"Keep me informed."
Melody hurried out and Kerney went to the fax machine, where the last pages of Sergeant Broom's report were spilling onto the tray. As he waited, he asked the office secretary to run a motor vehicle check on the license plate Broom had provided. He picked up the loose sheets, returned to his office, and started reading through the material. The last page was a handwritten letter from Wanda's son. It read:
Dear Chief Kerney, Sgt. Broom said that I could rite to you. If you find my dog Buster please send him back to me. He's mostly black with some brown and white on his legs and tummy. He has realy long hair. He ran away the day my Mom and I left New Mexico.
I love Buster very much. He is the best dog in the hok world.
I hope you find him. Thank you.
LANE KNOX
He looked up to find Charlotte Plores standing in front of his desk.
"Here's the motor vehicle report you wanted. Chief," Charlotte said.
Kerney took the papers from the secretary's outstretched hand. He scanned it, put Lane Knox's letter to one side, and gave Charlotte the rest of Broom's report, along with the file he'd received from Melody Jordan.
"Fax everything to Sergeant Gonzales at the Las Vegas office. Give it top priority."
Charlotte studied Kerney's face. Usually the chief was cordial and polite. Today he sounded abrupt and distracted.
"Are you feeling all right, Chief?"
Kerney forced a smile.
"I'm fine."
Charlotte gave him a quizzical look and left.
Kerney went to the window and watched traffic on the Old Albuquerque Highway. Across the road, the huge American flag at the entrance to the new car dealership flapped and billowed in a gusty wind. Spring winds in New Mexico often rose up without warning, drove dust along at gale force, and threw a brown haze into the sky. He could barely see the foothills below the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and all the shiny new vehicles lined up in rows were dulled by a coat of sand. A truck passing down the road had a huge tumbleweed pinned against its grille.
The tumbleweed broke free, bounced against the truck windshield, and rolled across the highway, where it landed against a chain-link fence.
Lane Knox certainly deserved to have his dog back. But sending Shoe, or rather Buster, off to California wasn't a happy thought. Kerney really liked that mutt.
In the small conference room at the Las Vegas district state police office, Gabe Gonzales thumbed through and rearranged the multiple copies of his case files, dunking he must have been really hammered with fatigue the night before. He'd gone to bed sure that everything had been sorted the way he wanted it for the presentation to his team.
He'd made copies for each officer before discovering that Melody Jordan's preliminary forensic report was out of order in the packet.
He corrected the error in each packet, held one copy back for Ben Morfin, and passed the rest out to his team.
"Look this over and then we'll talk," Gabe said.
Gabe's team consisted of Russell Thorpe, Ben Morfin-who was off meeting with a botanist at the university-and two agents sent up from Santa Fe, Robert Duran and Frank Houge.
Gabe didn't speak until the men finished reading the material.
"Let's get started," he said.
"Technically, we have four different crimes. A homicide of an unknown female, the murder of Carl Boaz, the illegal production of a controlled substance, and wood poaching. Ben Morfin will handle the narcotics case."
"Where is Ben?" Prank Houge asked. Houge was a thick-bodied man with a bit of a gut, and a high nasal voice.
"He went to Boaz's greenhouse to get the cactus plants we found. Then he's meeting with a botanist at New Mexico Highlands University to have them identified."
"What's Ben going to be doing after that?" Robert Duran asked. The opposite of Houge, Duran was small in stature. He stayed lean by running in long-distance and cross-country races.
"He'll spend today back at the Boaz crime scene with the lab techs, and then start probing Boaz's drug contacts on the West Coast, through the Drug Enforcement Agency"
"Where do you want us?" Duran asked.
"I need a man on the mesa looking for more bones.
We've got some good initial findings from forensics, but I'd be a whole lot happier if we could complete the skeleton."
"I'll take that," Duran said.
"Good. I've put together a grid sketch of the areas that have already been covered. Don't go over old ground. You can use the Dodge four-by-four to get up on the mesa. I've marked a county map that will take you to the site."
"What do you have for me?" Houge asked.
"I want you to work a short list of missing women.
Forensics reports that the upper left arm bone suffered an old fracture. That, along with the age estimate of the victim and the fiber analysis, may help us make an ID."
"I'll contact the victims' families, get medical records, and double-check what the women were wearing at the time of their disappearance," Houge said.
"Don't get the families' hopes up," Gabe said.
Houge nodded in agreement.
"Thorpe will help me develop a list of area woodcutters and firewood sellers," Gabe said, getting to his feet.
"We spend today-and today only-on information and evidence gathering.
We've got enough right now to suspect that the man who killed Boaz is the wood poacher.
Maybe Ben can turn up Rudy's last name with a second search, or the California authorities will come through with more information from Wanda Knox. But with or without it, tomorrow we go looking for Rudy."
Houge waved his paperwork at Gabe.
"Prom what you've got here, Rudy could be the key to all these felonies."
"Wouldn't that be a nice early Easter present?" Gabe replied.
Gabe held Thorpe back after Houge and Duran left.