Dorsey picked up and a woman with what he guessed to be a German accent asked to speak to the officer in charge.
“This is Everett Dorsey, the police chief, ma’am,” he replied. “How can I help you?”
The woman explained that she was calling from Frankfurt, Germany, that she was the executive assistant to the CEO of the multinational company that owned the Lazy Z, and that she’d been trying to reach the ranch caretaker without success over the last forty-eight hours.
“A group of our corporate executives are due to arrive at the ranch from Hong Kong in three days, and various arrangements needed for their accommodations must be made,” the woman added. “It’s not like Ms. Trimble to be away or unavailable for several days without giving advance notice. I’ve left a message with the Colfax County sheriff and have not yet heard back.”
“Ms. Trimble is the ranch caretaker?” Dorsey reached for a pen and a writing tablet on his disorderly desk.
“Yes, Nancy Trimble. Could you please send an officer to see if she’s ill or has had an accident?”
“I’ll surely do that, ma’am,” Dorsey said, “but first I need to ask you some questions.”
“By all means.”
The executive assistant, Ms. Hannelore Schmidt, told Dorsey that Nancy Trimble was a divorced, older woman in her sixties who lived full-time at the Lazy Z. Schmidt didn’t know what kind of vehicle Trimble owned but said the company kept a silver Hummer on the premises. Dorsey also learned Trimble was the only employee and that no corporate executives or their guests were currently staying at the ranch. Schmidt supplied Dorsey with the name and phone number of a neighboring rancher who boarded the Lazy Z horses when the Lazy Z wasn’t in use.
Dorsey asked Schmidt how he could reach her and she rattled off a string of numbers. He wrote them down, realizing he’d never made an international telephone call before.
“I just dial these numbers you gave me to get through to you?” he asked, feeling like a total hick.
“You must dial your international access code first,” Schmidt replied.
“Okay, thanks.” Dorsey wasn’t about to ask if she knew his international access code. “I’ll call you back.”
“Thank you, Chief Dorsey,” Schmidt said. “But before you ring off, let me give you the key pad code to the ranch road gate.”
Dorsey wrote down the code, said good-bye, hung up, and headed for his unit, not even thinking about contacting the sheriff’s office, which as far as he was concerned had dropped the ball. He’d spent nine years with the Colfax County S.O. before becoming the Springer police chief, he held a cross-deputy commission that gave him full law enforcement powers outside the city limits, and he was a good half hour closer to the Lazy Z than any deputy. Besides, if there was the slightest chance that Trimble’s disappearance was in any way connected with Craig Larson, Dorsey sure as hell wanted to be in on it.
He called Ed Seward, the rancher who boarded the Lazy Z stock, and asked if he’d recently seen or talked to Nancy Trimble.
“Not since last week,” Seward answered. “We stopped and visited in town for a few minutes. Is there a problem?”
“Don’t know. I got a call from the ranch owner’s assistant asking me to make contact with Trimble. Said she couldn’t get in touch with her. Did Trimble seem like her normal self when you saw her?”
Seward laughed. “Nancy keeps to herself, so it’s hard to say what’s normal with her.”
“What kind of car does she drive?”
“A dinged-up green Subaru. One of those hatchback models.”
“What do you know about her?” Everett Dorsey asked.
“Not much. She has a grown son who lives back east. South Carolina, I think. I can go over there and check on her, if you’d like.”
“I appreciate the offer, Ed,” Dorsey replied, “but it’s best if I do that.”
“You’re the law, Everett,” Seward said. “Let me know if I can help out.”
“Will do.” Dorsey disconnected and made radio contact with one of his officers, Rick Mares, and Mitch Lowe, a local state police officer.
“I need backup on a welfare check at a ranch,” he said to both men. “Care to join me?”
“You got something, Everett?” Mitch asked.
“Yeah, a cautious nature,” Dorsey replied.
Mitch laughed. “Give us a ten-eighty-seven.”
Dorsey told the officers where to meet up.
Larson’s new hideout was perfect. The setting was remote, the unlocked barn was less than one hundred steps from the house, and the old pitched-roof house sat on a knoll that gave him excellent views in all four directions. He parked the Subaru in the barn just in case someone came wandering up the ranch road, broke into the house through a side window, and took a look around. The rooms were empty, the curtains and shades closed, and the house was spic-and-span clean. According to the real estate sales brochure he’d found on a kitchen counter, the walls had been freshly painted, the hardwood floors sanded and resealed, a new forced-air propane-fired furnace had been installed, and the one-year-old roof was still under a full warranty. Total cost for the property, which consisted of the house, barn, and shed on eighty acres, was less than the cost of a manufactured double-wide on a postage stamp-size lot in a Santa Fe trailer park.
Larson checked to see if the utilities were working. The kitchen wall phone had no dial tone, there was no juice to the ceiling lights, and the stove and furnace had been turned off. Fortunately he had water, probably from a gravity-fed well.
Larson opened the propane tank valve on his way to the barn, where he unloaded his arsenal, supplies, and gear from the Subaru. It took three trips to get everything into the house.
He set up housekeeping in the living room and kitchen, lit the stove and water heater pilot lights, and turned on the portable radio just in time for a top-of-the-hour local news summary from a station broadcasting from nearby Raton, the county seat and largest community in the far northeast corner of the state. He was still a hot topic on the news, but not the headline story. That honor went to a Raton man who had shot and killed his estranged wife at her place of employment.
The house was hot and stuffy, and Larson was about to open all the doors and windows when he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. He took a peek though a living room window and saw a late model GMC SUV roll to a stop at the closed but unlocked gate. A portly, older man got out of the passenger side of the Jimmy, opened the gate for the driver, and climbed back in. As the SUV drew near, Larson read the magnetic sign on the driver’s door that read:
TAMI PHELAN
YOUR HOMETEAM REALTOR
RATON, NM
Larson shook his head in disbelief at such shitty luck, picked up the 9mm Glock, and waited for his uninvited guests to arrive. But when a leggy blonde in jeans with big hair and a stacked pair opened the driver’s-side door and climbed out, Larson grinned and changed his mind about his bad luck. He watched Blondie fast-talk the old dude as he climbed the porch steps and waited for her to unlock the front door. He was another porky like Bertie Roach, the man from Tulsa Larson had offed in the Albuquerque motel, and Lenny Hampson, the bigmouth friend of Kerry’s he’d left in the desert.
“The property is in excellent condition,” Blondie said as she swung the door open and moved aside for Porky to enter first. “There are thirty acres under irrigation. It would make an excellent horse ranch.”
Larson shot Porky in the chest as he stepped over the threshold. Grunting, the man crumpled to his knees and fell face forward. Before Blondie could react, Larson grabbed a handful of her big, curly hair and yanked her inside.