty miles distant.

  The ranch had once been independently owned, but now was part of a bigger spread controlled by a prominent New Mexico family with strong political connections.

  Larson hadn’t visited Kerry at the ranch for a good ten years, and he rattled the Honda along the ranch road that he remembered as being lined with large shade trees. Most of the trees were dead or stunted from drought.

  He stopped in front of a cluster of barns, sheds, and corrals. Off in the distance on a small rise he could see the campus of the new prison where the Springer Boys’ School once stood. For a moment Larson wondered if Officer Trujillo was dead and if the young couple and their baby would survive. He decided it really didn’t matter and went looking for Kerry.

  Larson’s brother was a full-time mechanic for the horse and cattle outfit. Cowboying had been his passion from the time they first did it as a summer job in their early teens. Larson liked the riding-around part, but thought it was way too much work for way too little money. A bad fall off a horse had forced Kerry to change jobs, and since he was naturally good with his hands he became a mechanic.

  One of the barns served as Kerry’s garage. The doors were open and country music blared from a beat-up boom box on the hard-packed dirt floor inside. A ranch pickup truck on blocks had had its transmission yanked, and the cannibalized remains of two four-wheel ATVs were parked along the back wall.

  Larson called out for his brother and got no answer. A grimy, long-sleeved denim shirt and a stained baseball cap hung on a peg hear the doorway. Larson put the shirt on over his jail-issue T-shirt to hide the semiautomatic stuck under his belt, and checked the other barn and a nearby horse stable. There were horses in the corrals but the barn and stable were empty inside.

  He walked down the winding lane to the dell where the ranch house and guest cottage were nestled under large cottonwoods. The rambling hacienda had a long portal on the back side with an expanse of lawn enclosed by a low adobe wall. A flagstone path wandered from a gate in the wall to the guest cottage.

  The main house was used infrequently by the owners to put up visiting family members, friends, livestock buyers, and the occasional hunter who paid for the right to hunt big game on the ranch. Kerry got free rent in the cottage for looking after the place when nobody was in residence.

  Drawn window shades and curtains and the absence of any vehicles in the circular driveway told Larson the house was most likely unoccupied.

  A heavy-duty pickup truck was parked outside the guest cottage. Larson had sent his brother the money to buy it. Through the open windows he could hear the sound of a noontime television news broadcast from one of the Albuquerque stations.

  Before Larson got to the front porch, Kerry slammed the screen door open, hooted, and gave him a bear hug.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked with a grin.

  Larson grinned back. “Saying hello to you, younger brother.”

  Kerry had been born twenty-five minutes after Larson. Except for Kerry being a quarter-inch shorter, seeing him was like looking in a mirror. They had the same baby-fine brown hair, light brown eyes, nose with a crease right down the middle, and prominent chin with a small dimple.

  Because of a difficult birth that cut off his oxygen supply, Kerry wasn’t nearly as bright as he should have been. In school, he’d tested in the very low normal IQ range and had been put in the slow classes.

  “How come you’re wearing my old greasy shirt?” Kerry asked.

  “Because I like it,” Larson answered.

  Kerry laughed and held the screen door open. “Come on inside.”

  The front room of the cottage was neat as a pin. An easy chair faced a flat-screen television that sat on a sturdy handmade stand. A framed photograph on the wall showed Larson and Kerry on horseback when they were kids.

  “I need to know who you told that I was staying in Venice,” Larson said as he joined Kerry in the adjacent kitchen. After getting busted, he’d learned that a Crime Stopper tip out of New Mexico had led the cops to him. Only Kerry had known where he was staying.

  “No one,” Kerry answered quickly with a shake of his head. He pointed at a half-eaten sandwich on a plate. “You want me to make you a sandwich?”

  “No thanks. Somebody knew, Kerry. You told somebody where I was hanging my hat.”

  Kerry looked down at his boots.

  “Tell me who it was,” Larson demanded.

  “Lenny,”
Kerry replied slowly.

  “I don’t know anybody named Lenny.”

  “Lenny Hampson. Came here from Texas. He’s good people. Does auto body repairs out of his garage at his house. Sometimes we get together and have a beer at Josie’s. He heard about you and thinks you’re really cool. I told him you were laying low in Venice, but I didn’t give him your address or anything like that. I swear to it.”

  “I believe you, little brother. Did you tell anybody else?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you still have any of that money I sent you?”

  Kerry nodded. “I paid cash for my truck like you told me, bought some tools and the new TV, and kept the rest for a rainy day.”

  “Let me have it,” Lawson said, figuring Kerry had held on to a good ten thousand dollars. “I’ll pay you back.”

  Kerry’s smile faded.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about getting a new deer rifle.”

  “Keep what you need for that and loan me the rest,” Larson said.

  Kerry’s smile returned. He took a flour jar from a cupboard shelf, pulled out three thick wads of twenties and fifties, counted out what he needed for the rifle, and handed Larson the rest.

  Larson smiled approvingly. “That’s perfect. Now, if I were to visit your friend Lenny, where would I find him?”

  Kerry gave Larson directions to Lenny’s house. It was right in town, off a highway that ran east to the Oklahoma state line.

  “Let me borrow a set of clean clothes, younger brother,” Larson said.

  “You could use some fresh duds,” Kerry replied with a chuckle. “I never saw you looking so grubby.”

  Larson washed up and picked out a pair of fresh blue jeans with razor-sharp creases, a long-sleeved cowboy shirt, and a pair of boots. Everything fit perfectly. In the front room he took one of Kerry’s cowboy hats off a wall rack next to the door, pocketed the money, rolled up the clothes he’d been wearing and put them under his arm, stuck the sidearm in his waistband, and told Kerry that he had to get going. He stretched his free arm around his brother’s shoulders, gave him a playful shake, and asked him not to tell anyone he’d stopped by for a visit.

  Kerry made a zipped-lips motion with his fingers and smiled in his typical bland, gullible way.

  “I’ll call you from the road,” Larson said. “Does Lenny have anybody working with him?”

  “He sure don’t.”

  Larson left his brother on the front porch, walked up the lane, got in the Honda, and drove away. It was time to find a new vehicle, and he knew just the man to help him make the switch.

  The garage where Kerry’s pal Lenny had his auto body repair shop was along an alley at the back of a house. Parked at the side of the garage were four cars with crumpled fenders, bashed-in front ends, or smashed door panels. Along the backyard fence, a sweet four-wheel-drive pickup with an off-road package was parallel parked.

  The sound of a grinder on metal greeted Larson as he got out of the Honda. He spotted Lenny at the back of the garage, working on a rear rocker panel, and walked to him.

  When Lenny looked up and saw Larson, he turned off the grinder, lowered his mask, and smiled. “What brings you by here in the middle of the day?” he asked. “You got some work for me?”

  Larson had figured Lenny would mistake him for Kerry. He pulled out the semiautomatic and pointed it at Lenny’s face. “You’ve got the wrong twin, my friend.”

  Lenny pushed his safety goggles up to his forehead and blinked hard. His face flushed red and he started to breathe rapidly. “What’s the gun for?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Larson said. Lenny was short. In fact you could call him stubby. He had big round eyes and a thick neck that made him look porky.

  Lenny put the grinder down. “I don’t even know you, mister.”

  Larson half-expected him to start stuttering like Porky Pig. “I’m going to kill you for calling Crime Stoppers on me.”

  “I did no such thing,” Lenny blustered, almost stuttering.

  “That’s a lie, Lenny. Tell me one more lie and you’re a dead man. Did you do it for the money?”

  Lenny stared into Larson’s eyes for a long moment and then slowly nodded. “Times are hard. I needed the cash. Ain’t even got it yet.”

  Larson smiled. “That’s better, Lenny. It’s always good to tell the truth.”

  “Don’t kill me.”

  “We’ll see about that. How about we get in your truck and go for a ride.”

  “Take the truck, the keys are in it.”

  “I need a driver, Lenny. Is it gassed up?”

  “I filled the tank yesterday.”

  “Excellent. Do a good job as my driver and I might let you live. But first, we need to bring that Honda in here and lock it in your garage. Let’s go.”

  Larson kept Lenny company with the handgun aimed at his chest while the Honda got put away out of sight. In the pickup, Larson stowed the rolled-up clothes under the passenger seat with the shotgun and told Lenny to head east on the state highway toward the town of Clayton.

  “Where are you taking me?” Lenny asked. He was sweating through his shirt.

  “On a scenic country drive.” Larson cranked up the air conditioner. “How long have you lived in Springer, Lenny?”

  “Twelve years come this September. I got a wife and two teenage kids. That’s why I needed the money.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” Larson said amiably. “Do you know the back roads around here?”

  “Some,” Lenny answered.

  “Good. I’m gonna tell you what roads to take. If you get me to where I want to go, you may just live to spend that Crime Stoppers’ money on your wife and kids. You savvy?”

  Lenny gulped and nodded.

  About twenty-five miles outside of town, Larson directed Lenny to an unpaved county road that headed south. They followed it to a few miles north of the village of Roy, where it joined up with a two-lane state highway. Past the village a turnoff took them near the famous Bell Ranch and across the Canadian River.

  They were traveling in the least populated area of New Mexico, where cows outnumbered the people and traffic was almost nonexistent. A few miles beyond the small Hispanic settlement of Trementia, Larson ordered Lenny off the pavement onto a country road that wandered through a vast basin peppered with red-rock mesas. When the country road turned into a seldom used ranch road, Lenny’s pickup truck with the off-road option package handled the washouts, deep ruts, and boulders without difficulty.

  Ten miles beyond the cutoff to the ranch headquarters, Larson ordered Lenny to stop the truck. “Get out,” he said when Lenny killed the engine.

  “What are you going to do?” Lenny asked in a shaky voice.

  The bright afternoon sun bounced off the hood of the truck. It was getting on to the hottest time of the day. There were few clouds in the sky and virtually no shade on the parched basin. Heat waves rising from the ground distorted Larson’s view of a few nearby stray cows that had raised their heads at the sound of the truck.

  Larson waved the gun at Lenny. “Out.”

  Lenny scrambled out of the truck.

  Larson slid behind the wheel and opened the driver’s-side window. “It’s ten miles back to the ranch headquarters cutoff and about twelve miles to Santa Rosa. You get to pick which way you want to go.”

  “Don’t leave me out here without water,” Lenny pleaded.

  “If you’d rather, I’ll shoot you now and leave you for the buzzards.”

  Lenny shook his head. “Don’t do that.”

  “My brother likes your company, Lenny, that’s the only reason you’re still alive. Buy him a beer when you get that Crime Stoppers check.”

  Lenny nodded, lowered his eyes, and looked away.

  Larson closed the window and drove off. The dust kicked up by the rear tires momentarily obscured Lenny as he stood at the side of the road. Lars
on thought about backing up and shooting Lenny just to be on the safe side, and he braked the truck to a stop. Through the rearview mirror he saw Lenny take off like a jackrabbit at a dead run cross-country.

  He drove on, calculating it would take Lenny a good four or five hours to reach civilization on foot and get to a telephone, if he didn’t die from dehydration first. He would have to ditch the truck and find another ride, but he had more than enough time to get to Santa Fe before then.

  Larson pressed the accelerator and bounced the truck over some big rocks. If he remembered correctly, he had about another mile of rough road before it smoothed out.

  Larson hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was getting on toward late afternoon. In Santa Rosa, a town that catered to travelers on Interstate 40, a major east-west highway, he stopped, loaded up on snack food and soft drinks, and continued westbound. Traffic was fairly light and the big rigs pushed along at eighty miles an hour or more, only slowing to form convoys in the right-hand lane on the long hill climbs. Most of the passenger cars that passed him were from out of state.

  Larson knew the route was heavily patrolled by state police, so he kept his speed at the posted limit and fell in behind a rancher in a big old diesel truck pulling a horse trailer. He tensed up when a black-and-white patrol car came at him traveling in the opposite direction, but it kept going and soon disappeared from sight.

  He got off the interstate at the Clines Corner exit and headed north toward Santa Fe. He’d started the day in Albuquerque and was about to make almost a complete circle and end it in Santa Fe. There was no one behind him until he reached the White Lakes turnoff, when headlights appeared in his rearview mirror, coming up fast. He cut his speed in case it was a cop, and was quickly overtaken and passed by a black SUV with Texas plates.

  Another set of headlights soon appeared in his rearview mirror, and Larson winced when the car closed and he saw the emergency light bar on the roof and the telltale spotlight mounted on the driver’s-side door. On a straight stretch of pavement, Larson slowed slightly to give the cop car a chance to pass, but it hung back. He tried again at the next passing zone but still the cop stayed behind him.