off.
Mom's surgery had gone well-better than expected, according to the doctor-and Karen sat in the waiting room with her father. Even with the good news, his face was filled with worry, and he was fidgety, running his fingers through his gray hair and pacing back and forth across the waiting room, taking big strides with his long legs.
Karen wanted to pass it off as nothing more than Edgar's desire to see Mom as soon as the doctor would let him. She wondered if the love that her parents had-a sweet, absolute devotion-had melted away with their generation and was now nothing more than a cultural icon. The idea of being joined at the hip to a man had always felt stifling to Karen.
Elizabeth and Cody were much calmer than their grandfather. They were playing with a puzzle in the corner of the room with the pieces spread out on the floor between them. Elizabeth was lying on her stomach, knees bent and legs in the air, fitting pieces together, while Cody, stretched out on his side, played tiddledywinks with his pile of the puzzle, trying to vex his sister by skipping shots at her.
The only other person in the room, a woman waiting to take her husband home from outpatient surgery, sat in front of a television at the far end of the room, watching a mindless talk show. The station broke away from the network for a news bulletin.
Karen got to her feet as soon as the anchorman in Albuquerque started talking about more violence in Catron County. A trailer had been bombed and a man was dead. There would be a full report on the evening news.
'Daddy,' she called.
Already at her side, Edgar scowled at the television.
'I've got to go,' she said.
'Go ahead. I'll take care of the children,' Edgar replied.
Karen grabbed her purse, kissed Cody and Elizabeth, and flew out the door.
Thwarted by Molly's refusal to drive him around because she had to work for a living, and because his face would cause a massive traffic accident if she took him out in public, Jim Stiles was forced to do detective work by telephone. The mining company confirmed Steve Lujan's story about his settlement, and the Catron County Bank reported no large amounts of money going in or out of Lujan's account.
Karen arrived at the trailer and quickly grilled Gatewood. She was relieved to learn that Kerney wasn't dead. The devastated trailer had been braced up with scrap lumber so that the crime scene specialists, flown in from Santa Fe by the state police, could work inside the structure. They were laboring cautiously, bagging evidence, dusting for prints, and taking photographs. Karen logged in with the officer in charge and toured the outside area with Gatewood, an arson investigator, and the state police agent assigned to the Padilla homicide. The wall studs of the trailer had been fractured into giant toothpicks, and melted ceiling tiles, warped by heat into bizarre shapes, dangled from the gaping hole in the metal roof. A couch, consumed down to the metal frame, sat next to a badly charred and smoldering mattress.
The arson investigator, in from Las Cruces, took Karen and Omar up a plank board to the hole where the front door had been. His rumpled jacket caught on the sharp edge of a piece of metal, and as he turned to free it, the trailer settled a bit. The movement froze Karen in her tracks.
The man coughed, shook his head, and stepped back down the plank, forcing Gatewood and Karen to retreat.
'Maybe I should just tell you what I found,' he said.
'That's a good idea,' Karen replied.
On solid ground he inspected the tear in his jacket and tried to pull out a loose thread without success before pointing at the trailer.
'We've got a dynamite explosion triggered by propane gas.' He wheezed, took out a tissue, and blew his nose.
'Enough material was used to guarantee nobody inside would survive the blast. Whoever did this wanted to send a message that it was no accident. I'd say the tenant was the target, and revenge or retaliation was the motive.'
'Was it a professional job?' Karen asked.
'No way,' the investigator replied.
'Does it fit any kind of profile?'
The investigator shrugged.
'Sure. My bet is that we've got a male perpetrator. Women tend to use flammables and burn personal objects, like clothes or bedding. Men go for accelerants and explosives.
The perp was organized about it. Knew what he wanted to do. This is a flat-out murder case.'
'Anything else?'
The investigator nodded.
'The landlord probably wasn't the target. I understand the tenant is a single man who worked for the Forest Service. I'd be looking for either an extremist or a jealous husband or boyfriend. Something along those lines.'
Karen turned to Gatewood and gave him a searching look.
'Where is Kerney?'
Omar looked sheepish.
'He was here earlier.'
'Find him,' she ordered, thinking that maybe the democratic system of electing sheriffs was a stupid idea.
'I want a full statement from him on my desk as soon as possible. Does he know anybody angry enough to want to kill him? Concentrate on his investigation. Find out if he has been threatened or harassed. If you come up empty, ask if he has a girlfriend. What was his relationship to Doyle Fletcher? Fletcher's wife?'
Stung by her crisp manner, Gatewood sent two deputies to look for Kerney.
Satisfied that the investigation was a little less scattered, Karen went to her office to call her boss in Socorro. Then she stood at the window for a very long time, looking at the sorry row of buildings across the road. Reserve had no charm other than the natural beauty of the valley and mountains.
Most of the tourists stayed in Silver City or at resort ranches when they came to the region. There were no sidewalks or streetlights on the road. In front of an empty house across the way, once used as a real estate office, a pile of trash had collected against the sagging porch.
Next door, she could see into the vacant modular building that had housed the weekly local paper before it went belly-up. Waist-high weeds covered the bottom half of the door.
The town felt like it was dying. Maybe they needed to keep track of the population: five hundred and counting-down.
She brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek and thought about the three dead men-Fletcher, Hector Padilla, and his grandfather. How were the deaths connected? What linked them to her family and a sixty-year-old secret? Would Kerney uncover the link before she could prepare her parents for the repercussions?
Far past the ranches along Dry Creek Canyon, at the point where the forest road separated, Kerney took the fork that led away from the Slash Z summer grazing land, where he had first met Phil Cox. The road dipped into a canyon before climbing the slope toward the hogback ridge.
Jim had discovered engine oil in the mine shaft before he was shot. That meant Padilla Canyon had been used as a staging area to scout out the hunter's prey. Maybe another look would turn up similar evidence on the black bear poaching.
At the ridgeline he shifted the truck into low gear and descended slowly into a second canyon. Bracketed by box elder and walnut trees that thrived in the moisture-rich ecosystem, the canyon was an oasis compared to Dry Springs. The road, or what was left of it, crossed several small springs that trickled over river rock. It seemed to give out as sheer canyon walls closed in and the stream widened. He sloshed the truck through a pool of water three feet deep, past downed trees rotting in the undergrowth, and picked up the bare outline of the route moving sharply upland. Crawling slowly to the summit, he topped out to find a cabin in a secluded hollow, sheltered by pine trees and protected by the mountains that filled the eastern skyline. Made of hand hewn logs, it had a tin roof that sagged in the middle and a rock chimney that leaned precariously at an angle over the roof. The windows and doors had been boarded up with sheets of plywood.
Kerney made a quick outside inspection before approaching the cabin, and found no sign of human activity. A
