House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  The problem with the idea that Curtis had ordered Murdock to kill Bill, however, was what she’d told Bill: Murdock wouldn’t have missed. Murdock put two bullets in Sarah Johnson in a circle the size of a fifty-cent piece. He certainly wouldn’t have missed Bill from a distance of five feet.

  Which left two possibilities for who had tried to kill Bill: DeMarco and Sarah Johnson’s grandfather. She knew from Heckler that DeMarco had met with Johnson’s grandfather and maybe he’d told the man that Bill was responsible for Johnson’s death. So the grandfather had the most compelling motive of all: revenge. She didn’t know enough about Thorpe’s personality to know if he was the kind of man who would kill, but she was willing to bet that an outdoorsman—a fly-fishing guide—probably owned guns and had been steeped in all the bloodthirsty, eye-for-an-eye attitudes of the old frontier West.

  DeMarco, on the other hand, wouldn’t have taken a shot at Bill for revenge, but what DeMarco might do was try to scare Bill. Which also explained why Bill hadn’t been killed: DeMarco didn’t want Bill dead. DeMarco wanted Bill thinking that Curtis had tried to kill him so Bill would testify against Curtis.

  Hmmm. So which one did it, DeMarco or Grandpa? She had a hard time seeing DeMarco risking a jail sentence for attempted murder. Based on what Peach had told her, DeMarco was a political operator, basically a guy just like Bill—although maybe a harder, tougher version than Bill. It was hard to imagine him being so emotionally invested in Johnson’s death that he’d be willing to risk ten or twenty years in jail.

  Yeah, she liked Grandpa for the shooter.

  She called Bill’s cell phone—she had no other way to reach him—to tell him what she’d concluded, but the son of a bitch didn’t answer his phone. She had to find the damn guy before he did something stupid.

  She also needed to call Heckler. She needed to get Heckler back on DeMarco so she could execute her plan to have Christie seduce ­DeMarco and then accuse him of rape. She was going to nail DeMarco’s slippery hide to the wall.

  27

  Westerberg picked up DeMarco at his motel. As soon as he was in the car, she said, “He’s someplace on the Knife River, about an hour and a half from here.”

  “How’d you find him?”

  “His cell phone.”

  “Didn’t you need a warrant to use his phone to locate him?”

  “Yeah. I told the judge that Logan was out on bail for assault, had disappeared, and that I was afraid that he might have decided to skip. I also told him that someone had tried to kill Logan, and I needed to find him for his own protection. So he gave me the warrant, but it’s a one-time thing and I can’t use it to track Logan indefinitely.”

  DeMarco loved having the FBI working for him, and he was glad to see that Westerberg was becoming more creative when it came to warrants. It also looked as if going back to Minneapolis and getting laid had been good for her. She seemed more relaxed than the last time DeMarco had seen her.

  “What do the cops know about the guy who tried to kill Logan?” DeMarco asked.

  “Nothing, really. He used a .45, so it wasn’t the weapon used to kill Sarah. One of the slugs was in good enough shape that they can match it to the gun if they can find it. But that’s about it. Logan couldn’t describe the shooter and the police haven’t been able to find any witnesses. All the businesses in the strip mall were closed when the shooting occurred, it was raining cats and dogs, and nobody driving by on the street in front of the mall has reported seeing anything. Where were you last night?”

  “Me? I spent the night in my room, watching TV. I didn’t feel like going out.”

  “Where’s the gun you used the night you interrogated Roy Patterson?”

  “I gave it back to the guy who loaned it to me.”

  “Who loaned it to you?”

  “I’m not going to tell you that. And what’s with all the questions?”

  Westerberg’s cynical brown eyes stared at him for a long heartbeat, then she said, “Just curious about what you were up to last night when Logan was almost killed.”

  “Are you serious?” DeMarco said. Before Westerberg could answer, he asked, “Have the Bismarck cops made any headway at all on Sarah’s murder?”

  “No. They’ve reached a dead end.”

  “Well, when we see Logan, I’m going to ask him again what he was doing in Denver. I almost asked him when we were playing golf.”

  “You played golf with him?”

  “Yeah. The day before yesterday, the day you headed back to Minnesota. I didn’t have anything better to do so I went to a course to play a round, just to think about what to do next, and I saw him there on the driving range. I wasn’t following him or anything like that. It was just a coincidence. Anyway, I asked if he wanted to play and he said yes. The guy was completely relaxed, like he didn’t have a worry in the world. But we didn’t talk about Sarah’s murder or anything related to Curtis—he said he wouldn’t play if I started questioning him—so we just played a round.”

  “Who won?”

  “We tied.”

  “Huh. What’s your handicap, DeMarco?”

  “Do you play?”

  “Yeah. I played on the women’s team at Northwestern and I’ll bet I can kick your ass. So what’s your handicap?”

  “That’s his SUV,” Westerberg said, pointing at a dark blue Tahoe sitting in the driveway next to a cabin that looked as if it might have been there when Custer passed through the Dakotas. Except for the satellite dish on the roof, that is.

  “Who does the cabin belong to?” DeMarco asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s find out,” Westerberg said.

  Westerberg got the address off the mailbox, called somebody, and fifteen minutes later somebody called her back. “It belongs to a Mrs. Rachel Collins,” Westerberg told DeMarco. “She lives in Bismarck. She’s married to a man named Harvey Collins, who’s a dentist, and has a six-year-old son named Aaron. There’s nothing in any database, however, to show how Collins is connected to Logan.”

  “Let’s go talk to Bill,” DeMarco said.

  As they approached the door, Westerberg said, “Stand off to the side of the door when I knock. The guy’s probably scared and he could have a deer rifle in there.”

  “After you, Agent,” DeMarco said.

  Westerberg knocked hard a couple of times, then called out, “Logan, it’s Agent Westerberg. FBI. I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

  There was no response from inside the cabin.

  Westerberg pounded on the door again. “Logan, open the door.”

  DeMarco saw a face briefly appear in a window—Logan looking out to make sure it really was Westerberg—then the door opened. Logan was dressed in jeans, a wash-faded red sweatshirt, and heavy wool socks. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He hadn’t shaved in a day or so and looked tired and frazzled.

  “How did you find me?” he asked Westerberg.

  Before Westerberg could respond, DeMarco said, “A drone. We’ve had a big-ass Predator drone tracking you ever since you were released on bail.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” Logan said—to which DeMarco shrugged, like: Hey, believe what you want.

  “Never mind how we found you, Mr. Logan,” Westerberg said. “We’re here to help you and we need to talk.”

  Logan shook his head.

  “Logan,” DeMarco said, “a guy with a few billion dollars wants you dead. You can’t hide from a man with that much money. You can’t run from him. What you need to do is start playing offense instead of defense.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Logan said.

  “It means you need to get Curtis before he gets you. It means, you let the FBI take you into custody and you spill your guts about Curtis. The bureaucrats in the Justice Department would much rather prosecute Curtis than a low-level player like you because Curtis will get their names in the news. But
if you keep pretending you didn’t do anything illegal for Curtis, then the next guy Curtis sends to kill you won’t miss.”

  “I don’t know that Curtis tried to kill me.”

  “Then you’re an idiot,” DeMarco said. “Who else would want you dead?”

  “I’m not saying anything. And you people need to get out of here.”

  “Let me remind you of something, Mr. Logan,” Westerberg said. “You’re on bail for an assault charge. If you run, the government’s going to assume you’re trying to flee before your trial and then, after we find you, just like we found you today, your bail will be revoked and you’ll be tossed into a cell. How hard do you think it’s going to be for Curtis to kill you if you’re in jail?”

  “I want to know how you found me,” Logan said. “Nobody knows about this place.”

  “A drone,” Westerberg said.

  “Now what do we do?” Westerberg said.

  “You need to tap his phones. He’s going to talk to somebody about what’s going on—his partner or Curtis or maybe even the guy they hired to kill Sarah—and you might hear him say something we can use.”

  “I don’t have justification for a warrant to tap his phones,” Wester­berg said. “I was lucky I was able to get a warrant to use his cell phone to locate him, but no way is a judge going to let me eavesdrop on him.”

  “Come on, Agent. Use your imagination. Invent some probable cause if you have to. There’s gotta be something in Sarah’s blog that ought to be enough to convince a judge. Or call up your pals at the NSA. Those guys obviously don’t worry about warrants.”

  “The FBI does not work like the NSA,” Westerberg said, sounding righteous.

  “Well, then I don’t know what to do next,” DeMarco said, “but I was serious when I told Logan that Curtis has the resources to kill him.”

  Bill Logan put on his boots, then took a seat at the kitchen table. He needed to run—but before he ran, he needed to think.

  He’d figured out how the FBI had found him: his cell phone. He’d been so panicky last night after someone tried to kill him, and tired by the time he arrived at the cabin, that he didn’t even think about the damn phone being used to track him. A cell phone these days was like gluing a locator beacon to the top of your head. What he didn’t know was how the GPS technology in a cell phone worked. If he turned off the phone, could they still track him? He didn’t know. He should probably throw his phone away to be safe, but he hated to do that. He might need it for something urgent and wouldn’t have time to drive around and find a pay phone. He almost wished that he hadn’t dumped the prepaid phone he’d bought to communicate with Murdock, but he’d tossed that phone right after Johnson’s death. Yeah, the smart thing would be to get rid of his cell phone. If the FBI could use it to find him, so could Murdock.

  But did Murdock really try to kill him? One thing Marjorie had said that made sense was that Murdock probably wouldn’t have missed shooting from less than six feet away. But if Murdock had tried to kill him, then DeMarco was right. If he wanted to survive he’d have to put himself under the government’s protection and become the star witness against Curtis—which would effectively destroy his life. He could just see himself spending months helping the FBI develop a case against Curtis, then Curtis’s trial would drag on for years and, in the end, Curtis might get off scot-free. But Bill Logan—assuming he didn’t spend time in jail—would be flat broke by the time it was all over and would have a hell of a time getting a job.

  So what should he do? How could he keep Curtis from killing him and at the same time not testify against Curtis? Then he figured it out. There was a way, even though it meant his life was going to change drastically.

  He took out his cell phone and spent about an hour looking at the calendar, jotting down notes. When he was finished, he tossed his duffel bag into his car and took off, doing his best to make sure no one was following him. He stopped on a bridge near Stanton—a town with a population of three hundred sixty-six—long enough to fling his cell phone into the Knife River, then stopped again at the next gas station he saw. At the gas station, he used a pay phone to call a lawyer in Fargo.

  After he talked to the lawyer, he began to feel a sense of hope.

  Marjorie had to find Bill. The other thing she had to do was call Curtis. By now Curtis would know that somebody had tried to kill Bill, and it would look funny if she didn’t call him. The one thing she absolutely had to do, no matter what happened to Bill, was make sure that Curtis trusted her.

  She called Curtis’s office and, as usual, was told that he’d call her back. She couldn’t remember one time when she’d called Curtis and he’d been available to take her call. It was like every second of his day was scheduled out.

  Two hours later, Curtis called her. The first thing he said was: “Be careful what you say on the phone.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you something that’s already been on the news. Somebody tried to kill Bill Logan last night.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Where’s Logan now?”

  “I don’t know,” Marjorie said. “He got scared and ran, and I don’t know where he is. Bill thinks that . . . I don’t want to say more on the phone. Is there any chance you might be coming here soon?” Marjorie didn’t want to fly to Houston again.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I’m on my way there right now,” Curtis said. “I’ve been invited to a party the governor’s throwing tonight. I’m calling you from the plane. I’ll be at the Radisson in about three hours. Meet me there.”

  Marjorie called Bill again—about the tenth time she’d called him—but the call went to voice mail. Where the hell was he? What was he doing? She had to find him.

  Curtis thought for a moment, then texted Murdock. The phones he and Murdock used to communicate were prepaid cells and not traceable to either man, but Murdock had told him to send text messages and not call. The phones had an encryption program installed for texting.

  Using one finger, Curtis typed: Where’s Logan?

  I don’t know.

  Somebody tried to kill him.

  I know. Heard on the news.

  You mean it wasn’t you?

  Don’t be stupid. I wasn’t even here when it happened.

  Curtis figured Murdock was telling the truth. He wouldn’t have tried to kill Logan unless Curtis ordered him to, and if he had tried, he would have succeeded. This also meant that Murdock must not have been able to get to Bismarck before Logan took off. He knew that Murdock preferred not to fly because he didn’t want there to be records of him traveling by plane, so by the time he drove from Denver to Bismarck, Logan had disappeared.

  Curtis typed: Find him.

  Marjorie was on her way to the Radisson to see Curtis when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, just the North Dakota area code. She decided to answer the call anyway.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “It’s me,” Bill said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Never mind where I am. Have you talked to Curtis?”

  “I’m on my way to see him right now. He’s here in Bismarck. What do want me to tell him, Bill?”

  “You tell him that if anybody tries to kill me again, the guy had better succeed next time.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means, I have no intention of talking to anybody about the things we’ve done for Curtis but if somebody tries to kill me again, then I will.”

  “You listen to me, Bill, and you listen hard. You don’t want to threaten Curtis and he didn’t try to kill you. I think the guy who took those shots at you was Johnson’s grandfather.”

  “What?”

  “It’s like I told you. I’m not going to mention his name on the phone, but the guy you think tried to kill you wouldn’t have missed. I think what happened is DeMarco told Johnson’s grandfa
ther that you were responsible for killing Johnson, and the grandfather, who’s your typical Montana redneck cowboy, tried to kill you. He missed because he’s an old man.”

  “Huh,” Bill said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “That’s right, you didn’t. And the reason why is because you’ve got your head up your butt and you’re not thinking at all. Now you need to settle down and come back to Bismarck so we can straighten everything out.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I want to take a day or two to mull things over. There’s just been a lot of stuff going on. Getting arrested, somebody shooting at me. I just need a little time.”

  “No! You don’t! You get your ass back here and—”

  “I’ll call you in a day or two, Marge. And you may be right about Johnson’s grandfather but pass on the message to Curtis anyway.”

  Bill hung up.

  Marjorie knocked on the door to Curtis’s room at the Radisson. He was wearing a tuxedo for the governor’s party and it was shiny from age and the pants were about two inches too long. It looked as if Curtis had shrunk since he bought the tux probably twenty years ago.

  He was sipping a Coke, but didn’t ask if Marjorie wanted a drink. He said, “So what’s the story on Logan?”

  “Mr. Curtis, right now he’s scared and he’s hiding someplace. He thinks you tried to have him killed.”

  “I didn’t,” Curtis said.

  “I know that, sir. But he’s scared and he’s not thinking straight. And there’s something else you need to know. He called me while I was on my way here and he told me to tell you that if another attempt is made on his life, he’ll talk to the FBI.”

  “He said that, did he?”

  “Yes, sir. But he won’t.”

  “Well, if he does talk, the only person that will have a problem is you. I don’t commit crimes. It’s like this party I’m going to tonight. I’ll shake the governor’s hand and tell him if he runs for reelection, I’ll contribute to his campaign. But that’s all I’ll tell him and that’s all I’ll do. The only ones who’ve been bribing and blackmailing people are you and your partner, and no one can prove I ordered you to do anything illegal. And don’t forget that one of the best law firms in Houston will be defending me if I have to go to court. What law firm is going to defend you and Logan?