Serpent Gate

by Michael McGarrity

  Ordway blinked, rubbed a sleeve across his face, and grabbed a fistful of Robert’s shirt. “You’re going to jail for that, shithead.”

  Robert grinned and nodded in agreement.

  Kerney clamped down on Ordway’s arm. “Let him go,” he ordered.

  Ordway locked his gaze on Kerney. “Whatever you say,” he said with a grin, releasing Cordova.

  Free of Ordway’s grip, Robert tipped over his chair and scampered out the door.

  Ordway laughed as Robert disappeared from sight. “Well, it seems like he’s run away. Isn’t that a damn shame.”

  “Maybe you can tell me where to look,” Kerney said calmly.

  “Your guess is as good as mine. But if you think Cordova can help you, you’re way off base.”

  “I’d still like to talk to him.”

  “He’ll turn up again. He always does.”

  Kerney changed his tack. “I know you gave Gillespie excellent performance reviews, but did you ever have to discipline him for failure to perform his duties?”

  “No.”

  “He was never late for work? He never had to be corrected about policies and procedures?”

  “Sure, occasionally. It wasn’t a big enough deal to require any official action.”

  “There was no evidence of conduct unbecoming an officer? No citizen complaints lodged against him?”

  “No.”

  “Did Gillespie show signs of having a drinking problem? Was he closemouthed about what he did on his free time? Did he have a pattern of calling in sick after his days off?”

  “I never saw him under the influence, either on duty or off.”

  “Did he have money problems?”

  “You’ve seen his financial records. He lived within his means.” Ordway shook his head and stood up. “You know what? I think this case has got you stumped, and you’re looking for a way to save face. Questioning Paul’s character isn’t going to get you spit or make you any friends in this town.”

  Kerney got to his feet. “It sounds like Gillespie was a perfect cop.”

  “He did his job.”

  “I’ve heard that the town council isn’t very happy with your performance.”

  “The hometown hero, who took their high school football team to the state finals way back when, was murdered. They think I should have made an arrest the day he got shot. They don’t give a tinker’s damn about the lack of a suspect.”

  “That puts you under a lot of pressure, I bet.”

  “Not anymore. I’ve resigned. I’m out of here at the end of the week.” He turned on his heel to leave.

  “Chief Ordway,” Kerney called out.

  Ordway stopped at the door and looked back at Kerney. “What?”

  The waitress stood anchored behind the counter at the far end of the dining room, tilted slightly forward, intent on every word.

  “If you find Robert Cordova, don’t mess with him. Tell me where he is and I’ll pick him up.”

  “Sure thing, hotshot.”

  Kerney watched him leave, thinking Ordway had been a cop long enough to know that without a suspect, the victim became the prime focus of attention. But politics in small towns were played based on blood ties, and Ordway was the outsider, imported because Gillespie hadn’t met the state training and experience qualifications for the chief’s position. What if Gillespie had been a bad apple and Ordway had turned a blind eye to it, not wanting to fire the hometown ex-hero of the high school gridiron? It would be really stupid to admit that he let an unethical or crooked officer remain on the job in order to keep the town council placated. Such an admission would end Ordway’s career in law enforcement.

  From what Kerney had seen of Ordway during the past four weeks, he would be no great loss to the profession.

  He dropped some bills on the table to cover Robert’s meal and the tip, and smiled at the waitress. She lowered her gaze and got busy wiping down the immaculate countertop.

  • • •

  A railroad town established in the early part of the century, Mountainair sat among the foothills to the Manzano Mountains. A state highway dissected Main Street, curved in front of the local elementary school, and continued past a gas station, motel, and some abandoned commercial buildings before making a straight run west toward the mountains. Main Street, a two-block-long strip with some retail stores, a post office, and a National Park Service building, boasted no trees, no traffic lights, and no pedestrians. Some of the buildings were vacant, and barren display shelves behind plate-glass windows created a rhythm of continual decline.

  Kerney drove the strip several times looking for Robert, who was nowhere to be found. He stopped next to the post office and spotted Neil Ordway’s police car parked in front of the town hall and police station.

  The police station, which housed the police dispatch office and the magistrate court, had a concrete front with a thunderbird design perched above an ornamental pillar that separated two entry doors. Ordway’s office took up the second floor of the adjacent town hall.

  Kerney wondered if Ordway had snagged Robert in spite of his warning to leave the man alone. He switched his police radio to Ordway’s frequency. If Robert was in custody, Kerney would know it when Ordway left to take him back to Las Vegas. He would keep looking until then.

  Mountainair had no distinct neighborhoods to speak of, except for a string of middle-class, ranch-style houses and a few restored Victorian cottages near the high school. Even there, scattered between neat yards and tidy homes, an occasional empty lot with an old foundation or a sagging, weather-beaten house open to the elements broke any impression of a well-defined neighborhood.

  Kerney did a slow patrol and checked each empty house before heading across the main drag, where the pavement quickly turned to dirt, and a string of houses, several churches, some shacks, sheds, and uninhabited cabins sputtered to a stop at a fence to an unused pasture.

  Kerney kept looking, found nothing, returned to the main drag, and stopped at the grocery store to buy two packs of cigarettes. Ordway’s cruiser was still parked outside city hall when he came out. He headed east on the state highway in the hope that Robert might be hitchhiking out of town. He drove to the Estancia cutoff before giving up and turning around to scout the road west of town. He shut down the hunt near the Abo Ruins National Monument and made his way back to the village.

  He topped out at the hill on the outskirts of Mountainair just as a small herd of pinto horses swooped up a shallow arroyo and trotted along the highway fence. It was a pretty sight, and Kerney slowed to watch until the horses disappeared into a draw.

  Mountainair had faded with the demise of dry land farming and the decline of railroad traffic. But its beautiful setting pulled tourists in and kept the place alive. It was a gateway to the wilderness that spread over the southern end of the Manzano Mountains, which were brushed at the summits with the first dusting of snow.

  To the south a heavily forested mesa sheared off half of the horizon, and thick, slow-moving clouds in the blue-gray November sky rolled toward the village. Kerney had been taught by his ranching father to read the weather, and the day promised moisture sometime soon.

  Mountainair was not completely unfamiliar to Kerney. After finishing a brief stint as the interim sheriff of Catron County in the southwest part of the state, Kerney had looked at a section of land for sale in the high country outside Mountainair. It was summer grazing pasture infested with cocklebur, hound’s-tongue, and prickly pear cactus—sure signs of overgrazing. It would take years to bring it back, and Kerney needed land that he could put to use immediately to produce income and make the mortgage payments, if he was ever going to get back into ranching.

  With only enough money for a modest down payment, everything else he’d looked at was either way out of his price range or too small in size for raising cattle.

  Kerney’s parents had lost their ranch in the Tularosa Basin when White Sands Missile Range, a top-secret testing facility in the heart of south-cent
ral New Mexico, had expanded. The day they moved, military policemen and federal agents escorted the family off the spread to the Rocking J Ranch, where Kerney’s father had taken a job as foreman.

  That was the day Kerney’s dream of owning a ranch was born. He had kept his hopes alive for almost forty years. While living on the Rocking J, during his college years, in Vietnam as a platoon leader near the end of the war, and throughout his career in law enforcement, Kerney had never let go of the dream.

  He wondered if he would ever be able to achieve it. It didn’t look promising.

  He pulled up in front of Pop Shaffer’s hotel to find Ordway using a side-handle baton in a wrist lock on Robert to force him toward the squad car. The waitress watched the action through the plate-glass window of the dining room.

  “Let him go,” Kerney ordered, slamming his car door to get Ordway’s attention.

  “Butt out, Kerney,” Ordway said. “This is my business.”

  Kerney quickly closed the distance to Ordway.

  “Move, Cordova,” Ordway commanded. He applied more force to the hold. Robert gasped in pain and lurched toward the police car.

  “I said, let him go,” Kerney repeated, grabbing Ordway’s shoulder.

  “Sure thing, hotshot,” Ordway said as he pulled free, released Robert, and swung at Kerney with the baton.

  Kerney kicked Ordway in the nuts. He dropped the baton, fell to his knees, and grabbed his groin.

  After disarming Ordway, Kerney looked for Robert, who stood next to him, bouncing on his toes in delight.

  “Kick him again,” Robert said, as he threw uppercuts into the air.

  “Wait for me by the fence.”

  “Fuck you,” Robert replied, still punching the air. “You lied to me.”

  “What?”

  “You promised me some smokes, man.”

  “They’re in my car, on the passenger seat. Go get them. Then wait by the fence.”

  “Okay,” Robert grumbled, moving away.

  Kerney moved behind Ordway, stood him up, put the baton against his throat, and applied some pressure. “You’re not a man who takes advice easily,” he said.

  “Fuck you,” Ordway gurgled.

  “I could file charges against you,” Kerney said. “Unlawful arrest. Use of excessive force. Do you want that kind of grief?”

  Ordway thought about it and shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so.” Kerney released the pressure, pushed Ordway out of kicking distance, and circled around to look the man in the eyes. “Take my advice, Ordway. Find a civilian job. I don’t think you’re cut out to be a cop.”

  Ordway’s expression turned ugly when Kerney locked his handgun, baton, and car keys inside the police cruiser.

  “That should slow you down,” Kerney said to Ordway. “Get in my car, Robert.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought you wanted to go to jail.”

  Robert beamed. “Can I smoke in your car?”

  “No, but I’ll stop along the way so you can have a cigarette or two.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Humor me,” Kerney replied.

  • • •

  Kerney let Robert sit up front wearing no cuffs. He fought off Cordova’s bad smell by running the air conditioner with the window cracked, even though the cloudy late afternoon had dropped the temperature into the low forties.

  “You’re supposed to cuff me and lock me in the back. I’m an escaped mental patient.”

  “You don’t like sitting up front?” Kerney asked.

  “Yeah, I do. I need a cigarette.”

  They had just passed the Mountainair town limit sign. Kerney pulled off the road next to a cottonwood tree and got out with Robert, who quickly lit up. The cloud cover broke, and for a moment the high mesa south of the village shimmered in pale yellow sunlight.

  “You were in town the night Paul Gillespie was killed,” Kerney said.

  Robert exhaled. “Who?”

  “Paul Gillespie, the police officer.”

  Robert tugged at his beard. “I don’t know him.”

  “You went to high school with him.”

  Robert shrugged indifferently and looked away. “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you see Gillespie get killed?”

  “I’ve never seen anybody get killed. But I’d like to. That would be neat.”

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  The wind picked up and Robert started to shiver. “I’m cold,” he whined, grinding out his cigarette with his sneaker. “Am I going to jail or not?”

  “You’re going. Get in,” Kerney answered, gesturing at the car.

  Kerney drove for a time without talking, keeping one eye on Robert, whose foot beat a steady tattoo on the floorboard. Kerney wondered if the habit signaled anxiety. He decided to test the theory.

  “Did you see Gillespie the night he was killed?”

  Robert’s foot started bouncing off the floorboard. “I saw Satan.”

  “What was Satan doing?”

  Robert’s foot jiggled wildly. “Raping my daughter.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “Serpent Gate.”

  Kerney remembered the peculiar stone snake on Pop Shaffer’s fence. “Do you mean by the fence next to the hotel?”

  “Yeah.” Robert changed his mind. “No, not there.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay,” Kerney said gently. “Tell me about your daughter.” As far as he knew, Robert was childless.

  “She’s in heaven with Jesus,” Robert replied flatly, as he gripped the back of his skull with his fingers and stuck his thumbs in his ears.

  “Is that where Satan rapes her?” Kerney asked loudly, trying to get through to Robert.

  Robert grunted and shut his eyes. The conversation was over.

  When Kerney pulled into the sally port at the Torrance County jail, Cordova removed his thumbs from his ears, popped out of the car, and waited at the door to the booking alcove while Kerney locked his handgun in a weapon box.

  “Hurry up,” Robert barked, snapping his fingers.

  Kerney pressed the button to the booking alcove, and the electronic door latch snapped open. Inside, Robert immediately relaxed. He smiled at the female guard behind the glassed-in booking counter and began emptying his pockets.

  The guard, a sturdy-looking woman with broad shoulders and a close-cropped haircut, welcomed Robert back with a greeting and a grin.

  “What’s the charge?” the guard asked, eyeing Kerney skeptically.

  “Protective custody,” Kerney answered. “Twenty-four-hour hold.”

  She nodded knowingly and pushed a form through the slot at the bottom of the glass. “Fill this out. Has he had anything to eat?”

  “Lunch,” Kerney replied, as he completed the paperwork. “But he’s probably hungry again.”

  “Did you search him?”

  “Pat down only.”

  The woman nodded.

  Robert tapped Kerney on the shoulder. “I left my cigarettes in your car.”

  “I’ll get them for you.” Kerney took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and pushed it through the slot along with the booking form. “Put the ten bucks in his canteen account. He may need a few things while he’s here.”

  The woman smiled at him as he left to get Robert’s smokes. When he returned, Robert was inside the secure area sitting calmly in a chair. Kerney passed the cigarettes through to the guard.

  “Are you taking him back to Las Vegas?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t seem to want to go.”

  “Then why are you holding him?”

  “He may be a witness to a crime. I’m hoping he’ll talk to me. So far, I haven’t gotten very much out of him.”

  The woman nodded. “Give him the night to settle in. Robert does real well here. He likes the structure. We’ll clean him up, give him a meal or two, and he’ll be a new man by morning.”

 
; “I hope you’re right,” Kerney said.

  “He just told me you were his friend,” the guard said. “I’ve never heard him say that about a police officer before. You might get lucky.”

  “I could use some luck.”

  Robert waved gaily at Kerney as the guard buzzed him out the door to the sally port.

  • • •

  Sixty miles east of Mountainair, Kerney waited in the gathering night outside the old Vaughn train station for the arrival of a westbound freight out of Amarillo. On it, he hoped, was Floyd Wilson, a crew chief for the Southern Pacific, who had left Mountainair the morning after the Gillespie shooting. Wilson had been transferred off a track-replacement job west of Mountainair and reassigned to a spur-line construction project in Texas.

  As far as Kerney knew, Wilson had never been interviewed during the initial investigation.

  Parked next to the dark station house, Kerney sat in the car with the engine running, the heater on, and the window rolled down. Robert’s odor still permeated the vehicle.

  At the end of a siding, barely visible in the gloom, a warning sign where the tracks ended read DERAIL. It neatly summarized Kerney’s sense of futility about the case.

  An occasional car rolled down the highway that paralleled the train tracks, rubber singing on the pavement. But the dominant sound came from the wind that cut across the Staked Plains, a vast, high desert plateau that encompassed thousands of square miles of eastern New Mexico.

  The wind drove a light rain against Kerney’s cheek, and he turned on the car wipers so he could see down the line. The flash of light from the lead locomotive showed long before the sound of the engine reached Kerney’s ears. If the train blew through town without stopping, it meant Kerney would have to make the long drive to Amarillo sometime soon. On the phone, Wilson had told him he knew nothing about the case, and didn’t want to lose time away from his job. Kerney had called Wilson’s boss, who agreed to let Wilson make the trip to meet with Kerney on company time. He hoped Wilson was on the train.

  The train stopped and a man of average height, carrying an overnight bag, climbed out of the locomotive and walked wearily toward the car. Kerney got out to greet him.

  Floyd Wilson offered Kerney his hand with little enthusiasm. A man pushing sixty, Wilson had a full head of gray hair, a deeply lined face, thick, droopy eyebrows, and a condition on his neck that bleached out the pigment of his skin.