Kerrigan just listened, but he was dubious, and Morgan knew it. Morgan’s theory rested on the literally fantastic theory that Laddie Granbouche had, in fact, been the mythic outlaw Etta Place.
But the hardest thing to believe was that the verbose, slightly nervous Carter McWayne was a murderer, a major-league grave-robber, a drug kingpin, a kinky cyber-pornographer and a kidnapper of senile old women.
“He’s in the Rotary Club, for God’s sake,” was all Kerrigan could say, as if he’d never known a Rotarian to show up late for lunch, much less break the law.
They hit Denver at rush hour. A tanker roll-over had constipated the interstate leading to Denver International Airport, and neither Morgan nor Kerrigan knew the city well enough to navigate the surface streets, so they waited and fumed in four lanes of traffic at a dead stop. Even though his asshole had puckered on the hell-bent drive, Morgan understood the vagaries and vicissitudes of the big city; Kerrigan despised them.
The sun was settling behind the wall of the Rocky Mountains on the western edge of Denver when traffic started moving again, albeit slowly. It was nearly seven p.m. Kerrigan flipped on his vector lights and scooted around the amoebic mass of commuter traffic on the shoulder.
Denver International wasn’t just on the other side of the city. Its circus-tent roof — a white-canvas simulacrum of the snow-covered Rockies — rose from the plains more than twenty miles northeast of Denver’s downtown, a crystal garden of high-rise offices, stadiums and skyscrapers utterly that always seemed to Morgan to be misplaced at the edge of the windswept western prairie. It always seemed odd to Morgan that the airport, splattered over fifty-three square miles of former buffalo range, was the tenth largest in the world, yet it existed in the least populous corridor of the United States, the Mountain West.
Denver was an island of self-conscious urbanity surrounded by a sea of cow shit and rattlesnakes. Thirty miles from the penthouse suites, artist lofts and overpriced fashion malls — and as far as the eye could see — were ranches still run by families that had homesteaded this country.
Kerrigan parked at the far end of the passenger drop-off zone. A badge-heavy traffic cop challenged him, but Kerrigan whipped out his badge and the cop let them pass. Inside the terminal, they checked the departure screen. McWayne’s flight was leaving in ninety minutes from Gate B37, a concourse reached only by the airport’s subway train. If he was already there, they could talk to him; if not, they’d wait.
But the airport’s security screeners saw it differently. Since September 11, nobody got a free pass, especially if they were carrying guns instead of tickets. At Kerrigan’s request, a uniformed technician with a hand-held metal detector radioed for two of the airport’s main security officers, moonlighting city cops who hustled Morgan and Kerrigan into a small, airless room.
They listened to Kerrigan’s story, but a Wyoming sheriff, far from his home and legal jurisdiction, had little stroke and less respect among the sleek and cocky Denver cops. They seemed amused by the ancient Colt revolver he slung on his hip, like he was Matt Dillon or something. His emergency was not theirs.
It was seven-fifty-five p.m. McWayne’s plane would board in a few minutes. Time was running out.
Finally, the airport cops got clearance to escort Kerrigan to the gate.
But not Morgan. He wasn’t a law enforcement officer, and the courtesy would not extend to him. He’d have to wait outside the security gates in the main terminal.
The three cops finally rushed down to the subway platform, skipping escalator steps as they ran, Kerrigan in the lead.
The brief train ride through the airport’s concrete bowels dumped them at the B concourse, where they scrambled up the moving stairs past other passengers toward Gate 37. On the way, Kerrigan heard an announcement for the flight’s first-class ticket-holders to prepare to board. His lope quickened to a sprint through the sparsely crowded concourse, the two cops close behind.
Passengers had already queued up at the door to the jet way when Kerrigan and his escorts arrived at the gate.
McWayne wasn’t among them.
They milled around the boarding area. Kerrigan watched for McWayne, and the cops watched Kerrigan. Passengers quietly hovered, impatiently waiting for the invitation to economy boarding. Gate clerks checked boarding passes, plucking the random passenger from line for another security screening. Nothing seemed amiss.
Except that Carter McWayne was not there.
At the gate, an appealing redhead with a pleasant smile and tired eyes checked her computer for Kerrigan, then spoke to a flight attendant by phone. McWayne was indeed booked on the flight, she told him, and he had checked his baggage at the main ticket counter, but the first-class passenger who had been assigned Seat 1B had not yet boarded.
Morgan stood outside a Seattle’s Best coffee stall and watched the stream of anonymous travelers float past. He checked his watch every few minutes until McWayne’s flight to Mexico should have been pushing away from the gate.
Maybe it had been a trick. McWayne didn’t seem to be the kind to set up an elaborate diversion, but maybe Morgan had underestimated him. Maybe he was skipping to France, not Mexico. Maybe he caught an earlier flight. Maybe nothing was as it seemed. Maybe Grady Stillwell was playing another practical joke with a computer. Maybe McWayne was taking an innocent vacation after his family business was destroyed. Maybe this was all a wild goose chase. Maybe Morgan was wrong about everything.
Anything was possible.
The only thing that seemed utterly impossible at that moment was that the tubby Carter McWayne would suddenly appear in the swarm of people.
But he did.
McWayne emerged from the subway platform in precisely the spot where Morgan’s eye had lingered. He carried no luggage. His white shirt was damp with sweat and wrinkled, his porky face pale and drawn, like he was about to cry. He seemed not to move under his own power but by some magnetic force field that drew him forward against his will.
Then Morgan saw why: McWayne was flanked by DCI agents Halstead and Pickard, both tanned and dressed as if they’d been working undercover in the Professional Golfers Association.
They were moving fast toward the baggage claim area and the parking garage beyond. Morgan started toward them, but he was swimming upstream in the surge of people, rolling suitcases and skycap carts. He kept looking for Kerrigan and the two airport cops, but they weren’t with McWayne and the DCI guys.
DCI is trying to hijack this bust, Morgan thought. Those pricks.
By the time Morgan had picked his way through the mass, they had disappeared around the corner, toward the stainless-steel ranks of carousels where bags were squirted out of the labyrinthine bowels of DIA’s infamous state-of-the-art baggage system.
Morgan scanned the baggage-claim area, but his targets had blended into the crowd. White shirts, pudgy men and razor-cut pretty boys abounded, all moving in different speeds and directions among the throng. If nothing else, he’d slow them down until Kerrigan showed up — if he could find them.
Then he saw them at the far end of the mall. McWayne was balking at an automatic doorway into the passenger pick-up lanes and the dark parking garage beyond. Pickard and Halstead had grabbed him by each arm, trying discreetly to usher him out into the night.
Morgan dashed toward them. Within hailing distance, he shouted to get their attention over the din of gray-noise.
“Pickard! Halstead! Wait up!”
Pickard looked toward him, and so did McWayne, who stiffened his legs and tried to wrench himself free of the two agents.
“Jeff! Help me!” McWayne screamed.
Morgan froze in his tracks as the attention of passengers within the sound of McWayne’s voice suddenly focused on the frightened little man and the two strapping men struggling with him.
Then Halstead drew his Glock from a shoulder holster beneath his wind-breaker. He drew a bead on Morgan, who raised his hands as passengers screamed and ducked behind any cover they could find, including suitc
ases.
“Not another step, mister,” he barked. “This is police business. Back off! Now!”
McWayne cried out as Pickard wrestled him through the door.
“They’re gonna kill me! They’re gonna …”
Pickard, who’d pulled his own gun, pistol-whipped McWayne with a single blow to the head, then dragged him out the sliding glass. Halstead backed slowly through the door after them, then disappeared into the dark night beyond the fluorescent reflections in the glass.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Where were Kerrigan and the cops? Morgan wondered, even before he began to breathe again. A baby began to cry and then another, until the enormous space had fallen into chaos. They weren’t detaining McWayne, or even arresting him. This looked more like an abduction.
Morgan was on his own, and he couldn’t let them get away. He ducked out a different door into the street where cars were jockeying for position, stopping and going, seeking purchase at the curb to pick up passengers and then get the hell out. Half a block away, he caught a glimpse of Pickard and Halstead hauling the dazed McWayne into the shadows of the parking garage. Edgy drivers honked as he threaded his way among the cars and the reunions and the loose luggage to the other side of the busy four-lane street, then another, and followed them into the darkness.
Squealing tires, distant voices and car horns echoed through the concrete warren of the parking garage. Morgan plunged deeper into the maze, but they had simply melted into the dead air, shadows and steel. Morgan’s curse reverberated in the concrete cave.
And so did a whimper.
Morgan followed the sound. He couldn’t be sure where it had come from as noise bounced in every direction.
He heard it again off to his left, beyond the elevator shaft, in a murky corner of the garage, near an enormous black Suburban with impenetrably tinted windows. Or perhaps inside it.
Crouched low, Morgan moved closer, keeping a safe distance and using other cars for cover.
Suddenly, McWayne cried out.
“Jeff! Help me!”
The sound came from the other side of the Suburban, not inside. Morgan felt a cold rush of blood beneath his skin. He peered along the pavement and saw McWayne on his hands and knees on the far side of the vehicle. Alone.
He ran to help. McWayne was there, crying, down all fours like a whining, overfed dog — and Pickard sat in the open door of the passenger seat, his feet on the running board, his gun to the back of McWayne’s head.
“Took you long enough,” the agent said.
Adrenaline spurted into Morgan’s bloodstream, but before he could run, he felt the cold barrel of Halstead’s Glock behind his ear. He raised his hands, palms open.
“Couldn’t have worked out better, eh, Scott?” Halstead said to Pickard. “Two fish on one hook.”
“Perfect, Eric,” Pickard responded by kicking McWayne in the ribs. “I’m glad we missed him the other night. This is much better. You da man.”
Morgan was ensnared in something he didn’t quite understand.
“Hey, I’m unarmed. I’m on your side.”
Halstead laughed menacingly as he frisked Morgan.
“Our side, huh? That’s a good one, you fuckin’ pencil-dick. Okay, we’re ready here.”
“Ready for what?” Morgan asked.
Pickard chuckled as he helped McWayne to his unsteady feet.
“Why, you’re gonna be a fucking hero, Morgan,” he said. “See, we’re detaining Mr. McWayne here for questioning, just like your piss-ant sheriff buddy requested. But Mr. McWayne here is gonna grab my gun while I’m helping him into our vehicle. He’s gonna shoot, and you’re gonna take a bullet for my partner. Then my partner is gonna shoot your assailant, Mr. McWayne, dead. And we’re gonna try — unsuccessfully, I’m afraid — to save your life. Kinda sucks, don’t it?”
Morgan couldn’t speak, but Halstead could.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll tell all your media pals how you died bravely. Just try not to piss your pants. It doesn’t look good on the evening news.”
“Okay, who gets it first?” Pickard asked. “Maybe the paperboy should watch. Fat-boy here got to watch the last one and he didn’t seem real appreciative.”
Pressed into the dark, empty space between the Suburban and the wall with a gun to his head, the terrified McWayne did just that. A damp, pungent stain spread across his groin, and trickled around his shoes.
“You chickenshit bastard,” Pickard snarled. Again, he pistol-whipped McWayne, who dropped to his knees, stunned.
“Fuck him. Just do it,” Halstead commanded, and Pickard raised his handgun. He aimed it at Morgan’s chest.
The air exploded. The roar of a gunshot pierced the garage’s stagnant air and ricocheted through Morgan’s skull. Before he could open his eyes to see what killed him, he was hurled to the pavement hard, laying raw the flesh of his arm and face.
Is this how it is to be shot? his brain asked him. Shouldn’t it hurt more? How does it end, this story? How does it start? Will someone tell Claire? Colter … Bridger …
Blackness seeped in around the edges.
Dying wasn’t so hard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Funerals are for the living, not the dead.
It had rained the night before, a warm July rain, pregnant with distant thunder. The earth of Pine Lawn Cemetery was soft and the air scented with new-mown wet grass, because it was Monday and the caretaker always mowed on Monday, come rain or shine. The customers didn’t care.
And if the cemetery had its peculiar rhythms, so did dying in Winchester, Wyoming. The church service would begin at ten a.m. on burying days, be finished by eleven, and then a cortege of working-men’s pickups and Sunday sedans would meander slowly to Pine Lawn Cemetery for a brief graveside service. Come rain or shine.
The mourners’ faces might be re-arranged in church and in the small circle gathered around the grave, but they remained essentially the same. Death was a community event. Any loss in a small town sent out its dreadful ripples, and few were untouched by it. Saying goodbye at the cemetery was as natural as saying hello in the park on a Saturday.
Today, the young widow and her child sat tearfully while pallbearers placed the coffin on its bier. The sun was high overhead, the shadows on the ground dispersed.
They all prayed, and the words drifted on the breeze. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want … green pastures … quiet waters … although I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me …
The Reverend Joel Wright, the Presbyterian pastor in town, said a few more words before the casket was lowered into the damp ground.
“He had a passion for what he did,” the preacher said, “and he died doing it. He put himself in harm’s way so that we would be secure and warm. He died as he lived, knowing his presence made us safer, and it made us better. May he continue to watch over us.”
A bagpipe played an ancient Scottish dirge and a squad of Perry County deputies fired a salute to a man who died protecting another.
And Cecil James Box, who’d only been a deputy for three years, was laid to rest forever in the town where he was born twenty-four years before, and never left.
And never would.
After the service, Morgan visited Laddie Granbouche’s empty grave one last time.
After a long hug and a kiss from her husband, Claire took Colter and Rachel Morgan back to Laurel Gardens, where she had miraculously re-appeared after news of Pickard’s death and Halstead’s arrest in Denver. Nobody knew who brought her, and the Perry County Sheriff’s Office — that is to say, its six remaining patrolmen and investigators — was focused intently on the biggest crime it had ever worked. And every hour, it was getting bigger.
But she was home and safe. She had no memory or awareness of what had happened, but had apparently been treated well. She kept talking about the sea and sunflowers.
After the press ran on Wednesday, Morgan, Cl
aire and Colter planned to take a long weekend. They were going camping together in Montana, which seemed far enough away to Morgan to be close to his wife and child again. Maybe he’d show his son how to shoot one of his grandfather’s guns.
Morgan resolved it would be the first a many more days when he would walk away from the newspaper long enough to take his son fishing or make love to his wife without the haunt of his work.
Tomorrow, the state crime lab and the county commissioners would remove the crumbling old crypt for good, giving Laddie’s memory a fresh start and a fresh memorial in another part of the cemetery. And gravediggers would begin exhuming the rest of Laddie’s silver from other graves, each one an alias for Laddie’s grand joke. Who owned it now? Nobody knew, but that’s why God made lawyers.
Morgan merely contemplated the life, the death and the mystery of Laddie Granbouche. Her ghost had turned out to be the wind generated by a butterfly’s wing, moving the water and, somewhere beyond the horizon, creating a tempest.
Carter McWayne had stolen some of Laddie’s silver, which she had stolen from Pancho Villa, which he had stolen from Wells Fargo. Or maybe the truth was not so romantic. Morgan didn’t know and, for the moment, he didn’t care as he traced Laddie’s epitaph with his finger: Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery.
“That’s evidence there, friend,” said a voice behind him.
It was Sheriff Trey Kerrigan, in a full dress uniform he never wore. A small black band of electrical tape wrapped his badge.
Morgan nodded.
“Trey, I’m sorry about Cecil. I feel guilty.”
Trey put his good hand on Morgan’s shoulder.
“Wasn’t your fault. He was doing his job. You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah. Eventually. Shawn doing okay this morning?”
Kerrigan shrugged.
“Takin’ it pretty hard about his students. I still got a guard up there, just in case. South Dakota found the vans yesterday. McWayne told us what happened. The doc was supposed to be the real target, but he stayed here. They was just kids.”
Morgan was silent for a moment. He’d already been told about the attack on the USF vans. Of all the players in this tragedy, they were the most innocent.
The Obituary (Jefferson Morgan Mysteries Book 2) Page 20
