"Before you come back home."
Margaret went to him, sank down on his lap, and pulled his arms around her. Her wet eyes smiled.
"Thank you, Edgar."
He held her tightly, and neither spoke for a very long time.
Kerney spent a hot, long day in El Paso checking out the last two smugglers on Juan's list. Both seemed to operate legitimate businesses, which made Kerney's snooping by necessity discreet. After posing as a customer in each establishment, he staked-out the buildings until it became clear that he would need a surveillance team to help him and a lot of luck to catch any kind of a break. Frustrated, he gave it up late in the afternoon, wondering how far he could get going it alone with limited resources.
The only bright spot to the day was leaving El Paso. Big cities made no sense to Kerney at all. After the clutter of the strip malls, gas stations, and fastfood restaurants on the main drag out of town, he reached the desert that spread out like a vast ocean of glistening sandy breaks rising to steep-walled mountains on the western horizon. He cranked the air-conditioning up a notch, flipped down the visor, and headed west toward the enormous pale pink sun hovering at the horizon.
It was a two-hour haul from El Paso to Silver City. If he made good time, he might arrive early enough in the evening to pay a social call on the convalescing Jim Stiles and his lovely nurse.
Kerney's unknown traveling companion was back, and had been with him all day. Whoever was driving used a different car each time and tailed him like a pro. Kerney checked the rearview mirror and shrugged it off. Up ahead, the sun had vanished before it could set. A shroud of yellow dust came straight at him, pushed along by crosswise gusts that buffeted the truck. He turned on the headlights and reduced his speed. The cars coming at him were nothing more than floating beams of dull lights as the dust cloud boiled over the highway.
The storm blew through quickly, leaving a clear evening sky in the west and a huge sand cloud billowing to the east behind him. Drivers parked on the shoulder of the road, heading in Kerney's direction, pulled back into traffic. He watched for the car tailing him to emerge from the storm that still swallowed up the asphalt ribbon of highway in his rearview mirror. Nothing. Smiling, he increased his speed, fairly certain he had shaken the tail with the help of Mother Nature.
In Kerney's mind. Silver City had two redeeming characteristics: the foothills where the town sat, and the historic district, slowly coming back to life after years of neglect. The old hospital on the main drag, abandoned after the new medical center opened, looked like a relic from a World War II bombing raid. And the growth along the strip was a checkerboard of vacant land alternating with commercial enterprises surrounded by parking lots that appeared large enough to accommodate the cars of the entire city population at one time.
But downtown Silver City appealed to Kerney, with its long row of brick and stone storefronts with rounded second-story windows and elegant parapets, substantial old warehouses in back alleys still showing the faded letters of failed enterprises, the Big Ditch Park where Main Street once stood until a flood early in the century washed it away, and Victorian houses that climbed the hills on narrow streets.
Molly Hamilton lived in one of the Victorian cottages on a hill. A steep set of steps rose to a covered porch and an oak door with a leaded glass window. A brick chimney jutted at one end of the pitched roof.
Molly's brown eyes filled with censure when she opened the door.
"Where have you been?" she demanded.
She shook her blond hair in mock dismay and pulled him by the hand into the living room, where Jim scowled at him from the comfort of an easy chair, his feet propped on an ottoman. He still wore an eye patch, and the cuts on his face had turned into bright scarlet splotches.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me you'd been fired?" he snapped at Kerney.
"I had to find out about it on the TV news."
"I didn't want to induce a relapse." Kerney's attempt at humor felt flat; Jim kept scowling.
"It's no big deal," he added lamely.
"It sucks, big-time," Stiles retorted.
"Stop bitching at him, Jim," Molly ordered, turning to look up at Kerney.
"He's been moaning and groaning all day that you probably packed up and left without even coming to see him."
"I wouldn't do that," Kerney replied.
"That's what I told him."
Jim's expression softened, and his boyish grin reappeared.
"What I was really worried about was having to solve the damn case by myself with one eye, my arm in a sling, and a face like Boris Karloff."
"You might be able to frighten the truth out of people," Kerney acknowledged.
"Good!" Molly proclaimed, clapping her hands.
"You've kissed and made up. I love this male bonding crap. Sorry to leave you boys, but kitchen duty calls." She pranced out of the room, looking lovely in her tunic top and cut-off jeans that showed her legs to advantage.
The room was the nicest Kerney had been in for some time. It had a high ceiling, a fireplace bordered by a cast-iron surround, oak wainscotting, and two wooden casement windows that faced the street. The modern, comfortable furniture, slightly undersized and placed at angles to the walls, gave the room a feeling of space.
Kerney settled into the chair next to Jim, thinking of the time when he'd been living with Laura, a bright-eyed, feisty woman who seemed to have every desirable attribute he was looking for in a lover.
They had rented a small adobe home on a hill above Palace Avenue near downtown Santa Fe. It was a gem of a house that looked down at a cluster of mud plastered homes and a dirt lane bordered by ancient cottonwoods. But it wasn't a happy place to live as Laura became more and more disenchanted with the demands of Kerney's job as a detective.
He came home one night to find Laura and a stranger packing her belongings into her car. The stranger turned out to be Laura's new юboyfriend, the man she was moving in with.
"Do you want to tell me what you've been doing?"
Jim asked.
Kerney nodded and started talking, leaving out very little. He chose not to mention the tail-which hadn't reappeared-or the way the BLM officer had flinched when Leon Spence's name had been mentioned.
That stuff was in the pending file for items of developing interest.
"So my mustache theory about the shooter didn't hold up," Jim said, when Kerney finished.
"I guess we can write Steve Lujan off."
"I'm not so sure," Kerney replied.
"He was a little too eager to cooperate."
"Want to check his story out?" Jim said.
"I think so."
"I'll do it. There's got to be a record of his injury settlement at the company."
"Get his bank records while you're at it," Kerney advised.
"What about Eugene's wife? Anything yet?"
"Nada, except for some background. Louise Blanton Cox moved to Pie Town at the end of World War Two and taught school for two years before marrying Gene Cox. She stayed with Gene for fifteen years and walked out on him in the early sixties. I haven't found any record of a divorce, but I still need to check with several more district courts."
"Maybe she never divorced him," Kerney speculated.
"Have you traced her family?"
Jim shook his head.
"She came here from Ohio or Michigan. All her family was from back there." Kerney sighed.
"Keep on it."
"I will."
Both men were dejected and unwilling to admit it. Kerney watched Jim fidget with the sling that held his arm secure against his chest before resting his own head against the cushion of the chair and closing his eyes. He was almost asleep when he felt a hand shaking him.
Molly looked down at him, a pillow and a blanket in her arms.
"You're spending the night," she announced.