David Wolf series Box Set 2

by Jeff Carson

  “Damn straight.” Teeth bared, Baine wheezed with his hands on his hips.

  Wolf nodded and cleared his throat, noting the way Patterson’s lungs pulled in air as if she were in a deep sleep.

  The valley to the north extended up to the miniature-looking buildings of Rocky Points. Even from such a distance, the glass-ensconced Sluice–Byron County building—now home to the new Sheriff’s Department, numerous holding cells, and various government offices—stuck out like a beacon as the sun reflected off its windows.

  “See that there?” Wolf pointed to the pinpoint reflection on the side of a mountain to the west.

  Patterson followed his finger and then stepped close to his arm. “That reflection?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s that?”

  “FBI surveillance team.” Wolf gestured around them. “They have a couple of guys up there watching me twenty-four seven. Me and Rachette spotted them a few days ago, taking this same walk. There’re two more men down south on that bluff, two to the north along that ridge, and a couple of goons in that unmarked you passed on the way to my house.”

  “Yeah, we saw them parked a half-mile or so down,” Patterson said.

  Wolf waved to the reflection and scratched his nose with his middle finger.

  Patterson looked uneasy. “You think they’re listening to us?”

  He shrugged. “The guys to the north are within parabolic mic range to hear us crisp and clear, as if we were standing right next to them. The fact that they’re out there sitting on their asses, listening to us, rather than looking for the killer of my ex-wife, shows they might be too stupid to realize they can use a parabolic mic to listen in.” He turned to her and Baine. “It’s a toss-up.”

  She blinked. “I … uh …”

  Baine straightened and backed up a step, looking like his space had just been violated.

  “They asked you about Gail Olson?” Wolf asked Patterson.

  She blinked some more. “What?”

  “The FBI. Don’t worry. We have nothing to hide. What did they ask you?”

  “They kept asking about those photos that Sheriff MacLean gave us of her and Rachette. Then they wanted to know what I was doing the night Sarah was shot. Frickin’ bastards. I saw they were interrogating Rachette before me. I don’t get it. What are they saying? That we did this?”

  “What did they want to know about the photos?” Wolf asked.

  “They wanted to know if and how I knew Gail Olson.” She turned to the woods and raised her voice. “Which I didn’t! I never saw that girl in my life before I saw those pictures, which Sheriff MacLean gave to me.” She turned back to Wolf and straightened her jacket. “I don’t know, it’s like they were trying to get a confession out of me or something. I ended up taking the fifth. My father used to say that it’s never, ever, a good idea to talk to a law-enforcement officer. I’m beginning to realize why when I talk to these feds. They seem to be grasping for anything, and groping us in the process.”

  “And you?”

  Baine was staring across the valley, lost in thought.

  “Baine.”

  He flinched and turned to Wolf. “What?”

  “What have the FBI been asking you?”

  Baine wiped his nose with his thumb. “You know, what you were doing the night of Sarah and Willis’s deaths. That kind of stuff.”

  Wolf nodded in thought. “And Gail Olson?”

  “Yeah, and Gail Olson.”

  “Did you tell them about the video we had?”

  Baine exhaled. “Yeah, of course I did. I told them I’d interviewed her but I couldn’t find the file. Then they asked me about what she said, so I took the fifth, too. I don’t know what the hell is going on around here. I don’t want to say anything that implicates you or me. And I don’t think we should talk about it now.”

  Wolf eyed the reflection again. “What’s changed?”

  “What do you mean?” Baine asked.

  “They’ve been out there for three days. What changed three days ago?”

  “The FBI talked to me a little over a week ago,” Patterson said. “Not in the last few days. I’m not sure what this is about. They asked me if you knew Gail Olson and I said no. That’s all they said about you. We’ll check.”

  Baine eyed the reflection on the mountain across the valley, then back down into the forest the way they’d hiked up.

  “All right,” Wolf said. “Let’s get you two back.”

  Patterson and Baine followed in silence.

  As they reached the trail at the base of the hill, Patterson came next to Wolf and lowered her voice. “Sir, I wanted to talk to you about Carter Willis.”

  “You find anything on him?” Wolf pounced at the utterance of the man’s name.

  She glanced back at Baine.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not listening.” Baine held back a few steps.

  “Thanks.” She exhaled and slid Wolf an uneasy glance. “No. I haven’t gotten anywhere with Carter Willis’s identity. Lorber can’t find anything with his contacts, and Kristen Luke is dodging me as much as she’s dodging you. I’ve checked with a CBI guy I know, and he came up empty, too. Said the guy’s made up. I checked with the company who issued his car insurance, and they had no record of even having him as a customer. Not even online. The card was a forgery. The registration on his car? Same deal. Not registered with the state.”

  Wolf nodded impatiently. They’d already gone over all this and Patterson knew it. Wolf was asking whether she had anything new, not to rehash what they already knew.

  But people didn’t know how to act with Wolf as of late, because the truth was that Wolf had also sustained a second-degree concussion in the fall, and his memory was holier than Swiss cheese.

  The head injury had also damaged his left inner ear, causing intermittent tinnitus and a sensation of it having been stuffed with foam. Vertigo and nausea were never far behind. This, coupled with his other injuries, acted as an off-switch for his body.

  His left ear was beginning to ring.

  “What did you want to tell me … that we haven’t already talked about?” Wolf asked, making his point.

  “Remember I said I saw Carter and Sarah at the bar that night, when I was with Scott and his family?”

  Wolf swallowed. He remembered quite well. “Yeah.”

  “I stopped when I saw Sarah to say hi, and Carter had his hand on her thigh underneath the table.”

  The ringing instantly doubled in volume.

  Wolf nodded, keeping an even stride. “All right.”

  “I never told you, and it’s been eating at me recently, because I realize it might be some kind of clue. Shit, I’m so sorry.” She looked down at the ground.

  Wolf walked in silence for a few steps and then put a hand on Patterson’s shoulder.

  She looked up with glassy eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it, all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. I even told the FBI about it, but I didn’t tell you, and then I waited and waited, and then it got harder to tell you.”

  “I’m glad you told me. It could be important. It was already suspicious that she was wearing her nightgown in the car when they were shot. It suggests that either she and Carter were intimate, or she was pulled out of the house without warning. With what you just told me, it’s looking like they were definitely intimate. That’s a clue.” He turned to the trees and shook his head, trying to shake the deafening sound. “I’ve gotta get back to work. I can’t do anything from here but think in circles.”

  Patterson looked up at him. “My aunt says you’re a wreck and need more rest. From where I’m standing, it looks like she’s right.”

  He felt light in the chest and sweat broke out on his forehead. “I’m …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Wolf was starting to get the sparkly vision again, a sign that he needed to lie down, and fast. He limped onward toward the trail. “A couple of months ago the FBI came up empty with th
e search of my house. The ballistics didn’t match. They’ve got nothing. So I don’t know what they’re up to.”

  The red barn came into view between the trees.

  “So what do you want us to do?” Patterson said loudly, as if to include Baine back in the conversation.

  Wolf lumbered forward, barely hearing himself as he spoke. “I want you to keep trying with Luke. The FBI knows something we don’t and we need to know what that is. She’s still our best inside man.”

  “Yeah, one who clearly wants nothing to do with us,” Patterson said.

  “Baine, keep your eyes and ears open on MacLean, I guess. And if either of you can figure out what’s going on with this surveillance, I’d appreciate knowing.”

  “I can check on it,” Baine said.

  Wolf nodded. His good leg buckled and he stumbled before standing straight.

  “My God, are you okay?” Patterson ducked under his arm and locked her own around his waist. Baine grabbed under his other armpit.

  “It’s all right.” Wolf blinked away the stars again. “I’ve just gotta lie down.”

  “Let’s go,” Patterson said with determination.

  His feet left the ground as the two deputies whisked him up the trail, around the barn, and to the front of his house.

  “Kitchen entrance?” Patterson asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Both Patterson and Baine’s phones chimed from their pockets.

  “Shit. You get that,” Patterson said.

  “What? Are you sure?”

  “Do it.”

  Baine let go of Wolf and fished for his phone.

  Patterson leaned to the side, digging her hip into Wolf’s leg.

  He winced from the pressure on his femur as his legs touched down.

  “Sorry. You okay?”

  Wolf nodded.

  Patterson wrestled him through the door, into the kitchen, on through the family room, and into his bedroom.

  He collapsed onto the unmade sheets and rolled to his back. “Thanks.”

  The ceiling spun, but the sustained ringing seemed to diminish.

  “Yeah.” She pulled off his shoes. “What can I get you?”

  He swallowed, and it felt like a piece of cotton was stuck in his throat. “Luke probably can’t talk to us. I bet she’s being watched just as closely as I am right now. Her SAC probably warned her to stay away from all this. She’s emotionally attached to me, and he knows it.”

  Patterson grabbed the empty cup of water from Wolf’s nightstand, filled it in the bathroom, came back in, and held it out to him.

  He gulped the water down and leaned against the headboard. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah. Geez, you are a wreck. What else? What else can I get you?”

  “Patterson?” Baine called from the kitchen entrance.

  “Yeah!” Patterson’s eyes stayed on Wolf’s. “What do you need?”

  “Nothing. Go. Don’t worry about me.”

  “We have to go! MacLean’s calling us in for a meeting.”

  Patterson glanced at her watch. “Yeah, all right. I’ll be right there.”

  Wolf smiled and nodded.

  “I’ll be back,” Patterson vowed and left the room.

  “Bye, Arnold.”

  “What?” She appeared again at the doorway with a scowl. “Arnold? Are you okay?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, I get it. Bye.”

  Wolf closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  Chapter 3

  “They’re all dead, and it’s your fault!”

  Wolf opened his eyes and rolled to his side, struggling to catch his breath. The accusation seemed to echo in the room, like he was in a deep canyon.

  He sat up and rubbed his temples, seeing the fictitious fireball against his eyelids once again.

  For over fifteen years, since his days in the army, he’d battled a recurring nightmare that spawned from one of his worst memories—a recall of one of his worst deeds—a single shot he’d been forced to take in Sri Lanka to save twenty-three lives. It had killed an eight-year-old boy who had been running toward a Chinook helicopter, a suicide bomb strapped to his back and a detonator switch in his hand. The boy had been conned into doing it by a group of men who watched from the trees.

  Before the stock had finished its recoil against his muscled shoulder, before the boy was through feeling the pain of Wolf’s first bullet, Wolf had already begun to focus his efforts on coming back home—back to his son, who was two years old and thousands of miles away at that instant. Back to his son, who at the time was essentially a fatherless child, impressionable, vulnerable to any bad man who walked in off the street while Wolf was around the world fighting against men with putrid values.

  The shot had been a seminal moment in his life, like when Jack had been born, or when he and Sarah had exchanged vows, or when they’d divorced, or when Sarah had been shot in the head and taken before she and Jack and Wolf had had a chance to be normal again.

  The dream always returned during times of stress. But now it had morphed into a fiction. In this dream, the boy reached the Chinook helicopter. He depressed the thumb button. The people were all dead in a searing fireball, and it was all Wolf’s fault because he’d frozen and watched it happen, unable to pull the trigger.

  He got up and went to the bathroom to splash some water on his face.

  His reflection was the skinniest version of Wolf he could remember. His complexion was so pale it was almost blue; his eyes were ringed with dark circles bordered with yellow, the crow’s feet next to them deep, his lips thin and dry.

  There was a new streak of gray in his otherwise dark hair coming in above his ear. A matching splash of silver painted his inch-long beard.

  He looked like a prisoner, he thought. He’d never had the misfortune of being captured in war, but he’d rescued people who had, and this is what they looked like.

  For twenty minutes, he bathed and shaved, and in the end looked a little better, though not much.

  His phone chimed on his nightstand and he went out and picked it up.

  Nate Watson. He got excited, knowing exactly why he was calling.

  “What’s up?” Wolf answered.

  “Hey, I’ve got him here. We’re going to the river.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll park at the Westfield Oxbow lot. I’ll bring him and Brian south.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave now.” He picked up his watch and then checked out his window. The rear of the house was in shadow and the tops of the trees were blazing in bright light. Four p.m.? He’d slept all day.

  “See you there.”

  Wolf slipped on the same clothes from the morning, grabbed his keys, got in his Toyota truck, and drove.

  He sped down the dirt driveway, through the headgate, and took a right to follow the river north.

  A mile up, he mashed the accelerator and passed the unmarked Crown Victoria, contemplating whether to stay close or give it a wide berth on the way by. He swung the wheel and passed with plenty of space to spare—no sense endangering the innocent agents inside the vehicle. They were only acting on orders.

  He was satisfied, though, watching the rearview as the FBI vehicle disappeared in a storm of dust.

  He reached the end of the county road, hung a left, crossed the Chautauqua river, and went north on highway 734 toward town, keeping his speed up as he did so. As he finally slowed and made his way along Main Street in town, he saw that the FBI unmarked had caught up and now tailed him ten car lengths back.

  Wolf passed through town and kept going north. The highway meandered along the right side of the Chautauqua, whose sliding waters bisected the town of Rocky Points, flowing north and then west, ultimately pouring into the Colorado River a hundred miles away.

  Once out of town, Wolf cruised at sixty. Slowing at the Westfield Oxbow sign, he pulled into the dirt parking lot and parked next to Nate’s SUV.

  Wolf and Nate had become best friends growing up by playing together in the same offensive backf
ield on the same football team each year from elementary school until college.

  Whereas Wolf had gone off to Colorado State on a full-ride scholarship as quarterback, Nate had gone on to Golden and attended the Colorado School of Mines. Nate followed his strengths, abandoning his post at running back and honing his sharp mind instead. Eventually he’d become the owner of one of the premier geological-services companies in the western United States.

  Nate’s large, top-of-the-line American SUV, coupled with his sprawling house in the woods, told of the continued success of his business.

  As Wolf got out of his SUV, a car on the highway leaned on the horn and sped past the FBI unmarked rolling into the lot.

  The agent pulled to the opposite side of the clearing and parked. When the car shut off, they climbed out and one of them grabbed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one while the other leaned against the trunk.

  “I’d appreciate it if you two stayed here,” Wolf said.

  Both gazed at him with an air of superiority.

  The last thing Wolf wanted was a couple of suits to mess up this situation, but there was nothing he could do about it, so he walked toward the river.

  The Westfield Oxbow was a bend in the Chautauqua River a few miles north of town with shores blanketed in low bushes and frequented by local and out of town fishermen.

  As Wolf walked through the foliage into a clearing, he saw Nate standing with his son, Brian, a dog, and another young man.

  Wolf’s pulse quickened at the sight of his son.

  Brian, Nate’s son, was fourteen years old like Jack, but he’d yet to enter a growth spurt yet. Built like a running back, Nate was average height and his son Brian was a few inches beneath him.

  On the other hand, Jack had reached Wolf’s height of six foot three and surpassed it by an inch as of this summer. At least, that’s what Sarah’s mother had told him the last time they’d spoken on the phone.

  Jack looked as awkward as ever, stooping a little with his shorter companions, as if ashamed of his height. His hair was shaggy and blew in the late-afternoon breeze.

  The FBI agents watched with interest, but stayed put. One of them looked away as if respectfully giving Wolf his space. Must have kids. The other smiled as he blew out a drag. Must not.