Michael McGarity - Serpent Gate

Martinez studied Kerney, who looked him dead in the eye without flinching or fidgeting. Cops were no better than anybody else when it came to telegraphing lies, and Kerney was playing it straight with him.

That was good enough for Gilbert.

"You've got a deal. Chief."

"One more thing. Sergeant," Kerney said.

"I don't think the governor personally selected all the artwork for his office. From what I saw at his ranch, his taste doesn't include Georgia O'Keeffe. Her works were the most valuable of the lot. Worth almost half of the total haul. Send somebody to the fine arts museum in the morning. I want to know who put the collection together and when it was installed. Talk to that person."

"What are we looking for here. Chief?"

"Clues, Sergeant. I've been told that occasionally curators dedde to appropriate art for themselves. If that's the case, wouldn't it be smart to move the works you wanted to steal to a less secure setting before you swiped them?"

"I'll get on it." carlos sat in the Range Rover across the street and watched a tow truck back up to the van parked at the side of the Wal-Mart in Silver City.

Two city police units were stationed in the parking lot to keep curious people away, and a cop in civilian clothes stood next to the van directing the tow truck. His unmarked police car idled nearby.

"We got here too late," Facundo said indifferently.

Carlos shot him a dirty look, but in the darkness Pacundo missed it.

"Do you want to leave?" Pacundo asked.

"Not yet," Carlos answered. De Leon had told him to retrieve the van, which now appeared impossible. What would De Leon want him to do?

"We'll wait," Carlos added.

The van couldn't be traced back to De Leon of that Carlos was certain.

But the patron was a man of exacting standards, who viewed an inability to carry out orders as negligence, regardless of the circumstances.

Carlos stopped grappling with the problem. It was too confusing. His best bet was to call De Leon and ask for instructions. But he would wait until he knew exactly where the police were taking the vehicle before disturbing the patron.

The tow truck pulled away with the van and Carlos nudged Facundo.

"Stay at a safe distance behind the police car," he ordered.

Facundo waited until the tow truck was a block away before he pulled onto the street. The flashing blue lights on the truck made it easy to follow. At the police station. the truck turned and disappeared behind the back of the building.

Facundo continued on to the next intersection before doubling back and coasting to a stop at the curb.

"Wait here," Carlos said as he got out of the vehicle.

He walked behind an adjacent building and stood in the shadows. The tow truck operator was winching down the van at the back of a parking area inside a vehicle impound lot. No one eke was in sight. Three empty police cars, including the one that had followed the truck to the station, were parked near the rear entrance.

Carlos took the cellular phone from his jacket pocket, flipped it open, and dialed De Leon private Santa Pc number. As soon as De Leon came on the line, he explained the situation.

"You did well to call me," De Leon said when Carlos finished.

"Is there any way you can safely get to the vehicle without being seen?"

"Yes, patron. It is not under guard. But I believe the police will search it soon."

"Can you drive it away?"

"No, patron. It is parked in an impound lot behind a locked gate."

"Burn the van," De Leon instructed.

"Do not allow yourself to get caught. Do not allow the police to see the Range Rover."

"Yes, patron."

Carlos rang off and studied the layout. He would climb the impound fence at the rear of the lot, and use darkness for concealment. He went back to the Range Rover, took the road atlas away from Pacundo, and tore out a handful of pages.

"Drive away when I leave," Carlos ordered.

"Do not come back here. I will meet you at the all-night convenience store on the main street in one hour. We passed it on our way here."

"I know where it is," Facundo answered, as he slipped the vehicle into gear and pulled away.

Carlos waited until Pacundo was out of sight before returning to the back of the building next to the station.

The tow truck was gone and no one was in sight.

Staying in the shadows as much as possible, he made his way quickly to the rear of the impound lot, climbed the fence, and moved in a crouch to the van.

He reached under the fender near the fuel tank, found the flexible hose to the tank, and slashed it with a knife, opening a wide, deep cut. He stuffed some twisted pages from the atlas down into the tank until they were saturated with gas. He pulled them out and repeated the process until he had enough to make a fuse that ran from the tank to the ground.

Maybe he had three or four seconds to get away once he lit the paper.

He judged the distance to the back fence. He could just reach it before the van blew up.

Somebody might catch a glimpse of him, but he would be too far away to be identified.

He lit the fuse and started running at full tilt. The van exploded into flames and heat seared the back of his neck. He was safely over the fence and in deep shadows when the first cop burst out of the back door of the police station, carrying a fire extinguisher.

Carlos turned down an empty side street and trotted away.

Kerney was two blocks away from Fletcher's house and some much needed sack tame when he got the news that the van used in the shooting of Officer Rogoff had been found in Silver City. He hit the siren and ran Code Three back to headquarters. Within minutes of his arrival the Silver City PD dispatcher called to report that the van had been torched and heavily damaged by persons unknown.

Kerney reviewed the background information on Nick Palazzi. While serving time in a California prison, Palazzi had joined the American Nazi Party. Any known party members in the Silver City area needed to be identified and interviewed immediately. His arrest for a contract killing had been tied to a territorial dispute among drug traffickers in Southern California.

Intelligence information needed to be updated on trafficking in southwestern New Mexico. Street dealers had to be rounded up and grilled. Palazzi was known to favor prostitutes as girlfriends. Local hookers should be contacted and interviewed.

He put together a few more facts on Palazzi, assembled the response team, sketched out the information, and fielded some questions before sending them on their way. A plane waited at the airport to fly the team on the forty-minute hop to Silver City.

He sank into a chair, thinking it was more than likely that-assuming Palazzi torched the van-he would be across the Mexican border before the plane touched down at the airport. But unless crime scene techs could develop some solid evidence from the van, searching for Palazzi was the only card he had to play.

He fleetingly thought about a good night's sleep, pushed himself upright, and went to make a pot of coffee.

His patched-together gut wouldn't like it, but the caffeine would keep him awake.

As he watched the coffee brew, Kerney brooded over the fact that tying Officer Rogoff's murder in with the art theft could have been a mistake on his part. If the two crimes weren't connected, it would mean starting over from square one. He carried a coffee cup back to the conference room and stared at the telephone. He doubted the team would have anything to report for at least several hours.

He sat and read through the agents' field interview reports, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Nothing jumped out at him. He put the reports aside, picked up a clean sheet of paper, drew a line down the middle, and started separating out the facts of the two cases. If he had to give up the theory of connecting Palazzi to the theft, he needed to be ready to move as quickly as possible. kern by caught a quick nap on Andy's couch and at dawn went outside to dear his head. The reports from Silver City had been encouraging. The interior of the van had been badly burned, but fingerprints had been lifted from the vehicle and some human hairs had been found on a piece of unburned carpet.