Shatter the Night

by Emily Littlejohn

  “Has there been other trouble?” I asked. “Other incidents, besides the dynamite theft?”

  Poe wearily spit tobacco juice into a soda can and wiped his lips. “Hell, I don’t know. We’ve had a few things happen. Fistfights, drunken brawls, a couple of minor accidents. Nothing out of the ordinary, though. The mine’s been closed for nearly forty years, see; there’s a lot of old ghosts coming up out of the ground.”

  “I don’t know much about ghosts, Mr. Poe. What about the dynamite? When exactly did you notice it was missing?” Finn asked.

  “According to the time stamp on our security footage, it was stolen a week ago, last Monday. I reported the theft to Sheriff Underhill. She came out to investigate with a couple deputies, then my security team performed an internal investigation as well. We’ve purposely kept it quiet; the other employees know nothing about the theft. It’s a rather, uh, strange situation,” Poe said. He slid open a creaky desk drawer and withdrew a small flash drive. “You’ll see what I mean when we review the film.”

  Finn and I leaned forward as Poe inserted the drive into the laptop on his desk. He swiveled the monitor so that we could see the screen. From behind us, still standing, Underhill sighed and said, “Wait until you get a load of this. Why do all the nut jobs come out this time of year?”

  Frank hit a few keys on the laptop. “We store the dynamite in a secure building near the back of the mines. As you may expect, we have fairly high security measures in place—guards, cameras, that sort of thing. You have to understand that the Kenzi Corporation has invested millions into the mine, and Mr. Hayashi, the chairman, intends to keep this place safe.”

  We watched as the computer screen went from black to gray to an eerie green. It was night; the time stamp read close to midnight. The camera was pointed at the door of a large warehouse. In the corner of the screen, a fat white rabbit moved in and out of the camera’s view. Then the animal disappeared. After a long moment, a person appeared where the rabbit had been. It was hard to tell if it was a man or woman, as a hooded sweatshirt was pulled over his or her face. What was clear was that it was a large man or woman, nearly obese. The individual stood stock-still, taking in the night, then went directly to the door of the warehouse.

  Finn groaned. “Let me guess, you don’t have any visuals of their face.”

  “Nope.” Rose Underhill rolled up her newspaper and swatted at a couple of flies that had begun to buzz noisily over our heads. “And start practicing some patience, young grasshopper. Just watch the damn tape.”

  There was something lithe and deliberate, almost catlike, about the thief’s movements. He cocked his head to the side, as though thinking or listening, then bent forward. Because of the camera angle, it was impossible to see what he was doing, though I had a pretty good guess. Within a minute, the thief tossed something small over his shoulder and opened the door.

  Poe sighed and spit another stream of tobacco juice into his can. “He picked the lock. With a couple of hairpins, if you can believe it. We found them on the ground, a few feet away. You better believe my security team got their butts handed to them when I saw that they’d put such cheap and flimsy locks on the doors. Anything to save a buck. Though once inside, the thief would have found the dynamite locked behind a secure inner door. Somehow, he broke the code and gained access.”

  “I can’t tell from the footage if he’s wearing gloves,” I said. “Sheriff, did you recover prints from the pins?”

  “Nope,” Underhill muttered. “Frank, you need to do something about these flies—lay some sticky paper down or get one of those fly-eating plants. These buggers are the size of sheep testicles.”

  The video rolled another minute, then faded to black.

  Full of questions, I asked, “Where’s the rest of the tape? How long was he in the warehouse? Is there an interior camera? Do you have footage of him actually leaving with dynamite?”

  “No, no, and no.” Poe ejected the flash drive and shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got. The film is on a loop, though it shouldn’t have reset until six in the morning. Theoretically, we should have captured footage of him leaving with the explosives. But something happened with the camera; we’re not sure what.”

  “So there’s no evidence he actually did steal the dynamite.” Finn raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Could he have tampered with the system?”

  “No.” Poe shook his head emphatically. “We’re certain—okay, fairly certain—that he didn’t sabotage the security system. Also, we found tracks on an old dirt road just north of the mine; my security team, and Sheriff Underhill, determined this guy came in on that road. There are sensors back there, along the edge of the property, but he evaded them. It’s clear to me that he’s a pro. There’s more. You saw that rabbit at the beginning of the tape?”

  I nodded, not sure I wanted to hear more.

  “We found him next to the hairpins, dead. Poor guy’s neck was broken.”

  I bit my lip, thinking of the moments when both rabbit and thief were offscreen.

  Finn asked, “How much dynamite was stolen?”

  “About twenty pounds, plus a dozen detonators,” Poe said. “We were lucky even to have that much on hand. We keep some on reserve, but these days we tend to stick with aboveground pit mining practices. It’s cheaper; less manpower required. Hell of a lot safer, too. Most operators around here just aren’t using dynamite anymore.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard dynamite referred to, at least in a roundabout way, as an out-of-date explosive,” I said. “Why is that?”

  Poe scratched his head. “Well, it comes down to the fact that there’s product with better control out there. Used to be dynamite was all there was. Now, our techniques are much more sophisticated, our explosives higher quality. Refinement is the name of the game.”

  Sheriff Underhill slammed her newspaper down on the desk and we all jumped.

  “Got it!” She lifted the paper and exposed the remains of an enormous blackfly, now just another mark on the scarred and messy desk. “So, Detectives, what do you think? Is twenty pounds of dynamite enough to blow up a car? My research tells me it is more than enough. In fact, I’d bet your bomber didn’t use all of it. If he had, a couple of houses would have come down, too.”

  Poe nodded in agreement. “That, ladies and gentlemen, should be the scariest thing of all … you could be looking at a second explosion soon, another victim.”

  A mad bomber? Finn and I exchanged looks. If Caleb’s murder had been random and unconnected to the threats he’d received, then finding the perp would be that much harder.

  My gut continued to tell me the opposite was true, though; that Caleb’s murder was deliberate, his death very much foreshadowed in the letters he’d received.

  Poe handed us a stack of printouts. “Well, here are the screen shots from the video footage. I’ll email you a copy of the file, if you like.”

  “Thanks.” I flipped through the images, once more struck by the professionalism of the thief. The way he evaded getting his face on camera; his ease at accessing the dynamite.

  And the hooded sweatshirt he wore.

  Finn read my mind. “The sweatshirt looks the same, but this guy has a hundred pounds on the man we chased in the alley.”

  “We could be looking for two suspects. Let’s get back to Cedar Valley.”

  As Finn and I drove away, Frank Poe and Sheriff Rose Underhill stood on the steps of the trailer, their arms raised in two identical waves. In town, the boy in the grocery store door and the dog in the church lot were both gone. My car’s wheels left dust and dirt clouds behind us that trailed up into the air and then disappeared.

  Suddenly an enormous turkey vulture set down in the road ahead of us, pecking at a splatter of roadkill. I slowed down and honked. After another few nibbles, the bird flew off with a ferocious beating of its wings, the intestines of a squirrel hanging from its talons.

  “Hell of a town,” Finn muttered.

&nb
sp; I stepped on the gas. “Hell of a town.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was early afternoon by the time we arrived back in Cedar Valley. We grabbed lunch from a Greek deli and ate it in the station, at our desks. I barely tasted the pungent feta cheese and olives in my Greek salad; a ticking clock had perched itself on my shoulder and though I couldn’t explain it, I knew with every fiber in my being that we hadn’t seen the last of the bomber.

  It was more than the fact that the thief stole more dynamite than was used in Caleb’s death. It was the sense that we were standing at the edge of a dark chasm, just beginning to see tiny pinpricks of light, of understanding, at the bottom.

  We had a long way to go.

  “He’s going to strike again, Finn,” I said around a mouthful of tomatoes. “He, or they, didn’t do all of this, the theft, the extensive planning it took to kill Caleb, only to disappear.”

  Finn finished chewing his sandwich. “But when? And where? And what’s his objective? We should go back to the threats Caleb received. See if there’s anything there.”

  “Maybe Jimmy has narrowed down the list of names I gave him.” I paged the intern and he appeared a few minutes later, a thick stack of reports under his arm.

  “It’s like a tomb in that closet; I never see the sun. I love it but I’m turning into a vampire, I swear. So … I take it you want to know what I’ve found out so far?” Jimmy pulled up a chair and crossed his long, gangly legs. “There are some messed-up people in the world, are you aware of that? Yeah, yeah…’course you are. I checked all the names of defendants that went before Judge Caleb Montgomery during his tenure. I started with the county death records first and was able to eliminate maybe twenty percent. Then I looked at prison records; there’s another forty percent or so still incarcerated.”

  “So … about forty percent of the men and women Caleb saw in his courtroom are both alive and out of prison?” I asked, thinking about the hundreds of names on my initial list.

  “Well, it’s probably less, when you really think about it. I only checked Colorado state prisons and county records,” Jimmy replied.

  “Of course. Which doesn’t tell us much.” Finn groaned. “If Joe Smith got arrested in Florida or died in Texas, we wouldn’t necessarily know about it.”

  “Correct.” Jimmy nodded. “Unless you want me to run the names through the DOJ database. It will take some time … but it could shorten your list significantly. A lot of these guys, they don’t stay out of prison long.”

  “Yes, please do, though I suppose the threats could have been mailed from anywhere, then routed through Boulder. Knowing Joe Smith is in a Florida jail doesn’t mean we can eliminate him,” I said.

  Jimmy scowled. “It’s worse than that. What about family members? Just because Joe Smith is dead, maybe his son or wife sent those letters.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Good point. What if we’re on the right track and Caleb’s death is just the beginning? Think about how many people intersect with a single case during the investigation, trial, and sentencing: the arresting officer, other police personnel, the victims and their families, the judge, the court employees, the prison guards, even probation officers.”

  “Until the killer strikes again, we’ll be searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Let’s put aside Montgomery’s former cases for a moment and do the same with his current legal practice.” Finn rolled his shoulders, exhaled. “We’ve been assuming the threats he received were related to his career, but let’s look at the man personally. What were his hobbies? Was he seeing someone? How did he spend his time?”

  “If anyone knows, it’s Bull.” I called my grandfather, explained what we were interested in, and put him on speakerphone. Jimmy and Finn crowded in. “Okay, we’re all here.”

  Bull cleared his throat. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  I asked him the same questions Finn had posed. Bull was silent a long time, then finally said, “Well, let’s see. Caleb loved his work, he really did. He loved the law, loved the logic and the purity of it. I know that sounds strange, but he felt in this crazy world we live in, the law was steadfast, made up of principles a man could count on.”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes and I remembered hearing he’d done a semester of law school at some point. The intern asked impatiently, “What about outside of work?”

  “Caleb was a true outdoorsman. Fly-fishing was his great love, though he enjoyed hiking, playing cards, or settling in with a good British spy novel and a bottle of scotch,” Bull said. “Is that the sort of thing you mean? I’m not sure what else I can tell you.”

  Bull sounded as though he were reciting the obituary of a beloved uncle. It was all true, but none of it helped our case.

  “This is good stuff. But we’re looking for a motive for murder. You told me on the night Caleb died that you believed he was seeing someone.” I held my breath and crossed my fingers. “Do you know who?”

  On the other end of the line, Bull sighed. “I don’t know. I may have been wrong, Gem. There was a spring in his step, if you know what I mean, the last month or so. Someone, or something, was making him smile.”

  I thought a moment, then asked, “Could it have been a case? We’ve been unable to get into his current files. His paralegal is protecting attorney–client privilege. She’s offered to review them, see if anything jumps out, but to be honest, they sound like run-of-the-mill small-town issues. Contentious divorces, disputed wills, that sort of thing.”

  “We rarely discussed work.” Bull’s voice sounded weary, frustrated. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t know anything else. For as close as I thought Caleb and I were, there’s a lot he kept private.”

  “I understand. You’ve been helpful, Bull. I’ll talk to you later.” I ended the call and sat back, stared at Jimmy and Finn. “Well? What do you think?”

  Jimmy tapped a pen against his chin, leaving a small blue dot of ink behind. “There’s a woman. There’s got to be, I’m certain of it.”

  I said, “Okay. I’ll play. Why do you think that?”

  “Look, people kill for three reasons, right? Greed, passion, and power. That’s it. Let’s look at greed first. Who benefits financially from Montgomery’s death? His wife. But she’s already got the house and she doesn’t seem the type. Plus, from the sounds of it, the family money comes from her side, anyways. Let’s skip passion for a moment and examine power: again, who gains power from Montgomery’s death? The paralegal? One of his clients?” Jimmy paused a moment, looked at us for an answer, then quickly moved on. “I don’t think so; both the paralegal and his clients stand to lose the most, in fact, with his death. It would be a different story if Montgomery hadn’t retired; if that was the case, then I’d say a big red circle needs to go around Judge Gloria Dumont. But he was retired, and Dumont is on the bench, so she as well gains nothing from his death. Which leaves us with passion. He’s been messing around with the wrong woman. Maybe he wouldn’t marry her. Or he was going to end it. She stewed for a while, growing angrier and angrier. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She loved the judge, but if she couldn’t have him, no one could. So she arranged the hit.”

  The intern paused again. He stared at me, then at Finn. “Well? How did I do?”

  “I think I saw the movie. You should have stuck with law school; you spin a fine story,” Finn said, a patronizing look in his eyes. “Gemma, you want to take the first stab?”

  I shrugged. “Why not. Here’s the thing, Jimmy. Passion can be born of love or hate. If Caleb was seeing someone, maybe the woman’s husband took him out. Or perhaps, as we’ve considered, this was an act of revenge, a killing born from absolute all-consuming hatred. Greed … with the right businesses in place, the potential property value on the south end of Main Street could be worth millions. There are developers who have been harassing homeowners and businesses for years, trying to get them to sell. Caleb and Edith Montgomery bought the house he used for his legal offices fifteen years ago as an investm
ent property. And power? It’s the stickiest of your three motives. Power comes in many different shapes and colors, Jimmy, not the least of which is knowledge. What if Caleb was killed for something he knew? Some secret he’s protected all these years?”

  Jimmy blushed and hung his head. I leaned over and patted his knee. “Hey … it’s a great start. And I agree, it sounds as though there might be a woman involved in this. But one of the things we have to do as detectives is keep our eyes open. Going into a case with only three motives in mind blinds us to other possibilities. Do you want to take a shot and see if you can track down Caleb’s possible lover? I’d start with the paralegal. Support staff know everything that goes in their bosses’ lives; she could tell you if he had frequent off-site lunches, or late meetings.”

  The color faded from Jimmy’s cheeks and he sat up straighter. After a moment, he grinned and said, “Sure. I can do that. I would like to say, though, for the record, that all motives for murder really can be tied back to the three I listed. Just like there are only six core stories that make up all the literature in the world. We like to make things complex but at the end of the day, humans aren’t that complicated.”

  Jimmy stood and ambled off to his closet. Finn smirked. “Where did we find this guy?”

  I shrugged. “Where do we find any of our interns? They appear out of the blue and sell Chavez a story he can’t refuse. Our chief has the heart of a nun, Finn. He’s like Sister Maria from The Sound of Music with thousand-dollar loafers and fifteen rounds in a Glock 22.”

  Finn burst out laughing. “Now there’s an image I’m not likely to forget for some time. But seriously, you really think a woman could be behind this murder? I know I threw Edith Montgomery’s name out there, but a car bomb detonated by a sniper’s rifle seems a bit out of character for the fairer sex.”

  “You’re as bad as Jimmy. Talk about a narrow perspective. Women can be just as vicious, just as violent as men. Ever hear of Lizzie Borden?”