“I sure will. Tell Sara we’ll be praying for her and thinking about her.”
“Thanks.” Kerney hung up, feeling a bit depressed. With Sara in Iraq, Kerney’s enthusiasm about the movie had waned, and now that Dale wouldn’t be there, the whole idea was even less appealing. But he’d promised Sara he’d take Patrick and go, so he would do it.
On Sunday morning, after spending the night in a hotel near the airport, Kerney and Patrick flew home to New Mexico. Usually a good traveler, Patrick was hyperactive and irritable during the flight. Not even Pablito the Pony or any of his favorite toys held his attention for long.
At the ranch Kerney decided the best medicine for his son would be to wear him out. They spent the remainder of the day cleaning out stalls, laying down fresh straw and sawdust, rearranging the tack room, and clearing manure from the paddocks. It was slow going, with Patrick taking frequent breaks to give biscuits to the horses and getting brief rides around the paddock on Hondo’s back while Kerney led the horse by the halter.
“I want to go see Mommy,” Patrick said as Kerney plucked him off Hondo and carried him to the house.
“Mommy has to work in a place where children can’t go,” Kerney said. “She can’t be with us until the army sends her home.”
“Fourteen days.”
“Is that what Mommy said?”
Patrick nodded. “The last time she went away.”
“That’s a long time.”
Patrick pouted unhappily.
“She’ll be gone a little longer than that.”
“No,” Patrick said emphatically, as if to make it so.
After dinner Kerry saddled up Hondo and took Patrick for a ride to the railroad tracks. They got there just in time to watch the excursion train that ran from Santa Fe to the village of Lamy pass by. The tourists riding in the old carriages waved, smiled, and pointed at the cowboy and his son on horseback. The engineer tooted his horn as the train rumbled by at ten miles an hour over the spur line.
Patrick loved trains. He waved back at the passengers until it passed out of sight and, on the ride back to the ranch, didn’t ask once about Sara. It gave Kerney hope that Patrick would adjust to living with him.
That night, long after Patrick was asleep, Kerney turned on the television news and listened with growing interest as a local weekend anchor reported a breaking story out of Dublin. George Spalding, a U.S. Army deserter and international fugitive now in custody, had named Thomas Carrier, a retired colonel with close ties to high-ranking defense officials and senior White House aides, as a member of a smuggling ring that had operated during the Vietnam War.
As the news anchor talked about how the story had been leaked, a video clip from the blog was shown, and Kerney got his first look at George Spalding. Except for a touch of self-importance in the way he held his head and moved his mouth, he was nondescript in every way.
On the Sunday-morning television news show panels Carrier was a hot topic. Spokepersons from the White House and Department of Defense distanced the administration from Carrier. Opposition party leaders called for an investigation. Legal analysts discussed complex judicial issues. Spin doctors predicted the controversy would either fade away or cause irreparable damage to the credibility of key government officials.
Kerney wondered how the story had surfaced. Sara had hinted that it might go public, but she’d refused to say how. He worried that the brass would put her in their crosshairs again.
The morning they were to leave for the Bootheel, Kerney woke up dreaming of rows of flag-draped caskets. He shook off the sensation as best he could, checked his e-mail for a message from Sara, and found a short note. She’d arrived safely, reported to her brigade, been assigned a billet, and had immediately started working. She’d write again within the week when she had time.
He fired off a quick note in return and went to the kitchen to fix Patrick a breakfast of apple pancakes. There were still no blueberries in the house.
As they drove into Playas, Patrick stirred in the car seat and looked around eagerly. With a full movie crew in town Playas was a beehive of activity. The baseball field on the edge of town had new bleachers, lights, and a bandstand for the filming of the country-music benefit concert. Behind the nearby community swimming pool a parking lot had been established for a fleet of trucks and trailers, with a separate area cordoned off for cast and crew vehicles.
In the village center all the buildings looked occupied and prop vehicles were parked along the streets. The area had been dressed with lampposts, street signs, and parking meters. Several of the residential neighborhoods had been spruced up and there were rows of houses made to look inhabited with fresh coats of paint, curtains in the windows, and landscaped front yards complete with flower beds.
Dozens of people were out and about. Some were unloading props, others were building flats, and a long line of extras was queued up at the back of a wardrobe trailer.
Kerney parked and walked with Patrick past a dozen or more makeup trailers, motor homes, prop trucks, light- and sound-equipment vehicles, and a small fleet of transportation vans used to take the cast to and from locations.
The old mercantile building where the tech scout team had taken meals had been turned into an office. Desks and chairs were scattered around the large room and large bulletin boards on rollers were plastered with assignment sheets, shooting schedules, inventory documents, and memos.
Kerney checked in with a production assistant, who told him that Malcolm Usher and a crew were on location at the Jordan ranch. She gave him his housing assignment and directed him to the location of the child-care center. It was in a house on the hill where the mining company managers had once lived.
Libby, the nanny, was a pleasantly plump, young-looking woman with soft brown hair and a calm manner. She immediately took charge of Patrick and introduced him to her four other charges, three girls and a boy who ranged in age from two to five. Patrick eyed his new companions warily for a minute before making a beeline for a toy train set that sat on a pint-size table.
Kerney watched Patrick settle in, and by the time he left he felt that his son was in good hands and among friendly children. At the apartment he and Patrick had been assigned-a far cry from the house Johnny Jordan had promised to provide-he dumped the luggage and left for the Jordan ranch.
First he’d check in with Susan Berman and then see if he could find out if Ray Bratton, the young Border Patrol officer, had begun his undercover assignment as an apprentice set dresser. As he drove the empty highway, the events of his earlier trip to Playas flooded into his mind: the dying Border Patrol agent he’d found on the highway to Antelope Wells, the mysterious airplane that had landed south of the Jordan ranch, Walter Shaw’s late-night trip to the old barn on the Harley homestead, and the beacon light on the shut-down copper smelter that guided smugglers and illegal aliens across the Mexican border.
Kerney had some questions for Agent Bratton. Had the feds developed any more evidence against Jerome Mendoza, the Motor Transportation officer who lived in Playas? Had they identified the man Kerney had seen driving away in Mendoza’s van?
He thought about Walter Shaw, the ranch manager at the Jordan spread. The cursory background research he’d done on Shaw had been inconclusive. He’d turned the task over to Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino for follow-up and had heard nothing back.
Rhetorically, he wondered if he should just drop the whole damn thing and let Agent Bratton deal with it. It wasn’t Kerney’s case or even within his jurisdiction. He should forget about it and give his full attention to Patrick.
Kerney knew he couldn’t do that, no matter how tempting. He still carried a shield, a law enforcement officer had been murdered, and those responsible for the crime remained at large. With that locked in his mind he turned off the highway and headed down the dirt road past the rodeo grounds, toward the Jordan ranch.