by Jeff Carson
Wolf could feel the heat coming off the rusted out metal cylinder while he watched Deputy Wines lift some rocks off a blue tarp and snap it away, revealing a dark hole underneath.
“Big hole, huh?” Sheriff Mansor said in between wheezes.
The hole was large enough to comfortably park a 1995 Ford Explorer inside with plenty of room to spare.
“The roof was five, six feet underneath the ground?” Sheriff Mansor asked his deputy.
Deputy Wines silently agreed with him, keeping his solemn gaze at the bottom of the hole.
“Deep,” Mansor said.
Luke took off her sunglasses and walked around to the other side. She was in her white blouse, sleeves rolled to the elbows, the wind pushing the fabric against her skin.
Wolf’s next thought was involuntary, like a jab to the nose that had gotten through his guard. What was Lauren doing now?
He had tried to call her last night and gotten no answer. After leaving a voicemail she sent a message that said, “We’re okay. We’re in Aspen.”
It was as if the cell phone in his hand had turned to a block of ice. Of course he’d known they were in Aspen. He wanted to know how they were. What were they doing? How were they holding up?
Maybe that was none of his business anymore. Or maybe it was. He had given their last conversation a lot of thought.
We do need to talk.
Is that what she’d said? Without a second’s hesitation he’d gone on the defensive and left, probably out of fear of hearing what she wanted to say. He assumed it was going to be a not-you-it’s-me speech or some variation to make it seem like it wasn’t a not-you-it’s-me speech.
“What did you want to talk about at the fair?” Wolf had texted back.
His cell phone had sat silent all night, and now she still hadn’t answered. His hurt was quickly giving way to bitterness.
“… the excavation companies in town,” Sheriff Mansor was saying.
Wolf looked at Hannigan, because the sheriff was now talking to the agent.
Hannigan’s Ray Ban Wayfarers glasses revealed nothing. “You sure?”
Sheriff Mansor squared off with him. “Yeah. An excavator with a three-twenty-B, thirty-six inch, six-tooth bucket.”
Hannigan raised a corner of his mouth. “Okay. And what about the excavator that discovered it?”
Mansor pointed at a wall of dirt inside the hole. “Four toothed. The fracking company had a four-toothed. You can see where they stopped digging when they hit the roof of the truck. Then they pulled it out with a chain.”
“Okay.” Hannigan held up his hands. “So it was a six-toothed excavator.”
“I’m sorry,” Wolf said. “What are you two talking about?”
Mansor pulled a can of Copenhagen from his back pocket, took a pinch and shoved it in his lip, leaving grains dangling on his chin like black ants were crawling on his face. “We were talking about the two different kinds of buckets that dug in this hole. The original hole was made by a six-toothed bucket. The truck was discovered by a four-toothed bucket the fracking company had.”
Wolf eyed the hole in front of them and nodded. Erosion from a recent rain storm, probably two days ago by the looks of it, had done its thing, rounding the edges, and the bottom was a smooth floor where mud had pooled and hardened, but there were places that were clearly stabbed with exactly what the sheriff had said—four-toothed excavator marks and six-toothed.
Mansor spat on the ground and eyed Wolf.
“Who has excavators?” Wolf asked. “Excavation companies? What about construction companies?”
“Some construction companies have them,” the sheriff said, “but they usually outsource the dirt moving to excavation companies.”
Mansor poked up the brim of his hat. “We’ve been checking all day yesterday. It’s across the board. Depends on the company. Every place we’ve talked to has paper trails that need to be followed, which is gonna take warrants and time.”
“Paper trails? How are you going to do that? You don’t know when the Explorer was buried, do you?”
Mansor winked. “Didn’t they tell you? The gas tank was filled to the brim, and he had a gas receipt sitting right on the passenger seat for August 21st.”
“A little thin,” Wolf said. “Just because that’s the last time the truck was filled up doesn’t mean that’s when it was buried.”
“True,” Agent Hannigan said. “But we also found a newspaper in his truck dated the same as the gas receipt. A Durango Herald, purchased at said gas station.”
Wolf gave them a skeptical look.
Luke jumped in. “There was not just a newspaper in his truck. There was a box full of newspapers in his truck. The first of them was dated August 7th, the day after Rose Chissie was discovered in the park. The front page was all about it. A big four page special on the investigation so far. Then he had every day’s newspaper until August 21st.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes. “So your saying he was collecting them.”
“He became a collector,” Hannigan said. “We know that. Every newspaper in that collection had the Van Gogh killer as front-page news. We checked with the Durango Herald, and they had Van Gogh front-page articles for consecutive weeks after August 21st. So why wasn’t there more newspapers in the back of his truck?”
Wolf nodded. “Because the truck was buried on the 21st … okay, I’ll buy it.” He walked around to the other side of the hole. “Why bury the truck in the first place? Why bury the newspaper articles if he was collecting them? Wouldn’t he take them?”
Mansor chuckled, then shrugged. “Because he was spooked? Mary Attakai saw his SUV that night, and he wanted to make sure nobody found it so he buried it. There was a lot of DNA and blood inside, which would have tied the killings to him. Have you seen the truck yet?”
“I have.” Wolf stared inside the hole. “But Mary Attakai’s attack, her escape, happened on August 5th.”
Mansor nodded. “Yeah?”
“So he waited sixteen days to bury his vehicle. If he was spooked about Mary Attakai seeing his vehicle, wouldn’t he have buried it … I don’t know, on the 6th or 7th? Not wait around for sixteen days and then bury it?”
They stood in silence, contemplating the question.
“Maybe he didn’t have a reason to think he was in danger,” Luke said. “And then something spooked him sixteen days later. And as for the newspapers, that’s sixteen newspapers to carry around with him. If it were me, I’d leave them in the truck. Why carry those things around if you’re trying to ditch evidence?”
Mansor spit in the dirt. “Makes sense to me.”
Wolf looked around. “You’re looking for excavator companies.”
“That’s right,” Mansor said.
“And checking their paperwork?”
“Yes sir.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find anything.”
Mansor chuckled humorlessly. “Well I don’t know about that.”
“Fred Wilcox worked as a janitor at a funeral home,” Wolf said.
“Yeah?”
“Where did he live?” Wolf asked.
Luke cleared her throat. “An apartment in town. One bedroom in the basement of another house.”
“How much did it cost him?”
“Three hundred a month,” she said.
“What did he get paid?”
Luke shrugged. “Probably minimum wage. Somewhere around there.”
Wolf nodded. “How much does it cost to rent an excavator? One big enough to put a six-tooth shovel on the end of it?”
“Probably a few thousand at least,” Agent Hannigan said with a nod. “I see what you’re saying. How the hell did the guy afford to rent out an excavator? You gotta put it on a trailer, hook it to a big diesel, haul it down here. Dig the hole, put the car in, fill up the hole, pay for delivery charges, pay for excavator gas … we’re talking a big bill at the end of all of that. Sure a lot more than a funeral home janitor can afford.”
&nb
sp; “He could have a history of running big machinery we don’t know about,” Luke said. “Could have had a friend who loaned it to him. Or someone who helped him.”
Wolf nodded. “I think it certainly had to be a friend loaned it to him, or more exactly, he had a friend who helped him. Think about the explanation he would have to give to a company he hired out of the blue about why he was burying a truck next to a wellhead.”
“They wouldn’t do it,” Hannigan said.
They stared at the hole for a while longer.
“Well I’m gonna keep looking at the excavator companies. Something might jump out.” Sheriff Mansor folded his arms over his ample gut.
Wolf stared at the ground for a few moments, trying to connect new information with old. He felt like he was trying to mash together a dozen puzzle pieces with his palm.
Mansor spit again. “I hear you guys are holding Jeremy Attakai in connection.”
“He had the cell phone in his apartment,” he said.
“Yeah. I know.”
Wolf began the walk back to the other side of the hole. “He was dating the victim.”
Mansor said nothing.
“His sister was the only one who got away.”
“If you want my opinion,” Mansor said, “he ain’t your guy.”
“And why’s that?” Luke asked.
“Why’s that? Because he was a good man. Went to the police academy in town. Made some bad mistakes at the beginning of his tenure with us, but hell, everyone gets drunk and does stupid stuff. But a cold-blooded killer, cutting off ears and toes? Displaying their bodies like we seen? No way. No …” He glared at them in turn, as if daring a contradiction.
“Do you know where Jeremy Attakai was the night of his sister’s abduction?” Wolf asked.
Mansor snorted. “Jeremy? He was … he was at the hospital later that night. When his sister was brought in, we called him and he came in.”
“But where was he before that?” Wolf asked.
The sheriff thought about it and shook his head. “I don’t know. He … I don’t know. He said he was supposed to pick her up that night from work but he didn’t. I got the impression he was out drinking. I guess you’d have to ask him. But like I said, he was at the hospital. So I guess he was at home when she showed up there. What are you saying anyway? Mary Attakai said a fat, hairy man attacked her. Fits Fred Wilcox’s description. We found her blood and hair in his SUV.”
Wolf and Luke exchanged a glance.
“Does he have any history of violence?” Luke asked.
“Attakai?”
Luke nodded. “Yes. Attakai.”
“Nope.” After another spit he said. “Just a fight during his early years. But like I said, we all get drunk and do stupid stuff.”
“What fight?” Hannigan asked.
“Some guy was hitting on his girl, so he took it outside. Got a little too physical and put the guy in the hospital.”
“In the hospital for what?” Luke asked.
“Two broken arms.”
She whistled. “That’s more than a little too physical. Why wasn’t this on his record?”
“He was a good kid, I’m telling you. It was a freak accident. He threw the guy down, and the guy landed weird, broke both his arms.” Mansor raised both hands and stared at them. “The guy with the broken arms agreed, it was a freak accident.”
Luke snorted. “Right. When you were done twisting one of his casts.”
Mansor lifted his chin toward the sun and closed his eyes, then stepped to the edge of the hole. “I’m telling you my assessment of Deputy Jeremy Attakai. You can take it or leave it.”
“What was his reason for leaving here and moving to Ashland?” Wolf asked.
Mansor turned his head and cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know for sure. Back then he said he needed a change … but I have a theory if you want to hear it.”
Wolf nodded.
“He was really spooked about his sister when she escaped this guy. For a few weeks after that he requested the night shift. He staked out her house personally, tailed her to work every day, guarded her at lunch, tailed her after work all the way home, then slept outside her house and did it all over again the next day.
“He was a mess. I think he thought he’d let his sister down in the first place. Like I said, I think he was supposed to be the one to pick her up from work. He was putting it all on himself.”
“So he left?” Wolf asked. “Goes from protecting her day and night to leaving her high and dry?”
“I think it was his sister who ran him out of town in the end. She couldn’t take the smothering anymore.” Mansor shrugged with a wheeze. “Of course I don’t know for sure. You’d have to ask him. All I know is I saw them fighting once—him and his sister—outside the station. And then he asked for a week off, which I gave him, and he came back a week later with a job up in Rocky Points.”
“When did he leave on vacation, exactly?” Wolf asked.
Mansor shrugged. “I don’t know. A month after his sister got attacked?”
“I’d like you to check for the exact date when you get back to your office.”
“Why’s that?”
The truth was Wolf had no answer for that, but something was telling him it was important. “Just to know.”
“You really think Attakai’s involved in this?” Mansor asked.
“He went north and so did the killings. He had a cell phone that had been communicating to this cell phone found in this hole. His sister was the only one who escaped the killer.”
Mansor shook his head.
Wolf pulled out his phone and checked his home screen. There were no missed calls, no received text messages. No news about Lindsay Ellington.
“We were out in full force that night,” Mansor was gazing into the past with unblinking eyes. “Mary was unconscious in the hospital and we hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to her so we didn’t know the whole story. Didn’t know Rose Chissie was still out there. Didn’t know about the Ford Explorer. But this sick bastard, Wilcox, didn’t know that. For all he knew, we had him identified. But he still had the gall to come driving into town with a dead body in the back and dump it in a park next to a schoolyard.”
Mansor took off his hat and twisted the brim. “Three kids, aged ten, twelve, and fourteen. They were dressed in church clothes. They found her. Now they gotta live with that image flashing in their mind every single day of their life.”
“Attakai could have told him,” Hannigan said.
Mansor frowned. “What?”
“Attakai could have told Fred Wilcox that his sister didn’t tell you guys anything yet, and he was in the clear to come into town and dump the body.”
Mansor turned to them with narrowed eyes. “Deputy Attakai was there when we got called to it. The guy was just as upset as the rest of us. Way more than the rest of us. You ask me, this Fred Wilcox was a sick bastard, and he’s messing with Jeremy right now. It has to be that. Plain and simple. Jeremy’s not working with him. Wasn’t working with him. That kind of sick shit? That’s not Jeremy Attakai. I saw the determination in him to find this bastard after his sister crawled out of the desert.” Mansor glared at them, as if daring them to contradict him again.
No one did. At least not out loud.
Luke looked at her watch. “We have to go. Mary Attakai’s expecting us.”
Chapter 20
Highway 160 cut east out of Durango through low hills and slanted plateaus covered in junipers, yucca, and other shrubs that thrived in the oven-like heat outside.
Wolf followed Luke’s Tahoe for ten miles and pulled off the highway onto a dirt road that ducked north into the trees toward a line of brown cliffs.
Farm machinery and plastic toys littered a yard in front of a house, but Luke kept driving past it and further into the hills.
Mary Attakai’s place was a mile later—a single story doublewide trailer with a deck off the back set on a few acres of scorched lawn. The cliffs back drop
ped the property, glaring in the late morning sun.
A few men sipped beer around a smoking grill on the deck. Four women sat on a picnic table on the lawn watching kids play soccer.
Passing a cruiser with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Department logo on it, they pulled up to the front of the property. The women stood while the men lowered their beers.
Slotting their vehicles between two oversized pickups and a minivan, Wolf got out into hot air smelling of barbecue smoke and weeds.
“What can I help you folks with?” Two thick and short men with dark skin, hair and eyes came marching around the house. The lead one was talking and looked like he meant the question to be rhetorical.
Luke consulted her notebook and raised her sunglasses to her forehead. “You must be … Hector?”
Agent Hannigan ignored the interaction and gazed at the landscape.
The man folded his arms. “What do you want?”
“We’re here to talk to Mary. My name is Special Agent Luke. This is Special Agent Hannigan and Detective Wolf from Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department.”
“About what?”
“About her brother,” Wolf said. “I work with him up in Rocky Points. You know what happened, right? How he’s being held in jail right now?”
The man said nothing, just stared at him for a few seconds, until a woman came around the corner.
She was short and squat, like the two men who’d greeted them, but she had kind eyes that matched Jeremy Attakai.
“Mary?” Wolf asked.
The woman wiped her hands on an apron, on it the image of bikini clad breasts of a much thinner woman. “Yeah?”
“I’m Detective David Wolf, with the Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department.”
Her every movement was strained: a hesitation, a thought, a decision, and an execution. She nodded and tilted her chin back. “Yeah?”
“I talked to you yesterday,” Luke said. “About us sitting down for a chat. Could we please—”
“She doesn’t have to talk to you,” the man said.
“Hector, please,” Mary said.
Hector pointed at Luke. “She already told you everything she knows. Back after that guy attacked her. Now you sick bastards want her to talk about it some more? Don’t you guys have the first discussion on video? Why don’t you go watch that and leave our family alone?”
