David Wolf series Box Set 2

by Jeff Carson

  Natural light lit the downstairs level, streaming in through windows that probably matched the enormity of the ones upstairs. He made a quick decision—bolting out the front door and taking a right.

  He moved along the bright front of the house to the south side and paused. Pistol ready, he turned the corner, and saw it was clear. He stalked his way down the slope, sliding on dried pine needles, to the rear of the house.

  Wind chimes clanged, dangling from the underside of the rear deck. Trees on the slope below howled and creaked.

  He stopped and peeked around the corner. No one. Edging his way to the first window, he peered inside and saw the blue fabric again, which was now clearly a hanging drape fluttering on the wind streaming through an open sliding glass door.

  The music was louder now, a steady urban beat playing through tiny top-of-the-line speakers mounted in the corners on the underside of the deck.

  Inside he saw the recreation room he had heard plenty about from Jack on many occasions. There was a pool table, a pinball machine, two couches, and a large flat-screen television. Framed European landscapes hung on the walls.

  He stood for a full minute, looking inside the window. All the while sirens grew in volume over the howling wind until they were right outside the front of the house.

  Still, there was still no movement inside. Nobody fleeing out the back door next to him.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket.

  He answered. “Yeah.”

  “Where are you?” Deputy Tom Rachette said. “Why aren’t you on your radio?”

  “I shut it off. I’m at the rear of the house. I want you to stay out front. I’ll be right there.”

  “Are you inside?”

  “I’m going to come out the front door. If there’s someone else in here I’ll probably flush them out.”

  He pocketed his phone and walked to the sliding screen door. Covering his hand with his shirt so he would preserve fingerprints, he slid the door open and walked inside.

  The music was louder still in here, and he walked to the stereo and poked the power button with his knuckle, plunging the room into silence.

  Once again, he stood motionless, listening to the wind outside and the clanging of window coverings throughout the basement. They were the sounds of a hastily abandoned house—a house whose owner had stepped out with every intention of returning, but got sidetracked with a gunshot to the head and back, and never returned.

  After a quick sweep of the downstairs, he returned to check the upper floors before emerging through the front door.

  Deputies Heather Patterson and Tom Rachette were behind the hood of their SUV with pistols trained on him as he walked outside.

  They relaxed and pointed their guns skyward.

  “All clear.” Wolf’s voice echoed through the trees, joining the sound of another approaching siren. He took his radio from his duty belt, turned it on, and pushed the button. “I’m looking at a pistol discarded right here in the bush next to the front porch.”

  He stepped off the cement porch and down the walkway to the beginning of the dirt. “I see four sets of footprints here. They go all the way to the body. And you can see Cassidy’s prints there. And mine.”

  Patterson scribbled in her notebook.

  “Off to your left”—Wolf pointed—“I saw fresh vehicle tracks.”

  He stepped back to the porch and walked along the front of the house, then skirted the trees and returned to his deputies. “Looks like two gunshot wounds. One to the head, one to the back. No brass.”

  Rachette eyed Ryan Frost’s body. “Anything else?”

  Wolf clipped the radio back on his duty belt as he neared them. “Probably a lot else. A bunch of bones in the garage.”

  “Bones in the garage?” Rachette’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Like fossils. Animal bones.”

  “Oh.”

  The revving engine and roaring tires of the second department SUV drew their gazes down the dirt road. The driver kept his foot on the gas until the last second, at which point he mashed the brake and began a long slide that ended with a rocking vehicle buried in an explosion of dust.

  “Easy, Turbo,” Rachette said. “My God, this guy.”

  Deputy Patterson had ignored the chaos behind her and stood rock still, looking at Ryan Frost’s corpse. Her Colorado sky-blue eyes were hard, unblinking, all business and forensic science. She pulled a stray strand of her shoulder-length auburn hair behind her ear and looked at Wolf for the first time. “Ryan Frost you said? This was Cassidy’s father? Jack’s girlfriend?”

  He nodded.

  “Geez.”

  Rachette pulled off his SBCSD ball cap, revealing a brand-new buzz cut of his blond hair underneath. Wiping his forehead, he said, “Damn. It’s hotter than Satan’s nacho farts out here.” He pushed his tongue against a wad of chewing tobacco in his lip and spat on the ground.

  Patterson twisted her face. “Why don’t you show a little respect?” She gestured to Frost’s body and then to Wolf.

  Rachette shrugged and looked at Wolf. “What?”

  “That’s Jack’s girlfriend’s father.”

  Rachette mouthed the words silently, and then looked at Wolf. “Shit, sorry. Man, I didn’t know that.”

  Deputies Barker and Hernandez thumped their car doors shut and emerged from the cloud of dust.

  Deputy Greg Barker was in front as was his alpha nature, trotting at three quarters of a sprint. At six foot one, he was muscular with freckled white skin and red hair and moved like a track star. “Sorry, sir, we were up at mile marker 137 for the 10-32. Five cars.”

  “So I heard,” Wolf said. “You guys got here fast.”

  Deputy Jon Hernandez approached with thumbs hooked on his belt, his eyes fixed behind them at Ryan Frost’s body. He let out a whistle through his teeth, mumbled a quick sentence in Spanish, and crossed himself.

  Soft from eating his wife’s meals, but certainly fit enough to make Wolf’s squad, Hernandez was short, an inch taller than Rachette, but had a large personality that everyone had warmed to. Everyone save Barker. Warm feelings and Barker never fit well together.

  Barker stood shaking his head, hands on his hips as he craned his neck to see behind Wolf. His blue eyes were wide and his chest heaved. “Damn.”

  Wolf looked back at the swirl of shoe prints in the dirt, and a thought knocked the wind out him. He remembered that one of the shoe prints behind the body had been about Wolf’s size and with a diamond tread pattern that resembled Converse All Stars. Many young people wore that shoe, and said person with large footprints would have been tall. Wolf knew a tall young person intimately. Did Jack have Converse All Stars?

  “Sir?” Patterson asked.

  “Boss?” Rachette asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Let’s get to work. Patterson, get the camera and start processing the body. Hernandez and Barker, I want you two inside. Is Lorber on his way?”

  She nodded. “Yep. He and his team will be a few minutes.”

  “Rachette, secure the scene. Set up the tape a good hundred yards up the road. I don’t want …” Wolf let his sentence die at the sound of popping tires. A truck was easing down the road toward them.

  “Who’s that?” Hernandez asked.

  Wolf shielded his eyes and stepped toward it. “I don’t know.”

  The truck rumbled at an idle, the tires crackling as it approached at no more than a few miles an hour.

  When Wolf put his hand on his pistol, the truck skidded to a stop. He pulled the pistol and held it pointing at the ground in front of him.

  With the glare, it was impossible for Wolf to see through the windshield, but whoever was inside was no dummy. Two arms thrust out the open driver’s window, palms out.

  “Don’t shoot!” a voice said, barely audible behind the diesel engine. One hand disappeared and the engine shut off. The truck rocked in place, and then the open hand appeared again. “Don’t shoot!”

  Wolf steppe
d sideways to the edge of the woods to get a view inside the driver’s window, keeping his pistol at the ready.

  The man fumbled with the door, trying to open it from the outside. It was locked so he had to reach back inside to unlock it.

  The door opened and bounced on its hinges.

  Wolf saw a shiny leather loafer first, and then the driver stumbled out from the behind the truck door. In that moment, he also saw that the passenger seat and the rest of the extended cab appeared to be empty.

  “Hi,” the man said with a disarming smile. “Scott Levenworth. Please don’t shoot me.”

  The man was in his early fifties. His hair was wavy gray, full and swept back like he was sitting in a wind tunnel set on low speed. He wore a snap-button cowboy shirt rolled to the elbows, revealing tanned arms. His fingers were adorned with multiple rings. A gold watch circled one wrist, a gold bracelet the other.

  His teeth gleamed in the sun like they were under a black light. “Can I put my hands down now, Deputy?”

  Wolf twirled his finger. “What are you doing here, Mr. Levenworth?”

  The man closed his door and put both hands on the hood of his pickup.

  Wolf frisked him quickly and thoroughly, checking the waistline, which was wrapped with a handmade leather belt and large buckle. The man’s cologne was thick.

  “You can turn around.” Wolf holstered his gun and backed up.

  Scott Levenworth had lost his smile and gained a puzzled look. He kept glancing toward Wolf’s squad of detectives, who stood staring back at the new visitor.

  “My God,” Levenworth said. “They killed him?”

  Chapter 3

  Wolf stared at the man, waiting for more words that never came.

  “Who’s they?” he asked.

  The man said nothing, still staring at the corpse down the road.

  “Who?” Wolf raised his voice a little.

  Levenworth blinked and snapped to attention. “What?”

  “You said ‘they’ killed him. Who are ‘they’?”

  The man’s eyes were drawn to the corpse, which seemed to override his ability to speak.

  “Sir, why don’t you start by showing me your driver’s license?”

  The man dug out his wallet and produced his ID, an Arizona driver’s license that confirmed the name he’d given. Then he produced a business card that had a raised gold symbol—an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch in its claws, which Wolf recognized as the Great Seal of the United States. The black writing said Scott Levenworth, United States Senator, Arizona.

  “Senator?” Wolf asked.

  Senator Levenworth nodded absently.

  Wolf stepped between the senator and the view of the body, and Levenworth focused on him as if for the first time.

  “What are you doing here, Senator?”

  “I’m here to pick up the bones I bought from Ryan Frost.”

  Wolf remembered the scene inside the garage. “The bones?”

  “The fossils.”

  “And what kind of fossils are we talking about here?”

  “Dinosaur fossils.”

  Things were coming back to Wolf about the activities of Ryan Frost. Cassidy had once come to dinner with Jack at the house, and she’d mentioned that her father was “into” fossils. Wolf hadn’t known at the time that being into fossils meant he was selling them.

  “Ryan Frost ran a business selling fossils?”

  Levenworth raised his eyebrows and nodded. “He’s a big deal in the fossil trade world.”

  “Really.”

  He’d apparently appeared confused because Levenworth said, “The company is called Ancient Acquisitions. He’s kind of a legend in some circles. A broker who sources bones for buyers. Has a fancy website. Booths at all the big trade shows. But I think he does everything out of his home here. As far as I know, he’s a one-man operation.”

  Wolf nodded again. “You said … you asked if they’d killed him when you drove up. Please, tell me who you’re referring to.”

  “I guess I meant the sellers of the bones. Frost is the broker. I’m the end buyer.”

  “The sellers?”

  Senator Levenworth stared at the ground in deep thought. His breathing became shallow.

  “Senator.”

  “It makes sense. They wanted all the money up front.” Levenworth shook his head. “They probably took the money. Hell, they probably kept the bones. Gah! Dammit. I knew I shouldn’t have …” Levenworth turned and rubbed his face.

  Wolf thought again about the small set of footprints that ran up to Ryan Frost’s body. He remembered Cassidy’s shaky voice on the phone.

  “Senator, I need you to start making sense.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I gave Ryan Frost a million dollars last week.”

  Wolf raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know it was possible to even get that kind of cash in this day and age.”

  Levenworth chuckled. “It’s tricky from a bank, but I didn’t get it from a bank. I had it.”

  They locked eyes for a few seconds, listening to the howling treetops and the ticking pickup truck.

  “I need you to come down to the station and tell us everything.”

  Levenworth looked back toward the house. “Yeah. Okay, sure.”

  “Barker,” Wolf said into the radio.

  “Sir.”

  “Please come over here.”

  Barker strode over, his small eyes volleying between Wolf and the senator as he neared. “Sir?”

  “This is Senator Levenworth. He’s here because he had a business transaction scheduled with Ryan Frost. Please escort him to the station—”

  “I know where it is, Deputy,” Levenworth said.

  Wolf turned to Levenworth. “Still, I would like my deputy to escort you. I’ll be in shortly. At that time, I’d like to take your statement personally.”

  Levenworth’s eyes narrowed, as if he rarely took orders from anyone and didn’t like it. Then, with a strained smile, he said, “Yeah. Okay.”

  Chapter 4

  An hour and a half later, Wolf pulled into the Sluice–Byron County building’s parking lot and shut off the engine. He stepped out onto the asphalt, which gave off so much heat he felt it on his chin.

  He could scarcely remember feeling so hot in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This was a place that fogged breath most mornings, even in mid-August, and now it felt like the deserts of Arizona.

  Stepping through the automatic doors and into the building was like moving into a walk-in refrigerator. He weaved his way through the shiny halls and past the administrative offices, passing men and women he’d never met but knew by sight. There was a lot of that in Rocky Points nowadays. The locals had been overrun by neighbors to the south. That went for here in the building, the Sheriff’s Department upstairs, the bars and taverns in town, and everything else in between.

  The town was still Rocky Points, getting a modern update in most places, but still quaint despite a few more people. It was easy enough for Wolf to get used to. But the county building was something else altogether. Because besides the onset of hypothermia, whenever Wolf entered the place he also felt like he was entering a city. The fast pace, the suits and ties, the politics, and the bureaucracy were overbearing.

  He walked past the elevator and the terrazzo stairway that led to the Sheriff’s Department and went to the front reception area.

  Jack, Cassidy, and Nate were sat in chairs in a nook near the windows. Jet was lying on his side next to Cassidy’s chair, his chest heaving as he slept.

  Jack stared at a muted television playing baseball highlights while Cassidy sat next to him, staring through the carpet.

  Tammy stayed in her chair behind the reception counter, nodding greeting to Wolf with a reassuring close of her eyes. Wolf had spoken to her earlier for an update and she’d assured him she’d do all she could to keep Cassidy comfortable.

  Nate rose from his chair and walked over. “Hey.”

  “How’s she doing?”
<
br />   “She’s in bad shape.”

  Cassidy turned at Wolf with an unblinking, haunted gaze. By the looks of her sunken red eyes, she was cried out and numb.

  “What about her mother? Have you asked where she is?”

  Nate nodded. “I talked to her earlier on Cassidy’s phone. She’s sitting at the airport in Sacramento. She was at some health-food conference.”

  Cassidy’s mother was the owner of Mountain Organics Market, which was commonly referred to as “MOM’s” by the locals.

  “She said her flight comes in tonight to DIA. It was the earliest one she could get. I wrote down the flight number.” Nate dug in his pocket and produced a wadded piece of paper and handed it to him.

  “Thanks.”

  “Ryan took her to Denver to catch the flight yesterday and was supposed to go pick her up from the airport tomorrow night, so she has no ride back.”

  Wolf nodded. “I’ll go get her.”

  Nate stared at him and shook his head. “I don’t know how you do this shit.” He glanced over his shoulder at Cassidy. “You got any leads on who did this? We gotta be on the lookout for some psycho running around? My house is less than a mile from theirs.”

  “We’re not sure yet, but it looks work-related. I’d keep the gun handy, that’s for sure.”

  Jack had his arm around Cassidy now. The situation was too much for two kids their age, Wolf thought.

  He slid his gaze to Jack’s shoes, which were of the low-top hiking type with athletic tread on bottom. Perfect for camping, he supposed. He couldn’t recall what Jack had been wearing earlier in the day.

  Now that he was staring at his son in the flesh, though, he realized that Jack didn’t wear Converse shoes. Never had. Even during his skateboard years. He remembered the old pair of Vans that had disintegrated on Jack’s feet, and then—yes—it had been another pair of Vans that he’d wanted after that, and Wolf had bought them. It had been a whole thing with Sarah about who was going to go with Jack to buy them that day.

  Vans had a universal tread pattern as well, but they were tiny diamonds, or crisscrossing lines, or … hexagons? Octagons? Whatever the pattern, it was completely different to the one he’d seen next to Ryan Frost’s dead body.