David Wolf 01 - Foreign Deceit

by Jeff Carson

  The Mayor’s face fell. “Again? Haven’t you guys already gotten what you need from my son? There’s no sense upsetting him any more. Look, he made a mistake not telling you guys about it right away, but he was just protecting that girl, Julie.” He looked at Rachette, then back to Wolf. “But they came in. They did the right thing. Come on, guys. Seriously. Let’s let these kids grieve.”

  Wolf stared a beat at the Mayor. “Greg. You know I wouldn’t be doing this without a good reason. I need to ask your son one question. Just one. Then we’ll be on our way. I promise.”

  The Mayor stared at Wolf for a long time. He was probably wondering what could have possibly been so important, at the final hour before the sheriff appointment, which was set to happen the next morning. He was probably thinking there was no way Wolf would harass his son with so much on the line. After all, the Mayor’s vote would be counted tomorrow, too.

  Mayor Wakefield sighed and waved his hand. “Come in. I’ll get him.”

  They followed the mayor into the vaulted entrance of his house.

  “Just a second,” Mayor Wakefield said, and he disappeared around the corner.

  Rachette whistled softly. “Wow.”

  Ahead of them was a tall room filled with leather couches and wood furniture. Windows dominated the far wall, framing the valley below and a perfect view of the ski resort in the far distance. It was a million dollar view, and with the house, probably cost five times as much.

  “Chris!” The Mayor belted from somewhere inside the house. “Chris!”

  “What?” A distant reply sounded deep in the house.

  After a minute of silence, they both came around the corner.

  Chris Wakefield was dressed in sweat pants and a t-shirt, and looked like he had not showered all weekend, which probably was normal for a sixteen-year-old. But he looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot, with half-moons under his eyes so dark, it looked like he’d been punched a couple times.

  Wolf stepped forward. “Chris. How are you. I’m Sergeant Wolf, this is Officer Rachette.”

  Chris nodded and pulled his shirt down, like he needed something to do with his hands. “Yeah, I know you guys.”

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Wolf said.

  “You said one question,” the Mayor warned. Then he rolled his eyes and led everyone into the great room. He pointed at them to sit on the thick couches, and sat down next to his son and leaned forward with an expectant look.

  “Chris,” Wolf said, “I need to know why you are covering for Julie Mulroy.”

  Chris’s chest heaved as he sucked in a breath. Wolf watched as panic flashed and disappeared within an instant on the boy’s face.

  He glared at Wolf. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Chris!” The Mayor pointed at his son. “You’re talking to a police officer right now.”

  There was a tense moment of silence as father and son stared icily at one another.

  “Show some respect, please,” the Mayor said.

  Chris stared at his hands and picked at a fingernail.

  “Where’s Julie now?” Wolf asked.

  “Home.” Chris shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Chris,” Wolf continued. “I know Julie Mulroy killed Jerry Wheatman.”

  Chris kept his eyes on his busy hands.

  The Mayor shook his head and sat straight. “What?”

  Wolf kept his eyes on Chris, who sat unmoving, still fiddling with his fingers.

  “You said that you were called by Julie that morning, that morning Jerry died, and you went to help her down the mountain.” Wolf’s voice was quiet. “You said she was catatonic. You even said that she was vomiting on top of the mountain. She was frozen, and that you had to help her down.”

  Chris looked up at Wolf. “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  Wolf stared at him for a few quiet seconds. “If Julie killed Jerry Wheatman, and you are helping her cover it up, you know that makes you an accessory to murder, right? You’ve probably seen enough cop shows to know that, right, Chris?”

  The Mayor put up a hand between them. “Okay, Wolf. My son says he did what he did, and that’s that. Do I need to call my lawyer and –“

  The Mayor went quiet when he saw Wolf holding up a slip of paper.

  Wolf thumbed the receipt he’d gotten from the Sunnyside Café and made a show of studying it.

  “Okay, what’s that?” the Mayor said.

  “This is a credit card statement from the Sunny Side Café, signed by you, Chris, on the morning of last Friday. The morning that Jerry Wheatman was found forensically to have died.”

  Chris clamped his eyes together and shook his head. “So?”

  The Mayor stared expectantly at Wolf.

  “It’s an itemized receipt, showing you paid for a ham and egg omelette, some toast, and orange juice. I also checked who you were eating with. They said you ate alone that morning.” Wolf paused for effect. “When we went up to the top of the cliff where Jerry fell off of we found some vomit. It contained, ham, eggs, orange juice, and toast.”

  Wolf watched Chris’s chest heave up and down again. His blood pressure was clearly skyrocketing.

  “That was Julie’s vomit,” Chris said, still staring at his hands.

  Wolf didn’t blink. “That’s what you told us when you and Julie came to the police station, yes. But I checked, and Julie and Jerry didn’t eat there that morning. They ate somewhere else.”

  Wolf cleared his throat. “Did you know that Julie Mulroy has recently become a vegetarian? Her mom told us the Wheatmans converted her. Did you know that Julie had breakfast at the Wheatmans’ that morning?”

  Wolf kept his eyes on Chris and watched the question sink in. The leather of the couch squeaked as Rachette squirmed next to Wolf. He would know that Wolf had made that last part up. Wolf had no clue where Jerry and Julie had had breakfast the morning of Wheatman’s death, nor what they’d had. But Wolf had remembered that the Wheatmans were vegetarian. Always had been ever since Wolf could remember. It was just an educated guess that if the two were together, and if there was any truth in Vicky Mulroy’s statement of her daughter’s conversion, then they wouldn’t have had ham and eggs. Wolf figured he was betting a strong hand.

  Wolf relaxed, knowing his gamble had won, when he watched a tear fall down Chris’s cheek.

  Chris made no attempt to hide his tears. “No, I didn’t know she was a vegetarian,” he whispered.

  The Mayor smothered his face in his hands and then looked at his son. “Did you two kill Jerry Wheatman, son?”

  Chris looked wide-eyed at his father, “No, dad. I swear. I didn’t do anything. I just …”

  “You just what? Tell us!” The Mayor’s face was flushed red.

  Chris’s tears flowed freely now, but he stayed silent.

  “You went up there because she asked you to,” Wolf said, “and when you got there, you freaked out. Right? You were the one who vomited, not her. Because you couldn’t believe what you were looking at, and you had just found out that Julie pushed him.”

  Chris wiped his nose and glared out the window with wet eyes. After a few seconds he started speaking as if he were watching the events unfold in front of him. “I didn’t know she pushed him, I swear. I got the call from her right after I was at the Sunnyside. She said that Jerry had fallen. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I told her to call the police, didn’t know why the hell she was calling me. Then she freaked out and said she couldn’t do that. She said you guys would think it was her who did it. She asked if I would come up and help her down. She said she was totally freaked –“

  “I still don’t see why you did that, Chris. That was so irresponsible. A boy had died.”

  Chris broke down crying. “I told her to tell the police!”

  Wolf held his hand up to the Mayor and leaned forward. “Just tell us what really happened, Chris. The truth is the only way out of this thing now.”

  Chris nodded
his head and sniffed, looking like he’d summoned the courage to tell the truth. “Like I said, she called me, so I went up. I hiked up as fast as I could. When I got up there, she was hysterical. She was blabbering about how Jerry was messing around near the edge of the cliff, and just fell off.” He shook his head and stared at Wolf, “That’s when I looked over the edge and … then I puked.”

  Wolf nodded to keep him going.

  “That was the story she told me. I believed her, and I told her everyone would totally believe her, and we needed to talk to the police. But then she started talking about how we needed to hike all the way down and hide his body. Then I was kind of like, what the hell? You know? Like, why was she wanting to hide the body if it was an accident?”

  “Did you ask her that?” Rachette asked.

  Chris hung his head. “No. I just tried to calm her down and told her we needed to leave. I was going to bring her to the police station. I figured she was just hysterical or something, like she didn’t know what she was saying and she would snap out of it sooner or later. But she kind of like, went crazy. She was begging me, and begging me,” his voice lowered to a whisper. “And kissing me, and begging me not to go to the police.”

  Wolf took a deep breath and put his elbows on his knees. “You like Julie Mulroy, right? You’ve always kind of had a crush on her?”

  Chris huffed. “Yeah. I guess. But I still was like, no, we have to go to the police. So we hiked down, and I said I would take her to the police station, but she wanted to drive her car, so I said I would follow her there. But she drove straight here, to this house.” Chris shook his head. “So I just followed her, and then … I just wanted to keep her happy until we went to the police, until she got the guts to tell you guys.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave her and come to us?” Wolf asked.

  Chris looked down with a blush. “She was being … nice.” He looked at Wolf and flicked a glance at his father. “She and I … ”

  Wolf and the Mayor gave each other knowing looks.

  “She kept you occupied? As in, sexually?” Wolf offered.

  Chris nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So then what?” Wolf asked.

  “My dad came home and said it was okay for her to stay here for the weekend. I lied and said she was having trouble at home. Everyone knows about her parents.”

  Mayor Wakefield shook his head in disgust.

  “All weekend I was telling her we needed to go to the police, and it was like, getting worse with every day. Told her the more she didn’t go, the more it looked like she pushed him off. Like she was hiding something. Finally, on Monday we heard about the search going on, and I told her I was going to the police whether she liked it or not. So she finally agreed to come with.”

  Wolf frowned. “Okay then what? Why did you lie to the police about the vomit?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I was trying to like, make her look more … vulnerable or something. Like I was trying to help out her story. I just wanted the police to believe her, and let her get on with her life.” Chris took a deep breath and his lip started quivering. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. But I think I really screwed up doing that, though.”

  Wolf nodded. “Yes. You—“

  “No, you don’t understand.” Chris’s eyes were wild. “I know she did it. She told me.”

  Wolf blinked. “When?”

  Chris stared at the coffee table in front of him. “Right after we talked to the police. I followed her home. I was hugging her goodbye in front of her house, and she called me ‘her hero’. She whispered it in my ear, then said, ‘you were great in there. You made it all sound so believable’. I was like, what? And she just like, smiled at me, and walked off. So I grabbed her and asked her, made her tell me. She said, ‘Yeah, I pushed him. And now he’s gone.’ She had this, like, really evil look in her eyes.”

  Wolf took a deep breath and peered out the window. The pines were swaying back and forth now, and the clouds were rolling in.

  “I swear. I didn’t know she did it until after I talked to you guys.”

  Wolf looked back at him with disappointment. “And then you didn’t come back to the police station to correct yourself, or to let us know what she said.”

  Chris sat back and stared again at his hands.

  “Chris. We’ll need you to come down to the station and do that right now. We need a corrected official statement from you as soon as possible.”

  The Mayor turned to Wolf and nodded. “I’ll bring him in, is that okay?”

  Wolf nodded. “Yes. That’s okay.”

  Chapter 51

  Rachette shook his head as he drove them back into town. “You had no clue about what Jerry and Julie ate that morning.”

  Wolf shrugged. “I knew that was Chris’s vomit. No doubt after I went and checked in the Sunnyside. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed you didn’t put that together while I was gone.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Rachette drove in silence for a minute. “Risky.”

  Wolf stared out the window at the approaching storm.

  “So, how we going to get Julie to confess?” Rachette asked.

  “She’s not going to confess. I have a feeling that family is poisoned. No consciences. She probably already convinced herself she didn’t do it. We’ll try, but in the end, it’s not going to be up to us now. It’s he-said-she-said, and it’ll be figured out in court.”

  Wolf closed his eyes and leaned back to dismiss further conversation. Wolf was dead tired, dead tired of shitty people doing shitty things, and dead tired of thinking about it. Rachette sensed his mood, and kept silent for the rest of the drive back to the station.

  Wolf stepped out of the SUV into the RPPD dirt lot and swiveled on his heels. He looked at the peaks and sucked in the scent of pine. It was good to be home.

  The air shook with a continuous rumble, and Wolf could feel the hair on his arms rising as the sky darkened above.

  Rachette pulled Wolf’s backpack out of the SUV and set it at Wolf’s feet. “It’s been raining every day since you left. That looks like a mean one though.”

  Wolf nodded and slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Thanks for the ride again.”

  “What? Aren’t you going to stick around for Wakefield’s statement? And what about Julie Mulroy?”

  “You guys can handle it. I have a lot of sleep to catch up on. Kind of a big day tomorrow.” Wolf started walking to the open station garage where he’d left his SUV.

  “Hey, Sarge?” Rachette hadn’t moved from the side of the truck.

  Wolf stopped and turned. “Yeah.”

  Rachette looked over both shoulders and toward the garage, then stepped close. “You going to stick around if you don’t get the sheriff’s appointment?”

  Wolf gave a half smile as the air around them lit up with a bright flash. Thunder crashed almost immediately, and a large dollop of rain smacked the bill of Wolf’s hat, but they both stood unmoved.

  There was a funeral for his brother to be arranged, his mother to comfort, and, yes, either he or Sergeant Derek Connell was going to be appointed to sheriff within the next twenty four hours—a moment Wolf couldn’t stop thinking about, especially hanging around this second-year.

  Rachette stared unblinking, shifting his weight side to side. It looked like he knew something. Something troubling.

  Wolf turned and walked to the garage as the sky opened in a downpour. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  THE END.

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  Continue reading for an excerpt of The Silversmith (David Wolf Book #2)…

  Chapter 1

  Monday — 9:08 am

  Wolf sat motionless in the stiff wooden chair as a trickle of sweat rolled from his armpit, down his torso, and against his tucked uniform shirt. The council meeting was progressing at a no-nonsense pace, and what started out for Wolf as a case of sweaty palms had quickly escalated to an all out body drenching.

  The smell of glazed doughnuts and burnt coffee filled the air, and a bright beam of sunlight shone through the distorted window, illuminating a swimming cloud of dust particles.