Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

But what made Olsen the perfect suspect was the fact that Kerney had busted him, Potter had prosecuted the case, and Dora Manning had done the psych evaluation for the court. It had taken Green a year’s researching to find the ideal candidate to become the cops’ one and only prime suspect.

He got in Olsen’s car and drove away. By the time the cops arrived, Olsen’s body would be at the bottom of a lava tube in the El Malpais National Monument, his car would be at a chop shop across the border in Juarez, and Green would be on his way back to Santa Fe ready to implement the final phase of his plan.

L ast night, Kerney had spoken by phone with Milton Lynch’s wife, who’d told him that her husband would be returning from Albuquerque to Las Cruces early in the morning to prepare for an afternoon court appearance. She assured him that Lynch would be at his office by eight o’clock.

As he flew over the Tularosa Basin above the highway that cut through the missile range, Kerney could see sections of the land that had once belonged to his family. The sun lit up the alkali flats and washed over the tips of the Hardscabble Mountains, part of the San Andres Range, south of Rhodes Canyon. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the ranch house and the old road that snaked down the hills to the broad swales of tall grama grass that, in the wet years, spread out across the range.

Silently, Kerney studied the vast, empty reaches of the basin, broken only by some military roads and clusters of high-security testing facilities. This was the land he’d been born to, only to have the family ranch taken away by the government when he was a child. This was the land where his godson, Sammy Yazzi, a soldier stationed at the missile range, had been murdered. He looked over his shoulder at Sierra Blanca Mountain on the eastern fringe of the basin that defined the Mescalero homeland, now forever embedded in his memory as the place where Clayton and his family had seen their home destroyed.

The early morning light softened the black lava flows far to the north, made the pure white gypsum sand dunes sparkle, blunted the squat Jarilla Mountains west of Orogrande, and bleached the dry salt flats of Lake Lucero. It was a land of wind-blown drought, cactus and rattlesnakes, thorny mesquite, and boulder-strewn foothill canyons at the base of the mountains. Despite the harsh vastness, there was an intense, wild, undeniable beauty to the Tularosa.

The land held good memories, too. It was here, under the watchful eye of his father, that he’d been taught to cowboy and ranch. It was here that his lifelong friendship with Dale Jennings had begun. And it was here, just a few short years ago, that he’d first met Sara during her tour of duty at the missile range.

The chopper traveled through the San Agustin Pass and dropped down to the desert where the city of Las Cruces spread out before them. New residential subdivisions peppered the hills and stretched along the Interstate. Strip malls, business parks, and commercial buildings lined the highway that had once been a two-lane road into town.

The second-largest and fastest-growing city in New Mexico, Las Cruces was no longer the sleepy little ranching, farming, and college town of Kerney’s childhood. But even with all the exploding growth, most of it fueled by the defense industry and migrating retirees, the green of the pecan orchards and farms along the Rio Grande River valley and the magnificent spire-shaped peaks of the Organ Mountains still gave the city a certain natural charm that the man-made sprawl had yet to diminish.

The chopper pilot had radioed ahead to have the parking lot at the district state police headquarters cleared for their landing. Motorists along University Boulevard and the nearby Interstate slowed to watch the chopper’s descent.

As Kerney left the helicopter and went into the building, he checked the time. It was too early to expect Lynch to be in his office, so he would call Sara and then buy the pilot breakfast.

Sal Molina sat behind a mechanic’s desk at the city maintenance yard garage and watched as the crime scene techs continued working on the blue van. The place smelled-not unpleasantly-of grease and motor oil, rubber and cold metal. It had taken several hours to complete the search for evidence on and in the van, and not one fingerprint had been found. Every surface had been wiped clean, and, according to the techs, the perp had even vacuumed the carpet and floor mats before he’d loaded up the body and parked it at the municipal court building.

Along with a plant biologist who’d just shown up, the techs were now working on the undercarriage of the vehicle, which had been raised on a hydraulic rack, looking for trace elements that could possibly tell Molina where the van had been. They were prying pebbles out of the tire treads, picking small strands of vegetation off the grease on the rear axle with tweezers, and looking for seeds and other plant matter that might be caught in the U-joints, springs, or clinging to various parts of the chassis.

Molina had worked the vehicle identification number and the license plate while the techs dusted for prints. A year ago, the van had been sold to a junkyard in El Paso and then bought for parts by one Lewis Lawless. According to the El Paso PD, Lawless had provided an address on the sales receipt that turned out to be a vacant city lot. It made Molina think that Lawless was a bogus name used by the perp as a derisive, cocky little joke.

He looked at the bagged and tagged evidence that had been removed from the van. It consisted of a used Band-Aid that had adhered to the lever of the brake pedal where it came in contact with the floorboard, some blond hairs that possibly came from the perp, and several other strands of hair that probably belonged to the victim. It was very slim pickings.

The body had been fingerprinted, but the victim’s identity was still unknown. Although Molina had a detective checking the state and federal data banks, there was no guarantee her prints would be on file. Dental records would most likely wind up being how the body would be identified-if they could come up with a suitable missing-person candidate.

However, after checking with the National Crime Information Center, Molina had his doubts about making a quick ID. The woman had a butterfly tattooed on her right inner thigh, but there was no record of a missing person with such a unique identifier. It was no big surprise; a lot of people who disappear are never reported to the authorities.

Molina had been frustrated by unknown homicide victims before. He’d worked cases involving decomposed remains found by hikers in the foothills, bodies discovered in shallow roadside graves, scattered human bones recovered in arroyos after a heavy rain, and corpses that had been dumped at the landfill. In each of those situations the victim had remained nameless and the killer anonymous.

He thought about it a little more. Up to now, the perp had been an in-your-face killer with an agenda and specific targets. If he held to form, the dead woman had to be linked to Potter, Manning, and Chief Kerney, which meant he expected the police to puzzle their way through it.

Molina’s cell phone rang and he answered quickly.

“I got a preliminary cause of death,” the pathologist said. “Strychnine poisoning, specifically rat poison ingested orally.”

“You’re sure?”

“I haven’t cut her open yet, but it looks that way. I found traces of the poison in the mouth, plus the jaw muscles were paralyzed and the lips were drawn back to expose the teeth.”

“What else?” Molina asked.

“I think she was tied up and then the killer forced her mouth open and made her swallow the poison pellets.”

“What makes you say that?”