“McWayne, is he talking?”
Kerrigan smiled wryly.
“He’s singin’ like a meadowlark. And you wouldn’t believe the song.”
“Try me.”
“Pickard and Halstead were on Fourth Sign payroll, just like the mob. Scouts. They mostly just looked for opportunities and kept the wolves away from the door, you know? Well, they apparently got wind of McWayne’s little web site. Suddenly, they had the poor guy in a pickle. He could help them, or he could go to jail, plain and simple.”
“Blackmail?”
“You got it.”
“So they built the meth lab in McWayne’s parlor?”
“Damn straight,” Kerrigan said. “Who’s gonna raise a stink about queer smells comin’ from a mortuary? Big ol’ barrels of chemicals comin’ and goin’ all the time. Big boxes bein’ carried away …”
“So Shawn Cowper was right,” Morgan said.
“Yeah, and since he woke up, he’s remindin’ me of that fact on a regular schedule. And that lab was a big-ass operation, too. FBI guys are still checkin’ but we know it distributed all the way down to Arizona and out to Oregon.”
“Who was cooking the crank?”
“They sent guys in. McWayne just had to keep his mouth shut. Pickard and Halstead were just the enforcers, like hit men. They were watching everybody, and they knew who was watching.”
“Rodriguez.”
“Yeah, Rodriguez. He’d got inside, like he was some cocky ex-con. ATF gave him a whole fake prison record for drug-running and murder and everything the Fourth Sign desired in an employee. He was trying to follow the money all the way to the fuckin’ heart of the Fourth Sign, but he screwed up by trying to turn McWayne. Pickard and Halstead got him one night …”
Kerrigan choked up. He had just buried a cop, and the wound was still too fresh. But he steeled himself and continued.
“They took him back to the mortuary and … they made McWayne watch. And they told him that’s what would happen to him if he got stupid. They handed him Rodriguez’s head, just … Well, McWayne wasn’t gonna talk. He kept the body in his winter salt bin in the basement until he come up with a plan to escape.”
“Is that when he started stealing Laddie’s silver?”
“Yeah. When the county come up with the idea to move the crypt, McWayne saw his chance. He reckoned he could steal the silver and dump Rodriguez’s body where it’d be found, I guess.”
“That’s bullshit, Trey,” Morgan fumed. “If he wanted the cops to know about Rodriguez, he could have propped him up on Main Street and left a note.”
“He was scared shitless, Jeff. Still is. I guess him and Rodriguez had got to be friends. He felt some responsibility, I s’pose. People do dumb things when they’re scared.”
“So it was McWayne who tried to kill us and burned down the mortuary?”
“Nope. It was Pickard. Or at least that’s what Halstead is sayin’. Once you and the doc got on the scent, they started followin’ you. When you busted into McWayne’s, they knew the jig was up. And you give ‘em a damn fine chance to kill all the birds with one stone. Clean as a whistle.”
Morgan shook his head.
“And the sniper?”
“Pickard again. But I suspect it was a team effort. But while they was shootin’ at you, they lost track of McWayne. He took off that same night.”
“Has he explained the e-mail he sent to me, under Cowper’s name?” Morgan asked.
“Carter says it was his way of warning you and protecting the doc. He figured we’d put a guard on him. He just didn’t want anybody to know it was him. He was high-tailing it out of town, and those DCI guys just lost him.”
“Lost him?”
“Yep, but thanks to you, they found him again. Once their meth lab burned down, they didn’t need him anymore. He was a liability, not an asset. I guess the plan was to snatch him before he got on the plane and take him out somewheres and whack him. I guess they planned to say he was resisting arrest and tried to escape.”
“But I got in the way.”
“Yep.”
“Shit.”
“Lucky for you, the ATF was there, huh? I still don’t know how they knew it was going down, but they had a tip. They’da preferred to arrest Pickard and Halstead, but they saved your life instead.”
“I don’t remember any of it until the ambulance was there. Just Pickard …”
Kerrigan squeezed Morgan’s shoulder, still a little sore from the night in the mortuary.
“ATF sniper took him out, and Halstead freaked. The ATF guys come down fast on him, and I guess you got roughed up a little. Nothing personal. I’m sure you’d rather be bruised and alive than perfectly dead, huh?”
Morgan touched the bandage that covered twelve stitches on his flayed jaw. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he said.
“Well, we got plenty of loose ends to tie up, my friend. McWayne is likely to do some time, and DCI is damn sure gonna get more credit for this fiasco than it wanted. I best get back to it,” the sheriff said, expending his good left hand to Morgan, who squeezed it with his own uninjured left hand. “Glad you’re off the hook.”
“Was Hi Goldsmith involved in all this?” Morgan asked, almost an afterthought.
Kerrigan looked around, as if to keep the secret.
“It’s lookin’ like an accident, pure and simple,” Kerrigan said. “We found some stuff at his house that suggests he’d done it before and was into that stuff. Just miscalculated, I guess.”
The mourners had dispersed, except for a few who lingered at Cecil’s grave while the casket was lowered. Morgan watched it disappear and said a little prayer, thanking the Lord it wasn’t him in that box.
Morgan looked up into the ancient cottonwoods. The sky was azure, uncluttered by clouds and without the promise of more rain. If there was a Heaven up there, he imagined he could see the bottom floor.
But he didn’t see the man who came up behind him.
“Mr. Morgan?”
Startled, he turned.
It was Pridrick Leighton, the truck-stop preacher. A loose end. Morgan stiffened.
“I just wanted to say how sorry I am about your friend,” Leighton said. “It’s hard to know exactly what to say at times like this.”
Morgan pursed his lips.
“But that’s your job, isn’t it, rev? To know what to say?”
Leighton looked off into the distance, across the stone garden of the cemetery, and smiled. Then he took off his mirrored sunglasses and wiped them with a greasy finger.
“Well, not really,” he said. “Seein’ as how this thing has sorta wrapped up, I guess I oughta introduce myself.”
He extended his hand to Morgan, who was reluctant to take it.
“Name’s Grant Dreyer. ATF.”
Morgan’s jaw dropped.
“I worked with Gabe Rodriguez. Good cop. I appreciate what you did for him and his family. Anyway, after he was … well, we couldn’t lose this investigation. We knew they had somebody inside, probably a cop on the take, but we didn’t know exactly who it was. We were close, but you were closer.”
“You’re ATF?”
“Yeah. I’ve been inside the Fourth Sign as a scout goin’ on three years. A truck stop preacher talks to a lot of people, you know? Good cover. Didn’t save any souls, but I’d tell them about loads that were left unattended, or pass on delivery information. Most of the time it was a set-up. Halstead’s bust opened the floodgate. As of today, we’ve popped a couple dozen guys in six states, all major league busts, and there’ll be lots more. Drugs. Guns. Murder. Interstate piracy. Racketeering. They’re going down hard and long.”
Morgan was speechless. If Leighton, or Dreyer, was telling the truth, the Fourth Sign’s back would soon be broken. All he could manage was a flabbergasted smile.
“Yeah, Jerry Overton said you’d be pleased. It’s your scoop, if you want it. He says to call him when you need a good quote for your story. This was his baby before he retired, y
ou know?”
“He knew?”
“Yeah, he knew all along. And when the shit started to come down — Jesus Christ, it’s good to be able to cuss out loud again! Anyway, when the shit started coming down, Overton pulled some strings to get your mom out of there, for her safety. You were next, but you moved too damn fast.”
“You took my mom? You’re ‘Comeaux’?”
“Yeah, she was with me the whole time. Overton said if you didn’t know the Fourth Sign was involved, that name would wake you up, you know? She’s a nice lady, and I wish I’d have known her before. Anyway, we lost McWayne until you and the sheriff came by to see me. We made a call to see where he was going and the rest was easy. ATF had guys there hours before you. Halstead and Pickard were under surveillance all afternoon. We had a nice, quiet arrest planned until you showed up.”
Morgan scuffed the wet grass. He didn’t know what to say.
“The Lord — and the U.S. government — work in mysterious ways,” Dreyer said.
Then he smiled and walked away.
Laddie Granbouche would remain a mystery.
As Morgan stood at the crypt, Old Bell’s obituary bubbled up through the years. Did she truly ride with and love mythic outlaws … or was she merely a lonely woman who yearned for a history more romantic than her own? Have we missed our chance to know her? To know ourselves? The river flows on.
Maybe Laddie’s mystery made life more interesting, Morgan thought. No legend worth his — or her — salt ever died. They cheated death.
Does it matter if Laddie Granbouche carried Etta’s true memories inside her, or if she just snatched a mythic life for herself? Does it matter if the shootout at the OK Corral was a mythic struggle between good and evil — or a gang rumble in a manure patch? History was funny that way. People shaped it more than it shaped people, Morgan thought.
Even if Cowper and his team had proven Laddie Granbouche was, in fact, Etta Place — or not — the argument wouldn’t have died. They never do.
Morgan smiled. Even though mysteries beg to be solved, he knew the best ones never are.
Jefferson Morgan inhaled, and wondered if particles of death floated on the cemetery air.
After a night of rain, the graveyard smells like sweet resurrection. The morning sun draws out the damp, the dark and the ferment, and they mingle as they rise on the warming air.
The long-dead floated in the July morning, cleansed by the clay and concealment in Wyoming’s ancient soil.
The living simply had to breathe.
Have you read the first book in the
Jefferson Morgan Mystery series?
The DEADLINE
“A brilliant and engaging blend of fast-paced suspense, painstaking prose and characters so real they could drive down southbound I-25.” —DENVER POST
Learn more about THE DEADLINE
and how to order the book at:
http://wildbluepress.com/obit-deadline
A dying convict’s last request thrusts small-town newspaperman Jefferson Morgan into a deadly maelstrom as he explores a fifty-year-old case of child murder — a wound his town still isn’t ready to scrape open. Under the heaviest deadline of his life, and amid threats from unexpected foes, Morgan must struggle with his own conscience to tell a story no matter the consequences, dig deep into the town’s past, and unveil a killer who’s managed to remain hidden in plain sight for almost 50 years. Before CJ Box and Craig Johnson mined mysteries from the Wyoming landscape, national bestselling author Ron Franscell introduced crime fiction fans to Jefferson Morgan and the Winchester Bullet in THE DEADLINE and now in its exciting sequel, THE OBITUARY.
More Books by Ron Franscell
Nonfiction
Evil at the Front Door (2014)
The Sourtoe Cocktail Club (2012)
Delivered from Evil (2011)
The Darkest Night (2008)
Fiction
Angel Fire (1998)
The Deadline (1999)
The Obituary (2003)
Crime Buff’s Guides
Crime Buff’s Guide to the Outlaw Southwest (2014)
Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw New Mexico (2014)
Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Arizona (2014)
Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Pennsylvania (2013)
Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Washington DC (2012)
Crime Buff’s Guide to the Outlaw Rockies (2011)
Crime Buff’s Guide to Outlaw Texas (2010)
Now For The First Time
As An eBook and Audio Book!
NO STONE UNTURNED: The True Story Of The World’s Premiere Forensics Investigators
“A fascinating journey into the trenches of crime [investigation]”
—Lowell Cauffiel, New York Times bestselling
author of House of Secrets
NO STONE UNTURNED recreates the genesis of NecroSearch International as a small eclectic group of scientists and law enforcement officer who volunteer their services to help locate the clandestine graves of murder victims and recover the remains and evidence to assist with the apprehension and conviction of the killers. Known early on as “The Pig People” because of their experiments in locating graves using the carcasses of pigs (because of their similarities to human bodies), NecroSearch has evolved and expanded into one of the most respected forensic investigation teams in the world. In NO STONE UNTURNED, New York Times bestselling author Steve Jackson, the author of BOGEYMAN and MONSTER, vividly tells the story of this incredible group and recounts some of their most memorable early cases that if taken separately would each make great true crime books.
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wildbluepress.com/NSU-BM
“The book covers the group’s quirky beginnings and digs into its most important cases suspensefully; Jackson’s sharp eye misses nothing in the painstakingly rendered details. A must-have for true crime fans, it should also be of great interest to anyone fascinated with the practical applications of science.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)
“A fascinating account of a group of extraordinary people who volunteer their time and expertise to locate hidden murder victims for the police and prosecutors. … Recommended for public and academic libraries.”
—Library Journal
“No Stone Unturned” delves into cases that would make good novels, but they’re real. Furthermore, he describes a group of uncommon people performing uncommon tasks, and he does it with respect, accuracy and genuine style.”
—Ron Franscell, bestselling author
of The Darkest Night.
Order Your Updated Copy
of NO STONE UNTURNED at
wildbluepress.com/NSU-BM
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The Obituary (Jefferson Morgan Mysteries Book 2) Page 21
