“How about you?” Diane watched his reaction very carefully.

  His reaction was hard to read, but she noticed his eyes narrowed slightly and his fist clinch for a second. “I don’t mess with him and he doesn’t mess with me.”

  “Well, I guess you’ve got to leave now and go catch some real bad guys. Good night, Officer—or is it Deputy?—Harmon.”

  “Officer or deputy is fine. Good night, Miss Garcia. And if I were you, I wouldn’t be running around out here in the sticks alone, especially at night. There’s still some wackos out there.”

  Diane nodded. “I’ve heard already. Any news on that missing boy?”

  Harmon shook his head. “No. And no witnesses have come forward. Nobody saw a thing, it turns out. The original sighting was a false alarm, unrelated. But the Klein kid’s fancy bike was found in a culvert, so we know it wasn’t a robbery, either. We’ve got our ears and eyes open.” The deputy turned and walked away. “Good night, ma’am.”

  “You, too, Deputy.”

  Glover pulled up just then, honked the Jeep’s horn lightly, and turned into his gravel driveway. He didn’t speak, instead waving in their direction. He appeared to be in a good mood, Diane noticed, considering his experiences earlier in the day with her and Lee. It was all show, of course. Glover was a rattlesnake.

  Officer Harmon nodded at Glover, his back to Diane so she couldn’t have read his expression even if it had been daylight.

  The deputy walked to his car, which was still running with headlights on, and backed up quickly and expertly, turning around in the process. He drove off slowly down the road toward the highway, his searchlight sweeping the margins of the road.

  Diane had been keeping one eye on Glover, wondering what he’d do or say now that the deputy had left. He climbed out of the Jeep, looked at her without a word or gesture, then went through his gate and walked to his door. There was a loud curse, then he went inside.

  Diane was downloading the photos from Glover’s house onto their laptop computer when Lee came into the driveway. She looked up just as he tried the knob. It was locked, of course.

  “I’ll get it, Lee.”

  Pork rinds,” Lee said as he set the grocery bag down on the counter and pulled out the small bag with the greasy snacks. He put the six-pack of Coors in the refrigerator. “Good clue. What’d I miss?”

  Diane explained what had happened as they looked at her photos on the laptop. Neither of them recognized any of the men or women in the compromising photos, but it wasn’t unexpected, because they really didn’t know any people in the area yet.

  “Crop the photos to capture just the faces, then send them to the Bureau and see if we can get some names and backgrounds on these people. If we get any hits, we’ll have an idea who Glover may be blackmailing,” Lee suggested.

  “I was planning on doing that ASAP, but first let me know what went down with Glover. I got your call in time, fortunately,” Diane said.

  “I had some trouble getting through at first, probably a dead zone. I was close to the Buffalo Tavern—south of here.”

  “Isn’t that the place where the guy down the street was killed, Zeke Perry?”

  Lee nodded, then gave her a quick rundown of his shadowing operation, and when he got to the likely drug transfer, she smiled.

  “You can find that shed again, right?”

  “Of course. Wanna go check it out?” Lee responded. He wasn’t sleepy, but Diane had recently yawned.

  She nodded. “For all we know, he never uses the same drop twice, or maybe has a particular spot for each customer. That way, if he’s ripped off he’d know who was responsible. But for sure, he’s in regular contact with his supplier, who drops off the drugs and picks up the money. An arrangement like that implies a level of trust between Glover and his drug contact.”

  “Mutual profit and fear trump trust when it comes to the bad guys. Glover knows the guy who leaves the drugs for him. Probably another local who’s being blackmailed, intimidated, or both. If he rips off Glover, Glover will come down on him hard,” Lee said.

  “Think it might be the property owner?” she asked. “Around here I’d think trespassers would be risking a load of buckshot, a pit bull, or worse.”

  “Let’s take a look and get mile marker info and addresses of the closest mailboxes. A GPS position, too. There may or may not be more drugs stashed there, but if we can find where he hides the stuff, we might be able to set up a sting, or at least catch his supplier if Glover uses the place on a regular basis.”

  “How long do you wanna wait before we take off?”

  “Let’s get the photos sent, run the plate for Breeann’s Ford pickup, and send the requests to Logan and my boss. We’ll encrypt the data and upload it to our Internet site for storage, then see what’s going on at Glover’s place. Once his lights go out, we’ll give it an hour, then leave quietly.”

  “I wonder if Glover will try to retaliate while we’re gone?” Lee reached out and placed a gentle hand on her arm. “He’s going to go for us, not our stuff, Diane. He’ll want to take us out permanently, and he’ll do it at a time when he can cover his tracks with a solid-sounding alibi. People have seen us standing up to him, so even Glover would have a hard time explaining the murder of his neighbors. He got away with it once, maybe. A second time will require some planning, even for someone who’d supposed to be invincible.”

  Diane checked her pistol as she spoke. “He’s going to bide his time, figure out a way to deal with us, then strike once he figures he’s fooled us into believing he’s learned his lesson.”

  “Exactly. Now all we have to do is get something on him and his contacts before he kills us,” Lee said with a grim smile.

  CHAPTER 7

  Another hour passed. Lee learned that the green F-150 Breeann was driving was in her name, Breeann Edmonds, and that she lived in Cedar Crest in a rented home. There was no information about who she was living with, though someone in the department was checking to determine who owned the property. Eventually, the person renting it would be identified.

  Breeann, originally from one of the area pueblos, had been arrested four times on Albuquerque’s East Central for prostitution, and had been busted twice for possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamines. Her last job was as a stripper at an East Central bar, though she apparently no longer worked there. She was nineteen.

  It was nearly 11:30 when Lee and Diane turned on the surveillance system, went out the front door, climbed quietly into the SUV, then drove away.

  “Think Glover noticed?” Diane asked as they reached the main highway.

  “If he was awake, he undoubtedly heard or saw us. The worse thing to do would be to make it look like we were sneaking away.”

  “You’re right. Why don’t you go north instead of south for a mile or two, then pull over and wait? If he’s following us, he’ll either have to stop behind us or pass us by. If he goes by, we’ll see; if he pulls over, we might be able to spot him when we reverse directions.”

  “Yeah. We don’t want him to see us checking out his drop site,” Lee agreed.

  Twenty minutes later, Lee and Diane walked down the narrow track near the shed where Glover had apparently picked up the drugs for Breeann. No flashlight was necessary, with Lee leading Diane by hand, and they were both wearing soleless shoes that were smooth on the bottom and left no distinguishing pattern.

  Lee had owned shoes like these for decades now, and since Diane had become his frequent partner in operations, she’d acquired a pair for herself.

  “That porch light over there,” Diane whispered. “Was it on earlier?”

  He shook his head. “No.” Lee had been watching the old farmhouse since they’d first spotted it. It had been nearly blocked by the shed when he’d looked earlier, but the light was something he’d have seen because it cast shadows as far away as the shed, which was a good hundred yards closer to the highway than the house.

  “So the resident had left it off. Maybe at Glover’s request?”

  “That would be my guess. Nobody would stash drugs and/or money in a place where they’d be easily found. And Glover didn’t take more than a minute or two before he came back, so I’m assuming it wasn’t hard for him to retrieve what he was after.”

  Diane nodded, giving his hand a squeeze. “That light will keep the owner from seeing us. Ruin his night vision.”

  “But not mine,” Lee said. They reached the spot where Glover had gone under the fence and he lifted up the wire, letting go of Diane’s hand to climb through. Then he held the wire up for her and she followed. They walked silently up to the closest corner of the small building.

  Lee crouched down low, then looked around the corner of the building toward the farmhouse. He held out his hand, but could barely make out the shadow against the wooden wall of the shed. Taking her hand, he led Diane around the corner and into a small roofed-in area enclosed on three sides that had obviously been a stall, probably for a horse, judging from the gray, crumbled remnants of road apples still scattered on the earthen floor.

  “He smoothed out his footprints, I guess,” Lee whispered, studying the ground.

  “I’m afraid to risk a light,” Diane said, looking back toward the house. She stepped back behind the doorway into the darkness. “Ow!”

  Lee turned and saw that she’d bumped into a metal horse feeder mounted onto the two-by-fours of the shed’s framework. Scanning the interior, he was unable to find any obvious hiding places, not even a loose board or compartment of any kind.

  “Behind the feeder?” Diane whispered, realizing what she’d collided with after feeling the shape.

  Lee noticed the heads of two bolts on the back surface of the feeder, and four big bolts on the outside frame of the unit, leading to the two-by-fours. The two center bolts didn’t have two-by-fours behind them, so why were they there? He got down on his knees and reached up behind the feeder base from below. There was a rectangular object with a flap at the top, and when he opened the flap, by feel, he detected rolled-up paper held together with a rubber band.

  “Well hidden. It’s a mailbox, the kind you’d find on a porch.” He brought out the roll of paper. It was cash, two hundred dollars in twenties. He held the money up close for Diane to see in the dim light from the house.

  “Payment for the transaction. The supplier will be coming for the money,” she said softly. “But if it’s the resident over there, why hasn’t he taken it already?”

  “He may not be the supplier, or, equally possible, maybe he just doesn’t want to risk coming out here in the dark. In the morning he can make sure nobody is hiding here, watching for whoever comes to take the payoff, like a cop staking the place out.”

  “He could have placed the drugs in the box anytime during the day, also keeping a wary eye out for the law,” Diane said in agreement.

  “Or we could make this complicated, and propose that a third party constructed this stash in secret. Maybe he sneaked in here after dark to make the drop, and plans on picking up the money sometime tonight once he thinks it’s safe.”

  “Which means he might be on his way here now, or watching the place?” Diane looked around curiously.

  “Yeah, so we’d better hightail it because we just don’t know yet. I’ll lead you back across the fence, then you lay low while I come back to smooth out any tracks we might have left.”

  Eight minutes later, the money back in the hiding place, they were in the SUV, which Lee had parked down the road in the same place he’d stopped earlier while following Glover.

  “Okay, what do we do now?” Diane asked. “Set up Glover for a drug bust?”

  “We could, but I vote we keep learning from the man, tracking his activities. He’s got allies around here doing some serious bad stuff on his behalf, and even if we manage to put him and his drug supplier away, the others will still be out there. Putting away Glover and his drug contact won’t be enough, not in my eyes.”

  “Agreed.”

  Lee didn’t need sleep as long as he was eating well and regularly, so while Diane went to bed almost immediately upon their return, he wrote and e-mailed an updated report on their activities—glossing over some of the specifics, like roughing up Glover, smashing his pickup, and breaking into his home. The report, and a daily log of their investigation, would be kept at an Internet address Lee or Diane could access. At the same time they’d be keeping the laptop clear of any information that could give them away in case the device was stolen or compromised.

  Lastly, he prepared the flyer he planned to distribute tomorrow, something to leave in doors and in business windows, to let the community know that a Navajo silversmith was now selling silver and turquoise jewelry at bargain prices. He’d already had a tech in the state police department design a Web site for him, and it would be accessible to anyone in the rural area with a computer and dial-up. Their address was also posted, as were hours when visitors could drop by to look at his collection.

  That cover would allow him to keep his own hours and interact with the community. He’d prepared a sample box that he’d be taking with him from now on to justify his travels.

  Next, Lee called the state police watch commander in his area for news on the missing child. The Amber alert had been canceled because they no longer had solid information that a kidnapping had indeed taken place. All known reports of children getting into vehicles had been checked out and cleared. All they had was that the boy failed to return home, and that his bike was recovered. That was it.

  Glover didn’t appear to have the boy, at least not at his home or at any place he’d been known to visit today, so if the sleazeball was involved, he was covering his tracks well. All the local agencies were still questioning known sex offenders in the area, but no real leads had surfaced.

  It was nearly 1:00 in the morning by now. Just before turning in, Lee decided to take one last look outside. He went through the kitchen and small utility area and slipped out the back door, then circled around the other end of the building, coming around the corner.

  Across the street, Glover’s lights were out and there was no movement in the yard. A cottontail sat between the fence and the road, munching on some ground-hugging plants. The gray-and-white creature raised its head and watched Lee for a moment with big, black eyes, then went back to eating.

  All the driveways were half circles in this small development, their closest point near the front doors, and Glover had parked the Jeep directly in front of his door. From where Lee was standing, he could see the license plate. He’d run the letters and numbers and see what he could learn about the owner. Glover had acquired a vehicle within an hour, which meant he had connections, a lot of cash on hand, or had located a very trusting local repair shop owner.

  Lee glanced across the front of their own yard, noted that the SUV and pickup appeared undisturbed, then reversed his course and reentered the building from the back, locking the door behind him.

  A quick check revealed that the Jeep was registered to a businessman who owned several properties across Bernalillo County, including a gas station at Tijeras and a cabin near Chilili. A quick background on the businessman, named Brian Sully, showed that he was fifty-two years old, long divorced with no children, and had been arrested once for solicitation. He had bailed himself out, later paying a small fine.

  Lee thought about Breeann Edmonds, nineteen, and decided there was a chance she knew Brian Sully, one way or the other. He and Diane had to learn more about both of these people. Good or bad, young or old, they were both associating with Newton Glover.

  The next morning Diane crossed through the living room over to the kitchen. She was fully dressed for work in a designer knockoff version of green camouflage pants, a military web belt, and a lavender knit top beneath some kind of fashion-trendy, short jacket.

  Lee almost did a double take. “It looks like you’re going duck hunting at the mall,” he said, waving a hand toward a plate on her side of the table. It was covered with another dish to keep the pancakes, eggs, and bacon warm.

  “I’m supposed to look like I’m going through my second teenhood. And this outfit gives me a place to keep my backup weapon and still wear the vest,” Diane said, patting the jacket pocket as she crossed the thin carpeting to the dining table. “I wish these extra pockets were for real, though.”

  She sat immediately. “Thanks for fixing breakfast. I could smell the bacon all the way from the shower. But this thousand-square-foot house is still huge compared to my apartment.”

  “Yeah, I’ve never had a home this big. The stove is well designed, and I’m used to cooking with gas, so I thought an old-fashioned greasy breakfast was just the thing.”

  Diane sniffed, looked around, then stood. “Coffee?”

  “Eat. I’ll get it.” Lee’s chair was close to the opening into the kitchen area, between counters, and he could reach the coffee pot without standing. “Toast?”

  Seeing her nod, he added, “One or two slices?”

  She held up two fingers because her mouth was full.

  Lee poured Diane a tall mug of coffee, black, then walked over to the little toaster oven, where a package of French bread was sitting. He sliced two thick pieces and placed them in the toaster oven.

  “Where did you go after I went to bed? I heard you leave … .”

  Lee told her what he’d done and learned about Breeann and the businessman, Brian Sully. Glover had managed to get the Jeep at a moment’s notice, so he either paid a lot of money or had some influence with Sully.

  “Sully was arrested for solicitation?” Diane asked. “Was it with a woman?”

  Lee shook his head. “Don’t know, though my assumption was that Sully was trying to pick up a female, and got caught in a sting or whatever. APD made the arrest—someone from the vice squad. You’re wondering if the prostitute was really young, or maybe male?”

  “Yeah. I think we should follow up on this—interview the arresting officer and get the details. Meanwhile, I can check with Anna and see if she knows anything about Sully. His gas station is just down the road from Howard’s, according to the addresses.”