He checked the time, went back to the desk, and scanned through the field reports before leaving to meet with the DA.
Kerney spent several uncomfortable but necessary hours with the district attorney, who probed hard to uncover any personal relationship that might have existed between Kerney and Shockley, or any work-related antagonism that might have contributed to Kerney's willingness to use deadly force. Kerney made it clear he'd never met Shockley before the shooting and had never supervised him.
With that issue set aside, the interview shifted to Kerney's record of deadly force. The DA dug into all prior events, including a gun fight with a street drug dealer who'd blown out Kerney's knee, the shooting of a rogue army intelligence officer during a murder investigation at White Sands Missile Range, the wounding of Nita Lassiter, who had tried to commit suicide to avoid arrest, and a gun battle with assassins hired by a Mexican drug lord to kill Kerney.
The records showed Kerney had been cleared of any wrongdoing in each incident. But the DA, a burly man with a high-pitched voice who breathed heavily through his nose, quizzed Kerney carefully on each event, looking for anything that might suggest Kerney was a trigger-happy cop.
Kerney understood the DA's reasoning; compared to most officers he had an extremely high use-of-deadly-force history. At five o'clock he returned to the command center, drained but through the worst of it. The DA had let him go without scheduling another session.
Sounds of commuter traffic hummed on the street as civilian workers from the air base and White Sands Missile Range made their way up the boulevard to houses in the foothills. At the nearby media staging area, reporters washed in the glare of high-intensity lights were broadcasting live satellite feeds back to stations and networks.
To the west, diaphanous in a light haze, the far-off tips of the San Andres Mountains towered like silent sentinels over the Tularosa Basin, home of the vast White Sands Missile Range.
Kerney's personal history was tied to the Tularosa. When he was a young boy, his parents had been forced off the family ranch when the missile range expanded; and less than three years ago Kerney had met his future wife, Sara, while searching for his A.W.O.L. godson, Sammy Yazzi, a soldier stationed at the base.
Good and bad memories coursed through Kerney's mind. His early years on the ranch had been the best of his life, and meeting Sara Brannon, a strong-willed, beautiful woman, had brought him emotionally back to life in ways he'd never imagined possible. But the loss of the ranch still galled, and the murder of his godson would always remain a sore spot in his mind.
The teams of agents and uniformed personnel from the crime scenes began trickling in, and Kerney went to meet them. No new killings had been reported, and Kerney figured the chances were good that the spree was over. He listened to their debriefings, which clearly indicated that a quick break in the case was unlikely. The sum total of facts remained unchanged: six people had been robbed and killed by person or persons unknown-probably with the same handgun-within a six-hour period, in a sequence that started at Carrizozo and ended at the Oliver Lee State Park. Vernon Langsford was the only victim to be shot twice with a silenced weapon.
Why two bullets for Langsford with a silencer?
In Kerney's mind, Langsford had to be the primary target, which meant that five innocent people had been killed to cover up a premeditated murder.
Kerney went looking for Lt. Lee Sedillo, the assistant commander of the criminal investigation unit, who'd been gathering background information on Langsford. He found him glued to a computer screen at the front of the command trailer.
Over twenty years ago, Kerney had started his career with the Santa Fe Police Department about the same time Sedillo had joined the state police. Kerney had worked on a number of joint cases with Lee after both of them had moved into criminal investigations.
A big-boned, balding man, Sedillo had thick thighs and large buttocks, a legacy of his years as a high-school and college football lineman. He easily carried an extra twenty pounds on an imposing frame, and had a pudgy face.
"What have we got on Vernon Langsford, Lee?" Kerney asked, as he sat in a chair next to Sedillo.
"I knew who Langsford was as soon as Hutch asked me to check him out," Sedillo replied, as he positioned the cursor under an icon on the screen and clicked the mouse. "He retired as a district court judge about six years ago, not long after his wife was killed by a letter bomb that was sent to his home. The case was never solved. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and the FBI were brought in. I'm asking for their case files right now."
"What do we have on the case?"
"A lot of digging that went nowhere." Sedillo swung his chair around and faced Kerney. "I was still in narcotics when it happened, but it created a big buzz in the department and among the politicians."
"Why?"
"Langsford had just ruled against the Mescalero Apache Tribe's casino operation, and ordered it shut down on a legal technicality. Everybody figured that Langsford was the target of the letter bomb, and the murder was tied to his ruling invalidating the gaming compact with the state. But nothing materialized to prove it."
"You have our case file?"
Sedillo nodded and patted a thick folder. "I almost burned up the fax machine getting it, but here it is. That's your copy."
"Have you talked to the Ruidoso PD?"
"Yeah, and they don't have much. Langsford kept a low profile. He lived alone and, except for his golf buddies, kept pretty much to himself."
"Was he under any kind of protection?"
"Not since before his retirement."
"I want a list of everyone who visited the four campgrounds during the past month," Kerney said.
"Do you think our killer reconnoitered the campgrounds?"
"We can't dismiss it as a possibility."
"Visitors pay on the honor system, Chief, if they pay at all. We'll have to gather the pay envelopes, pull the license plate information, and run motor vehicle checks. We're talking thousands of day and overnight visitors, Chief."
"I know. Get started on it tonight. Tell the team to pay particular attention to anyone who visited all of the sites on the same day, or in a very short time span."
"Will do."
"And keep working the background investigations on the other victims. We can't rule out the possibility that Langsford wasn't the only primary-or even the last-target until we're sure that we haven't missed anything. If Langsford knew any of the other victims casually as the camp host at Oliver Lee State Park, or had a prior personal or professional relationship with any of them, that could be important."
"Another long day at the office," Sedillo sighed, as he scribbled a note to himself.
"If any promising connections or motives turn up, get an agent on a plane as soon as possible to check it out."
"Are we looking at money, revenge, sex, profit, and politics as motives, Chief?" Lee asked dryly.
"All of that, plus extremists. Using a letter bomb to kill Langsford's wife goes way beyond an ordinary homicide."
"You got it." Lee paused. "Hutch told me about Shockley, Chief."
"I'm glad he did."
"You and I go back a long way. Can I speak freely?"
"I've never known you to do otherwise, Lee."
"Every member of the team knows you did what you had to do. If I hear any flak about it, I'm gonna kick some butt."
Kerney squeezed Sedillo's shoulder and picked up the letter bomb file.
"Thanks, Lee, but don't waste time on adjusting attitudes. Just keep your people focused on the job."
Outside the command trailer, Kerney watched the day fade on the western horizon, tinting the San Andres with flecks of amber. The lights along Tenth Street flicked on in a hot pink that gradually turned yellow as the fluorescent filaments powered up. In the morning he would go to the mountain resort community of Ruidoso, an hour away by car, where Vernon Langsford had lived, and start digging. But tonight, he would read the file on the murder of Langsford's wife, catch a couple hours sleep, and then drive the killer's route from Carrizozo to Alamogordo, starting at the time of the first shooting.