Larson decided to leave the truck where he’d hidden it, walk back to the “Bible Gate,” and have a look around before figuring out his next move. He followed the forest road down the mountain until he got close enough to see the gate and then hiked through the woods paralleling the side road, expecting to come upon either a small ranch in a clearing or a vacation cabin in the woods. Instead, he encountered a large riding ring filled with teenage girls and boys on horseback, cantering in circles under the watchful eye of a wrangler.
From behind a tree, Larson watched for a minute. The girls looked quite tasty in the saddle as they bounced and jiggled. He moved past a barn, several stables, and a couple of equipment sheds. Beyond them, he found an enormous log lodge with a pitched shingled roof and a modern-looking building with a vaulted, needle-point roof. A number of railroad cars placed next to Old West-style false-front buildings lined several lanes near the lodge and the vaulted-roof building, which Larson figured might be a church. He wasn’t sure what the false-front buildings and railroad cars were used for, but guessed they might be housing quarters for guests.
He stayed in the trees and out of sight, but moved close enough to read a sign nailed to a post in front of the vaulted-roof structure, which told him it was the worship center. He’d entered some holy-roller summer Bible camp.
Off to one side of the worship center was a compound Larson took to be staff housing. Under a stand of leafy trees, some cabin-size houses and several larger ranch-style residences were partially hidden by evergreen junipers. Laundry hung on clotheslines, toys for toddlers filled small porches, swings and slides stood in backyards, and dogs yipped and yapped behind chicken-wire fences.
Larson retreated and the barking dogs fell quiet as he made his way back to the forest road and started hiking up the mountain toward the truck. Since slaughtering a couple of Christians to hide out at a remote mountain ranch was no longer an option, he would have to rethink his plans.
The image of those teenage girls so sweet and pretty on horseback stuck in his mind. Maybe he should kidnap one of them, steal a vehicle, and just find another hiding place where he could enjoy some female company until things quieted down.
Chief Deputy Clayton Istee of the Lincoln County S.O. saturated his jurisdiction with every available resource in an attempt to find and capture Craig Larson. All sworn department personnel were called back to duty, including one deputy who willingly cut short his vacation in California and flew home to join the manhunt. All municipal and city police officers eagerly joined in, as did district state police personnel, game and fish officers, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management officers, several New Mexico livestock inspectors, and dozens of local volunteers who were enraged about the murder of Janette Evans and the paralyzing injury to Paul Hewitt.
Even Sergeant Rudy Aldrich of the Lincoln County S.O., who was also the Republican Party candidate for sheriff in the November general election, had managed to set aside partisan politics for the time being and give his full attention to the manhunt.
Several area ranchers with private planes were flying aerial reconnaissance missions with volunteer spotters over the vast tracts of open range and the thousands of square miles of remote high country. Sheriff’s posse reserve officers were out on horseback riding into remote canyons, through large, dense cactus flats, and up dry arroyos and draws looking for any sign of recent foot or vehicle passage.
Clayton ran the manhunt from his unit. As time allowed, he knocked on doors in rural areas to ask if anyone had seen Janette Evans’s truck, backed up officers doing searches of abandoned or vacant properties, and spelled officers for breaks at the various roadblocks set up around the county. With each passing hour the odds of catching Larson decreased, and the continued massive effort to find him was based solely on a hope and a prayer that he might have gone to ground in Lincoln County.
An hour before dusk on the third day of the search, Clayton stopped at the diner on Capitan’s main drag, got a container of coffee to go, returned to his unit, and went over a computer printout that showed all the rural locations that had been canvassed so far. On the slight chance that a hint of Larson’s whereabouts might have been missed during the first go-round, Clayton had ordered another heavy concentration of close patrols in areas with remote ranches, vacation cabins, or second homes, at all forest campgrounds, at mountain trailheads, and along river bottomland, especially near Fort Stanton, where there were caves that could be used to hide out.
He’d divided the county into sectors to be covered, and assigned all but one to his deputies. He had taken the Fort Stanton area for himself, and had just spent the last four hours tromping along the Bonita River searching the caves.
Before driving home for dinner—it would be the first meal with the family since Paul Hewitt had been shot and Janette Evans killed—he decide to check the Twin Pines Adventure Bible Camp at the base of the Capitan Mountains. He finished his coffee, drove east on Highway 380 to the county road turnoff, and made his way along the rolling, juniper-studded rangeland to the Bible camp.
When Clayton had first joined the Lincoln County S.O. as a patrol deputy, he’d made it a point to introduce himself to as many rural residents as possible during his work shifts. After his initial visit to the Bible camp, he’d looked up the citation posted on the gate and found that it basically said that Jesus had suffered on the cross to give mankind the opportunity to live a righteous life healed from sin.
A nominal Christian like most Apaches, Clayton wasn’t all that comfortable with the notion of a single, all- powerful deity. The traditional religion of the Mescalero was a personal, family, and tribal matter, not a theology to spread hither and yon.
The camp had been quite an eye-opener for Clayton. It operated year-round, but summer was the busy season, when teenagers came to ride horses, shoot rifles, mountain bike, backpack, rock climb, play volleyball, work out in the gym, study the scriptures, and engage in Christian fellowship.
He parked at the camp director’s house just as a spirited group of laughing teenagers came down the lane on their way to the worship center. He crossed the porch, knocked on the front door, and watched as the kids passed by, clowning, screeching, and teasing each other in the private world that adolescents inhabit.
The camp director, Reverend Gaylord Wardle, a soft-spoken, middle-aged man with a big, benevolent smile that Clayton had instantly mistrusted at their first meeting, opened the door. He greeted Clayton warmly.
“We’re keeping a close watch on our flock,” Wardle added before Clayton could speak. “We’re doing head counts four times a day. No campers are allowed to leave the ranch unsupervised. All are present and accounted for, and we’ve posted the photographs of the fugitive that another officer dropped off to us in every ranch building.”
“That’s very good,” Clayton said. “Have you or your staff encountered any strangers on the county road?”
Wardle shook his head. “There has been virtually no traffic. With that murderer still at large I think people are afraid to be out in the mountains on their own, away from civilization. The only vehicles we’ve seen have belonged to the Forest Service or the neighboring ranches.”
“Call 911 immediately if anyone unknown to you, your staff, or the campers shows up here unannounced.”
“Wouldn’t that be overreacting a bit?” Wardle asked. “After all, we do have photographs of the culprit.”
“Appearances can be easily altered,” Clayton countered.
Wardle stroked his chin. “Yes, of course. I didn’t think of that.”
Clayton stepped off the porch. “Thank you for your time.”
“Of course. Each day at prayer we ask Jesus to protect all the men and women in law enforcement who are working so hard night and day to keep us safe. Thank you so much for all that you do. Are you any closer to capturing this madman?”
“Not yet,” Clayton replied with a wave as he walked toward his unit.
He drove slowly through camp and out the open gate. On the county road he stopped, got out of his unit, and in the glare of the headlights took a close look at the surface of the road. It had rained in the mountains recently, just enough to wash away evidence of any vehicles traveling into the forest. But there was a set of fresh footprints on the road along with a set of hoofprints headed toward Capitan Gap.
He got a flashlight from his unit and followed the footprints a few yards past the gate, where the tracks left the road and cut through the woods parallel to the Bible camp access road. He got the local phone directory from his unit, paged through it, and dialed Gaylord Wardle’s phone number on his cell phone.
“Are you patrolling the access road to the camp?” Clayton asked when Wardle answered.
