Drifted

by Jeff Carson

  “Are you here to tell me you think I have something to do with all of this?”

  Wolf said nothing.

  “Please, Mr. Wolf, get to what you want to know. Or you’re going to wear out your welcome fast.”

  Wolf nodded. “You say it’s a company that purchased the option to buy your land. But really, like you and your corporation holding the property, it’s a single person, correct?”

  Bloom raised his sunglasses, revealing a hawk’s glare.

  “S & S Development,” Wolf said. “That’s the company who purchased the option.”

  “Yes. And I don’t know if it’s a one-man operation.”

  “But you met the one man, correct? Only dealt with the one individual.”

  Bloom’s eyes glazed over. His face dropped. “My God. You think he’s involved?”

  Wolf studied Bloom hard. “I do. But more importantly, Mr. Bloom, I don’t think you were involved.”

  Wolf flipped his notebook shut. “I hope I can count on your continued cooperation in our investigation should we need it in the near future.”

  Bloom stood frozen.

  “Mr. Bloom?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Wolf took a final sip from his coffee and stood from his chair. “I’m sure you’ll have plenty of chances to read about it in the papers.”

  Chapter 35

  Wolf crossed one leg over the other and checked his watch.

  “What’s he doing?” MacLean looked toward his office windows.

  Wolf followed the sheriff’s eyes but saw nothing past the shut blinds. His watch read 1:12 p.m.—twelve minutes past meeting time.

  “I guess I’ll call again.” MacLean huffed and picked up his desk phone.

  The door opened, and White strode in. He stopped at the chair next to Wolf, unbuttoned his suit jacket, and smoothed his canary-yellow tie before sitting down.

  “Hello, gentlemen.” White nodded at the sheriff. “Listen, sorry I’m late, but I have a lot on my plate this afternoon.” He slid a look to Wolf. “If we could please make this as brief as possible.”

  “Sure,” Wolf said.

  White settled in, checked his watch, and crossed a leg. “So?”

  “We have a new angle on the Preston case,” Wolf said.

  “What kind of new angle? I thought we were pretty clear on all the angles in this case, and they’re all dead.”

  “What do you think the odds are that Dr. Sheffield was hiking up on that pass the day Warren Preston’s body emerged from the snow?”

  White blinked rapidly. “What?”

  “It had rained almost an inch on top of Huerfano Pass the night before. The rain lowered the snowpack, washing a good portion of it down into the valley. That storm was responsible for uncovering Warren Preston’s body.”

  White looked like his brain was rebooting.

  Wolf opened a folder on his lap, pulled a sheet of paper from the stack, and handed it over. “I found Sheffield’s perfect timing rather odd that he was on top of that pass in the right place, at the right time, to see the body as it emerged from that snowbank. If he’d been a week or two later, maybe even only a few days later, who knows what could have happened to that body? The wildlife might have scattered it across the Rockies. And why hike there? The body was a good hundred yards off the trail, and then in a snowbank.”

  “He said he saw the crows,” White said.

  “Look at that.”

  White looked down at the paper. “What is this? Cell records for Sheffield? I never signed off on this warrant.”

  “You can see,” Wolf said, “that the odds are good that Sheffield would be there at that exact moment because it was the thirty-third time in the last three months he’d been up on that pass.”

  White set the paper on MacLean’s desk. “You may as well have just spoken Cantonese to me, Wolf. Got a full schedule, gentlemen. So far, I’m not liking the pace or content of what I’m hearing.”

  “Sheffield killed Chris Alamy,” Wolf said.

  White turned slowly to Wolf.

  “And I have proof.”

  “You have proof. Well, I would hope so. Otherwise that accusation would look downright crazy.” He flashed a condescending smile and looked at his phone.

  “I know Sheffield’s all but in the county council at this stage of his campaign, and I know he’s recently been publicly endorsing you. I thought you’d want to hear this sooner rather than later, so that you don’t inadvertently look bad. But if you want to get back to your full plate, by all means go ahead.”

  White pocketed his phone. “Consider my schedule cleared.”

  “Let’s, uh, go ahead and tell your story, Wolf,” MacLean said.

  “Before Zack Hood died, he told me that Preston had called his father a cheat and a liar. That’s why he bashed his head in—his words, not mine. He said he’d do it all over again if he could. I mentioned Chris Alamy, asked him why he’d killed his friend. And, yes, I was in an excited state of mind, a little bit crazy”—he glanced at White—“but I could have sworn he looked like he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then he died.”

  “Okay,” White said. “Let me get this correct, then. You’re saying Hood didn’t kill Alamy? That Sheffield did it? What about those construction workers across the street from Alamy’s? They saw Zack Hood’s blue truck honking at the scene, taking off down the hill—speeding away from the crime. Hood’s prints are all over the house, on beer bottles, on the toilet.”

  Wolf opened the folder and pulled another sheet. “From the first time I heard the story, I wondered why Hood would sit there and blast his horn, right after he’d shot and killed his friend and staged it to look like a suicide. Why would he do that?”

  White shrugged. “Because your detective misinterpreted what the construction worker said?”

  “Or Hood wanted to make himself seen by the construction workers across the street. So why would Hood want to make himself seen?”

  White blinked.

  “Because it wasn’t Hood,” Wolf said. “It was Sheffield making sure those construction workers looked over and saw that blue truck as it peeled away … so we would all think it was Hood.”

  White looked nonplussed.

  “Here’s one of Sheffield’s credit-card statements.” Wolf handed over the piece of paper.

  “Again, I never signed off on a warrant to check Sheffield’s cell records, or his financials.”

  “We went straight to the judge.”

  White looked at MacLean.

  The sheriff shrugged.

  “We didn’t want to hit any resistance,” Wolf said. “Look at the circled transaction, please.”

  White looked down. “A car rental.”

  “Sheffield used his personal credit card to rent a pickup truck from a rental agency over in Grand Junction last week.” Wolf reached over and tapped the page. “You can see the date. It’s the day he came into our office with the pictures of Preston’s body.”

  White squinted.

  “Here’s a photograph of the actual truck he rented.”

  White looked at it and lowered it to his lap. “A blue Ford F-250.”

  “The exact same model owned by Zack Hood. We went to Grand Junction two days ago and got casts of the tires on that rental truck. Last night in his lab, Lorber definitively matched the treads to the ones found at Alamy’s house.” Wolf tapped a finger on the edge of MacLean’s desk. “It was Sheffield. He came to us with the photos. Then he drove to Grand Junction, got the truck, came back, went to Alamy’s. He shot him, left the clean, untraceable gun in Chris’s hand, then left with his horn blaring.”

  White stared into nothing.

  MacLean pushed a piece of paper toward the DA. “Sawyer, we’ll need you to sign off on this warrant to search Sheffield’s house for clothing with GSR traces. We’ll also be bringing him in, taking us a good look at his hands for residue there, too.”

  White stared into nothing.

  “Sawyer.” MacLean
held a pen in his face.

  “Yes. Of course.” White took the pen and signed. When he was done he sat back, deflated. “What is this? What does this mean? I mean … why? He brought the pictures to us. But … Alamy and Hood had to have killed Preston.” He looked at Wolf. “Right?”

  “It all comes down to what would happen to the land under Preston Rock and Supply should the business fail,” Wolf said. “You know those condominium complexes that line the river on the way to the rock yard?”

  White nodded. “Yes.”

  “Through Margaret Hitchens, I’ve been speaking to some developers this week. It turns out that multiple groups have been in contact with Warren Preston over the years. Anybody with a pulse and a construction business is interested in turning his scarred piece of riverfront property into a couple of condo buildings, and millions in profits. They’ve been running into a brick wall, however, in the form of Warren Preston.”

  White’s phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out and silenced it. “So Preston was sticking it out. Thumbing it in the faces of the developers,” White said.

  “Preston never even owned the land,” MacLean said. “But he was entitled to stay.”

  “You’ve gotten to know Sheffield recently,” Wolf said. “He doesn’t live in that big house up on Sunnyside just from the profits of his clinic in town, does he?”

  White shook his head. “No. He doesn’t.”

  “It turns out he dabbles quite a bit in Rocky Points real estate. In fact, his own company partnered with another firm to build one of the condo complexes at the base of Rocky Points Resort.”

  “Yeah.” White’s voice was low.

  “I’ve spoken to the owner of the land under Preston Rock and Supply,” Wolf said. “A man named Rod Bloom. Ever heard of him?”

  White shook his head.

  “I hadn’t either,” Wolf said. “He likes to keep quiet. Apparently, these developers have been calling him for years, too. He tells them all the same thing—he’s not interested in kicking Preston off his land. He tells them he pays his bill every month as per the terms of the lease, and that’s fine by him.

  “But, Mr. Bloom takes opportunities when they’re given. So when a firm offered him hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase a ten-year option on the land, should Preston Rock and Supply default on their lease within that period, he took the deal.”

  “And what company purchased that option?” White asked.

  “S & S Development Corporation,” Wolf said. “The first S stands for Sheffield. And apparently so does the second one. The articles of incorporation only list the doctor.”

  White stood and walked to the window behind MacLean. He stayed silent and looked down on the street below. “I don’t get it. Was he involved in Preston’s killing or not?”

  “No,” Wolf said. “Ever since he bought the option, his mission has been to kill Preston’s business, not the man. I think his plan was to sabotage the equipment at the rock yard—death by a thousand paper cuts. I think he was the one cutting brake lines and hydraulic lines. And according to Betsy Collworth, he was doing a pretty good job of bleeding them over the past year. The business was struggling to keep up with repairs and fulfilling orders, which was leading to a lot of lost orders.”

  “You say you think,” White said.

  Wolf nodded.

  “That’s going to be tough to prove.”

  Wolf continued. “Through Zack Hood’s records found in his quarry office, and after talking to his business colleagues, we’ve put together a pretty good picture of what happened the night of Preston’s death. Remember, Zack Hood took over his flagstone quarry business from his father last year. His father had pissed off Warren Preston years ago, so the Hood quarry never supplied Preston after that. But after his father’s death, Zack was giving it another try. He bragged to his colleagues about how he was going to meet with Preston. Told them he’d get the account back.

  “Hood used his best contact at Preston Rock and Supply, his high-school buddy Chris Alamy, to get a meeting with the boss. That Saturday night, Hood came down with rock samples and a sales pitch. According to Hood’s last words, Warren Preston told him what he thought of his father, and that meeting ended with Hood killing Preston with one of those rock samples. And we know what Chris and Zack did next—they drove around town, dropping off Alamy’s phone at his house, bringing up Preston’s car to Preston’s house and leaving his personal contents to make it seem like he’d been there. Then they dumped Preston’s body up on Huerfano Pass.”

  “But Sheffield.” White turned around and shook his head.

  Wolf picked another sheet out of the stack. “Sheffield’s phone records tell quite a tale. He wasn’t as careful as Chris Alamy had been with his phone that night. We may as well have had a tracking collar on the doctor. On the Saturday night in question, Sheffield’s phone spent just under two hours hooked into Preston Rock and Supply’s wireless network IP address.”

  White raised his eyebrows and took the paper from Wolf’s hand.

  “Look at the exact time,” Wolf said.

  “6:38 p.m. to 8:23 p.m.,” White said.

  “He was there when the murder happened,” Wolf said. “Right during that window when Alamy drove home to drop off his phone and vehicle.”

  “And Sheffield was there,” MacLean said. “At the rock yard. Bleeding steering fluid on one of those front-end loaders, or whatever his next booby-trap was. My theory is he got stuck inside the lot. Probably thought the place would be deserted on a Saturday night. But then everyone started showing up. He got stuck and witnessed the whole thing.”

  White handed back the paper. “Okay. So he sees the murder. Then what?”

  “While Alamy and Hood drove back to Alamy’s to drop off Alamy’s vehicle and phone, Sheffield must have still been at the rock yard. Probably wondering how he was going to take advantage of this situation. He had options. He could come to us, tell us what he saw, and put away Alamy for murder. Preston was dead. The company would have gone under. He would have been sitting in a good position for his land option.”

  “But then Alamy and Hood came back,” MacLean said. “They took the body, and they drove away in Hood’s truck and Preston’s vehicle. At that point, we think Sheffield got in his own vehicle and followed them. Because them leaving changed things. There was no more body, no more murder. If Sheffield came to us, he’d have to explain what he’d seen, and that would lead to why he’d been on the property in the first place. He would have looked suspicious. So he must have followed them on their escapades, going up to Preston’s house to drop off the vehicle, and then up to Huerfano Pass to dump the body.”

  Wolf nodded. “He would have kept at a distance. Alamy and Hood must have parked at the gate on the top of the pass, given where we found the body. Think of Sheffield—he drives up behind them, knowing they’re disposing of the body. He sees their truck parked at the top of the pass, but he can’t get any closer. Maybe he even comes back later that night to see what happened. But it snowed. Hard. He would have been driven from his search.”

  White shook his head emphatically. “Jesus. And if he came back the next day, any and all tracks would have been erased under feet of snow.”

  “And then we got the case when Alamy came in saying his boss was missing,” Wolf said. “Only we were stumped, because … no body, no murder.”

  MacLean picked the sheet of paper showing Sheffield’s phone GPS locations and waved it. “So Sheffield began frequenting Huerfano Pass, hoping one day he’d find the body. Thirty-three times in three months. The thirty-third time’s a charm.”

  “He scoured that pass for clues,” Wolf said. “And then, the day after that rain storm, he hit the jackpot. He saw the crows and knew he’d found the body.

  “So now we had a body, and Sheffield knew we’d be right back on Chris Alamy. Sheffield knew about Zack Hood, but we didn’t yet. He saw a sure-fire way to get rid of Alamy—to kill him and make it look like Zack Hood had done it.
So he goes over there in the rented truck. He stages a suspicious-looking suicide, which points to an actual murder by Zack Hood. He honks the horn, makes sure the construction workers see. He even picks up Alamy’s cell phone and makes one final call to Zack Hood, knowing we’ll see that on the records. One final pointer to the man we need to go after.”

  “So now we’re onto Hood,” MacLean said. “We go after him, and he goes ape-shit and gets himself killed. But even if he’d come in quietly, we would have made everything stick on him. It all fit too well.”

  “Meanwhile,” Wolf said, “Sheffield would have already relayed the land to the highest bidder, quickly ducking back into the shadows, away from any suspicion. The odds of us digging that deep into that land deal would have been low.”

  “Nil,” MacLean said.

  White shook his head, looking like he’d just woken up from a daydream. “This is too … sensational. Unbelievable.”

  “Try on two other words for size,” MacLean said. “High profile.”

  White pretended not to hear. Or maybe visions of press conferences, interviews, and news reports—attention and votes—were taking up too much cognition.

  “We need to proceed very cautiously with this one,” the DA finally said.

  Wolf shut the folder and held it out. “I don’t know how to tie a bow.”

  White grabbed the folder with both hands. He turned and left the room without another word.

  MacLean stared at the swinging door. “Damn. That’s a lot of publicity in that folder he just left with. Ready for four more years with that asshole?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither.”

  Chapter 36

  Wolf walked into the Old Bank Building and smiled at the woman sitting behind the desk. “Hello … Cheryl, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Mr. Wolf. Good to see you again. Dr. Hawkwood is in back waiting for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wolf turned the corner and walked down the hallway, this time not bothering to look inside Sarah’s old office on the way past.