Easley, Frank Vanmeter, and SWAT before we go in.”
Clayton chuckled. “Gee, thanks for looking out for me, Dad.”
Kerney winced. “Ouch. I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Sorry.” Through the rearview mirror Kerney saw a dust cloud on the ranch road, signaling the impending arrival of reinforcements. “Vanmeter and his troops are almost here.”
Some number of police vehicles arrived to disgorge a heavily armed SWAT team of eight officers in full regalia, Major Frank Vanmeter, two uniforms from the Raton PD, and a short, wiry cop wearing jeans, boots, a white shirt, and a Western-cut sport coat, who introduced himself as Joe Easley.
“How did you fellows beat us here?” he asked Kerney as they shook hands.
Kerney nodded at Clayton. “Agent Istee did some cybertracking of Larson on the Internet at the Lazy Z. And you?”
“A missing-person report got us started. She’s a woman named Tami Phelan, a real estate agent in town, reported missing by her mother. We found her vehicle at her place of business, and when we searched her office, we found an entry on her computer that she was scheduled to show this property to a prospective client yesterday afternoon.”
“Have you got a lead on the client?”
“Just a name.” Easley consulted a pocket notebook. “Carter Pettibone. As far as we can tell, he’s not a local. I have officers contacting all the area motels to see if we can run him down.”
Kerney nodded. “Very good.” He turned to Frank Vanmeter, who stood nearby with the SWAT commander and his seven officers. “How do you want to do this?”
Vanmeter laid out a plan that started with a plea over a bullhorn asking Larson to give himself up. If there was no response in five minutes, the request would be repeated one more time before the SWAT team was sent in.
Using the webpage photographs of the ranch property Clayton had downloaded and printed, it was decided the SWAT team would first clear and secure the barn, place a sniper in the hayloft to lay down covering fire, and launch tear gas into the ranch house before moving on the target.
To get into position behind the barn without being seen from the house, the SWAT team would backtrack on foot down the ranch road, follow a shallow, winding arroyo to the fence line, and use the barn as cover to get into position.
“Okay,” Vanmeter said, “let’s do this. And remember, nobody except Larson gets killed.”
The SWAT team nodded in unison and moved out. When they reached the fence line, the SWAT commander gave Vanmeter a heads-up over the radio. Vanmeter made his bullhorn pitch twice to Larson, and when there was no response, SWAT moved to the barn.
Near the assembly point on the ranch road, Kerney, Vanmeter, Clayton, and Joe Easley spent an anxious few minutes flat on their stomachs at the rim of the rise, binoculars trained on the barn, waiting in silence for either a radio report or the sound of gunfire. Finally, the radio crackled and the SWAT commander reported that the barn had been cleared.
“We’ve got two dead victims in the back of a Subaru,” the commander said. “A male and female. The scene has been staged. Naked female on bottom, male with pants around his ankles on top. Vehicle matches the description of Trimble’s car. The license plate is missing.”
“Dammit,” Vanmeter said. “Take the house.”
“Roger that.”
Just as the sniper opened up and started shooting out windows, Joe Easley’s cell phone rang. He answered, listened for a minute, and disconnected.
“We’ve located the motel where Pettibone is registered,” he said. “According to the housekeeper, the room was slept in last night.”
“Well, if Pettibone and the real estate agent are in the backseat of the Subaru,” Clayton said, “it sure wasn’t him who stayed there last night.”
“I’m thinking it might have been Larson who used the room,” Easley said as he watched the SWAT team launch the tear gas canisters through the windows of the ranch house. “Because it sure doesn’t look like he’s here.”
“What motel is Pettibone registered at?” Kerney asked.
Easley told him.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Kerney said. “That’s where we’re staying.”
The SWAT commander gave an all-clear over the radio.
Fuming at the thought that Larson had been so close at hand last night, Kerney got to his feet and started for the barn just as the SWAT team fanned out and started a field search of the property.
Chapter Nine
Either Larson had remembered the wrong road or it had badly deteriorated over the many years he’d been away. On a narrow, deeply rutted, rocky strip, he attempted to turn around and high-centered the Buick on some large rocks. Additionally, he’d smashed the tailpipe like an accordion and seriously damaged the muffler.
He was out in the Big Empty with nobody around for miles, and there was no way he could pack out all his gear, weapons, and valuables in one trip. He would either have to get himself unstuck, or leave most everything behind and make the long, grueling trek to Kerry’s cottage in ninety-five-degree heat.
Larson crawled under the Buick for a closer look at the problem. The front tires were two inches off the ground and the transmission housing was hung up on a humongous rock. He got the jack out of the trunk and cranked it up as high as it would go. Even at the fullest extension it couldn’t reach to lift the Buick off the boulder. He put some flat rocks underneath the jack and tried again, but with the Buick’s nose angled in the air, he couldn’t get leverage to budge it off the rock.
A second look in the trunk revealed a towing strap tucked in the spare-tire well. He wrapped it around a nearby tree, secured it to the rear axle, revved the engine, put it into reverse gear, and tried to pull the car loose, using the axle as a reel. The rear tires spun, the Buick lurched back several inches, and the towing strap broke.
Disgusted, Larson broke a stout branch off a down and dead juniper tree, crawled back under the Buick, and started loosening the soil around the rock with the stick. It was tough, dirty work, and after an hour he was breathing hard through a cotton-dry mouth.
Wishing he’d brought some water with him, he crawled out from under the car and rested his aching back against the rear bumper. His forehead throbbed from hitting his head repeatedly on the undercarriage, and his knuckles were bruised and bloody.
Groaning at the thought of being stuck in the middle of nowhere all night, Larson put rocks under the elevated front tires and placed more rocks behind the rear tires to prevent it from rolling backward and crashing down on him while he was underneath it. He dug into the rocky soil with the juniper branch again, and used the loosened dirt to build up a platform for the jack under the front axle. If he could raise the front end another inch or two, maybe he could push the car loose from the boulder and slide it free.
After jacking the car up, he could see just the barest clearance between the boulder and the transmission housing. Hoping that was enough, he removed the rocks from behind the rear wheels, put the transmission into neutral, released the parking brake, and pushed the car from the front end as hard as he could. Metal screeched against rock as the Buick rolled back and all four tires dropped down.
Body aching, hot and sweaty, dirt and dust embedded in every pore of his face and hands, Larson grabbed the bottle of twenty-year-old whiskey he’d liberated from the Lazy Z, took a long swig, and poured some of the liquor on his bruised and bloody fingers.
After a careful inspection to avoid getting stuck again, he got behind the wheel and slowly backed up to where he could turn the Buick around. He headed toward Springer, hoping that the broken muffler wouldn’t attract any undue attention from the cops when he got there.
On the main street, two state police cars were parked in front of a small hotel that had a popular eatery
