by Jeff Carson
“But why kill Levi?” Wolf asked.
Shumway shrugged.
“And if they did go down to Rocky Points to kill Ryan Frost and Green, why come straight back and wait for the cops to come ask them about everything? They would’ve known we’d come to them, right? The evidence leads right to them. And the plaster … they left plaster in Steven’s truck. They left buckets down there with plaster all over the place inside of them. If they wanted to pretend the first skeleton didn’t exist, why didn’t they wipe away all the evidence if they knew the cops were coming?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’m just saying, these three students are acting like the last thing they expected was for cops to show up. Their actions are not consistent with having just killed three people. And why Levi?”
Shumway shook his head. Lifted a hand.
“I just talked to my deputy. She has the gas-station video footage showing one of our perps wearing Converse shoes.”
Shumway raised his eyebrows. “There we go. So?”
“She says the man’s face is covered and he ducks down as he’s leaving the convenience store so she can’t get a height. But she also says she’s positive the man’s shoes are several sizes too big for him. Either that or he has clown feet.”
Shumway gazed through his windshield. “The coyote?”
“If this deputy thinks something, it’s usually right. She’ll send us the footage tomorrow morning so we can see for ourselves.”
Shumway took a huge breath and let it out. “So what now?”
“Now we know they had a second set of bones. I want to know where they kept them,” Wolf said. “There might be a clue there.”
“What are you going to do? Ask those students? That’s why you wanna talk to them? Psh. Why do you think they’ll talk now?”
Wolf conceded the sheriff had a point.
“I’m stopping for food on the way back,” Shumway declared.
“Had to have been a storage unit,” Wolf said. “There aren’t any in Windfield, so how about east? East of the UrMover truck-rental place. Remember she said Green drove off going east?”
Shumway shifted into park and his truck rocked back and forth. “I told you, Pamela’s crazy. She didn’t know where she was pointing. I’m hungry.”
“And if she isn’t crazy?”
“Then she’d be pointing to the nearest town, which is Logan’s Ferry, an hour east toward Steamboat Springs on 40.”
Wolf did some mental math. “That would fit our timeline. They rent the truck at 12:30 p.m., drive into Logan’s Ferry, start loading up the bones at 1:30. Let’s say it takes an hour to load them, so they finish at 2:30, come back to Windfield by 3:30, and then the students and Green split—Green goes south to Rocky Points, and Felicia and Steven go back to the dig.”
“Okay. Maybe you’re onto something. Then, on the way back to the dig, Steven and Felicia make their drive-by of Dig 1 to make it known they’re returning. But they take the other route out, past Steven’s camp up the wash, and follow Green’s route down to Rocky Points.”
Wolf pinched one eye shut. “But my deputy says it’s someone else in the video footage wearing Steven’s shoes. She says the shoes were big looking. So, you’re saying Steven and Felicia went down there and killed them. But Felicia was wearing Steven’s shoes? Makes no sense to me.”
Shumway rolled his eyes. “I’ll believe that footage when I see it.”
Wolf tapped his phone screen and searched for storage units in Logan’s Ferry. “There aren’t any storage rentals in Logan’s Ferry.”
“Ah, Christ.”
They sat for a few moments with their motors idling.
“Where else?” Wolf asked.
Shumway started to say something, then his face dropped. “Wait.”
“What?”
“I know where they kept them.”
“Where? Let’s go.”
Shumway pointed to his dash clock. “It’s nine frickin’ thirty. You said you wanna go talk to these students, and we got a murder scene up there. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. If anything, let’s go eat, and we can get a fresh start on this in the morning.”
“You’re right. The students aren’t going to talk anyway. Tell me where this place is. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Shumway rolled his eyes and put his truck in gear. “Yeah, right. Follow me.”
Chapter 35
Wolf followed Shumway along a cracked asphalt county road, five miles past the Windfield Moving Company. They were traveling east—the direction Pamela from the UrMover Moving Company had pointed earlier—along flat country lit by the moon, surrounded by dark hills that blotted out a blanket of stars.
Shumway’s brake lights blossomed as he slowed and took a left at a grove of deciduous trees that looked to be hugging the banks of a river.
Wolf slowed and followed. Hundreds of insects swam through his headlights as he bumped onto a rutted dirt road.
Continuing on for a quarter-mile, Shumway slowed as their bobbing headlight beams lit a ranch house squatting in a clearing.
The windows of the broken-down house shone, revealing cracks and holes in the glass. A wall of weeds higher than a grown man stood against the warped wood-panel siding. Next to the house sat an aluminum building that looked much newer.
Shumway parked in front of this outbuilding, swiveling his truck so his headlights illuminated two white oversized garage roll doors.
Slowing to a stop next to him, Wolf shut off the engine, grabbed his Maglite and got out.
Jet moved an ear, but otherwise remained dead asleep, so Wolf left him inside and shut the door.
“This is it.” Shumway swiveled and looked around.
Cricket chirps came at them in stereo out of the sweet-smelling grasses and weeds.
“This is what?”
“Where my great grandparents homesteaded a hundred years ago.” He pointed to the side of the house. “Where my grandfather taught me how to shoot a .22.”
Wolf nodded and waited patiently for Shumway to finish a flashback.
Then Shumway turned around and took hold of a roll-door handle and twisted it. The clack of the locked handle echoed through the huge metal building. The other one was locked too.
“There’s a side door.”
Wolf followed him and clicked on his Maglite.
The side of the shed was overrun with huge weeds coming out of the gravel. Behind the foliage, a window reflected his flashlight beam, next to which stood a tan door with a cracked concrete landing.
Shumway twisted the knob. “Locked. Damn it.”
The sheriff clicked on his own flashlight and parted the weeds, pushing his way to the window.
Wolf stepped next to him and shone his light through the glass.
The interior space was big—metal crossbeams and corrugated aluminum roof and siding, with a crumbling concrete floor. A pickup truck was parked inside, covered in dust.
“Green’s truck?” Shumway asked. “Dodge Ram. Black. Can’t see the plates but that’s gotta be it.”
Shumway flipped his Maglite around and smashed the butt-end into the window. It smacked and the glass broke into large pieces and dropped. “Watch out!”
They jumped back as pieces shattered inside and out. A large razor-sharp shard inclined toward Wolf and toppled to the ground in a thousand tinkling splinters.
Wolf glared at him.
“Sorry.” Shumway straightened his pants. “You can probably reach inside and unlock it now.”
The window frame was now a yawning mouth of glass fangs.
Shumway patted his belly. “I can’t reach. Too fat.”
Wolf stepped up and knocked the rest of the glass out with his flashlight, then reached inside and twisted a lock on the knob. “Try it now.”
Shumway twisted the knob. “I think there’s a deadbolt.”
There was, so Wolf leaned back in and pulled at it. The bolt was sluggish, like pulling a nail out of woo
d. He suddenly felt exposed, so he pointed the light in Shumway’s eyes.
Shumway held up his hand. “Hey, watch it.”
“There,” Wolf said as he opened the deadbolt and lowered his flashlight.
“What the hell?” Shumway said.
Wolf ignored him and opened the door. He snapped on a light switch and two fluorescent tube bulbs buzzed overhead. He squinted at the sudden assault on his retinas and walked inside.
The interior was vast, dwarfing even the full-sized pickup truck inside. The once-smooth concrete floor was chipped and cracked, darkened with old oil stains where farm machinery once sat, and on top of that were chunks of white plaster.
“I don’t remember that being there.” Shumway pointed at a steel-cabled winch attached to a boom arm. The base of the six-foot-high contraption was bolted to the concrete floor.
Wolf pulled on some rubber gloves and went to the passenger-side door of the truck. The handle clicked and the door swung open on silent hinges. He passed the light beam around the interior and opened the glove compartment.
“Registered to Jeffrey Green,” he said, reading the Utah registration card.
“You’d better take a look at this,” Shumway said from the other side of the truck.
Wolf closed the door and walked over.
Shumway had his beam pointed at a duffel bag tucked against the aluminum wall. On the floor next to it was a shovel with a yellow handle.
“And now we have a murder weapon,” Shumway said. “Looks like the same size as those cuts on Levi.”
As if there was any doubt. Blood painted the blade and had spattered up the handle, smudging where the cold-blooded killer had gripped it.
Wolf unzipped the bag and parted the opening, revealing stacks of cellophane-covered bundles of hundred-dollar bills. Each stack had a blue $10,000 band on it.
“Jesus. There it all is,” Shumway said.
Shumway was referring to the other items in the bag: two purple Converse All Star high-top shoes with huge dollops of blood on them, a Smith and Wesson four-inch barrel revolver, and a pair of leather gloves that were stiff with blood stains.
Shumway sniffed. “Reeks like the rest of Steven’s shoes.”
Wolf nodded.
“Well …” Shumway gingerly picked up the shovel and studied the smudge marks. “No prints by the looks of it. Killer wore these gloves—they’re going to be the nail in the coffin. We can scrape DNA out of these, check it for a match against Steven, Felicia, and Molly.”
Wolf crouched down and pushed aside the stacks of money.
“You listening?”
“There’s only twenty stacks here. Two hundred thousand. Where’s the rest?”
Shumway said nothing.
“What’s the point of all this sitting here?” Wolf asked.
Shumway scoffed. “They’re in jail now. They haven’t had the chance to deal with all this.”
Wolf stood up.
Shumway gingerly put down the shovel. “I gotta tell you, I’m liking Mo and Felicia doing this. Let’s say Steven is telling the truth, and his shoes were stolen. They come back from loading the bones, and Steven leaves for some reason … to do something else in his truck. Felicia, or Molly, straps on Steven’s shoes. Then the two of them take the gun off the tent and drive down into Rocky Points in this truck… but wait a minute …” Shumway scrunched his forehead. “The Dig 1 team said Mo didn’t leave with the rest of them that afternoon, and Steven and Felicia came back in Steven’s truck. So how did Mo get this truck?”
Wolf raised his eyebrows.
“Well?” Shumway sagged and his face turned red. “You have any thoughts? Or are you just going to sit there and stare at me some more?”
Wolf looked at the duffle bag. “I think I agree—if it was Mo and Felicia, then how did they get down to Rocky Points? And there was a second set of shoeprints at our crime scene in Rocky Points that were size ten or eleven. Both men’s sizes. Both too big for these women. Huge for them.”
“One of the two women and Levi?” Shumway paced. “Is that it? Maybe this here is Levi’s cut of the money. Brought here after the perp killed him. It was a double-cross.”
Shumway stopped and held up a finger. “Maybe all three of these students were in on this, but Steven didn’t know that Mo and Felicia had decided to kill Professor Green. Maybe Steven stayed back Saturday night at the camp, and Felicia and Mo drove down to Rocky Points, telling Steven, ‘Hey, we’ll be back in a few hours with our cuts of the money.’ But they had other plans—they killed Green, putting it all on Steven … making it look like someone else had been with Steven. They had Steven’s shoes, they had the revolver …”
Wolf stared at him and pulled down the corners of his mouth, because despite the wild look on Shumway’s face, the theory fit. “I think we desperately need sleep. I think there’s a lot of evidence to process and we need to get your crime techs here, so you’d better get on the radio.”
Wolf yawned.
Shumway eyed him and broke into his own yawn. “Where are you sleeping?”
Wolf shrugged. Like always when he left town, he had the essential camping gear in the SUV.
“Let’s get CSU down here and we’ll go crash. We need to sleep, and we need to eat. Either that or I’m gonna start murdering people.”
Wolf conceded with a nod.
“You can sleep at my place.” Shumway walked to the door as if it was settled and pulled his radio off his belt. “Deputy Etzel, come in …”
Chapter 36
Wolf woke from a dead sleep to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the distance. He sat up and momentarily had no clue where he was.
A spring cushion couch squeaked underneath his butt, sounding like an effect on a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Jet stood and stared at him from two feet away.
“Huh?” a gruff voice said.
Only then did Wolf fully snap to and realize he was in Shumway’s Windfield home.
“All right … fantastic … we’ll be in.”
Wolf opened his sleeping bag and pushed his bare feet into the soft yarn of a mid-length shag carpet. His watch said 6:20 a.m.
Standing up and stretching his arms high, he bent over and pressed on his lower back, feeling like he’d slept folded in half.
Jet whined, walked to the front door, and stood expectantly.
Wolf opened it and a cool breeze smelling like cut grass and sagebrush fluttered inside. Jet squeezed his way out and squatted on the lawn.
Shumway walked out of his bedroom and put his hands on his hips. He wore boxer shorts and a white T-shirt that were both twisted on his body. His box of gray hair was now crushed on one side, and his face had a red line where the pillow had pressed into his cheek all night.
“Just talked to Deputy Etzel. The techs worked all morning. Matched the blood on the shovel to Levi, got the ballistics going on the revolver. Found all four of their prints on the shovel—Felicia, Steven, Molly, and Green’s.”
Wolf nodded. “But not in the blood.”
“Nope.”
“So it proves the shovel came from their camp, and nothing else.”
Shumway smiled with one side of his mouth. “They’ll have the DNA-match test done early this morning. They took the gloves and the three students’ cheek swabs down to Grand Junction overnight. That’ll get us the perp. Coffee?”
Shumway walked down the hall and disappeared into his kitchen.
“Sure,” Wolf said, smelling the coffee already brewing.
“Sleep all right?”
“Yep.”
Wolf followed him into the room.
Shumway sat down at a table in front of a window and sipped. “Cups to the left of the sink.”
He went to the cupboard and dug out a World’s Greatest Dad cup that had years of swirling scratches inside it.
He filled it with steaming, jet-black coffee, and sat down. His body rejoiced as he swallowed the first sip. The brew was a hazelnut blend, sweeter th
an Wolf would’ve liked, but the caffeine started doing its job.
“Hell of a view,” he said, gesturing out the window.
“Yeah. Not bad.”
A neatly trimmed lawn glistened with dew outside the panes of glass, ending at a barbed-wire fence. Beyond, sage country gleamed in the morning sun, folded with shadows.
Jet walked in front of the window outside with his nose to the grass, walked to a fence post, and lifted his leg.
“Sorry,” Wolf said. “I’ll pick up whatever he leaves.”
Shumway reached out, touching the side of Wolf’s coffee cup.
Wolf saw the sadness in the man’s eyes and wished he had chosen a different mug.
“I did lie to you,” Shumway said.
Wolf raised the cup and sipped the coffee.
“About the sale of my grandfather’s land.”
“Okay.”
“My brother and I didn’t sell it.” Shumway stared out the window. “I sold it without my brother’s permission. I mean, I didn’t really need my brother’s permission. My dad left it all to me in his will … but … I did need his permission. At least that’s what the other people around me thought. Especially my wife. She hated me for it. I sold it to this guy from Washington, and I took the money and ran for the Sheriff’s Office with it.”
Shumway took a long slurp of his coffee. He hung his head and then chuckled to himself.
“I spent that money wisely. Bought a television-and-radio-ad campaign. It was for the future of my family, for God’s sake. Got myself into the minds of the people in Windfield County. And then … my opponent died of a heart attack before the polls even opened. In the end, I won unopposed.”
Wolf was unsure of what to say, so he sipped his coffee again.
