Michael McGarrity - The big gamble

Halfway through the drive, Sara looked at her hands, twisted her wedding ring with her thumb, and asked about the homicide.

Kerney gave her a brief summary. "It could be a tough one to solve," he said in conclusion.

"You were so long getting back, I thought you had abandoned our plans for the morning," Sara said.

"I wouldn't do that," Kerney replied. "I stopped by to talk to Fletcher. He had some interesting information about Jack Potter that might prove helpful."

"You could've sent a detective to meet with Fletcher," she said flatly, her eyes still fixed on the road ahead.

"Yes, but I wanted to cool down a bit," Kerney said.

"Besides, seeing Fletcher got us a dinner invitation to his house for Friday night."

"If we're talking to each other by then, I suppose we should go."

"Aren't we talking now?"

Sara squinted against the sunlight and lowered the visor. "Not really."

They left the highway and drove along the ranch road to the cutoff that took them through a pasture on their new property and up toward a long ridgeline. Kerney had spent several weekends improving the road with a borrowed grader, spreading and packing vast amounts of gravel base course to make it usable year-round. No longer rutted, narrow, and rocky, it climbed gently to a large sheltered bowl below the crest where several low courses of new adobe walls stood on the recently poured concrete pad.

Sara made no comment about the road, nor about the new red prefabricated galvanized-steel horse barn that had been erected a good half a mile from the house. She was out of the truck and moving toward their contractor, Bobby Trujillo, before Kerney set the parking brake and killed the engine.

Trujillo met Sara halfway across the open field. Together they walked around the outside perimeter of the partially raised adobe walls, inspecting the work in progress. Kerney decided to let them go on without him and took a hike in the direction of the horse barn to check on Soldier, the mustang he'd trained as a cutting horse.

Soldier had been pastured at Dale Jennings's ranch down on the Tularosa for the past several yeas. Two weekends ago, after the barn and corral were completed, Dale, Kerney's boyhood chum and lifelong friend, had brought Soldier up by trailer along with his own mount. The two men camped out on the property overnight and covered all of Kerney's two sections-twelve hundred and eighty acres-by horseback the following day.

It had been Kerney's best weekend away from the job in several months. Dale had left shaking his head in wonder and amusement at the beauty of the land with its magnificent views of the distant mountains, the size of the house Kerney was building, and the fact that his old buddy had put up a six-stall barn that for now would serve one lonely animal.

The corral gate was closed and the stall door was open, but Soldier wasn't inside the arena or under the covered shelter that ran the length of the barn. Inside the corral, Kerney inspected the water trough and freestanding hay rack he'd filled yesterday before leaving to pick up Sara at the airport. Both looked untouched. He glanced into the empty stall, which he'd purposely left open to give Soldier access to the corral. The interior gate to the center aisle was closed and latched.

Kerney stood in the corral and did a three-sixty looking for his horse. He was nowhere in sight. Kerney doubted Soldier could have gotten out without assistance. He'd carefully padlocked all the other exterior doors to keep rodents and other small animals from gaining access.

He walked around the barn. Except for Soldiers stall it was secure. He unlocked the barn doors, pushed one back, and saw Soldier lying on the concrete pad that ran the length of the center aisle. He stepped in and inspected the animal. Soldier had been shot three times in the stomach and left to die. In his death throes, he'd kicked and dented the steel wall with his forelegs. Blood from the wounds had stained the concrete pad and soaked into the dirt floor in front of a stall door.

Because he was starting out with just one animal, Kerney had jokingly named the spread the One Horse Ranch. Now, it wasn't even that anymore. He bent down and stroked Soldier's head. He'd been a fine horse, a smart horse. Who would do such a thing? And why?

Outside, he used his cell phone to call Andy Baca, his ex-boss and the chief of the state police. He told Andy what had happened to Soldier and asked him to dispatch a patrol officer.

"Do you want me to send an agent also?" Andy asked.

"No, I'll handle the crime scene myself," Kerney said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Kerney said.

"This doesn't sit right with me," Andy said.

"With me either," Kerney replied. "Somebody went out of his way to kill my horse as painfully as possible."

"You got any idea who did it?"

"Only a handful of people knew Soldier was on the property, and none of them carry any grudges against me as far as I know."

"Well, somebody's sending you a message," Andy said.

"It looks that way."

"Maybe you've got a wacko on the crew building your house."

"Maybe," Kerney said. "But I've gotten to know the guys pretty well, and none of them strikes me that way."

"You never know."

"True enough," Kerney said.

"Any leads on the Jack Potter homicide?"

"Nothing worth talking about yet," Kerney answered.

"Keep me informed, and if you need help, just ask."

"I will, and thanks." Kerney disconnected and called Tug Cheney, a veterinarian he knew from his days as a caretaker of a small ranch on the Galisteo Basin. Tug told him Soldier could be sent to Albuquerque for an autopsy or he could do a quick and dirty one himself.

"I know what killed my horse," Kerney said. "What I want are the bullets out of Soldier's stomach. When can you get out here?"

"Give me directions to your place, and I'll be there in an hour," Tug said.

Kerney supplied directions, thanked Tug, stuck the cell phone back on his belt, and turned to see Sara walking slowly in his direction from the construction site.

Today he'd argued with a woman he adored, seen the murdered body of a man he liked, and found a horse he loved maliciously destroyed. It was a crummy way to start a vacation.

He started toward Sara to give her the news.