“We’re fairly sure it’s the murder weapon used to kill my officer,” Steve Ramsey added, giving Clauson his card as well.
Clauson pocketed the cards and gave Clayton and Ramsey each one of his own. “I’ll let y’all know if anything turns up. Bad business, killing a lawman.” He glanced over at the dead boy. “This is the first homicide victim I’ve seen in Yoakum County since I got elected.”
“Let’s hope it’s the last,” Clayton replied.
“Amen to that, brother,” Clauson intoned solemnly. “I’ll let the boys up in Muleshoe know that you’re on your way for a look-see.”
The pilot of the New Mexico State Police whirlybird made short work of getting Clayton and Steve Ramsey up to Muleshoe, a small town of no more than five thousand people, close to the New Mexico border. From the air, it was apparent that agriculture dominated the economy. Dairy farms, with irrigated fields in sharp contrast to the checkerboard sections of brown prairie, and tall grain elevators ringed the community. Within the town limits, motels and eateries were clustered along one main drag, and smack in the middle of it were the cordoned off, blackened roofless ruins of a cement-block building. A large hole in front of the building was most likely all that remained of the gasoline pumps. Around the perimeter were blasted-apart remnants of a vehicle, including an engine that had been severed from the chassis. From the size of the crowd kept back by police officers and firefighters, Clayton figured half the population of the town had gathered to watch events unfold.
He wondered out loud about the origin of the town’s name, and the pilot, a native of an eastern New Mexico village within spitting distance of Muleshoe, told him it had come from a nearby ranch that had been homesteaded long before the town was established. He set the chopper down in a vacant lot behind the destroyed building, killed the engine, and reported their arrival by radio as Clayton and Steve Ramsey left the bird.
The man who hurried to meet them was no more than forty but almost totally bald except for buzz-cut sidewalls. He had square shoulders and one of those permanently etched, hard-nosed expressions some cops liked to adopt as their public persona. He introduced himself as Police Chief Billy Pruitt in a dour tone that matched his expression. He had smudges on his face, and gray soot dirtied his white shirt and once polished boots.
As he shook Pruitt’s hand, Clayton wondered if the chief’s full name might be Billy Bob. He resisted the impulse to inquire. “What have you learned so far?” he asked over the sounds of the thudding chopper rotors slowing to a stop.
“It’s been a real mess,” Pruitt answered as he walked Clayton and Ramsey to a panel truck with a Muleshoe PD logo on it, which served as a mobile command post. “After the explosion, the fire burned hot and long. Once the firefighters put it out, it took a while for it to cool down enough for a look-see. The only one who’s been inside is the arson investigator. So far, he’s found the badly burned remains of one individual. But the place is such a shambles, who knows, there may be more.”
Clayton gazed at the ruined structure, looking for signs of movement. “Is he in there now?”
Pruitt nodded. “At the back of the building, where there was less damage.”
“I take it you got the VIN off that engine block sitting at the edge of the crater,” Ramsey said.
Pruitt nodded. “Yep, and that’s the sum total of the evidence we’ve recovered so far.” He stopped talking to answer a cell phone clipped to his belt. As he listened he got an exasperated look on his face. Finally he said, “I don’t care how long it takes, dammit, find his sister.”
“Whose sister?” Clayton asked when Pruitt disconnected.
“There was a new clerk working when the store blew up. According to the manager, he’s an older Mexican named Bernardo Ulibarri who used to work in a local dairy until he injured his back. The manager says Ulibarri has a green card, but that could be a bunch of BS. Supposedly, he lives with his sister, but the address he gave the manager was bogus, and the manager doesn’t remember the sister’s name. I’ve got an officer out looking for her.”
Pruitt paused and looked at the crowds behind the police lines. “You’d think she’d be here,” he said. “Everyone else in town seems to be.”
A figure emerged from the innards of the destroyed building and walked slowly toward the police van, pulling off his gloves, a pair of goggles, and his breathing mask.
“That’s Eloy Miramontes, our arson investigator,” Pruitt said.
Pruitt waited to make introductions until Miramontes, a man in his thirties with a weight lifter’s body, pulled off his boots and tossed them inside the cab of a fire engine with his other gear.
“What have you got for us, Eloy?” Pruitt asked after hand-shakes all around had been completed.
“There are no other bodies inside,” Miramontes replied. “I had to move a lot of debris to get into the bathrooms at the back of the structure, but they were both empty. I took a closer look at the victim and there’s a bullet hole in his forehead.”
“You’re sure of that?” Pruitt asked.
Miramontes nodded. “Shrapnel from an explosion is messy and the entry wound is circular, consistent with what you’d normally see from a gunshot. Also, outside the building I found fingering. That’s the splash effects of the gasoline being spewed around before it ignited. The fire was deliberately started away from the fuel pumps on the side of the structure. There’s even some melted material from the fuel hose embedded in the paving. That tells me it was dropped on the ground prior to the explosion. We’ve got ourselves a felony arson and a homicide.”
Ramsey glanced at Clayton and Pruitt. “Did our perp just walk away from the explosion? Larson obviously isn’t driving the Bible camp pickup anymore.”
“Did the clerk have a vehicle?” Clayton asked.
Pruitt shook his head. “Not one that he owned, as far as we know. That’s why we’re looking for the sister. The store manager said Ulibarri would either walk to work, borrow his sister’s car, or get rides from her. He thinks it’s an older model Toyota, but isn’t sure.”
“We need to know about that vehicle,” Clayton said.
Pruitt grunted in agreement.
Clayton watched a heavyset woman push her way to the front of one of the barriers and wave both hands over her head in his direction.
“Somebody wants your attention, Chief,” Clayton said as he nodded at the woman.
“Wait here,” Pruitt said as he hurried toward the woman.
Out of earshot, Clayton, Ramsey, and Miramontes watched. The woman said something to Pruitt as he approached, gesturing frantically at the rubble of the convenience store. He took her away from the crowd and a TV reporter holding a microphone who’d elbowed her way up to the woman and leaned close to say something. When he finished talking, the woman’s knees buckled, and Pruitt grabbed her arm to keep her upright.
“It seems the sister of our vic may have arrived,” Miramontes said.
“Let’s hope she didn’t get here in an older model Toyota,” Ramsey said. “Because if she did, we’re screwed.”
“So much for our compassion for the bereaved,” Clayton said grimly.
“We’re a sorry lot,” Steve Ramsey replied as the image of Officer Leroy Ordonez’s fiancee flashed before his eyes.
Several hours before dawn, on a rural two-lane state highway, ten miles beyond the village of Logan, New Mexico, the piece-of-shit Toyota died on Craig Larson. Of course, there was no frigging flashlight in the car, and no tools either, for that matter, even if he could see what in the hell needed fixing. He stayed with the car for a while, with the hood up and the parking lights flashing, hoping some good Samaritan would come along and stop. Be it a cop or civilian, it didn’t matter, Larson was prepared to blow away whoever came to his rescue for their wheels.
After an hour passed and the chill of the high desert summer night had seeped into his bones, Larson realized that the chances were slim that anyone would be out on the road until first light. He gave up on the idea of waiting for help to arrive, closed the hood of the car, turned off the flashers, and pushed the car off the shoulder of the highway, next to a tree. Hopefully, anyone passing by would think nothing of seeing a disabled vehicle at the side of the road.
