needs to be rebuilt. I was gonna give him the money on payday, but then he went A.W.O.L.. It's still parked up by the barracks.'
'Did you take anything out of the car?' Kerney asked. Robinson nodded.
'Right before Sammy split he said I could start working on it anytime and gave me the keys. There was a bunch of stuff inside that I cleaned out.'
'What stuff?' Sara demanded.
'Just the usual junk people leave in cars, and a big leather case to keep art stuff in.'
'A portfolio,' Sara clarified.
'That's it.'
'Do you still have it?'
Robinson inclined his head toward the small office next to the service bay.
'Yes, ma'am. I kept everything.' They followed Robinson to the office and waited while he pulled the portfolio out from behind a filing cabinet and located a small box mixed in with some cartons on the floor.
'That's all of it,' he said. Sara took the portfolio, Kerney grabbed the box, and Robinson walked them to the door.
'Is that all you need. Captain?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Don't you drive a Jeep Cherokee?' Robinson inquired.
'I do.'
'Bring it down and I'll give it a tune-up. Cost you for the parts only.'
'I may do that, Specialist.' Outside she told Kerney to take her back to her house. Protocol called for them to log the items as evidence immediately, and Kerney had assumed they would do it at Sara's office. He said nothing, and they drove in silence, the box on the floorboard and the portfolio in Sara's lap.
The storm had blown itself out quickly, and the sky had cleared enough for a moonlight haze to pour over the basin. The top of the post water tower emerged on the side of a hill above the residential area, and streetlights illuminated the precise rows of military housing units with neat lawns and carefully trimmed shrubbery. A soft breeze pushed lines of sand across the pavement in lacy waves.
In the living room, Sara put away the map to make space on the carpet for the evidence. They sat opposite one another and went through the contents of the box first, like children saving the best present for last. It contained a pair of sunglasses, cassette tapes for the car stereo, a class catalog from the university, a small car repair kit in a plastic case, and several wrinkled road maps.
Sara unzipped the portfolio and spread it open on the carpet, revealing a series of watercolors and pencil drawings, each separated by a sheet of clear plastic. She laid them out in order, fingers touching only the tips of the paper. Kerney scooted next to her on the rug, his bad leg protesting the movement.
'Marvelous,' she said, almost to herself, switching her attention from one painting to another.
'Sergeant Steiner said nothing about a portfolio of watercolors.'
'Did you have Steiner picked up after I talked to him?' Sara smiled sweetly.
'Of course I did.'
'I promised him he wouldn't get in trouble.'
'He's not, although I did chew him out for not leveling with us.'
'Did you find any other artwork?' Sara nodded.
'We have Sammy's sketchbooks that were in his quarters. All very harmless: anatomy studies of animals, pencil sketches of plant life, caricatures of some of his buddies. Until you talked to Steiner we had no knowledge that Sammy was sketching in restricted areas.'
'What Steiner said amounts to nothing more than the reason Sammy went hiking on his free time,' Kerney replied.
'I agree, but until now, we operated on the assumption that Specialist Yazzi left with the intent to go A.W.O.L.. That no longer seems to be the case.'
She dropped her gaze to the watercolors, a series of wildlife studies. Each consisted of three separate panels: a landscape field sketch, a pencil drawing of a wildlife subject, and the final watercolor version, combining both elements. The landscape pencil drawings showed the locations of Sammy's field trips-the rickety windmill at Windy Well, the dilapidated corral at old John Prather's ranch, the mesa above the 7-Bar-K Ranch. Sammy had traversed a large chunk of real estate on the missile range.
'I wish we'd had these when we were looking for him,' Sara reflected.
'He's been all over the damn base, at places we didn't even think to search.'
'Maybe we should search again,' Kerney suggested.
'Maybe we should.'
'He's been to some remote back country, from the looks of it,' Kerney added.
'Not places you can hike into in less than a day. Any ideas on how he got there?' Sara watched carefully to see what drawing Kerney looked at as he spoke. A bobcat seemed to command his attention. She had no idea what the locale for the painting might be.
'The service club operates a jeep excursion program for post personnel. They can sign out for a vehicle for day trips into the wilderness areas. Use is limited to specific roads and locations on the range.'
'A jeep would do it,' Kerney said, getting up stiffly from the carpet. 'I'll check the service club records in the morning. It might give us a better idea of where to start looking.'
'I think you already know where to look,' Sara asserted. Kerney gave her a wry smile and shook his head.
'I don't know where to start.' Sara stood up. 'I'll let the service club NCO know you're coming.'
'Thanks.' He walked to the bookcase and picked up a framed photograph of four riders on horseback, a man, woman, young boy, and girl. The girl, with pigtails dangling down under the brim of a cowboy hat, had a broad, happy smile. From the looks of it, Sara must have been no more than thirteen years old when the picture was taken.
'Your family?'
'Yes.'
'Where was the photograph taken?'
'Montana. North of Livingston on the Shields River. My parents are sheep ranchers. My brother and I are the fourth generation. Paul runs the ranch now. Mom and Dad work part-time, and head south in the winter. They call themselves snow birds Kerney looked at the photograph again before replacing it on the bookcase. If Sara's mother was an indication of how her daughter would age, it was clear Sara would be very lovely for many years to come.
'They look like good people,' he said.
'They are.'
'Do you think you can locate Bull McVay?' he asked. Sara smiled.
'Already done. Meet me at my office at noon and we'll drive up to see him.'
'I'll be there. Is the BOQ available, or am I still out of time?'
'I think we can forget the clock, Lieutenant. I'll let them know you're staying over another night.'
'Can you lose the tail on me?' he asked.
'Good night. Lieutenant,' Sara said sweetly, brushing off the request. She watched Kerney limp to his truck with his half-rolling, busted-up gait and smiled in spite of herself. It probably hurt him like hell, but the walk reminded her of home and the men she had grown up with. She watched him drive away, called the BOQ, sat at the dining-room table, opened her briefcase, and took out the memorandum prepared by the post historian.
Patrick Kerney (born Live Oak County, Texas, 1872; died Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1964, age 92) came to the Tularosa Valley at the age of thirteen, as a horse wrangler for one of the original Texas cattlemen. He was a contemporary of Eugene Manlove Rhodes (see W. H. Hutchinson, A Bar Cross Man. University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), a cowboy who became one of the best-known western novelists of the early twentieth century. Both Rhodes and Kerney worked at the Bar Cross Ranch as wranglers and hands. Kerney took a patent on six thousand acres in the foothills of the San Andres Mountains about the same time that Rhodes laid claim to his land in what is now known as Rhodes Canyon. Both ran longhorn cattle, hired out to other spreads and broke mustangs to make ends meet. Patrick Kerney hauled freight from the railroad in Engle to the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation on a
