on the truck, citing an officer down and the possible abduction of one Gregory Cuddy.
Back at the roadblock, not a word had been spoken about the impact of Leroy’s death on the men who’d found him. In order to cope, every officer at the crime scene had wiped away all personal feelings. Grief would have to wait. Anger would have to wait. The shrinks called it depersonalization, but to Clayton and the others it was simply an issue of their own emotional survival.
According to the time and date stamp on the video, the cop killer had a good ninety-minute head start in the middle of the night, when there were few if any officers patrolling highways, and absolutely none roaming the many unpaved rural country roads of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. It would take a miracle to catch him before daybreak, and chances of a capture after that weren’t much better. He could be long gone before a dragnet could be launched.
Clayton had no doubt the killer was Craig Larson, but he had to prove it before he could announce it. With the speedometer hovering at ninety-five miles an hour and the emergency lights of his deputy a hundred yards behind him, Clayton raced down the highway.
In his hurry to go home, had he missed something during his visit to the Bible camp? Just thinking that made Clayton wince. He also wondered what would have happened if Grace had woken him when he’d asked her to. Would he have been at the roadblock with Ordonez when Larson arrived? Would his presence have been enough to make Larson turn around and find another route? Or would he also be dead with a bullet in his head?
As he drove the winding road through the hills west of Lincoln, he slowed, concentrated on the road, and tried not to think about all the maybes. Yet he felt negligent. When he turned onto the gravel country road, the dust from his wheels partially obscured the lights of Walcott’s unit. In front of the open Twin Pines gate, Clayton stopped, got out, and took a look around with his flashlight while Deputy Walcott waited at the side of the road.
He quickly spotted very recent tire tracks and two sets of fresh footprints. One set matched those he’d seen earlier in the day and thought belonged to somebody from the camp. But as he followed them up the county road away from the gate, he began to have doubts.
He dropped down and looked at them more closely. The prints looked similar to a set he’d seen at Kerney’s ranch, next to Riley Burke’s lifeless body. Had his lack of sleep made him miss the connection earlier?
On the access road inside the gate, he took another careful look. Tread marks and footprints told him a vehicle had stopped, the driver had left the vehicle, walked to the gate, and returned. Additionally, he found more footprints similar to those of Larson’s that came out of the woods, traveled around the back of the vehicle to approximately the driver’s door, and stopped. There both sets of prints were partially obliterated, but the set that had come out of the woods continued on to the gate before returning to the truck.
Clayton picked a distinct clean impression of each of the footprints, made a quick measurement to determine shoe sizes, and took digital photographs, before proceeding to Gaylord Wardle’s residence with Walcott following in his unit. He slowed to a stop in front of Wardle’s house, to find him standing under the front porch light, a .22 rifle cradled in his arms.
Clayton had Walcott stand fast, approached Wardle, told him to put the weapon down, and asked if anyone other than Cuddy was missing.
“No,” Wardle said as he rested the rifle against the porch railing. “We’ve checked everyone twice. Only Gregory is unaccounted for.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.” Wardle looked past Clayton at Deputy Walcott, who was waiting next to his unit. “I have a lot of very upset young people here. Can’t you spare more officers for their protection?”
“Just keep everyone inside until we tell you it’s safe, and you’ll all be fine,” Clayton said.
“How long will that be?” Wardle asked.
“Until we tell you it is safe,” Clayton repeated, fast losing patience with the man. He reached out and picked up the rifle. “Yours?”
Wardle nodded.
It was a lever-action. Clayton emptied it, the rounds clattering onto the wooden porch deck. “Do you have a gun cabinet?”
Wardle nodded again.
He handed the weapon to Wardle. “Lock it up, call everyone at the camp who owns any kind of firearm, and tell them to empty their weapons and put them away. I don’t want to see any civilians carrying, and I want an inventory of every gun in your armory as well as those that are in private hands as soon as you can get it to me.”
Red faced with anger, Wardle opened his mouth to speak but Clayton cut him off.
“I don’t need a lecture on your constitutional right to bear arms, Reverend Wardle. A state policeman has been shot dead, and the weapon the killer used may have come from Twin Pines.”
“Oh, my,” Wardle said. “First the sheriff and now this. Of course, we’ll do everything you ask.”
“Excellent. Where are Cuddy’s quarters?”
Wardle gave Clayton directions, and handed him a master key that would open the front door.
Clayton thanked Wardle, left him on the porch, rejoined Deputy Walcott, gave him the key, and pointed him toward Cuddy’s rooms. “I doubt Cuddy was abducted from his rooms, but check anyway. Let me know what size shoe he wears. Call me by radio.”
“What’s that going to tell us?” Walcott asked.
“I found two sets of footprints by the gate, and only one of them is a nine and a half. That’s Larson’s shoe size. The other print is a size ten and a half. If that’s what Cuddy wears, you can bet we’re not going to find his body here.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because the driver of the camp pickup was attacked at the gate while in his vehicle.” Clayton handed Walcott the digital camera. “Do a quick search and then take this camera to Captain Ramsey.”
Clayton climbed into his unit. “Tell him the last four images are of the footprints by the Bible camp gate. Have him download them to his laptop, transmit them to the state police crime lab computer, and ask if they can match them to any of the footprint evidence found at Larson’s known crime scenes.”
“Where are you headed off to?” Walcott asked.
“I’m going to see where Larson’s footprints on the Forest Service road take me.”
Clayton left the Bible camp and drove slowly up the forest road, using his unit’s spotlight to follow the plainly visible footprints. If they were Larson’s footprints, Clayton figured he must have planned to steal a vehicle at Twin Pines. No attempt had been made to hide the tracks on the way down the mountain.
Where the road turned rocky, Clayton dismounted his unit and walked, scanning for partial prints, broken twigs, scuff marks, trampled grass, or crushed leaves. Born and raised in the mountains of Mescalero, taught to hunt and read sign by his Apache uncles, Clayton was one of the best trackers in the state. As a police officer on the Rez, he’d chased and caught poachers and illegal trespassers, and taught his knowledge and skills to officers throughout the southern part of the state.
He was a good half mile away from his unit when the beam of his flashlight picked up a shoe partial next to an old hoofprint impression at the side of the road. He dropped down for a closer look and found some fairly fresh, broken tiny juniper twigs and evidence that tire tracks had been brushed away.
Clayton stepped off into the undergrowth and quickly found more tire tracks that led him directly to Janette Evans’s truck and Larson’s improvised campsite.
He felt no sense of accomplishment as he called it in. If he’d followed the trail hours ago instead of going home for dinner and a nap, maybe Ordonez wouldn’t be dead, the youth minister wouldn’t be at the very least kidnapped, and Larson wouldn’t still be at large.
It made him physically sick to think about it.
Without pushing it too hard, Craig Larson made good time to the Texas state line. A dozen miles farther on, he passed through the dark and shuttered town of Plains, where the water tank, the tallest structure in the village, pierced the night sky. On the outskirts of town, he pulled off the pavement on the eastbound side of the highway and glanced over at his passenger. Kid Cuddy, the KO’d Kid, hadn’t budged an inch since Larson had coldcocked him
