House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  “Yeah, but the hotel doesn’t have cameras in the hallways on the guest floors. There is one in the lobby. But last night, somebody set off a fire alarm—maybe the killer did it—and there were a lot of people milling around, coming and going from the hotel after the alarm went off. I saw one guy on the lobby camera who just looked kind of funny, like he was turning his face away so the clerk at the desk wouldn’t see him.”

  “But I take it you couldn’t ID him.”

  “No, he was wearing this floppy hat and, like I said, he had his face turned away from the camera. He was wearing a blue-and-green Pendle­ton shirt and he was tall, over six feet, but that’s about it.”

  “Huh,” Westerberg said. “Well, I know it wasn’t DeMarco because he’s not over six feet tall and he was supposed to be on a plane back to Washington last night. But you should check with the airlines.”

  “You seriously think DeMarco could have done this?”

  “No, not really. DeMarco’s hardly a saint, but he’s not a killer. And if you’re right about the guy in the floppy hat being the shooter, it couldn’t have been Dawkins.”

  “We don’t know that the guy in the hat was the one. Like I said, he just looked funny. And the killer could have entered through one of the side doors instead of going through the lobby, so I can’t rule Dawkins out.”

  Marjorie Dawkins had thought that her life couldn’t possibly get any worse—then a detective stopped by to tell her that Leonard Curtis had been murdered and he wanted to know where she was last night. She told the dumb cop that she’d been home, all by herself, but the last person on earth she wanted dead was Leonard Curtis.

  With Curtis dead, her chance of getting immunity for testifying against him was gone and now she was the only person left to take the fall for bribing the politicians. And she certainly couldn’t point the finger at Curtis for the death of Sarah Johnson because, once again, she was now the only one living to blame for that crazy girl’s death. Being an accessory to murder was a whole different ball game than buying off a few corrupt lawmakers. Plus, there was always the possibility that Murdock might find out she was talking to the cops about him and he might kill her.

  That little son of a bitch, Curtis. Just like with Bill Logan, his death had screwed her. She could see Curtis and Logan in Hell, the flames dancing around them, laughing about what they’d done to her.

  When Ian Perry—the man Marjorie Dawkins knew as Murdock—heard on the radio that Leonard Curtis was dead, he was still parked near Dawkins’s house waiting for the order from Curtis to kill her. He’d been there all night. He’d seen a cop arrive earlier and speak with Dawkins and, at the time, he had no idea what that was about. Then he heard on the midmorning news that Curtis had been shot and he suspected the cops had come to question Dawkins about Curtis’s death.

  He wondered who had killed Curtis. Whoever it was had deprived him of a fee that he would have used to demolish the hideous house that spoiled his view when he meditated in his lovely Japanese garden. On the other hand, in a way, he was glad that he hadn’t been required to kill Dawkins.

  Ian Perry never thought at all about the people he was paid to kill. He didn’t sympathize or empathize with them in any way. What would be the point? He didn’t even hold himself responsible for their deaths. The people responsible were the ones who paid him. Perry thought of himself—and not facetiously—as being the equivalent of lightning. It was the client who decided a person should die and Ian Perry was simply the instrument that accomplished the physical act—but it was the client who had made the decision. It was the same as when lightning struck some poor bastard walking about in a rainstorm. It wasn’t the lightning’s fault; it was God who had decided the person’s time on this earth was up.

  But in the case of Dawkins, and even as much as he wanted the money he needed to purchase and demolish his neighbor’s house, he was almost glad that lightning hadn’t struck. He would have killed Dawkins had Curtis given the order—he was a professional, after all—but he’d never before killed a mother with two young children. Ian Perry sometimes doubted that God existed—but he did believe in karma.

  DeMarco arrived at Dulles at seven thirty a.m. EST—about the time Curtis’s body was found in Bismarck.

  During the long trip home—made longer because his connecting flight in Salt Lake City was delayed four hours—he had a lot of time to think about Sarah: Sarah laughing over the YouTube video. Sarah’s eyes flaring with anger over the way things were—and her refusal to accept that she couldn’t change the way things were. She’d been unrelenting, uncompromising, courageous, and naïve. She’d been so very young.

  DeMarco wondered what she might have accomplished if she’d lived. She would have matured and perhaps become smarter in her pursuit of the corrupt; perhaps she would have learned how to make alliances and get others to follow her lead. Perhaps—no, certainly—she would have made a difference in this twisted world. The only thing DeMarco could take solace in was that he’d done his best to make Logan, Dawkins, and Curtis pay for their crimes—but like Mahoney had said, nothing he’d done would make up for the loss of Sarah Johnson.

  DeMarco caught a taxi home from the airport, and on the way to his house, he stopped thinking about the events that had transpired in Bismarck. Instead he thought about his rodent problem, praying that, in the two weeks he’d been gone, that Ralph had done his job. According to Ralph, the pests had feasted on the blue-green poison, d-CON, and hopefully DeMarco’s backyard would be littered with their decaying corpses. When he got home, he was going to have to put his house in order—put all the stuff back he’d removed from the closets, reinstall new insulation batts down in his basement, and search the house to make sure Ralph had sealed up all the mouse entry holes. But he’d put all that off until tomorrow. After the long flight home, he needed to sleep.

  He put the key in the lock and opened the door.

  Oh, God! What was that smell!

  35

  Mahoney got to Doug Thorpe’s place at six thirty in the morning—about the time DeMarco landed in Washington and about the time Leonard Curtis’s body was found.

  His plane had landed in Billings at four a.m. and Mahoney should have been tired after the long flight from Washington, but for some reason he wasn’t. He felt great, and was glad he’d decided to come to Montana. Mavis had arranged for a car to be waiting for him in the rental car parking lot, the keys and the rental papers inside it. He hopped into the car and took off, enjoying the solitary drive to Thorpe’s place as the sun rose over Montana.

  But Thorpe wasn’t home when Mahoney got to his cabin, which surprised him. Thorpe knew he was arriving this morning and he was certain the man wasn’t inside the cabin sleeping because Doug Thorpe had never slept past five a.m. in his life. He wondered where he could be. Mahoney took a seat in one of the rocking chairs on the front porch and listened to the Yellowstone rolling by. He was looking forward to seeing his old friend in spite of the circumstances.

  Half an hour later, Thorpe’s pickup swung into the driveway. Thorpe stepped out of the vehicle and waved when he saw Mahoney. He moved stiffly as he walked toward the porch—like his joints were stiff after a long drive. Mahoney hadn’t seen Thorpe in quite a few years but he was struck as he always was with how . . . how noble Thorpe looked. Some men are blessed with a certain kind of face—men like Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda or Gary Cooper—those old movie stars who almost always played the good guy because they just looked like good guys. Mahoney certainly didn’t have that kind of face but Doug Thorpe did.

  When Thorpe reached the porch, Mahoney stuck out his hand for Thorpe to shake but Thorpe held up his hands and said, “Gotta go wash my hands; had a flat tire.”

  Mahoney noticed that in addition to his hands being black and grimy, the sleeves of Thorpe’s Pendleton shirt were filthy, as might be expected if he’d changed a tire, and again Mahoney wondered where he’d been, but didn
’t ask. Instead he said, “I’m sorry, Doug. I can’t tell you how sorry—”

  “John, I don’t want to talk about sorry.” He didn’t say anything more for a moment and Mahoney didn’t know what to say, then Thorpe said, “I know it’s kind of early in the day, but do you feel like sippin’ some whiskey?”

  “I can’t think of a better idea,” Mahoney said.

  Thorpe went into the cabin and came back a short time later, with clean hands and wearing a fresh blue denim shirt and holding a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two water glasses. An old black-and-white dog had followed him out of the cabin. The dog plopped down between the two rocking chairs and Thorpe poured the whiskey.

  “You remember,” Thorpe said, “that time we went into Saigon with that big redheaded kid from Detroit, the one who had lenses in his glasses thicker than the bottom of that whiskey bottle? I can’t remember his name.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that goofy bastard. His name was Kellogg, like the corn flakes. I remember once when we were out in a rice paddy and he lost his glasses. I was sure he was going to shoot one of us.”

  Thorpe laughed. “But that time in Saigon, we were in that club that fat French guy owned, and . . .”

  Two hours later, they were both pretty drunk, Thorpe more than Mahoney because Mahoney was no stranger to booze in the morning. A car that said Custer County Sheriff pulled into the driveway and an old cop, a heavyset guy in his sixties, got out of the car. He tugged on the wide belt holding his gun and handcuffs, and Mahoney bet the sheriff spent half the day tugging up that belt.

  “Is one of you Douglas Thorpe?” the sheriff asked.

  “I am,” Thorpe said.

  “Mr. Thorpe, can you tell me where you were last night?”

  Before Thorpe could answer, Mahoney said, “Why are you asking?”

  “And who are you, sir?” the sheriff said.

  “United States Congressman John Mahoney.”

  The sheriff looked at him more closely, then said, “Hell, I recognize you. You used to be the Speaker of the House.”

  “That’s right,” Mahoney said. “So why are you asking where my friend was last night?”

  “Well, sir, a man named Leonard Curtis was shot and killed last night in his hotel room and the Bismarck cops asked me to come out here and ask where Mr. Thorpe was last night.”

  “He was right here with me,” Mahoney said. “We’ve been sipping whiskey all night talking about when we were young bulls in Vietnam. Are you by any chance a veteran, Sheriff?”

  Epilogue

  The guard told Marjorie to take a seat in one of the first ten rows in the plane. The plane was a beat-up old 737 that belonged in a scrap yard and the once-gray seats were almost black with grime. She wouldn’t be surprised if she ended up with head lice before the flight was over.

  The rear seats of the airplane were occupied by hard-core criminals, all men, being taken to maximum-security federal penitentiaries in Kansas, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. They were manacled hand and foot and chained to the floor of the plane. In addition, there was a metal gate separating the rear seats from those in the front. If the plane crashed, they were screwed—but who cared?

  The front rows of seats were reserved for folks like Marjorie bound for minimum-security prisons and they had on leg manacles that made it hard to walk and impossible to run, but they weren’t handcuffed. Marjorie had been told that if she acted up or mouthed off in any way, they’d handcuff her to her seat and gag her.

  Marjorie’s destination would be the last stop the plane made: Federal Prison Camp, Bryan, a minimum-security facility for females in Bryan, Texas.

  Marjorie had been sentenced to eighteen months in prison and would be eligible for parole in twelve. Her sentence would have been longer but she pled guilty, cooperated with state and federal prosecutors, and testified against three state legislators and two judges. The government was more interested in convicting the folks who’d taken the bribes than the person who did the bribing. The feds wanted her to testify that she’d bribed other people than the five named in fuckin’ Bill’s manifesto, but she lied and said there were no others.

  The next eighteen months of her life were going to be bad, but probably no worse than the last eighteen had been. Dick filed for divorce six months after she was arrested and the divorce was finalized four months after that. Naturally, he got custody of the boys since she was a convicted felon. Because of the boys, he also got to keep the house and two-thirds of the money they had in savings. The money she was able to keep was gobbled up by her lawyer. The icing on the cake was she’d heard that Dick was now dating the most successful real estate agent in Bismarck, a woman built like a Sherman tank, but with money coming out of her ears.

  Marjorie took a seat next to a skanky-looking white woman whose arms were covered with tattoos and had blond hair that was about a quarter of an inch long. As soon as she sat down, the woman said, “Have you been saved?”

  “Saved?” Marjorie said.

  “By Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

  Aw, geez. She was going to be seated next to this woman for the next twenty hours.

  The first thing she was going to do when she got out of prison was piss on Bill Logan’s grave.

  Harvey Milton, medical examiner for El Paso County, looked down at the body. The head looked like a chunk of charcoal.

  “Well, he’s dead,” Harvey said to the young Colorado Springs cop who had been dispatched to the house after a neighbor called.

  “No shit,” the cop said. “The neighbor said he liked to work in his garden and sit on that bench over there and meditate and—”

  “It’s a beautiful garden,” Harvey said. “Looks like one I saw in Tokyo when the wife and I went there last summer.”

  “Anyway, the neighbor saw it happen. He was up there, looking out that second-story window, the one there on the right, when wham! A great big lightning bolt. Hit the dead guy right on the top of his head. Scared the shit out of the neighbor.”

  “What’s his name?” Harvey asked.

  “Ian Perry, according to the neighbor.”

  Harvey looked up at the sky. “There’s hardly a cloud in sight. It’s like he just pissed God off or something.”

  “Karma,” the young cop said.

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Legislation and lawsuits related to natural gas mentioned in this book are, for the most part, real, such as the lawsuits regarding forced pooling, water contamination caused by fracking, and the sales tax case in South Dakota. It’s also true that state legislators in the Dakotas and Montana aren’t paid particularly well. What is not true—at least as far as I know—is that energy companies are bribing these underpaid lawmakers to do things they want done. I imagine the legislators in these states are decent, honest public servants—but decent and honest doesn’t always make for good fiction.

  When I was researching this book, I tried to learn how Heckler, the detective, could monitor cell phone calls and was actually amazed to find three companies online that sold software for monitoring calls and tracking people’s locations. The companies’ websites said everything was aboveboard, completely legal, and that in order to monitor someone’s phone you needed physical access to the phone and—wink, wink—the owner’s permission. I have no idea if the monitoring software can be downloaded onto a person’s phone by embedding it in an email as I do in the book—but I’ll betcha it can be.

  I want to apologize in advance for poking fun at the name Bertha. My mother had a beautiful name—Antoinette Nicolene—and was usually called Nicky. But for some reason, never explained to me, a number of her childhood friends called her Bertha. My mother hated the name Bertha, but could never shake it. Anyway, the only Bertha I’ve ever known was a terrific person and I’m sure all the other Berthas out there are wonderful, too.

  I want to thank Judge James Don
ohue for advising me on warrants, although in one case I—or Agent Westerberg—cheated a bit to get around a warrant. I’m grateful to Dale Zimmerman of the Peacock Alley American Bar and Grill in Bismarck for emailing pictures of his restaurant so I could better describe the interior. Also, a couple of folks whose names I won’t mention, for advising me on security cameras at the Radisson in Bismarck. As best I was able to determine, there are no security cameras in the guest hallways as it says in the book—and if there are, well, I could see no point in letting the facts screw up a good story.

  I want to thank my editor, Jamison Stoltz, for improving this book immeasurably beyond the first draft. Also Allison Malecha, Jamison’s assistant, for her help on this book as well as the DeMarco mapping project. (There will be more on the DeMarco mapping project on my website later.) I want to thank my wife, Gail, for reading this book, advising me on titles, and most of all for creating an environment in which I can write. Finally, as always, my agent, David Gernert, for keeping me in the game.