chance Larson has been here. We’ll call in forensics and keep looking.”
He pointed to the ranch road that snaked up the mesa. “Let’s see where that road goes.”
The road, with fresh vehicle tracks, took them to a hunting lodge on the mesa top where they found the truck Larson had stolen from the Dripping Springs Ranch. Mitch Lowe called it in and they took a quick look inside the lodge and found it occupied by vermin, spiders, some squawking crows perched on the back of a leather couch, several flighty robins, and a coiled rattlesnake. There were bird droppings, rat shit, and coyote scat in every room, along with about a million or more red fireants.
Outside, they followed the stolen truck’s tire tracks to a water tank and found a partially eaten woman’s body, which was most likely all that remained of Nancy Trimble. Almost all of her clothing had been ripped off by the coyotes that had obviously feasted on the internal organs. Rope had been used to tie her hands, she’d been hobbled around the ankles, the bottoms of her bloody, bare feet were pincushions of imbedded cactus spines, and there were shreds of gray duct tape at the corners of her empty eye sockets. The entry wound told Dorsey she’d been shot in the back by a high-powered rifle, and signs of recent bruising on her buttocks convinced him that she’d been raped.
Dorsey pictured Trimble panicked, violated, hobbled, blindfolded, and barefoot stumbling across the mesa, knowing she was about to die, and his stomach turned at the thought it. He’d seen his share of human perversion, evil, and ugliness, but this was a new, all-time low.
“Somebody needs to put a bullet in Craig Larson’s head,” Dorsey said as he covered the body with a tarp.
Springer had one motel and a small, ten-room hotel. The state police task force hunting for Craig Larson had filled them up and spilled over to a budget motel on the outskirts of Raton, some forty miles distant. Just after nine at night Kerney drove past the Raton motel, with its “No Vacancy” sign and parking lot filled with cop cars, and pulled in next door at a slightly more expensive lodging establishment. Clayton parked behind him and they registered for separate but adjoining rooms. When they finished stowing their gear, Kerney used his cell phone to call Frank Vanmeter, the state police major in charge of the manhunt, and advise him of their arrival.
Just as Kerney disconnected, Clayton popped into the room and asked if there were any new developments.
“Nope,” Kerney replied. “No fresh kills since the caretaker at the Lazy Z and no sightings of Larson.”
Clayton nodded, turned as if to leave, hesitated, and gave Kerney a questioning glace.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I keep hoping Larson won’t get caught until I find him. I haven’t even being thinking about the innocent people he’s been murdering while he’s on the loose. Is that perverse or what?”
“No, it’s human,” Kerney replied with a grim smile. “I want a piece of Larson just as much as you do.”
Chapter Eight
In spite of her good looks, sex with Tami was a real bummer. Larson figured her to be a frigid, hysterical bitch. The only hole that worked on her was her mouth. He finished quickly, zipped up his pants, and slapped her hard repeatedly to get her to quit begging for her life. When she wouldn’t quiet down, he stuck her head in the toilet and held her under until she went limp.
As he laid Tami’s body out on the living room floor next to Porky, he decided it would have been more fun to send her out into the cactus patch behind the barn to use as target practice. Blindfolded and barefoot, just like Ugly Nancy, except that he wouldn’t have let Tami put any clothes on. Shooting people was far more enjoyable than drowning them.
He searched Tami’s purse. She carried a New Mexico voter identification card for the Republican Party and held memberships in the Toastmasters, the Rotary Club, and the Raton Chamber of Commerce. Her business card showed an address on a downtown street of Raton’s so-called historic district near the train tracks and old railroad station. Her home address on her driver’s license didn’t ring any bells, but he’d last been in Raton half a lifetime ago, so who knew what had changed?
He leafed through Tami’s day planner. The final entry for the day was a notation to meet Carter Marion Pettibone in the lobby of a Raton motel, to tour several ranch properties. The wallet in Porky’s back pocket confirmed he was Pettibone, age sixty-six, of Omaha, Nebraska. It also contained a key card to a room at the motel where Tami had picked him up.
Larson looked down at the bodies he’d neatly arranged side by side. Tami Phelan and Carter Marion Pettibone. What a pair. He could just imagine them as a Bible-thumping husband-and-wife team, evangelizing the back-road, dusty villages of West Texas door to door and on dinky public access television stations.
He went to the kitchen, sipped from the bottle of twenty-year-old whiskey he’d taken from the Lazy Z Ranch, and pondered his next move. For sure, staying put wouldn’t work. There was always the chance that Tami, Pettibone, or both had told somebody where they were going.
Larson retrieved Tami’s cell phone from her purse, found her home number on the speed-dial list, and punched in the number. The phone rang, went unanswered, and switched over to a voice message recorded by Tami. He disconnected, speed-dialed her office number, and got another message from Tami. There was no wedding ring on Tami’s finger and her business card showed her to be the broker who operated the real estate agency. Maybe she lived alone and even worked alone.
Outside, Larson searched Tami’s GMC Yukon. If Pettibone had a cell phone, he hadn’t brought it with him. Back inside, Larson paged through Tami’s day planner and found a two-week-old entry for Pettibone showing his home address and phone number in Omaha circled in red, with a note that he was interested in ranch land of less than 320 acres.
Larson dialed the Omaha number on Tami’s cell and a woman answered on the fourth ring.
“Hello,” she said, in a breathless voice as though she’d run to answer the telephone.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Pettibone,” Larson said, trying not to crack up at the absurdity of his request.
“I’m sorry, my husband’s not here right now. Can I take a message?”
“When would it be best to call back and speak to him?”
“He’s out right now, but I can take a message for him.”
“I’m just passing through town. Do you expect him back anytime soon?”
“No, he’s away on business.”
“For how long?”
“He’ll be back in three days.”
“Tell him Ted Landry called. He’ll remember who I am.”
“Ted Landry?”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you”
Larson disconnected and went through Tami’s day planner more carefully. There was nothing in it about picking up the kids from school or meeting the hubby for lunch or drinks. The only names that showed up repeatedly other than clients seemed to be those of a few women friends Tami would meet for dinner or a movie.
The car keys in Pettibone’s pocket were for a Buick, probably with Nebraska plates, which was most likely in the motel parking lot. If Porky’s wife wasn’t going to start missing him for the next three days, the cops wouldn’t be looking for the Buick anytime soon. Larson decided to ditch the piece-of-shit Subaru on the off chance that what was left of Ugly Nancy had been discovered, drive to Raton in Tami’s GMC Yukon, and use Porky’s Buick as his new set of wheels.
Back at the Yukon, he removed the magnetic real estate signs from the driver and passenger doors. Tami had a vanity license plate that read “COWGIRL.” Larson discarded it in favor of the Subaru’s plate, thinking that Tami the cowgirl hadn’t even been as good at giddyup as Ugly Nancy. He loaded the Yukon with all the gear he’d carted into the house, figuring that under the cover of darkness he would transfer his stuff to Pettibone’s Buick.
Finished with his tasks, Larson downed another couple of fingers of whiskey before returning to the living room. What to do with Tami and Porky was nagging him. His druthers were to burn the house down around them, but that would just draw quick attention and bring a slew of volunteer firefighters to the place. He could bury the
