Killer Summer (Walt Fleming)

by Ridley Pearson

  “That’s all?” he said sarcastically, gasping as he ran a hand through his hair stubble. “Jesus! You . . . are . . . a . . . piece . . . of . . . work.”

  “What did you mean by money?”

  “What do you think I meant?”

  “I think you were offering me a bribe.”

  “Nonsense. I was suggesting you wanted a bribe. That’s a far different thing.”

  “I have to wonder about the attempt to steal the bottles,” she said, finally finding her way into the line of discussion the sheriff was hoping for.

  “That was a horrible thing. A man died.”

  “A man—a good man—was killed in Amsterdam as well. These bottles have blood on them.”

  “If you’re accusing me of something, just say it.”

  “Very well . . .”

  She studied him for a minute. She wanted to make him wait.

  “Dr. Weisling’s murder put you in a bind. You expected someone like me would show up. You’re smart enough to know that would happen. Sun Valley was already arranged. If you could have withdrawn the lot, I believe you would have. But that would only focus more attention on Dr. Weisling’s tragedy. However, if the bottles never made it to the auction, having been authenticated and properly insured . . .”

  “If only I was so smart as all that . . . since you have me as a murderer and a crook already . . .”

  “If not you, then who? An investor? Someone put you up to the Adams bottles? Brought you the idea? Forced it on you maybe? It’s no time to be defending someone like that. Unless you plan on killing me too?”

  “I had nothing to do with the attempted theft,” he said. “Would I have profited? I suppose so. The bottles are well insured, it’s true. Do I plan on killing you? Why would I invite you to this meeting if that were the case?”

  “To find out just how serious a threat I am.”

  He winced and pursed his lips. “You are a graduate student, my dear. The bottles were vetted and authenticated. You value yourself a little too highly, I’m afraid. How should I know who killed Weisling, if it’s as you say? I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about,” she said.

  “The reserve on this lot is seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I have plenty to worry about. If you cost me that reserve, I’ll sue you so that any paycheck you earn for the rest of your life goes to me. I’d consider that, if I were you.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” she said. “Not if you were me. I studied under Weisling. I worshipped that man.”

  He laughed. “God, you are impossible.”

  “Now you’re catching on,” she said. “Think it through: whoever buys these bottles is going to have them vetted by their own people, and you can be sure I will make myself a part of that process. Microfractures, Mr. Remy, it will all come down to microfractures. What you want to be doing is getting yourself out in front of this thing, ahead of it. If it wasn’t you behind Dr. Weisling’s death, then you know who was. Speak up. Say something. Save yourself while there’s time.”

  His eyes danced behind the magnification.

  “So dramatic,” he whispered harshly. “Perhaps you missed your calling.”

  “Don’t bet on it.”

  She left, hoping she could find her way back to the front door. She began roaming from room to room.

  “ ‘Before God, we are all equally wise,’ ” he called out, “ ‘and equally foolish.’ ”

  “Albert Einstein,” she said, turning.

  She’d knocked the wind out of him.

  “Microfractures,” she said, pulling the door shut behind herself.

  27

  Walt sat at his desk, looking at printouts of three e-mails, each a criminal record, while Tommy Brandon tried to look comfortable in the small room’s only other chair. His six-foot-four frame made the chair look like something from Alice in Wonderland.

  “You don’t see a sheet like Matthew Salvo anymore,” Walt said. “A second-story man, is what they used to call a guy like this.”

  “I guess he’s an ATV man now,” Brandon said.

  “He’s a bridesmaid,” Walt said. “All his arrests are as an accomplice. No assaults. Two charges of statutory, both pled out, so he obviously likes them young. Nothing else here to get him more than medium time and a pair of reduced sentences. He’s Matt Damon in those Ocean’s movies.”

  “So, who’s George Clooney?” Brandon asked.

  Walt wanted to say: “You are.” Because Brandon was undeniably handsome. He had piercing dark eyes, a strong chin, and perfect teeth. It was hard for Walt to look at him and not imagine Gail straddling him. There was nothing to break Walt’s spell, the grim porn movie running through his mind involving his soon-to-be ex-wife and his deputy.

  “I doubt it’s this guy,” Walt said, tapping Roger McGuiness’s face. “He’s the wheel man. We can bet he drove the wrecker. One arrest, six years ago, no time served. He’s kept himself clean, which I imagine appealed to Clooney.”

  “We issue a BOLO?” Brandon said. Be on lookout.

  “Yes, for both. Ketchum and Sun Valley PDs need this. Ask them to walk these sheets around to the bars and hotels and property managers. Where do young girls hang out? The pool at the Y? Tennis courts? I’d put those on the list too. Let’s hope Matthew Salvo has been trolling during his free time.”

  “Got it.” Brandon stood.

  “Tommy,” Walt said, stopping him halfway to the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “The girls come home Monday.”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t exactly an I couldn’t care less, but it was close enough that Walt felt a stab in his chest. Brandon would never care about his kids the way he did.

  “It’s been two weeks, the longest they’ve ever been away. I was thinking, it might be nice if Gail and I took them out to dinner. You know, just her and me. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re asking the wrong person.”

  “But you’re okay with it,” Walt said.

  “What are you asking?”

  Walt hesitated. “You think she’d be good with it?”

  Brandon crossed his arms tightly. “Listen, Sheriff . . .”

  “We sign the papers next week.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I imagine that sucks.”

  Walt realized he should have kept his mouth shut. What was he doing talking to Brandon about any of this?

  Neither man spoke. Walt’s silence was the result of countless sleepless nights spent on the couch or in one of the girls’ empty beds, anywhere but in the bed he and Gail had once shared. He silently suffered such heartache and physical pain that he’d sought a doctor’s opinion, not just once but several times, only to be told it was all in his head. Walt’s silence was the silence of defeat, regret, shame, and disgust.

  “Well, hey, I ought to notify Ketchum and Sun Valley.” Brandon was blocking the doorway.

  “Yeah,” Walt said, “go.”

  28

  Arthur Remy stepped out of the shower and reached for the monogrammed towel. The initials on it belonged to his hosts, currently hiking a trail on the ski mountain.

  His hand swiped the air where the towel should have been.

  “Jesus!” he barked, his voice ringing off the imported Spanish tile. He quickly covered his groin.

  “What were you thinking?” the man asked.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Talking to the police, initiating inquiries within Branson Risk.”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Did it not occur to you we would be keeping an eye on our investment? That we would be watching you? Did it not occur to you that if you started turning over rocks, something vile would come out from underneath?” He indicated himself. “Voilà!”

  “The sheriff came to me, not the other way around.”

  “And this theft? An attempt at insurance money?”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Lying won’t help
you, believe me.”

  “It wasn’t me!”

  “Insurance adjusters . . . is there a lower life-form? Like a dog with a bone. You get them involved . . . And now, thanks to you, they are involved. What if they decide to look at this more carefully?”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions. I had nothing to do with attempting to steal the bottles.”

  “That’s what I was told you would say. I said you weren’t that stupid, that you could be reasoned with.”

  “It was someone else . . . a third party . . . has to be . . .”

  “It was very, very stupid.”

  “IT WAS NOT ME!”

  “I’ve already told you, it wasn’t us. You panicked. You were afraid that after what happened in Amsterdam . . . that a closer look . . . that the insurance would cover it. It was a decent plan, had it worked. You should have come to us. But look where you are now.” He passed Remy the towel. “Look where it leaves you . . . where it leaves us.”

  Remy wiped the shower water from his eyes and then wrapped his waist. “Let’s just calm down, okay?”

  “I am perfectly calm. This is me being calm.”

  “It’s a misunderstanding,” Remy said, “a fuckup.”

  “Your fuckup.”

  “No . . . no . . . no . . .”

  “Let me explain.” The man stepped closer. “We have two concerns. The first is that you might try to flee, to shirk your responsibilities.”

  “No! That won’t happen.”

  “The second,” he said, “is that you understand the degree to which you’ve fucked this up.” He placed his hands on Remy’s shoulders, his arms locked. “The bottles will be sold, our investment recouped. End of story.”

  He kicked Remy’s left knee, snapping it as loudly as a tree branch breaking. Remy screamed and fell back into the shower.

  “More people break a leg or a hip in the bathtub than on ski slopes,” the man said. “Did you know that?” He picked up the fallen towel and tossed it onto the writhing man. “No more reminders. Next time . . . if there is a next time . . . You don’t want a next time.”

  29

  The persistent squeak of the room-service cart’s errant wheel created a counterpoint rhythm to the whoosh of Kevin’s rubber soles on the hotel hallway’s carpet. A good-looking woman in her thirties, with wet hair and pool water clinging to her tan skin like pearls, strode toward him in a tiny bikini.

  “Down, boy,” came a girl’s voice over Kevin’s shoulder. He slowed the cart. The woman passed by, offering him a sideways glance that told him she’d caught him staring and that she enjoyed the attention.

  “Get a room, why don’t you?” Summer said.

  “What’s up?” he said, trying to act casual.

  “I have an answer to that, but it’s too dirty to say in a hotel hallway. Dude, she’s ancient. Give it a rest.”

  Kevin pushed the trolley forward. “I’ve got to deliver this,” he said.

  “We’re still on for tonight?” she asked, walking side by side with him. She showed him the key to the jet. “Fifteen minutes. Right?”

  “I’m off at seven,” he confirmed. “But I owe a friend big-time.”

  “Where do we meet? I’ll have a bag with me and don’t want to drag it all over the place.”

  “A bag? What’s with that?”

  “It’s just clothes and stuff. No big deal.”

  “I don’t know about this,” he said.

  “Are you kidding? I am, like, totally looking forward to this,” she said. “It is so boring here. You don’t even know how much fun you’re going to have. You thought the hot springs were fun?” She took a step closer. “You don’t have a clue, do you?” she said in a raspy voice. She’d seen her mother tease her father this same way.

  “Yeah?”

  “I told you, you can sit up front,” she reminded. “It’ll be so awesome.”

  He glanced over at her, and she offered him as much reassurance as she could muster.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  She relaxed. “Awesome. So where do you want to pick me up?”

  They made arrangements to meet in back of the hotel a few minutes past seven.

  Her plan saved, her face brightened. She kissed him on the cheek, the same way her mother would her dad when she got her way. Kevin flushed and looked away.

  “You’re running away, aren’t you?” he said, speaking down to the cart.

  Her brain seized.

  “What happens to me when it turns out I’m the one who drove you, huh? Have you even thought about that? I’ll bet you have. And I’ll bet you don’t give a crap, do you, because you’ll be long gone?”

  “I’m eighteen, Kevin. I can do what I want.”

  “Nice try,” he said. “I’m the one who’s eighteen. I’m the one gets in trouble for this.”

  “I thought we were going to party in the jet? I promise, that’s happening. The flight I’m on is the last one out, at ten o’clock. You think I could get on a plane by myself if I wasn’t eighteen?”

  “Maybe with a fake ID you could.”

  “You’ve been hanging around your uncle too long, dude. This is not Without a Trace, you know?”

  Kevin looked at her, remembering the hot springs.

  “You never drove me down there, okay? All we’re going to do is hang in the jet until my flight, and if anyone ever asks I’ll say I took the shuttle bus, I promise.”

  “So, then, why don’t you take the shuttle bus?” he asked.

  “I thought we were friends,” she said, pouting and disappointed. “I thought we were going to party.”

  Kevin slowed the cart and stopped in front of a room door.

  “I’ve got to do this,” he said.

  “Come on.” She pressed against him. “Please, Kevin . . . seven-ten, at the circle out back,” she said, confirming their plans. She hurried off before he had a chance to answer.

  30

  The door to the Incident Command Center in the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office was closed, a MEETING IN PROGRESS sign on the wall alongside.

  Walt addressed Barge Levy, as Fiona took pictures of Janet Finch’s inspection of the Adams bottles.

  “One thing you didn’t explain, Sheriff,” Finch said, never taking her attention off the bottles, “is how you talked Arthur Remy into allowing this.”

  “Who said I did?”

  “You have the access card. You opened the case.”

  “True. And true.”

  “Go ahead, be that way,” Finch said.

  “Every once in a great while, blind luck plays a hand in an investigation.”

  “You stole it from him?”

  “Remy showed up at the emergency room earlier,” Walt said. “Slipped and broke his knee, he claimed. I was contacted because the on-call orthopedist and his radiologist judged the fracture to be blunt-force trauma—a baseball bat, maybe a martial-arts kick, to the knee. We ask them to report that kind of difference of opinion, primarily to head off domestic violence against women.”

  “And?”

  “He left his pants.”

  “Excuse me?” Finch said.

  “Remy left his pants in the emergency room. Was driven home in a pair of hospital scrubs. One too many painkillers, and he spaced out and forgot his pants. The pants, and their contents, were turned over to me. I’m required to do an inventory, and, as it happens, the card was in his pocket. I’d seen it before. This office has every intention of returning Mr. Remy’s belongings. We have been in communication with him, and it was agreed I would pass along his things when I see him tonight at the auction.”

  “Holy shit! Did he ask about the card?”

  “Not a word. I’m sure he didn’t want to attract my attention to it.”

  “Who says there’s no God?” Finch said.

  “Other than the photographs, we can document the test results, right?” Walt said.

  “Of course,” Levy said, still making adjustments on what appeared to be some complicated elect
ronics.

  “I’d rather have a spectrometer,” Finch said. Wearing cotton gloves, she viewed the labels with a loupe, and, as she did, she made noises like she was in the throes of really good sex.

  “Trust me,” Levy said, “the piezoelectric effect is just as conclusive. We can measure density, size, clamped capacitance, and low-field dissipation.”

  “English?” Walt said.

  “She can determine the pattern of any microfractures,” Levy said. “Listen, we wouldn’t have this gear if I didn’t know what I was doing. It was donated by the father of one of our students after we found those pottery shards out at Muldoon. Remember? The mine cave-in? The piezoelectric effect was the cheapest way to determine if it was authentically Native American without sending the shards out to a lab, which would have cost aplenty.” He laughed one of his laughs. “Turned out they were common gardening pots. But, hey, I got the equipment donated, so who’s complaining?”

  “The results will have to be verified,” Finch reminded. “No offense, but they’re not going to take the word of a grad student and a school principal.”

  “Alternative-school principal,” Levy corrected. “And I taught science for twelve years. And graduated from MIT, don’t forget.”

  Finch didn’t comment.

  “Do you know someone?” Walt asked.

  “I can ask one of my professors to examine the data we collect,” Finch said. “There will definitely be someone on campus who can do this.”

  “But not before the auction?”

  “Doubtful,” Finch said, “it being a weekend and all. But, who knows? These bottles are famous. I can think of a couple people who would jump at a chance to examine them.”

  “I can try Lowry, at MIT,” Levy said, “there’s always a chance . . .”

  “Dr. Lowry would do it,” Finch told Walt. “If he signed off on this, no one would dispute it.” She flattered Walt with a look. “Thank you for doing this.”

  “Don’t mistake this as benevolence,” Walt said. “Those bottles are evidence in a homicide. If they’re fakes, that impacts the investigation. It’s something I need to know.”