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.
'I was at the Shaffer Hotel the night that policeman got shot,' Floyd said.
'Me and my crew were in the game room on the second floor, drinking beer and playing pool.'
'You didn't go out?' Kerney asked.
'Nope. I had a late dinner in the dining room and turned in early. I didn't even hear about the shooting until the next day, just before I left.'
'Did you know Gillespie, or have any dealings with him?'
Floyd scratched his head.
'Not really. I knew who he was, but that was about it. I didn't spend much time in town. Replacing track and ties on a main line is a sunup to-sundown job.'
'Did you ever see him act inappropriately?'
'You mean tough-guy stuff?'
'Yes.'
'Not personally, but some of my crew said he acted like a badass when we first got to town. He settled down after we'd been there for a while.'
'Did any of your crew spend time with Gillespie?
Socialize with him?'
'I don't think so.'
'Do you know Robert Cordova?'
'The name doesn't ring a bell.'
'He's a skinny guy, about five-four. He likes to hang out by the fence next to the hotel.'
Floyd nodded.
'You mean the crazy guy? The one that walks around with his fingers in his ears talking to himself?'
'That's him.'
'Sure, I know him. Hell, I think everybody in Mountainair knows who he is. He really gets around.'
'Gets around?' Kerney repeated.
'Sometimes I'd see him when I was on the job. He liked to walk along me railroad right-of-way. I kept telling him he was trespassing, but it never seemed to sink in.'
'Did you see him anywhere else?'
'Once I saw him walking up a ridge about a half mile from the tracks, west of town.'
'You're sure it was Cordova?'
'Yeah. After a while, he came back and caught a ride into town with one of my people.'
'When did you see him there?' Kerney asked.
'A couple of days before that policeman was killed.
Do you think Cordova killed the cop?'
