Michael McGarrity - The big gamble

After he completed his regimen the therapist walked Tully slowly out of the rehab room. His gaunt face glistened with perspiration, and his partially paralyzed arm dangled a bit at his side. They met with him in an empty nearby office, where Kerney introduced himself.

"I don't know why you're back here," Tully said haltingly to Clayton, as he lowered himself slowly onto a chair. "Couldn't tell you anything before, can't tell you anything now."

"We'd like to ask you about a friend of your son," Clayton said.

Tully stiffened and turned his head away as though he'd seen something despicable. "My son is dead to me."

"We're only interested in his friend," Clayton said.

"I don't know any of his friends," Tully said, working his mouth slowly to pronounce the words.

"A friend from a long time ago," Clayton said.

Tully gave him a sidelong glance. "Who?"

"Tyler Norvell," Kerney said.

Tully wiped a bit of drool from his lips. "I have nothing to say about him."

"Our questions aren't personal," Kerney said. "Did Norvell ever work for you?"

Tully nodded. "When he was in high school. I hired him as an apple picker. He worked after school and weekends in the fall."

"Did he ever work at the fruit stand near Carrizozo?"

"No."

"He had nothing to do with the fruit stand?" Kerney asked.

"Deliveries, that's all. He'd go with Julio, my foreman, to restock apples and cider, and dispose of any spoilage."

"From the cold-storage cellar?" Kerney asked.

"Yes."

"How long did he work for you?" Kerney asked.

"Three harvest seasons."

A thought about the abandoned fruit stand clicked in Clayton's head. "Has Norvell ever offered to buy the property from you?"

Tully nodded. "He had a realtor make an offer through his company. I turned it down. Don't ask me why."

"When was that?"

"Ten years ago, maybe longer."

They thanked Tully and turned him over to a waiting aide, who walked him down the hall toward the old hospital.

"So when are you going to arrest Norvell for murder?" Clayton asked.

"All in due course," Kerney replied as they left the lobby.

Clayton shook his head. "I wonder what the deal is between Tully and his son."

"I'm glad we didn't have to find out," Kerney said.

Clayton unlocked his unit. "Why?"

Kerney thought about Vernon Langsford, the retired judge from Roswell who had been murdered by a deeply disturbed daughter because of a secret incestuous relationship he'd had with her decades earlier. "Because that kind of family stuff is usually pretty ugly, sometimes disgusting, and I've heard enough of it to last a lifetime."

"But saying a son is dead to you is really harsh."

"No harsher than a son saying it to a father," Kerney said deliberately as he strapped on his seat belt.

Clayton sat behind the steering wheel without reacting, letting Kerney's words sink in. When they'd learned about each other's existence, Clayton had come close to telling Kerney to completely butt out of his life. Was there that much difference between Tully's denial of a son and his own rejection of a father? Tully had raised his son, but he had never known Kerney as his father until recently. Still…

Clayton ran his forefinger over the edge of the wheel and said, "I guess that's true, in a way, isn't it?"

Fidel waited on a side street down from the rehab center, parked in front of a row of single-family dwellings which he figured once housed military personnel. Some of them were occupied and some had for-sale signs plunked down in dead grass under dead trees. The whole area on three sides of the center was filled with identical ugly concrete block houses. Some of them looked pretty trashed out.

He called Rojas and told him the Indian cop had done nothing, except go to work early, walk around a burned building, and take some crippled cowboy with a limp to a rehabilitation center in Roswell.

"I guess the Indian cop runs a taxi service when he's not busy drinking coffee and eating donuts," he said.

"What did the cop do at the fruit stand?" Rojas asked.

"Tour the guy with the limp around. They weren't there long."

"Did you recognize the other man?" Rojas asked.

"Never saw him before."

"Then nothing's happening," Rojas said. "That's good."

"Yeah, but it's not keeping me entertained."

"If everything stays quiet, finish out the day and come home. Don't do anything stupid."

"I'll be cool, promise," Fidel replied.

He saw the Indian and the cowboy walking to the police vehicle, fired up the engine, and got ready to take another boring drive in the country.

As they left Roswell Kerney and Clayton shied away from talk about their troubled relationship and focused instead on business. Kerney got the distinct feeling that Clayton was loosening up a bit. He seemed more talkative and animated. It gave him a hopeful feeling.

"Do me a favor," Kerney said, looking at the brown desert hills and the mountains beyond rising up on the western horizon.

"What's that?" Clayton asked.

Traffic had thinned. Kerney checked the side-view mirror. "When the time comes, pick up Norvell for me. It will save me a trip down here."

"You're giving me the arrest?" Clayton asked, surprised. Kerney was offering to turn over his major felony bust to another officer outside his own department, which was almost unheard of.

"Why not?"

"I don't need a career boost from you," Clayton replied.

"No, you don't. Are you being sarcastic?"

Clayton shook his head. "I'm just saying you don't have to do me any favors."

"You're doing me the favor, remember?" Kerney tapped his right leg. "I've been recalled by my doctor for a replacement knee. The warranty has run out on the old one. I go in for surgery next week. I doubt I'll be chasing any bad guys for a while."

Clayton looked at Kerney's leg. "You never told how you got hurt."

"You really want to hear the story?" Kerney asked, glancing at the side-view mirror.

"Yeah, I do."

Kerney told him how another cop-his best friend in the department and a secret boozer-had let him down when they were on a stakeout waiting for an arrest warrant to bust a drug dealer; how the perp had caught Kerney off guard because his friend had left his post to sneak a drink; how Kerney had taken one round to the stomach and one to the knee before he could put the perp down for good.

"Some friend," Clayton said.

"Well, he was. A good one, until the booze caught up with him," Kerney replied. He glanced at the side-view mirror once again and stretched his leg to ease the ache in his knee. "He's on the straight and narrow, now. In some ways, I think he's in more pain about what happened than I am. Although today I wouldn't bet on it. Did you know we're being followed?"

Clayton looked in the rearview mirror. "Which car?"

"Third one back," Kerney said. "The blue Camaro with Texas plates."

"Where did you pick it up?" Clayton asked.

"In Roswell, just outside the old air force base."

"Were you able to read the plate?"

"Not with these tired old eyes," Kerney replied.

"What do you want to do?" Clayton asked.

"Find out who our friend is," Kerney said.

They talked it over. Kerney suggested a traffic stop, using a state police patrol officer, who could ID the driver. Clayton agreed, adding that he thought it best to wait until they were back in Lincoln County. Kerney brought up the idea that their "friend" might not be very friendly at all. Clayton conceded the point and imagined that it might be best to use two uniforms to make the stop, doing it casually but treating it as high risk. Kerney felt that would work if they had the state police come up behind the Camaro while a second unit, preferably from a different department, passed by in the opposite direction, and then stopped to render assistance.