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.
Larson’s mind started racing. If Trujillo had survived and the young family had been rescued, that would put the cops on to the Department of Corrections van and the Honda, but not Lenny’s truck. Had some cowboy with a cell phone on his way back to the ranch picked up Lenny in the desert and called the cops? He groaned in disgust at himself. He should have killed them all.
He checked the rearview mirror, trying to see if the cop was talking on his radio, but he couldn’t make anything out. If it was a tail and the cop had called for backup, somewhere up ahead there was sure to be a swarm of police blocking the highway. He decided to get off the pavement to see what the cop would do.
He crossed the bridge that spanned the railroad tracks near the village of Lamy, flashed his turn signal, and made a left onto a ranch road. He drove slowly for a quarter mile, constantly checking the rearview mirror for any sign of the cop car. The road behind remained empty, but that didn’t mean anything.
Where the ranch road divided, he took the right fork, which dipped into a canyon and rose toward a house that sat on the crest. He topped out to find a truck and small SUV parked in front of the house. A horse barn with a corral stood about a quarter mile across a grassy field, and dirt tracks traveled up a small hill toward a big piñon tree. In the canyon below there was no cop car or sign of dust kicked up by tires.
Larson decided to switch vehicles. He pulled to a stop, honked the horn, got out, and rang the front doorbell. After waiting a minute, he rang again. When nobody answered, he checked the SUV and truck, only to find them locked.
Larson figured the ranch belonged to one of those rich easterners who liked to play part-time cowboy while the wife shopped Santa Fe. He smashed a glass patio door with the handgun and went looking for car keys. He snatched them from a wall rack in the mudroom just off the kitchen and came outside just as a pickup truck came down the dirt track.
He stuck the car keys in his pocket, hid the weapon behind his leg, and waved as the truck skidded to a stop. A perturbed-looking cowboy in his twenties piled out.
“What are you doing here?” the young man demanded.
“I just stopped by to visit and found that patio door busted,” Larson said, bluffing.
“Hogwash. I was here twenty minutes ago and everything was okay.”
“Well it ain’t okay now,” Larson replied as he brought the handgun up and shot the cowboy twice in the chest.
The man coughed, clutched his chest, and collapsed to his knees. Blood stained his shirt and hands as he fell forward on his face.
Larson stepped up and turned the man over. This one was dead. Now for sure he’d be facing a murder one charge if he got caught.
He got into the SUV and drove back to the fork in the road where the vast Galisteo Basin spread out before him. The other branch of the road paralleled a broad, sandy arroyo. Should he return the way he’d come or take a chance on finding another outlet?
He decided to find another way to Santa Fe. If necessary, he’d drive cross-country and bust through fences. Once he got to Santa Fe, he’d leave the SUV in the mall parking lot at the south end of the city, take a bus downtown, and walk to Jeannie Cooper’s South Capitol apartment.
He’d given her a hefty sum of money to keep something for him and now he needed to collect it.
Chapter Two
Jeannie Cooper rented a small one-bedroom apartment on a dead-end street in Santa Fe within shouting distance of the state capitol. Larson’s knock at the door went unanswered. From a small enclosed patio at the rear of the apartment, he peered through the kitchen window. There was no movement inside.
Larson figured breaking in to search for the property he’d left with Jeannie would not be wise. He had ditched the SUV and was on foot. Without transportation, making a quick getaway if he had to would be impossible. He settled into an old lawn chair on the patio, out of sight from any nearby nosy neighbors, and waited for Jeannie to come home.
Larson had met Jeannie when he’d been working for Melvin and Viola Bedford as their personal assistant. He’d carefully murdered the elderly couple one at a time over a two-year period while embezzling money from their estate. He’d blown most of it on women and vacations at luxury resorts, and had even spent a few bucks on Jeannie, an employee of the landscape company that maintained the grounds at the Bedford residence. As far as Larson knew, she was still watering flowers, pruning shrubs, and pulling weeds for a living.
She was also manic-depressive, what the shrinks called bipolar. When she was up, she could be great fun. But when her dark moods hit, she became self-destructive and impossible to deal with.
Around dusk, the sound of a vehicle pulling into the parking space at the front of the apartment building brought Larson to his feet. He intercepted Jeannie as she unlocked her front door and turned the doorknob.
She looked at him with wide-eyed surprise. “Craig. I thought you were in jail. That’s what the paper said.”
Larson pushed the door open and put a hand on her back to hurry her inside. “I’m out on bail. I need that strongbox I left with you.”
He turned on the ceiling light and looked around the small, tidy living room. A shipshape apartment meant that Jeannie was probably stabilized on her medication and neither manic nor depressed.
“What strongbox?” Jeannie asked.
“Don’t give me that crap.” Larson pushed her down on the couch. “You know what I’m talking about. I gave you a box of papers to keep for me.”
Jeannie gave him a belligerent look. “I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”
Larson stared at her. When Jeannie got stubborn, she completely shut down, and he didn’t have time to wait her out. Better play nice. He sat next to her, sighed, and said, “Maybe I’m mistaken, but I thought for sure I’d left a strongbox with you for safekeeping.”
Jeannie smiled tentatively. “Not that I remember.”
Larson patted Jeannie’s hand. “I guess my legal problem has my head all screwed up,” he said as an apology. “I still can’t believe I was convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”