'Nothing else?' Kerney queried.
'Elk, when I can get a permit. I'm not a poacher.'
Kerney switched gears.
'You have a boy in graduate school and two kids at Western New Mexico, don't you?'
'Yeah. So what?'
'It must be expensive to put three kids through college at the same time.'
Lujan laughed bitterly.
'Don't you mean how can a peon like me come up with that kind of money?'
'I didn't say that,' Kerney replied calmly.
Lujan thrust his face forward.
'You don't have to say it to mean it. I had an industrial accident at the copper mine a few years before I got laid off. Hurt my back. The union helped me settle with the company. I got a cash payment. The money went into savings for the kids' education. We don't use it for anything else.'
Lujan turned to the sideboard behind him, opened a drawer, pulled out a bank passbook, and flipped it onto the table.
'Check it out for yourself.
Every dollar pays for tuition, books, dormitory costs, and expenses.'
Kerney looked. From the amount of the initial deposit it was apparent the Lujans certainly could cover the cost of three children in college.
It had been spent down systematically over a period of years.
'Satisfied?' Lujan asked. He had forgotten his cigarette. It was in an ashtray on the table burning down to the filter.
'Where were you the day Hector Padilla was murdered?' Kerney asked, holding out the passbook.
Steve took it and returned it to the drawer.
'That's a stupid question. You know where I was. I was at the campsite with Amador and the rest of the crew.'
He pulled another smoke out of the pack.
'Did you leave the job at any time?'
'No.'
Kerney glanced at Yolanda. She stood with one hand on her hip, her eyes darting from him to her husband. Her expression was one of masked resentment.
'That about does it,' he said.
'Thanks for your time.'
Steve grunted, lit up, and blew smoke in Kerney's direction.
'Let yourself out.'
Loco, the German shepherd, wagged his tail when Kerney stepped off the porch. He rubbed the dog's snout and let him sniff his hand again before moving on to his truck. It seemed that Steve and Yolanda had been expecting his visit. Probably Amador had told Steve that Kerney might come around asking questions. But that didn't explain why Lujan had been so forthcoming with someone he thought no longer had any legal authority to question him. And why was he so nervous?
It was evening when Kerney got home and found Karen Cox standing next to her station wagon waiting for him. She wore jeans, cowboy boots, and a ribbed scoop-neck shirt. He parked, got out of the truck, and stretched his knee to ease some of the stiffness. He had spent too many hours driving with the leg locked in one position.
'You don't have a telephone,' she said as he reached her.
'The phone company is supposed to put in a line, but now I guess I won't need it. Are you here to ask me about Padilla Canyon?'
'Not really. Jim Stiles filled me in. To him you're quite a hero.'
'Hardly. I did what was necessary. What can I do for you?'
'Can we talk inside?'
In the trailer, he turned on the ceiling light and offered her the choice of the chair or the couch. She sat on the couch and waited while he opened windows to let out the heat of the day. The metal skin of the trailer absorbed heat like a sponge, and the room was stifling hot.
Except for two Navajo saddle blankets that hung on the walls, the living area held no personal touches. From the weave and the pattern she guessed both were late-nineteenth-century trade blankets, worth a considerable amount of money. The room, a combination kitchen, dining nook, and sitting area, was tidy but bleak in the harsh glow of the overhead light.
Kerney turned on a table fan, sat in the overstuffed chair, and stretched out his legs. It felt good to let the knee rest.
'What's on your mind?' he asked.
Karen smiled apologetically.
'I came to thank you for rescuing Cody. My father told me what you did.
I appreciate it.'
'No thanks are necessary. I think your father could have handled it without me.'
'That's not the way he saw it. Why did you go to see him?'
'Are you wearing your ADA hat now?'
Karen shifted her weight on the lumpy cushion.
'You could say that.'
Kerney nodded.
'Fair enough. I'll trade with you.'
'Trade what?'
'Information.'
'I don't have to do that.'
'What's holding you back?'
'From what I've learned from Jim Stiles, you're still directing the course of his investigation. I can't allow that.'
Kerney smiled in amusement.
'That's quite a stretch you're making. Counselor. I've provided nothing more than friendly advice to Jim.'
'That doesn't relieve you of the responsibility to tell me what you've learned.'
'I've already done that.'
'Not completely. You said you had information to trade.'
'It's more like a suspicion.'
'Of what?' Karen demanded.
'Something happened a long time ago that brought Jose Padilla back to Catron County. It has put your father between a rock and a hard place.
Maybe it ties into the deaths of Hector and Jose Padilla, and maybe it doesn't. But until there is a solid lead on the killer and the motive, it can't be discounted.'
'Now you're the one making a stretch.'
'I don't mean to put you in an uncomfortable position.'
'I didn't say that.'
'You got uptight as soon as I mentioned your father in the same breath with Jose Padilla. You did the same thing this morning when we talked about it at the hospital.'
Karen looked at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap, and forced herself to relax.
'Why are you pushing this?'
Kerney leaned forward in his chair, his blue eyes filled with anger.
'Because whoever shot Jim Stiles was worried about something. But the question is, what? The poaching case? Hector Padilla's murder?
The death of a man your father knew sixty years ago? All of the above?
'I like Jim. He's good people, and he deserves to have the son of a bitch who shot him caught.
