Slow Kill - Michael Mcgarrity [2]
In Santa Fe, pharmacists David Nunez and Cathy Morlock provided me with technical information about their profession and prescription medications; Tom Claffey dug up information on record retention rules for financial institutions; and Ken Mayers, without even knowing it, gave me an excellent idea I immediately put to use in the book.
Finally, a very special thanks to Major Linda Wrasman of the New Mexico State Police, a good friend who opened many doors for me at the FBI Academy and gave freely of her valuable time and expertise at Quantico and in Santa Fe.
Chapter 1
Ten minutes after Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney picked up his rental car at the Bakersfield Airport, he was stuck in heavy stop-and-go traffic, questioning his decision to take the less-traveled back roads on his trip to the central California coast.
Congestion didn’t ease until he was well outside the city limits on a westbound state highway that cut through desert flatlands. Ahead, a dust devil jumped across a straight, uninviting stretch of pavement and churned slowly through an irrigated alfalfa field, creating a green wave rolling over the forage.
Kerney glanced at his watch. Had he made a mistake in trying to map out a scenic route to take to the coast? By now, he’d expected to be approaching a mountain range, but there was nothing on the hazy horizon to suggest it.
It really didn’t matter if he’d misjudged his driving time. He had all day to get to the Double J horse ranch outside of Paso Robles, where he would spend the weekend looking over some quarter horses that were up for sale. He hit the cruise control and let his mind wander.
Kerney had partnered up with his neighbor, Jack Burke, to breed, raise, and train competition cutting horses. Kerney would buy some stock to get the enterprise started, Jack would contribute brood mares, pastureland, and stables to the partnership, and Jack’s youngest son, Riley Burke, would do the training.
The sky cleared enough to show the outline of mountains topped by a few bleached, mare’s-tail clouds. Soon Kerney was driving through a pass on a twisting road flanked by forked and tilted gray-needle pine trees, into a huge grassland plain that swept up against a higher, more heavily timbered mountain range to the west.
Finally his road trip had turned interesting. He stopped to stretch his legs, and a convertible sports car with the top down zipped by, the woman driver tooting her horn and waving gaily as she sped away.
Kerney waved back, thinking it would have been nice to have his family with him. He’d arranged the trip with the expectation that he’d enjoy his time by himself and away from the job. But in truth, he was alone far more than he liked. Sara, his career Army officer wife, had a demanding Pentagon duty assignment that limited her free time, and Patrick, their toddler son who lived with her, was far too young to travel alone.
Kerney had hoped that the new house they’d built on two sections of ranchland outside of Santa Fe would change Sara’s mind about staying in the Army, but it hadn’t. Although she loved the ranch and looked forward to living in Santa Fe full-time, she wasn’t about to take early retirement. That meant six more years of a part-time, long-distance marriage, held together by frequent cross-country trips back and forth as time allowed, and one family vacation together each year. For Kerney, it wasn’t a happy prospect.
He looked over the plains. The green landscape was pleasing to the eye, deeper in color than the bunch grasses of New Mexico, but under a less vivid sky. He could see a small herd of grazing livestock moving toward a windmill, the outline of a remote ranch house beyond, and the thin line of the state road that plowed straight across the plains and curved sharply up the distant mountains.
He settled behind the wheel and gave the car some juice, thinking it