by Dave Stanton
A couple of minutes later we pulled into a small bar and grill called Chuck’s Pit. Inside, it was warm and dark, like a cave. We took a seat at the bar, and Edward asked for a bottle of Heineken, which he drained in long swallows. The bar maid took our dinner orders, and Edward ordered another beer and a shot of Patron. He leaned his head back and shot the cognac-like tequila, then sat hunched over the bar on his elbows. He kept shaking his head.
“It’s unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the preparations that went into the wedding. And the impact this has on Bascom Lumber and the Bascom family. It’s monumental. I’m in a state of shock.” His brown hair was parted on the side—it looked like it had been hair sprayed in place, but the wind had messed it up. I noticed one of his front teeth was bigger than the other, which made him look boyish, like a child whose adult teeth were still growing in. But he had to be close to forty.
“How well did you know Sylvester?” I asked.
“Fairly well, I guess. Understand, he’s a lot younger than me. We didn’t socialize outside of work, but he seemed to be pretty typical.”
“Typical? How so?”
“Well, here’s a twenty-seven-year-old son of an extremely wealthy and powerful man. He’s got everything going for him; his career is in place, he’s got a beautiful new fiancée, he’s got enough money to live however he wants. He’s got it made. All he needed to do is go with it and not do anything stupid. I guess that was too much to ask.”
“How do you know he did something stupid?”
“Well, I…” Edward shrugged. “Just an assumption, I guess.”
“Was Sylvester intense and committed to the business, like his dad?”
Edward waved at the bartender, ordered another tequila, and gunned it with a quick flip of the head. I could see him start to unwind as the booze hit him. The lines around his eyes and forehead lightened, and he smiled for no reason. The tension seemed to leave his body like steam rising off wet concrete under a hot sun.
“I don’t usually drink much,” he said. “But this situation…”
“I understand,” I said.
“Let me give you a little Bascom Lumber empire history,” he said, beginning to slur a little. “The original founder was Leland Bascom, who started a small timber business back in the early eighteen hundreds on the East Coast. He built it into a pretty good company, and then in the eighteen-fifties his son, Hamilton, came out west to expand the business during the gold-rush boom days. Hamilton Bascom was very successful in California and extended the company’s timber rights into Oregon. He was known as a ruthless, uncompromising businessman and was shot to death in eighteen-eighty. He’s become kind of a symbol to the Bascoms, representing toughness and tenacity. They like to bring him up in meetings.
“Anyway, after he died, his son William inherited the business, which by now was well established and very profitable. William was a competent executive but had a notorious record of philandering. He died in the nineteen-twenties—had a heart attack while in bed with a prostitute. His son Stephen then became the top executive.” Edward paused, holding up his fingers and counting them off. “And he was in charge until after World War Two, at which time Stephen’s son Samuel returned home from Germany as a decorated war hero. Stephen retired, and Samuel took over. Samuel was at the wedding; he made a speech at the rehearsal dinner. He just turned eighty-two.”
I nodded, and the waitress brought our food and took orders for another round. We ate in silence for a minute, then Edward started again.
“Samuel retired about twenty years ago, and that’s when John Bascom became president—John Bascom is Samuel’s oldest son. I started working for the company ten years ago, right after Seth Bascom was killed. This whole situation kind of seems like déjà vu.”
“How did Seth Bascom get killed?” I asked.
“He was crushed when a cable snapped while loading a trailer with redwoods in Southern Oregon.”
“Ouch. Back to Sylvester, tell me how he compared to his dad.”
Edward sat for a moment, chewing his food while he stared at the bottles behind the bar. “I was getting to that. I never knew Seth Bascom, but from what I hear he was a tough kid, a fighter, stubborn as a mule—very similar to his father. Now, this is just my opinion; I haven’t worked directly with Sylvester very much, I’m sure I would have in the future if he, uh, was still with us. But I got a feeling he was too young, too green, not intense enough. He seemed to spend a lot of time running around house shopping, taking Desiree on exotic vacations, and partying with his friends. I never got the impression he was that interested in the business.”
“Why did John Bascom want to promote him?” I said, thinking that it didn’t sound like Sylvester would have been the right guy to run his father’s business. But that didn’t mean he deserved to die.
“Because he’s his son,” Edward said. “It’s a family business.”
“I see.”
“Think about it,” Edward said, resting his forehead on his fingers as he looked at me. “For every man like John Bascom, there’s a thousand ordinary types that maybe are somewhat ambitious, but don’t view business as life and death. I think Sylvester was smart enough to know he had it good, but as far as him being driven, I never sensed that.”
I considered his remarks while I dosed a taco with Tabasco sauce.
“What about Sylvester’s friends, the guys in his wedding? Do you know them?”
“Not really,” he said. “His best man’s a guy named Chris Dickerson, they went to school together, like back in grade school. The Asian guy is Rod Yamato, he’s another old school buddy. I don’t know the other ones.”
“How about the big guy with the flattop, Sven Osterlund?”
“Oh, the bodybuilder?” Edward shook his head. “I never met him. But listen to this: last Thursday night Sylvester and all his guys are out at the casinos living it up. They end up back in Sylvester’s room at Caesar’s about two or three in the morning and completely wreck the place. I mean, there’s a couple holes in the sheetrock, they were throwing furniture around, the TV gets busted up, there’s food flung all over the place, and this guy Osterlund heaves a table off the balcony into the pool. From what I hear, he was the ringleader and was really going crazy. Anyway, I had to go fix things with the hotel manager—he wanted to kick the whole group out. I finally soothed it over, and Sylvester told me not to tell Mr. Bascom.”
“What did you say?”
“Not much. It kind of put me between a rock and a hard place, you know? I just wrote it off as a boys-will-be-boys thing and let it drop.”
We finished our drinks, and the bartender took our plates and left the check.
“I’ll get it,” I said, the new high roller on the block, ready to give my fresh expense account a workout.
7
When Edward dropped me off me back at my car, he gave me the room number at the Crown Ambassador where a maid had found Sylvester’s body. I watched Edward walk across Caesar’s parking lot toward the entrance to the casino. He appeared to be a straight shooter, an intelligent guy, a regular guy. But what type of person allows himself to be a personal errand boy for an arrogant, high-powered executive? When John Bascom snapped his fingers, Edward jumped. It seemed to be a demeaning existence, and my impression of Edward was that he had more going for him. Maybe he didn’t mind the work, but something didn’t seem right about it, and I wondered if perhaps his situation was due to some unfortunate circumstance.
I started the Nissan, and the bad muffler rattled like mad. Maybe now that I could afford it, I’d get it fixed. If I had the time. Or made the time. Hell, maybe I’d just get used to the noise and drive the car until the goddamned muffler fell off. I revved the motor a couple times, challenging the racket to outlast my patience. Then I stuck the car in gear and drove across the border into California, to the Crown Ambassador.
The hotel was one of Tahoe’s largest, rising sixteen stories on prime real est
ate right at the state line. I stared up at the green and gold structure, then traded my ski jacket for a black cotton coat. I pulled a small forensics case and a roll of yellow crime-scene tape from the suitcase I kept in my trunk, and grabbed my generic gold badge, which was mounted on a black leather backing attached to a thin neck cord. Then I strapped on my shoulder holster with the Beretta and went into the hotel lobby.
I walked around the perimeter, checked the restaurant, the lounge, and the men’s room, scouting for uniformed or plainclothes cops. It was almost nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and I hoped the detectives, forensics squad, and coroner would have already cleared out. I didn’t see anyone suspicious around, so I took the elevator to the sixth floor. The hallway was empty, and the door to 672 was sealed with three bands of yellow tape.
I went back down to the registration counter. I waited there for a minute until a pretty Asian girl stepped out from a side door.
“Hi, I’m Rich Conrad, Douglas County Sheriff’s Office,” I said. My coat was unzipped, the badge resting on my chest. “I need to go up to six seventy-two.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, looking around. “My manager should talk to you, but I think he’s on break.”
“I’ll only be a couple minutes, it’s standard procedure. My wife is waiting at home with a movie, so I’d like to get back soon.” I gave her my best “ah, shucks” smile. She glanced around again, then ran a plastic card through an electronic box. “I guess it’s okay. Here you go.”
I went back to the sixth floor. After snapping on a pair of rubber gloves, I used a razor blade to slice the crime-scene tape crisscrossed over the doorjamb of room 672. Then I ran the card key through the reader and went in. It was nine-fifteen. I wanted to be in the room for no more than ten minutes.
I avoided touching anything as I surveyed the crime scene. At the foot of the bed, a large bloodstain on the carpet spread past the boundaries of a taped silhouette of a body. The bedspread was pulled partially off the mattress, revealing a smeared streak of blood on the white sheets. A dried pool of vomit lay near the window, the sickly odor hanging in the air.
I looked underneath the bed and saw nothing. I studied the pillows with my magnifying glass, but it was probably pointless. Forensic evidence can make a case if one has access to a lab, and the time to wait for results. Neither applied to me.
I checked the bathroom and went through the dresser drawers, careful not to touch the white fingerprint powder. I didn’t really expect to find anything, but I felt it was important to check, to get a feel for the room, if nothing else. There was a large walk-in closet next to the bathroom. It was empty except for the non-removable hangers and ironing board. The closet floor had a few muddy scuffmarks, and I knelt down to see if I could make out a footprint. I couldn’t, but I did notice some lighter-color dirt, and I pinched some between my fingers. It was sawdust. I took a small flashlight from my forensics case and studied the floor carefully. There appeared to be a light coat of dust mixed with some fine sawdust, and then some heavier shoe dirt was scattered about. The sawdust could mean anything but was probably meaningless, I thought, and I was about to get up when I noticed an inch-long curlicue of wood shaving hiding in the crevice where the cedar floor butted up to the carpet.
I picked up the shaving, then stood and took a better look at it, and when I raised my head I found myself looking at a neat little hole that had been drilled in the closet door.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. The hole was an inch or so above my eye line and about a half-inch in diameter. I stood on my tiptoes, looking through it, then closed myself in the closet and peered out. I could see the bed pretty well, but not much else. I stepped back out, taking a look at the hole from the outside. It was right above a mirror mounted to the wood-grain closet door, and although the hole was visible, it wasn’t obvious. It was a damn peephole—but for what purpose?
I heard voices and footsteps in the hallway. I pressed my ear against the door and listened to the voices pass. It was time to boogie. I opened the door and the hallway was clear. I ripped the three strips of tape from the door, replaced them with new ones, and moved swiftly to the stairwell. A minute later I was walking through the dark parking lot to my car, congratulating myself on a smooth operation but eager to get out of there. Tampering with crime-scene evidence, especially in a murder case, would definitely piss off the locals.
• • •
I sat at the bar at the Lakeside and considered the peephole in the closet door. It was a perplexing find. Possibly it had been there for quite some time, but the sawdust seemed fresh; it wasn’t ground into the floor and pressed into the corners. The hole was probably something a guest or a maid would notice before long, then it would be repaired. My suspicion was it had been drilled recently, maybe even the previous night.
I called the Crown on my cell, identifying myself again as a cop from Douglas County, and asked for the most recent registration records for room 672. The clerk told me Sylvester Bascom had checked in last night at ten-thirty. Brad had said Sylvester and Sven Osterlund left the bachelor party last night to try to get laid, which I assumed meant hookers. Did they bring a hooker to the room at the Crown? Had the Lake Tahoe police talked to Osterlund yet?
I sipped on my drink and decided to call my old buddy Cody Gibbons, a detective with San Jose PD. It had been a couple weeks since we’d talked, but he’d had the same phone number in San Jose for years. I dialed it from memory, and he answered on the second ring, his voice gruff and loud.
“What? What? Dirty Double-Crossin’ Dan? Thanks for returning my call.”
“What call?”
“I left you a message at your house.”
“I’ve been in Tahoe since yesterday. You should have called my cell.”
“Oh,” he said. “Hey, they gave me another paid vacation. Can you believe it?”
“I hate to say so, but yes. What happened?”
“What? I was in pursuit of a car-jacking suspect over near King and Story. This asshole’s driving like a complete maniac, he’s blowing through red lights in crowded intersections, he’s driving on the sidewalk and takes out a hotdog cart, it’s amazing he didn’t kill anyone. So he finally loses it around a corner and slams into a curb and breaks both axles and folds the tires under the car. By the time he gets out of the car we’re right on him, but he takes off anyway. My new partner—I call him Fast Eddie, he’s a black dude who used to run the hundred in college—he catches him, but this dude is jacked up on PCP, and it’s like he’s Superman. He knocked out Eddie with his first punch then grabbed his piece.”
“Sounds like trouble.”
“Fuckin’ A. I was caught in the middle of the street with no cover. Lucky for me the guy couldn’t shoot straight. He got off two shots before I drew on him. I hit him between the eyes with my first shot. I’m serious, can you believe that? Right between the eyes.”
“DOA, I imagine.”
“And then some. It took the top of his head off and splattered his brains all over the street. I’m suspended with pay for the time being, pending the investigation.”
“What is there to investigate?”
“They suspect my ammunition might have been non-regulation, but shit, half the force is packing hollow-point cutters.”
“It never occurs to you to play it by the book, does it, Cody?”
“Play it by the book? That gets you nowhere except dead, maybe. Come on, Dirt. Anyway, it’s not uncommon to go SWP after a killing. They won’t give me too much heat unless it gets political. He would have bought it no matter what kind of bullet I used. It may have been the greatest shot of my career.”
“In the meantime you’re on vacation with a pay check coming in.”
“You got that right, Dirt. So, what the hell are you doing?”
Cody Gibson and I had known each other since we played football together in high school. Cody was our star defensive lineman. Sometime after high school, he began calling me Dirty Double-Crossing Dan,
the result of a forgotten, drunken episode at a pick-up bar. The nickname had survived the years. Cody was like that—on impulse he would nickname people, and the names tended to stick for life. His mom was Old Glory, he called his dad The Big Guy, and one of our old running buddies was No-Morals Andrew. He called Wenger “The Sniveler.”
I quit football after I blew out my knee in my junior year and took up wrestling, but Cody went on to play on the defensive line for Utah State, despite being expelled from high school for throwing his coach in a Dumpster. By that time Cody was six-foot-five, 270, and still growing, and was wearing the trademark red beard he grew every winter since. He came back to San Jose after college and worked for a private security firm for a few years before hiring on with the San Jose Police Department. They promoted him to plainclothes detective three years ago.
“I’m working a case up here freelance,” I said.
“Yeah? You going to be up there for a while?”
“Could be.”
“What’s The Sniveler have to say about that?”
“I haven’t told him yet.”
Cody laughed. “You think you could run a couple names through the system for me?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Fast Eddie owes me.”
“Right. The names are Sylvester Bascom and Sven Osterlund. Bascom’s a murder victim, and Osterlund’s a suspect.”
“I’ll have their records pulled. Call me in twenty-four hours,” Cody said, still chuckling.
“Thanks, buddy.”
I left my drink half-finished and walked out of the casino. If Osterlund wasn’t already being held as a witness, I wanted to talk to him. But first I needed to sit down with Whitey and Brad. I drove back down 50, to the Lazy 8 Hotel. The light was on in their room. It had been about five hours since I dropped them off, and I imagined they were sitting around watching TV before revving up for another long night of partying. Hopefully they had got some sleep. Whitey parted the drapes and looked out the window when I knocked.
