Dead Point (Maggie Blackthorne Book 1)

by LaVonne Griffin-Valade

  Several minutes passed before Asa Larkin opened the door. “What is it now?”

  Bach held up the judge’s order. “A warrant to search your property, including any vehicles, outbuildings, and all residences. In the meantime, we need to pat you down for weapons.”

  “You already have my pistol.”

  Hollis stepped forward and conducted the body search. He nodded to Al.

  “We’ll also be questioning you and your men,” Bach announced.

  “Wayne’s in Burns buying supplies.” There was a childish testiness to Asa Larkin’s voice.

  “We don’t mind waiting,” Al assured him. “Now, would you summon the Vickers men? You’ll all wait here with Trooper Taylor while we search the mobile homes.”

  On a panel next to the front door, Larkin punched two call buttons labeled “J.V.” and “R.V.”

  “Let’s move into the next room, sir.” Taylor walked toward the dining room to the right of and behind the living room. I nudged Larkin forward and followed after.

  The dining room was a good choice. White walls, black marble dining table, and six black Windsor chairs that looked uncomfortable as hell. A space even more sterile and cold than Larkin’s ultra-modern living room, except for the framed artwork hanging on the east wall. I hadn’t noticed it before: Frederic Remington’s The Fall of the Cowboy.

  There was something to consider in that choice of painting, its dark hues, the image of two free-roaming drovers resigned to a fenced-in world, the implication of that metaphor. But I would have afterward to chew over Larkin’s perceptions of the world.

  Larkin sat in one of the Windsor chairs without protest. “I’ll need to call my attorney. He’s staying at that historic hotel in Prairie City.”

  “Of course, sir. Give me his name and I’ll make the call.”

  I had to admit, Taylor really was good at this.

  John and Ruben Vickers, wearing their stiff Western hats and their cheap lookalike outfits, entered the main house. Something in their faces telegraphed an utter lack of surprise at finding two cops in the living room and another two in the adjacent dining room.

  “What’s going on?” John Vickers finally called out to Larkin.

  “Ask the homicide detective there.” He indicated Bach.

  The brothers exchanged glances. “What’s this about, Detective?” John, apparently the more talkative one, asked.

  “Search warrant.” Al held up the document.

  Vickers notched up the volume on his baritone. “Based on what?”

  “John,” Larkin said, “let’s just get this over with.”

  “The judge granted a warrant to search everything on the ranch premises. Are your mobile homes unlocked?” Bach asked.

  Both men nodded.

  Al pointed to the dining room. “You’ll wait in there with Mr. Larkin.”

  Hollis and I each frisked one of the Vickers men. Again, something in their demeanor made me think they weren’t surprised the cops had shown up. Not resigned to it exactly, but always open to the possibility.

  Taylor drew two empty Windsor chairs slightly away from the table. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  “And for the present, all of you need to turn over your phones to Trooper Taylor,” Bach said, nodding toward Mark.

  22

  Afternoon, March 1

  Al led Hollis and me outside to Larkin’s front porch, where the wind had settled into a light breeze punctuated by intermittent gusts. “Any thoughts about Mr. Larkin or the Vickers men just now?”

  “Did anyone else think the brothers seemed kind of blasé about four cops showing up?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure that was it, but there was something,” Hollis said.

  Bach shrugged. “Let’s get on with it. I’ll take the first mobile home, Hollis you take the second, and Maggie the far one.”

  We all donned latex gloves, and Al handed out evidence bags.

  A tabby cat the spitting image of Louie scrambled outside when I opened the metal door of the third double-wide. Inside it smelled of fried eggs and bacon, a cover for the litter box odor and the extra-full trash can in the kitchen corner. The double sink was piled with dirty dishes, which were also stacked and strewn about the countertop. I opened and inspected the cupboards and the mostly empty drawers. I noted the bills, recipes, and snapshots pinned to the refrigerator by magnets. One photo showed Wayne Smith standing between two young women, maybe his daughters or nieces.

  The small dining table was largely free of debris except for a small stack of Blue Mountain Eagle newspapers all turned to the crossword puzzle page. Unless the man had cheated, I could see he was pretty good at word sleuthing. I browsed every issue, looking for any articles that might have been circled or cut out. Finding none, I moved on.

  Multiple coats, hats, and boots were stored in the closet between the kitchen and the living room. I checked pockets, looked under hats, and shook the air out of his boots and a couple of empty shoe boxes.

  The living room itself was much cleaner, less littered, and nearly bare of furniture, as though he mainly occupied the kitchen/dining room. The section of the built-in entertainment center where a television was supposed to be ensconced sat empty. I’d noticed the main house didn’t seem to have a TV either. Maybe Larkin had banned them or refused to shell out for a satellite dish.

  Down the hallway was a second door to the outside and a small bedroom, empty and obviously unused. The main bathroom across the hall included a laundry closet with a washer and dryer, but otherwise appeared to be for guests only.

  The master bedroom at the back of the double-wide was where Smith slept and dumped his clothes. I inspected the articles of clothing strewn about and examined the few items hanging in the large closet.

  I hesitated to explore the master bath given Smith’s lack of tidiness in the kitchen/dining area. By comparison, it was barely messy and came equipped with a separate tub and shower, a double sink, and a relatively clean toilet. In the adjoining linen closet, he stored towels, toiletries, cleaning supplies, a locked file box, and a loaded Beretta M9.

  With no other rooms left to search, I placed the semiautomatic handgun in my evidence bag and carried it and the file box to the front door. Through the door’s small window, I watched Wayne Smith shuffling, head down, toward his mobile home and away from his Pathfinder parked on the gravel driveway. He couldn’t have missed our police vehicles where we’d left them a quarter mile down the road.

  I set the evidence bag and file box on the floor and unsnapped my Glock holster. Opened the front door and stepped outside. “Mr. Smith,” I called.

  He peered up from his study of the frozen earth beneath his feet and stood stock-still. The look on his face was one of both surprise and curiosity. “Why are you on my porch?”

  Smith didn’t appear to have noticed Hollis and Al approaching from his left.

  “I’m Detective Bach, Oregon State Police homicide unit.” He pointed to where I stood on the small deck outside Smith’s front door. “This is Sergeant Blackthorne and Trooper Jones beside me.”

  Smith jerked and faced Bach. “What’s this about?”

  “We have a warrant to search the premises of Mr. Larkin’s ranch, including your mobile home and vehicle.” Again, he held up the warrant. “We’re going to check you for weapons and then sequester you with the other men in the main house.”

  “You said homicide? What are you looking for?”

  “Mr. Smith, place your hands above your head.” Hollis patted him down. “Come with me.”

  While Hollis delivered Smith to the dining room of the main house, I joined Al in the yard.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing of interest in either of the other double-wides.”

  Hollis stepped from the front porch of the ranch house and rejoined us. “Detective Bach probably told you we came up empty. How about you?”

  “A loaded Beretta and a locked file box. I left them inside Smith�
�s place for the time being.”

  “The Beretta’s interesting, anyway,” Hollis said.

  “I figured the file box might be locked for a reason.” I scanned the three double-wides. “Did you check the exteriors?”

  They indicated they had.

  “I was about to do that when I saw Smith walking across the yard.”

  While Bach and Hollis went through Smith’s Pathfinder, I searched his back porch and his front deck. But we all found nada.

  I pointed toward the new metal barn and the green-apple Bronco, a good hundred feet away. “I’m going through their rig again.”

  Bach didn’t ask about the again part, and we all marched to the Bronco. Even with a legal, more professional once-over, it came up clean.

  With our rigs parked a quarter of a mile away, we agreed it was safer to leave the evidence bag containing Smith’s weapon and file box inside his double-wide. All three of us were anxious about the time, eager to get the interviews underway, but Al wanted to search the ranch house first.

  The four men detained in the dining room appeared restless, or in the case of Wayne Smith, flummoxed. I pulled Taylor aside and asked how things were faring.

  “Mr. Larkin’s attorney hasn’t responded to my phone calls yet, and he apparently checked out of his hotel room.”

  “Is that making Larkin nervous?”

  “Oh, yeah. Also, everybody wants to use the facilities.”

  “You go first, then I’ll watch the others while you escort them one at a time. Search the bathroom while you’re in there, then search it after everybody’s done their business,” I said.

  Al and Hollis had paired off to comb through the second floor. Once Larkin and his men were all back around the dining table and Taylor had given the all clear on the main-floor bathroom, I began my search of the dining room.

  I’d never been in such a home, every space meticulously clean, the walls painted white, all of it in line with Larkin’s cold, sterile, and expensive preferences for furniture and art. The Remington in the dining room might have been the exception, not for its muted grays but because it was anything but contemporary in the extreme.

  “Be careful with that,” Larkin said as I inspected The Fall of the Cowboy.

  “Is it an original?” I asked.

  He hesitated, as though he’d never thought to wonder about its authenticity. “I believe so.”

  After inspecting the massive black china hutch in the dining room, I moved to the adjoining kitchen. I examined drawers, cupboards, appliances, and the separate pantry. From the pantry, I slipped out the back door to the old-timey wraparound porch. There were no fancy Roche Bobois deck pieces, or austere sculptures, or anything futuristic. Just one of those tan plastic containers near the hose bib made to resemble a wooden box, including the molded, wood grain effect. I lifted the lid. Lying atop the requisite green garden hose were two more Beretta 9s.

  Hauling the guns in an evidence bag, I followed the porch around to the front door, where I reentered the ranch house, turned a swift right to cross through the living room, and began hurriedly climbing the stairs to the second floor.

  I heard the shattering of glass at the top of the staircase before the shot registered. The shooter had missed me but killed the black Euro light sconce on the wall above me.

  Hollis and Al drew their weapons, giving me cover as I crawled the rest of the way to the landing.

  Where was Taylor? What had happened to Taylor? Fuck, what had I missed bolting to the second floor?

  “They have Mark’s Glock somehow,” Hollis whispered.

  I pulled myself up from the floor of the wide landing. The weapon hadn’t been fired before the sconce was blown away, so Taylor hadn’t been shot, at least.

  “Trooper Taylor!” I shouted down to the first floor.

  “His gun is being pointed barrel-first at his skull.” By now I recognized the cultivated lilt of that voice. Larkin.

  I caught the thud of a wallop to the gut that followed, Larkin crying out in pain, and an expensive Windsor chair splintering against the hardwood floor of the dining room.

  “For the time being, Officer Tootles is coming with us,” one of the Vickers men called from the living room directly beneath the second-floor landing.

  I looked at Al, shook my head, and pulled my gun from its holster. “That’s not how this is going to play out, Vickers.”

  “Then we’ve got a big problem.”

  Bach, Hollis, and I stood at the edge of the landing braced against the banister, our weapons held in plain view. We could see that John Vickers indeed had the Glock pressed against the back of Taylor’s head. Ruben Vickers stood behind them.

  I leaned cautiously over the railing. “I’d say it’s you two with the problem.”

  The brothers conferred quietly.

  John Vickers stepped further out into the living room to give the three of us on the landing a better view of captor and captive. Taylor, with his hands laced at the back of his neck, walked ahead of Vickers.

  “They jumped me after hearing you go out the back door to the porch, Sergeant.”

  Vickers jabbed Taylor in the back with the gun barrel. “Cut the fucking chitchat.”

  Ruben Vickers stepped cautiously toward the front door.

  “My brother is going to pull up in Wayne’s Pathfinder. Meanwhile, Officer Tootles and I are going to follow him slowly and wait by the door.”

  “Put the gun down and release Trooper Taylor,” Bach directed.

  “That’s not happening.” Vickers pressed the pistol to Taylor’s ear.

  “Are you doing okay, Mark?” Bach asked.

  “I’ve been better, sir.”

  “Me too, son.” Al leaned across the banister, his Luger held at arm’s length, both hands wrapped around the butt, his head angled slightly, sighting his target. He fired the pistol, its sonic timbre radiating outward.

  Below us, Ruben Vickers howled, clutched the wound on his left thigh, and fell in a heap next to the front door.

  Reflexively, Al took aim at John Vickers. Hollis and I followed suit. But in an instant, shot after shot rang out as the man fired Taylor’s Glock semiautomatic toward us on the second-story landing.

  Bach managed to get one round off before the three of us dropped to the floor. The ranch house fell quiet except for the faint sound of falling debris. Bullets from the semiautomatic had shattered several of the landing’s safety rails, leaving daggers of clear-grain fir.

  Al and I sat up slowly and brushed the wood dust from our hair and uniforms. We moved to the rickety, bullet-riddled banister. John Vickers lay dead in a sprawl on the living room floor.

  “Mark,” Bach called down, “if you’re able to retrieve the weapon, glove up and bag it.”

  “Yes, sir. After I come up with a compress for Mr. Vickers’s leg.”

  “Hey, Maggie,” Hollis whispered hoarsely. “I think I’ve been shot.”

  It took a moment to grasp that he was lying on the littered floor to my right. “Goddamn it all to hell!” I removed the outer carrier I wore over my duty shirt and turned it into a temporary compress. After applying it carefully to the wound in his side, I spread my peacoat over his torso.

  I shouted for Taylor. “Hollis has been shot. If you have service, call the Seneca ambulance.”

  “Already did that!” he shouted back. “They’re about ten minutes out.”

  “I’m going to go get the emergency kits from our vehicles.” Bach tossed me his keys, and juiced by adrenalin, I vaulted down the stairs and grabbed the Pathfinder keys where they lay on the floor beside Ruben Vickers.

  “Larkin and Smith?” I asked Taylor.

  He indicated the kitchen. “They were shoved inside the broom closet, then the door was blocked shut.”

  “Secure them to a couple of dining room chairs.” I handed Mark my handcuffs, raced out the front door, drove the quarter mile to our police vehicles faster than I could have run, pulled the emergency kit out of Bach’s interceptor, a
nd floored my Tahoe back to the ranch house.

  I handed Taylor one of the emergency kits. “Send the EMTs to Hollis when they get here.”

  Dashing upstairs with the other kit, I moved two stairs at a time. Al had elevated Hollis’s head and was helping him sip water. I fetched a gauze compress from the emergency kit and replaced the makeshift one I’d slapped together using my outer carrier, now soaked through with an appalling amount of blood.

  Bach stood. “I messed up. We could have taken it slower, even let them leave. I doubt they would’ve gotten very far.”

  “I don’t know, Al. They were threatening to kill Mark. I think they easily might have.”

  He turned pale. “I made a mistake. One that comes with a price.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was being philosophical, thinking about his church teachings, or what. “We’ll have an opportunity to debrief everything later.”

  “I’m going downstairs to check Mr. Vickers’s leg wound.”

  Hollis turned to me. “Sorry to get blood all over your stripes, Sarge.”

  I held the compress firmly to the wound. “Shh.”

  “Lil. Tell her I love her and Hank very much.”

  “You can tell her yourself.”

  “Please.”

  I nodded.

  “And don’t call her until I’m on my way to the hospital. Or to Sam’s mortuary.”

  He was perspiring and shivering at the same time. I snagged a blanket from an upstairs bedroom and a damp washcloth from the attached bath. I placed the blanket over him and used the washcloth to dab his forehead.

  “Holly. The ambulance will be here any minute, but there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Something I need to tell you too.” His voice was weak, harsh in the throat.

  “You go first.”

  “I’m not taking the promotion, but thanks for the recommendation.”

  “What? No, that’s not—”

  Mark Taylor placed a hand on my shoulder. “They’re here.”