'Or he'd already found Terjo.'
'Shit, I should have thought of that.'
'Don't worry about it. If he has Terjo, we couldn't have taken action anyway.'
'Can I say something, Chief?'
'Go ahead,' Kerney said.
'As far as I'm concerned, you picked the right man to be your deputy.'
'I'm glad you feel that way.'
Kerney disconnected and Helen buzzed him on the intercom to announce that Special Agent Perry was waiting outside. Perry came in, glanced around the unadorned office, and gave Kerney a wiseass smile.
'Going for the spare, clean look, Kerney?' he asked.
'Or have you signed on as chief for the short tour? Maybe all that money you inherited has given you second thoughts about staying on the job for very long.'
Perry swung a chair out from the conference table and sat. Kerney stayed put behind his desk.
'You had everybody on your team out last night looking for Terjo,'
Kerney said.
'Didn't I tell you about it? Sorry about that. It must have slipped my mind.
Anyway, your Lieutenant Molina didn't seem to want the help, so we gave it up.'
'You didn't find Terjo?'
Perry shrugged.
'No. Anyway, Terjo isn't an issue anymore. We've closed the case.'
'How did you manage to do that?'
'Scott Gatlin, Proctor Straley's ranch manager, wrote out a confession and committed suicide last night.'
'Really?' Kerney said.
'What else do you have besides the confession of a dead man?'
'Letters that Terrell wrote Gatlin asking him to stop harassing her.
Letters Gatlin wrote to Terrell threatening to kill her if she didn't stop sleeping around. Witness reports that he'd come up to Santa Fe a number of times and stalked Terrell.'
'So the jealous lover stalks and kills the object of his desire,' Kerney said.
'Very interesting. Any physical proof?'
'We sent some of the semen stains and hair samples your people collected at the Terrell crime scene to our lab. They'll run a DNA comparison with samples from Gatlin. We should have preliminary results this afternoon.
I've asked for a quick turnaround.'
'Whatever happened to the concerns about national security?'
'Apparently it isn't an issue, Kerney. But we'll continue to pursue that possibility for a while longer.'
'Care to tell me how?' Kerney asked.
Perry stared at the four stars on Kerney's collars and tried not to smirk at the half-assed, over-the-hill investigator with a bum leg who'd cozied up to the local politicians and gotten himself appointed chief.
'You don't really need to know,' he finally said.
'But I'll be in town with Agent Applewhite for a while longer. We'll touch base with you if we require any assistance.'
'Where is Agent Applewhite?' Kerney asked.
'I haven't seen much of her.'
'She's busy. Just give your people the news that they can close the Terrell case, and pass on my thanks for their cooperation.'
'I'll sure do that.' Kerney stood up and reached for his hat.
'Where's Gatlin's body?'
'In Ramah.'
'Let's go see.'
Perry laughed.
'Don't waste your time.'
'It's no bother.' Kerney put on his hat and stepped to the front of his desk.
'You can ride with me.'
'There is nothing for you to do there,' Perry said.
'Don't start playing games with me and going behind my back, like you did with the Catron County militia.'
'Why don't you want me to see Gatlin's body, Charlie?'
'Wise up, Kerney, or you'll get burned, big time.'
'Don't you think this is all too quick and easy?'
Perry stood up and leaned in close to Kerney.
'I don't like you, never have. But I'll say this once and you'd better listen: This time you could lose a lot more than that shitty little seasonal job you had with the Forest Service.'
Kerney tossed his hat on the desk.
'It's been a pleasure working with you again, Charlie.'
'Yeah, right,' Perry said. He dropped a folded paper on the conference table.
'That's a copy of the official FBI statement to the press. I'm releasing it in an hour. Want to be there?'
'I'll pass,' Kerney said.
'It's your party. Have a good time.'
Sal Molina had gone back out in the field. Kerney got him on the radio and told him the Terrell case had been closed by the FBI. Molina wanted specifics.
'Not over the radio,' Kerney said.
'We can hook up later. Go to Perry's press conference. It starts in an hour. That way you'll know what I know.'
'Ten-four.'
Kerney read over the graveyard report that noted the last motel the agents had been seen at during their early-mo ming search for Terjo on Cerrillos Road. He got in his car and started checking the remaining motels from that point on along the strip, looking for Terjo.
February had suddenly turned unseasonably warm and the snow pack on the mountains was fast disappearing, along with the tourists who had traveled north to Taos looking for better skiing conditions.
Between stops Kerney wondered what was keeping Agent Applewhite so busy. She hadn't coordinated anything, as far as he could tell. Why would she be staying on in Santa Fe with Charlie Perry when she was supposed to be returning to Taos to resume an interrupted vacation with her husband? He wondered if it would be worth his time to try to get a line on the husband.
His last stop was at a motel near an outlet mall. He parked and tried to talk himself into taking Charlie Perry's advice and dropping the whole mess. He stared at the mall, and tried to think of other things.
Surrounded by acres of parking, the mall had a facade that combined elements of an oversized northern New Mexico hacienda with what appeared to be medieval castle battlements. The building consisted of retail shops around a large open-air courtyard, which shoppers entered through an enormous gate decorated with stylized buffalos, bracketed by two mock watchtower turrets. The watchtower motif continued around the perimeter of the structure, jutting up at different elevations. The walls had been stuccoed in two different colors, one of which, ugly mustard, reminded Kerney of dirty diapers.
The thought of dirty diapers made Kerney smile. Although it still felt unreal, in a little more than six months he would become a father. With Sara far away and seeing her so infrequently, to Kerney the relationship had felt more like a passionate love affair than a marriage. The baby would change all that, but Kerney wasn't sure how.
Of course, Sara would return to active duty after her maternity leave, but then what? She was exploring the possibility of landing an assignment in New Mexico after finishing up at the Command and General Staff College. But there was no guarantee she could swing it.
The idea that his wife could be stationed far away at an army post with their child while he stayed behind in
