Robert beamed.
"Can I smoke in your car?"
"No, but I'll stop along the way so you can have a cigarette or two."
"That sucks."
"Humor me," Kerney replied. kerney let Robert sit up front weaning no cuffs. He fought off Cordova's bad smell by running the air conditioner with the window cracked, even though the cloudy late afternoon had dropped the temperature into the low forties.
"You're supposed to cuff me and lock me in the back. I'm an escaped mental patient."
"You don't like sitting up front?" Kerney asked.
"Yeah, I do. I need a cigarette."
They had just passed the Mountainair town limit sign. Kerney pulled off the road next to a cottonwood tree and got out with Robert, who quickly lit up. The cloud cover broke, and for a moment the high mesa south of the village shimmered in pale yellow sunlight.
"You were in town the night Paul Gillespie was killed," Kerney said.
Robert exhaled.
"Who?"
"Paul Gillespie, the police officer."
Robert tugged at his beard.
"I don't know him."
"You went to high school with him."
Robert shrugged indifferently and looked away.
" I don't remember."
"Did you see Gillespie get killed?"
"I've never seen anybody get killed. But I'd like to.
That would be neat."
"Do you know who killed him?"
The wind picked up and Robert started to shiver.
"I'm cold," he whined, grinding out his cigarette with his sneaker.
"Am I going to jail or not?"
"You're going. Get in," Kerney answered, gesturing at the car.
Kerney drove for a time without talking, keeping one eye on Robert, whose foot beat a steady tattoo on the floorboard. Kerney wondered if the habit signaled anxiety. He decided to test the theory.
"Did you see Gillespie the night he was killed?"
Robert's foot started bouncing off the floorboard.
"I saw Satan."
"What was Satan doing?"
Robert's foot jiggled wildly.
"Raping my daughter."
"Where did it happen?"
"Serpent Gate."
Kerney remembered the peculiar stone snake on Pop Shaffer's fence.
"Do you mean by the fence next to the hotel?"
"Yeah." Robert changed his mind.
"No, not there."
"Where?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Okay," Kerney said gently.
"Tell me about your daughter." As far as he knew, Robert was childless.
"She's in heaven with Jesus," Robert replied flatly, as he gripped the back of his skull with his fingers and stuck his thumbs in his ears.
"Is that where Satan rapes her?" Kerney asked loudly, trying to get through to Robert.
Robert grunted and shut his eyes. The conversation was over.
When Kerney pulled into the sally port at the Torrance County jail, Cordova removed his thumbs from his ears, popped out of the car, and waited at the door to the booking alcove while Kerney locked his handgun in a weapon box.
"Hurry up," Robert barked, snapping his fingers.
Kerney pressed the button to the booking alcove, and the electronic door latch snapped open. Inside, Robert immediately relaxed. He smiled at the female guard behind the glassed-in booking counter and began emptying his pockets.
The guard, a sturdy-looking woman with broad shoulders and a close-cropped haircut, welcomed Robert back with a greeting and a grin.
"What's the charge?" the guard asked, eyeing Kerney skeptically.
"Protective custody," Kerney answered.
"Twentyfour-hour hold."
She nodded knowingly and pushed a form through the slot at the bottom of the glass.
"Fill this out. Has he had anything to eat?"
"Lunch," Kerney replied, as he completed the paperwork.
"But he's probably hungry again."
"Did you search him?"
"Pat down only."
The woman nodded.
Robert tapped Kerney on the shoulder.
"I left my cigarettes in your car."
"I'll get them for you." Kerney took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and pushed it through the slot along with the booking form.
"Put the ten bucks in his canteen account. He may need a few things while he's here."
The woman smiled at him as he left to get Robert's smokes. When he returned, Robert was inside the secure area sitting calmly in a chair.
Kerney passed the cigarettes through to the guard.
"Are you taking him back to Las Vegas?" she asked.
"He doesn't seem to want to go."
"Then why are you holding him?"
"He may be a witness to a crime. I'm hoping he'll talk to me. So far, I haven't gotten very much out of him."
The woman nodded.
"Give him the night to settle in.
Robert does real well here. He likes the structure. We'll clean him up, give him a meal or two, and he'll be a new man by morning."
"I hope you're right," Kerney said.
"He just told me you were his friend," the guard said.
"I've never heard him say that about a police officer before. You might get lucky."
"I could use some luck."
Robert waved gaily at Kerney as the guard buzzed him out the door to the sally port. sixty melbs east of Mountainair, Kerney waited in the gathering night outside the old Vaughn train station for the arrival of a westbound freight out of Amarillo.
On it, he hoped, was Floyd Wilson, a crew chief for the Southern Pacific, who had left Mountainair the morning after the Gillespie shooting. Wilson had been transferred off a track-replacement job west of Mountainair and reassigned to a spur-line construction project in Texas.
As far as Kerney knew, Wilson had never been interviewed during the initial investigation.
Parked next to the dark station house, Kerney sat in the car with the engine running, the heater on, and the window rolled down. Robert's odor still permeated the vehicle.
At die end of a siding, barely visible in the gloom, a warning sign where the tracks ended read derail. It neatly summarized Kerney's sense of futility about the case.
An occasional car rolled down the highway that paralleled the train tracks, rubber singing on the pavement.
But the dominant sound came from the wind that cut across the Staked Plains, a vast, high desert plateau that encompassed thousands of square miles of eastern New Mexico.
The wind drove a light rain against Kerney's cheek, and he turned on the car wipers so he could see down the line. The flash of light from the lead locomotive showed long before the sound of the engine reached Kerney's ears. If the train blew through town without stopping, it meant Kerney would have to make the long drive to Amarillo sometime soon. On the phone, Wilson had told him he knew nothing about the case, and didn't want to lose time away from his job, Kerney had called Wilson's boss, who agreed to let Wilson make the trip to meet with Kerney on company time.
He hoped Wilson was on the train.
The train stopped and a man of average height, carrying an overnight bag, climbed out of the locomotive and walked wearily toward the car.
Kerney got out to greet him.
Floyd Wilson offered Kerney his hand with little enthusiasm. A man pushing sixty, Wilson had a full head of gray hair, a deeply lined face, thick, droopy eyebrows, and a condition on his neck that bleached out the pigment of his skin.
"I don't see how I can help you, Mr. Kerney."
"I'm glad you're willing to try, Mr. Wilson. Thanks for coming."
"No sweat," Floyd said.
"Let me buy you dinner."
"In this town that means the cholesterol plate."
At the only open diner in town, a cheerless establishment with Formica tables, tattered chairs, a cracked linoleum floor, and faded posters tacked on the walls, Kerney and Floyd Wilson sat by a window streaked with smoke and grease. Outside, the wind had diminished and fat snowflakes drifted against the glass, melting instantly.