“You realized they used a silencer,” Mac suggested, thumbing through the photos. “Am I right?”
Rawlings nodded. “It’s not like you would need to out here. Not another house for miles, but they used a silencer. That is the only way you end up with four dead people lying in bed, as if they never moved …”
“Because the killers were silent and—”
“Professional,” Rawlings finished. “Tweakers on meth aren’t using silencers.”
“Did you mention this to the task force?”
“I said I had my doubts, but I kept my cards close to the chest, because other than these suspicions, what did I have? Like you said earlier, I eventually played the game after a couple of weeks. I had no leads, no witnesses, and no resources to try and find a professional or professionals and to figure out why they would want to murder the Bullers. Additionally, when you buck this task force, they get vengeful and withhold resources. We have a lot of problems around here, so I need all the help I can get.” Rawlings sat down on a chair and sighed. “I’m not proud of it.”
“You do what you have to do, Sheriff. I’ve been here a day, and I’ve seen the challenges.”
“I wrote the report the way I did so that I had wiggle room if something came along that would give me a new avenue to pursue.”
“It’s the shots to the head that are the tell for me. I saw the same thing in Washington, DC, shots to the chest but then the one to the forehead. They did it to Sterling and Gentry. I think they did it to Adam Murphy.”
The sheriff raised an eyebrow. “Adam Murphy?”
“His name showed up in the file, just like the Buller family,” Mac replied. “They’re all connected for some reason.” He took one last look at the little girl’s bed and suddenly felt the urge to get outside. “I need some air.”
Mac quickly walked through the house and out to the backyard and took in some air, leaning over.
“It’s tough in there, no matter how many scenes you’ve handled,” Rawlings stated as he came back from his truck with two bottles of water.
“I had a police chief in Virginia marvel at the fact that I was so clinical looking at one of the Reaper’s victims with her abdomen cut wide open, her insides splayed over a flower garden. I said I’d seen enough that I wasn’t fazed by it anymore. I was always bothered I could respond that way.”
“But this one got to you a little?”
Mac nodded, still sucking in some air, looking back to the house. “Kids. There is nothing worse than kids, and these two little kids had no chance, didn’t do anything wrong—they’re just sleeping, dreaming, and they never got their lives.”
“At least they didn’t suffer—their death was instant. They’re with the angels now.”
“And their parents,” Mac added, and the two men stood in silence for a few minutes.
“I’d love some closure,” Rawlings said. “I’d love to nail whoever did this. This case? This one wakes me up a lot of nights.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Mac replied. “This case is personal to me. The wife of the lawyer, the one accused of murdering the lawyer, Sterling, and woman, Gentry, is my ex-wife, Meredith.”
“Your ex-wife?” Rawlings asked with a wry smile. “Really?”
“I know, seems crazy. She didn’t do it; she was set up. And while our divorce wasn’t pretty, I want to make sure she doesn’t spend the rest of her life in jail. Now, I want to make sure the murderers of these two kids do.”
“What’s your next move?”
“Figure out what connects all of these victims, other than they’ve either lived in or been to Williston a lot in the last several months—and since the Bullers were killed first, I think the answer is around here somewhere.” Mac exhaled and steadied himself. “I need to go back into the house.” As he started walking back to the house, his left foot slipped on some mud, and he started to fall. He caught himself with his left arm, but his hand ended up in the mud as well. “Shit,” Mac muttered, shaking the mud off his hand and brushing it off his left knee.
“You can wash up in the house,” Rawlings stated.
Mac untied his hiking boots and left them on the back stoop. Inside, he went to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.
“You have some mud on your face as well,” the sheriff stated. “You look like a roughneck.”
“Thanks a lot,” Mac replied as he dropped his face down to the sink and washed with the tap water, and the smell hit him. “Wow, is that bad.”
“What?”
“The water, the smell,” Mac answered, leaning back down to sniff the water running out of the tap. “That’s disgusting.”
Rawlings came over to the sink, leaned down and smelled the water, and then looked up. “I’m not sure, but I’m getting a whiff of … I want to say gas. Methane, maybe?”
“This can’t be safe, can it?”
Rawlings shook his head, “I suspect not. I mean, that’s pretty bad.”
“This house would have well water, right?”
“Yes, and some methane isn’t uncommon in well water.”
“But this much?” Mac asked. “This doesn’t seem natural.” He took a small sip of the water and grimaced and spit it out and started coughing. “There is no way you could drink that.” Mac scanned the house. There was no separate water system that he saw, no water filter on the tap, no drinking water system.
The sheriff smelled the tap water again and then walked out the back door and looked north, and a half-mile up the road was an oil well. He and Mac shared a look as they walked over to the sheriff’s Tahoe. They drove up the road to the well, where three large trucks, two tankers, and one dumper sat. The tankers were delivering water, and the dumper provided sand, both needed in copious and constant amounts for the hydraulic fracturing process to work. A man in a hard hat approached them.
“Can I help you?” the worker asked.
“Are you the man in charge out here?” Rawlings asked.
The man nodded. “I’m the foreman, Byron Westrum.”
“I’m Sheriff Rawlings. This gentleman is Mr. McRyan. Can you tell me how long this well has been here?”
Westrum thought for a moment. “I want to say nearly two years, sheriff. The one farther up the road went in last January, but this one has been running for two years.”
“And you’re drilling every day?” Mac asked.
The foreman nodded. “Yes, sir. Pretty much nonstop. The trucks keep coming, we keep drilling, and they keep a-pumping. It’s the oil cycle of life.”
“Who owns this well?” Rawlings inquired.
“Deep Core, sir,” Westrum answered.
“Deep Core?” Mac asked, seeking confirmation.
“Yes, sir. This is Deep Core 4. We have that rig as well,” Westrum pointed farther northwest. “That’s Deep Core 5. We have five total wells up in this area.”
“And then the field back near Williston, correct?” Rawlings asked. “The one you just got online? What do they call it, the North Station?”
“That’s right. That’s a big field over there by the town.”
“Do you have any other fields or locations up here?” Mac asked.
Westrum shook his head. “No, sir.”
Mac and Rawlings shared a look as they turned to walk away. Mac stopped and walked back. “Say, partner, I got one more question.”
“Sure, what’s that?”
“Did you know Adam Murphy?”
The man nodded. “Sure, I knew Adam.”
“Did you work with him?”
“A few times. He would help us when we were setting up the wells, making sure we drilled in the best place possible based on the makeup of the earth beneath us.”
“So he helped you place the well?”
“Right. He set the wells out here in this oil field and then the wells at the North Station.”
Mac and Rawlings walked back to the Tahoe. Rawlings saw the faraway look in Mac’s eyes, “What is it?”
“You know wha
t other name was in the notes Sterling had?”
“Deep Core.”
Mac pointed to his nose.
“Interesting,” Rawlings replied, sneaking a peek back at the oil rig.
Mac smiled inwardly. He now had a partner.
• • •
“Where has he been today?”
“To the sheriff’s office and then the Buller place with the sheriff,” Phelps replied.
“And now?”
“He’s with the sheriff in his Tahoe. They’re riding back toward Williston.”
“What did he find?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t get close, and it is impossible to hide out there. All I know is they were there for a long time.”
• • •
A little after 5:00 P.M., the detectives’ bullpen quietly murmured with activity. Bud Subject sat with his feet up on his cubicle desk, thumbing through a forensics report for a three-week-old homicide that had stumped them. Gerdtz, sitting behind him, was engrossed in a television report—the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue Squad in the river north of downtown Minneapolis, pulling the body of a man from the Mississippi. The man had gone missing the night before. His Jeep Cherokee was found parked nearby. There was some evidence he’d been out on an old cement pier.
“I bet the sucker was drunk, was pissing off that pier, slipped, and fell in,” Gerdtz mused. “That pier is nothing but an old, slick, uneven cement block jutting out into the water.”
“And the river current pulled him under,” Subject added as his phone rang. “Homicide, Subject. Yes … we still are … what makes you think it ties back to that? Three holes… in the back tailgate, black, a Suburban… okay, we’re on our way.”
“What?” Gerdtz looked back while checking his watch. They were off duty shortly.
“You know that SUV McRyan thought he popped a few slugs into last Sunday night?”
“Yeah.”
“Hennepin County thinks they found it.”
“Really? Where?”
“Right there.” Subject pointed at the television. “In twenty feet of water.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“I prefer to view it as deductive reasoning.”
“What are you going to do?” Rawlings asked.
“Rattle his cage,” Mac replied.
“You know, you’re not exactly a cop with any jurisdiction up here,” Rawlings stated while making no attempt whatsoever to stop Mac. “He has no obligation to talk to you.”
“I know,” Mac answered. “And he knows that too.”
“So then why would he talk to you?”
Mac stopped and turned. “Because I think he knows exactly who I am, and the last thing he wants is me hanging around, asking a bunch of questions.”
“He doesn’t?”
“No,” Mac replied, shaking his head. “He wants me to go away. So he will try to deal with me, try to convince me there is nothing to see here. If he doesn’t, that only makes me more suspicious—makes me want to look around more, keep poking around more, hang around, and dig for more. He wants less of me, not more, so he’ll try to answer my questions and answer enough so that I go away.” Mac stepped up to the door for the trailer and turned back to Rawlings with a sly smile. “Besides”—he pointed at the badge on Rawlings’s coat—“you add a certain air of authority and authenticity to the festivities.” As he opened the door and walked in, he added, “Feel free to join in You know you want to.”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re more than that.” Mac didn’t knock. He barged right in on Wheeler.
The Deep Core man was at his desk, staring at his computer screen amongst the piles of paper when they entered. He was startled. “Mr. McRyan and … Sheriff Rawlings … is something wrong?”
Mac walked and stood right in front of Wheeler’s desk. “Mr. Wheeler. You didn’t tell me the whole truth yesterday.”
“What do you mean?”
“You omitted some things.”
“Like what?”
“I was out at the Bullers’ house this morning.”
“Okay. So how does that apply to me?”
“Have you ever smelled the water out there?”
“No.”
“It smells awful,” Mac replied. “And tastes even worse.”
“It smells like methane, Mr. Wheeler,” Rawlings added, leaning casually against the wall, arms folded. “Like a lot of methane.”
“So?”
“I’m no hydrologist, but I know that water doesn’t end up smelling that foul naturally,” the sheriff asserted. “It had to have some help. We’re going to have to look into that.”
“So?”
“You have a well—two wells in fact—Deep Core 4 and 5, just down the road,” Mac added.
“Again,” Wheeler replied, nonplussed, “so?”
“Let’s see,” Mac answered, leaning down. “I have the foulest smelling water I’ve ever experienced. Where that water is, I have a family of four dead—murdered in cold blood. I got a Deep Core well just down the road, a well that uses a toxic mixture of chemicals to extract oil and gas. Your geologist who set that well is dead—murdered. The owner of that land, Callie Gentry, is dead—murdered. Her lawyer, an exceptional lawyer, and you have no idea how much it pains me to say that, is dead—murdered with Gentry. And then there are the others.”
“Others?”
Mac bored in on Wheeler’s eyes. “Shane Weatherly and Isador Kane.”
“Who’s Isador Kane?”
“So you know who Shane Weatherly is, then.”
Wheeler hesitated and then shook his head, flustered. “I don’t know either of them.”
“Bullshit. I think you know exactly who Shane Weatherly is. Or was, for that matter,” Mac answered, not moving, searching Wheeler’s expression for more. He was flustered, but that could be Mac and Rawlings’s presence, or it could be something else.
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“Quit fucking with me. You know who Weatherly is.”
Wheeler sat back in his chair, trying to relax. “Enlighten me.”
“He was a geologist. He was hired by Callie Gentry. Now, why would she hire a geologist?”
“I have no idea. Maybe she wanted to drill on her own land for oil. Lots of people hire geologists around here to do that, you know. Everyone wants their little piece of the action. Everyone wants to get rich.”
“She was in the oil industry for years, you think she didn’t know there was oil under her land. Your problem, I think, was that she was concerned about something else under her land, like the water. The water used by the Bullers, to be used by cattle, and to be used to irrigate. So she hired Weatherly to test the water on her land? Maybe Harold or Melody Buller called her to complain about the water, and that’s what she was doing.”
“Maybe they did,” Wheeler answered.
“And that wouldn’t bother you?”
“We’re a drilling company. We get complaints all the time, and we deal with them.”
“Yeah, by buying off the North Dakota Industrial Commission, among others,” the sheriff muttered bitterly, and Mac liked him more by the minute.
“I would know nothing about that,” Wheeler replied, acting casual, sitting comfortably back in his chair, right leg crossed over the left.
“Mr. Wheeler, did you ever get a complaint from the Bullers about their water or about your well or about the trucks driving by their home with all of the chemicals—anything like that?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“It’s a yes or no question.”
“The answer is no.”
“So,” Rawlings asked, “if I came out here with a search warrant to go through your records, I wouldn’t find any record whatsoever of the Bullers calling and filing some sort of complaint with the company?”
“No.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Of course there isn’t, Sheriff,�
� Mac replied sarcastically then gestured toward Wheeler. “He’s had what, six, maybe seven months to eliminate it from their records?”
Wheeler snorted his disgust. “Mr. McRyan, I’ve been cooperative with you because that’s generally my nature. I’m not looking for trouble, but I think I’ve had quite enough of your questioning. Are you a cop with any jurisdiction up here?”
“Nope,” Mac responded, holding his ground. “But let me ask you a question. Do you really think that makes me less dangerous to you?”
“Is that a threat?” Wheeler asked.
“What do you think?” Mac retorted, glaring.
Wheeler looked at Rawlings. “Sheriff, is Mr. McRyan working with your office, either officially or unofficially?”
“No, Mr. Wheeler, he is not. But he is someone who is a serious person that I have to respect. He’s asking questions, interesting questions, about a case I care very much about.”
“Sheriff, do you have a search warrant for my premises?”
“No, I don’t, Mr. Wheeler.”
“Am I or my company under investigation?”
Rawlings shook his head. “Not by my office at the moment, but I remain interested in the Buller case. Four people were murdered, including two very young children. Mr. McRyan has raised certain specific issues that have once again piqued my interest in that case.”
“I understood that case to be closed.”
“It is perhaps not an active investigation, but it is not closed,” Rawlings replied. “There’s been no arrest. There is a theory as to what happened, but that’s all it is—a theory.”
Mac looked back with a cunning smile and said, “Theories change, Mr. Wheeler. Evidence, like oil, bubbles up to the surface.”
“That’s enough,” Wheeler retorted, standing up, coming around the desk, and getting into McRyan’s space. “I don’t like your tone or what either of you are accusing me or my company of.” Wheeler pointed to the door. “Sheriff, you want to get a search warrant, get a search warrant, but I think you won’t. And Mr. McRyan, if you want any more information, here’s the number for our lawyer. Now, both of you can get the fuck out of my office.”
Blood Silence - Thriller (McRyan Mystery Series) Page 24
