Not Before Midnight (Sheriff Bud Blair Oregon Mystery Series Book 5)

by Rod Collins

  “Probably Neah Bay, off Vancouver Island,” Moorhouse said as he walked back into the room.”

  “Could he get further than that?”

  “Possibly. If he traveled at eight knots, he would make Neah Bay in about twenty-two hours. But if he ran top speed, he could get there in one day.”

  Miranda said, “He was so careful to clean the boat he was living on, it seems strange he would have overlooked the flyer for Homer. You don’t suppose it’s a red herring … that he wants us to look north, while he boogies south?”

  Moorhouse tapped the photo of The Runaway, “You could just send a picture of his yacht to each Coast Guard station. And to each harbor master. Have them keep watch.”

  “What if he changed the name of the boat?”

  “Yacht,” Commodore Moorhouse corrected. “He could, but he couldn’t change the color or the configuration, not unless he put it in a ship yard, and even then, it would still be a Krogen 52.”

  Chapter 70

  Song of the Road

  AGENTS BRANDT AND WRIGHT stood behind the one-way glass in the viewing room, waiting for the arrival of Gary Gentle, a biker known on the street as Starbucks. A rather imposing police officer, whom Brandt judged to be a good six-feet-four or five inches tall, biceps straining the seams of a short-sleeved khaki shirt, opened the door and prodded Gentle into the room. The officer pointed to a chair bolted to the floor in front of a heavy stainless-steel table, also bolted to the bare concrete floor.

  He said, “Sit.”

  Gentle, dressed in an orange jumpsuit with PRISONER stenciled on the back, took a two-handed roundhouse swing at the officer. He quickly learned what a foolish move it was. The bigger man caught the chain of the handcuffs and slammed Gentle against the viewing window.

  Startled, Brandt and Miranda both took a quick step back, but the window did not break. Gentle said some unkind things about the big officer’s parentage, but the guard ignored him and snapped a second handcuff around the chain on Gentle’s handcuffs, then locked the other end to an eyebolt welded on the top the metal table.

  When Special Agent Smith pushed through the door, Brandt and Wright heard Starbucks say, “I want a deal.”

  Agent Smith shook his head, slapped a file on the table, set a tape recorder beside the file, and sat down on a hard metal chair across from Starbucks. Without a word, Smith turned the tape recorder on and watched Starbucks fidget as his confession to Sheriff Blair rolled through the speaker.

  They all listened carefully to the recording, nodding affirmation when the sheriff read Gentle his Miranda rights. On the recording, Sheriff Blair asked Starbucks if he understood his rights, and when he heard Starbucks say, “Yes,” Smith smiled and nodded in the direction of the one-way glass. Sheriff Blair was also heard to ask if he wanted an attorney present while being questioned. His voice registering resignation, Gentle had declined legal representation.

  Brandt nodded in unison with Smith and nudged Miranda. “Got him.”

  When the recording ended, Smith shut the recorder off, stared at the ceiling and drummed his fingers on the table top. Finally, he looked at Starbucks and said, “You are charged with assaulting a federal police officer, with inflicting bodily harm on a federal police officer, with attempted murder, and with murder for hire. You will also be charged as a felon in possession of a firearm and illegal possession of an opioid.

  “What I am prepared to offer is a promise to keep you away from the general prison population and to keep you alive long enough to serve your sentence … providing you give us the name of the person who hired you to kill Reverend Wildish.”

  Agent Smith tapped the tape recorder and said, “Remember, we have your confession. Admissible in court…” Smith shrugged his shoulders. “Your accomplices are singing like birds. You know the drill. He who sings loudest and longest gets the prize.”

  Starbucks just seemed to sink lower in his chair, and when his shoulders sagged, Miranda said, “There he goes.”

  Brandt nodded and said, “Yep.”

  Forehead furrowed, brown eyes narrowed, Starbucks looked across the table and said, “If I cooperate, will the judge give me a lighter sentence?”

  “I can’t promise that, but I will tell the judge what a good citizen you’ve been … if you give me a name.”

  “I don’t know his name. But his street name is Shooter. That’s all I know him by. Runs the Salem chapter of The Romans.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I know Shooter’s voice. He’s the one who ordered the hit.”

  Agent Smith said, “Will you testify to that in court?”

  Starbucks nodded.

  “Good man. I promise to do what I can for you.”

  Smith stood up and nodded to the guard. “Please return Mister Gentle to his cell.”

  ***

  Smith met Miranda and Brandt in the hallway. In spite of himself, Brandt held his hand out and said, “Nice job, Boss.”

  Smith grinned and nodded. “Yes. Yes, it was, but we can blame it all on Sheriff Blair. He did a good job. Everything Gentle said to the sheriff is admissible in court.” He smiled again, a rarity for Special Agent Smith, “I’m going to call the Salem office and see if they have a name and an address for this Shooter guy.

  “Now then, what did you find out about Butler?”

  Chapter 71

  Mountain Point

  AFTER FOUR LONG DAYS of 10-knot cruising, Butler was ready to hunker down and rest a day or two. He wasn’t lost … exactly. The Runaway’s GPS showed him creeping along in the east-west channel south of Mountain Point. The dense fog made it hard to see more than thirty feet. It was getting on toward dark, and he was anxious to call it a day.

  Not confident enough to totally trust his charts, he willed the fog to open. In exasperation he muttered, “Lift, damn it!” He shook his head, and then said, “That’s totally irrational, but I need to see where we are.”

  He had Milly keeping lookout on the high bow. In the deck lights, he could see her orange life vest, a bright contrast to the gray of her hooded rain jacket. All the running lights and every light in the wheelhouse were on. His close call with the big container ship on the Columbia was still fresh in his mind. He knew being seen was as important as seeing.

  A gust of wind stirred the fog and gave him a look at the channel around the point just south of the port docks. He welcomed the sight of a row of house lights visible along the shore. “Now we know where we are,” he said to himself. He turned the wheel to starboard and eased The Runaway up next to a mooring buoy just as the fog settled back in.

  With the engines in neutral, he ran to the bow of the boat and grabbed a boat hook. He snagged the buoy chain on the second try and breathed a sigh of relief. He was tired. The trip through the inland passage was reasonably safe – except for the occasional floating log sent to remind him the sea is unforgiving of the unwary.

  Butler tied the bow line to a big eyebolt and dropped the chain back through the slot in the buoy. “And there we have it,” he said to Millie. “Tomorrow we’ll take the dingy to town. You can do some shopping. Maybe buy yourself some new clothes, while I shop for groceries. And maybe we’ll find a big, juicy burger someplace.”

  “And a beer?”

  He shook his head. “Not any more. I can’t do it. I just turn into a drunk … and then I make really bad decisions … and sometimes do really bad things. You shouldn’t drink either.”

  She slipped an arm through his and said, “Is that why you won’t have sex with me? Because you’re afraid you’ll make a bad decision?”

  He shook his head. “No. I won’t have sex with you because you are young enough to be my daughter. You need to find a young man and build a life together. That’s what young people are meant to do.”

  They stepped into the wheelhouse and closed the door to block the cold fog. She caught his arm and turned him. “Am I so unattractive?”

  He looked at her upturned face, her blues eyes, her shiny auburn h
air, and her pert up-turned nose … a dusting of freckles on her cheeks. She was close to being pretty again. He studied the acne scars from years of drug abuse and decided the scars were fading, her skin taking on a healthier glow. He shook his head, and a grin tugged at his lips while he formed a proper reply.

  The problem he had was twofold. First, she was still in withdrawal … and scared. Their first night in Neah Bay, she woke in a panic, ran down the companionway to his stateroom, and crawled into his bed – shivering and crying. She curled up against him, and he held her until she fell asleep. That had become the pattern. Start the night in separate staterooms. Wait for her to have a panic attack. Hold her until she fell asleep.

  Second, he hadn’t made love to a woman in over two years. The booze and the lack of female companionship had kept his frustration at the bay. But now he was staying sober, and a warm young body was keeping him company at night. He was tempted, but he didn’t feel right about it.

  He never asked her, but he was sure she had been molested as a young girl. The psychology of that was morbid. Wrong as it was, the abused felt inadequate and guilty. Sex became acceptance and love. He’d never thought it through, but instinctively, he knew the last thing she needed was sex – especially sex with an older man.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and nodded. “You are very pretty, and I like you very much, but it would be a grave mistake for us to become sexually involved. And I think deep in your heart you know that also. So, let’s just be friends while we are on this boat. Okay?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  Chapter 72

  Summoned

  A REGISTERED LETTER MOVED via overnight delivery through the USPS system and found its way to the office of Lake County Sheriff Henry (Bud) Blair. His unofficial administrative assistant, Technical Deputy Karen Highsmith, did what all trusted AA’s do throughout the world: signed for it, opened it, read it, and started to put it back in its envelope.

  He’s not going to like this, she thought. Generally, a sworn deposition from a law enforcement officer is enough.

  The envelope contained a summons from an Assistant U.S. Attorney to appear before a federal grand jury. Two days from now. In Portland. People did not ignore a grand jury summons, not with impunity. Especially law enforcement officers.

  She knew, without question, the court was hearing testimony and reviewing evidence in the case of the United States versus Gary Gentle (aka Starbucks). You don’t shoot FBI agents without serious kickback.

  Technically, you could argue he did not shoot Special Agent Miranda Wright. He merely shot “at” her. But when the high velocity rifle round smacked her cedar paddle, it essentially exploded, and the impact drove a sharp splinter about the size and length of a pencil all the way through the palm of her hand, a wound defined as grievous bodily harm.

  Technical Deputy Highsmith shook her head and thought it would have been a whole lot better and a whole lot faster to let Lake County District Attorney Howard Finch prosecute Gentle in the fine city of Lakeview. But the feds ignored Sheriff Blair’s protests, so the Lakeview jail reluctantly turned Gentle over to the custody of two rather large men from the U.S. Marshals Service.

  She looked at the phone number on the letterhead and dialed the number. After the second ring, an official-sounding woman answered, “Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony McRae’s office. This is Kathy.”

  “Hi, Kathy. I’m Deputy Karen Highsmith, Lake County Sheriff’s Department. We received a summons for Sheriff Blair to appear before the grand jury day after tomorrow. I’m wondering if he could submit a sworn deposition instead. We’re running a bit shorthanded down here. Depositions have been sufficient in the past.”

  “Hold please. I’ll ask.”

  The wait seemed like half an hour, but in reality, it lasted only a long six or seven minutes. When Kathy came back on line, she said, “No. Mister McRae wants to see him in person.”

  “Even if he has other duties?”

  “Assistant U.S. Attorney McRae insists he appear in person.”

  “He’s not going to like this.”

  Kathy softened enough to say, “I know. But he really doesn’t have a choice, does he?”

  Karen hung up without saying goodbye. “Assholes,” she muttered, just as Bud pulled the office door open and walked into the booking area. Karen heard him whistle a tune she didn’t recognize, but she smiled anyway. It was nice to see her sheriff happy for a change. Maybe it will work this time, she thought. Maybe. If Nancy doesn’t change her mind again. Cynical thought.

  She smiled and said “Good morning, Bud.”

  “Hi, Karen. Sorry I’m late. I ran BB over to the Ford dealership. He needed to get a vehicle, and I had business at the newspaper … an interview with Carol Connor.”

  “How did that go?”

  He pushed his Stetson back on his forehead and frowned. “I don’t know. Fine. I hope. She tells me that now the new owner of the Z-BAR is going to run for sheriff in place of his foreman. She wants to do a series of interviews with each of us.”

  Karen frowned in return. “I wonder what happened, Bud? Why would he do that?”

  He shook his head and leaned an elbow on the booking counter. “I don’t know. Carol’s sources say the foreman quit his job and left the state. She doesn’t know what’s going on either. The owner will be a tough contender. He has money, he has Hollywood good looks, and I hear he’s an excellent speaker.”

  “You’ll beat him, Bud. You have lots of friends.” And you’re handsome yourself. At least I think so.

  Bud shook his head, a worried furrow on his forehead. “It isn’t going to be easy. I’ve always run unopposed. Makes me an amateur. And a lot of people are telling Judge Lynch they think the drug dealers and biker gangs would leave Lake County alone if I resigned. That doesn’t sound too damn friendly to me.”

  She handed him the USPS envelope. “You won’t like this, but it might take your mind off the problem of running for sheriff.”

  “Did you read this?”

  “Yes. It’s a summons to testify before a grand jury in Portland. Two days from now.”

  “I’ve been expecting that, but the timing is crummy.”

  “Yes, I know. I called the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s office. I asked if a sworn deposition would do. No dice. They want you in person.”

  “In two days, huh? Well, get Lonnie in here. He’s sheriff for a couple of days.” And then he grinned. “I know just what to do about this.” Without explanation, he walked the short hallway to his office and closed the door.

  He made a phone call, listened to the first ring, and heard Nancy say, “Emergency Services.”

  “Howdy, ma’am. This bachelor I know is looking for a beautiful woman to end his solitary way of life. You know anybody?”

  She laughed softly. “I thought we had that solved already.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not getting any younger. You busy along about this afternoon? I thought we might tie the knot and head to Portland for a brief honeymoon.”

  “What’s going on?”

  When he filled her in about the summons, she responded, “And I’m supposed to drop everything and run away with you? Is that it?”

  Her lack of enthusiasm stopped him dead in his tracks. “I just thought, you know, we could get married and work in a honeymoon.”

  “We will, but I want to stick with the original plan. I want my family here, Mom’s friend Verna, Sonny, Mom if she’s able to travel … my family. And your father. And your brother and his family, if he’ll come.”