Why did Wilkes find this research shit so intriguing anyway? All the literally backbreaking work had gained her were three names. She stared down at the notepad next to her uncle’s computer. Luckily Cy had left to attend to business in the park, which had allowed her to commandeer his office and his computer, although at the moment she would have gladly traded places with him.
She’d much rather be out in the field than sitting behind a desk, staring at a glowing screen that had grudgingly yielded a small handful of names. Knowing desk work was not her forte was the reason she’d happily turned all the staff scheduling duties at the Sunny Side Up over to Anchorman.
Resigned to having to keep plowing through the endless pages of information, both accurate and otherwise, spewed out by the internet, Ricki looked at the first name on her list and considered it for a moment. The description she’d found on the Jennie Dobbs Foundation’s website had touted it as the place where wishes came true, followed by a lengthy request for donations to purchase toys for Christmas for kids in the greater Chicago area. She didn’t see any reason the small foundation, which proudly proclaimed reaching its annual twenty-thousand-dollar goal, was a good candidate for buying land out in the wilds of the state of Washington. Unless they were considering starting their own Christmas tree farm.
The second name on her list was more promising. The Edward Tarkard Foundation was into environmental issues, from saving a rare breed of pond frog to stopping climate change. Their donation goals were a lot more ambitious than those of the Christmas gift group, which meant they might be large enough to buy some forest land on the Pacific coast. And with their environmental mission, they’d also have an interest in owning that kind of land. She typed the name into the browser and pulled up the website again, giving it a more thorough look. In the upper left-hand corner was what appeared to be a logo. Ricki doubled-clicked on the image to enlarge it, then made a face at the oversized picture. The year 2002 came right after the words “Founded in.”
“Too late. Way too late,” she said out loud, her voice bouncing around the room. She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck to ease the growing ache as she ran the possibilities through her mind. It could be this was simply the current version of the foundation. It might have sprung up from another one that had been operating around the Second World War. But that would take some digging that was beyond her internet research skills. She grinned. Lucky Dan.
After circling the name to remind her to shoot it off to her assistant partner, she typed the third name on her list into the browser. The Lillian M. Young Foundation didn’t have a website, and every piece of information she pulled up on it was at least ten years old. But when she came across an article that had been written in the late nineties, proudly proclaiming the foundation’s fifty years of service to the community, her instincts came alive. That would have put it in operation around World War II, and at one time, at least, it had accepted project requests from anyone who needed or wanted help. Maybe that extended to purchasing land out west? It was a stretch, but maybe. It was also the only name on her list that had brought all her senses to full alert.
When her phone rang, she absently looked over to where it lay on the desk. Josh’s name was on the front display, which had her glancing at her watch. It was almost five, which made it eight o’clock at Quantico. The FBI agent was putting in some long hours.
Reaching over, she pressed the speaker button then picked up the manila envelope she’d retrieved from her backpack before she’d put in the call to Josh several hours ago. “Hi, Josh. You’re working late.”
“I just got off a plane and made it to the motel. Yours is the first call I’m returning.”
Since he didn’t sound like he was in the mood for any preliminary chitchat, Ricki got right to the point. “I read the report.” She drew it out of the envelope and stared at the US Marshals emblem in the corner. “How did you get a copy?”
“I still have contacts there,” Josh said, then fell silent.
Okay. I guess he wants me to start. Ricki flipped over the first page of the report and zeroed in on the section that started with her name. For a moment she struggled between the oath she’d taken for the service she’d once worked for, and loyalty to her best friend. It didn’t take long for her to come up with a hands-down winner.
“Like I said, I read the report,” she began, keeping her tone low and even. “And either the tape failed somehow at a couple of critical places and the agent relied on a very faulty memory to fill in the blanks, or someone is really lousy at transcription.”
“I’m going for door number two on that one,” Josh said. “How about you?”
The question came out as a dare, and Ricki took it that way. If she agreed with Josh, she was also agreeing to help him out with whatever he was doing to look into Marie’s death.
All in or nothing, Ricki thought, then nodded to herself. Did she really have a choice? Marie had been more than a best friend. She’d been a sister, and Ricki couldn’t walk away not knowing the truth about her death. So, all in it was.
“Me too. The report has either been altered, or it was never truthful in the first place.” She skimmed down the page, looking for the passages she’d marked up the night before. “The sequence is wrong.” She stared down at the words. “Marie was killed first, then the prisoner, and then I was hit.”
“That’s what you told me when I went to see you in the hospital,” Josh said. “Are you still sure that’s the way it went down?”
“It was fast, Josh, but I’m sure. I was in front. Marie and the prisoner were slightly behind me. She was shot first, and then Hernandez, and then me.”
“I picked that up too,” he said softly. “But I needed you to confirm.”
“There’s something else,” Ricki said.
“What else?” Josh’s voice took on a sharp edge. “The rest of it looked like it matched what you told me.”
“It was something I didn’t tell you. It isn’t in this report, but I told the deputy who interviewed me. But something he said, insisted on, actually, made me think I was imagining it, but now I don’t think so.”
“What is it?” Josh asked.
“I got a shot off.”
Surprise leaped out of the phone. “You what?”
“I fired my weapon, and I’m a pretty good shot.”
Josh let out a crack of laughter. “Good is an understatement, Ricki. You’re an expert shot. But that would have been in the report, and your weapon would have been tested.”
“Yeah. Well, before I lost consciousness, I got one off. I’m sure of it, and I heard a scream, so I thought I hit the guy.”
“You’re shitting me.” Josh’s breathing picked up, and she could hear the anger growing every time he inhaled. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Why indeed? Ricki closed her eyes, wishing she had told Joshua instead of letting that deputy marshal put doubts into her head. Under her dad and uncle’s watchful eye, she’d handled guns most of her life, and Josh was right about her being an expert shot. She damn well knew when she hit a target and should never have believed Olyman’s mournful “You’re so confused” look when he came to interview her. “The deputy marshal said they checked all over the scene and didn’t find any blood anywhere. He had me believing I didn’t even draw my gun, much less hit the guy who was shooting at us.”
“The guy? You’re sure it was a male?” Josh asked.
Ricki nodded again as if Marie’s fiancé were right in front of her. “That wasn’t a woman’s scream I heard. It was high-pitched, but definitely male.”
There was a drawn-out silence before Josh finally asked, “Is Olyman the marshal who interviewed you?”
“Yeah. He’s also the one I turned my badge in to the day I was released. I ran into him outside the hospital.”
“Did you talk to anyone else?”
“No.”
“That’s it then,” Josh said with a finality that echoed the silent message that there was no turning back.
“I’ll get on tracking down this Olyman and arrange to have a little chat with him. What’s his full name?”
“Chad. Chad Olyman, deputy marshal out of Arlington,” Ricki said. “And I’d like to be in on that chat.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Josh replied. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He hung up without saying goodbye, but Ricki understood completely. Josh had been on a mission for over a year now. One that she’d just joined. Despite not knowing what she’d gotten herself into, she felt a satisfaction deep in her bones. Questions about that night had always lurked in the back of her mind, and it was long past the time to get some answers.
Her watch said she needed to get going if she wanted to meet Clay on time. It was a fifteen-minute drive from Edington to Brewer, and that was about all the time she had. She picked up her phone and stuffed it into her back pocket before shutting down Cy’s computer. Satisfied that everything on the desk was as neat and tidy as her uncle liked, she picked up the report and slid it into its envelope just as there was a knock on the office door.
She curled her fingers around the manila envelope and stood up. “Come on in, I was just leaving.”
Dan Wilkes stuck his head around the edge of the door. “Got a minute? I found something.”
“Like what?” Ricki asked, coming around the desk. She waited for Dan to step inside the office and shut the door.
“It took some heavy lifting, and I mean that literally, but I found a couple of boxes with records from 1970 to 1971. I managed to dig out the staff rosters from both years. There were twenty-two rangers on the 1970 list, and twenty-three on the list the following year.”
Ricki leaned a hip against the desk and grinned. “That’s good. Are those lists dated by any chance?”
He wiggled his eyebrows to go with his own grin. “Oh yeah. January 1970 on the first list and September 1971 on the second one.” He looked down at the paper in his hand. “I compared the names, and it looks like they lost three guys between the two time periods and picked up four more. So that gives us twenty-six guys to look at.” He shrugged. “At least for these two years.”
“Twenty-six is a big pool,” Ricki noted. “But it gives us a place to start.”
“We only have three more days,” Dan pointed out. “Not a lot of time to narrow the list down to one victim.”
“Five days, if you’re willing to work the weekend,” Ricki said.
The ranger immediately nodded. “I am. But it still isn’t a lot of time.” He laid a photo the same size as a standard piece of paper on the desk. “I also found a picture in the 1970 file.”
Ricki carefully picked it up and held it in front of her, studying the men who were at attention and arranged in two rows. In their uniforms, they looked surprisingly similar, except for differing heights and hair colors. She was quiet for a full minute as she counted out the same number of bodies as there were names on the staff roster.
She was still staring at the photo when her cell phone rang. Thinking it might be Clay wondering where she was, she grinned when she saw the name that flashed on the caller ID. “We might be getting a break. Hang on a minute.” She tapped the screen and then held the phone up to her ear. “Hey, Beth. What did you find?” She reached over and grabbed a pencil from a repurposed soup can sitting on Cy’s desk. Since the only available paper was the envelope tucked under her arm, she set it down and began scribbling across its back. “Yeah, I got it. And is that also the listed owner?” Ricki frowned as she listened, writing down the name her contact at the county courthouse was spelling out. “Barbara G. Metler. Okay. Thanks. I owe you.” She listened for another moment, smiling. “Sure. One of Anchorman’s famous burgers is on the house the next time you come to town. I’ll leave it up to you about any plans you have for my cook.”
She said her goodbyes and hung up before picking up the manila envelope and holding it out for Dan to see. “Hamilton was right. A foundation doesn’t own the land. They must have sold it because it belongs to a Barbara Metler.”
“Great.” Dan sighed. “There goes our only Chicago connection, and we’re right back where we started from.”
Ricki shook her head. “Not exactly.” She pointed at a name she’d written higher up on the envelope. “See that? It’s an accounting firm. The annual tax bill is sent to their office, in Chicago, Illinois.”
While Dan grinned, she picked up the photo again. “Now. Which of you gentlemen ended up in the old lighthouse?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ricki was only twenty minutes late meeting Clay by the time she walked into the diner. She’d left the truck in her usual space in the alley out back. The big Ford was even more of a challenge than her jeep to fit into the tight area, but she managed before heading around the building to the front door.
She’d spotted the chief’s SUV out front and figured he was probably sitting at his favorite spot at the end of the counter. She didn’t want to keep him waiting even longer by coming in through the back door and being waylaid in the kitchen by Anchorman.
The place was crowded. It looked like half the town was taking advantage of the diner’s expanded summer hours and enjoying a casual dinner out. Marcie was flying around the room, a pitcher of iced tea in one hand and her order book in the other. Tonight she had help from Cindy, daughter number two, who was weaving her way between the tables, several plates of food balanced on her arms. With Marcie’s cousin was holding down the hostess station up front, the Sunny Side Up had become quite a family affair. And that included her own son, who was toting a large gray tub under one arm as he cleared a table on the far side of the room.
Ricki looked up at the battered clock hanging on the wall behind the back counter. Her eyebrows drew together as she quickly scanned the room, expecting to see Bear. She certainly was always glad to see her son, but she’d expected his father to have picked him up by now. He was due back from the guided tour today, and they’d agreed that Eddie would go home with him tonight. She took out her phone and checked to see if she’d missed a text message, but didn’t see one.
Wondering if she should be worried or annoyed by her ex-husband’s tardiness, Ricki slowly made her way across the room, stopping to greet customers at the tables she passed, and waving to others who called out to her. When she finally reached Clay, she plopped onto the low-backed swivel stool next to his and made a face.
“It’s like running a gauntlet.”
“It’s like walking into a family reunion,” Clay corrected. “That makes you a lucky person, Agent James.”
She smiled and nodded her agreement. “I guess it does.” She glanced over at the empty space on the counter in front of him. “Not hungry?”
He winced. “Not yet. My last phone call was to Demi Lansanger, and I’m still getting over it.” He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “What you’re missing here is a liquor license.”
Ricki made a sympathetic sound and patted him softly on the back. “Is she still going into hysterics every time you mention her dead boss?”
“Hasn’t shown any sign of calming down as far as I can tell.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “All I have to do is say ‘hello’ and the tears start coming. It took me thirty minutes to get her to agree to look back through the records for that report on the previous trip Hardy made out here.”
“The one he wrote up himself because she was out helping her mom through some surgery?”
“Yeah, that one.” He gave Ricki a sideways glance. “She almost makes me glad I haven’t been able to talk the town council into paying for a trip to Chicago. Although I’d still like a chance to go through Maxwell Hardy’s desk.”
“We might be a step closer to identifying his client.” When Clay shifted in his seat to face her, Ricki nodded. “My contact down at county records came through with the name of the landowner.”
“The foundation in Chicago?” Clay asked.
“It might have been at one time, but now it’s owned by someone named Barbara Metler, and the
taxes are paid by an accounting firm in Chicago.” She grinned. “I have it on my to-do list to track down the phone numbers for any Barbara Metler in the Chicago area, and I’ll give the accountants a call tomorrow.”
“They aren’t likely to give up the name of a client,” Clay said.
“Maybe not to a special agent with the park service, but what if the call came from an upstanding member of the Chicago PD?”
Clay grinned. “Good idea. I’ll reach out to them in the morning.” He signaled to Cindy for two iced teas. “Did our relentless ranger find out anything else?”
Ricki thanked the young temporary waitress as she set down a glass filled with ice and Anchorman’s secret tea blend, then waited until she moved off to help another customer. “Dan found some staff lists.” She quickly filled him in, including Dan’s plan to start looking for personnel files in the boxes stacked in the basement.
“Another good idea,” Clay said. “I’m sorry I can’t send Ray down there to help. He wasn’t in the front lobby, and when I got back to my office, there was a note on my desk saying he’d had to leave early to go to Olympia with his nephew.”
“Doesn’t sound like his nephew is getting much work in,” Ricki mentioned.
“Probably not. Ray brought John in to meet me last week. Nice guy. The two of them seem pretty devoted to each other.”
“They are,” Ricki confirmed. “John’s mother was Ray’s sister. The story around town is that she passed away when John was a baby, and his uncle stepped in to raise him.”
“What happened to John’s father?” Clay asked.
“Some kind of accident right after they were married, as I recall. I think Ray told me that once.” Ricki idly stirred her iced tea. “One of those things small towns don’t talk about, I guess.”
Abandoning the topic of his longtime volunteer, Clay fixed his gaze on her face. “What about your talk with Josh? Did you manage to get hold of him?”
She inched closer on her stool and lowered her voice. “We talked. He’s going to track down the deputy marshal who interviewed me in the hospital.”
One Last Scream (Special Agent Ricki James Book 2) Page 15
