Thirteen

The gun felt right. She loved the sound of jacketed lead pinging off the target twenty-five yards down range. She loved even more each tear in the photo of Dewey Nobles taped over the steel disc held steady in her sights.

Jimmy Arenas stood behind her with a spotting scope, grunting as each shot rang against the target. He ran the Law Enforcement Academy’s shooting range, partial retirement from his career as firearms instructor. She had wanted the end of the firing line, preferably three stations from the next person. He always put her dead center. He stuck to his routine again today, with one exception. When she told him about the suspension he slipped Nobles’ photo out of its frame on the wall for former members of the Academy’s staff and taped it to a steel disc.

Arenas checked his watch and called cease-fire. The line quieted. He announced they were free to check targets. Aragon kept her place. Arenas would have let her know if she had missed.

She ejected the empty clip and laid out the five magazines she’d loaded at the office.

On her left a young cop wearing an Albuquerque Police Department uniform rested a Glock on his table. To her right, a guy bigger than Lewis from the State Police tactical unit opened a box of .45s. Farther down the line she saw AR-15s and a shotgun mixed in with semi-auto side arms. She saw only one revolver, a Ruger Blackhawk, in the hands of a man whose active duty was decades in the past.

“The range is hot and live. You are cleared to fire.”

The metallic chime of bullets striking her steel disc rang above the staccato of pistol shots and the boom of the shotgun. She squeezed off the remaining cartridges in the Springfield’s magazine without a miss. Each hit came with the exclamation point of metal striking metal. She ejected the spent clip combat style, letting it fall to the ground and slammed another home. Next to her the young APD cop fired as fast as his finger could jerk the trigger. His gun bounced with the front sight rarely reacquiring the target set at a mere ten yards. The State Police SWAT officer fired patiently, sighting down the four-inch barrel of his Colt, trying to maintain the tight group that admitted sunlight through the center of his target. Down the line, the shotgun exploded.

She slapped in another clip and fired off double taps.

Starting into her last clip she noticed that the range had gone silent. She worried she’d missed the cease-fire order. She looked left and right. The line was empty except for the two guys on either side. They were watching her. Keeping her weapon pointed down range, she turned her head. The rest of the men had gathered a few yards behind her.

“You got nine more in that clip,” Arenas said.

She showed the kid from Albuquerque how fast the Springfield could fire without bouncing around. The metallic target never stopped reverberating. When she was done she removed her ear protection and faced her audience. Arenas was smiling and spinning an empty picture frame on his index finger.

“Dang,” someone said. “Ninety-six shots without a miss.”

“Ninety-seven,” Arenas said. “She started with one in the pipe.”

“How’s she do it?”

Arenas glassed Aragon’s target. The Dewey Nobles photograph had disintegrated.

“Motivation.”

She drove to her efficiency apartment on the city’s west side and brought dirty clothes downstairs to the laundry in the basement. Her .40 holstered on her hip, she separated colors and whites, watching a Holly Holm fight on her phone. Holm went almost a full five rounds at the Route 66 Casino before a TKO gave her the win over a bloodied Juliana Werner. Somewhere in the fight Holm’s left ulna snapped in two. Aragon had watched the video a dozen times, trying to see where Holm protected the arm. At the end she’s pummeling Werner with both hands. The ref raises her right glove in victory. A second later there’s Holm, pumping her left fist in the air.

While her clothes dried, she cleaned her weapon and defrosted some of the green-chile stew Javier’s wife, Serena, had sent home with her last time she visited their home in the mountains. The stew lit her up, but then she felt empty and ragged. The calm from blasting Dewey’s face was a fraud. She needed to be working her cases.

Aragon drove to Fager’s Finds and parked in the back alley. She imagined Geronimo opening the door to dump the paper towels he had used to wipe off Linda Fager’s blood. He had stood here, naked in the moonlight. She could still feel the Springfield alive and fierce in her hand, spitting fire a couple hours ago at the range. She sighted with her finger and cocked her thumb.

She drove around the front and parked, retracing her steps upon arriving at the scene. She couldn’t see where she had gone wrong. They had done it by the book. Even the rookie cops had toed the line and held puke in their cheeks until they rushed outside. She grilled herself about the chase and remained convinced she had sufficient reason to pursue Geronimo from the second the key fob found under Linda Fager’s body triggered the Range Rover’s alarm.

She mentally rewound the recording of him speaking from inside the hedge. His voice could be plainly heard on the sidewalk. Up until he said the name “Marcy,” she had no clue about the identity of the person on the other end of the call. Even then, it was only a first name and the DA could argue insufficient notice that he was consulting his attorney. She supposed she could research how many Marcys lived in the Santa Fe area to reinforce the argument.

She remembered something Mascarenas frequently muttered after getting slammed by one of Santa Fe’s judges. An ounce of the judge is worth a pound of the law, he’d say. In this case, the good guys had the law on their side. They had a ton of evidence. But Thornton had every ounce of Judge Diaz.

Her stomach ached. Breakfast and lunch were gone, vaporized by anger and stress. She felt as thin as cellophane. She drove out to the Cerrillos strip and swung into a Blake’s for a Lotaburger and fries. With the paper bag warm on her lap, she drove to Killer Park. She needed a place to work through an idea that had come to her at the range, when her mind was calm.

She was surprised to find Lewis in his Chrysler minivan eating an apple and reading a file. She drove past and turned around to park. He waved for her to come to him.

“Your phone is off. I knew I could find you here,” he said when she slipped into the passenger seat.

“I thought you would be deep into your honey-do list.”

He jerked a thumb at shopping bags in the back.

“I’m standing in check-out at Costco, screaming kids, old people not starting to write their check until all their bags are filled, you know? Instead of worrying whether I’ve got the right soy milk, all I could think about was Tasha Gonzalez.”

She unwrapped her burger.

“I’ve been thinking about her, too.”

“Damn, that smells good.”

“Have some fries. They won’t kill you.”

Lewis alternated bites of apple with fries as Aragon tore chunks from her burger.

Lewis said, “Senior officer first.”

“So Thornton has a lock on the judge,” she said with a mouthful of beef. “We’ve got Fager flying wing. I think he’ll keep things stirred up. If we can get another agency to take up Tasha Gonzalez, focus on Cody Geronimo, we’ve found a route around Thornton’s roadblocks.”

“Tasha was found outside Belen. Valencia County Sheriff’s jurisdiction. Not Keystone Cops, but not the Untouchables, either.”

“Imagine the Feds jumping in. I’m liking what I see in Rivera.”

“He’s liking what he sees in you.”

She blinked. That caught her off guard. “We find a federal connection,” she said, regaining her train of thought. “Maybe a hook to federal land like with Cynthia Fremont.”

“That place out by Ladron Peak. The one asset Geronimo has tried to keep whenever his finances tanked. It’s mostly leased federal land with scattered private inholdings.”

“Super Dad strikes again.” She gave Lewis’s shoulder a friendly punch. “Show me.”

She wiped greasy fingers on her thighs and took up the map on the console.

“Private inholdings are colored orange. The rest is public,” Lewis said. “I think these parcels go with the ranch.” He pointed out orange rectangles. “No roads. You’d need a four-wheel drive.”

“Like a Range Rover.”

They peered more closely at the map.

“I just figured out what I’m doing with my suspension,” Aragon said. “I was going to check every bar in Santa Fe until I found where Geronimo drank beer after killing Linda Fager.” A smile spread across her face. “Instead, I’m going hunting.”

“The season’s not open yet. Or it just closed.”

“Always open season on varmints. No bag limit, no restrictions. Any kind of ammo, any weapon is legal.”

“Do I want to know what you’re talking about? Don’t answer.”