Dead Money

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “As expected for a woman who just lost her husband instead of one who left her over a quarter of a century ago.”

  Fleet shook his head. “Maybe now we’ll find out why he left. There’s bound to be something in his old papers.”

  “Not sure I really want to know,” I said.

  “Well I do,” Fleet said. “Just call it lawyer curiosity.”

  “I thought that was called voyeurism.”

  “If that wasn’t so damned close to the truth, I’d have a comeback,” Fleet said.

  Why had Carson left? The simple question that I had asked for years. Another woman? Traveling too much? It couldn’t have been poker, because my mom loved the game and supported Ace teaching me how to play. There had to be something else, something no one would tell me.

  An even larger question was why Carson had never once came home to see his family. To see me. Carson had given my mother good financial support and full custody of me. But nothing else. The son-of-a-bitch had given his duties as a father over to Ace and just walked out.

  A hundred times I had thought about going up to my father in a casino and demanding an answer, but I could never bring myself to talk to the bastard.

  Who really was Carson Hill? Maybe now that he was dead, I would get some answers, whether I wanted them or not.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Central Idaho Mountains. August 19

  WE HAD GONE ANOTHER five miles on the rough, gravel road when Fleet’s cell phone beeped.

  “Amazing the thing still works way up here,” Fleet said.

  “There are a lot of houses and money in this area,” I said, pointing a big mansion up through the trees on the right. “The kind of people who won’t put up with inconvenience.”

  “Oh, yeah, those types,” Fleet said. “Club types. Nice of them to live up here.”

  “Second homes. Too far from good restaurants to be anything but roughing it.”

  “Figures,” Fleet said.

  He tucked the phone into its hands-free slot on the dash and clicked a button on the steering wheel to answer.

  I stared at the nifty device. I owned an old Ford Taurus that mostly just stayed in the garage. But after riding with Fleet yesterday and today, I was starting to think there might be some advantages to buying newer and more expensive cars. I had often wagered more than the value of Fleet’s car on one hand of poker, but over the years, I just couldn’t make myself spend the same amount of money on a car.

  It seemed that some insanity just ran in my family.

  Hell, I was so damned cheap, it had been everything I could do just to buy my little two-bedroom house on the north side of Boise when I got out of college, six blocks over from my mother’s. Even though I was worth millions and had a couple million in fairly handy cash and bonds at that point, I didn’t want to spend sixty-five thousand on a house. Heaven only knew what it was worth now.

  Fleet had convinced me it was a good deal and had done the paperwork. All I did was sign my name a few dozen times and give Fleet the full amount in cash. It still bothered me a little, even though Fleet and I owned tons of business property in our different companies, more than I wanted to know, actually. And I liked riding in limousines and flying in our corporate jet between tournaments. But keeping track of it all was Fleet’s job. And he just kept getting us richer and richer every year.

  While on the road, I got suites in hotels, usually in the same hotel that a tournament was being held, and I had a permanent suite at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. I hadn’t even bought enough stuff to furnish my house very well after I bought it. My mother and Fleet’s wife had done a lot of the furnishing for me. Sort of sad for a man my age, actually.

  Fleet got the speakerphone turned on, then said, “Go ahead. Your dime.”

  “Mr. Korte?” a soft, hesitant voice asked over the speaker-phone.

  “Yes,” Fleet said, sitting up, straightening his back, clearly dropping into his business mode.

  Fleet had tossed his suit jacket and tie into the back seat, but still looked like an attorney fresh out of court, even though he wore a new pair of tennis shoes, bought at my insistence this morning on the way out of town.

  “My name is Aaron Bearings.”

  I couldn’t quite catch the accent. Maybe East Coast Washington area.

  “Ahh, Mr. Bearings,” Fleet said.

  He quickly pulled over to the edge of the road and stopped. Too fast. A cloud of dust billowed around us, shutting out the sun. Luckily, Fleet had the air-conditioning system on and the windows rolled up.

  “I have you on speaker phone in the car,” Fleet said. “Jonathan Hill is with me.”

  “Mr. Hill, I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” As if the guy was actually sincere. Fleet had called Vegas and hired Bearings this morning to help with Carson’s estate in Nevada. The guy was going to make a fortune off just the IRS problems caused by all the cash my dad had in the plane.

  “And the name is Doc,” I said, figuring that if I were going to have to be around the guy for all this, I might as well get that much straight up front.

  “Doc it is.”

  “Have you started everything into motion?” Fleet asked.

  “I have,” Bearings said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. No complications that I can see so far. Mr. Hill—uh, Doc—you understand that I’m going to need you here in Las Vegas to sign some papers and deal with some other matters.”

  “We’ll be down there in three days,” Fleet said. “We’ll inventory Carson’s house and take care of bank accounts at that point. We’re meeting with the NTSB on the crash scene in a few hours.”

  “Good,” Bearings said. “I’ll let you know if I run into any problems, but I don’t expect any this soon.”

  “Thank you,” Fleet said. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow morning.” With that, he clicked off the phone. Then, with a glance over his shoulder through the still-lingering cloud of dust, he pulled the car back onto the gravel road.

  “How long is all this probate going to take?”

  Fleet shrugged. “We might have it done in a year. More than likely longer. Depends on how much there really is, and if there are any surprises we don’t know about yet.”

  “Hell, we don’t know anything about the man. Who knows what could be waiting.”

  “By the time this is over, we’re going to know more than we want to know.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, with as much disgust in my voice as I could manage without spitting in Fleet’s new car.

  “Yeah, Fleet said, “I’m looking forward to it as well.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Central Idaho Mountains. August 19

  AS THE NARROW road emerged from the heavy trees, I studied the meadow ahead. The Valley County sheriff’s car was pulled off into the weeds, and another unmarked car was parked beside it. For the last ten miles, the road had been no wider than two tire tracks, winding its way along the stream-sized Middle Fork of the Payette River. I had no doubt that during spring runoff, the road was under water in a dozen places and this meadow was a swamp, if not a small lake.

  The valley ended in sheer rock walls that towered over the meadow like buildings in central Manhattan. The river flowed between the walls and over a rock shelf in a waterfall that must be fantastic during high water.

  “Looks like we’re here,” Fleet said, heading the Lexus across the meadow.

  I glanced at the dial on the dashboard that said it was a comfortable seventy-one degrees outside the car. A person couldn’t ask for a nicer day in the mountains. I just wished I was here for a different reason.

  Any other reason.

  No one was in sight, and no sign of wreckage. I felt a sense of relief at that. Relief like the kind you feel sitting in a dentist’s waiting room when the nurse calls the person next to you.

  “You ready for this?” Fleet asked, parking off the road beside the sheriff’s car.

  “Oh, sure, I love seeing where people were kille
d. Don’t you?”

  “I watch the Discovery Channel and programs about mass murderers. Wrong question.”

  “Does your wife know this about you?”

  I opened the door and let in a blast of warm, dry air, then climbed out.

  “She finds it disturbing,” Fleet said, joining me at the front of the Lexus.

  “I can understand why.”

  We started up the road toward the rock walls, Fleet’s new tennis shoes squeaking in the dust.

  I had been in a lot of places in the central Idaho mountains, but never here. And I was glad I hadn’t. The place gave me the creeps.

  Under the tall mountains and sheer rock walls, the meadow had a bottom-of-a-box claustrophobic feel. Downstream, behind us, the river valley turned so that the mountain walls closed off any open area in that direction. The valley made me feel as if I were standing in the bottom of a very deep well.

  “Man, this place is weird,” Fleet whispered, as if talking louder was going to make the mountains close in tighter. He pointed to an old fire ring beside the river. “Can you imagine camping in here?”

  “Not a chance. I’m used to mountain valleys, and I can tell you that this one has giant rockmen who eat campers at night and lawyers during the day. I can show you spoor if you don’t believe me.”

  “No, thanks,” Fleet said, shaking his head at my stupidity.

  “I guess my sense of humor sort of goes when I have to look at where my father was killed.”

  “No kidding,” Fleet said.

  The Valley County sheriff, Ray Hendricks, appeared from behind a boulder and came down a narrow trail at us. He was tall, heavy-set, and wore a tan uniform that looked to be about the color of most of the rocks around us. A wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses kept his face in shade.

  I liked Ray a lot, and had known him for years. I figured him to be in his early fifties, but with Ray there just was never any telling. We had worked dozens of search and rescue operations together, and I wouldn’t hesitate in trusting the man with my life.

  “Sheriff Hendricks?” Fleet asked, stepping ahead of me and extending his hand.

  “Mr. Korte, I presume,” the sheriff said.

  I could see the sheriff manage to contain a smile at Fleet’s silk dress shirt, dress slacks, and new tennis shoes as he shook Fleet’s hand.

  “Doc, how you doing on this one?” Ray asked as he shook my hand. “I was stunned to hear it was your father.”

  “Doing fine, Ray. We weren’t close.”

  Ray nodded, then changed the subject. “How was the river this summer? Didn’t hear that anyone got into serious trouble over there.”

  “We didn’t lose a one. The Henderson crew had a passenger break a leg. They had to chopper him out.”

  “One of these days I’m going to have to take a ride with you,” the sheriff said.

  “Make it late May or early June, and I can promise you a real thrill on the big water on the Middle Fork.”

  He laughed. “My heart might be too old for that.”

  Then Ray took off his sunglasses and looked me right in the eye, his expression serious. “Are you sure you want to see this?”

  “Actually, I personally don’t. I’d rather be sitting in a casino with pocket aces and a guy with pocket kings to call my raise. But I made a promise to my grandfather to stay on top of Carson’s death. This is where he died, so here I am, right on top.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Suit yourself. Let me show you what’s left of the plane before Eric and the rest of the NTSB people get here and start blocking everything off. They can get kind of protective of a crash scene.”

  “Yeah, seen that.”

  Ray glanced at me, then smiled. “That’s right, I forgot you were on the dive team for that kid in the pond. Ugly one, that one.”

  “Glad it wasn’t me who found the kid.”

  “You should be. I had to pull the body out of the water, and I had nightmares for a month.” Ray shuddered and then turned and headed up the trail toward the waterfall.

  “You didn’t tell me much about that search,” Fleet said as we followed Ray.

  “Nothing to tell. Two dead, a dad and his kid, the dad still in the plane upside down in the pond, the kid’s body floated off.”

  “At first,” Ray said over his shoulder, “the NTSB clamped a lid on that thing tighter than a virgin’s ass. Then they discovered they needed our help. I love it when they come begging.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to need any help here,” I said.

  “Not likely,” Ray said.

  After about a hundred yards of climbing and walking through the boulders and brush, I caught my first glimpse of the plane. Seeing it made me go cold, as if I were studying a poker hand instead of a plane crash.

  The wreckage was a part of the tail section. It lay twisted in some rocks along the left-hand side of the canyon, the shiny white paint looking very out of place.

  No other part of the plane seemed to be close to it.

  After another twenty steps, Ray stopped. We were a stone’s throw below and to the left of the waterfall. The sound of the cascading water sounded almost playful, and very welcoming.

  The sheriff pointed over the top of the waterfall.

  “See that mark along the rocks there about two hundred yards beyond the falls?”

  I glanced up, shading my eyes. It was clear what the sheriff was pointing at.

  “Looks like someone dug into the cliff with a big knife,” Fleet said.

  “Tip of the wing, actually,” Ray said. “From what I can tell, Doc, your father had engine troubles, more than likely engine failure, between the Scott landing strip and Cascade. He didn’t have the air speed to get over the last major ridge and into Cascade. He turned downstream and more than likely was trying to reach the meadow and the road.”

  The sheriff pointed back toward the cars.

  I glanced back at the meadow below. The road would look possible for a landing strip. Ray’s theory made sense from what little we knew.

  I studied the rock walls that towered over us like thirty-story skyscrapers. You might be able to fit two lanes of traffic and a sidewalk between them, but nothing more. A damned tight squeeze for a dead-stick small plane.

  “He got close,” Fleet said, glancing back at the road.

  “Hand grenades and horseshoes,” the sheriff said. “Hand grenades and horseshoes.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Central Idaho Mountains. August 19

  I TRIED TO imagine how it would feel to dead-stick a plane down this narrow canyon. More than likely just sheer panic and terror. While still in college, I had earned my private pilot’s license, but hadn’t much enjoyed flying. Too much work, too much risk, but mostly just too much money for so little return. After the flying lessons, I had never bothered to fly again, deciding to stay with airlines, bad food and all.

  And Fleet had even ended that when one of our companies needed a big tax deduction and he bought us our own Gulfstream corporate jet, with beds and everything. That was one perk to being rich I tended to love and use a lot. I just didn’t want Fleet to ever tell me what it cost to run the stupid thing.

  The sheriff pointed to a spot that looked black and scarred on the cliff face downstream from the first mark. “The main body of the plane nosed in right there and just disintegrated. It’s scattered in pieces along the base of the cliff for about a football field.”

  I couldn’t imagine how fast Carson must have been going to have that sort of impact and destruction. A plane on takeoff or landing was usually going slow enough that most planes stayed pretty much intact when they crashed. Clearly Carson had a lot less control of his plane than he needed to make a landing in the meadow work.

  “Was there a fire?” Fleet asked. “This area looks pretty dry.”

  “It is,” Ray said. “Luckily, the only fire was small, burnt nothing but one tree and then went out.”

  “How did you find this?” Fleet asked.

&nbs
p; “Mr. Hill activated a GPS emergency locator. Somehow, it survived the wreck. We had a plane buzz the canyon within twenty minutes and someone on-site within two hours, which is damned fast for this part of the country.”

  “Real fast,” I said, impressed. “That has to be a record of some sort.”

  “I’m looking that up,” Ray said, smiling.

  “So only the body and the money were taken away from the scene?” Fleet asked.

  “Yup. Everything else had to be left for the investigation.”

  The mention of the word body jolted me. No doubt I was going to have to identify my father’s body at some point, or at least see it before any service.

  Damn it all to hell. I suppose it was better me than my mother. Or Ace. Too bad Carson hadn’t gotten remarried and had another family. Then someone else could have been taking care of this stupidity.

  “And you’ve had someone on scene the entire time?” Fleet asked.

  The sheriff pointed up at a rock ledge on the other side of the river from the crash site. For the first time, I noticed a man was sitting up there in a folding chair, his tan uniform perfect camouflage against the rocks.

  “Wow, didn’t even see him,” Fleet said.

  “He stayed on that ledge since right after we got on scene,” Ray said. “He can see the entire wreck site from there. And he’s not coming down until I hand over control to the government boys.”

  “Smart,” Fleet said.

  “Just experience,” Ray said. “I’ve dealt with Eric and the NTSB people before. Too many damned forms to fill out if I do it any other way.”

  “How difficult is it to climb up there?” I asked, glancing at the rocks, trying to figure a way up.

  The sheriff shrugged. “Wouldn’t be hard for you, but I would suggest Mr. Korte here not try it.”

  “Not interested anyway,” Fleet said, looking up at the rocks as if the idea of climbing them was grounds for an insanity plea. More than likely, it was, but when it came to the mountains or the river, simply craziness didn’t seem to stop me.