Dead Air

by David A. Poulsen

  O.C.

  Morrissey — Black

  Monday — Green

  Swales — Blue

  Hugg — Pink

  “How fucking junior high can you get?” I hadn’t realized I’d said it out loud until I looked up and saw an older couple frowning at me over their glasses of wine. I apologized and went back to the day planner.

  What I was pretty sure I was looking at was confirmation that the four members of the organizing committee had been Shawn Beamer’s targets.

  On May 9 Hugg noted that Larmer had agreed to be one of the guest speakers. There were other less important references to the event, but nothing that shed any further light on what had taken place that August in the woodlands near Buffalo, Wyoming.

  But if Derek Beamer had been murdered while attending the Proud conference and his son had rightly or wrongly connected the members of the organizing committee to the killing, then motive was no longer in doubt.

  I texted Cobb to tell him about the names/colours notation in Hugg’s planner. Then I packed it up, drank the last of my second cup of coffee, and headed for the door. I stopped at the bar on the way out and paid the tab of the elderly couple I had offended. I doubted it would make them feel any differently, but it made me feel better.

  The ribs Jill had on the barbecue were some of the best I’d ever had. A fifteen-year-old bottle of Barolo was now almost empty and Kyla was laying out the board for a game of Clue.

  “You know, of course, that I am a highly skilled crime investigator and that neither of you has the slightest chance of winning,” I told them. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to play something else — something that gives everyone an equal opportunity — Snakes and Ladders maybe?”

  My speech was met by derisive laughter to which I shrugged a response and fell to examining the clues I had been given. Forty minutes later Kyla informed us that the killer was Miss Scarlet (that bitch) with the candlestick in the conservatory. I had been certain that Colonel Mustard had committed the act in the billiard room with the rope. And I was also pretty sure the kid had cheated.

  “Never trust a nine-year-old, that’s my motto from here on,” I announced.

  “This nine-year-old is going to bed,” Jill told her.

  “Can I read?’

  “Have you ever gone to bed and not read?” Jill asked her.

  “Guess not.” Kyla shrugged, then leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “I can let you win next time if you want,” she loud-whispered.

  “Next time it’s Snakes and Ladders,” I said.

  Kyla laughed and skipped down the hall, savouring the victory and the book she would soon be consuming.

  I topped up the wineglasses a final time and Jill and I sat close together on the couch enjoying the peaceful silence of each other’s presence.

  I spoke first. “I’m no expert, but I’d say the young lady looks great … and seems to be doing pretty well.”

  Jill nodded. “She’s gained back some weight and has an appetite again. So, yes, she’s doing well. They’re adjusting some of her medication, so we’ll see how she does after that. The biggest thing is her attitude. She considers Crohn’s to be an inconvenience and nothing more. That’s all she’s going to allow it to be. And that’s exactly the right attitude.”

  “And I think I know exactly where she got it from.”

  Jill smiled, kissed me for a long time, then lay her head on my shoulder.

  “Adam, I don’t want us to be one of those couples where the guy keeps things from his partner so she won’t worry.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “How about we start with what happened in Wyoming?”

  I told her everything I’d learned, everything I knew about the case, and everything I thought. It took some time.

  “I was worried about you,” she said.

  “I know you were. The truth is, the only time I thought things might get dicey was when I saw a retired cop coming toward me with a rifle in his hand. But it made no sense for him to shoot me unless he was the killer, and I knew he wasn’t.”

  “But you couldn’t have known that, not right then. You might have thought he wasn’t the killer, but you couldn’t have been sure — not yet.”

  “I guess you’re right. But logic told me he wasn’t the one. Although I will admit I was starting to rethink my logic out there in the woods, miles from anywhere or anyone, and him with a rifle. I was never so glad to see a box of beer in my life.”

  We laughed and she sat up and took my hand.

  “I will never tell you not to do something you feel you have to do. I know there’s danger involved with the kind of work Mike does and that there are times when that danger might touch you. And as much as it scares me, I’m okay with it. I just want you to know that.”

  “I do know that. And it means a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”

  She stood up, still holding my hand, and we turned out the lights as she led the way down the hall.

  The phone rang at 6:13 a.m. Jill reached across me to answer it. Her voice was low and sleepy. “Hello. Hi, Mike. He’s right here.” She passed me the phone.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Sorry for the bad timing, but we’re moving now. I got confirmation late last night that Beamer flew into LAX two nights before the explosion that killed Morrissey. He flew out the morning after. I’m still waiting for word on San Antonio, but we’ve got enough, and I’m worried that if he calls Becky in Buffalo and she tells him someone’s trying to find him, he’ll blow town before we can move. I‘ve told the two detectives, Landry and Chisholm, everything you told me, or at least most of it. They’ve got a search warrant and they’re meeting me at Beamer’s condo. I’m just letting you know in case you want to be there.”

  “I want to be there.” I was already out of bed and headed for the shower.

  “Thirty minutes,” Cobb said.

  I was five minutes late, and I’m guessing Cobb and the cops might have been early.

  The two detectives were sitting in an unmarked car a few doors away from the condo. Cobb was leaning against his car and talking on his cellphone as I pulled in behind him.

  I got out of the Accord and approached him. He wrapped up his conversation just as I came alongside. He looked at me and shook his head.

  “We’re too late,” he said. “The cops have been inside. He’s gone. That was the station manager on the phone. Beamer didn’t show up for work yesterday, didn’t phone in. I’d say he got word, likely from the girlfriend, that we were getting close. Now the question is, where has he gone?”

  I didn’t get to offer a theory as the detectives crossed the street and stopped in front of us.

  Detective Landry spoke. “Shawn Beamer crossed the border into the U.S. at Coutts just after midnight two nights ago,” she told us. “We’ve got uniforms on their way to do some canvassing of the neighbours, but we won’t likely get much. Somebody might have seen him pack up his car and head out. Probably didn’t think anything of it. People go on holidays.”

  The second detective, Chisholm, looked at me. “Any thoughts as to where he might be headed?”

  “One maybe,” I said. “He has a girlfriend in Buffalo, Wyoming, Becky Hicks. They had a kid together a few years ago. He contacted her not long ago suggesting maybe they should get back together. I’d say there’s at least a chance that’s where he was headed.”

  Landry nodded. “We know about her.” She pointed at Cobb. “Your friend told us about her.”

  “Any other ideas?” Chisholm asked.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t really know Shawn Beamer. I interviewed him once in the context of the Larmer investigation but that’s it.”

  “What about the school he attended down there? Is that a likely destination?”

  I thought about that. “A possible destination maybe. A likely one, I don’t know.
Could have someone in Laramie he could stay with. I just don’t know.”

  Landry looked at Chisholm, then nodded at Cobb and me and turned away. Abruptly she turned back to me.

  “If you’d called us from Wyoming when you first learned of this stuff, we might have got him.”

  I bristled at that and fought to keep my temper. “I didn’t have definitive information until after I got back here and we found out that Beamer’s father might have been John Bones. And we didn’t have confirmation about Beamer’s being in California at the time of the radio station bombing until late last night.”

  “Your attitude’s bullshit, Detective, and you know it.” Cobb’s voice was low and blizzard-cold. “I figured you for better than that, and if you’re not you should be. We gave you what we had when we had it and when it wasn’t just speculation, which I was a cop long enough to know is not your favourite thing.”

  Landry’s eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth, but closed it again. She looked at Cobb, then at me. Several seconds that felt like minutes passed before she spoke again.

  “You’re right,” she said to Cobb. “I was out of line. Frustrated at being late for the party. Thanks for your help.” She turned to me. “Both of you.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out a business card. “In case you ever need to get hold of us.”

  I took the card and nodded. “Any chance we could get inside his place for a look around?”

  Landry shook her head “We’ve got the forensics techies on their way. We need to go over every inch of the place. Can’t risk having you contaminate potential evidence.”

  “I know we can’t touch anything, but we might see something that could trigger a thought that might help.”

  Cobb said, “It’s not a bad idea, Detective. He’s the only one of us who has actually met Beamer. He might spot something that could prove useful.”

  Landry looked at her partner, thought about it. “You go with them,” she said, nodding in Chisholm’s direction. “Fifteen minutes. You touch anything or go anywhere Detective Chisholm tells you not to go, and he has my permission to throw you out of the place. And I don’t mean that in the metaphorical sense.”

  Chisholm looked pleased at the possibility. He led the way to the building’s front door, which was propped open, and up the stairs to Beamer’s second-floor condo. There was already one band of police tape across the front door. Chisholm unlocked it, ducked under the tape, and stepped inside. He turned to us and nodded, then watched as we moved inside, me first, then Cobb.

  I took three or four steps into the apartment, then looked at Chisholm to make sure I was okay to do that.

  “That’s far enough, he said.

  I nodded and looked around. I wasn’t sure this would do much good. I doubted Chisholm would let us farther into the apartment, so all we could see was what was right in front of us. We were in the living room, which I guessed was twice the size of mine. It was sparsely furnished but neat, lacking the clutter that defined my own living space. A worn but serviceable couch, a recliner, coffee table, a bookcase along the wall to the left, a hallway that I guessed led to a bedroom, also to the left. The room morphed into an adjoining kitchen to the right.

  “Was this place furnished or does this stuff belong to him?” I directed the question to Chisholm.

  “Landlord says it was furnished, but some of the stuff belonged to Beamer.”

  I nodded, looked around the room again. Nothing jumped out at me and I knew Chisholm was hoping for just that — the “not-for-real-investigators” finding nothing.

  “Can I get a little closer to the bookcase?”

  “Nope.”

  I leaned forward and willed my eyes to read the titles on the three shelves. The majority were hardcover — thrillers, some non-fiction, mostly political history and biographies.

  I peered at the lower shelves, then looked over my shoulder at Cobb. “Can you see that book, middle shelf, third title from the right?”

  Cobb leaned forward, Chisholm watching him like an owl watches a field mouse. I pointed at the worn hardcover, the dust cover missing, and read the title aloud: Nature’s Poisons.

  “Any chance we can get a look at that, Detective?” I said over my shoulder.

  “Stay right where you are,” was the reply, but when I turned to argue, I saw that Chisholm was gloving up and moving toward the bookcase.

  He took it from the shelf and carefully set it on the coffee table. “What do you want to see?”

  “Is there a table of contents?”

  He flipped a few pages. “Yeah, right here.”

  He held it up and I leaned forward again to look, then read aloud: “‘Chapter seven, page 113.’ Try that.” The chapter was titled “Bitter Homes and Gardens — Home-Grown Poison.”

  Chisholm finally found the page, the gloves making the task difficult. He seemed interested now and held the book closer for me to see.

  “Can you turn the page?”

  He did, then again. On page 117 someone had highlighted a portion of text in yellow. I could see that the highlighted section focused on the plant monkshood from the Aconitum species. It was essentially a step-by-step how-to for extracting the poisonous part of the plant, including the dosage required for exterminating large animals. It even noted that the extract would be tasteless. Next to that section of the text someone had written “Bingo!”

  Chisholm moved the book so that he could see what it was we were looking at. I straightened and stepped back.

  I looked at Cobb. “Jasmine Swales,” I said.

  As Chisholm carefully closed the book and placed it in an evidence bag, Cobb said, “Bingo.”

  TWENTY

  Cobb called me three days later. The Stampede had wrapped up for another year and I’d banged out a piece for Canadian Cowboy Country magazine. I was at my computer working on the sequel to The Spoofaloof Rally. Normally people don’t write sequels to books that sell a couple of hundred copies — most to family and friends. But I’d received a call from my Toronto-based publisher the day after we discovered that Shawn Beamer had fled the country.

  The call was to inform me that they’d pitched the book at a major book fair in the U.S., and Barnes and Noble had placed an order that had taken Spoof from backlist purgatory to a full-page ad in the publisher’s next catalogue. And they wanted to talk sequel. Suddenly I was a writer.

  “We need to have coffee,” Cobb said. And his voice told me that this wasn’t so much an invitation as it was a command.

  A half-hour later we were sitting at the Starbucks in Bridgeland. Cobb’s suggestion. Neither of us was drinking the coffee that sat in front of us.

  “Beamer’s dead,” Cobb said.

  I took a couple of breaths while I digested that.

  “Wow,” I said.

  Cobb nodded. “Landry called me this morning. State cops caught up with him just outside Buffalo. He had a gun with him and they shot him. He died instantly. The gun he was holding was a Smith and Wesson 380. It wasn’t loaded.”

  I nodded. “Just outside Buffalo,” I repeated. “Not in town. Not at Becky’s house?”

  Cobb shook his head. “Sounds like there was something of a car chase. He led them to this place. Got out of his car and was waiting for them.’

  “With an empty gun in his hand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pretty much guaranteeing that he would be killed.”

  “That’s how it looks.” Cobb took his first sip of coffee. “Landry talked to your friend, the retired sheriff.”

  “Jud Crombeen?”

  “Yeah, he said Beamer died at almost the same spot as John Bones’s remains were found.”

  “His dad.”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked around the place. People reading the paper, texting, talking to one another. Probably not many talking about a killer dying in th
e Wyoming woodlands.

  “There’s a lot about this I don’t understand,” I said.

  “And a lot we’ll never know. Only guy who might have told us is dead.”

  We drank our coffee for a while, our thoughts far away.

  “It had to be revenge for what happened to his dad. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “It’s a theory all right.” Cobb rubbed a hand over an unshaven jaw. “Hard to say for sure, but I can give you what I think.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “I think the kid learned or figured out somehow that his father died in Buffalo while attending the Proud to be Right conference. I don’t know how, especially with all the secrecy that surrounded the thing. But if the kid’s dad was a journalist, maybe he wasn’t part of the cloak-and-dagger stuff. I suspect he found out something he shouldn’t have and got himself offed by someone attending the event — maybe one of the organizers. Or more than one.

  “Then the kid who by then wasn’t a kid anymore read or heard about the discovery of John Bones, and that got him thinking. At some point he made it his life mission to find out what happened to his dad. He even went to school to study forensics to help him with his own personal investigation. He found out enough or at least suspected enough that he narrowed it down to four people. He either discovered that all four were involved or he knew it was one of the four but didn’t know which one.”

  “So he decided to kill them all.”

  Cobb shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a theory.”

  “But how was he able to figure it out when the cops couldn’t?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about that. Two things. First of all, he knew something the cops didn’t. He knew who the victim was. And second, it was an obsession. He spent years working it out. Crombeen told you the state cops gave it a half-hearted effort and the feds even less. Crombeen himself tried, maybe even tried hard, but again, he was missing the most important starting piece — the ID of the victim.”