I moved as quickly as I could along the edge of the road, trying to avoid the deeper shadows and ankle-turning potholes.
Ahead was a two-story brick cube with window lights on the first floor. The building sat thirty or forty feet from the road, flanked on both sides by flat, open, weedy ground. The entire area was bordered by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
The gate in the fence hung open, and I moved through it to the front of the building. There was a steel door secured with a couple of no-nonsense locks. The windows on either side were painted out and covered with iron bars.
I put my ear to the door.
Silence.
I stepped around the corner of the building to the gravel drive that led to the back. The windows along this side were head high and free of bars, the glass painted white. The ones toward the rear of the building glowed with light. They were open at the top. I could hear a murmur of voices. And there was something else—an odor. Faint, bitter.
I peeked around the corner.
Three vehicles were parked back there, end to end, out of sight of the road. I knew them all. Wes’s red Nissan was behind a new Thunderbird, dark blue or black, just like the one I’d seen a few nights ago at the golf course. In front of the T-Bird was the notorious pickup truck on oversized tires.
I unholstered the Magnum and stepped around the corner.
A steel door was set in the rear of the building, flanked by barred, painted-out windows. I went up a few concrete steps to the door, put my head to it, and listened.
I heard a couple of distinct clicks.
From behind me.
The man stood about ten feet away, spotlighted by the pale glow from the windows. He was a tall, skinny character with slicked-back hair, a zipped-up nylon jacket, and a twelve-gauge pump shotgun. He must have been hiding behind the vehicles, or maybe just back there catching a smoke. A lit cigarette hung from his lip. It moved when he talked.
“Drop the gun, motherfucker, or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Some choice. I dropped the pistol.
CHAPTER 33
SKINNY TOLD ME TO face the door and put my hands on my head. I heard him pick up the Magnum from where it had clattered to the bottom of the concrete steps.
“What the fuck’re you doing here?”
“Meter reader.”
“Fucking wise guy. Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Wes. And Frank. But if they’re busy now, I can come back later.”
He jabbed me in the back with the muzzle of the shotgun. “Inside.”
I swung open the steel door, and he shoved me in. A narrow hallway with a bare wooden floor ran straight through the building to the front. There were a few doors on either side, all closed except for the nearest one on the left. Light spilled from it into the hall.
“Through there,” Skinny told me.
I stepped through the doorway. The odor I’d detected outside was stronger in here, though not as potent as I would’ve expected from a speed lab. Progress through chemistry.
There was little furniture in the room, making it seem spacious—a few chairs and a couple of long tables, one at each end. The table to my right was crowded with an apparatus of glass tubing, plus big brown glass jars with screw-on lids and huge glass beakers filled with pale white liquid.
Skinny ushered me around to the far end of the other table.
Four men were seated there, three of whom I knew. None looked happy to see me.
Wes Hartman, shocked and frightened, sat to my left beside a squat, broad-shouldered character with a shiny dome surrounded by a long, shaggy fringe of hair. Sitting across from them, their backs to the door, were Frank and Carl Dykstra, who looked a lot like their photographs—Frank heavy, Carl young.
“Who’s this?” Frank demanded, angry. I guess he hadn’t seen my face that night at the golf course.
“Found him nosing around outside,” Skinny said from behind me.
“Lomax, what are you doing here?” Wes’s voice quavered.
“Hi, Wes.” I let my hands drop slowly to my sides. “Nice to see you again.”
Frank looked at once surprised and pleased. “So this is Lomax.”
Squatty said, “He don’t look so tough to me.” He stood up, all five and a half feet of him. But he had a shotgun, so I guess that made up for it. The light gleamed off the top of his head. “Not tough at all.”
“Oh, really?” Frank said. “You missed him twice, once with the truck and once at the golf course.”
Squatty’s dome turned pink. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t alone the second time. You and Royce were—”
“That’s enough.” Frank turned his bulk toward me. His bulging yellow shirt and dull green sports coat made him look like a giant toad. He gave me a hard look, one eye sleepy. “How did you find this place? As if I didn’t know.”
“Wes led me right to it.”
“Honest, Frank, I didn’t kn—”
“Shut up,” Frank told him. “And you,” he said loudly, looking past my shoulder, “what did I tell you about smoking in here?”
“Sorry, Frank, I forgot.” I heard Skinny stamp out his cigarette on the floor.
Frank gave his nephew Carl a crooked smile. “All these chemicals and he forgot.”
Carl looked worried. There was a balance scale on the table before him, and he pushed it away as if to disassociate himself from any illegality. Also on the table were a couple dozen Ziploc plastic bags filled with tiny chunks of crystal—maybe ten pounds of ice.
“What are we going to do?” he asked his uncle.
“You mean with Lomax?” Frank looked up at me and grinned. “Gee, I don’t know. What do you think we should do with you?”
“Let me take you all into custody,” I said.
That got a laugh from Squatty and Frank. Skinny snorted behind me.
“I’m not kidding,” I told Frank. “You’re finished here. The cops know all about your ice operation and how you’re using Butler Manufacturing to ship your product out of state. To Northfield Distributing in Minneapolis, for example.”
Frank’s face darkened. He swiveled his head to glare at Wes. “Who else have you been blabbing to?”
“No one, Frank, I swear to God.”
“For a while I thought you were stealing from the company,” I said to Wes. “Then I realized you were taking stuff from the shipment boxes to make room for the bags of ice. Am I right?”
Wes stared at me, frightened.
“How did you—”
“You got a big mouth, Wes,” Frank said.
“The cops will be here soon,” I put in, trying to make it sound real.
“You son of a bitch,” Squatty said to Wes. He pointed his shotgun at him.
Wes stood up hastily, knocking over his chair. He raised his hands, palms forward. “Now wait a minute, take it easy.” His voice shook. “I didn’t tell him anything. I don’t know how he found out any of that.”
“I told you we should’ve never let this asshole in with us, Frank.” Squatty had spoken out of the side of his mouth. His eyes and gun were still on Wes. “Let’s get rid of him.”
“Slow down,” Frank said.
Wes backed up, hands still in front of him, shaking as if he were palsied. Squatty walked toward him.
“You fucked up everything.”
“No, please, you got this all wrong.”
Squatty jacked a shell in the chamber.
“Not in here,” Frank said loudly.
Wes bumped into the end of the other table, hard enough to rattle glass beakers. He looked frantically toward the door, but Frank and Carl were on their feet, blocking the exit. Wes edged along the opposite length of the table. “No, please,” he begged.
Squatty stepped toward him and raised the shotgun.
“No!”
“Not in here!” Frank yelled.
Too late. Squatty squeezed the trigger, the shotgun boomed, and a microsecond later there was a tremendous flash and c
oncussive shock as vapors in the room ignited and the chemicals on the table exploded, engulfing Squatty and Wes in a ball of fire and slamming me back into Skinny. I caught a glimpse of Carl and Frank stumbling out the door.
I was on my back, on top of Skinny, the shotgun pinned between us.
He tried to shove me off. If it hadn’t been for the gun, I would’ve gladly obliged and gotten the hell out of there, because the room—at least the other half of it—was roaring with fire. It howled and crackled and clawed its way toward us along the floor and walls, breathing out acrid smoke.
I gave Skinny an elbow in the face, then quickly rolled over and got my hands on the shotgun. He fought me for it. We tumbled back and forth, first me on top, then him, the gun between us, parallel to our bodies, muzzle pointing up. We were both starting to choke, and I could feel the heat as the fire crept toward us. My hip struck the solid lump of my Magnum tucked in Skinny’s belt, and I considered letting go of the shotgun and going for the pistol. But there was no time; his finger was on the trigger, and the muzzle was under my chin. I shoved the barrel away from me just as he jerked his finger.
The front of his head erupted in a burst of blood and flesh, stinging my face with powder and bits of bone.
I yanked the Magnum from his belt and bolted toward the doorway, my arm covering my face, the fire biting my skin. An explosion threw a fireball after me, blowing me across the hallway into the wall. I scrambled to my feet, stumbled down the hallway and out the back exit.
Frank and Carl were already in Frank’s T-Bird. But the car was hemmed in between the pickup and Wes’s Nissan.
Frank raced the engine, threw it in reverse, and slammed into the Nissan, shoving it back, nearly out of his way. Now the T-Bird jumped forward, banging into the truck.
“Hold it!” I pointed the Magnum at the windshield.
Frank’s arm came out the driver’s side window, fist filled with an automatic. I didn’t wait for him to fire, but squeezed off all six rounds, spattering his end of the windshield with spiderwebbed holes. The T-Bird lurched back into the Nissan, chugged once, and died. Frank’s arm hung out the window, limp.
The passenger door flew open, and Carl jumped out, face chalk white, hands in the air.
“I give up! Don’t shoot!”
“Move it,” I told him, waving my empty gun toward the faraway gate.
We gave the building a wide berth. Flames leapt from the windows, and old wood and plaster crackled inside. I pushed Carl down the dark road to the Ford. I put him in the backseat, cuffed his right wrist to his left ankle, then drove to My Brother’s Bar.
It was pretty crowded, but people got out of my way as I walked to the back. I called the cops from the pay phone, then found an empty stool at the bar.
The bartender was the same one who’d served me last Monday. He stared at me wide-eyed, possibly because my hair and clothes were scorched and Skinny’s brains were drying on my face.
“Jesus, you again? Did you get in another accident?”
“More or less. You got any whiskey back there?”
CHAPTER 34
CARL DYKSTRA WAS EAGER to talk to the cops. There were murder charges hanging in the air, and he didn’t want one dropping on him.
His uncle Frank, he said, had lured him into a life of crime, recruiting him right out of college to be a cooker of meth, then ice. They’d begun in California, but after Frank had shot three competitors to death, they’d been forced to move, landing in Denver. For protection Frank brought along muscle—William Royce. He also hired local talent, Skinny and Squatty, whose real names were Terrance Everett and Eugene Styres.
As for Wes Hartman, he’d done more than “smoke ice once in California,” as he’d admitted to me; he’d pushed drugs for Frank in Los Angeles. Two years ago, Wes had fled the Coast, frightened by threats from the Korean drug dealers. After spending a few months each in Minneapolis, Kansas City, and Omaha, he’d finally come to Denver. He’d met and married Nicole, whom he saw as a soft touch, a rich man’s daughter. The problem was that her father wasn’t soft. So Wes looked elsewhere for easy money.
When Frank showed up in Denver, he and Wes reunited. They conspired to produce ice locally and ship it to dealers in other states, places where ice was not yet being manufactured. When a dealer wanted ice, he’d order mugs or other cheap merchandise from Butler Manufacturing. Wes would pack the ice with the mugs, and off the shipment would go.
Wes was careful not to arouse the suspicions of anyone at the company, especially Samuel and Kenneth. Of course Samuel spent more time entertaining his young wife, Clare, than taking care of business. And Kenneth, who was supposed to be in charge, seemed too preoccupied with a scam of his own to notice anything suspicious about shipments to new customers. After a while, Wes’s biggest worry was that Samuel would start spending more time at work and less time with Clare.
Then a private eye showed up—Gil Lucero. His questions were upsetting Kenneth, which in turn upset Wes and Frank. They didn’t want the status quo disturbed. So Frank and his men took care of Lucero.
And then Samuel was arrested for Clare’s murder.
Wes and Frank saw this as a great opportunity. Frank took steps to ensure that Butler would be convicted and out of the way forever. He and his men murdered the key defense witness, Winks Armbruster, and “discouraged” the new private investigator, Jacob Lomax.
The cops asked Carl if Frank had ordered the murder of Clare Butler.
“No,” Carl said. “None of us knew who killed her.”
That wasn’t quite true. One of them had known.
And I knew.
It was past midnight by the time I got home. My jacket, pants, and shirt were scorched beyond repair, so I stuffed them in the trash. My face didn’t look so great, either—singed eyebrows and lightly cooked skin. Although not nearly as cooked as Skinny, Squatty, and Wes Hartman.
I took a shower and went to bed.
I got up early the next morning, ate a light breakfast, and watched the local news on TV. There were some spectacular shots of the ice lab engulfed in flames, with firemen spraying water on it and watching it burn to the ground. The newscaster said there were four fatalities, three of whom had been named by the police: Dykstra, Everett, and Styres. The identity of the fourth man was being withheld pending notification of his next of kin.
I drove to Karen Butler’s house.
I parked in back. The side door to the garage was open. Two cars were inside—Nicole’s and Karen’s. I rummaged through the glove compartment until I found what I was looking for—and something extra. Then I knocked on the back door of the house.
Karen answered, surprised.
“What are you doing back here?”
“Sleuthing.”
“Find anything?”
“Clare’s murderer.”
Karen gave me her impression of the famous Butler scowl and asked, “What do you mean?”
“May I come in?”
She hesitated, then stepped aside and let me into the kitchen.
Nicole was sitting at the table with a big yellow mug of steaming coffee. She wore a pristine white top and faded blue jeans, both a bit too big, probably Karen’s. Her face was scrubbed, and her hair was tucked back behind her ears. She smiled at me and said, “Hello.”
“How’re you feeling today?”
“Rested, thank you.” She frowned. “What happened to your face?”
“Cooking accident.”
Karen stood behind me and demanded, “What did you mean just now at the door?”
“Do you mind if I have some coffee?”
I filled a mug from the glass pot on the stove, then sat across from Nicole. Karen stood beside the table, waiting. She folded her arms and looked down at me with annoyance, perhaps anger.
I sipped coffee. It was bitter. “As you know, your father always suspected that Clare was murdered by her lover.”
Nicole squirmed in her chair. “Are we going to talk about that?”
But I made no move to leave the table. “From the beginning, I was looking for the man Clare had been seeing. And for a while I even thought I knew his name—Jeremy Stone. But that turned out to be something else entirely.”
“Do you have a point here?” Karen demanded.
“Yes. You and Clare.”
Karen glared at me.
Nicole said, “What do you mean?” She looked up at her sister. “What does he mean, ‘you and Clare’?”
“Is your sister aware of your sexual preference?” I asked Karen.
“Of course she knows I’m gay. So what. So does Kenneth.”
“What about your father?”
She hesitated. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve never told him.”
“No one’s told him,” Nicole said, eyes wide, brows arched. “He’d never accept it. He’d—” Her mouth fell open as it dawned on her. “You…and Clare?” She waited, hoping for a denial. “Karen?”
Karen leaned heavily against the back of the chair. Then she pulled it away from the table and slumped into it. “I guess it doesn’t matter now who knows.”
Nicole was shocked. “But…but how could you? Our father’s wife.”
Anger flashed in Karen’s eyes. “She wasn’t his wife when I met her,” she said. Her anger faded, and she stared into the middle distance. “It wasn’t as if I seduced her. I thought of her as a friend—sweet, vulnerable, and in need. That’s why I let her stay in this house.” She sighed. “The third night here she came into my room, into my bed. We…made love. It was so beautiful, as if we were meant to be together. And I did love her. I thought our relationship would last a long, long time.” Her face turned grim. “It lasted one month, until she met our father.”
“God, Karen, I had no idea.” She reached for her sister’s hand. “No wonder you hated her so much.”
“Hated?” Karen shook her head. “I loved her. I always hoped we’d…get back together. Even Teri understood that. We’re fond of each other, but with us it’s always been off again, on again. With Clare it was something else, something special.”
Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4) Page 19
