Free Absolution by Michael Kerr Page A

time-coded and fits with when Wayne and Gary were there.”
    “Good work, Al.  Is the bar on our books?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay.  Bring the tape out to the ranch.”
    “On my way.”
    Martin closed his phone.  He was pissed with Zack.  Killing Wayne had been a bad move.  Wayne could have confirmed that the woman he had seen was the same one that was on the tape that Al was bringing over.  Zack was becoming more overconfident, rash and dangerous as time went by.  He thought that he was untouchable and could do anything and get away with it: was losing the ability to appreciate that for every crooked official there was a thousand honest ones that could not be bought and would be only too pleased to see him arrested and put behind bars.
    Martin personally drove Wayne’s naked, bagged body out to Barton Gap, – a desolate area crowded with tumbled, sun-fractured and deeply fissured cliffs – that was several miles off the beaten track and a difficult trip even in a 4x4.
    With the corpse draped over his shoulder, Martin carefully climbed up to a point where the rock had split over millennia to form a deep arroyo, the bottom of which was permanently steeped in stygian darkness, untouched by the light or warmth of the sun.
    Removing the heavy duty plastic garbage bag from the pale, bruised body, Martin rolled the remains of Wayne Miller over the edge of the rift, to watch as it bounced off jagged outcrops, before vanishing from sight for the rest of time.
    Sitting on a flat shelf of rock and looking out at a mainly barren vista, Martin lit a cigarette and watched a lone coyote lope across the ground far below him, to skirt the SUV and zigzag out of sight behind a house-sized boulder.
    The heat prickled his weathered face as he breathed in the dry desert air and surveyed the land that he had been born and raised in.  This was his home; the place where his ancestors had lived and died, and where he knew that he would one day pass and join them. As the Navajo, the Apache feared the ghosts of the deceased, who were believed to resent the living.  The nomadic Apache buried corpses swiftly and burned the deceased’s house and possessions. The mourning family would purify itself ritually and move to a new place to escape their dead family member’s ghost.  Martin was not a particularly spiritual Indian.  He was more than happy to live well off illegal earnings, and had no regrets over the pain, suffering and deaths he was responsible for.  To his way of thinking, whites and Mexicans deserved all they got for their historical ill-treatment of Native American Indians.  But unlike Zack, he had the sense to know that it was best to keep as low a profile as possible.  Making examples of people like Sam Benton was reckless, and had now attracted trouble to their door.  Whoever this man Logan was, he had bested Miller and Foley, and had now threatened to follow that up by targeting Zack.
    Martin stubbed out the cigarette, got to his feet and made his way back down to the Chevy Suburban.  He planned on a leisurely drive back to the ranch, where he would shower and then look at the CCTV footage that Al would have dropped off.  With any luck, Logan would be with the blond.  All he had to do was locate and dispose of them both.  Logan had no idea of just how organized they were.  Zack had eyes everywhere, and very few people could just vanish off the grid in this day and age; there was always a trail to follow.  And Logan wasn’t running, which would make it even easier.

CHAPTER NINE

    Andy drove Fran’s Mazda south.
    Logan moved the front passenger seat back as far as it would go, but still felt a little cramped in the small SUV.  They stopped once at a diner for coffee and a burger, and then carried on, to pass through the ghost town of Oro Blanco, then Ruby, and deeper into the Coronado National Forest, to take a track off the blacktop on to dirt road, that after two miles they left to follow a rocky trail hardly