Michael McGarrity - Everyone Dies

Kerney smiled. “It might cause Jack and Irene Burke to wonder.”

“I’m way ahead of you.” Sara stepped to her grandmother’s desk, gathered up the architectural plans, and brought them to Kerney. The swimming pool had been crossed out.

“I think a terraced flower garden with a few shade trees off to one side would be nice. It doesn’t have to be something we do right away.”

“Let’s go see if it’ll work,” Kerney said.

The doorbell rang. “Whoever it is,” Sara said, “send them packing.”

Kerney opened up.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have turned off all your phones,” Andy Baca said with a shake of his head. He was dressed in civvies with his sidearm on his belt. Gloria waved at Kerney from the passenger seat of Andy’s pickup truck parked in the driveway.

“This better be important, Andy,” Kerney said.

“Look, you don’t have to do anything, but I thought you’d want to know that five bodies, all male, have been discovered buried on Olsen’s property. We don’t know who they are yet or how they died. I’ve got my people working on it with Pino, Thorpe, Istee, and a team of forensic specialists. They’re still uncovering the remains. It will probably take them most of the night to wrap up the preliminary work and get everything up to the medical examiner’s office in Albuquerque.”

“Dammit,” Kerney said.

“It’s being handled,” Andy said as he turned to Sara. “You know, Gloria mentioned that we still haven’t seen the new house you’re putting up. She said you’re going out there. How about giving us a tour?”

“You’re very sneaky, Andy,” Sara said, as she stepped to Kerney’s side.

Andy grinned. “That’s if you don’t mind us tagging along behind you.”

“Come along,” Sara said. “Just let me get my purse.”

F ast-moving clouds drifted over the Jemez Mountains, diffusing the glare of the sun in short bursts, revealing it again and again as shafts of brilliant light cut through the billowing white cumulus caps. Not yet low enough on the horizon to light up the sky with colors, it studded the tips and underbellies of the clouds with a soft pink hue. Passing shadows dotting the basin gave way to patches of dense blue sky that turned hot white as the sun broke through, lighting up a distant peak and exposing a carmine-colored hillside in high relief.

The breathtaking vista pushed all the fears and worries of the week from Sara’s mind. She felt lighthearted as she walked Andy and Gloria through the clutter of what would one day be her very first house, showing them the footprint for each room. The crew had started laying the interior adobe walls, and for the first time Sara could see actual room dimensions rather than have to imagine them from the plans.

She’d brought her camera, and as she took snapshots, she excitedly pointed out window placements, fireplace locations, how the entry alcove would give way to the great room, and the view she would have from the kitchen window over the sink.

Finally, she took them out on the recently poured slab for the portal that ran the length of the house, where they stood and looked down on the canyon below. A huge cottonwood glistened pale green along the edge of an arroyo that fanned out across the canyon floor. A slash of exposed limestone glimmered in the escarpment that hid the railroad spur from view.

“We’ll hear trains,” Sara said, pointing at the ridgeline that hid the tracks from view.

“I love the sound of trains,” Gloria said.

“You’ll have clear night skies and the Milky Way above you,” Andy said.

“And coyotes howling,” Kerney added, squeezing Sara’s hand.

They stopped talking momentarily to watch a small herd of antelope warily enter the canyon, led by a male who first scanned for danger before beginning to graze. The females and juveniles quickly followed suit.

Sara adjusted the camera lens to zoom in on the herd and snapped the shutter.

“How beautiful,” Gloria said in a whisper. “It’s paradise.”

They walked the perimeter of the house. The curving wall for the courtyard patio had been poured, and Sara showed Gloria where she planned to put the planting beds, how the flagstone walkway would veer off from the main path to an adjacent patio that would be accessed through French doors.

“With a pergola, it would be a perfect, sheltered place to breakfast,” she said, eyeing Kerney. “We’d have a lovely view of the pasture, horse barn, the hill beyond, and the tips of the mountains in the distance.”

Kerney laughed, put his arm around Sara’s waist, and patted her tummy. “Okay, we’ll build the pergola,” he said as the early evening shadows began to lengthen. He turned to Andy and Gloria. “Are you up for a short drive? I want to show you something.”

“What’s that?” Andy asked.

“A special place.”

The foursome piled into Sara’s vehicle. Kerney drove up the hill past the spot were he’d buried Soldier, wound through the rolling grassland and into a draw bracketed by a low, rocky ridgeline, and pulled to a stop where marsh grass and cattails encircled a pond at the foot of a hillock.

“My God,” Andy said, climbing out of the SUV, “you’ve got live water.”

“Which has never run dry,” Kerney said, following Andy to the edge of the pool.

“Unbelievable,” Andy said. Any constant source of live water away from the rivers and streams was a rarity to be treasured in arid New Mexico.

“A hacienda stood here two hundred years ago,” Kerney said, pointing to the rubble of the rock footings. “For a long time, it was the main stop on the cartage road from Galisteo to Santa Fe.”

“And it’s on your land?” Andy asked.

Kerney nodded and pointed at animal tracks in the soft earth at the edge of the water. “Yep, and it comes with a resident bobcat, who hunts rabbits here at night. I’ve found fresh tracks and kill sites just about every time I’ve come out here.”

He watched Gloria and Sara kneel down to examine pieces of partially exposed petrified wood scattered under the base of an ancient willow tree on the other side of the pond.

Suddenly, Sara stood upright and looked at Kerney with a serene smile on her face. “It’s time to go,” she said.

“We’ve got a good twenty minutes before sunset,” Kerney replied, glancing at the sky.

“It’s time to go to the hospital,” she said as she patted her belly and moved toward the SUV.

“Right now?”

“I think so.”

Kerney gave his cell phone to Andy and raced to Sara’s side. “Call the doctor. Press speed dial, then nine. Tell her we’re on the way.”

Sara laughed. “Slow down, cowboy. I don’t need you four-wheeling me over hill and dale. We’ve got time.”

“Let’s go,” Kerney said, easing Sara into the vehicle, not realizing that both Andy and Gloria were already on board.

He ground the gears putting the vehicle into motion, and Andy laughed at him from the backseat.

Samuel Green left his car on a point beside the railroad tracks where the sand looked too deep to pull through, checked his watch to time himself, and started walking at a fast pace in the direction of Kerney’s property. He ducked through the barbed-wire fence, scrambled to the top of the ridgeline, saw the outline of a pickup truck at the construction site, and dropped quickly to the ground.

He slipped off the backpack, took out a pair of binoculars and carefully scanned the vehicle. It wasn’t Kerney’s truck. He wondered if security had been hired to watch the place at night after the crew went home. That would put his plan in jeopardy.

After making sure the truck was unoccupied, Green scanned the building site and horse barn several times for movement before deciding the pickup had probably been left behind by one of the workers.