by Jeff Carson
He was a good-looking guy, probably Wolf’s age, just about the same height, with short brown hair that was sculpted like a trimmed shrub at a French countryside estate. His voice was low and smooth, like a radio announcer’s. His eyes were light blue, which gave them an electric quality.
“You must be new,” Wolf said.
“There are a few of us new guys this year. I’m a transplant from Chicago, along with Special Agent Hannigan, whom I think you’ve met.”
Wolf pulled off his latex glove and shook the man’s hand. “Yeah, I’ve had the pleasure.”
“I see you found her car.” Agent Todd gestured behind him.
Luke climbed out of the second Tahoe with Hannigan and they stood a few feet behind Todd, pointedly keeping out of the conversation. Agent Hannigan looked like he was wishing he had a bag of popcorn to go with the show.
“Kristen’s told me a lot about you,” Todd said.
Kristen?
Wolf nodded toward Sally Claypool’s vehicle. “The bar owner called it into the department this morning. It was parked here overnight and he wanted it towed, but our deputy opted for warning stickers and logged it into our system.”
“And how did you three come upon her vehicle?”
“Detective Patterson was checking Sally Claypool’s DMV records, saw the match. So here we are.”
“And you didn’t tell us?” Agent Todd asked.
“Correct.”
The ASAC smiled wider and shook his head; like this was classic Wolf behavior he’d heard about. “Have you found her phone?”
“Yes.”
“Good work.”
“Anything I can do to help,” Wolf said.
“Look, I know this is awkward, our … entrance into matters here.”
“Very.”
Agent Todd nodded. Made a face. Nodded some more. “But I assure you we’re here with only cooperation in mind. There was an ongoing investigation that drew us here. We requested the sheriff to keep our presence secret, because to let others know could have endangered our operation.”
“Your operation?” Wolf looked at Luke, who averted eye contact. “Whatever your operation was, it ended with you guys rushing to the dead body of one of our citizens. As far as I’m concerned a dead girl that could still be alive if only you guys would have made it clear that you were in town in the first place, and why, and how, and when. And for whom.”
ASAC Todd narrowed his eyes, dimming the blue bulbs to a cold stare. “In due time, detective.”
“That’s what I keep hearing. I think due time is long past.”
“Where’s her phone?”
Wolf stepped aside. “Down in a bush by the river.”
ASAC Todd pointed. “Would you please show it to us?”
Wolf hesitated. “Of course.”
He led them down the incline to where Patterson was still standing.
***
For the next two hours Wolf, Rachette, and Patterson helped with the rest of the processing. Or at least, those parts they’d been allowed to participate in. Which put them in charge of less important tasks, like calming down Jerry Blackman as his parking lot became a crime scene on the best business day of his life. A small team of FBI scientists, along with the agents on hand, took care of processing the rest of the scene.
All the while the clouds were clearing, pushing out on a freshening breeze from the southwest. As the sun grew hotter the air turned muggy next to the river, and more and more patrons of Beer Goggles Bar and Grill streamed into the parking lot. They walked by with cell phones pointed, firing stupid questions that went unanswered by tight lipped FBI agents.
The entire time Wolf ignored Luke. He felt childish, especially when she was close enough to touch, but he also felt betrayed by her so far today, and that was something she needed to talk her way out of. Not him.
Now, as Vince “Viper” Hurwitz of Viper’s towing was jamming into position to pull the Ford Fiesta out of the lot, Wolf called Patterson and Rachette over.
“We’re done here.” Wolf smacked a mosquito on his neck.
ASAC Todd came over and ran a hand through his hair. “Thanks for the help. We’ll be giving a detailed report tomorrow morning at your station. As I’m sure you’ve heard from Sheriff MacLean.”
Wolf hadn’t heard a thing from MacLean in the hour and a half they’d been there. He looked at his watch. 3:46 p.m. Things were heating up even more inside Beer Goggles, and it would be hopping on Main Street with the Adrenaline Games opening weekend fair going in full swing.
“We have to go,” Wolf said.
ASAC Todd nodded. “I understand. You guys were already going to be busy without all this happening.”
He and Luke made eye contact for a moment.
“Bye.”
“Damn, I could use a beer.” Rachette patted his belly as they made their way down the parking lot. “And a few burgers.”
“Watching a bunch of people drink will have to do for now,” Patterson said looking at her watch. “Theoretically we have fifteen minutes until our security shift.”
“Well, people are going to have to watch my fat ass eat while I protect them.”
Patterson eyed Rachette’s belly. “Yeah, you’re really working on something there.”
Light footsteps came chasing after them, and Luke came in step next to Wolf. “Hey.”
“What?”
Luke looked at Patterson and Rachette. “Do you guys mind giving us a moment?”
“I’ll see you guys later,” Wolf said.
She waited for them to leave and then took a hard breath. Looked back up the parking lot at the whirring tow truck. “This is a delicate investigation. There’s a lot at stake with some of the people here.”
“You don’t have to tell me what’s at stake. A girl’s dead. A killer’s loose in our town. Not yours. So cut the BS.”
She nodded and looked at her feet. “Fair enough. Listen. Here’s the reality. We’ve had a serial killer task force in place on this for two years now. You know that adding more investigators usually muddies up the water, confuses logistics.” She looked up the parking lot again.
Wolf frowned. “What?”
“My ASAC up there has your DA convinced everyone needs to step aside, especially now that it involves one of your own. You know the drill. Internal investigations are usually outsourced. It’s about due process and objectivity—”
“Bullshit. Because our guy was dating Sally Claypool, he’s the guy? And what if it’s not him? Then it’s just us stepping aside while you people walk in here and investigate a murder in our town.”
“Yeah, well … you don’t know the half of it.” She put her hands on her hips and stretched her back.
Wolf leaned toward her. “I don’t? Then tell me.”
“Just … have a little faith in me, all right? I’m working on it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand and left.
Chapter 8
Wolf knocked once and opened the door, not bothering to wait for permission to enter.
“Yeah?” MacLean waved a hand. “Oh, hey. Come in. Shut the door.”
He stepped in and paused at the sight of D.A. White sitting across the desk. He was heavy looking in the chair, his tie loosened, a button undone, and his sleeves rolled up.
“What’s happening out there?” MacLean asked.
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
MacLean looked at DA White. “Well, we have Deputy Attakai in interrogation room C talking to fed interviewers. Or should I say, not talking. He’s not saying anything. Waiting on his lawyer, who should be here any minute. And you guys found Sally Claypool’s car, which is getting towed into impound right now, and we’ll be giving over that to the fed forensic team. You also found her phone, which we’ll be—”
“Why we rolling over and playing dead on this? Because it may or may not involve one of our own deputies?”
White frowned and stood up. “We’re not rolling over on this. We
’re acting accordingly. This isn’t a deputy having sex in the evidence room, a few bucks missing from a towed vehicle, a few punches thrown off-duty … this is a step beyond an IA matter. This is murder, and in case you weren’t out there this morning, it’s sick, twisted murder. And like you said, this might involve one of our own.” White walked to the window behind MacLean’s desk and looked down. “Look at it out there. We have every news outlet in the country already parked along Main Street. They came for a puff piece about the extreme sports, and now they’re staying for the show.”
“It makes no sense.” Wolf’s voice was louder than he wanted it to be. “What the—”
“Deputy Attakai’s sister was one of the victims of the Van Gogh killer two years ago,” MacLean said.
Wolf stood dumbly, trying to process the information. “What?”
“His sister escaped the killer’s clutches. She was the only one ever to escape.” MacLean upturned his palms. “Yeah. There’s a lot more to this we don’t know, okay? I’m in the dark just as much as you are, but I have learned that little tidbit. So it’s more than he was dating Sally Claypool.”
Wolf blinked. “So, you think since Attakai’s sister escaped the killer … that Attakai is the killer … I’m not understanding.”
“You’re not supposed to understand,” White said. “You don’t know enough to be making judgments right now. So why don’t you calm down.”
Wolf faced the DA. “Calm down?”
MacLean stood and held up his hands. “Right now Lorber is doing the autopsy, preparing his prelim report, and he’s going to present it to us tomorrow morning. At that time, our federal buddies have promised me a full and thorough briefing of what’s going on. And then we’ll all be happy. Okay?”
Wolf walked to the window and looked out. The rain was back. There was a curtain of green to the south and it flickered from within, but drops were already streaking the window. Through the triple panes her heard a constant rumbling outside. Vendors wrestled with flapping tarps and tents while patrons scuttled away like bomb sirens were going off.
“And if it’s not Attakai?” Wolf turned around.
White shrugged. “Then somebody else will determine that.”
“So we just have a sick, serial killer on the loose in our town, and you want to outsource the investigation?”
“It’s a matter of due process and objectivity, Wolf.”
“Cut the bullshit, Sawyer.” Wolf said, raising his voice louder than he wanted.
The room flashed and there was an immediate boom of thunder outside.
“You know I can’t cut the bullshit,” The DA said. “It’s all about the bullshit. The council is up my ass with making sure we come out of this doing the right thing. They’ve got pictures of that dead girl all over the internet for God’s sake. I’m getting calls from reporters talking about the Van Gogh killer. And how the hell do they know about that little tidbit of information? You know what’s coming up in November. Any screw-ups will mean reassessment of budgeting. And cut in funding at any level would destroy way too much this county has invested in thus far.”
Wolf eyed the condo building poking up through the trees to the north. Despite the electrical storm barreling into town, a group of men were still hammering on the roof, the threat of losing precious man-hours forcing them to play Russian roulette with God. More county investments.
MacLean cleared his throat. “Wolf. You did a good job today. There’s nothing more we can do but wait for tomorrow morning.”
“And then what?”
“And then what, what?”
“How are we assisting in the case?”
MacLean gestured to White. “At the request of the District Attorney’s office, we are to turn over the investigation to the feds.”
Wolf glared at White. “I’m not sure this is going to bring up your numbers, Sawyer.”
White rolled his eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t? That’s what’s going on here, isn’t it?”
Drops were pelting the window now, and another crack of thunder penetrated the silence.
White held his tongue, because anything that came out of his mouth would have been an obvious lie and they all knew it.
MacLean was sitting pretty for this year’s election, running unopposed in November for his office of Sheriff thanks to the scandal that dropped the floor out from under Adam Jackson’s campaign, but Sawyer White was anything but in the clear when it came to his job security. He had a woman named Blair Hanquist to contend with.
Blair Hanquist had started out as a laughable candidate for District Attorney, a mere pile of dried dog poop on the path to Sawyer White’s third four-year term in office. Laughable, because Hanquist had entered the race talking about White’s heavy-handed sentencing recommendations. He was too tough on crime, she said, and Sawyer White and his cronies laughed with utter confidence, dismissing Blair Hanquist’s backward approach with a wave of their hands.
Sawyer White had been elected during a time when candidates were out-toughing each other, promising to put dangerous criminals away. And he proved to be very good at doing exactly what he promised, putting away a lot of young people for a very long time. Only his idea of what dangerous criminals were was not the same idea that the people of the tri-county district had.
Wolf had never told it straight to Sawyer White’s face, but he was more inclined to think like Blair Hanquist when it came to sentencing a seventeen-year-old kid who’d been caught with a few pills. Rather than slap on intent to sell charges, ship him out, and lock him up and throw away the key down in Florence, he’d rather see that kid working up at the ski resort, down at the local grocery store, getting his life together with the help of a little professional help, good old fashioned talking, along with social pressure to keep him in line.
Or whatever they did to make the kid better. It was a case-by-case basis as far as Wolf was concerned. All he knew was that when his father was Sheriff, they had four beds in two cells in the old department building, and they were rarely occupied. Now they had forty-six beds in state-of-the-art cells, and they were crowded under the “recommendations” from Sawyer White. Rocky Points and the other small towns north and south weren’t filled with criminals, and they needed to start acting accordingly.
“What’s going on here, Chief Detective,” White’s voice was low, “is my official recommendation, which will be followed. If you don’t like it, you can talk to Judge Richardson. I’m sure he’ll be happy to spell it out for you.”
“Gentlemen,” MacLean said. “We’re on the same side, here. Let’s all just relax.”
Wolf walked to the door.
“Seven a.m. meeting tomorrow,” MacLean said before the door shut behind him.
Chapter 9
Hey Dad. How’s it going? I hope all is well with you and everyone down in Points.
Things are going great up here. We had a visit from the Alaska State Patrol yesterday, some trooper looking for a guy skipping his parole or something, and I thought of you.
The ice fields are actually very warm, which was counter-intuitive for me. I sunburnt the roof of my mouth! Can you believe that? I was hiking with my mouth open and the sun reflected off the snow. Hurts like crap when I eat.
Anyway, the program is great and I’m glad I’m doing it. I’ve met a bunch of cool people and the professor is hilarious. And thanks again for helping me out with the cost. I owe you … but don’t hold your breath while waiting for me to pay you back.
I’ll email you again soon. We don’t have readily accessible internet up here on the ice field, which is actually pretty nice for a change, so I’ll probably talk to you again in a few days.
Love,
Jack.
Wolf closed the email and clicked back over the internet. Scrolling down the Durango Herald newspaper webpage, he commenced reading the next article in line.
The Van Gogh killer has struck again and the city of Durango is f
rozen in fear.
“We are following promising leads at this time,” Sheriff Ron Mansor of the La Plata Sheriff’s Department said early Thursday morning to reporters. What exactly those leads are, and how law enforcement and FBI agents are going to act on them is anyone’s guess, because since Thursday morning nobody is talking.
Last Sunday morning Rose Chissie, 26, was found murdered and put on display in a park. Her body was found naked and mutilated by a family who wish to remain anonymous—”
The music outside started up again, ripping him from his reading.
He stood and stretched at the window.
Main Street below Wolf’s office was hopping. The sun was back out, the black top street drying rapidly, and hundreds of patrons had taken to the streets holding beverages. The music pumped from a trio of speakers set up by an energy bar company. How they’d been put in charge of the music he had no idea, but it was less “extreme sport” and more “mountain rock” so he approved.
He used a scanning technique he’d learned in the army, eyeing a narrow band of vision from left to right, moving down a fraction of a degree, then back right to left, and repeating. It only took him a few passes to find Lauren with Ella.
His pulse jumped at the sight of her. Her hair looked redder than brown in the fading light of the day, and it was pulled back with silver hair clips, framing her tanned, beautiful face. Her smile warmed him through the fifty yards of air and three panes of glass. An older man was chatting her up and she had the guy in an uncontrollable laughing fit. When she walked away, the man gazed at her behind until his wife appeared and punched him in the shoulder.
It was a fact that every man Lauren Coulter came into contact with fell instantly in love with her, and they just had no control over it. He still remembered the first time he’d looked into her green, nebulous eyes, and the certainty that he’d found the one. The only one that could possibly hold a candle to his late Sarah.
