Kerney released the mare. She got up, shook herself off, snorted, and trotted away.
'Where did you learn that trick?' Edgar asked, holding Cody tightly in his arms.
'A fellow by the name of Bias Montoya taught it to me when I was a boy.'
'Well, I thank both you and Mr. Montoya. That's some damn fine roping,'
'You're welcome.'
He stroked Cody's head.
'Are you all right, cowboy?'
Cody's eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying.
'Yeah.
That was scary.'
'It scared me, too,' Edgar said.
'Is there anything else we need to talk about, Mr. Kerney?'
'I don't think so,' Kerney replied.
Edgar stuck out his hand.
'Well then, good luck to you, and thanks again.'
Kerney shook his hand and left, wondering what it would take to shake out Edgar's secret. He was damn sure there was one. Maybe Edgar had all the family skeletons locked in a closet that required a special key.
In Doming, Kerney went looking for a smuggler.
South of town, along the state highway, in view of the Tres Hermanas Mountains twenty miles distant, he found a mailbox with the right numbers at a roadside business that had gone under. The old farmhouse, bordered by cotton fields on three sides, had a front yard filled with rows of sagging wooden bins that once contained rocks for sale to the tourist trade. Signs at either end of the yard, the painted letters faded by the desert sun, welcomed rock hounds to the defunct establishment. There was a Keep Out sign posted on the front door of the house. Kerney parked and looked in the windows as he walked around the building. The rooms were empty except for some litter and a thick carpet of sand on the plank floors. Nobody had been inside for a good long time.
The wire strands to the back fence were filled with fluffs of raw cotton from the last harvest. In front of the fence was a level spot of sand and gravel near a utility pole with an electric meter attached to it. A dented propane tank sat on the other side of the site.
It was clear that a house trailer had been recently moved off the property. The tracks of the truck that had hauled it away were barely filled in with drifting sand.
Kerney kicked at the sand with the toe of a boot, pissed off at himself for taking too long to follow up on Juan's lead. It was another dead end, and he was getting tired of running into walls. He looked down the road. About half a mile away, at the intersection of the highway and a county road, was a farm equipment and supply business. Beyond that, cotton fields gave way to desert that ran up against the dark groundmass of the Tres Hermanas.
At the dealership, a metal-skin building with a large plate-glass window that bounced the sun into his eyes, he stood next to a hundred-thousand-dollar tractor and talked with the owner. Clancy Payne was in his sixties. He had a cheerful smile and a trace of a West Texas twang. He shook his head and said he didn't know much about the man up the road. Kerney learned that his target, Leon Spence, had sold the house trailer and moved to Tucson. Other than that, and a belief that Spence was a traveling salesman of some sort, Mr. Payne knew nothing more.
'When did Spence move out?' Kerney asked.
'I don't know when he left, but they hauled the trailer away over the weekend,' Clancy replied.
'Were you open for business on Saturday?'
'I sure was, but I didn't see Spence, if that's what you're wondering.'
'What kind of car does Spence drive?'
'He's got two vehicles. One of them is a Toyota four-by-four sport utility and the other is a four door Chevy. A Caprice, I think it is.
The Toyota is a dark blue and the Chevy is white.'
'New Mexico plates?'
'Yeah, but don't ask me for the license numbers. I can't even remember my own.'
Laid out on a grid, Deming ran parallel to the interstate until it petered out at both ends of the main street. On a smooth desert plain, broken only by low sand mounds and shallow arroyos, the locals fought the starkness of the land and lost the battle.
There would never be enough greenness, no matter how many trees were planted or lawns were sodded, to combat the sparseness, dryness, dust, and wind that constantly wore at the town.
With all of that going against it, Deming had been discovered by working-class retirees on limited pensions, and new, inexpensive subdivisions were pushing back the cotton fields, as the city touted its resurgence with billboards and bumper stickers.
On the outer limits ofDeming's main street, in the air-conditioned comfort of a restaurant that gave customers a great view of the interstate highway and the railroad tracks, Kerney called the BLM officer, who agreed to meet him for a cup of coffee. While he waited he borrowed the phone book and called the electric and phone companies, hoping that Spence had left a forwarding address. No such luck. He called mobile home movers. None had hauled Spence's trailer. The BLM cop arrived, and Kerney sat with him in a window booth, the sun's glare cut by a thick plastic shade that made the outside world look dark brown.
'You did the ibex investigation in the Florida Mountains,' Kerney said, after the small talk concluded.
Mike Anderson, a man with a blocky face and fat earlobes, took his sunglasses off and wiped some dust out of the corners of his eyes.
'That's right.
Couldn't get anything definite on it. I called a state police buddy of mine to help out, but we couldn't get a damn bit of hard evidence other than the tire tracks. That didn't pan out either. The impressions didn't take. Not enough tread depth.'
'So, what have you got?'
'Two days before I found the kill site, I stopped a kid on a four-wheel ATV. He was on state land outside of my jurisdiction, but I gave him a butt chewing anyway. Said he was camped at Rock Hound State Park with his family.'
'Did you ID the kid?'
'Got a name,' Anderson said, pulling a small notebook from his shirt pocket.
'The kid was maybe twelve, thirteen years old.' Anderson thumbed through his notes.
'Here it is. Ramon Ulibarri. Said he was from Reserve. I called up there after I found the trophy kills, just to check it out. There was only one Ulibarri listed in the phone book and the telephone had been disconnected. So I called the Catron County sheriff.'
'And?' Kerney prodded.
'I talked to the sheriff. He didn't know any kid by that name, and nobody matched the description I gave him. I figured in a town that small, the sheriff would know.'
'You talked to Gatewood?'
'Sure did.'
'Describe the boy to me,' Kerney asked.
Anderson gave him a rundown. Four-six or — seven, slender build, wearing floppy jeans and a baseball cap with the bill turned backward. He closed the notebook and put it away.
'The kid told me that he was camping with his family at the state park, but later when I talked to the manager he said there was nobody registered from Reserve during that time.'
'So the kid lied to you.'
'Appears that way.'
'Do you know a man named Leon Spence?' Kerney asked.
'Used to live on the highway to Columbus.'
Anderson suddenly got busy stirring his coffee.
'Doesn't register.'
Kerney pushed a bit.
