by Jeff Carson
The mayor’s house was up ahead, easy enough to see as turret lights flashed everywhere in front of it. He began to slow early so he wouldn’t slide into the forest when trying to make the turn.
At the last second he jammed the brakes as Rachette jumped in front of the hood.
Rachette stepped quickly to his window. “Hey,” Rachette said, eyes wild with big pupils.
“What’s going on?” Wolf stopped the SUV and got out.
Rachette shook his head and started walking. Wolf strode alongside.
“He’s inside,” Rachette said. “Now. We got here, and he was inside.”
From the top of the driveway, Wolf could see an SCSD SUV parked sideways up ahead with roof lights twinkling. Nearest them, four deputies were lined up and leaning on the hood in crouched firing positions. In front of them were the trucks of Chris Wakefield and Kevin Ash parked nose-in to the front porch, and beyond that the brightly lit front door.
They jogged down the driveway, and Patterson, Baine, Wilson and Yates turned with wide eyes.
“What’s going on?” Wolf asked, crouching next to Yates.
Patterson came over behind Wolf. “Rachette and I went to the front porch, and Kevin Ash opened the door with a pistol aimed at our faces. He told us he wanted to talk to you, told us to back up, and then he slammed the door and locked it.”
Wolf took a deep breath, feeling the cold air freeze the inside of his nostrils.
“I don’t get what’s going on,” Patterson said. “Kevin’s been doing this? Is Chris Wakefield involved, too?”
Wolf looked inside the big windows at the front of the house. There was no movement inside.
“Stay out here,” Wolf said. “I don’t want you guys coming in and startling him.”
“What? What are you doing?” Rachette asked. “You’re going in there? He’s waving a pistol around and looks way over the edge.”
“He won’t kill me,” Wolf said, hoping he was right.
Wolf stepped around the SUV and walked up to the porch. He put his ear to the cold wood of the front door and listened. Hearing no sounds, he knocked on it three times.
“Who is it?” A muffled voice screamed from inside.
Wolf reached out and grabbed the handle and pushed his thumb down. The door opened an inch.
“It’s Sheriff Wolf,” he said through the crack.
“Are you alone?” The voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Then come in.”
Wolf put both hands in first, and then swung the door open with his forearms. Keeping his hands up high and visible, he stopped the door with his foot and kicked it shut. Then he reached behind him and twisted the lock. It clicked home.
Kevin Ash was in the big room straight ahead. He faced Wolf, lying on the floor and leaning against the back of one of the big leather couches. His neck was cranked forward, and he was leaning on an elbow with one knee up. He held a pistol in his hand and rested it on his stomach, aiming at the floor beside him.
Wolf held up his left hand and reached for his pistol with his right. “I’m going to take off my gun and set it down right here,” he said.
Kevin pointed his gun at Wolf and held it rock steady. “Don’t try anything.”
Wolf slowly pulled out his pistol and set it on the bench next to him. He backed off from it and stepped further inside, keeping his hands high.
Kevin squinted one eye and lined Wolf up in his pistol sight, then twisted his lip a fraction. “You sure trust me, after what I did to your window.”
Wolf shook his head and shrugged. “I knew you were just setting a diversion. And I know you aren’t going to kill me. I know what happened. I know why you’re doing this.” Wolf lowered his hands.
Kevin opened his eye, keeping the gun pointed at Wolf.
“I know about your mother. I know how she died,” Wolf said. “More importantly, I know why she died.”
Kevin lowered his gun and sat up straighter against the back of the couch. He flitted a glance past Wolf’s left shoulder.
Wolf looked to see why, and then took a sharp breath and shook his head.
Mayor Craig Wakefield sat inside the den, slumping heavily in the office chair. One side of his head was gone, blown out onto the table in front of him. The small desk lamp was on, covered in blood and brain. It cast a red light that silhouetted his body and reflected off the fluids everywhere. His arm was dangling off the armrest and a pistol was on the carpet beneath his limp hand.
“He didn’t hesitate when I told him to do it,” Kevin said. “Just lifted up the gun and bam.” Kevin lifted the pistol to his own head and pantomimed.
Wolf stared at him, waiting until the gun dropped back down. “Where’s Chris?”
“He’s okay. I gave him a roofie. He’s sleeping it off. So you think you figured it out?” Kevin sprang to life and stood up. “I thought I’d thrown you for a loop with making it look like I was coming after you.” He nodded and walked away from Wolf toward the windows. “And don’t think I’ve never thought about it. The way you treated me in that interview.”
“I just got off the phone with the police chief from Lake Tahoe,” Wolf said meeting Kevin’s gaze in the reflection. “I know about your mother’s car crash. She’d been drinking, so everyone thinks it was an accident how she drove into those trees. But I know what you and your father know. I know she killed herself.”
Kevin turned and glared at Wolf.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked as the brass pendulum swayed back and forth. Faint beeping and scratchy radio voices came from outside.
“Tell me about what happened,” Wolf said.
Kevin shook his head. “You wouldn’t—”
“Tell me about Mary Richardson.”
“He killed her,” Kevin said, his voice barely a whisper.
Wolf cocked his head. “What? Your father killed Mary Richardson?”
Kevin frowned. “What? No. My mom. She killed herself because of him, and he didn’t give a shit.” Spit flew out of his mouth.
Wolf breathed slow, keeping dead still.
“He was screwing her.” Kevin stared into the past. “Mary Richardson was an agent with my dad’s real estate company, and my mom found out. That’s why they got a divorce in the first place.
“He made a little agreement with my mom, she agreed to keep quiet about the whole thing if he gave her a divorce and paid her well enough.” A tear trickled off his cheek and hit the floor. “She was a good woman. It’s not like she was blackmailing him or anything. She wouldn’t do anything like that. She just needed to survive, you know?”
Wolf blinked and nodded, goading him to keep talking. He was a good fifteen feet from Kevin now. With slow movements, he stepped his right foot forward, then his left.
“And so they got the divorce”—Kevin stared past Wolf into another time and place—“but my dad did something, and ended up screwing her out of getting any money. I don’t know how. Somehow he and his lawyer made her look bad, so she didn’t get anything.”
Kevin lowered his eyes.
“And then what?” Wolf asked, watching the stringy muscles on Kevin’s forearm flex, the knuckle of his index finger white on the trigger. It was still pointed at the ground, his arm hanging by his side.
Wolf took another step forward, and then froze.
Kevin looked up, both eyes swimming with tears now. “Then my mom came over that night after dinner and was screaming at my dad. She just needed some money. She’d been staying at a friend’s house…and a fucking motel. She didn’t have anywhere to go. Her mom was dead, her sister lived in London. There was nowhere for her to go. She was asking how he could do this to her.”
Kevin swallowed and wiped his cheek with the palm of his gun hand, pointing the pistol at the ceiling.
“I was sitting on the steps listening, and I came down and watched them fight. And I never knew my dad was like that until then. Even after all those years of yelling at me when I sucked at baseball, or whe
n I couldn’t pass math…still, he’d never acted like this.
“He was calling her a cunt, had her up against the wall, pinning her neck with his forearm.”—Kevin clenched his teeth and held up a shaking forearm in front of him, then his face relaxed and he dropped his arm down—“I just watched. I just watched as my dad pinned her, dug through her purse and pulled out a stick of lipstick, and wrote an X on her forehead. He kept saying, ‘You’re my ex-wife and you don’t get shit, you’re my ex-wife’. And I just sat there…I just watched her choke and stare at me, and I…”—he shook his head—“I picked up a brass statue, and he heard me, and then he let her go. I was about to kill him, I swear to God … I wish I would have. None of this would have happened.”
Kevin screwed his eyes shut and bared his teeth, shaking his head back and forth.
Wolf took another couple steps forward, and then cleared his throat. “So she killed herself that night. But only you and your dad knew it.”
Kevin opened his eyes and nodded, wiping tears again, this time with the knuckles of his free hand. “Everybody else said it was an accident, but we both knew what happened. Nobody wanted to bring up the obvious question – Do you think she just jerked the wheel? But if they’d have known about what my father did to my mom...”
Wolf exhaled. “So you went and killed Mary Richardson. The woman who split up your parent’s marriage. You got back at him the only way you knew how. And your dad found out, so you guys came to Colorado. To escape any suspicion.”
Kevin nodded and sniffed. “He helped me cover it up. Helped me stage it to look like it was a break in, then we kind of ran, to get away from what I’d done.”
Wolf squinted. “I don’t get it, so you killed her and then felt bad about it? Told your dad and he helped you cover it up?”
Kevin sagged. “No. He found me next to her. I’d already killed her. I … you wouldn’t believe me anyways.” He started to raise the pistol.
“Wait, Kevin. Listen. Just tell me about it. All of it.”
Kevin looked around the room for a few seconds and then looked embarrassed. “I’ve got a disease where I do stuff and don’t remember it.”
Wolf frowned. “What? Are you saying you don’t remember doing any of these killings?”
Kevin shook his head. “Like I said, you wouldn’t believe me. It doesn’t matter anymore anyways.”
As he watched Kevin shut his eyes and lift the gun, pressing the muzzle into his own temple, Wolf was hit with a realization that made him flinch like he’d just been punched in the nose.
Because Kevin Ash was holding the pistol with his left hand.
Wolf lunged forward as fast as he could and the gun flashed with a deafening boom.
Chapter 29
Ash stood at his office window looking out at the twin headlights as they flickered through the edge of the forest and out into the meadow. It was unmistakably a deputy cruiser – one of those decked-out expensive models of SUV the Sheriff’s Department drove nowadays that sucked the county coffers dry.
When Wolf had called him twenty minutes earlier, Ash had been hunkering in his upstairs office for the fourth hour, sitting in the dark with an aching back and a desperate need for water. He had been about to go crazy. Not stir-crazy, but actually crazy. The suspense had been tormenting him like fingernails clawing inside his skull.
And now it was over. The phone conversation with Wolf had told him as much.
“I need to come tell you some bad news. It’s about your son,” Wolf had said.
“Why don’t you just tell me now? What the hell is going on?” Ash had said.
Wolf didn’t tell him specifics, but Ash knew exactly what had happened. So far, Ash was acting the part of a concerned father well enough, but he was going to have his work cut out for him, and as he watched Wolf’s SUV slow at the head of his driveway a quarter mile away, he walked downstairs and began getting his mind right.
When Ash had been a kid, he’d been able to turn on the waterworks on command. It was a gift, he had realized later in life. Even world-renowned actors spoke of difficulty of acting sad—with actual twitching lips and gushing tear ducts—but he had been able to do it. But this was going to be tough, because if he heard the news that his son was dead, then it was going to be a relief. Not exactly good news, but news couldn’t get better for him at this point. Every single stroke of misfortune in the last few days, in the last few years, was now going to be wiped out.
Ash reached the bottom of the stairs and went back to the great room, which was now brightly lit like the rest of the house, and turned on some smooth jazz. He felt like he was getting ready for a date or something. When he felt the steel of the snub-nosed revolver that he’d stuffed in his pants dig into the small of his back, he paused and flipped the stereo off. What the hell was he thinking? He had just lost a son. He needed to act the part.
Wolf drove into the curving drive of Charlie Ash’s ranch house. Long and sprawling, the layout of the house was two rectangular wings topped with A-framed roofs attached to a cylindrical center. On top of the cylinder was a pointed cone with a band of windows underneath – a turret on a modern day castle.
The windows in the center of the house sparkled with light, and exterior halogens painted the snow-covered property in huge yellow smears.
He stopped in front of the house and looked down the straight shoveled walkway that ended in tall wooden doors on the front porch. Wolf shut off the vehicle and looked at the back of the property, peering into the woods as far as he could. He turned around and looked back out at the road he’d just come in on as it meandered into the forest and out of sight. He wondered just where Stephanie Lang and the mayor had rendezvoused that night of the party. Then he figured it really didn’t matter.
Stepping out of the SUV, a cold wind whistled past his ears, and he pulled his winter cap down. The moon was a yellow blob behind some high, thin clouds. The peaks to the west were invisible, which meant low clouds, indicative of another front rolling in, enveloped the higher elevations. Forecasters were warning of accumulations of another twelve to eighteen inches.
Hopefully, it would hold off for the next couple hours.
Wolf’s boots crackled on the rock salt as he walked the dry path to the porch. He stepped under the light in front of the door and pressed the doorbell. A song chimed quietly, barely audible through the heavy doors and rock façade.
The door clunked and then opened, and Charlie Ash stood in the doorway. He was fully dressed, wearing jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt on top of a t-shirt. His gray comb-over hair was firmly in place, looking wet from a recent shower.
He looked curious and concerned, but behind his gold-rimmed glasses his eyes darted around – like he was expecting someone to come out of the dark behind Wolf at any second.
“Sheriff,” Ash nodded. His voice was hoarse and he cleared his throat. “Please, come in.”
Wolf nodded and stepped inside onto a thick brown rug. A crystal chandelier hung from a vaulted ceiling above, illuminating the entryway as light as day. It smelled like tobacco and leather inside, and there was no sound other than a soft whoosh of a nearby heating vent on the wall.
Wolf looked behind Ash. There was a big room full of leather couches and low dark wood furniture with dim lamps with stained glass shades perched on most of them. Off the room to the right was a brightly lit hallway that veered out of sight to the kitchen and dining areas. To the left another hallway that was more dimly lit led to the wing with the bedrooms and the stairway to the office on the second floor above them.
Ash watched Wolf closely for a few seconds, and then he started to stroll toward the great room in front of them. “Please, come inside. Can I take your coat?”
“No,” Wolf said, standing still near the door.
Ash stopped walking and turned around with raised eyebrows. “Okay.”
“I didn’t come to get comfortable and socialize. This is definitely not a time to get comfortable.”
Ash blinked rapidly. “What’s going on?”
Wolf turned his cheek and pointed at it. “Do you see this?”
Ash stepped forward and peered at Wolf’s face. He squinted and shook his head, then pulled back with wide eyes.
“Is that blood?” Ash asked.
“That’s your son’s blood,” Wolf said.
Ash’s face dropped. “What?”
“Your son shot himself an hour ago. I was right next to him. I couldn’t stop him.”
Ash looked at the ground and gripped his head.
Wolf narrowed his eyes, studying his reaction. “He told me some things before he blew the top of his head off.”
Ash looked up. “You fucking bastard. How can you talk about my son that way when he just—”
“Because you made him do it. And you can spare me the act of pretending like you care. I know about everything. I know about the sex tape you and Matt Cooper made of the mayor on Thursday night. I know about you blackmailing the mayor with it, and how Jen Wakefield watched it and then killed herself with her husband’s gun.”
Ash stood still and raised his lower eyelids.
“And when you learned about her accidental discovery of the sex tape, your…little play to sell out Rocky Points, you called Wakefield the next day, not even waiting twenty-four hours after her death before you made your demands to him. Did you know Kevin heard your conversation?”—Wolf pointed up and glanced at the ceiling—“He was standing outside your office. Heard every word of it.”
“Listen here—”
“Just shut up.” Wolf stepped forward, snarling his lip.
Ash backed up a step, then looked at the floor and smiled with a shake of his head.
“I can only imagine what Kevin must have felt when he heard you. Because you’ve done this before, caused someone to feel so terrible, so helpless and afraid about life that they killed themselves. You’d done it to his mother already.” Wolf shook his head in disgust. “And you did it again to Jen Wakefield.”
Ash rolled his eyes and snorted, but said nothing.
“I talked to Kevin tonight. Before he pulled the trigger. He wanted to get back at you, and that’s why he’s been killing all these people – Stephanie Lang for her role, Matt Cooper for putting that video camera in Wakefield’s car, and tonight he got Wakefield for obvious reasons…he was going to take you out next.” Wolf narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. “Were you a little scared tonight? Because you knew exactly what was going on, didn’t you? The way those X’s kept showing up at crime scenes? And in lipstick? Just like what you did to your wife that night she died.”
