'This isn't a game, Ms. Murray. I understand Judge Langsford's house was burglarized some time back. Were you working for him then?'
Murray's expression turned to puzzlement. 'A burglary?'
'A little over four years ago.'
'Nothing like that ever happened here.'
'Supposedly, Eric broke in and took some of his father's possessions.'
Murray laughed sharply. 'Did Eric tell you that?'
'Do you have a different version?' Kerney asked.
'Only if you're interested in the truth. Eric didn't break in. He came here demanding that his father give him what he wanted. He even brought a list with him.'
'And Judge Langsford complied?'
'Only after Eric refused to take money instead.'
'He turned down money?'
'That's right.'
'Why?'
'He wanted things the judge prized. He said that writing a check would be too easy.'
'He wanted to hurt his father,' Kerney suggested.
'I suppose.'
'Do you have any ideas on the subject?'
Murray raised her hands in a theatrical gesture. 'For past sins. For the death of his mother. For a shitty childhood. How should I know?'
'Or some family secret?' Kerney proposed.
'Every family has them.'
'But you don't know what they are?'
'Why should I?'
'How did Eric get Judge Langsford to give him what he wanted?'
'He was half-loaded and waving a gun around.'
'So, it was robbery.'
'No, and it was never reported to the police. Vernon talked Eric into putting the gun away.'
'What kind of gun was it?'
'I don't know. A revolver of some sort.'
'What did Eric leave with?'
'Everything on his list. Some of his mother's jewelry, his father's handguns, Arthur's coin collection, and Eric's stamp album. All of it quite valuable.'
'How valuable?'
'Eighty, a hundred fifty thousand dollars. In that range, at least.'
'That's quite a haul. And the judge just handed everything over?'
'Yes.'
'Why would he do that?'
'To get him out of the house, I would imagine.'
'Did Eric want anything that had belonged to his sister?'
'I don't think so.'
'Did the judge discuss Eric's visit with you afterwards?'
'No.'
'Did Eric ever come back here after that visit?'
Kerney took his hand off the front door. 'I need a list of the handguns the judge gave Eric.'
'I wouldn't know where to look,' Kay Murray said. 'Go find the killer, Mr. Kerney, and stop wasting your time butting into other people's personal lives.' She slammed the door shut in Kerney's face.
Driven by southerly winds, a brown haze of dust and pollution settled over Roswell. The sky was low and dreary, and the mountains to the west were a trivial outline against the horizon. The exquisite, radiant light and the vast conjunction of earth and sky, once so familiar and appealing, were fast becoming a rarity as industry along the Mexican border belched smog that drifted onto the high plains.
Middle-class retirees seeking the warmth of the Sun Belt added to the problem, as did the traditional dryness of a New Mexico desert autumn.
As Kerney wheeled into Linda Langsford's driveway, the sour feeling in his gut intensified. Not because the sky was less beautiful. Other things were piling up on him. Sara was hundreds of miles away, and he didn't get to see her enough. Clayton viewed him with hostility. And to top it off, he worried that his dream of ranching was nothing more than an overblown, forty-year-old fantasy.
Modern ranching was far more complex than Kerney's childhood experiences on the Tularosa. Could he do it? Did he even know how to do it? Was he too old to try? Even the thought of the heap of money he stood to get from the sale of the land Erma Fergurson had left him didn't soothe his unsettled feelings.
His parents had raised him to work hard, enjoy what life brings, and never waste anything. What would they have said about his good fortune?
Certainly they would have expected him to put the money to good use and to spend it wisely. They would have wanted him to build something of enduring value. But figuring out how to do that was starting to get harder than Kerney had ever imagined possible.
He shut the car door and stared at the stark architectural lines of Linda Langsford's house, which now seemed incongruous in comparison to the nearby farms, pastures, and fields. The house said something about Langsford, but Kerney wasn't sure what it might be.
He tried to get his head straight, but the lousy mood persisted. The most important case of his career was filled with contradictions and going nowhere. As he walked up the pathway, the appearance of the house ate at him along with everything else bouncing around in his head. under the close watch of a surveillance officer, Linda Langsford was at a funeral parlor making arrangements for her father's services.
Eric answered Kerney's knock, looking scrawny and undernourished in what appeared to be some of Drew Randolph's clothes. His eyebrows twitched as he stared at Kerney.
'I'm not talking to you,' he said from behind the screen door. 'You'd rather go back to jail,' Kerney countered. 'For what?'
'I'll think of something.'
'I didn't murder my father or any of those other people.'
'That should make talking to me a whole lot easier.'
'Okay, come in.'
Kerney stepped through the door. 'Now, you're absolutely sure you didn't kill your father?'
Eric nodded as he padded barefoot into the living room and sat on the couch. 'That's right. Do you know my bitch sister doesn't have any uppers or downers in the house? Not even a Valium prescription.
There's not a damn thing to get high on except booze.'
'You don't seem to like your sister very much.'
'We're not that close. Never have been.'
'She had Randolph bail you out.'
'That was for appearances, man. We've got to grieve together publicly now that the old man's been iced. Linda's big on shit like that.'
'Four years ago, you ripped your father off.'
Eric smiled gleefully. 'You heard about that? I held him up at gunpoint, man. It gave me a big charge. What a rush.'
'Why didn't you just take his money?'
'I wanted things that mattered to him. Stuff he wouldn't want to give me. Money would've been too easy. That's all he ever offered.'
'You took Arthur's coin collection, your mother's jewelry, and your own stamp album.'
