From a distance Walter Shaw stood in front of his house at the Jordan ranch and watched Julia flirt with Barry Hingle, the construction supervisor for the movie. The two were off by themselves, away from the cast and crew that had assembled around the director at the cattle-guard entrance to the ranch headquarters. Julia leaned against Hingle, talking, touching him on the arm, laughing and smiling. Shaw wondered if she’d screwed him yet.
At one time Shaw would have been jealous, but that was many years ago, before he’d come to realize that she was nothing but a slut. Once, he’d hoped to marry her-for the ranch, not for love, although sex with Julia was outstanding.
Shaw’s plans for marrying Julia had been quickly discarded when he’d come upon her straddling a hired hand in her pickup truck at the Shugart cabin. When Shaw had ridden up, she had stared at him with her eyes wide open through the rear window of the truck as she bounced up and down on the cowboy’s lap, her lips thin and her teeth bared like those of an animal pouncing on its prey.
Out of convenience Shaw still slept with Julia now and then, when she was between new bedroom talent. But he kept his emotional distance as he would with any feral animal.
From time to time he toyed with the idea of killing Julia and her parents. But he could never hit upon a strategy that promised to give him legal control of the ranch once they were dead, not with Johnny still in the picture.
Shaw had been successful in the past when it came to murder. As a child he’d bounced from one foster home to another, until Ralph and Elizabeth Shaw had adopted him at the age of twelve and turned him into an indentured servant on their Virden farm. Over the next six years Elder Ralph and Sister Elizabeth recited the glorious teachings of the Mormon church while they worked him day and night during the summers, and every early morning, evening, and weekend during the school year.
When spiritual instruction and honest labor failed to keep him in strict bounds, they employed corporal punishment. Two or three times a week he paid for an ill-advised remark or look with a beating.
At eighteen, unconverted to the faith, mean, and filled with hate, he graduated at the bottom of his high-school class, escaped into the navy, and spent the next six years on an aircraft carrier. After his discharge he worked on a ranch outside of Willcox, Arizona, before taking the manager’s job with Joe and Bessie, where he bided his time for a while.
Every year the residents of Virden celebrated their Mormon ancestors’ trek to the Gila River Valley after being forced to flee Mexico in 1912 because of the revolution that made Pancho Villa famous. During one such celebration, while the villagers were at the annual picnic, Shaw sneaked into Elder Ralph and Sister Elizabeth’s house, found their last will and testament leaving everything to a Mormon clinic in El Salvador, destroyed it, and loosened the gas line to the bedroom wall heater.
They were dead by morning, and after a lengthy probate hearing, Shaw inherited the farm and immediately leased out the land. Although the money from the leasehold agreement gave Shaw a steady income stream, with land prices skyrocketing it was far from enough to buy a good-sized ranch of his own, even if he sold the farm outright. But soon he would never again be somebody’s hired hand.
As he watched Julia and Hingle, Shaw decided she hadn’t screwed him yet. She was still playing her cunning little seductive game with him, acting enchanted by everything Hingle said, as though he alone could delight her. It was such bullshit the sight of it almost made Shaw laugh.
His attention switched when he saw Kevin Kerney get out of his truck on the other side of the fence and walk toward the movie types clustered at the cattle guard. They were surrounded by cameras, lights, electrical equipment, and some metal frames covered in a black fabric that were used to shade sunlight.
The damn cop was a snoop. When he’d been down here last, Kerney had taken a solo tour of the ranch. Shaw had backtracked on Kerney and found evidence that he’d been to the barn at the old Harley homestead and tromped around the landing field on the Sentinel Butte Ranch. Shaw didn’t like people butting into his business, and although he had no reason to believe the cop was onto him, he was wary nonetheless.
He watched Susan Berman, the pretty woman who always had a notebook or clipboard in her hand and a harried look on her face, break away from the group, greet Kerney, and give him a manila envelope.
The two chatted for a time and Shaw lost interest. The stock had been gathered at the Shugart cabin for the cattle-drive movie scenes, and the horse wranglers for the film company would be trucking in the remuda this afternoon. The new corral was finished, and Shaw’s day hands were hauling feed to the site in preparation for the arrival of the horses. It was time to check and see how far along they were with their chore.
He pulled himself into the cab of the truck and headed south, kicking up dust on the ranch road and wishing Hollywood would just pack up and go away. He had a shipment arriving soon and he didn’t like the idea of transporting contraband with a movie crew and a police chief parked under his nose.
When Susan Berman rejoined Malcolm Usher, who was running over the setup for the establishing shot of the ranch, Kerney paused to look around. As promised, Ethan Stone, the set designer, had turned Joe and Bessie’s pristine ranch headquarters into a hardscrabble, weather-beaten movie set. The exteriors of the houses and the barn were painted a dingy, sun-bleached gray, and a rusted water tank and an old windmill had been planted squarely in front of Joe and Bessie’s house along with two large, dead evergreen trees. The construction crew had added a rickety porch to the front of the house with a roof that seemed about to collapse. Several old, wrecked vehicles that looked like they’d been hauled down from vacant lots in Hachita were scattered around, and a pile of scrap metal had been dumped next to the barn.
There was no sign of Joe, Bessie, or Johnny, but Kerney noticed that Julia and Barry Hingle were looking pleased with each other. He smiled at the prospect that Julia might have found someone more receptive to her advances.
He opened the manila envelope. It was from the SFPD and inside were the NCIC wants and warrant reports on the cast and crew that his department had run. The name of one crew member, a transportation driver named Hoover Grayson, was circled. He had an outstanding warrant from Grady County, Oklahoma.
A sealed business envelope addressed to Kerney was attached to the paperwork. It contained Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino’s memo on her further findings regarding Walter Shaw. The deaths of Shaw’s adoptive parents had been ruled accidental, and no autopsies had been performed. Shaw owned the Virden farm free and clear, which consisted of the house, barn, and ten acres of land. With six years in the navy he’d been given a general discharge and denied reenlistment after being busted in rank twice by summary court-martial. Both times he’d gone AWOL and been arrested by the shore patrol for fighting.
On her own initiative Pino had researched Shaw’s juvenile record. As a teenager he’d been picked up in Duncan, Arizona, for shoplifting and released to his adoptive parents after pleading guilty and paying a fine. Child welfare reported that he’d been in seven different foster homes before his adoption placement with Ralph and Elizabeth Shaw, and that he had been removed from most of the previous placements because of incorrigible destructive behavior.
Financially, Shaw wasn’t well off. He had some money in the bank, but not much, and the value of the Virden farm wouldn’t cover the median cost of a Santa Fe house.
Kerney put the memo back in the envelope, stuck it in his shirt pocket, dialed Santa Fe dispatch on his cell phone, and asked them to confirm the warrant on Hoover Grayson out of Grady County, Oklahoma.