acknowledgments

Patricia Anaya, the wife of New Mexico’s great novelist Rudolfo Anaya, took time to read a very early draft of this book and encouraged me to keep going. She saw in Cody Geronimo the kind of very bad guy who could emerge from New Mexico’s strange mix of beauty and charm, corruption, and darkness.

The wonderful folks of the SouthWest Writers Workshop and the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, whether they know it or not, kept me going. Matt Kennicott introduced me to Krav Maga in Santa Fe. His class, led by a fierce, diminutive woman, gave me tons of ideas for Denise Aragon’s character.

Along the way, investigators previously with the New Mexico Attorney General’s Special Investigations Division answered many law enforcement questions. Vern Beachy, who, as a reporter with Albuquerque radio station KKOB AM770, exposed the crimes of Taos artist R. C. Gorman, helped me flesh out my villains, including those in the power structure who profit from (and perhaps enjoy) shielding evil from justice. Wow—radio stations with fearless investigative reporters. We need those days again.

Thank you, Elizabeth Kracht, my agent with Kimberley Cameron and Associates, for believing in me and making the storytelling better. And also thanks to Terri Bischoff, my editor at Midnight Ink, for taking me on board and steering my first book in the Denise Aragon series to publication. And much gratitude also for Kathy Schneider, the Midnight Ink production coordinator, who added the final, important touches. And a big thanks to Barbara Ann Yoder, an old friend and great editor and writing coach, who helped polish the manuscript that landed me an agent.

My wife, Kara Kellogg, has been my most committed and unwavering supporter. When I doubted myself, she urged me forward. She donned her very clear editor glasses and gave my work its most important, first critical read. She put up with me when I emerged from writing still in the character of one of the people in my book, instead of the man she married and wanted to share her life with. More than once—many times more—she suffered through my drifting off as I worked out a plot twist, ignoring everything and everyone around me until my head cleared.

And still she loves me.

Last, I want to acknowledge four remarkable, brave, powerful women. This is most definitely a work of fiction, but the accounts of the female law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty and remembered on the Wall of Honor at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy in chapter 17 are absolutely true. It is my sincere wish that the character of Denise Aragon always honors them.