ABSTRACT
By all accounts Lloyd Aragon was a good highway patrolman, a sharp-eyed, toughminded state trooper who knew his way up and down his highway. Working the wide-open stretches of Interstate 40 that wind through northern New Mexico, Aragon and his police dog Barry tracked down speeders and, in keeping with the United States drug wars of the last two decades, focused especially on intercepting the shipments of marijuana and methamphetamine that flowed out of the southwest along I-40. Patrolling those long open stretches, Aragon knew what other cops and criminologists know: When it comes to drug shipments and drug busts, I-40 is a mainline vein that’s been opened up more than once in the past 20 years.
