Bobby nodded and climbed down.
“I’ll follow you in the truck,” Sara said.
Kerney pulled himself into the cab, raised the backhoe, swung the machine around, and started for the rutted ranch road that led to the ridge top. He stared down at Soldier’s stiff legs and exposed innards and looked quickly away to force down his anger.
Sara caught up with him in the truck as he climbed the ridge. He topped out and found a spot off the ranch road where a massive old pinon tree stood near a fair-sized boulder. He lowered Soldier to the ground, unchained him, and dug a deep trench. He used the forks of the hoe to nudge Soldier into the trench, put the chains away, and began covering up the hole.
Sara stood by Kerney’s truck with moist eyes studying the intense expression on Kerney’s face, thinking how hard it had to be for him to maintain his composure. Under much more tragic circumstances, he’d done this before when his parents had been killed in a head-on traffic accident while traveling to meet him at the Albuquerque airport upon his return from ’Nam. He’d placed his military decorations in their caskets, dug their graves by hand, and buried them in a beautiful grove of trees on Dale Jennings’s ranch, where his parents had lived and worked for many years. Surely, that memory had to be coursing through his mind.
She watched him dig out the boulder, move it to the grave site, and place it on top of the mound of dirt. She could see his stiff hands working the levers and the hard set of his jaw as he packed and smoothed the earth around the rock.
It was a lovely spot to put Soldier to rest, with a view of the expansive ridge-top pasture land and the surrounding mountain vistas.
Sara thought about the new set of military decorations she’d requested and received through official Army channels to replace the ones Kerney had buried with his parents so many years ago. They were in her suitcase. Kerney knew nothing about them. She planned to give them to him after the birth of their baby. Not for Kerney to keep, but to pass on to his son. Now, more than ever, it felt like the right thing to do.
He waved to her that he had finished, spun the backhoe around, and started for the ranch road. Sara followed as Kerney moved slowly down the ridge. The baby kicked her hard in the stomach.
She placed her hand on her belly. “I know you’re there, little one,” she said softly.
Ramona Pino met up with Sergeant Cruz Tafoya at the end of the driveway to a two-million-dollar estate in the hills behind Tesuque. Stout and balding with a scraggly black mustache and a toothy grin, Cruz greeted her with a quick nod of his head. He was wearing a Kevlar vest over his white cowboy shirt.
“So Larsen’s armed and dangerous,” he said.
“Armed at least,” Ramona replied.
“Same thing,” Tafoya said. “Is he a credible suspect?”
“We won’t know until we talk to him,” Ramona said. “But from what the girlfriend told me, he left home in plenty of time to kill Potter before heading off to work.”
“Well, let’s do it,” Tafoya said. “Larsen got a phone call while he was here and told the estate manager he had to bid on a gardening job at a neighbor’s house and would be back later to finish up. His tools are still here. The road dead ends on the hill behind us, and Larsen’s truck is parked at the last house. Put on your vest and follow me.”
“Let’s hope he’s there,” Ramona said. “He may have been tipped off that we’re looking for him.” She popped the trunk of her unit and strapped on her body armor.
“By the girlfriend?” Tafoya asked.
“Yeah,” Ramona replied.
“Is she really a girl?” Cruz asked.
“From the top of her curly head right down to her little red toenails. She’s a marvel of modern medicine.”
Cruz shook his head in disbelief. “Santa Fe, the city different.”
The hilltop house had a steep driveway that curved to a level parking area overlooking the road. Larsen’s truck was in plain view in front of a three-car garage. The garage doors were closed and no other vehicles were present. Ramona left her unit angled to block the driveway and walked up the driveway to Cruz, who’d positioned his unit behind Larsen’s truck. Together they walked up stone steps through a patio door and into a large courtyard, where a fountain of cut polished stone columns trickled water into a bed of pebbles. An L-shaped portal covered both the entrance and a large living room with glass doors and windows that looked out on the courtyard.
They stood on either side of the oversized hacienda-style double doors. Cruz rang the bell while Ramona kept her eye out for movement inside the living room. The doorbell brought no response.
Tafoya tried again with the same result. “See anything happening inside?”
“Nothing.”
Tafoya unholstered his sidearm. “Perimeter search,” he said, pointing the direction he wanted her to go.
Ramona took out her weapon and began her sweep. Staying as concealed as possible, she checked every door and window, finished the circle, and met up with Tafoya at the back of the house, where a patio provided a spectacular view of the Jemez Mountains to the west and the Tesuque Valley below.
Ramona shook her head to signal no contact. Beyond the valley she could see the soaring roof of the Santa Fe Opera and the white tents of the adjacent flea market that bordered the highway.
“Some place,” Tafoya said.
“There’s a trail off the master bedroom door that leads up towards the mountains,” Ramona said. “I saw some fresh footprints.”
Cruz flipped open his cell phone and dialed the number of the alarm company he’d written down from the sign posted at the end of the driveway. He identified himself, gave his shield number, and asked for information about the owners and any occupants, employees, or personnel with authorized access to the property.
He listened and shrugged as though what he’d heard was no big surprise. “Can you let us inside?” he asked, nodding at Ramona as he listened to the response.
“Good deal,” he said as he disconnected. “The alarm system is satellite linked. They’re gonna shut it down and open the front door for us. The owners are in California, nobody is in residence, and the grounds are maintained by a landscape company. Larsen had no reason to be here.”
They did a room by room search, found the house empty, and returned to the patio.
“Seems like our boy is on the run,” Tafoya said, holstering his weapon.
“Do we call out the troops?” Ramona asked, as she pivoted to look at the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that filled the eastern horizon, most of it heavily forested wilderness roughly fifty miles long and twenty-five miles wide.
“Yep,” Cruz said, reaching for his handheld. “He’s a credible suspect now.”
Four hours into his trek, Kurt Larsen stopped to get his bearings. After leaving the foothills, the trail had taken him deep into the forest, up a steep grade, over thick underbrush, and into a dense stand of pine trees where he had no line of sight to any familiar landmarks.
Not that he’d recognize anything but the highest peaks of the mountains. Since coming back from ’Nam, Larsen had never set foot in a forest. The jungle had hammered into his mind the dangers of closed-in spaces, which made him crazy with anxiety.
He waited until his breathing slowed, then listened for any sound that would tell him he was being followed. All he heard were birds chirping, squirrels scampering, wind whistling through the trees, and the dull whine of a jet passing overhead.
He looked up the trail, if you could call it that, and all he saw were more trees ascending a punishing slope. He hadn’t encountered anyone since entering the mountains and hadn’t seen any signs of recent use, such as footprints or litter. Maybe it was a hiking trail the forest service had shut down years ago, or an old game trail.
He sat with his back against a tree and tried to calm down. He’d skedaddled right after Mary Beth’s phone call with nothing but his handgun, a pocket knife, and his lunch. He opened the bag, peeled the meatloaf off the slices of bread, and chewed them slowly to let the juices wet his dry mouth. He would need to find water before too long.