House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  DeMarco was tired from driving all day and from listening to Sarah nag at him. He was thinking he should go to a laundromat because he was wearing his last pair of clean underwear, but who wanted to spend the evening in a laundromat? If he could get a flight out tomorrow evening, he’d go see Sarah in the morning and tell her he was sorry but he had to get back to D.C. If she ever found any real evidence—­something more than a guy getting a bargain price on a seed drill—to give him a call and he’d try to convince Mahoney to lean on the FBI. He knew if he made that offer he’d regret it because she’d probably call him twice a day.

  Anyway, that was the plan. See Sarah in the morning, then go see Doug Thorpe and tell him basically the same thing: that if Sarah ever found any actual evidence that Curtis had done something illegal, Mahoney would help. Until then, his granddaughter needed to hire a bodyguard, some strapping Montana lad with a license to carry a weapon. Insofar as the dirty underwear situation, after he had dinner, he’d go back to the motel and wash out the pair of boxers he was wearing in the motel sink. Or better yet, maybe he’d swing by Walmart and just buy a pair.

  He ordered a second martini and took out his phone to look at flight schedules. Using one finger—he’d never been a thumb texter—he started to tap in the Travelocity website when a voice said, “You one of those tweeters?”

  He looked over at the speaker: a blond in her late thirties. She was pretty, a little plump, but not too plump, and with a pleasant amount of cleavage showing.

  “Uh, no, never tweeted in my life. I was just—”

  “So what are you doing here in Bismarck. Are you a roughneck?”

  “A roughneck?”

  “You know, a driller, one of the guys who works on the gas wells. You got the build for it.”

  DeMarco figured that was a compliment. “I’m a lawyer from D.C.” He added that his boss had sent him out here to help an old friend with a problem and before she could ask what the problem was, he asked what she did.

  He found out that she was a math teacher, taught fifth grade, divorced, no kids. Deep into his second martini, he asked, “By the way, what the hell is a seed drill?”

  “A seed drill?”

  “Yeah, I heard the term a couple of days ago and was just curious.”

  “Well, city boy, a seed drill is a farm implement used to plant seeds. I mean, scientifically. These days, farmers don’t plant by poking a hole in the ground with a stick and dropping a seed in. They use these fancy machines called seed drills that have computers and GPS systems and are calibrated so every possible inch of farmable space is planted.”

  “I’ll be damned,” DeMarco said. “You want another drink?”

  And at that moment, his phone rang. It was Sarah. She was like a demon who had escaped from hell and couldn’t be forced back down to the underworld where she belonged. “Just a sec,” he said to the teacher. “Yeah, Sarah, what is it?”

  “I think I found something. Come over to my place.”

  “Sarah, you need to get a life. We just spent the last three days together and, no offense, but I need a break from you. I’ll stop by and see you first thing in the morning.” Then he disconnected the call before she could argue with him. Then he turned the phone off—the only way to escape a modern demon.

  “Who’s this Sarah person you spent the last three days with?” the teacher asked.

  Heckler could see DeMarco there at the bar chatting up some blonde. It didn’t look like he was planning to leave any time soon—which wasn’t good as far as Heckler was concerned. He was tired and needed to get some sleep. He walked up to the bar and made a motion for the bartender to come talk to him. Heckler and the bartender had gone to high school together and the bartender knew what Heckler did. He asked the bartender who the blonde was, and the bartender told him. He said the woman was practically a fixture at the American Grill.

  An hour later, DeMarco and the blonde left together. DeMarco followed the blonde to her place and Heckler followed DeMarco. When DeMarco was still inside the blonde’s house an hour later, Heckler called it a night, thinking he was getting way too old for this shit.

  On the other side of Bismarck, Murdock sat in a car. He could see the lights were on in both sides of the duplex, meaning Sarah Johnson’s landlady was home and awake. He’d wait until they both went to bed.

  12

  DeMarco woke up feeling groggy, disoriented, and hungover. It took him a minute to figure out where he was: the teacher’s bedroom. He turned his head. All he could see was the top of her head, a mass of blond curls, and one bare, freckled shoulder.

  He eased out of bed trying not to wake her and got dressed. This was the one part of a one-night stand he hated: trying to figure out what to do in the morning before he left. He’d made it clear to the teacher—her name was Amelia—that he’d be leaving to go back to D.C. today. So he hadn’t lied to her and he hadn’t pretended that he’d be coming back to Bismarck for a second date. But still, it gave him that greasy lounge lizard feeling to sneak out of her house without even saying good-bye.

  He went into her bathroom and used her toothpaste and his finger to brush his teeth. Then he hunted around the kitchen until he found paper and a pen. He scratched out a note saying he’d enjoyed last night and if he ever passed through Bismarck again, he’d give her a call. He had no intention of ever passing through Bismarck again.

  He glanced at his watch as he started the car. Seven a.m. Knowing Sarah, she’d probably been up since dawn, ranting on her blog, but it still seemed a bit early to be knocking on her door. He stopped for coffee and an Egg McMuffin at the first McDonald’s he saw, then proceeded on to his motel where he packed his clothes. He tossed his suitcase full of smelly clothes into the trunk of his rental car—he’d put a lot of miles on that car—and headed toward Sarah’s place. She’d told him last night that she’d found something, but he’d interrupted her before she had a chance to say exactly what she’d found. Maybe she’d identified whoever was helping Curtis corrupt local politicians, but knowing the way Sarah tended to draw conclusions not necessarily supported by facts, he wasn’t hopeful.

  Marjorie had been in the office for more than an hour when Heckler called.

  “DeMarco spent the night with a woman name Amelia Moore. He picked her up at the American Grill. Moore’s a teacher . . .”

  “I know who she is,” Marjorie said. Moore was Bobby’s math teacher, the same gal that Bill had been screwing. Jesus! What a slut!

  “DeMarco went back to his motel about seven thirty this morning. Ten minutes later, he came out and tossed a suitcase into the trunk of his rental car. It’s looks like he may be leaving town.”

  “Well, follow him to be sure,” Marjorie said. It would be a relief to have DeMarco gone, although she still wished she knew what he’d been doing with Sarah Johnson after he left Minot the other day.

  It was after eight by the time DeMarco arrived at the duplex where Sarah lived. He knocked, but no one answered. Then he noticed the door, the area where the lock goes into the frame. The wood had been splintered like someone had taken a crowbar or a big screwdriver and ripped open the door.

  He thought to himself Oh, shit, and pushed on the door with the tip of one finger and it swung open without a sound. “Sarah?” he called out. There was no answer. “Sarah?” The silence was ominous and he had this awful feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He took a step into the apartment and there she was, on the floor, on her back, wearing boxer shorts and an extra-large T-shirt; probably the clothes she slept in. Her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn’t moving. He noticed her long legs were white as milk as the girl never took time to just sit in the sun. DeMarco took two more steps and he could see that her T-shirt, which was a burgundy color, was soaked with another color that was almost burgundy. He knew it was a waste of time, but he went down on one knee and felt for a pulse in her
throat. There was no pulse.

  Sarah Johnson was dead.

  DeMarco walked outside and dropped down onto the porch steps. He felt completely numb. He sat there for a minute, unable to think, his mind like a whiteout in a blizzard, then reached for his phone and called 911. Five minutes later a squad car arrived, lights flashing, no siren. Two cops, one male, one female, both young, walked up the sidewalk toward him, hands on their holstered sidearms. “Are you the one who called 911?” the female cop asked.

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said.

  “Sir, we need you to stand up and keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Heckler called again while Marjorie was on the phone with one of Curtis’s lawyers, and she let the call go to voice mail. She checked the voice mail five minutes later and heard Heckler say, “You need to call me. The cops just arrived at Johnson’s house.”

  She called Heckler and said, “What’s happening? And why are you at Johnson’s house? You’re supposed to be following DeMarco.”

  “I was following him. He went to Johnson’s place and then he went inside and five minutes later a squad car shows up. Now there’re two more squad cars here and a couple of guys I think are detectives. Shit. The medical examiner just pulled up.”

  “Hang on a second,” Marjorie said. “I gotta think.”

  She knew what had happened: Murdock had killed Johnson and DeMarco had discovered the body. Should she tell Heckler to split or not? The last thing she needed was a cop spotting Heckler hanging around the crime scene. On the other hand, she wanted to know what DeMarco was going to do next.

  “You stick with DeMarco,” she told Heckler. Then she lied. “I don’t know what the cops are doing at Johnson’s house, but you make sure they don’t see you. I don’t want them questioning you. But stick with DeMarco and keep me posted.”

  Two hours after discovering Sarah’s body, DeMarco left the police station. He told a detective how he knew Sarah and why he’d come to her house that morning. He told him about Sarah’s crusade against Leonard Curtis and how she thought Curtis was bribing judges and politicians. He said the police should read Sarah’s blog, that everything she’d learned or suspected had been dumped into it. He also said that Sarah had contacted various law enforcement agencies regarding Curtis, and the people she’d contacted were listed in her blog.

  The detective—a heavyset guy with kind eyes—told DeMarco that he’d investigate those things, but it looked to him like Sarah had woken up and interrupted a burglary in progress, and that’s why she was killed. “All the small electronics were missing from Ms. Johnson’s apartment. We couldn’t find a laptop or cell phone. All the drawers in her bedroom had been opened and pawed through. If she had any expensive jewelry, it’s gone, and there was no cash in her purse.” The detective paused and added, almost apologetically, “Like lots of places around the country, we have a meth problem here in Bismarck. And thanks to all the gas and oil workers, there’s a lot of cash floating around which tends to attract a bunch of bad actors.”

  “I don’t think this was a robbery,” DeMarco said.

  “You think this guy, Curtis, had her killed?”

  “I don’t know, but the timing bothers me and it should bother you, too. She’d received two death threats and was assaulted once because she was writing about Curtis. And she’d just spent three days running around Montana and the Dakotas trying to find evidence she could use against him.” DeMarco realized as he was speaking that he sounded like Sarah: No hard evidence, just conjecture based on coincidence.

  “Did the person who lives next door to her hear the gunshots?” DeMarco asked.

  “No. She didn’t hear the door being ripped open, either. But the next door neighbor is seventy-six years old. She doesn’t wear a hearing aid but she needs one.”

  “Or it could mean the killer used a silencer,” DeMarco said.

  The detective made an expression that DeMarco interpreted as: Not likely—and please leave the detecting to us.

  The detective asked DeMarco if he knew who Sarah’s next of kin was and DeMarco said, “Yeah. A man named Doug Thorpe who lives near Miles City, Montana. He’s her grandfather. I have his address and phone number. Do you want me to notify him about Sarah’s death?”

  “No. You’re a suspect and . . .”

  When DeMarco opened his mouth to protest, the detective said, “I mean technically, since you found the body and admitted to spending the last several days with her. But do I really think you killed her? No, I don’t. I’m just saying it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to notify her next of kin. I’ll call the right sheriff in Montana and have him go talk to Mr. Thorpe.”

  DeMarco was relieved that he didn’t have to break the news to Thorpe—and felt like a coward because he was relieved. He could imagine what Thorpe’s reaction was going to be; he remembered how Thorpe had said that Sarah was the only family he had left and how he “loved her to death.” He could also imagine that Thorpe might blame him for what happened to his granddaughter—and Thorpe might be right to blame him. It was possible that someone had found out that a guy from D.C. who might have some political clout was working with Sarah, and that may have been the catalyst for her being killed. He also wondered if he’d gone to see her last night as she’d asked, if he could have prevented her death.

  He remembered telling Sarah how life was short and how she ought to spend some time enjoying it; he’d just never imagined how short her life would turn out to be. He could see her the first night he met her, her unlined face, her eyes blazing as she spoke about her obsession with Curtis. He remembered the way she laughed at the YouTube video. She’d been so terribly young and naïve and earnest—and good.

  DeMarco had heard the word heartsick before but had never been sure what the word really meant. Now he knew: he was heartsick.

  13

  DeMarco called Mavis—he didn’t even bother to try calling Mahoney directly—and told Mahoney’s secretary to tell Mahoney to call him right away. “Tell him Sarah Johnson was murdered.”

  Ten minutes later Mahoney called him back. “What the fuck happened?” Mahoney screamed. Then, being Mahoney, he had to add, “What the fuck did you do?”

  DeMarco didn’t answer Mahoney’s question. He just told him that whoever killed Sarah had tried to make the crime look like a robbery, but he doubted it was.

  “But I don’t know for sure that Curtis was responsible,” DeMarco said.

  He also didn’t tell Mahoney that Sarah had discovered something last night and wanted to talk to him about it, but that he’d been too preoccupied with getting laid to go see her. DeMarco didn’t believe—maybe because he didn’t want to believe—that whatever Sarah had uncovered had anything to do with her death. In two years of investigating she’d never found any hard evidence, so why would last night have been any different? And how would anyone have known what she’d found last night? But since the killer had taken her laptop and her cell phone and the police had locked up her house because it was a crime scene, DeMarco doubted there was any way to find out what she’d been working on the night she died.

  So he didn’t believe—and again maybe because he didn’t want to believe—that Sarah had found something last night that was the cause of her death. What he suspected was that Curtis had simply taken the next logical step: Since Sarah couldn’t be bought off, discouraged by lawsuits, or scared away by death threats and assaults, he decided to have her killed.

  “So what are you going to do?” Mahoney asked.

  “First, I’m going to go see Doug Thorpe and tell him how sorry I am.”

  “Ah, God, Doug,” Mahoney said. “Does he know his granddaughter’s dead?”

  “By now, he probably does. The cops wouldn’t let me tell him. They said they’d have the sheriffs where he lived notify him. I could call him and talk to him on the phone, but that doesn’t seem right. I need to talk to him face-to-fa
ce, to explain what happened and to tell him how badly I feel, so I’m going to drive to Montana to see him.”

  “Yeah, okay. Call me after you’ve talked to him and I’ll call him, too.” Mahoney sighed. “I imagine that will be the last time in my life I talk to him. Jesus. He calls me to help his granddaughter and the next thing you know she’s dead, and he’ll probably think it was your fault, which means he’ll think it was my fault.”

  DeMarco couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. The worst part was that he knew it could indeed be his fault that she was killed.

  “What are you going to do after you see Doug?” Mahoney asked.

  DeMarco had been thinking about that question since the moment he saw Sarah’s body. His first reaction to her death had been shock followed by an overwhelming sense of sadness and a good deal of guilt—but now the main thing he was feeling was anger.

  “I don’t know,” he said to Mahoney, “but I do know that I’m not leaving this place until somebody pays for killing her. And I can tell you right now that the local cops aren’t going to be much help. So one thing you can do is lean on somebody at the Bureau, and get an FBI agent to meet with me.”

  It occurred to DeMarco, after he talked to Mahoney, that it could be a mistake to drive five hours to Miles City to talk to Doug Thorpe only to discover that Thorpe wasn’t home and on his way to Bismarck to talk to the cops and to make arrangements for shipping Sarah’s body back to Montana. He went back to the police station and asked the detective if anybody had talked to Thorpe yet. The detective was nice enough to call somebody and a moment later told DeMarco that yes, Thorpe had been notified.