Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  “So you do know: Yes, Waco. Every single one of them was there.”

  “How many?” Wilson asked. He drifted away, mentally, connecting bits and pieces. He had an advantage over other men in that he was not a linear thinker. What Vaughn had always considered Wilson’s California moron look was really the face of a creative thinker. Wilson could shift from subject to subject, moving in and out to consider an inexhaustible range of possibilities—an ability that gave him the same cerebral advantages as a woman.

  “Three from the FBI, two from our side; five total. We know he’s got an agent in his sights and we know the agent is located in the Southeast—either Tennessee or Kentucky. We’re going to get him first.”

  “And the name of the perp is … Rodeo?”

  Vaughn rubbed his chin. “Nickname, obviously. Had some guys in D.C. working with a marine intel group out at Pendleton in geographical forensics. They came up with an unmistakable correlation between the location of the hits and several select annual rodeos. Right now we’ve got it narrowed down to the U.S. Pro Am Markus Bourbon Rodeo, but he seems to move around.”

  Wilson waited. He scratched his nose. “This is all we’ve got after both agencies have been on this five years?”

  “Three years. That’s when we decided we had something going and connected it up with Waco.”

  “Killer doesn’t leave any little notes or anything?”

  “No notes. No variation in the method of execution.” Vaughn removed a legal-sized file from an accordion folder. He laid crime scene photos in a square on his desk. Very precisely, no overlap.

  Wilson scooted his chair closer. He didn’t recognize any of the faces, but he wouldn’t, even if one had been his brother. Looking at the row of victims he was reminded of those little puzzles in elementary school where you looked at a series of pictures and tried to pick out the differences.

  The faces were alike—eyes half-lidded, face puffy, tongue lolling, neck swelling almost comically over the wire that was used to strangle them. They’d been shocked with a high voltage Taser or prod, which had been powerful enough to knock them out, leaving a significant burn mark. Merciful in the long run. Their hands and feet had been bound with baling wire, and they’d been strangled from behind, wire wrapped tightly around their neck. The killer had only to cross the loose ends and pull tightly, and the wire would bite through the flesh and deliver a quick, brutal execution. There were no defense wounds, no signs of struggle, no histamine levels that showed high and extended pain levels before death. All five were male, and had been incapacitated and killed quickly, the whole procedure over in five to eight minutes tops.

  Wilson settled back in his chair. He realized his leg was aching. He’d been too absorbed to feel it.

  “Taser—cattle prod. Baling wire—large animals. Rodeo. That can’t be all.”

  Vaughn leaned back in his chair. “It’s not. We’ve spent the last two years chasing a network of loosely connected conspiracy groups. Up until about six weeks ago, we were sure they were the major players.”

  “What kind of conspiracy groups are we talking about?”

  “Most of them are survivalist wanna-bes. They’re not holed up in Oregon, like the serious hard cores, but they have a nasty edge and they talk the talk. They’ve got a gun rack in the basement, a fishing boat in the backyard, wouldn’t be caught dead drinking bottled water. They get on the Internet and play with conspiracies and the teachings of Rush Limbaugh like computer nerds play Dungeons and Dragons. They’re convinced the government is collecting all their receipts from the local Kroger’s and Wal-Mart and keeping a file on what they buy. They’re still talking about Ruby Ridge.”

  They had a point over that one, Wilson thought.

  “Plenty of these guys have enough weapons to make them dangerous no matter how stupid they are.”

  The stupider they are, the scarier they are, Wilson thought.

  “Most of the time they can’t get organized enough even to meet regularly, and if they do, they stay up all night and drink beer and whiskey, tell dirty jokes, beat their chest. Pajama parties with the NRA. But with every victim but the first, one of these so-called organizations has put out notice on who will get hit, usually before we even find a body. It’s been a different group every time, local to the dead zone—and their stream of information comes simultaneously with the execution. They broadcast like sports commentators at a ball game. It’s weird and it’s creepy and now, for the first time, they’re giving hints about who’s next.”

  “When you say broadcast—”

  “Audio streams on the Internet. Easy to trace. We have time and location and I’ll get you a download of the files so you can listen.”

  “Shit,” Wilson said.

  “In a word.”

  “They identify the target by name?” Wilson wondered when his would come up. If it hadn’t already. There’d been a lot of ATF agents in the mix of law enforcement, military advisers, and civilians.

  Vaughn shook his head. “No names. Yet. They give the state, and now the city where the agent lives. Their information is a hundred percent accurate every time. And it’s coming out earlier and a little more specific in the detail, with less time between.”

  “Escalating.”

  Vaughn nodded.

  “So if they’re not doing the killing themselves … the assassin is using them to draw our interest?”

  “That’s the general consensus. Rodeo uses the groups as a shield, so he can do his thing without us on his ass. The groups take the credit and feel like they have a hand in the affairs of the big bad world, knowing that if it comes to court they’ll be safe—unless, of course, there’s a conspiracy to have them framed. So the goofs get to splash around in the big boy pool and make a lot of waves while the assassin does his work. We don’t know who the killer is or why he’s doing it, other than the obvious Waco connection.”

  “And they’ve made another broadcast? That the next hit will be on a Tennessee or Kentucky agent?”

  “No.”

  Wilson waited for Chesterfield to do the song and dance that would indicate an informant so vulnerable no one was admitting his existence. Which was invaluable but would also complicate things, when it came down to warrants.

  Vaughn pulled another set of pictures out of the open file and handed them to Wilson.

  She reminded him of Sel. Slender with luxurious, dark hair that hung over her shoulders.

  “One of ours?”

  Vaughn nodded.

  “It usually is,” Wilson said.

  “We’ve had agents infiltrating groups we targeted as likely. Hoping to get lucky. And we did.”

  Wilson turned the pictures facedown on the desk.

  “She was good. I’ll give you a copy of her report, but it boils down to this. The assassin arranges a meet with a group. He doesn’t go himself; he always sends an intermediate who meets with a select member of the organization in an out-of-the-way place, gives them the information, and they never see or hear from him again. The last thing our agent came up with was the U.S. Pro-Am Markus Bourbon Rodeo. Since she was killed less than twenty-four hours later, we figure she was on the right track.”

  “Where’s the rodeo now? Are they on the road?”

  “They’re in South Carolina.”

  “Is that typical? The distance?”

  Vaughn peeled a piece of skin back on the edge of his thumb. “Sometimes more. That’s why it took us so long to tag the rodeo connection.” Vaughn cleared his throat. “Alex Rugger will be running the op from Tennessee and he wants you on the Kentucky end of the thing.”

  “ATF outpost there is Louisville?”

  “And Lexington. That’s where we want you. There’s been a complication. An ATF intern, female, college student at Eastern Kentucky University; she’s been missing for two months. Her car was found in her apartment parking lot, looks like she was killed in the vehicle. No body, one suspect. A deputy sheriff from London, Kentucky, named Edgers, who was doing so
me temp work for the Lexington office.”

  Wilson groaned. He did not envy the Lexington S.A.

  “Local police investigation is being run by a Detective Joel Mendez. Lexington outpost says he’s good. No arrests imminent, but the theory is the sheriff and the intern had a thing, and the sheriff killed her, crime of passion, blah blah blah.”

  “But not one of our guys?”

  “Hell no. As it turns out, the London cops were kind of unloading this guy. He’s a hotdog, not good at following orders, sure there’s only one Way to do things, which is his way. Kind of guy works lots of hours and gets nothing done. Kind of guy you avoid when you’re heading out to lunch.”

  “Where is London, Kentucky?”

  “Roughly an hour and a half drive south of Lexington.”

  “What was he doing with our office in Kentucky? Other than …”

  “He’s a local boy. He was pointing his finger at the illegal gun buyers, most of whom he went to high school with. They had him going to flea markets making gun buys from guys he’s known all his life.”

  “So how does being local help him? People will know right away he’s a cop.”

  For the first time ever Wilson heard Vaughn Chesterfield laugh. “It’s a peculiarity of this part of the country, Wilson. These are the gun states—”

  “Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee.”

  “Obviously they’ve got the hard cores, but Rugger says half the time they arrest these ol’ boys they’re indignant as hell and swear they weren’t doing anything wrong. They don’t see what the government has to do with their God-given right to sell arms. They’ve been known to send their kids to college with the proceeds. Son comes home over a long weekend, hugs his mama, has some home cooking. He hangs out with his buddies and has a high old time, and on his way out his daddy packs fifty handguns in the trunk of his Camaro to sell when he gets back to school in the Northeast. Buy a gun in Kentucky, pay fifty dollars. Sell it in Chicago for five hundred.”

  “Adds up to a lot of tuition.” Wilson stretched and flexed the muscles in his right leg. “Fifty guns in one weekend, comes to twenty-two, twenty-three thousand. Beats working at El Polo Loco.” He closed one eye, wondering if Southern criminals were as strange as they sounded. “So then we’ve got this sheriff guy, fingering his buddies, all the people he grew up with and went to high school with, right? He’s going to be pretty unpopular when they start picking people up.”

  “Yeah, it bothered me, too. Hardigree, the Lexington office S.A., thinks Edgers has been counting on moving from a temporary assignment to a permanent position with ATF. Guy is ambitious and told Hardigree from day one that he wanted to get off the local sidelines and into the federal end. Hardigree encouraged him. On first evaluation, Edgers looked pretty good. Put the hours in, was cooperative, happy to do anything they asked him to do. Hardigree says he did really good work, except for wanting to do things his way. Says the guy was starting to wear on him a little when the intern thing came up.”

  “What have we got on her?” Wilson asked. “Other than she went to EKU, which sounds good.” Even in California, they knew the law enforcement program at EKU.

  “The university is about a half-hour drive from Lexington. The girl, Cheryl Dunkirk, was a top student, had recommendations from all her teachers and the dean.”

  She’d have to be good, Wilson thought. The ATF female population holds steady at nine percent. “What’s the story on this girl?”

  Vaughn rubbed the bridge of his nose. “She’s young and eager, highly motivated, jazzed about actually getting into some work. They had her doing the usual—tagging evidence and entering it in the log. Hardigree says that Edgers started up on the mentor tack, helping the girl, introducing her to local cops at the watering holes, showing her the ropes. Next thing you know, Edgers is taking her to lunch two or three times a week, and trying to get Hardigree to let her go with him on flea market buys.”

  “An intern?”

  “Hardigree vetoes. But he’s got the situation in his sights now and he’s getting concerned. She’s a nice girl, and he takes her aside and gives her a little advice. She thanks him, avoids Edgers from then on out. As far as Hardigree knows, that’s the end. He keeps her busy, and out of Edgers’s orbit.”

  “So then?”

  “So then she disappears. Her car turns up, physical evidence says foul play. Lexington homicide is as sure as they can be without a body that she’s dead. Cops start taking a look at Edgers, which does not thrill Hardigree, but in all fairness he knows Edgers had been working her.”

  “How sure are they? Grand jury going to indict?”

  “They don’t have a body, remember, so it’s getting long and drawn out. They don’t indict for homicide in Lexington unless it’s a slam dunk.”

  Wilson pulled at his bottom lip. “What’s this got to do with the assassin?”

  Vaughn shifted sideways in his chair. “A few days after Cheryl Dunkirk disappears, one of her friends, an EKU grad student who used to be an ATF intern himself, goes to Hardigree. He says that Cheryl had come to him for advice because she thought Edgers had some kind of information about an assassin who was targeting federal agents.”

  Wilson sat up in his chair. “What?”

  “Yeah. Imagine. She told this guy that Edgers had been bragging to her. Said he had a contact, another old high school buddy, who was involved somehow, and that he, Edgers, was going to track down the assassin and hand him over to Hardigree, who would hopefully use his influence to offer Edgers a permanent job with ATF. Cheryl tells all this to the friend, tells him she’s not comfortable sitting on the information, doesn’t know what to do. She liked Edgers, but he’d said enough to convince her he was really on to something, and she felt like keeping quiet compromised her ethics. On the other hand, what if the whole thing was just a load of crap? Ergo, the friend—a little older, an ex-intern himself, the closest thing she’s got to a peer—says Holy shit, and makes her promise she’ll go straight to Hardigree. He never saw or heard from her again. Two days later she’d disappeared.”

  “So what’s the theory? Edgers was bragging, trying to impress her, finds out she’s going to go to Hardigree, and kills her?”

  “Or Rodeo finds out and kills her.”

  “What does Hardigree think? He’s talked to Edgers, obviously.”

  “Said Edgers acts like a wide-eyed innocent. Hardigree doesn’t know about Rodeo, and neither does Edgers.”

  “Lexington homicide in on any of this?”

  “They’ve pegged it as a sex thing—affair that got out of hand. Thinking maybe she was pressuring him to get a divorce. Or maybe she was trying to dump him and he wasn’t going to sit still for it.”

  “Which is possible,” Wilson said.

  “Hardigree handed it to Rugger, who wants to watch Edgers, see if he’s really involved or just blowing smoke. The problem is that the detective, Mendez, wants to go to the grand jury and ask for an indictment. And Ruggers wants to know what Edgers really has before he gets shut down.”

  “So is this detective, this Mendez—he going to play ball?”

  “Hell, Wilson, that’s your job. Tell him what you think he needs to know, get him to cooperate, and figure out what the hell Edgers is up to. Unless you want to stay put, and chase Colombian guerrillas. Otherwise, you take a flight out of LAX at six forty-five A.M. tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take the flight.”

  Chesterfield handed Wilson a flimsy piece of paper. “Electronic ticket. Here’s your itinerary.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cowboy looks like someone she knew years and a lifetime ago. Janis can’t remember exactly what happened to him. This one is young, like Hal was when she knew him. He has black hair and brown eyes, and thinks he’s God’s gift to women. But you can’t help liking him—he is wide open and ready for anything and something about him just sparkles. Rumor has it he was a college boy four years ago, then dropped out, at the strenuous objections of his father.
People tell all kinds of stories, so there’s no telling if this is true or just a legend. But things are interesting when this kid is around. And Bones Jones, the traveling veterinarian, reminds Janis that life will knock the stuffing out of the kid more than soon enough.

  Janis thinks the vet can turn any subject depressing, even if she agrees.

  The kid’s name is Dennis Kelly, and he grew up in South Dakota. He’s been smoking the competition in team roping for the last two years, and tonight he rides his first bull. The prize money is good, and the rush even better. Janis figures he won’t make four of the required eight seconds, and that somebody will have to rescue his cute little cowboy ass.

  That’s her job.

  She scratches the end of her nose, trying not to smear the bright red greasepaint. Red and yellow are her signature colors. The silky material of her polka-dot shirt is coming out of the sides of her overalls, like it does in every rodeo she works. She likes the job, likes having a character to hide in. She likes the horses and the cows and the cowboys; the smells and the crowds and the life on the road. And she likes being the center of attention when she goes in that ring to play tag with a bull, to put herself between a cowboy in trouble and an extremely pissed-off animal who weighs in excess of a ton and has horns. Janis knows she is impressive. She knows people talk about her and wonder if she has a death wish. She doesn’t, of course. She’s forgotten how to be afraid. That’s not a concept you can really explain to people; it’s not one she even understands herself. Besides, that’s rodeo life. It’s part of her legend.

  She hadn’t been afraid of that other guy, either, the enemy, and he had hated her for that. No fear, no control. She knows now that those kinds of people, ones like the Branch Davidians, are all over Texas and everywhere else. The innocents, captives is how she thinks of them, stay holed up somewhere doing all the work, while the bad ones are everywhere, just waiting for someone on the wrong side of vulnerable and then they’re right there to pounce.