Blood Silence - Thriller (McRyan Mystery Series)

by Roger Stelljes

  “Yeah, but Mac, there are still lines that can’t be crossed. The Bullers and all the others? That can’t be allowed to stand. We gotta draw a line somewhere.”

  “So the Bullers, maybe they didn’t sell out. Maybe they, or Callie Gentry, or Adam Murphy decided to do the right thing.”

  “But what’s the right thing?”

  “Not go along to get along,” Mac suggested. “The Bullers—or later on, Adam Murphy, and then Callie Gentry, Sterling, Shane Weatherly—all of them figured out what Deep Core was up to.”

  “Up to what?” Rawlings pushed. “You keep saying they’re up to something. I mean, it is one thing to say it’s Deep Core—they’re the ones, but what is it they’re up to? What is it that would make them drop nine bodies?”

  Mac shrugged. “I don’t know.” He gave it some thought. “Let’s go back to what I said awhile ago,” he took a long swig of his beer. “What’s happening at the Bullers isn’t the only place it’s happening or …” His eyes brightened. “Not the only place it will happen. Deep Core, they’re an oil and gas drilling company. They’re fracking, right?”

  “Only way you can get the oil and gas out of the ground around here. It’s the technique that led to the boom.”

  “I don’t understand the process well, Sam, but doesn’t fracking involve injecting water, sand, and chemicals into the well?” Mac inquired.

  “Yes,” Rawlings replied knowingly. “Like I said, it takes four hundred tanker trucks with water, chemicals, and sand to frack one well. Fracking is basically the process of drilling the well and, once drilled, injecting fluid, water, and chemicals, along with a special kind of sand called frac sand, into the well at a high pressure. There’s a formula for it all. The well goes straight down thousands of feet and then turns horizontal. When the pressure reaches the horizontal part of the well, it is injected into the shale. That injecting of the pressure fractures the shale and allows for the release of the oil and gas in the rock, and that’s what comes back up the well.”

  Mac pulled out his phone and did a quick search of the hydraulic fracturing process. “Cripes, the chemicals they use to do this read like a periodic table. Lead, uranium, mercury, radium, hydrochloric acid, diesel, formaldehyde, and here’s one that’s familiar—methane.”

  “So?” Rawlings replied.

  “So presumably when you drill down, you’re drilling down through the water table. Well water comes from the water table.”

  “So?”

  The thought was forming in Mac’s brain. He reached into his backpack and took out a map he’d printed of the Williston area. “So there is a lot of pressure in that well, on the cement and steel casing in that well going down, right?”

  “Not my area of specialty, but I suppose there is,” Rawlings answered. “Mac, what are you getting at?”

  Mac kept his eyes on the map and asked a question, a leading question, pointing at the Bullers’ farm on the map. “And the Bullers’ water came from a well in the ground, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Mac then moved his index finger just north of Williston, to the area where Deep Core was now drilling, and tapped it with his index finger and looked up at the sheriff.

  Rawlings’s eyes suddenly went wide, recognizing where Mac was going, and then he said, “No. Do you think?”

  Mac nodded. “Where have they started drilling now?”

  “Just north of town.”

  “And how many wells do they have up there?”

  “I don’t know. A lot. Maybe fifteen, twenty—could be more.”

  “And they just started drilling there, right?”

  “Within the last couple weeks. Those wells are on state property. They were under some kind of a deadline to get them online by year-end, or the drilling rights covered by the lease would revert back to the state.”

  “And how much is all that oil worth to a drilling company like Deep Core?”

  “Millions. Many millions,” Rawlings answered. “Who knows, with as many wells as they’re putting online, maybe billions in the long run.”

  “And if there were concerns about their drilling, or maybe their drilling method, such that it was damaging groundwater or perhaps the water supply for a town of twenty thousand. Even that, my friend, might be enough for people to stop and take notice, to maybe”—Mac’s eyes lit up—“maybe stop a company from drilling. That’s a lot of money that would be lost. Maybe that’s where Sterling comes in. He and Gentry were formulating some sort of lawsuit on that basis, perhaps a class action against an oil drilling company representing a town of twenty thousand who were about to have their water damaged. How about that? Would that be substantial enough for you?”

  The sheriff nodded, looking away, and shaking his head. He put his beer to his lips. “Now that’s a theory.”

  “Indeed it is,” Mac agreed, taking a satisfied beer sip of his own. But the reality of the problem was still there. “Still, it’s only a theory.”

  “And a theory we should keep quiet about, at least until we have proof.”

  “How do we get proof?” Mac asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know who might have had proof?”

  “One of your murder victims.”

  Mac pointed to his nose. “That might explain something else, as well.”

  “What? Explain what?”

  “So when Shane Weatherly was in Washington, DC, he met with an employee of the EPA named Isador Kane.” Mac reached inside his backpack and found another folder with the security camera screenshots of Weatherly and Kane from the East Union Tavern in DC. “This is Weatherly on the right and Kane on the left. They spent a couple hours in this bar, discussing all of these documents. Then they left the bar out the back and were both shot and killed in Kane’s car. And all these documents right here…” Mac pointed.

  “Were gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rawlings nodded. “Your proof?”

  “Maybe,” Mac answered. “Another occurrence that makes sense now was that Sterling and Gentry both had briefcases with them the night they were killed. Gentry’s briefcase was gone, and Sterling’s was still in his car but empty. Adam Murphy’s apartment was ransacked, and his computer and files were gone. The Buller house was ransacked. So what if all these people had proof and—”

  “Deep Core did whatever they had to in order to get their hands on it,” Rawlings finished. The sheriff leaned back and folded his arms and then let out a slow whistle. He shook his head. “That’s a hell of a story ya got.”

  “I prefer to view it as deductive reasoning,” Mac answered, sipping his beer. “I do love a good conspiracy, though.”

  “I imagine a feller like you does. So you said this Weatherly was a geologist, right?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “He was murdered in DC, two weeks ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Murphy was killed a couple nights later.”

  “Yes, which was then followed by the murders of Sterling and Gentry back down in the Twin Cities at Sterling’s lake house. Can you say cleanup operation? They took out everyone who could hurt them.”

  “But why go after your ex-wife, then?”

  “I was investigating by then,” Mac answered. “Without being too full of myself, Sam, I do have a track record of getting to the bottom of shit. I was poking around, like I am now. Although to be honest, I hadn’t found a ton at that point. If Meredith was dead, then maybe I stop hunting around and I never make these links on the case. Heck, I wouldn’t have tied this all together if Judge Dixon hadn’t had me take a look at that murder in DC for him.”

  “God,” Rawlings muttered. He took a long pull from his beer. “I wish I knew how to go after these people. I just don’t have the resources.” He looked at Mac. “You have some connections,” Rawlings suggested. “A fiancée working in the White House and all, you could pull a string or two.”

  Mac smiled and nodded, somewhat satisfied with himself. “Sometimes acce
ss to those folks does have certain … advantages, especially when Shane Weatherly was the godchild of Judge Dixon.”

  “You don’t say?”

  A little after 11:00 P.M., after one more round of beers, more case discussion and then a cup of coffee, Mac and Rawlings walked out the front door of the County Line and turned east on the sidewalk.

  “So what’s your plan, Mac?”

  “It’s late, so I’ll call the Judge early in the morning and see what he thinks. He’s very good at getting the machinery to move in DC.”

  “How about out here in North Dakota?”

  “We’ll see. That might be a heavier lift, but it all starts by talking, informing, and asking. The man is amazingly persuasive when he wants to be, and everyone in the world seems to owe him favors. He’ll be motivated to help any way he can.”

  “I’m across the street,” Rawlings stated, extending his hand. “It’s been an interesting day, Mac McRyan.”

  “It has, Sam,” Mac answered, shaking the sheriff’s hand. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “I look forward to it.” Rawlings walked between two cars and looked left before walking across the four lanes of East Broadway. His phone rang, and it was his son. “Hey Bobby, what’s up?”

  Mac continued walking down the sidewalk, looking down at his phone, texting to Riley, “All good, heading in for the …” but stopped when he heard loud honking and then the roar of an engine behind him. He turned back to his left. “Sheriff, look out! Look out!”

  Rawlings looked left as a black SUV bored in on him. He tried to jump to his right but was struck by the truck and sent hurtling through the air.

  Mac instinctively moved toward Rawlings, but then in a blink, saw the passenger-side window of the SUV open, and he saw it—a gun. The SUV was veering towards him. There was a flash and a pop. He dove to his left, down behind a car. Bullets ricocheted off the car and the pavement and glass shattered and rained down on him. Then he heard the truck accelerating, pulling away. He reached for his gun on his back and jumped up, turned back to his left, reflexively checked the background, and fired back three times as the SUV roared east down East Broadway and eventually out of sight. Mac saw brief brake lights and then the taillights turning to the left far in the distance.

  He glanced back left to see Rawlings lying in the street, not moving. People came streaming out of the front of the County Line as Mac sprinted across the street. “Call 9-1-1! Call 9-1-1!” Mac yelled. “The sheriff is down! The sheriff is down!”

  Mac reached Rawlings, who was lying on his back, his legs pointing in unnatural directions, and bleeding heavily from the impact, but he was breathing, gasping for air. “Oh God!” he croaked. “Oh God!”

  “Hang in there, man! Hang in there!” Mac exclaimed, checking the sheriff’s body for injuries, quickly finding oozing blood coming from the area above his left pelvis, his abdomen sliced wide open. Two police officers who were in the bar raced across the street with their guns drawn. Both had their cell phones to their ears, barking orders into them. The waitress and a bartender soon followed. The waitress had two towels in her hands.

  “Give me those! Give me those!” Mac covered the wound with the towels, applying pressure.

  The sheriff’s eyes were open but fluttering, his breathing labored, in gasps. Mac put his face down close. “Stay with me, Sam! Stay with me! Help is on the way!” And Mac could hear sirens in the distance. “Sam, God dammit, you stay with me!” he screamed as Rawlings’s eyes closed. “Sam! Sam!”

  Then he heard a voice, shouting from the cell phone still in the sheriff’s hand, which he was holding close to his chest. “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “You’re the black Escalade.”

  The warm water ran over Mac’s hands as he scrubbed the blood off. Then he looked down and noticed that it had soaked into his jeans. He dampened a paper towel and pressed it to his right thigh to absorb the blood and extract it from the denim. Then he noticed blood all over the bottom of his black shirt, and even the tips of his hiking boots. He was a total mess, and he decided to accept it and turned off the water. He leaned over the sink and looked in the mirror at his tired face and relived the events of the last hour.

  The ambulance had raced to the hospital, trailed by a convoy of sheriff’s deputies and patrol cars and then Mac.

  Rawlings was unconscious but breathing, barely, and had just a faint pulse when the ambulance arrived at the hospital. He was rushed into the emergency room. In the craziness, with everyone standing around watching the doctors frantically work, he crashed. The doctors were able to restart his heart, stabilize him, and then rush him into surgery.

  There had been no further word.

  Mac exited the restroom, drying his hand with a paper towel, when Detective Brock approached with Borland.

  “What happened?” Brock asked quietly, taking the lead, handing him a cup of coffee.

  Mac sat down in a chair and leaned forward on his elbows, holding the Styrofoam cup in his hands, staring alternately at the floor and the blood on his clothes. “We left the bar, I think just after eleven,” he started quietly. “We were walking down the sidewalk toward our trucks. Sam started across the street. I think he was talking on his phone, and I was texting on my phone when I heard … a horn … a car horn. Someone was laying it on behind me. I turned, and a dark-colored SUV was hauling ass down the street right at Rawlings. I yelled out to him, but …”

  “There was a report of shots fired,” the chief said.

  Mac nodded. “First shots were fired at me from the SUV. I ducked down behind a car. As the SUV pulled away, I returned fire.”

  “Did you hit them?” Borland asked.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Mac replied. “It was hauling ass away, and it didn’t slow down after I fired, so while I might have hit the truck, I doubt I did any damage to the occupants.”

  “Occupants, plural?” Borland inquired, confused.

  “Had to be. One was driving, and one was shooting. The truck hit the sheriff, and a man in the passenger side was firing at me. We were both the targets.”

  “Tell me about the SUV,” Brock asked.

  “Black, or dark,” Mac answered. “Big, might have been a Suburban, Yukon, Expedition, Tahoe—I’m not sure. It happened fast, and it was dark. My glimpses were quick, blink-of-the-eye kind of things.” He made a mental note that the truck didn’t have the distinctive look of an Escalade.

  “License plate?” Brock asked.

  Mac shook his head.

  “Do you have any idea why these people would come after you two?” Borland asked.

  Mac looked up at him and thought for a second. He decided this was not a question he was going to answer right now. So he shook his head and replied, “No.”

  “No?” Borland asked skeptically.

  Mac shook his head. “No.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you want.”

  “A couple of deputies told me you and Rawlings spent the day together,” Borland replied, notebook in his hand. “What were you doing?”

  “Talking, taking a look at some things of interest for me and him.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Do you really think you’re in the position to not say?” Borland asked, annoyed, his voice rising. He leaned down and pointed, his finger inches from Mac’s face. “I have the Williams County sheriff hanging on by a thread here, and he was with you when this all went down. I want answers.”

  “Chief, I don’t know you,” Mac answered, setting his coffee cup on the table next to his chair. “And frankly, my assessment of you is, you don’t know dick about police work. So I don’t trust you. I can’t trust you with what I’m working on.”

  “I don’t think you get to decide that.”

  “Are you going to arrest me?” Mac looked up and smirked. “Good luck with that.”

  “Now listen here, hot shot …
” Borland stated loudly—too loudly—leaning down, poking Mac in the chest.

  It was a bad move.

  “No, you fucking listen, you incompetent shit,” Mac roared as he burst out of the chair, throwing his right shoulder into Borland, and sent the Williston chief flying into a wall across the hallway. The impact caused Borland to slump to the floor, groaning in pain.

  Brock jumped in front of Mac. “Jesus, what are you doing?”

  Other officers stepped in between as Borland slowly pushed himself up off the floor.

  “Shit,” Mac muttered.

  “Take the chief down the hall to cool off,” Brock suggested to the other officers and then quickly led Mac by his right arm down the hall in the opposite direction. “What in the hell are you trying to do, Mac?”

  “That stupid fuck. How do you work for him?”

  “Because I have no choice,” Brock replied sternly. “What were you and the sheriff doing today?”

  “No.”

  “Mac? Borland is right,” Brock pressed. “You can’t just not answer that question.”

  “Leah, I’m not answering Borland because he’s an idiot who has no clue. I’m not going to answer you right now for your own protection.”

  “My protection?”

  “Yeah, the less you know right now, the better. Rawlings and I think we know who might be behind all of this—behind Adam Murphy, behind the Bullers, behind a lot of shit that’s been going down around here. And after tonight, somehow, some way, I think they know we know. At a minimum, they’re worried we’re getting close. What just happened confirms it.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “How? How would they know?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, give me something to work with, Mac!” Brock demanded, hands on hips.

  “If I give you something, Leah, then you end up on their radar. Heck, you might already be on it. Those weren’t two kooks coming after Rawlings and me tonight. Those were hitters with orders.”

  “So?”

  “So, I already have one boy who might lose a parent tonight, and I’m the one who put the sheriff in danger.” He looked Leah in the eyes. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to expose your son to that possibility. This is for your own good, so let me handle this. I think I know who or what is behind this, but I can’t prove it—yet. When the time is right, and if it’s safe, I’ll bring you in.”