by Jeff Carson
They stared at one another for a few seconds, and Wakefield blinked first.
Wolf’s phone vibrated in his jeans, and he reached through the fabric and pushed a side button to forward it to voicemail.
“Where were you on Saturday night?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield popped his eyes wide open. “You don’t think I killed this girl, do you?”
“Where were you?” Wolf asked again.
“I was here, getting shit-faced on scotch. Like I’ve been doing since…”
Wolf sat forward on the couch, elbows on knees. His cell phone vibrated again, and then again. Wolf stood up and pulled out his phone. The screen said one missed call, one voicemail, and one text message.
Just then another text message flashed on the screen. It said Call me, now! Important!
It was from Patterson.
Wolf held up the phone. “I have to make a call.”
Wakefield flicked a wrist.
Wolf dialed the number and Patterson picked up halfway through the first ring.
“Sir,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Lorber matched the blood on the USB,” Patterson said.
“And?”
“It’s Jen Wakefield’s blood.”
Wolf looked at Wakefield.
“Sir?” Patterson said in the earpiece.
“Thanks,” Wolf said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Do you need—”
Wolf hung up and put the phone back in his pocket.
Wakefield looked at him.
Wolf looked past him to the wooden table in the den. It was getting almost too dark to see inside the room, but something still caught Wolf’s eye. His boots squeaked on the hardwood floor as he stepped around the couches and across the hall. He stopped at the entryway to the den and flicked on the light.
Wakefield walked up silently behind Wolf.
The office chair was different, understandably a new model to replace the one Jen Wakefield had died in, and just as understandably there was a rug underneath it that hadn’t been there days before. It was a carpeted room, and the rug under the chair would have been put there to cover the stain, at least until they got around to re-carpeting the whole space.
Wakefield watched Wolf with a wary expression. His chest was heaving, nose whistling with rapid breaths.
Wolf pulled the chair aside. Then he bent down and crawled under the table, and then yanked a computer charger out of the wall.
“What’s going on?” Wakefield’s voice cracked.
Wolf climbed out from under the table with the charger in hand. He held it up and studied it for a second, and then held it by his side.
“Did your housekeeper clean up in here?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield swallowed and shook his head. “We had a company come in and do the cleanup.”
“Hollow point bullets,” Wolf said. “Supposed to stay in the body, do as much damage as possible, and cause less collateral damage to others. At least that’s the argument, and that’s why we use them in law enforcement.” Wolf looked over at the table, and then down at the rug. “But the problem is, they do a lot of damage in the body. And if that damage comes out the other side? Well, it makes a real mess.”
Wakefield clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.
Wolf held the end of the charger between his thumb and forefinger. “Tough to clean a mess like that, to the point everything’s completely gone. Pretty much impossible. You’ll have to replace everything, repaint the walls. The ceiling. Replace the carpet.”
Wakefield opened his eyes and stared at Wolf. A tear rolled down his cheek.
Wolf held out the wire in front of Wakefield. “See that? Blood. And it’s here, all the way down the wire of the charger, until about here.”
Wakefield stood quietly and let the tears flow.
“I thought it was weird when I came here that day, and you had wiped the table. You played it off pretty well, like you were just going a little bit crazy, and had to get started cleaning up the mess. Couldn’t stop yourself. Of course, now it all makes sense.”
Wakefield broke down crying in shaking sobs.
“She was watching that sex tape when she killed herself, wasn’t she?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield looked down and cried, dripping tears onto the carpet as he moaned and shook. After at least a minute he swallowed, sniffed and looked up at Wolf, the same way he had done in the chapel after his wife’s funeral. Shoot me.
“Why don’t you tell me what really happened,” Wolf said.
He trudged back into the big room and Wolf followed. The peaks behind the window covering were black silhouettes against a midnight blue sky.
“My wife wasn’t supposed to see it,” Wakefield said. “Ash went to my downtown office on Friday and dropped the USB on my desk with a cryptic note. On a fluke, Jen came looking for me in my office, to have lunch or something. She read the note and brought the USB stick home.
“When I got home from work, I heard the sex noises coming from the den. I thought it was Chris watching porn or something. When I got in the room, I…I saw her. And I saw the video playing in front of her. She’d looped it, so it played over and over again. She wanted me to find her like that. God!”—he shook his head and looked up—“I still thank God Chris didn’t find her. She…she hadn’t been doing too well, psychologically, with the MS. It was eating at who she was. Making her…hard edged. A completely different person.”
Wakefield paused and flicked a glance at Wolf. “I saw the note. It was sitting right next to the computer. I panicked. I…picked it up and I pulled the USB out of the computer. And then the damn window of the movie was still up on the screen, so I had to close it with my finger on the track pad, and before I knew it I was smearing my wife’s blood all over the damn thing. So I just picked it up, cleaned it in the sink and then got to work cleaning the table. It was so dumb”—he shook his head—“I wake up every time I finally get to sleep thinking about what I did to her, and then what I did with her blood. I have to drink myself unconscious.”
Wolf sat in silence watching Wakefield’s mind rip itself apart. “What did the note say?” Wolf asked.
“Klammer gets your vote, or else,” Wakefield said with a scowl. “From Charlie Ash.”
“It said, From Charlie Ash?”
“No, but it was him.” Wakefield stared into nothing. “He hired Stephanie…to seduce me. My wife wasn’t at Charlie’s party on Thursday night. She never went out anymore, not with her illness. She didn’t like being in public anymore. Didn’t like people anymore.”
Wakefield sat forward, picking his fingernail on the coffee table. “A couple years ago, when I met Charlie Ash, when he moved to town from Tahoe, I’d been screwing around on my wife. And Charlie and I, we went out to a bar to have a drink, to get to know each other. You know, the state of the real estate market, the political atmosphere. He was interested in getting involved in the county council.
“Anyway, this girl came up to me. This girl I’d been…seeing. Young. She was out with her friends and came barging into the bar, and she came right up to me and started putting her hand on my face, and I brushed it away and got her to back off before anything too telling happened. But Charlie Ash knew.” Wakefield smiled. “Ash knew, but he pretended like he hadn’t noticed. I remember it like it was yesterday. She didn’t give it away, and I acted pretty well, getting that girl out of there without making a scene. But he knew. I saw the gears churning in his head for a few seconds, and he just kind of…pointedly forgot about it, never mentioned it. But I knew he knew, and I thought his ignoring it was like…I don’t know, him being loyal to me, or something. He was saying, he didn’t care, and he was going to be a good friend from now on, so just...forget it. I already have.”
Wakefield squirmed in the chair. Scratched his cheek.
“So his little plan worked perfectly. He dangled a beautiful girl in front of me while my wife was home dying in her bed. And me, being such the asshole that I am I fell for it.
I screwed her, and he videotaped it.”
Wolf cleared his throat, and then stood up and walked over to a smaller window with a view. He looked down at the twinkling lights of the town and then at Wakefield’s reflection in the glass. He was sitting board straight and staring at Wolf’s back.
Wolf turned around. “That doesn’t prove it was Charlie Ash who made that tape.”
Wakefield snorted. “Oh, it was him. He came over and clarified things on Saturday, even after knowing my wife had just shot herself.”
“And how did he clarify things?” Wolf asked.
“He came over and said that I must vote for Klammer’s bid, and persuade everyone else I can to do the same. If I do that, I’ll get money and the video stays private.”
“And has he paid you any money?”
“No. I don’t even want money.”
“Where’s that note?” Wolf asked.
“I burnt it before I called you.” Wakefield looked down. “I was panicking.”
“And the USB drive?” Wolf asked.
His face froze and he looked up. “Wait, the USB drive”—he looked over at the computer on the coffee table—“how did you get that?”
“We found Matt Cooper dead today. The USB was left on him. And your wife’s blood was smudged on the drive.”
Wakefield’s mouth dropped open. “What? Cooper had the USB? How?”
“Cooper didn’t have the USB, he was killed, and the murderer left it for us to find.”
Wakefield jumped up off the couch and walked out of the room.
“Hey!” Wolf called, putting his hand on his pistol. “Stop.”
Wakefield stopped, and then held up a hand. “Wait, I have to see something,” and then he waved Wolf down the hall and started walking again.
Wolf caught up fast, keeping his hand on his gun.
Wakefield stepped through cones of light as he marched down the hall, and then veered left into a dark cave of a room.
Wolf followed on his heels into the darkness, and then the room lit up with the sound of a switch. A mahogany desk was the centerpiece of a large room filled with patterned rugs, bronze statues, and dark-wood carvings. Shelves lined the walls with thousands of books.
Wakefield stopped at the desk and reached for the top drawer.
“Stop, or I will shoot,” Wolf said in a steady voice. He aimed his pistol at Wakefield’s back.
“What?” Wakefield swiveled and thrust his hands in the air. “What are you doing?”
“Step away from the desk, now,” Wolf said.
Wakefield did.
Wolf kept his eyes on Wakefield and opened the desk drawer. Inside was a tray full of pens and pencils, a small calculator, a pad of graph paper, and a USB drive.
Wakefield bent closer and pointed in the drawer. “There,” he said. “That’s the USB I took out of the computer. I swear.”
Wolf took out the USB and shut the drawer, then kicked the big leather office chair toward him. “Sit.”
Wakefield sat down, keeping his arms in the air.
“You can put your arms down,” Wolf said. He reached over and shuffled the mouse on the desk, and the desktop monitor came to life. Without speaking, he put the USB in, waited for it to be registered by the computer, and then clicked on the folder on the desktop. The drive was blank. No files at all.
“Blank,” Wolf said.
Wakefield stood up and walked over. “Shit. I…Ash. It was Ash. He must have switched the drives on Saturday. When he came over.”
“Sit down,” Wolf said.
“I knew he was setting me up. I knew it yesterday when I talked to him.”
“You talked to Ash yesterday?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield nodded. “Yeah. I had heard about Stephanie, and I called him to come over. I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on.”
“And what did he say was going on?”
“He didn’t. He played dumb about the whole thing. He actually kind of freaked out, tripped over the maid on the way out.”
Wolf glared at Wakefield. “Freaking out about you?”
“What?”
“After Stephanie Lang seduced you, and Matt Cooper set up the video camera to record you, I’d be pretty pissed off if I were you.”
Wakefield frowned. “Wait, Matt Cooper set up the camera? I didn’t know that. How would I know that?”
Wolf stared at Wakefield’s eyes for a few seconds. There was fear, confusion, regret, and a whole lot of hangover, but Wolf didn’t think he was lying about anything.
“What about Chris?” Wolf asked.
“What about him?”
“What was he doing on Saturday night?”
“He was…he went out. To a friend’s. I don’t really know. I was pretty drunk, and I just kind of let him do his thing.”
Wolf stood up and looked down a row of book spines, and stopped at the Harry Potter book series, which sat next to four books about civic law.
“You think my son did this?” Wakefield’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
“And this morning? What was he doing?”
“He was”—he shook his head—“sleeping here, then woke up and went into town for a while. I don’t know what he was doing. He skipped school. Said he didn’t want to go, and I didn’t blame him.”
“What time did he wake up and leave?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield thought for a moment. “Woke up at like eight? Left at about ten? Why?”
Wolf stared at Wakefield, still seeing truth in the man’s eyes. Then Wolf thought about Ash, and Irwin, and Klammer, and Prock, and Margaret Hitchens. Was she lying to him about something? Was she involved in her own form of corruption, lying about the listing contracts? What about Sarah? Was she getting involved too?
Wolf shook his head, snapping out of his thoughts. “I think I need to get a shovel to start digging through the bullshit you guys are piling up in Town Hall.”
Wakefield looked down at the floor.
Wolf walked out of the office, down the hall, and went outside, not bothering to shut the door to the house as he left.
Only after he’d driven a mile did he realize his jaw had been clamped shut since he’d left. The mayor hadn’t killed Stephanie Lang or Matt Cooper. But what about Jen Wakefield’s suicide? What was he going to do about that? The mayor had covered up the full truth by removing the computer and cleaning the table, but was that an obstruction of justice? What was that? And had Wakefield really caused his wife’s suicide for carrying out the adultery caught on tape? Or had it been Cooper’s fault for setting up the camera? Or was it Ash, who allegedly set the whole thing up to blackmail the mayor? Or a rare form of Multiple Sclerosis attacking Jen Wakefield’s brain?
The questions banged around in Wolf’s brain, and they were giving him a headache.
Charlie Ash. Wolf’s jaw clenched again as he thought about the man. He knew Charlie Ash was involved, but instinct was telling him to steer clear until he had his ducks in a row. And what ducks would those be? The phantom burnt note from Charlie Ash? There were no prints on the USB drive. Cooper was dead, and along with him the true reason why he set up the video camera to capture the mayor and Stephanie having sex.
And Wolf could have just been played by Wakefield, he couldn’t forget that. He couldn’t forget that Wakefield was a politician, and a damn good one at that. And many politicians got where they were by knowing how to lie through their teeth.
And the corruption. How should Wolf deal with it? Was there any real evidence any wrong doing had occurred between the two construction firms and members of the county council? Any evidence of illegal payments to Charlie Ash, or any contracts breeched by Prock as he acted as a double agent working for both firms? Who gives a shit? Wolf wasn’t a forensic accountant, and he wasn’t a white-collar crime prosecutor.
He was a detective. A small town cop, and there were murders happening in his small town. He was going to find the killer. The strangler with a pistol. The psychotic skier with a tube of l
ipstick that had almost gotten Wolf killed. Someone else could sort out the rest.
Chapter 23
On a Monday night in the heart of winter, Rocky Points was dead. From Mayor Wakefield’s house to Main Street, Wolf passed only one other vehicle. On the south side of town, there would be more action, as the younger crowd working at the mountain would gather for happy hour either at Beer Goggles or in the base village. That was a six day a week inevitability for most ski bums. But on the northern edge of town, the roads were dark; most people snug at home, tending their wood stoves in front of the TV.
Wolf stopped at the grocery store and picked up a bag of fried chicken, some soda, chips, eggs, bacon, and bread, and then stopped at the liquor store for a six-pack of Newcastle, and decided he had enough supplies to head home.
As he drove down Main, he passed dark shops, and a quietly sleeping Sunnyside Café. The station was lit up as usual, but he wasn’t in the mood to go in. Just as he hadn’t cared to return home the night before, he didn’t care to return to work tonight.
Aside from the station and the Hitching Post Real Estate office, one other building was conspicuously bright—the Old Bank. Six vehicles, including Sarah’s 4Runner and Chris Wakefield’s black Ford truck, crammed the lot.
Wolf looked at his dash clock – 6:17. Sarah’s Monday night meeting, he realized. He slowed and turned the wheel, bouncing into the lot. There were no available plowed spots so he rammed the Explorer up the side of a snow bank next to an old truck he didn’t recognize, yanked the parking brake, and climbed out.
A beat up Chevy Blazer hummed a few cars over, spewing a thick cloud of exhaust. A light clicked on and the door opened.
“Nice park job, Sheriff.” It was a female’s voice, thick with sarcasm.
Wolf walked over and peered inside, then smiled. “Oh, hi Jan, how are you?”
Jan Olson had been in Wolf’s class in grade school, which meant he saw her just about every day of his life growing up. Back then she was skinny with long blond hair and brown eyes. Now, after a baker’s dozen of years of heavy smoking and hard mountain living, Jan looked sickly thin and leathery, much older than a woman in her late thirties.
