Clayton had no doubt the killer was Craig Larson, but he had to prove it before he could announce it. With the speedometer hovering at ninety-five miles an hour and the emergency lights of his deputy a hundred yards behind him, Clayton raced down the highway.
In his hurry to go home, had he missed something during his visit to the Bible camp? Just thinking that made Clayton wince. He also wondered what would have happened if Grace had woken him when he’d asked her to. Would he have been at the roadblock with Ordonez when Larson arrived? Would his presence have been enough to make Larson turn around and find another route? Or would he also be dead with a bullet in his head?
As he drove the winding road through the hills west of Lincoln, he slowed, concentrated on the road, and tried not to think about all the maybes. Yet he felt negligent. When he turned onto the gravel country road, the dust from his wheels partially obscured the lights of Walcott’s unit. In front of the open Twin Pines gate, Clayton stopped, got out, and took a look around with his flashlight while Deputy Walcott waited at the side of the road.
He quickly spotted very recent tire tracks and two sets of fresh footprints. One set matched those he’d seen earlier in the day and thought belonged to somebody from the camp. But as he followed them up the county road away from the gate, he began to have doubts.
He dropped down and looked at them more closely. The prints looked similar to a set he’d seen at Kerney’s ranch, next to Riley Burke’s lifeless body. Had his lack of sleep made him miss the connection earlier?
On the access road inside the gate, he took another careful look. Tread marks and footprints told him a vehicle had stopped, the driver had left the vehicle, walked to the gate, and returned. Additionally, he found more footprints similar to those of Larson’s that came out of the woods, traveled around the back of the vehicle to approximately the driver’s door, and stopped. There both sets of prints were partially obliterated, but the set that had come out of the woods continued on to the gate before returning to the truck.
Clayton picked a distinct clean impression of each of the footprints, made a quick measurement to determine shoe sizes, and took digital photographs, before proceeding to Gaylord Wardle’s residence with Walcott following in his unit. He slowed to a stop in front of Wardle’s house, to find him standing under the front porch light, a .22 rifle cradled in his arms.
Clayton had Walcott stand fast, approached Wardle, told him to put the weapon down, and asked if anyone other than Cuddy was missing.
“No,” Wardle said as he rested the rifle against the porch railing. “We’ve checked everyone twice. Only Gregory is unaccounted for.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” Wardle looked past Clayton at Deputy Walcott, who was waiting next to his unit. “I have a lot of very upset young people here. Can’t you spare more officers for their protection?”
“Just keep everyone inside until we tell you it’s safe, and you’ll all be fine,” Clayton said.
“How long will that be?” Wardle asked.
“Until we tell you it is safe,” Clayton repeated, fast losing patience with the man. He reached out and picked up the rifle. “Yours?”
Wardle nodded.
It was a lever-action. Clayton emptied it, the rounds clattering onto the wooden porch deck. “Do you have a gun cabinet?”
Wardle nodded again.
He handed the weapon to Wardle. “Lock it up, call everyone at the camp who owns any kind of firearm, and tell them to empty their weapons and put them away. I don’t want to see any civilians carrying, and I want an inventory of every gun in your armory as well as those that are in private hands as soon as you can get it to me.”
Red faced with anger, Wardle opened his mouth to speak but Clayton cut him off.
“I don’t need a lecture on your constitutional right to bear arms, Reverend Wardle. A state policeman has been shot dead, and the weapon the killer used may have come from Twin Pines.”
“Oh, my,” Wardle said. “First the sheriff and now this. Of course, we’ll do everything you ask.”
“Excellent. Where are Cuddy’s quarters?”
Wardle gave Clayton directions, and handed him a master key that would open the front door.
Clayton thanked Wardle, left him on the porch, rejoined Deputy Walcott, gave him the key, and pointed him toward Cuddy’s rooms. “I doubt Cuddy was abducted from his rooms, but check anyway. Let me know what size shoe he wears. Call me by radio.”
“What’s that going to tell us?” Walcott asked.
“I found two sets of footprints by the gate, and only one of them is a nine and a half. That’s Larson’s shoe size. The other print is a size ten and a half. If that’s what Cuddy wears, you can bet we’re not going to find his body here.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because the driver of the camp pickup was attacked at the gate while in his vehicle.” Clayton handed Walcott the digital camera. “Do a quick search and then take this camera to Captain Ramsey.”
Clayton climbed into his unit. “Tell him the last four images are of the footprints by the Bible camp gate. Have him download them to his laptop, transmit them to the state police crime lab computer, and ask if they can match them to any of the footprint evidence found at Larson’s known crime scenes.”
“Where are you headed off to?” Walcott asked.
“I’m going to see where Larson’s footprints on the Forest Service road take me.”
Clayton left the Bible camp and drove slowly up the forest road, using his unit’s spotlight to follow the plainly visible footprints. If they were Larson’s footprints, Clayton figured he must have planned to steal a vehicle at Twin Pines. No attempt had been made to hide the tracks on the way down the mountain.
Where the road turned rocky, Clayton dismounted his unit and walked, scanning for partial prints, broken twigs, scuff marks, trampled grass, or crushed leaves. Born and raised in the mountains of Mescalero, taught to hunt and read sign by his Apache uncles, Clayton was one of the best trackers in the state. As a police officer on the Rez, he’d chased and caught poachers and illegal trespassers, and taught his knowledge and skills to officers throughout the southern part of the state.
He was a good half mile away from his unit when the beam of his flashlight picked up a shoe partial next to an old hoofprint impression at the side of the road. He dropped down for a closer look and found some fairly fresh, broken tiny juniper twigs and evidence that tire tracks had been brushed away.
Clayton stepped off into the undergrowth and quickly found more tire tracks that led him directly to Janette Evans’s truck and Larson’s improvised campsite.
He felt no sense of accomplishment as he called it in. If he’d followed the trail hours ago instead of going home for dinner and a nap, maybe Ordonez wouldn’t be dead, the youth minister wouldn’t be at the very least kidnapped, and Larson wouldn’t still be at large.
It made him physically sick to think about it.
Without pushing it too hard, Craig Larson made good time to the Texas state line. A dozen miles farther on, he passed through the dark and shuttered town of Plains, where the water tank, the tallest structure in the village, pierced the night sky. On the outskirts of town, he pulled off the pavement on the eastbound side of the highway and glanced over at his passenger. Kid Cuddy, the KO’d Kid, hadn’t budged an inch since Larson had coldcocked him before gunning down the cop at the roadblock with a perfect head shot. He checked the kid for a pulse, couldn’t find one, and glared at the body in disappointment. The KO’d Kid had up and died on him, spoiling all the fun.
Larson hauled the kid’s muscular body out of the truck, started to drag it into some tall weeds, changed his mind, and instead propped it against a nearby utility pole where it wouldn’t be missed come daylight. He hoped when the cops arrived they would concentrate their search to the east, but if not, so be it.
He turned the truck around, drove back to Plains, and headed north on a state road that w
ould get him a good distance away from Kid Cuddy before Larson crossed back into New Mexico. The two-lane highway was empty, and except for some oil pump-jacks casting shadows from a dim quarter moon on a flat prairie, and a few pieces of farm machinery sitting in irrigated fields, the land was empty as well. In the several small villages Larson passed through, there was absolutely nobody out on the streets and no sign of life in the houses fronting the main drag.
He let his mind wander back to those tasty-looking teenage Christian girls he’d seen at the Bible camp, bouncing and jiggling on their horses. It got him hungry for a woman, and he decided that he’d be really pissed off at himself if he let the cops shoot and kill him before he got some girly action. He grinned at the anticipation of some good sex and a running gunfight with the cops.
At three in the morning, just south of Muleshoe, Texas, the dial to the gas gauge quivered at the empty line. Larson slowed way down, hoping he could make it to town and find a twenty-four-hour convenience store or a gas station where he could fill up. In town, on a tacky-looking street named West American Boulevard, he drove past an open stop-and-rob twice before he spotted the exterior surveillance cameras pointed at the parking spaces in front of the entrance and at the gas pumps. He made a turn onto a side street, pulled to the curb, and considered what to do next.
The pickup truck had two pine trees and the name of the Bible camp painted on both doors, which was going to make it far too easy to spot once the cops started seriously looking for it. Better to ditch the pickup now and get new wheels. An older model Toyota sedan at the side of the convenience store probably belonged to the clerk on duty. He decided to make an even trade, the Ford pickup for the Toyota, whether the clerk liked it or not.
He sat and watched traffic on West American Boulevard for five minutes and only two cars passed by. If the trend held, that would give him adequate time to do what he had in mind. If not, he would just have to deal with whatever came along. He drove to the store, parked at one of the pumps, stuck the semiautomatic in his waistband at the small of his back, went inside, smiled at an overweight Mexican man behind the counter, and handed him some money.
“Fill up on pump one,” he said genially.
The bored clerk grunted, put the money next to the cash register, and turned on the gas pump.
“Is that your Toyota outside?” Larson asked.
“It’s my sister’s car,” the clerk answered in a thick Mexican accent, looking at Larson with a bit more interest.
“But you’re driving it, right?”
“Yeah.”
Larson pointed the semiautomatic at the Mexican’s head. “Give me the car keys,” he said.
With a shaking hand, the clerk hastily fished the keys out of his pocket and dropped them on the counter. “Take it,” he said. “Take anything you want.”
“Thanks.” Larson scooped up the keys. “Is there gas in it?”
“I just filled the tank.”
“That’s great,” Larson replied as he squeezed off a round. The Mexican’s head snapped back from the impact of the bullet as blood speckled the packs of cigarettes in the rack on the wall.
Larson jumped the counter, pushed the Mexican out of the way, grabbed a pack of smokes from the rack, a disposable lighter from the counter, and the cash he’d given the Mexican. He went outside to the Toyota and fired up the engine; the gas gauge read full. He left the motor running, hurried to the gas pump, got his stuff out of the cab, and hosed down the pickup with gasoline. As the vapor fumes filled the air, he spewed a full stream of regular unleaded toward the store entrance and watched it seep under the glass doors. He dropped the hose on the ground, went to the Toyota, backed away from the store, and lit a cigarette. When the gasoline oozed within range, he flicked the cigarette through the open window, floored the Toyota, and pushed it to the limit down the street.
The fireball explosion that followed rocked the small car, lit up the night sky, and threw debris onto the roadway. Larson smiled in satisfaction. It was just like in the movies. He made a U-turn so he could get a better look at the fire. The pickup truck and store were masked by a wall of flames.
It was gonna be a hell of a mess once the fire was extinguished. It would probably take the cops days before they could piece any evidence together. By then, he would be settled in someplace where he could hunker down for a while and find a woman to party with.
Larson hadn’t felt so good since the day he decided to murder Melvin and Viola Bedford. Back then, he thought he was doing it for the money, but now he realized that he just flat-out enjoyed killing people.
The New Mexico State Police helicopter carrying Captain Steve Ramsey and Clayton Istee touched down on the highway east of Plains, Texas, just as the sun on the eastern horizon began to light up the prairie. Yellow crime scene tape enclosed a body resting against an electric utility pole, roadblocks had been set up in both directions of the highway, and a small team of police officers was searching the area.
Ducking under the chopper’s rotors, Clayton and Steve Ramsey hurried over to a thin man wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat and a Western-cut sport coat, with a sheriff’s badge hanging from a lanyard around his neck, and introduced themselves.
“Brownlow Clauson, Yoakum County Sheriff. Folks call me Brownie,” the man said, shaking hands with each of them. He pointed at the dead young man. “Got the photo y’all sent and it looks to me that there’s your missing boy. An oil field crew getting an early start spotted the body about four this morning.”
“What else can you tell us?” Steve Ramsey asked.
“Cause of death appears to have been blunt trauma to the head. The boy got bashed at least three times. There are no other visible wounds on the body. Time of death is probably no more than four to six hours. ’Course, we won’t have anything definitive until the autopsy.”
“Have you found any hard evidence?” Clayton asked.
“Just footprints and tire tracks so far.” Clauson led them to some evidence cones placed on the soft shoulder of the highway.
Clayton bent down for a look. “That’s our man,” he said as he recognized both the footprints and tire treads, “and he’s still driving the Twin Pines pickup truck.”
“Not any more he ain’t,” Sheriff Clauson said. “I got a report out of Muleshoe just before you landed. A gasoline explosion and fire at a convenience store burned up a truck parked at the pumps, and probably killed the store clerk and maybe a customer or two inside the place. The VIN off the engine block matches that of the stolen Ford 150 four-by-four from that Bible ranch.”
“Are you sure the vehicle ID numbers are the same?” Clayton asked.
Clauson took a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Clayton. “I had the Muleshoe police chief read the VIN off to me twice to make sure I got it right. Could well be your cop killer is now nothing more than some crispy critter body parts strewn around the wreckage of that stop-and-rob.”
“We should be so lucky,” Steve Ramsey replied. “Were you told the cause of the explosion?”
Clauson rubbed the tip of his nose with a forefinger and shook his head. “‘To be determined’ was what was said. The fire chief has an arson investigator on-scene.”
Clauson glanced from Ramsey to Clayton to the chopper sitting in the middle of the highway. “I guess you boys will want to take that whirlybird of yours up to Muleshoe. I’d sure appreciate it if you did so pronto. Traffic is starting to back up and I’d like to get a lane open for those vehicles.”
“Sure thing,” Clayton said as he looked down the highway in both directions. At one roadblock there were three pickups, one semi, and two cars waiting. At the other, two empty yellow school buses, delayed from making the morning run to pick up students, idled behind the barrier.
Clayton handed Clauson his card. “You might want to have your people look for a .22 Marlin rifle.”
“We’re fairly sure it’s the murder weapon used to kill my officer,” Steve Ramsey added, giving Clauson h
is card as well.
Clauson pocketed the cards and gave Clayton and Ramsey each one of his own. “I’ll let y’all know if anything turns up. Bad business, killing a lawman.” He glanced over at the dead boy. “This is the first homicide victim I’ve seen in Yoakum County since I got elected.”
“Let’s hope it’s the last,” Clayton replied.
“Amen to that, brother,” Clauson intoned solemnly. “I’ll let the boys up in Muleshoe know that you’re on your way for a look-see.”
The pilot of the New Mexico State Police whirlybird made short work of getting Clayton and Steve Ramsey up to Muleshoe, a small town of no more than five thousand people, close to the New Mexico border. From the air, it was apparent that agriculture dominated the economy. Dairy farms, with irrigated fields in sharp contrast to the checkerboard sections of brown prairie, and tall grain elevators ringed the community. Within the town limits, motels and eateries were clustered along one main drag, and smack in the middle of it were the cordoned off, blackened roofless ruins of a cement-block building. A large hole in front of the building was most likely all that remained of the gasoline pumps. Around the perimeter were blasted-apart remnants of a vehicle, including an engine that had been severed from the chassis. From the size of the crowd kept back by police officers and firefighters, Clayton figured half the population of the town had gathered to watch events unfold.
He wondered out loud about the origin of the town’s name, and the pilot, a native of an eastern New Mexico village within spitting distance of Muleshoe, told him it had come from a nearby ranch that had been homesteaded long before the town was established. He set the chopper down in a vacant lot behind the destroyed building, killed the engine, and reported their arrival by radio as Clayton and Steve Ramsey left the bird.
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