Finn took it personally.
The chief drove the three of us to City Hall in his personal car. It was a short ride, just a couple of minutes, but long enough for me to acquire a small case of nerves. I hadn’t yet met the mayor, and in fact still thought of her as “new,” though she’d been in office nearly a year. Based on the way the chief’s jaw was set and his eyes narrowed, I didn’t think we were in for anything good.
We parked, hustled inside, and jogged up the stairs to the city council chambers. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the town, but the stunning view was the last thing on my mind as I took in the people already in the room. Fire Chief Max Teller, Fire Investigator Liv Ramirez, the city manager, and his assistants. A few department heads sat around the table, their expressions glum.
We’d just taken seats when Mayor Betty Cabot stepped into the room. There was a collective tightening up in the shoulders of the group and I wondered at the power this petite woman yielded. Nearly seventy years old, barely five feet tall, and on her fourth marriage, she favored turquoise-colored snakeskin cowboy boots and heavy silver jewelry. She was infamous for carrying four things with her at all times, most often in the enormous purse she lugged around: a wallet brimming with cash; a pistol; a bottle of tequila; and a tiny terrier named Dixie.
Cabot had been overheard saying there wasn’t a problem on God’s good Earth that couldn’t be solved by money, a gun, a dog, or a drink, or some combination thereof.
When I thought about it, I figured she was probably right.
Mayor Cabot nodded to the room and took a seat at the head of the table. At her feet, Dixie let out a mighty bark then settled down. The mayor opened the meeting without preamble. “I understand the body has been identified?”
Chavez took the first question. “Good morning, Mayor. Yes, as we initially suspected, Caleb Montgomery was killed yesterday in the car explosion outside his law offices.”
“Well, shit.” Cabot wasn’t one to mince words. “Any suspects?”
Chavez shook his head. “No, Mayor. It’s early days yet, though we do have one avenue to investigate. Over the last few months, Montgomery received a number of threatening letters. We’ll look into them, of course. And as I understand it, Chief Teller’s team has been working nonstop through the night to put together a preliminary report. Lengthier findings, of course, will take a few days.”
“Of course.” The mayor swiveled in her chair and stared at Teller. “Chief? What can you tell us?”
Teller cleared his throat and straightened his tie. I began to feel underdressed in my jeans and boots, though I’d had no way of knowing I’d be called into a meeting like this. And besides, I reminded myself, the mayor herself was in cowboy boots.
Turquoise cowboy boots. With crystals on the spurs.
Teller said, “Thank you, ma’am. As Chief Chavez said, my team hasn’t stopped working since the explosion. I’d like to introduce Fire Investigator Olivia Ramirez, a top-notch employee. She’s prepared to share her initial thoughts. Investigator, if you would, please?”
Ramirez stood, assumed a ramrod posture, and clasped her hands behind her back and pivoted so that she was facing Cabot. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mayor. Bomb scene investigations take time, and I don’t want to offer any preconceived notions until we have forensic evidence, so I’ll be brief. My initial findings are that the blast effects and component fragments found in the deceased indicate a homemade bomb composed of sawdust and nitroglycerin: dynamite. The crater under the vehicle and other trace evidence would seem to confirm this.”
“Soldier? At ease. This is not a combat situation, though the city manager might disagree.” Cabot winked at the group. “So Montgomery, when he turned the key in the ignition, the dynamite detonated?”
Ramirez relaxed her stance. “Thank you, Mayor. No, I don’t believe we’ll find that Judge Montgomery was responsible for igniting the detonator. Witnesses in the vicinity of the scene report hearing a gunshot immediately before the explosion. I believe the killer detonated the bomb with a well-placed bullet. He’s a professional, whoever he is. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s spent time in the military, maybe special operations.”
“He or she,” Cabot murmured.
Ramirez’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“You implied the suspect is a man. That’s quite an assumption, considering we don’t have a suspect yet,” Cabot said. She turned to Chavez, in effect dismissing Ramirez. “Chief, what are your thoughts? Do we need to get the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives out here? You can all guess how I feel about the feds, but those boys in black get things done.”
Ramirez stepped back, her face flushed, and took her seat. She noticed me watching her and stared back, eyes defiant.
Chavez hemmed and hawed, unusually indecisive. “We’ve alerted ATF already, of course. The Denver field office is tied up with a large arson investigation in a neighboring suburb, but they thought they could send someone up here in the next day or two. As Investigator Ramirez stated, this investigation will take some time anyway. Based on what I know so far, it sounds as though she and her team are on the right track. The perp may have construction or mining in his or her background. Or, as the investigator suggested, perhaps even military.”
The mayor stood up and began to pace at the head of the table, back and forth, back and forth. The room was silent until she spoke again. “You may find this hard to believe, but I myself am a veteran. Lieutenant, United States Navy. While I find Investigator Ramirez’s theory solid, here’s where I get hung up: dynamite is, as my grandkids like to say about anything born or used before the year 2000, ‘old school.’ It is a sensitive, easily combustible substance, infrequently used outside of demolition and mining operations these days. In contrast, the military, rightly so, prefers to use explosives that will go off when, and only when, they are supposed to. We like precision with our bombs. So, I’d lean toward a mining contractor over military. And that leaves you with a hell of a lot of places to look. This state was built on the backbones and blood of miners.”
“Excellent point, Mayor,” Fire Chief Teller said. “I’ll tell you where I’m getting stuck. Why use dynamite, or any explosive, at all? If the killer is such an excellent shot, why not just take Montgomery out with a rifle? Is he … or she … sending us a message?”
It was a valid question, and one to which none of us had an answer.
We spent the next half hour listening to the mayor and the city manager stress the importance of a quick collar. As if we didn’t know. But we sat there, nodding our heads, smiling politely and looking concerned at all the right moments, until at last we were dismissed.
Chiefs Chavez and Teller walked out ahead of Finn and me, so we hung back a few feet to give them privacy as they talked. As we reached the front entrance of City Hall, Liv Ramirez appeared at my side.
“Well, that was fun,” she said. “That old bird handed my ass to me on a platter. I should have known she was Navy, uptight chick like that.”
“Sounded to me like she was sold on your findings,” I said.
“My findings, sure. It’s hard to disagree with facts. But my theory … she didn’t agree with that,” Ramirez said. She sighed and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “I’m telling you, this reeks of military. Black ops stuff, real deep junk.”
Finn scoffed. “Caleb Montgomery, while a hell of a nice guy, was a small-town, two-bit judge. Give me one reason a covert operation would be put together with the intent of assassinating him.”
We were outside now, close to the parking lot. City employees and citizens walked by us without a second glance; we were just another couple of cogs in the wheel.
Ramirez stopped walking. “My ride’s over there. You asked why someone would put together a covert operation to assassinate a retired judge. You’re missing the point. This wasn’t covert. If it was, the judge would have been found drowned in his bathtub, or dead of a supposed heart attack. We wo
uldn’t have ever known anyone was here. Bomb like this, while professional, is also crude. And that means it’s traceable. No … you’re not looking for an operation. You’re looking for a lone wolf.”
Chapter Six
The chief ordered a couple of pizzas to be delivered for the team. We ate the piping-hot slices from Chevy’s Pizzeria standing up, strategizing our next steps in light of Ramirez’s preliminary findings. It was all hands on deck, so Detectives Louis Moriarty and his partner, Lucas Armstrong, joined us as well. The two Lou’s had a combined seventy years of law enforcement experience between them. Physically, they were complete opposites: Moriarty was a beefy red-faced man nearing seventy whose great-grandparents had arrived at Ellis Island straight from the Emerald Isle. His only son had been killed years before and he had long ago divorced.
The job was his life.
Armstrong, on the other hand, was a former linebacker from Alabama. Ten or fifteen years ago, when he’d moved here, his had been one of three black families in town. Thankfully, Cedar Valley had grown a bit more diverse and his girls were now a couple of grown women; Maggie was living at home while she studied for the law school entrance exam, and the younger, Megan, was in school in Denver but came home every few weeks for a quick visit. They were a tight-knit family. For Armstrong, law enforcement had been a calling. He took the job seriously, but it wasn’t his be-all and end-all. That was going home every night to his wife and daughters in no worse shape than he’d left them in the morning.
Though physically and philosophically opposites, Armstrong and Moriarty made a solid team. And we could certainly use all the help we could get. A car bomb was big and the investigation truly would touch a number of departments.
Armstrong spoke first. “So, Chief … what do you think the chances are of ATF actually sending someone?”
Chavez leaned forward, careful to avoid getting any pizza grease on his silk tie. “I’d say fifty-fifty. My understanding is that Olivia Ramirez is part of a national task force on bomb scene investigations. They feel like she’s probably got things under control.”
“How does someone with her background end up here?”
Chavez shrugged. “This is all secondhand, but word on the street is that she’s got issues with authority. But she’s good, very good, and Chief Teller owed someone a favor. To be honest, she’s a coup, a triple win in terms of diversity: female, veteran, Hispanic. It’ll be good for the fire department, for the town, to have her on board. Hell, I could see her making deputy someday, if she learns to walk the straight and narrow.”
“A rebel after my own heart.” Finn wiped his hands on a napkin, then casually asked, “She got any family? Husband, kids?”
For the first time since the pizza arrived, Moriarty took a break from chowing down and said, “Nope. She’s unattached and very much looking.”
“How do you know all this stuff? An attractive woman shows up and you guys put together a dossier on her? It’s disgusting,” I said. I paused, fully aware that Moriarty was probably champing at the bit to take my place on the Montgomery case should things get too personal, then added harshly, “She’s a colleague. Show some respect.”
“Hey!” Moriarty’s face flushed. “No disrespect meant. She’s renting the apartment above my garage. We share an affinity for a cold beer in the evening. She’s told me things. The lady’s just trying to make a fresh start, that’s all. Her time in the military really messed with her head. She’s lonely. To be honest, she could use a friend, Monroe. A female friend. A confidante.”
With that, all eyes in the room swung to me.
“Fine. I’ll see if she wants to be pals.” I set down my plate and purposely took a step back from the table. There were still two slices of mozzarella with pineapple and pepperoncini in the box, but I knew I’d regret one more bite. “Now can we get back to the case at hand? How do you want to do this?”
We decided that Finn and I would go to the Tate Lodge Inn and search Caleb’s rooms, while Moriarty and Armstrong would do Caleb’s law office.
Finn and I drove to the Tate and parked near the expansive front lawn. In place of the usual Adirondack chairs and lawn games was a spooky cemetery of cardboard tombs and a few open caskets, their occupants jangly-looking plastic skeletons. The Tate threw an annual adults-only Halloween party, an event that was infamous for both the outrageous costumes and the fistfights that inevitably occurred. Last night’s event had been unusually subdued, according to the logs I’d skimmed that morning.
As promised, there was a key waiting for us at the front desk. Even the staff was still in the spirit of things; the man who slipped us the key was dressed as a mummy.
Caleb’s rooms were on the fifth floor, the Tate’s highest, and were what amounted to a penthouse suite. Housekeeping had been ordered to leave the room as it was, and unless Caleb’s killer had crept through here late last night, we were the first to enter the room. We took a quick walk through: two bedrooms, a small kitchenette and living area, and a bathroom. The décor was typical lodge style, with dark wooden furniture, red-and-brown plaid pillows, and heavy quilts in the bedrooms.
“Where do you want to start?” Finn slipped on a pair of gloves and handed me a second pair. “Bathroom?”
“Fine.” I examined the items on the cluttered vanity as Finn peered in the cabinets, behind the shower curtain, even in the toilet tank. “Sleeping pills … prescription antacids … Viagra.”
Finn groaned. “Getting old sucks.”
“No kidding. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here. Let’s move on.”
We left the bathroom and went to the larger of the two bedrooms. There, the bed remained unmade. A pair of boxer shorts and a crumpled white undershirt hung halfway off the bed. In the nightstand were a couple of paperback novels, a photo album, and a bottle of melatonin.
“Check this out.” I held the album up, slowly flipping through the pages. “It’s Edith and Caleb’s wedding album. Galveston, Texas. Looks like an expensive party. I seem to recall that Edith came from a very wealthy family. Oil money, maybe.”
Half of a photograph fell from the album. I picked it up, surprised at what I saw. Or rather, what I didn’t see. “Look at this.”
It was Caleb, Edith, and a third person standing together under a palm tree. Caleb and Edith were smiling, but it was impossible to know anything about the man other than he wore a heavy silver ring on his hand and a navy-blue suit. The rest of him had been cleanly ripped away.
Finn asked, “Who’s the guy and who ripped the photograph?”
“Edith would know.” I slipped the photograph into an evidence envelope.
Finn knelt and checked under the beds, feeling around for something—anything—tucked into the mattresses or pillows. “There’s nothing here. Why would there be? It’s like I said: if there’s something to find, we’ll find it at the Montgomery house or the law offices.”
We were nearly done with the suite when Lucas Armstrong called. “I just got off the phone with Edith Montgomery. The house is ours to search if we want.”
“Really? She just offered it up like that?” I relayed the news to Finn and he spun a finger in a circle: let’s go.
Armstrong said, “Yes. Mrs. Montgomery knows the deal; she knew we’d come knocking sooner or later. So it’s easy-peasy and let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. It would have been like pulling teeth to get Judge Dumont to sign off on anything.”
“I agree. Okay, we’ll wrap things up here and head over there. Did you find anything at the law offices?”
“No. The paralegal met us there, let us in. She was understandably upset, sobbing the whole time. Anyway, there’s this little thing, you might have heard of it, called attorney–client privilege. The warrant spelled it out real clear: we had a very narrow and specific scope of what we could look for.”
“Sure.” I thought of something and said it out loud: “Why didn’t the killer bomb the office itself? Seems less risky than the car. Or rather, more sta
ble. Houses don’t move. There’s more places to hide the explosives.”
Armstrong replied, “I wondered about that, too. Who knows what goes through these idiots’ heads?”
This is no idiot we’re chasing, I thought as I hung up.
We met Armstrong and Moriarty outside the Montgomery mansion on Fifth Street. In the light of day, the witch on the front door didn’t seem quite as terrifying, though I was certain she had changed position slightly.
Maybe it was the wind.
Edith’s half brother, Tom Gearhart, let us into the house. He explained that Edith was napping in a guest bedroom on the third floor, and asked if we could save that room for last. He avoided any mention of his film career, instead staring at us with baleful eyes still bruised and shadowed from his surgery.
He was different today, more subdued.
Armstrong and Finn took the second floor, while Moriarty and I tackled the first.
We started in the living room. Moriarty gazed at the artwork, the furniture. “Geez, get a load of this place. It’s like a museum. Though you’ve been here a lot, haven’t you?”
“Not lately. More when I was a child. Edith used to throw the most incredible parties—Halloween, Christmas. Fourth of July was spectacular; we could see the fireworks on Lookout Mountain from a balcony on their third floor.” I lifted the hood of the piano and felt underneath for anything unusual. I wasn’t even sure what we might be looking for; a secret diary, perhaps, or the rest of the torn photograph we’d found.
I moved on from the piano to the framed paintings on the wall while Moriarty peeked behind curtains and under sofa cushions. Pulling my hair back into a high ponytail, I added, “Looking back, it was incredibly dangerous; that balcony is nothing more than some wrought-iron posts and a waist-high railing. But we were encouraged, practically pushed, up there. ‘Best seats in the house.’”
“The craziest folks I’ve ever met are the rich ones. They don’t follow the same rules we do, Monroe. It’s a different playbook altogether,” Moriarty said. We moved on from the living room, taking our time in the library, then the kitchen, then the glass-encased solarium, where a beautiful macaw parrot on a wooden swing greeted us. An astonishing array of plants, many of them tropical, filled the room, giving it the look and smell of a secret garden.
Shatter the Night Page 7
