“Glad you weren’t hurt, Mr. Mobley,” Clayton replied as he got out of his unit and walked with the trucker to meet the state cop.
After introducing himself and turning Mobley over to the state cop, he asked how the roads were northeast of the city.
“Where do you need to get to?” the officer asked.
“The lower Canoncito area.”
“It’s probably snowpacked but manageable in your four-by-four. But the Interstate is closed in both directions just north of there at Glorieta Pass.”
“How long has it been closed?” Clayton asked.
“Two hours.”
“Any motorcyclists waiting to get through?” Clayton asked. He gave the officer a description of Brian Riley and his Harley.
“We’re all looking for him,” the officer replied. “Let me ask.” He keyed his handheld and asked the uniforms at the roadblock if anyone matching the description of Riley and his Harley had been spotted waiting for the highway to be reopened. The reply came back negative.
Clayton thanked the officer and drove on. The clouds had lifted over Santa Fe to reveal foothills and mountaintops covered in a white blanket of snow. Against the backdrop of a blue sky, the frosted radio and microwave transmission towers on the high peaks looked like man-made stalagmites poking toward the heavens.
Tire tracks on the road to Canoncito told Clayton that a good foot of snow was on the ground but motorists were getting in and out. He kept his unit in low gear with the four-wheel drive engaged and steered gently through the curves as a precaution against any hidden ice patches. The western sun turned the snow-covered mesa behind the settlement into a massive monolith, and the houses along the dirt lane that led to Tim Riley’s driveway were thickly blanketed with snow. Horses pawing the ground in the adjacent corrals exhaled billows of steam that sparkled and then dissipated in the frigid air.
The snow-covered driveway to the Riley property showed no sign of fresh passage, either by vehicle or by foot. Clayton turned in and drove toward the double-wide with his driver-side window open, listening intently for any sound above the rumble of his engine that might signal someone was nearby. He was halfway up the driveway when the distinctive roar of a motorcycle engine came to life and cut through the air. He shifted quickly, floored the unit, and almost crashed into the Harley bearing down on him. The rider veered off the driveway and gunned his machine up a slope toward the base of the mesa behind the double-wide.
Clayton geared down and followed, slaloming around trees, the tires of his unit digging through deep snowbanks. He plowed into a hidden boulder and high-ended the vehicle. He threw the unit into reverse, the rear tires burning rubber on the frozen ground, and realized that he was hopelessly stuck. He bailed out of the unit, grabbed the wadded-up blanket the trucker had used, wrapped it over his shoulders, and started following the motorcycle on foot. Up ahead he could hear the whine of the engine. He ran toward it, and through a break in the tree cover he saw the rider unsuccessfully trying to force his machine up a steep rock-face incline, once, twice, three times.
From a good fifty feet away, Clayton yelled at the cyclist to stop. The man turned, and Clayton for the first time got a good look at Brian Riley in the flesh. The boy’s expression was wide-eyed, frozen with fear.
“Police,” Clayton shouted, throwing off the blanket. “Don’t run. I’m here to help you.”
The boy spun the Harley around, spraying an arc of snow behind the rear tire, revved the engine, and headed down the slope away from Clayton, zigzagging through trees, ducking over the handlebars to avoid low branches.
Clayton followed on foot, scrambling down a rock-strewn slope, quickly losing hope that he’d catch up with Riley as the sound of the Harley’s engine began to fade in the distance. He broke free of the trees at the base of the mesa and followed anyway at a fast jog.
Up ahead he could see the railroad tracks that cut through the narrow valley and followed the course of a shallow streambed. The railroad right-of-way was fenced, but at a track siding where new railroad ties were stacked, a gate had been left open. Running into a stiff breeze that turned his ears and nose painfully cold, Clayton followed the path the motorcycle had taken across the railroad tracks and through another open gate. When he could no longer hear the sound of the Harley’s engine, he slowed to a walk and listened. Riley was long gone.
As he walked on, he tried to call the Santa Fe S.O. on his cell phone, but the call kept getting dropped. He jumped a fence, walked in the ruts of a snow-covered lane, approached the first house he came to, knocked at the door, and got no response. Two houses farther on, he encountered an elderly Hispanic man breaking the ice in a water trough at a horse corral. He showed the man’s shield and asked if he could borrow the man’s phone.
The old man gave him a thorough once-over before speaking. “Was that you yelling in the woods?” he asked.
Clayton nodded.
“Were you chasing that motorcycle rider that just passed by?” the old man asked.
Clayton nodded again.
“On foot?” the man asked incredulously.
Clayton nodded for the third time.
“That’s loco.”
“Can I borrow your telephone?”
“Come inside,” the man said, leading the way to a back door.
The toasty warm kitchen of the old man’s house smelled of freshly baked bread and had framed pictures of saints and a hand-embroidered copy of the Lord’s Prayer on the walls. Using an old wall-mounted, rotary-dial phone straight out of the 1950s, Clayton called Don Mielke at the Santa Fe S.O. and reported his sighting of Brian Riley.
“I’ll put out an APB and BOLO immediately,” Mielke said.
“I crashed my unit. I need a tow truck and a ride.”
“What’s your twenty?”
Clayton covered the telephone mouthpiece and asked the elderly man for his name.
“Francisco Ramirez,” the old man replied.
“I’m at Francisco Ramirez’s house,” Clayton said. He gave Mielke directions and added, “Look for a Cattle Growers sign on the garage that’s opposite the house.”
“Ten-four.”
“And ask Ramona Pino to meet me at the Riley crime scene,” Clayton added.
“Are you on to something?” Mielke asked.
“Riley came back here for some reason. I want to take a look around the property to see if I can find out why.”
“What do you expect to find with a foot of snow or more on the ground?”
“Tracks,” Clayton replied. “Tracks that might lead me somewhere.”
“I’m coming out there,” Mielke said.
“Come along,” Clayton replied. “Bring a couple of deputies with you. We might as well do another full search of the double-wide, horse barn, corral, and horse trailer. Tell them to dress warmly.”
“Whatever you’re looking for, Riley may have already taken with him.”
“Yeah,” Clayton said, “and that would be par for my day. But let’s look anyway.”
He disconnected. If he’d just passed by the jackknifed semi on the Interstate and reported it to dispatch, he might now have Brian Riley in custody and be finding out what had caused the murder of two police officers and two civilians. But failing to render aid and assistance to Bailey Mobley would have been the wrong thing to do.
Clayton sighed in frustration. So far, the only good to come from his marathon effort to find Brian Riley was that he’d crashed the Lincoln County S.O. unit, which meant he wouldn’t have Tim Riley’s ghost hanging around him anymore. That was a burden lifted, but only a minor one.
He joined Francisco Ramirez at the kitchen table and looked over at the stove, where a coffeepot was slowly percolating over a low flame. “Is that coffee I smell, Senor Ramirez?”
“
“I look that bad?”
