Everyone Dies (17 page)

“Ten-four.”

Lieutenant Sal Molina arrived at the chief’s office within a matter of minutes. Kerney showed him the notes he’d taken of his phone conversation with the perp and then told him who was at risk and why.

Sal Molina sat quietly, his hands folded in his lap, and let Kerney talk. The chief, obviously distracted and on edge, constantly shifted his gaze from the wall clock to the telephone on his desk, as he laid out the facts about Clayton Istee, his family, and his very reasonable suspicion that the perp intended to kill them all.

Although he tried to stayed focused on the information pertaining to the investigation, Molina found Kerney’s tale riveting. Who would have ever thought it? It seemed like something right out of a novel or a movie. The college sweetheart, an Apache girl, who’d given birth to Kerney’s son and kept it a secret from him for almost thirty years. The chance meeting between father and son, both of them cops. Kerney’s discovery that he was a grandfather twice over. It was one hell of a story.

Molina wondered what kind of woman would deliberately get pregnant without a man’s knowledge, bear his child while the father served as a combat infantry officer in ’Nam, and keep it a secret for so many years. It seemed selfish at the very least, perhaps even heartless.

But was it? Sal didn’t know much about the Apache people or their traditions, so maybe it was a cultural thing. Or perhaps you had to know the woman to understand her reasoning.

Kerney cast another glance from the wall clock to the telephone and stopped talking. The handheld radio on his desk squawked traffic from bomb squad and SWAT team members en route to Upper Canyon Road.

“If your theory pans out, and I think it will, I’m going to have to let people know about this,” Molina said.

“That’s not a problem,” Kerney said.

“I want to send a detective down there to work the case with the local cops.”

“Of course.”

“Did you recognize the perp’s voice when he called?” Molina asked.

“No, but he seemed relaxed,” Kerney said, “like he was totally in control of himself. He also sounded educated, and not very old.”

“A young man?” Molina asked, as he started taking notes.

“Hard to say, but he didn’t sound old. He was more a tenor than a baritone.”

“He didn’t attempt to disguise his voice?”

“Not that I could tell,” Kerney replied.

“Why do you think he was educated?”

“He was articulate and had a good vocabulary.”

“There are a lot of well-read, educated ex-cons walking the streets courtesy of the taxpayers’ dollars.”

Kerney nodded. “There was a hint of sarcasm in his voice, sort of a mocking tone. He thinks he’s smarter than all of us.”

“But he said nothing personal? Nothing that tied him to you?”

“I tried to get him to open up and talk, but he wouldn’t bite.”

“Do you think his call was designed to create a diversion?” Molina asked, putting his pen away. “To get you focused on something else?”

“No, I think he’s raising the stakes. Everything he’s done up to now has been carefully thought out.”

“How does he know so much about you?” Molina asked. “It isn’t like this thing with Clayton and his family is old news or common knowledge.”

Kerney shook his head. “For starters, I’d be happy if we could find out how he got the number to my private line. No more than a half-dozen people have it.”

“I’ll put somebody to work on that.”

“Was the videotape of the parking lot time and date stamped?” Kerney asked.

“Yes,” Molina replied, looking at his wristwatch. “The perp left the van outside the municipal court just over three hours ago.”

“That’s enough time to drive to the reservation if you push it.”

The phone rang. Kerney answered, listened for a moment, gave a hurried thanks, and hung up. “I asked for a trace on the perp’s call,” he said. “It was long distance, and made from Dora Manning’s cell phone.”

“Which means he could be in Clayton’s backyard,” Molina said, rising to his feet, “ready to carry out his threat.”

“Don’t wait to find out if this is a ruse,” Kerney said. “Send a detective down to Mescalero now.”

He reached for the handheld as Molina nodded and left the office, and called Evertson. The bomb squad and the SWAT team were on-site at his house.

“What have you got for me?” he asked.

“I’ll call you back, Chief,” Evertson said. “We’re just starting the search.”

A uniformed city police officer and Andy Baca were waiting for Sara at police headquarters when Wade dropped her off. The officer opened the back entrance, escorted them to Kerney’s second-floor office, and then left to return to patrol. Kerney tried to smile when they walked in, but it was more a worried grimace, and his normally clear blue eyes looked troubled and uncertain.

Sara walked to him as he rose and gave him a hug. He held her tight for a moment, patting her reassuringly on the back as though to soothe himself.

They sat at the small rectangular conference table as Kerney talked over the noise of the radio traffic coming from the handheld on his desk. He told them about the conversation with the perp that had triggered his course of action.

“I just heard from Clayton,” he added. “He’s with Grace and the children, the tribal police are on-site in force, and Paul Hewitt, the sheriff, is with them for added protection.”

“That’s good,” Andy said with a nod. He was one of the handful of people Kerney had told about Clayton. “Everyone’s safe.”

“For now,” Kerney replied. “When will your man arrive?”

“He’s got about a sixty-minute ETA.”

“So now we wait,” Kerney said.

“While we’re waiting, tell me about the latest murder victim,” Sara said, trying to rid her mind of the panic Grace Istee must have felt during Kerney’s phone call.

Andy cleared his throat and Kerney’s gaze moved away from her. “What is it?” she demanded, reading their hesitancy. Andy smiled but his eyes didn’t.

“What are you hiding?” she asked, switching her attention to Kerney. A hand covered his mouth. “Dammit, tell me.”

“The killer posed his victim,” Andy said, his smile vanishing. “He wrapped her hands around the decapitated head of Potter’s dog.”

“Wrapped her hands how?” Sara asked.

“As though she was cuddling a baby against her chest,” Andy replied.

Instinctively, Sara’s hands traveled to her stomach. She could feel the hard-stretched skin under the fabric of her loose top. “Did he leave a note like before?”

Kerney nodded. “It was addressed to me, and asked if I knew who he was and who was next to die.”

Sara’s hands trembled. “That son of a bitch.”

“The note was found on her lower abdomen,” he continued, “attached by a knitting needle that had been driven, we think, through the stomach wall into the uterus.”

A sharp pain coursed up Sara’s spine to her neck, as if all the tension of the last few days had suddenly been compressed into one enormous jolt that froze her muscles and immobilized her body.

“This can’t go on,” she said, forcing her mouth to work. “It has to stop.”

The phone rang. Kerney turned the handheld radio volume down, punched the button to the blinking line, and activated the speaker function. “Go ahead,” he said.

“It’s Lieutenant Evertson, Chief. The house is clean, inside and out, and we didn’t find anything on the grounds. No explosives. But the perp broke the utility company seal on the outside electrical box and left a note. It says, ‘Bang you’re dead.’ ”

Kerney’s hand squeezed the receiver. He paused a beat before responding. “Get the note to Lieutenant Molina, give everyone my thanks, and send the teams home.”

“Will do. I’ve got a couple of reporters down at a roadblock asking questions. Want me to tell them to call you?”

“Fuck ’em,” Kerney said without thinking. He rarely cursed, but the words burst out of him as though he was voiding something rancid.

“Would you repeat that, Chief?”

“Be nice, but say there is no statement at this time, Lieutenant.”

Kerney hung up, and Sara said, “I’m not going back to that house tonight.”

“You can stay with me and Gloria,” Andy said. “Besides, she needs the company and has lots of baby stories that will keep you entertained.”

“Good idea,” Kerney said before Sara could respond. “Raise your right hand, Sara.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m swearing you in as a police officer. If anyone approaches you in a threatening manner, blow the sucker away.”

“I can do that,” Sara replied as she raised her hand.

Clayton’s closest neighbors, Eugene and Jeannie Naiche, were an older couple with grown children living on their own. Until his retirement, Eugene had run the tribal youth recreation program. Jeannie, a skilled basketmaker, operated a studio and gallery out of the house. Built almost forty years ago, the rambling ranch-style residence had a pitched roof, a stone fireplace, a large deck off the back patio door, and a family room filled with books on the history and art of Native Americans.

Clayton sat on a couch in the family room with Hannah on his lap, Grace next to him, and Wendell snuggled close to his mother’s side. All of them seemed emotionally empty, as though the experience of fleeing the house had transformed them into instantly displaced persons facing a strange, uncertain, and dangerous world.

Eugene Naiche sat in a rocking chair with a determined look on his usually jovial face, his hunting rifle resting against an end table. He rocked slowly with his hands on the arm rests, his stocky legs planted firmly on the floor.

Clayton’s boss, Sheriff Paul Hewitt, stood at the side of a curtained window, peering out at the driveway, his face washed by the colors of the flashing emergency lights of vehicles passing by on the dirt road. In the kitchen, Jeannie Naiche was making coffee for the adults and hot chocolate for the children.

Outside, tribal officers patrolled the dirt road and conducted foot searches in the woods around Clayton’s house. Volunteer fire department personnel were deploying equipment a safe distance away from the house, and the state police explosives expert, Perry Dahl, was walking a bomb-sniffing dog named Clementine around the outside of the structure. He hadn’t reported in yet.

Clayton’s handheld radio crackled. He let go of Hannah and turned up the volume.

“Clementine smells something,” Dahl said. “Hold on.”

Clayton peeled one of Hannah’s arms from around his neck.

“Don’t go, Daddy,” Hannah said.

“It’s all right, honey,” he said gently, as he put his daughter on Grace’s lap and stood. “I’m staying right here with you.”

He walked to Paul Hewitt, and spoke softly into his radio. “Where are you?” he asked Dahl.

“At your back door about to take the cover off the entrance to the crawl space,” Dahl replied. “Clementine’s really excited. We’re going in.”

Clayton waited.

“Have you been under your house lately?” Dahl asked.

“Not for a while,” Clayton replied.

“Well, someone has. There’s a lot of disturbed dirt, and the insulation and plastic vapor barrier between the floor joists has been pulled out in places. Okay, I’ve found some wires, and Clementine just sniffed out a device. Make that two devices.”

“What kind?” Clayton whispered, looking at Grace, who’d gone rigid, her arms locked around Hannah.

“Give me a minute,” Dahl answered. “I have to crawl on my back to get to them.”

Clayton turned away from his family and lowered the handheld’s volume.

Paul Hewitt turned his radio down, put a hand on Clayton’s shoulder and looked at his young sergeant. “Let’s go outside.”

Clayton nodded and glanced at Grace. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wendell pushed himself off the couch. “Can I come, too?”

“Stay with your mother,” Clayton replied.

Grace grabbed Wendell’s hand and jerked him close to her, her eyes filled with apprehension.

Clayton smiled at his family reassuringly, his heart pounding, and walked out of the room with Paul Hewitt. On the front step he could see the spotlight of a tribal police cruiser slowly moving down the dirt road. The flashing lights of fire department vehicles up ahead cut through the stand of trees, casting broken red beams that fractured the darkness.

“We’ve got a pound of plastique planted under the floorboards at each end of the house,” Dahl said. “They’re wired together and attached to a radio receiver.”

“Can you disarm them?” Paul Hewitt asked.

“Hold it,” Dahl replied. “Yeah, but not easily. Whoever built this thing added what looks like a pulse detonator wired into the radio battery. Any power interruption will set off one or the other packs of plastique. It’s pretty sophisticated work.”

“How long will it take you?” Hewitt asked.

“I’m gonna have to get my tools and try to figure it out. An hour, maybe more, once I get started. This is all miniature equipment.”

“What’s the range of the receiver?” Hewitt asked, the handheld an inch from his lips.

“I’d say maybe five miles,” Dahl replied. “No more than ten.”

Clayton glanced up at the heavily forested peaks that loomed over the narrow valley. He knew every gully, wash, stream, outcropping, and clearing in those mountains. There were countless places within a couple of miles that a man could easily hike to and have a clear line of sight into the settlement below.

“Get out of there now,” Hewitt snapped. “The Sante Fe PD has advised that the perp may already be at our location, and there’s no way we can clear that kind of radius at night.”

“Ten-four,” Dahl said. “I’m exiting the crawl space now.”

“Roger that.”

Paul Hewitt looked at his sergeant. “Now, do you want to tell me what this is really all about?”

“Some shithead wants to kill Kerney and his entire family.”