Trapline

by Mark Stevens

  Bloom took a swig of a flat energy drink, tried to picture the scene.

  “All this comes out later in the lawsuit,” said Coogan. “One thing led to another. A prominent leftie lawyer from Hotchkiss moves in on the case, to make a statement. Filed a civil suit and one year later almost to the day, Armbruster writes a check for $28,000. Not an enormous sum but it was more than Armbruster had on hand. By now, he’s divorced.”

  “Sounds like a peach,” said Hayes.

  “It gets worse,” said Coogan. “The reporter covering the trial was thoughtful enough to throw in some detail about Armbruster. Ironically enough, he had applied with the U.S. Border Patrol and hadn’t made the cut. He had also formerly enlisted in the U.S. Army but had been given a bad-conduct discharge, no stated reason given in the article but maybe that’ll be in the court record, the transcript.”

  “I remember that trial now,” said Hayes. “Before you and Duncan both got here.”

  “Wait,” said Trudy. “Allison said the kids she met that day at Lumberjack were all roughly the same age—twelve or thirteen.”

  “IRB,” said Bloom. “Let’s run Larry Armbruster through IRB.”

  “Got him,” said London.

  Bloom circled London’s desk while he combed the data.

  “Two kids,” said London, ten minutes later. “Woodrow, twenty six and Hank, twelve.”

  “We need his deposition from the trial,” said Bloom.

  “Courthouse opens in about eight hours,” said London.

  “Unless we can find it online,” said Bloom. “Try Smoking Gun and try Gawker. Both sites love that kind of detail.”

  “I’m on it,” said Hayes.

  “Got a picture of Woodrow Armbruster,” said Trudy. “This from El Paso, Texas. Two years ago.”

  The shot showed a solid young man holding an over-sized trophy. Safety glasses propped on his forehead. The trophy consisted of three, one-quarter scale rifles leaned together, tips of the barrels touching.

  Woodrow Armbruster held the trophy with one arm, clutched like a bouquet of flowers. The other balanced a long rifle, butt on the ground and the barrel almost to his waist.

  sixty-three:

  saturday, pre-dawn

  Stone cold awake. There wasn’t a tired thought in her brain. Her body felt alert, ready.

  Colin slept peacefully. It was 3:00 a.m. She didn’t need a clock.

  They had agreed to wake at 3:30 a.m., be on horses and on the way a half-hour after that.

  What was the point in grabbing a wink now, even if it came?

  Allison rested on her back. She replayed the first day at Lumberjack with Sulchuk and Armbruster, tried to slow the scene down step by step in her mind.

  Inflections. Gestures. Indications. Anything.

  She replayed the scene at Burning Camp.

  Inflections. Gestures. Indications. Anything.

  Tried to picture what happened before she arrived. Long before. Armbruster seeing the opportunity, planning it out. Had Sulchuk suspected anything when the body had been discovered? Did he sense anything? Wonder?

  Allison’s mind ran in disorganized snapshots.

  She remembered the delicate, faint tracks she’d found. Had Armbruster wheeled a body over on a sled? He would have had to work all night before the rest of them arrived.

  She remembered looking for drag marks—no wonder there were none. Had Armbruster wanted to create some fake drag marks—and ran out of time?

  How could he be that certain she’d follow through? The proof was in this moment, wasn’t it? And in every question she’d asked since last Sunday afternoon.

  Would Armbruster show at Lumberjack? Had Sulchuk done what she’d hoped—pick up the phone?

  The questions came. No answers followed.

  sixty-four:

  saturday, early morning

  “That’s a McMillan,” said London. “Tactical weapon. Perfect for long-range shooting.”

  “I think I saw a YouTube link, too,” said Trudy. She clicked back. London had some smugness to him, but she was impressed by his array of knowledge, dusted with a fine coating of bullshit.

  On the video, Woodrow Armbruster pumped a shot with a loud pop, stayed focused on the target and prepared for his next.

  A caption popped up: Winning Shot at Six Hundred Yards. The screen split in two and the right half revealed the target as a neat hole ripped a hair’s width from the bull’s-eye.

  “The recoil reducer on those has a gas piston inside that cushions the blow,” said London. “Like a shock absorber for the shoulder. It’s sophisticated.”

  “But we don’t know if he’s moved up here from Texas?” said Trudy.

  “Maybe that’s who the police are looking for,” said London. “If there’s an alert out, maybe he’s it.”

  The man on the screen looked sad and lonely. “He’s a bit odd looking,” said Trudy. “Shouldn’t he be smiling, at least a little?”

  “You’d think,” said London.

  There was a general similarity to the structure of the police sketch but the lighting wasn’t good in the photo or the video. And no face tattoo, though Trudy knew that could have been added in the interim.

  “He could have arrived up here two months ago, six months ago or two weeks ago,” said Bloom. “Who wants to take Woodrow Armbruster, add it to the list?”

  “I’ve got it,” said London, back at his computer.

  Trudy said she had a stray thought about William Sulchuk and started poking around.

  “Gawker’s got the deposition,” said Hayes, breaking the silence. “Forty five-page deposition with Armbruster. He’s got two kids but never married. He grew up in El Paso but moved here seven years ago. At the time of the trial, Woodrow lived in El Paso but he brought his other son Hank with him here. Both exes live in Texas.”

  “In his case,” said London. “That’s all his exes. He was inspired by George Strait, no doubt.”

  “So Hank was the one at Lumberjack that day,” said Trudy. “Fits better.”

  “And not too much more about his life after that,” said Hayes. “Although there’s a long grilling about his views on immigration. He doesn’t see much gray area, that’s for sure.”

  “Print out the whole thing,” said Bloom. “I want to read it. Nothing turning up on Luis Tovar? Nothing at all?”

  “Not here,” said Trudy. “But I’ve got a problem with Sulchuk.”

  “Shoot,” said Bloom.

  London stifled a yawn, snapped open a can of soda. Hayes stood to stretch, came to Trudy’s computer. Despite hours of work, Trudy still looked steady and comfortable.

  “I thought I’d check on Sulchuk’s kids,” said Trudy. “I checked Sopris Elementary School but of course the school doesn’t publicly list student names. But when I put the last name Sulchuk and Sopris Elementary in Google, nothing. Tried the same thing as an image search and up pops an image and that image is connected to a school newsletter in a PDF. An article in the newsletter shows the star of the school play as Gail, with her mother Page Wright and her father, William Sulchuk. Gail’s last name is Wright. And that’s the name Allison gave me—Gail.”

  “So the daughter kept the mother’s maiden name or maybe it’s a second marriage to Sulchuk,” said London. “Married the mom, got the daughter, and she keeps her original surname.”

  “Or maybe try William Wright on the search engines in connection with all this,” said Bloom. “Maybe Sulchuk borrowed his wife’s surname for a legal paper. Or two. What the hell are we missing?”

  “That unlocked it,” said London. “B-i-n-g-o. William Wright and Luis Tovar both come up together and they go straight to a holding company in Nevada. G.A.O.L. Inc.”

  “More initials,” said Trudy. “Great.”

  “That’s not an acronym,” said Hayes. She smiled, wondering
if anyone else would get it. Even London was shaking his head.

  “It’s the British word,” added Hayes. “Originally interpreted as little cage. Pronounced like ours. Jail.”

  sixty-five:

  saturday, early morning

  Bloom’s sheets of paper filled up. Wright, the correct surname, unraveled the tightened threads.

  William Wright was up to his neck in G.A.O.L. and, by association, Pipeline Enterprises.

  G.A.O.L. was an office address in Nevada, a holding company on paper.

  Sulchuk had a lot at stake and Professor Luis Tovar appeared to be Sulchuk’s silent partner.

  Kerry London dug up a thorough history on the Tovar clan—a generations-old, all-American family that started in the sugar beet fields near Greeley and moved to the mines near Cripple Creek and then to the underground coal mines near Paonia. The Tovar family was expansive. Luis Tovar was the grandnephew of the patriarch and, in London’s words, “there are more Tovars than drilling rigs on the Western Slope of Colorado.”

  At dawn, Trudy made a run for coffee, rolls, juices, fruit. The digging continued for another hour. A fresh injection of sugar and caffeine did the trick. The sheets of information grew dense. A diagram started to take shape.

  “Tovar and Sulchuk look like they’re above the fray,” said London. “They’re corporate, not operations. Sulchuk might not have known squat about what was happening down on the ground.”

  “So Nichols might be worth pressing,” said Bloom. “He’d know all about the company trying to muscle its way onto his turf.”

  Coogan volunteered to call Nichols.

  “Who’s going to find Allison? Warn her?” Trudy’s look established the priority. She was focused on only one thing, one person. “We’ve got to warn her about Armbruster and Sulchuk—she didn’t think Sulchuk was involved. Allison thinks she’s got Armbruster biting on a hook to come meet her today at Lumberjack. This morning, I mean. Now.”

  “That’s a problem,” said London. “What was her rush?”

  Trudy closed her eyes, looked down. Bloom thought he saw a flash of Trudy as a young girl. Piercing certainty was one of her strengths but it was wrapped in such a gentle spirit that the whole package yearned to be held, celebrated, and enjoyed.

  “She thinks Armbruster might be okay,” said Trudy. “But she has no idea about the older son, I’m sure of that. And if Armbruster is part of the whole racket that snatched Alfredo Loya, he’s got to be more trouble than she thinks.”

  The Flat Tops Wilderness map came up online and then they switched over to the Division of Wildlife version for the more detailed game units, with the camps marked.

  “Got it,” said Bloom. “Practically due north of here and not very far if you’ve got a big enough crow and one’s that trained to follow directions. Based on the topography, though, it looks like it’s in the bottom of a hole.”

  “Maybe a large crow?” said London. “Or how about an ultralight? Devo’s pal Ziggy. Flies out of Glenwood Springs. There’s a chance we get lucky, maybe he’s over here somewhere getting ready to do a run.”

  “Police helicopter?” said Bloom.

  “On our say-so?” said London.

  “A bit safer?” said Bloom.

  “Cops stop massive manhunt for assassin to honor reporter request,” said London. “I’m writing the headline now. I’ve got Ziggy’s number in my contacts. I was going to call him if this thing dragged out another day.”

  London went back to his phone, flipped through his directory.

  Bloom studied the map, wondered what kind of terrain an ultralight needed in order to put down.

  London punched in the numbers. “Is this Ziggy?” he said. Waited. And drifted away, phone to his ear.

  “I’m sure there’s a liability issue in here somewhere,” said Coogan. “But I don’t give a fuck. I got your notes and with Marjorie’s help we can piece this together but you have to come back—like quick.”

  On the map, Bloom figured Lumberjack was eight miles due north, maybe a couple degrees to the east. Driving to Sweetwater and getting up on horses and riding in would take all day. Too long.

  “An ultralight?” said Trudy, concern on her brow. “Not much better than a lawn chair and balloons, is it?”

  “He’s got to be an experienced pilot,” said Bloom. “Knows the terrain—”

  “But still,” said Trudy.

  “Compared to the trouble Allison’s in?” said Bloom. “Might be in?”

  London returned. “Ziggy is on the road between Carbondale and Glenwood Springs right now and was on his way up here for a Devo run. But he’s willing and he knows Lumberjack, thinks we might be able to find a spot.”

  Bloom looked at London to see if this was all a joke. He wasn’t fond of roller coasters or single-engine prop planes, let alone this.

  “I know there’s a rush, but—” This time Trudy came to Bloom, brought her hands up to cover her nose and mouth. She shook her head. “I know, nothing I can say.”

  “You or me?” said Bloom.

  “Oh no,” said London. “I’m the last person Allison Coil would want to see hopping off that flying contraption.”

  sixty-six:

  saturday morning

  The aspen grove, fully leafed, held secrets. A dozen horses could be tied to trees on the far side and be easily obscured.

  “You’d think something would move,” said Colin.

  They’d been glassing it for ten minutes.

  “Maybe they come later,” said Colin.

  “Maybe I’m way off here,” said Allison. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

  The binoculars pulled the view up so close she could only fit half of the grove in her field of vision.

  They lay prone, side by side at the edge of the forest, three hundred feet above the valley floor. The only approach to the camp without being noticed would be by parachute. Merlin and Sunny Boy, fully recovered from his ordeal, though no horse ever forgot, were tied to trees behind them.

  “How long do we give it?” said Colin.

  “If they are up and about, we would have seen something by now,” said Allison. “Maybe we take our chances, go right on down. If we’re still alone, we make a bee line to Button Down and help out Jesse. You know he’s got his hands full.”

  Allison lowered the binoculars.

  “Looks peaceful enough,” said Colin.

  “So we expose ourselves?” said Allison.

  “Unless we wait until dark.”

  “Maybe they’ll be watching the main trail,” said Allison. “Not the back door.”

  “We could leave the horses,” said Colin. “We could split up, lay low. There’s some scrub oak might give us a chance, a bit of protection.”

  “Not leaving the horses,” said Allison.

  Colin lowered his binoculars. “Then we go down, straight up, riding high. See what’s what.”

  It was hard to ignore the powerful feeling that crossing the half-mile of open terrain could amount to target practice for whoever was lying in wait.

  “We could wait them out,” said Allison. “War of attrition. If they’re there, they won’t stay all day. They’re thinking it’s a waste, too. If they aren’t there—”

  She stopped. She didn’t have a then.

  “Yes?” said Colin.

  “Then we are alone again,” said Allison.

  “This could all be over when we’re halfway down.”

  “A rifle shot up here? During archery season?” said Allison.

  Colin rolled on his back, stared up at the dense fir trees overhead.

  “Who exactly is going to come running? All those others we saw this morning?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Allison. “They’ll all come running to see where I got shot and how far I fell from my horse. By the way, wherever it is
that I fall, bury me right there. Dig a hole next to me, push me in, call it good. Don’t drag my body all over the place, okay?”

  “Whatever,” said Colin. “Nobody is stupid enough to fire a rifle up here today.”

  “An arrow then—pfffft. Old school.”

  They were delaying the inevitable—climbing on their horses and walking down to Lumberjack.

  “Then it’s fifty-fifty,” said Colin. “Whoever doesn’t get plunked first has got a chance.”

  “Unless there’s more than we bargained,” said Allison.

  She stood up, led the way back to Sunny Boy, whose ears pointed forward. He’d been listening, knew something was up. His eyes looked relaxed, however. Trust was back.

  They waited at the edge, Merlin and Sunny Boy shoulder to shoulder. Based on his look, Colin could have been preparing for a summer joy ride. Allison worked to mimic the resolute attitude, but feared the bubbles of uncertainty were popping in her eyes, lungs and nerves.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Better?” said Colin.

  “Better,” said Allison.

  Colin and Merlin obediently stepped out into the sunlight. Sunny Boy was a half-step behind.

  sixty-seven:

  saturday morning

  Bloom thought it might be good to know the full name of the last person who would see him alive, but Ziggy was just “Ziggy.”

  He looked like he walked off the set of the Broadway musical Hair, or time-warped in from Altamont. He had long dreads, a full red-brown beard that came to a natural point and a long, thin face with brown, happy eyes. A plain leather necklace held a small metal peace symbol. He smelled of Patchouli and weed.

  “Ever flown in an ultralight?” said Ziggy.

  “Nothing smaller than a 737,” said Bloom.

  Ziggy smiled. “If that’s like being on a bus, this is like being on a motorcycle. Same basic principle, though. It’s all lift. What do you weigh?

  “Roughly one-seventy,” said Bloom.

  “Scare easy?”

  “Not until right now.”