by Jeff Carson
Wolf stomped the snow off his boots and stepped inside. It was warm, and bright as a sunset in the entryway, with the sun streaming in through the huge windows of the next room straight ahead.
“Well,” Chris said, nodding at Wolf, “I’ll see you later.” He stepped out the door and pulled it shut, leaving Wolf on the carpet inside the foyer.
It smelled like toasted bread, and Wolf heard a plate clank in the distance and then muffled footsteps.
Mayor Wakefield walked around the corner wearing a sweatshirt, sweatpants, and socks, a stark contrast to the usual suit and tie in which most Rocky Points residents were accustomed to seeing the mayor dressed. He wiped his hands on the already dirty-looking sweatshirt and walked to Wolf. “Sheriff, what can I do for you?”
Wolf shook the mayor’s warm and greasy grip. “I just wanted to speak to you about a few things.”
“Sure.” Wakefield looked down at himself. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting company. Please, come in.”
Wolf wiped his feet on the carpet and then followed Wakefield into the living room.
“Please, sit.” Wakefield walked to the windows and pushed a discreet button on the wall. A window blind hummed and lowered with a continuous swish, blocking out the bright rays one foot at a time.
Wolf sat on the edge of a square leather footrest.
“There,” Wakefield said when the blind was fully down. Then he sat on a leather chair across the coffee table from Wolf. It groaned and so did Wakefield. “What’s up?”
The grandfather clock in the corner clunked and then started chiming—big echoing tubes of metal being pounded by mallets. Wolf saw that it was five o’clock, and rather than raise his voice over the noise he waited. They were going to be covering some tough subject matter.
His gaze was inevitably drawn past Wakefield, and to the open room across the hall that they used as a family den. There were shelves with books, an expensive globe on a floor mount, and other elegant office furniture.
Wolf stared at the wooden table with the black office chair pulled up to it—a different black office chair. That’s where Wakefield had found his wife last week, and that’s where Wolf had seen Jen Wakefield’s lifeless body sagging off the chair with a blown-out skull that Wolf had heard dripping on the floor hours after her death.
“Tough to look at, isn’t it?” Wakefield said, snapping Wolf out of his daydream. The clock was silent now.
Wolf sucked in a breath and looked the other way toward the kitchen. There was a big wooden table with an open laptop computer perched on top.
“Could I please borrow that computer?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield looked at Wolf for a second and then got up.
Wolf watched the man pad down the hardwood hall and go into the kitchen. Wakefield unplugged the computer, picked it up and walked back, stopping to switch on some lights. The sun had dipped behind the peaks.
“Here,” Wakefield said, and put it on the coffee table in front of Wolf.
Wolf pulled the USB out of his jacket pocket, inserted it, and pulled up the movie.
Wakefield feigned interest across from Wolf, but he was fidgeting and clearing his throat too much to fool anyone.
Wolf pushed play, moved the tracker to the middle of the movie, and then turned up the volume and twisted the laptop toward Wakefield.
Sounds of frenzied sex bellowed out of the computer speakers, and Wakefield looked horrified, but not surprised. He bent forward and shut the computer with a thud.
“What the hell is going on?” Wolf asked. “You know damn well we found this girl murdered Saturday night.”
Wakefield stared through the coffee table.
“This movie was recorded Thursday night, after Charlie Ash’s party, am I right?”
Wakefield nodded.
Wolf let the big clock tick a few times. “Did you pay this girl to sleep with you?”
Wakefield looked aghast. “No.”
They stared at one another for a few seconds, and Wakefield blinked first.
Wolf’s phone vibrated in his jeans, and he reached through the fabric and pushed a side button to forward it to voicemail.
“Where were you on Saturday night?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield popped his eyes wide open. “You don’t think I killed this girl, do you?”
“Where were you?” Wolf asked again.
“I was here, getting shit-faced on Scotch. Like I’ve been doing since …”
Wolf sat forward on the couch, elbows on knees. His cell phone vibrated again, and then again. Wolf stood up and pulled it out. The screen said one missed call, one voicemail, and one text message.
Just then another text message flashed on the screen. It said, Call me, now! Important!
It was from Patterson.
Wolf held up the phone. “I have to make a call.”
Wakefield flicked a wrist.
Wolf dialed the number and Patterson picked up halfway through the first ring.
“Sir.”
“Yeah?”
“Lorber matched the blood on the USB.”
“And?”
“It’s Jen Wakefield’s blood.” Wolf looked at Wakefield.
“Sir?” Patterson said in the earpiece.
“Thanks,” Wolf said. “Is that all?”
“Yeah. Do you need—”
Wolf hung up and put the phone back in his pocket.
Wakefield raised his gaze and Wolf looked past him to the wooden table in the den. It was getting almost too dark to see inside the room, but something still caught Wolf’s eye. His boots squeaked on the hardwood floor as he stepped around the couches and across the hall. He stopped at the entryway and flicked on the light.
Wakefield walked up silently behind Wolf.
The office chair was different, understandably a new model to replace the one Jen Wakefield had died in, and just as understandably there was a rug underneath it that hadn’t been there days before. It was a carpeted room, and the rug under the chair would have been put there to cover the stain, at least until they got around to re-carpeting the whole space.
Wakefield watched Wolf with a wary expression. His chest was heaving, nose whistling with rapid breaths.
Wolf pulled the chair aside. Then he bent down, crawled under the table, and yanked a computer charger out of the wall.
“What’s going on?” Wakefield’s voice cracked.
Wolf climbed out from under the table with the charger in hand. He held it up and studied it for a second, and then held it by his side.
“Did your housekeeper clean up in here?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield swallowed and shook his head. “We had a company come in and do the cleanup.”
“Hollow point bullets,” Wolf said. “Supposed to stay in the body, do as much damage as possible, and cause less collateral damage to others. At least that’s the argument, and that’s why we use them in law enforcement.” Wolf looked over at the table, and then down at the rug. “But the problem is, they do a lot of damage in the body. And if that damage comes out the other side? Well, it makes a real mess.”
Wakefield clenched his eyes shut and shook his head.
Wolf held the end of the charger between his thumb and forefinger. “Tough to clean a mess like that, to the point where everything’s completely gone. Pretty much impossible. You’ll have to replace everything, repaint the walls, the ceiling. Replace the carpet.”
Wakefield opened his eyes and stared at Wolf. A tear rolled down his cheek.
Wolf held out the wire in front of Wakefield. “See that? Blood. And it’s here, all the way down the wire of the charger, until about here.”
Wakefield stood quietly and let the tears flow.
“I thought it was weird when I came here that day, and you’d wiped the table. You played it off pretty well, like you were just going a little bit crazy, and had to get started cleaning up the mess. Couldn’t stop yourself. Of course, now it all makes sense.”
Wakefield stared at him.
“She was watching that sex tape when she killed herself, wasn’t she?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield looked down, dripping tears onto the carpet as he moaned and shook. After at least a minute he swallowed, sniffed and looked up at Wolf, the same way he’d done in the chapel after his wife’s funeral. Shoot me.
“Why don’t you tell me what really happened,” Wolf said.
Wakefield trudged back into the big room and Wolf followed. The peaks behind the window covering were black silhouettes against a midnight-blue sky.
“My wife wasn’t supposed to see it,” Wakefield said. “Ash went to my downtown office on Friday and dropped the USB on my desk with a cryptic note. On a fluke, Jen came looking for me in my office, to have lunch or something. She read the note and brought the USB stick home.
“When I got home from work, I heard the sex noises coming from the den. I thought it was Chris watching porn or something. When I got in the room, I … I saw her. And I saw the video playing in front of her. She’d looped it, so it played over and over again. She wanted me to find her like that. God!” He shook his head and looked up. “I still thank God Chris didn’t find her. She … she hadn’t been doing too well, psychologically, with the MS. It was eating at who she was. Making her … hard edged. A completely different person.”
Wakefield paused and flicked a glance at Wolf. “I saw the note. It was sitting right next to the computer. I panicked. I … picked it up and I pulled the USB out of the computer. And then the damn window of the movie was still up on the screen, so I had to close it with my finger on the track pad, and before I knew it I was smearing my wife’s blood all over the damn thing. So I just picked it up, cleaned it in the sink and then got to work cleaning the table. It was so dumb.” He shook his head. “Every time I finally get to sleep I wake up thinking about what I did to her, and then what I did with her blood. I have to drink myself unconscious.”
Wolf sat in silence, watching Wakefield’s mind rip itself apart. “What did the note say?” Wolf asked.
“Huh?”
“The note.”
“Klammer gets your vote, or else,” Wakefield said. “From Charlie Ash.”
“That’s exactly what it said?”
“It’s burned in my mind.”
“It said, ‘From Charlie Ash’?”
“Well, no, but it was him.” Wakefield stared into nothing. “He hired Stephanie to seduce me. My wife wasn’t at Charlie’s party on Thursday night. She never went out anymore, not with her illness. She didn’t like being in public, it was too hard for her.”
Wakefield sat forward, picking his fingernail on the coffee table. “A couple of years ago, when I met Charlie Ash, when he moved to town from Tahoe, I’d been screwing around on my wife. And Charlie and I, we went out to a bar to have a drink, to get to know each other. You know, the state of the real-estate market, the political atmosphere. He was interested in getting involved in the county council.
“Anyway, this girl came up to me. This girl I’d been … seeing. She was young. She was out with her friends and came barging into the bar, and she came right up to me and started putting her hand on my face, and I brushed it away and got her to back off before anything too telling happened. But Charlie Ash knew.” Wakefield smiled. “Ash knew, but he pretended like he hadn’t noticed. I remember it like it was yesterday. She didn’t give it away, and I acted pretty well, getting that girl out of there without making a scene. But he knew. I saw the gears churning in his head, and he just kind of … pointedly forgot about it, never mentioned it. But I knew he knew, and I thought his ignoring it was … I don’t know, him being loyal to me or something. His silence saying he didn’t care, he was going to be a good friend from now on, so just ... forget it. I already have.”
Wakefield squirmed in the chair. Scratched his cheek.
“So his little plan worked perfectly. He dangled a beautiful girl in front of me while my wife was home dying in her bed. And me, being the asshole that I am, I fell for it. I screwed her, and he videotaped it.”
Wolf cleared his throat, and then stood up and walked over to a smaller window with a view. He looked down at the twinkling lights of the town and then at Wakefield’s reflection in the glass. He was sitting board straight and staring at Wolf’s back.
Wolf turned around. “That doesn’t prove it was Charlie Ash who made that tape.”
Wakefield snorted. “Oh, it was him. He came over and clarified things on Saturday, even after knowing my wife had just shot herself.”
“And how did he clarify things?” Wolf asked.
“He came over and said that I must vote for Klammer’s bid, and persuade everyone else I can to do the same. If I do that, I’ll get money and the video stays private.”
“And has he paid you any money?”
“No. I don’t even want money.”
“Where’s that note?” Wolf asked.
“I burnt it before I called you.” Wakefield looked down. “I was panicking.”
“And the USB drive?” Wolf asked.
His face froze and he looked up. “Wait, the USB drive.” He looked over at the computer on the coffee table. “How did you get that?”
“We found Matt Cooper dead today. The USB was left on him. And your wife’s blood was smudged on the drive.”
Wakefield’s mouth dropped open. “What? Cooper had the USB? The helicopter pilot? How?”
“Cooper didn’t have the USB. He was killed, and the murderer left it for us to find.”
Wakefield jumped up off the couch and walked out of the room.
“Hey!” Wolf called, putting his hand on his pistol. “Stop.”
Wakefield stopped and then held up a hand. “Wait, I have to see something.” Then he waved Wolf down the hall and started walking again.
Wolf caught up fast, keeping his hand on his gun.
Wakefield stepped through cones of light as he marched down the hall and then veered left into a dark cave of a room.
Wolf followed on his heels into the darkness, and then the space lit up with the sound of a switch. A mahogany desk was the centerpiece of a large room filled with patterned rugs, bronze statues, and dark-wood carvings. Shelves lined the walls with hundreds of books.
Wakefield stopped at the desk and reached for the top drawer.
“Stop, or I will shoot,” Wolf said in a steady voice. He aimed his pistol at Wakefield’s back.
“What?” Wakefield swiveled and thrust his hands in the air. “What are you doing?”
“Step away from the desk, now,” Wolf said.
Wakefield did.
Wolf kept his eyes on Wakefield and opened the desk drawer. Inside was a tray full of pens and pencils, a small calculator, a pad of graph paper, and a USB drive.
Wakefield bent closer and pointed in the drawer. “There,” he said. “That’s the USB I took out of the computer. I swear.”
Wolf took out the USB and shut the drawer, then kicked the big leather office chair toward him. “Sit.”
Wakefield sat down, keeping his arms in the air.
“You can put your arms down,” Wolf said. He reached over and shuffled the mouse on the desk, and the desktop monitor came to life. Without speaking, he put the USB in, waited for it to be registered by the computer, and then clicked the folder on the desktop. The drive was blank. No files at all.
“Blank,” Wolf said.
Wakefield stood up and walked over. “Shit. I … Ash. It was Ash. He must have switched the drives on Saturday. When he came over.”
“Sit down,” Wolf said.
“I knew he was setting me up. I knew it yesterday when I talked to him.”
“You talked to Ash yesterday?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield nodded. “Yeah. I had heard about Stephanie, and I called him to come over. I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on.”
“And what did he say was going on?”
“He didn’t. He played dumb about the whole thing. He actually kind of freaked out, tripped over th
e maid on the way out.”
Wolf glared at Wakefield. “Freaking out about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“After Stephanie Lang seduced you, and Matt Cooper set up the video camera to record in your car, I’d be pretty pissed off if I were you.”
Wakefield frowned. “Wait, Matt Cooper set up the camera? I didn’t know that. How would I know that?”
Wolf looked hard into Wakefield’s eyes. There was fear, confusion, regret, and a whole lot of hangover, but Wolf didn’t think there was deception.
“What about Chris?” Wolf asked.
“What about him?”
“What was he doing on Saturday night?”
“You think my son killed Stephanie Lang?” Wakefield’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.
“Just answer the question, Mayor.”
“He was … he went out. To a friend’s. I don’t really know. I was pretty drunk, and I just kind of let him do his thing.”
Wolf stood up and gazed down the rows of books. “And this morning? What was he doing?”
“He was”—he shook his head—“sleeping here, then woke up and went into town for a while. I don’t know what he was doing. He skipped school. Said he didn’t want to go, and I didn’t blame him.”
“What time did he wake up and leave?” Wolf asked.
Wakefield thought for a moment. “Woke up at like eight. Left at about ten. Why?”
Wolf stared at Wakefield, still seeing truth in the man’s eyes. “You’re certain on those times?”
“Yes. Yes I am. What are you thinking?”
Wolf thought about Ash, and Irwin, and Klammer, and Prock, and Margaret Hitchens. Was she lying to him about something? Was she involved in her own form of corruption, lying about the listing contracts? What about Sarah? Was she getting involved too?
Wolf shook his head, snapping out of his thoughts. “I think I need to get a shovel to start digging through the bullshit you guys are piling up in Town Hall.”
Wakefield looked down at the floor.
Wolf walked out of the office, down the hall, and went outside, not bothering to shut the door to the house as he left.
Only after he’d driven a mile did he realize his jaw had been clamped shut since he’d left. The mayor hadn’t killed Stephanie Lang or Matt Cooper. But what about Jen Wakefield’s suicide? What was Wolf going to do about that? The mayor had covered up the full truth by removing the computer and cleaning the table, but what was that? An obstruction of justice? And had Wakefield really caused his wife’s suicide by carrying out the adultery caught on tape? Or had it been Cooper’s fault for setting up the camera? Or was it Ash, who allegedly set the whole thing up to blackmail the mayor? Or a rare form of multiple sclerosis attacking Jen Wakefield’s brain?
