“And let Colonel Brannon know ASAP that she’s good to go as the team leader of the TDY assignment.”
The line went dead before Thatcher could respond. His hands were sticky with sweat. He dropped the receiver in the cradle, rubbed a hand through his buzz-cut hair, stared at the palm print on the desktop, wiped it dry with his shirtsleeve, and let the reality sink in that he’d screwed up big time with the new vice chief.
Sara eased to a stop in the driveway of the Aurora Heights cottage, killed the engine, and sat behind the wheel, trying to purge the last of her negative feelings about her meeting with General Thatcher before she went inside. She didn’t want to start the weekend with Kerney ranting and raving about her boss.
She gazed at the small brick house with its pitched shingled roof, gabled second-story windows, and formal pilasters that bracketed the front entrance. She loved the house, loved the man and boy who waited for her inside, loved the fact that Kerney had bought it for her and Patrick. It was the first true home she’d lived in since the day she entered West Point.
Inside, she called out to Kerney and Patrick and got no response. On the kitchen stove a pot of spaghetti sauce simmered, one of Kerney’s specialties he frequently fixed when he came to Arlington. She walked to the small enclosed back porch, heard the sound of Patrick’s laughter, and looked out through the screen door to see father and son playing baseball. Patrick stood with a small plastic bat on his shoulder, watching Kerney chase down a large rubber ball that rolled across the lawn.
“Home run!” Patrick said.
“Home run,” Kerney echoed, returning with the ball. He lobbed it underhand to Patrick, who swung and missed.
The last of Sara’s snit about the meeting with Thatcher washed away as she watched her husband and son at play for another minute, before stepping to the bedroom to change out of her uniform. Last night, anticipating Kerney’s arrival, she’d shaved her legs and taken a long soak in the tub. She dressed in a pair of shorts that accentuated her legs and pulled on a scoop-necked short-sleeve top that revealed the tiniest bit of cleavage.
In the kitchen Patrick and Kerney were at the table, reading Pablito the Pony. Sara nuzzled Patrick’s cheek and stroked the back of Kerney’s neck.
“Are you just now reading the book?” she asked.
“For the third time,” Kerney said, glancing at Sara. “You look yummy.”
“Yummy means good,” Patrick announced as he turned the page.
“Can you hold that thought until later?” Sara asked.
Kerney grinned. “Easily. How did your meeting go?”
“Okay.”
Patrick poked his finger on the book to get Kerney’s attention. “This is where Pablito gets his hoof stuck in the fence, Daddy.”
“Right you are,” Kerney said.
“I’ll get the noodles started,” Sara said, “while you men finish reading.”
The phone rang. Sara went to the living room and answered. Kerney paused, hoping it wasn’t the Pentagon calling her back to work. She was still on the phone when he finished reading the story. He closed the book, sent Patrick off to his bedroom to put it away, and found Sara in the living room, her eyes dancing with excitement.
“Good news?” he asked.
“I’m staying at the Pentagon for at least six more months,” Sara said, “in a new temporary assignment, with a new boss.”
“What’s the job?”
“I’m supposed to develop a military-police training course for reserve and National Guard units.”
“How did you pull that off?”
Sara shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Does this mean your leave is canceled?”
Sara snuggled up to him. “No way. We’re still going to the Bootheel with you to play Hollywood cowboy.”
Kerney grinned with relief, held her close, took in her scent. “Well, for now, that’s another piece of puzzle solved.”
“For now is good enough for me,” Sara replied.
“I’m hungry,” Patrick said, as he bounded into the living room and grabbed his parents by the legs.
After a great weekend with Sara and Patrick, Kerney returned to Santa Fe late Sunday night, caught a few hours of sleep, and arrived at work in time to convene an interagency planning meeting for the upcoming Santa Fe Fiesta.
Every year in September the city celebrated the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico with pageantry, religious services, music, dances, parties, and the public burning of Old Man Gloom. It was a time when a good number of the citizenry got drunk, started fistfights, brawled in bars, vandalized property, fought with spouses, drove under the influence, and occasionally shot or knifed each other. Additionally, the birthrate in the city always spiked nine months later.
Santa Fe’s finest hated fiestas so much that many officers counted their years to retirement by the number of remaining celebrations they would be forced to work before they turned in their pension papers.
The meeting, held in the council chambers at city hall, brought together supervisors and commanders of all local, county, and state law-enforcement agencies, plus fire department, EMT, county jail, and hospital ER personnel. Working through the full agenda took the whole morning. Decisions were made on the streets to be closed and manned by uniformed personnel, where first-aid stations would be set up, how many personnel would be assigned to saturation foot and roving traffic patrols, the number of plainclothes, undercover, and gang-unit teams that would operate during the long weekend, and where DWI checkpoints would be established.
After setting SWAT command-and-control protocols for crowd and riot control, the meeting moved on to a discussion of what bars, liquor establishments, and convenience stores would be targeted for alcohol sales to underage drinkers, and how transportation to the jail and hospital would be coordinated.
Kerney brought the meeting to a close with a word of thanks and the announcement that he would be on vacation during the fiesta, leaving Larry Otero, his second-in-command, in charge. Because his pending retirement was now common knowledge in all the cop shops, the news was greeted with a lot of grins, head shaking, and friendly catcalls.
When the last of the group dispersed, Kerney stopped by the mayor’s office and left word that he would stay on as chief until the new administration came into office. At the personnel office he picked up the application for pension forms that needed to be submitted at least sixty days in advance of his retirement.
Paperwork in hand, Kerney left the building. In six months he would become a civilian. For many cops retirement was a difficult milestone. But with Sara and Patrick in his life Kerney felt ready and eager for the future. He smiled at his good fortune as he walked to his unit.
In preparation for the tech scout Kerney read up on the history of the Bootheel, a part of New Mexico he’d never really explored. He also surfed the Internet for information and bought some maps of the area to study. In 1853, under the Gadsden Treaty, the United States bought from Mexico over twenty-nine-million acres along the border for a paltry ten million dollars. The land purchase stretched from the Rio Grande to the junction where the Colorado and Gila Rivers joined. The deal had been struck by the government on behalf of the railroad barons, who wanted a southern route to California. Thanks to political patronage a new international boundary was surveyed and the Bootheel was born.
Eventually, at the turn of the twentieth century, the railroad had been built not to California, but to the copper mines in Arizona. Just as eventually, some sixty years later, the tracks were abandoned and dismantled, thrusting the small towns that had grown up along the right of way into free-fall decay.
The night before the tech scout was to start, Kerney drove to Deming, a small city on Interstate 10 west of Las Cruces, and stayed in a motel. Although he wasn’t due to meet up with Johnny and the movie-people party until late in the afternoon, he’d come down early so he could poke around and take a quick tour on his own.