Hermit's Peak (31 page)

“You're way off the mark.”

“Let's hope so,” Kerney said.

Garduno reached inside his unit to pick up the radio handset. Gabe gave Kerney an unpleasant look, walked to the river, and stood alone with his back turned and head lowered.

Garduno finished up with dispatch, glanced at Kerney, and nodded in Gabe's direction. “He knows it could be bad, Chief.”

“I understand that.”

A pickup truck with three dogs in the bed stopped next to Garduno's unit, and a stocky woman with short brown hair got out. “I'm Martha Owens. Where do you want my dogs?” she asked.

Before either could answer, the dogs started barking, straining against their leashes.

Owens went to the dogs and tried to calm them. The barking continued in spite of her efforts.

“They smell something,” she said.

“What?” Garduno asked.

“Either a body or blood.”

“We've searched,” Garduno said. “Nothing's here.”

“My dogs say otherwise.”

“Where?” Garduno asked, spreading his arms.

“Anne will show us. She's the best of the lot.” Martha unsnapped the leash of a female hound, and the dog jumped out of the truck before Owens could drop the tailgate. The hound made for a spot just off the road and started digging while her companions in the truck kept up a steady howl.

Kerney and Garduno converged on Owens and her dog. Clumps of dirt flew as the hound dug deeper.

Martha dropped to one knee, scooped up a handful of moist dirt, and sniffed it. “It smells like blood to me. Lots of it. The ground is saturated.”

“What kind of blood?” Garduno asked.

“I can't tell you that,” Owens answered. “But something got slaughtered here recently.”

Kerney felt the presence of someone at his side and looked over.

“Sweet Jesus, Mother Mary,” Gabe said, his voice cracking.

“Don't jump to conclusions, Gabe,” he said.

Gabe looked at Kerney like he was a complete stranger. “I want Bernardo in custody now.”

“We'll do this my way, Lieutenant.”

“What way is that, Kerney?”

“Cool it, Gabe,” Garduno said.

“Fuck you, Cap. I want to know what happened to my son.”

Garduno's call sign came over the radio. He hurried to his unit. “Go, dispatch.”

“The phone company reports a call made from the first number you gave me to the Gonzales residence at oh-six-fifty hours, last date.”

“Ten-four.”

“Let's go get the son of a bitch,” Gabe said.

Kerney grabbed Gabe's arm to hold him back. “Not yet. We need a plan.”

“You need a fucking plan. I don't.”

Kerney tightened his grip. “Give me your weapon and your shield.” For a moment he thought Gabe was going to swing at him.

“You'd do that?”

“Unless you work with me, I will.”

Gabe glared at Kerney. “What's your plan?”

Kerney swung his attention to Garduno. “Check with Fullerton. Find out if he slaughtered an animal here this morning. He may have had to put down an injured calf or a yearling.”

“Fullerton is on his way back to his ranch house.”

“Contact him ASAP.” Kerney turned to Gabe. “You're going back with me to the office. We're going to see what the surveillance team has on Bernardo, and get people out backtracking on Orlando. I'll ride with you.”

“To watch me?”

“You bet. Send the chopper home and keep working the search, Captain.”

“Will do.”

“Let's go, Lieutenant.”

Garduno called dispatch and snapped off an order to make contact with Fullerton. “Patch me through when you reach him. I'll stand by.”

“Ten-four.”

Still clutching the microphone in his hand, Garduno watched Gabe and Kerney drive away. He threw it on the front seat of his unit in disgust, put his hands to his face, and rubbed his eyes. What a shitty, shitty day it had turned out to be.

At the district office, Kerney kept Gabe Gonzales at his side during the time it took to implement a sweep to gather information about Orlando's whereabouts during the last twenty-four hours. Bernardo Barela would remain under full surveillance while officers backtracked at the bank, the university, and the burger joint where Orlando worked, questioning employees, classmates, professors, and anyone else who might have seen Orlando, or knew where he could be.

Kerney pulled Ben Morfin back on duty to do follow-ups on the people who'd been interviewed in the Luiza San Miguel slaying. He couldn't discount the possibility that it might tie in to Orlando's disappearance.

Garduno called in to report that Fullerton hadn't put down any of his livestock at the river, and the look on Gabe's face told Kerney that Gonzales was about to explode.

“Tell Fullerton we're coming out to talk to him,” Kerney said.

They left the district office for the Box Z Ranch in Gabe's unit, running a silent code three. Gabe kept the unit floored until the drop-off into the canyon forced him to slow down. On the ranch road, he pushed the unit to its limit, blowing out the shocks, struts, and alignment, fighting to keep control as they pitched, bounced, and veered through rough water crossings and over jagged rock outcroppings.

Kerney didn't say a word.

They found Arlin Fullerton in the equipment barn watching one of his employees weld a new lip on the bulldozer blade.

“Did you find that missing boy yet?” Fullerton asked.

“We're still looking,” Kerney said. “Did you see Bernardo yesterday?”

“Yeah, when he returned the 'dozer. He was late getting it back.”

“What time was that?”

“Four o'clock, or thereabouts. He came looking for me to say he'd gouged a chuck out of the blade. Said he'd hit some hard rock while he was grading the road.” Fullerton shook his head. “I don't see how he did it. That's mostly shale and sandstone he was moving around.”

“How did he get back to his truck?”

“I gave him a ride.”

“Did he talk about anything?”

“He told me you'd paid him a visit yesterday.”

“And?”

Fullerton shook his head. “That was it, except for some small talk about how many cow and calf units his uncle planned to run during the summer.”

“Did you see him after that?”

“Haven't seen him since.”

“Did any of your ranch hands see anyone around the abandoned car yesterday?”

“I would have heard if they did. They have standing orders to run off trespassers and report them to me. Those kids make a mess when they party at the river, and I don't pay my people to spend their time cleaning up beer bottles, garbage, and broken glass.”

“I'd like to talk to the man who first spotted the car,” Kerney said.

“You'll find him at the old Cañón La Liendre headquarters. His name is Marcelo. He doesn't speak much English. It's the last ranch house on the way out.”

“I've seen it from the road,” Kerney said.

 • • • 

Although he was tired, Russell Thorpe's enthusiasm for his first solo surveillance assignment hadn't diminished. He'd followed Bernardo to an early-morning stop at a hardware store, and then to a ranch and farm supply business where Bernardo loaded up an order of steel fence posts and rolls of wire.

From there, Bernardo drove out of town on the frontage road to the San Geronimo overpass and took a blacktop highway that turned to gravel a few miles outside the village. Thorpe used the dust trail kicked up by the tires to follow Barela through the settlement to Chief Kerney's property.

With binoculars he watched Bernardo unlock the gate, drive through, and park. After twenty minutes, Ruth Pino and her students arrived in a van. He saw
Bernardo and the professor exchange a few words and then drive down the ranch road in a caravan, Bernardo leading the way.

Several hours passed before Bernardo returned alone with an empty truck and headed toward town.

Russell stayed well back of the pickup to avoid being spotted. He caught sight of the truck on the ramp to the interstate and closed the gap, keeping two cars between himself and Bernardo. Back in town, Bernardo led Russell down the main drag and onto a side street adjacent to the university, cruising through a residential neighborhood of old homes that had been converted into duplex and apartment rentals for college students.

Several blocks into the neighborhood, on a tree-lined street, Bernardo pulled to the curb, parked, and walked to a waiting car. A middle-aged man got out, shook Bernardo's hand, and took him up the sidewalk to a small two-story Victorian cottage. The man unlocked the front door and gestured for Bernardo to enter first.

Russell waited for a minute, then drove by the house slowly, jotting down the phone number on a rental sign in the front window, and the license plate number of the man's car. He circled the block and parked at the end of the street. A few minutes passed before Bernardo and the man came out and stood on the sidewalk talking. Whatever the man said made Bernardo shrug his shoulders and shake his head. The man handed something that looked like a business card to Bernardo, went to his vehicle, and drove away.

Bernardo waited until the man was out of sight
before he dropped the card into the gutter and crossed to his truck.

Russell retrieved the card after Bernardo left, caught up with him at a red light, and tailed him across the main drag to a street that fronted the old railroad station and hotel. Bernardo parked and went inside the Rough Rider Bar.

Russell sat in his hot car. The day had warmed considerably and Thorpe's air conditioner didn't work. His face and hands were covered in dust from driving with the windows down on dirt roads and his mouth felt like dry cotton.

After ten minutes of waiting, Russell decided to eat lunch. He wiped his gritty hands on his pant legs and unwrapped the sandwich he'd packed. The bread was mushy and the meat was limp. He ate it anyway, and washed it down with a warm soda, thinking that sitting inside the Rough Rider Bar with a cold beer was a much more appealing idea.

He crumpled the wax paper, tossed it on the floorboard, and looked at the business card Bernardo had thrown away. It was from a local property management company. The phone number on the card matched the number on the rental sign in the window of the house. Maybe Bernardo was thinking about getting a place of his own.

Russell's shirt collar felt sticky against the back of his neck and he could feel sweat dripping down his armpits. He checked the time. In ten minutes he was due to call in on the secure channel and give an update to dispatch. Eating something hadn't been a good idea. After yesterday's
double shift, and only a few hours of sack time, the food in his stomach made him drowsy.

His eyes closed and when his head dropped to his chest, he woke up. Startled, he shook off the drowsiness. Bernardo's truck was gone and the dispatcher was calling his unit number. He pushed the transmit button on the handheld and answered.

“You're five minutes late on your call-in,” the dispatcher said. “Is everything ten-four?”

Russell cursed, put his car in gear, gunned it to the main drag, and checked both directions for any sign of Bernardo. Nothing. He slammed his hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

“Respond,” the dispatcher said.

“Negative,” Russell said. “I've lost the subject.”

“Stand by.”

Russell waited with a sinking feeling that he'd fucked up.

“Return to station,” the dispatcher said.

Russell swallowed hard.

“Acknowledge.”

“Ten-four,” Russell said.

 • • • 

Gabe rattled his unit over a flagstone outcropping that bisected the ranch road. The vehicle bottomed out and Kerney's head hit the roof. They drove past a stock pen that looked large enough to hold five hundred head of cattle, and into the old La Liendre ranch headquarters.

At the north end of Fullerton's half-million-acre spread, the ranch compound charmed Kerney's eye. Two side-by-side houses surrounded by mature trees
faced a stone barn and horse stable that was bermed into the ground and covered with a slanted tin roof.

The older clapboard house looked to be a Victorian-style craftsman model popular during the 1920s. Ordered by catalog, the complete building package was shipped by rail, hauled to the building site, and assembled following step-by-step instructions. The screened front porch sagged a bit and a fresh coat of paint was in order, but the house looked to be in fair shape.

The newer house was flat-roofed, stuccoed, and bordered by a low fence that kept a dark-haired, four-year-old boy in and a small herd of nearby goats out. A satellite television dish was anchored to the side of the dwelling.

Gabe ground to a stop in front of the gate. The boy ran inside the house as the goats scattered to the horse stable and clattered over the tin roof, raising a racket with their hoofs.

“I'll take this one,” Gabe said as he got out of the unit.

Kerney followed Gabe up the walkway, stepping around the toys the boy had been playing with. A man in bare feet, with a chubby unshaven face, stepped out to meet them.

He eyed Gabe's uniform and in Spanish asked what Gabe wanted.

“Are you Marcelo?” Gabe replied in Spanish as he stepped onto the porch. Through the screen door, Gabe could see a television. It was tuned to a Spanish-language afternoon talk show.

“Yes.”

“What time yesterday did you discover the abandoned car?”

“Eleven, no later.”

“And you saw no one?”

“No. I was in the feed truck. I just stopped and wrote down the license number so I could give it to the boss.”

“Where were you before you found the car?” Gabe asked.

“Loading the feed truck,” Marcelo said. “I always put out range supplement the day before we move cattle to a new pasture. It keeps them nearby and easier to find.”