Blood Silence - Thriller (McRyan Mystery Series)

by Roger Stelljes

  A Google Maps search showed the Bullers’ land was two miles west of the small town of Ray in northwestern North Dakota, which was thirty miles, give or take, northeast of Williston. This put the Bullers right in the middle of the oil boom in North Dakota.

  Since the mid-1950s, it was known that a massive oil pocket existed underneath western North Dakota, eastern Montana, and southern Saskatchewan. It was known as the Bakken Formation, named after the farmer who owned the land where the formation was initially discovered. However, the oil was buried deep down in shale, and the technology did not exist to extract it. Many attempts over the years were made to vertically drill for the oil but to no avail. Then, in the early 2000s, the technique of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling advanced enough that it became possible to extract the oil and gas buried miles down in the rock below the earth in North Dakota. The resulting success of the drilling had led to the long-awaited oil boom in North Dakota.

  The boom required workers, many more than the lightly populated northwest corner of North Dakota could supply. The boom coincided with the economic collapse of 2008. Workers, having lost their jobs in other industries, came from around the country to get in on the jobs and riches in North Dakota. And it wasn’t just field workers—you could get work for $18.50 an hour working a drive-thru in Williston, the shortage of workers was so acute. However, the workers flooding in from around the country weren’t always of the best character. Those of less character brought with them crime and drugs, both of which were now in heavy abundance, and there wasn’t nearly enough law enforcement and government resources in the desolate reaches of northwest North Dakota to deal with it. As a result, Mac was not surprised the Buller murders remained unsolved, particularly if they were the work of professionals.

  As Mac read the investigative report, the narrative reflected that those involved in investigating the case were not in complete agreement regarding what happened at the Buller house. The investigation of the Buller murders was conducted jointly by the Williams County Sheriff’s Department and the Northwest North Dakota Drug Task Force. The Task Force was developed to deal with the drug issues becoming more prevalent in the oil lands. The investigation did not turn up a suspect or suspects. The Task Force strongly believed the Buller murders were related to methamphetamine, as the break-in bore many of the characteristics of other meth-related crimes, and there was evidence of removal of items from the home often used to make it. All of the cleaning supplies were gone, and the medicine and kitchen cabinets were emptied. However, the way the report was written suggested, at least to Mac, that the drafter didn’t necessarily believe that was the only possible reason for the murders. The investigative report was signed by Sam Rawlings, the sheriff for Williams County.

  A discussion with Rawlings might be in order.

  The Buller family was running a farm operation on the two thousand acres. The farm operation was owned by Gentry Enterprises.

  “Why keep these records separated from the law firm files?” Mac asked out loud, standing, twirling a black marker in his fingers, soaking in the details on his murder wall. These records were held out of the law firm files, and he suspected the murders were why.

  But why hold them out?

  Were these just a copy?

  Did Sterling have another copy of the report? Would that have been in his briefcase? Would there have been more with it? Was that why his briefcase was empty? Was that why Gentry’s briefcase wasn’t found?

  Why was all of this relevant to Sterling and Gentry?

  Were those murders why they made all the trips to North Dakota?

  It didn’t fit.

  Sterling wasn’t a criminal attorney of any kind, although he was a trial lawyer—an exceptional trial lawyer, which could suggest a personal injury case, so maybe that was the angle. But it didn’t feel right. That wasn’t the right connection. With the children deceased, who would be damaged enough to bring some sort of lawsuit? There was nothing in the documents to suggest a family member was pushing it. He wrote Bullers with a “?” under Connections. They were connected, but how they fit wasn’t clear—at least not yet.

  He left the Bullers and looked at the check from Soutex Solutions.

  That was another connection.

  The check being in the file at Sterling’s tied the murders of Shane Weatherly and Isador Kane in Washington, DC to Sterling and Gentry. Judge Dixon had suggested Weatherly was, in addition to being a geologist, an avid environmentalist, and Kane worked for the EPA. The Bullers were farming land in oil country.

  Was that the connection?

  Was there oil being produced on the Bullers’ land?

  Did the Bullers want the oil drilled on their land?

  Did Gentry?

  Did someone else?

  Mac had read stories about how landowners in North Dakota sold the mineral rights under their land to speculators decades ago. This was due in part because the oil and gas was so far below the surface that the technology didn’t exist, and at the time there was reason to question if it ever would. So landowners took the money for the mineral rights while maintaining ownership of the land for farming and cattle purposes. Now those mineral rights holders were showing up to extract the oil and gas. Companies that owned the mineral rights could go onto land and pretty much put a well wherever they wanted, with little regard to the people occupying the land, the mineral rights trumping the land rights.

  Was Weatherly evaluating whether there was oil under the Buller land?

  Did Gentry own the mineral rights?

  Those were questions that required more digging. Searching property records was not his thing, but he made a note to get Summer Plantagenate on that.

  Mac took a look at his watch, and it was approaching 5:30 P.M. Thirsty, he went to the small bar refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of Vitamin Water. He sat back down on the floor with Sterling’s cryptic notes. There was a notation for Adam Murphy.

  Who was Adam Murphy? Next to that notation were the words “Deep Core.” Was Deep Core a name, or did it reference something else?

  Mac pulled over his laptop and a half hour later, he had what he thought was his answer with an article from the Williston Herald. Adam Murphy, aged thirty-four, found murdered in his Williston apartment six days ago, shot multiple times, including once in the head. He was a geologist employed by Deep Core Drilling, one of the many drilling companies operating in the Williston area. The police viewed it as a likely robbery, as his wallet, watch, car keys, computers, and vehicle were missing.

  “I’m sensing a trend,” Mac muttered as he touched his forehead, thinking, Don’t become one of these people with a bullet to the brain. That also made two geologists who were now dead—that also tied in. Geologists studied the earth. In northwest North Dakota, there was nothing else to study in the earth but oil and gas and their impact on the earth.

  Murphy’s murder, and more importantly its method, pointed to another connection. Sterling and Gentry, the house was broken into; the Buller family, the same thing; Murphy, and now Meredith last night. “Going in on the prowl, not a coincidence, but a commonality,” Mac murmured quietly as he wrote it up on the white sheet. Even Weatherly and Kane’s murders, while occurring outside, shared some of the same commonalities with the others.

  Commonality was a good word.

  There was a commonality to all of the murders, head shots, going in on the prowl, and no witnesses, no suspects. If they all were connected, then the murders were staged to look like one thing, such as a robbery or spurned spouse, when they were clearly for another purpose. That was evidence of trade craft. “Professional or professionals,” Mac said as he wrote those words under the Connections heading. The lone exception seemed to be Sterling and Gentry, where there were witnesses, but Mac and Lich viewed that as intentional—the killers wanting the vehicle seen so as to set up Meredith.

  “And you set up Meredith so everybody looks at the affair, and nobody looks at what they were doing professionally,
” Mac mused, drinking some water. It was a good misdirection play.

  Mac’s cell phone rang, and the display showed Judge Dixon. It was just after 6:00 P.M. or 7:00 P.M. in DC, after office hours. “Judge, what can I do for you?” Mac asked.

  “It’s what can I do for you for a change,” the Judge retorted. “I have information for you on Soutex Solutions. It turns out that enterprise is owned by—”

  “Callie Gentry,” Mac finished.

  “You are well informed as usual,” the Judge answered. “May I ask how?”

  Mac explained the events of the last twenty-four hours and the theory of the case percolating in his head. He finished with, “I might not have put this all together if you hadn’t had me look into the Weatherly case in DC.”

  “Watch your back, son,” the Judge cautioned. “I certainly don’t like how that one worked out.”

  “Me neither,” Mac answered, staring at his Sig Sauer and Glock 9, both sitting on the coffee table five feet away. “So what else have you found, Judge?”

  “In having my contact look into Soutex Solutions, they found the connection to Gentry and to her land holdings in northwest North Dakota. Those lands are held under a different company called—”

  “Gentry Enterprises,” Mac finished.

  “Correct. She bought these parcels of property ten years ago from the Sioux Companies.”

  “That much I knew, Judge. I don’t suppose you can tell me who Sioux Companies bought the land from?” Mac asked, typing notes on his laptop.

  “They bought it from Antonin Rahn.”

  That got Mac’s attention. “Old man Rahn. No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “Is he even still alive?”

  “Honestly, Mac, nobody really knows for sure.”

  Antonin Rahn was one of America’s wealthiest and most controversial figures thirty years ago. A man Mac learned about in economics classes in college and in an environmental law class in law school.

  An unabashed oilman and the only child of one of Texas’s original oilmen, Wentworth Rahn, Antonin Rahn became a lightning rod when two Rahn Oil tankers collided during a storm in the Gulf of Mexico just outside of Galveston Bay. The collision and resulting spill of over seven million barrels of oil was a massive environmental disaster, to which Rahn Oil was slow to react and take responsibility. It was ultimately determined that Rahn’s ships didn’t have functioning radar systems, and in the storm and dark of the night, the ships didn’t realize the danger until it was too late. The investigation and resulting criticism and blame caused Rahn, an outspoken anti-environmentalist, who claimed the EPA as his sworn enemy, to lash out at his critics. He was eviscerated in the press, shunned by the oil industry, particularly in his home state of Texas, and destroyed personally in the process. The only thing he didn’t lose was all of his money.

  For years, the Rahn name was synonymous with environmental disasters and oil spills. It took the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, seven years later, to let the Rahn name fade from public discourse.

  “Rahn pretty much dropped out of public view after the Galveston Bay spill and the resulting fallout,” Dixon reported. “Then a few years later, his wife died, and he left Texas and disappeared completely. Nobody has heard from him in years, and nobody really seems to know where he is or if he is still alive.”

  “Judge, how is that possible?” Mac asked incredulously. “Multibillionaires don’t just disappear. Not in this day and age. The world is too small.”

  “He didn’t disappear in this day and age—he disappeared thirty years ago. And when he did disappear, he was still a very, very wealthy man. If he hid it, sheltered it, and made it hard to track by turning it to cash, he could disappear. This is especially true if he maintained the discipline to stay away and stay out of the fray.”

  “And I suppose he went underground before we became so good at tracing money and where it went,” Mac speculated. “It wasn’t all done electronically as it is now. I doubt he was living check to check.”

  “He wasn’t,” the Judge affirmed. “He was one of the richest men in the world at the time, and while he took a big hit, he still had plenty to spare and to live quite comfortably. That’s what is kind of amazing about this. He had billions, and nobody is really sure where it all went. He liquidated and sold everything, converted it to cash, and vanished.”

  “Kids?”

  “Two, both deceased. One, a son, died in a car accident before the oil spill. Another, a daughter, died of breast cancer about fifteen years ago, and his wife died not long after the spill, too. There are a few grandchildren but otherwise no real family to speak of.”

  “Well, under your theory, Judge, he had twenty to thirty years to hide and shelter it. Soutex Solutions is essentially a dead end. Gentry Enterprises is a dead end. Sioux Companies is gone. So those all seem to be a dead end. You’re not finding anything else as to his business interests. He probably bought a country somewhere and is living out his days an obscure and wealthy man.”

  “But then why have Gentry doing what she’s doing, assuming she’s doing it for him?” Dixon asked.

  “How would we know that? Do we know that? Just because his name was once attached to this land doesn’t mean he’s still involved. I mean, is there a relationship between Rahn and Gentry?”

  “Maybe,” the Judge answered. “Gentry’s father, Leroy, worked for Rahn years ago as his chief counsel out of a big Houston law firm. Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “That’s really thin,” Mac replied, skeptical of the Rahn tie.

  “I thought you liked thin. I’m operating on the assumption you like thin.”

  “You’re looking for Rahn, aren’t you?” Mac asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I have some inquiries out, but I’ve not heard anything back. He could be dead, and we don’t know it. But you said earlier the world is too small for someone like him to disappear. If he’s alive, he’s out there somewhere. So if I do find him, I’ll let you know.”

  “If you do, I’d very much like to talk to him,” Mac replied, staring at his murder wall. “Maybe he would know what this is all really about.”

  “Maybe he’s behind all of this?” the Judge speculated.

  “Maybe. Someone with money is.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” the Judge stated and then signed off.

  Mac continued to work through the evidence, finally making his way back to Biggs’s pictures of Sterling and Gentry. Biggs followed Sterling and Gentry for nearly three weeks, so Meredith knew something was up with her husband. Mac never bought the stunned spouses when they found out about an affair. You know. He knew—he knew by behavior, excuses, timing, events, and just sense. He knew Meredith was being unfaithful.

  Meredith knew as well.

  Like him, she wanted proof.

  Cynically, he briefly thought she might be looking to get back from Sterling what she’d lost from Mac. After all, it was Sterling’s infidelity clause that Mac used to blackmail Meredith into accepting his lopsided divorce terms four years ago.

  Half of the Grand Brew stock would have left her with millions.

  Mac got it all.

  Biggs put in the work and the miles, as there were pictures from not only the Twin Cities but also Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, and Williston, North Dakota. There were pictures of Sterling and Gentry at restaurants, bars, walking into office buildings, touring land, and going into and out of hotels. It took the private investigator three weeks, but eventually he got the money shots in Bismarck at a MainStay Suites. They were similar to the ones Biggs got for him over four years ago.

  Mac called Biggs.

  “I wondered when you’d get around to me.” Biggs guffawed. “I suppose I should be saying thanks for the referral.”

  “Funny,” Mac answered. “Where’s my commission, then?”

  “The check’s in the mail.”

  They discussed the case for a while, and Mac provided some insight into what he was thi
nking and how Meredith was set up. “So what were Sterling and Gentry up to?”

  “Besides each other?” Biggs asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I sometimes wondered, Mac. I mean, I could tell, two days in, that there was something between them. But I did wonder what they were doing, and I couldn’t really tell you. They went to lots of meetings, met with lots of people, drove around Williston, Minot, and Bismarck, looking at land with oil fields, and I figured maybe they were scouting and looking to buy.”

  Mac was looking through the pictures Biggs took and found one from Bismarck and did a double take on the third face. “Biggsy, in Bismarck, the restaurant—do you know who the third person was at the table?”

  “That was at The Stockyard. Let me look.” Mac could hear Biggs shuffling through photos. “I got it, Mac.” Biggs took a moment. “I don’t know who that guy is. I think it was the only time I ever saw him. He seemed like one of many similar kinds of people they talked with. Why?”

  “Because,” Mac answered, standing now, holding up the best of Biggs’s pictures with the man’s face and putting it up to another picture on the wall, “he looks a lot like a man named Adam Murphy.”

  “Who’s Adam Murphy?”

  “He’s a man who was murdered later on in the night that you took this picture,” Mac replied. “Let me ask you a question, Biggsy. Do you remember anyone else who looked familiar, who was maybe following Gentry and Sterling around?”

  “Mac, I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple of days, and I don’t. To be honest, I was following those two and only paid attention to them and to not being seen. So you could say I had blinders on, but I don’t remember anyone or anything that sticks out. I wish I did. I feel like I ended up actually hanging Meredith out to dry.”