Nothing but Trouble_ A Kevin Kerney Novel - Michael Mcgarrity [113]
Kerney had some questions for Agent Bratton. Had the feds developed any more evidence against Jerome Mendoza, the Motor Transportation officer who lived in Playas? Had they identified the man Kerney had seen driving away in Mendoza’s van?
He thought about Walter Shaw, the ranch manager at the Jordan spread. The cursory background research he’d done on Shaw had been inconclusive. He’d turned the task over to Detective Sergeant Ramona Pino for follow-up and had heard nothing back.
Rhetorically, he wondered if he should just drop the whole damn thing and let Agent Bratton deal with it. It wasn’t Kerney’s case or even within his jurisdiction. He should forget about it and give his full attention to Patrick.
Kerney knew he couldn’t do that, no matter how tempting. He still carried a shield, a law enforcement officer had been murdered, and those responsible for the crime remained at large. With that locked in his mind he turned off the highway and headed down the dirt road past the rodeo grounds, toward the Jordan ranch.
From a distance Walter Shaw stood in front of his house at the Jordan ranch and watched Julia flirt with Barry Hingle, the construction supervisor for the movie. The two were off by themselves, away from the cast and crew that had assembled around the director at the cattle-guard entrance to the ranch headquarters. Julia leaned against Hingle, talking, touching him on the arm, laughing and smiling. Shaw wondered if she’d screwed him yet.
At one time Shaw would have been jealous, but that was many years ago, before he’d come to realize that she was nothing but a slut. Once, he’d hoped to marry her—for the ranch, not for love, although sex with Julia was outstanding.
Shaw’s plans for marrying Julia had been quickly discarded when he’d come upon her straddling a hired hand in her pickup truck at the Shugart cabin. When Shaw had ridden up, she had stared at him with her eyes wide open through the rear window of the truck as she bounced up and down on the cowboy’s lap, her lips thin and her teeth bared like those of an animal pouncing on its prey.
Out of convenience Shaw still slept with Julia now and then, when she was between new bedroom talent. But he kept his emotional distance as he would with any feral animal.
From time to time he toyed with the idea of killing Julia and her parents. But he could never hit upon a strategy that promised to give him legal control of the ranch once they were dead, not with Johnny still in the picture.
Shaw had been successful in the past when it came to murder. As a child he’d bounced from one foster home to another, until Ralph and Elizabeth Shaw had adopted him at the age of twelve and turned him into an indentured servant on their Virden farm. Over the next six years Elder Ralph and Sister Elizabeth recited the glorious teachings of the Mormon church while they worked him day and night during the summers, and every early morning, evening, and weekend during the school year.
When spiritual instruction and honest labor failed to keep him in strict bounds, they employed corporal punishment. Two or three times a week he paid for an ill-advised remark or look with a beating.
At eighteen, unconverted to the faith, mean, and filled with hate, he graduated at the bottom of his high-school class, escaped into the navy, and spent the next six years on an aircraft carrier. After his discharge he worked on a ranch outside of Willcox, Arizona, before taking the manager’s job with Joe and Bessie,