bodies, but that felt like too much work. Instead, he brought the Subaru from the barn where he’d stashed it, opened the hatchback, folded down the backseats, and manhandled Tami’s body into the car. To get her to fit inside, he had to pull her head up between the front bucket seats and place it on the center armrest. He spread her legs, raised her knees, dropped Porky’s drawers down around his ankles and, grunting under the effort, wrestled him on top of naked Tami. Larson doubted that Pettibone, in life, had ever been on top of such a good-looking piece of tail. That was the downside. In death, however, the upside was that Porky would never know what a bum fuck she was.
He put the Subaru back in the barn, carefully closed the gate to the property, and drove away in the Yukon, with a low-hanging western sun in his eyes. Tami’s cell phone, which hadn’t rung once, was on the front passenger seat, along with the 9mm Glock, the .357 Ruger, and the .357 pistol. The two hunting rifles, the Weatherby and a Remington 700 Safari that fired a .458 Magnum bullet with great stopping power, were on the backseat, along with the lever-action Winchester 30.06. If the cops found him and wanted to party, the firepower he had at hand would make it possible for him to oblige them greatly.
Larson turned north toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which rose up to fill the horizon from east to west. It seemed he had a knack for killing people, but so far his victims had been random folks who’d stood in his way. Maybe it was time to get more serious and up the ante.
Some years back, Larson had been mesmerized by the two snipers who had killed all those people in Maryland and Virginia. He even remembered their names, Muhammad and Malvo. At the time they seemed unstoppable, and he’d paid close attention to the details of the manhunt and their eventual capture.
He knew they had used a Bushmaster XM15 E2S to take down their targets. Patterned after the M-16, it had a ten-shot magazine and fired .223-caliber rounds. He knew the car they’d driven, a Chevy Caprice, had been checked out by the police seven times before the pair were finally arrested, that they used a stolen laptop to navigate around the D.C. area, and that they took turns as the shooter and the spotter, sometimes firing from the vehicle and sometimes not.
Supposedly, Malvo and Muhammad had killed for money: some ten million dollars they’d hoped to get from the cops. In truth, Larson knew it had to be all about the blood sport, not the money. He was starting to feel that way about his own killing spree.
On the interstate heading north toward Raton, a state police car passed him without slowing, and Larson toyed with the idea of assassinating cops. That would be a hell of a lot more entertaining than shooting unarmed housewives at gas stations or in front of grocery stores, like Malvo and Muhammad did. It could also be a lot more challenging too, because cops could shoot back.
Not that Larson planned to give them the chance. The Weatherby and the Remington would provide plenty of range and give him time enough to disappear, just like Malvo and Muhammad. The more he thought about killing cops, the more it appealed to him. After all, cops gave him the most grief, not Pettibone, Tami, Ugly Nancy, Cuddy the KO’d Kid, or most of the other folks he’d wasted. Those poor suckers had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the Lincoln County sheriff, the cop at the roadblock, and the horde of cops looking for him were all trying to bring him down.
Maybe it was time to stop the cops.
Larson liked the sound of that.
In Raton, along the motel strip, Larson made up his mind to do it. All the cop cars parked outside a budget franchise motel sealed the deal. He passed by slowly, watching a small group of uniformed officers talking as they stood next to a patrol vehicle.
Larson felt invisible. He was no more than twenty-five feet away from them, driving slowly as he passed by, and the cops ignored him completely. And why shouldn’t they? He was in Tami’s Yukon nobody was looking for, and with his shaved head and new beard he now had a completely different look.
He was invisible, maybe even invincible.
Larson grinned as he wheeled into the motel entrance where Porky Pettibone, now lying dead on top of cold and frigid Tami in the back of Ugly’s Subaru, had booked a room.
He’d seen a television show where the cops found a body carefully arranged on a bed and called it staging. He mulled over a way to kill a whole bunch of cops and stage their bodies in a circle jerk. He laughed out loud at the idea of it.
He parked next to the Buick with Nebraska plates and let himself into Porky’s room. The bedside telephone message light was blinking. Larson followed the instructions on the placard next to the phone and dialed to retrieve the message. It was from Pettibone’s wife, reporting that a man named Ted Landry had called for him, and asking if he liked the ranch he’d gone to see with the Realtor.
Larson closed the window curtains and checked the time. It was a good two hours before nightfall, when it would be safe to move his gear to Porky’s car. Until then, he would stay put and do some serious cogitating about ways to kill cops.
After attending an early morning state police task force meeting, Kerney and Clayton talked privately over coffee in the motel restaurant with Major Frank Vanmeter, the task force commander. Barely in his forties, Vanmeter was a twenty-year veteran of the department. He’d been a lieutenant during Kerney’s brief stint as a deputy chief of the state police.
Kerney asked him how the psychologist, Dr. John Casados, had made out talking to Larson’s twin brother.
Vanmeter pursed his thin lips and shook his bald head. “Kerry Larson clammed up. But Casados thinks it likely that he could be deliberately withholding information about his brother’s whereabouts.”
“What makes Casados think that?” Clayton asked as he spooned some sugar into his coffee cup.
“Hero worship,” Vanmeter replied. “Kerry Larson idolizes his brother, who in his mind can do no wrong. He’s an identical twin and the spitting image of his brother, Craig, but slow in the head.”
“Other than the psychologist’s theory, is there any reason to believe that Kerry is protecting or harboring Larson?” Kerney asked.
“No, but Everett Dorsey, the Springer police chief, thinks Kerry would have a pretty good idea where his brother might go to hide out if he’s still in the area.”
“That makes sense,” Kerney said.
“Casados is going to take another crack at Kerry today,” Vanmeter added.
“We know Larson has no other blood relatives in the area,” Clayton said, “but what about old friends and acquaintances? Would they have any ideas about Larson’s whereabouts?”
“Dorsey is working a list of locals who knew the Larson brothers before Craig left town. Former friends and folks they went to school with, people they once worked for, old school teachers and coaches. It’s a long shot.”
Kerney pushed back his chair and dropped some bills on the table to cover the coffees and tip. “But worth pursuing, given the fact that the Lazy Z once belonged to the family of Craig Larson’s teenage girlfriend. His familiarity with the ranch is probably one of the factors that drew him there.”
He glanced at Clayton. “We need to visit with Chief Dorsey and take a look at the Lazy Z crime scene.”
“Except for the vermin-infested hunting lodge on top of the mesa, there’s not much left to see,” Vanmeter said as he nodded at a file folder in Kerney’s hand. “The briefing packet I passed out this morning brings you up to speed on what happened there.”
Kerney stood. “And it does so very nicely, Frank. But I want to take a gander for myself.”
Vanmeter smiled and shrugged. “According to Chief Baca, you both have carte blanche.”
“We won’t step on any toes unless we have to,” Clayton said as he got to his feet.
Vanmeter’s smiled widened. “That’s not the back-channel traffic I heard about what you did when you departed the Lincoln County S.O., Agent Istee.”
Clayton smiled back at Vanmeter. “Those were bruised egos I left behind, Major, not sore toes.”
Vanmeter laughed as he followed Kerney and Clayton to the parking lot.
After dark, Larson had transferred his stuff to Pettibone’s Buick, driven Tami’s SUV to her office, left it in the
