Deadly Places: A Mapleton Mystery Novella (10 page)

It was almost five when the deputies returned, although to Ed, it seemed they’d been gone much longer. They assembled in Woody and Norris’s room this time. Woody unrolled a map and put it on a bed. “Here’s the plan.”

The men stood back enough to let Ed have the clearest view of the map, which showed the boundaries of the designated hunting unit where their permits—had they been legit—were valid. Ed trusted the wardens had been informed they were here after a totally different kind of game. Woody took a red marker and drew an X near the upper right side of the area. “Ed, Norris and I can drive in this far, and set up a base camp here tomorrow.” He drew an elongated oval to the southwest of the X. “And this is where we’ll pretend to be hunting. No vehicles, so no drive-bys to worry about.”

Woody drew another X. “Our recon says if they’re trying long-range surveillance, or a long-range sniper shot, they’ll be somewhere in here. Benjamin and Isaac will be our perimeter backup.”

“You think the blog ring has a pool of experienced elk hunters?” Isaac asked. “Wouldn’t like them getting suspicious that we’re not looking for elk.”

“My thought is that’s a huge stretch,” Ed said. “Especially if they’ve had to pull this together last minute.”

Isaac went on. “You two have to be close enough to Ed to intervene if someone comes after him, but far enough away to let them think they have access.”

“Well, hunting is about hiding.” Woody set the map on the desk. “But for this assignment, it’s about making sure we can be seen when and where we want to be seen.”

“Meanwhile, I’m starving,” Benjamin said.

“I could use a break from this room,” Ed said. “Let’s hit the coffee shop.”

“Nope,” Woody said. “If your killer is driving from Denver, he might stop here for dinner. The rest of us will eat, do a little recon, then bring you food.”

Ed grumbled, but checked the menu on the desk. “Double cheeseburger, fries, and apple pie.”

When the deputies brought his food, they reported the other customers seemed legit. “Two parties of hunters back from a day in the woods, one family. One googoo-eyed couple. Jury’s out on whether she’s his trophy wife or mistress. Nobody dining alone.”

“Early start tomorrow, gentlemen,” Benjamin said, after they’d gone over everything three more times. “Lobby at oh five-thirty.”

Ed, Woody and Norris pitched their tents as the sky glowed pink with the rising sun. While they ate the breakfast burritos the coffee shop had provided, they went over everything yet another time. Rifle shots cracked through the air. Ed tried not to think one might be meant for him. No, he kept telling himself. Isaac and Benjamin had his back.

They wandered the woods for the rest of the morning, seeking any evidence of elk, which they wanted to avoid. They didn’t want to be in a place where there’d be too many other hunters, although they did meet several groups on their own quests. Norris was friendly as he told them the area didn’t have much potential, and pointed them in another direction.

Once they’d decided on a spot that fit the bill as
hunterish
, they went to their base camp for lunch. More exploring until dusk, when Isaac and Benjamin joined them for dinner.

“From our vantage point, it looks fairly busy for elk season. The good news is most of the action is well away from the campsite you’ve picked out.” Isaac grabbed an apple from the cooler.

The wind had picked up, and Ed leaned forward and warmed his hands at the fire. Night sounds, carried on the breeze, swirled around them. Coyotes yipped and howled, seeming to come from all directions. A loud rustling from the brush sent Ed’s thoughts to the Mapleton bear.

“Help me.” A faint voice floated across the campsite. “Please.”

Bears didn’t ask for help.

Ed grabbed a flashlight. Benjamin snatched it from his hand and shoved Ed behind him. “Someone’s hurt,” Ed said in protest.

Woody yanked Ed’s elbow. “No, someone’s asking for help. Ed, get in your tent.”

Ed saw the logic. Didn’t mean he had to like it, but he ducked into the tent and sat where he could see out the window flap. Isaac and Benjamin called out to the stranger. “Are you hurt? Come here, into the light.”

A man staggered toward the campfire. “It’s not me,” he said, his voice raspy. “My partner. Bear. In there.” He pointed in the direction he’d come from.

Ed moved closer to the tent’s entrance where he could watch and listen to the conversation. Their visitor was male, average build, dressed in hunter’s camo and an orange vest and cap. The hood of his parka didn’t hide the blood streaming down his face.

Norris helped the man sit on a log by the fire. “Did the bear attack you?”

The man shook his head. Wiped the blood from his eyes. “No. Ran. Trying to get help. Dark. Tripped. Lost my rifle.” His breathing was ragged, his words huffed out in spurts. “Tree branches. Rocks. My partner. Leg. Broken, maybe.” He leaned over, hands on knees, sucking air. “Tried to scare the bear away. He fell. Into a ravine. Couldn’t get him out. Saw your fire.”

“You’re going to be all right.” Isaac wet a rag from their water bottle and daubed at the man’s face. “Doesn’t seem bad. Head wounds bleed a lot.”

“You have to find him. Get him to a hospital.”

“Can you show us where he is?” Woody asked.

“I’ll—” The man stood, clutched his belly, gasped, then crumpled to the ground.

“Guess not,” Woody muttered. “Okay, Benjamin, Isaac, you’re with me. Norris, you stay here with—whoever he is. We’ll find the injured party first, then see if we need to get to our vehicle for rescue equipment.”

The three men gathered what supplies they had available, then set off in the direction their visitor had pointed.

Ed crawled out of the tent. “Need some help?”

He deflected Norris’s scowl with a wave of his hand. “I’m not here until tomorrow, remember. This man is hurt. Can you tell what’s wrong?”

“Don’t know,” Norris said. “The way he went down, he might have sustained internal injuries. He said he’d fallen.”

“Could be a concussion,” Ed added. He leaned in toward the man. “Can you hear me? What’s your name? Do you know where you are?”

Rifle shots thundered from the woods. It wasn’t bear season, but shooting a bear charging at you was understandable. Were Isaac, Woody, and Benjamin all right?

The man’s eyelids flickered, then opened. “My belly’s on fire.” He reached upward, gripping Ed’s arm. “You gotta do something.”

“Take it easy. When my friends get back, we’ll get somewhere with a cell signal and call for a rescue team.” Ed clasped the man’s hand. A quick prick of pain. Then nothing.

Ed clawed his way out of the darkness, into consciousness. The world flickered like an old movie. No, that was the firelight. How long had he been out? Biting back a groan, he assessed his body. Toes? They wiggled. Check. And on up, testing each muscle. By the time he reached his shoulders, the memories returned in a torrent. Norris. The stranger. Woody, Isaac, and Benjamin.

He heard nothing but the crackling fire. He rolled to his side. Pain spiked through his head. Deep breath. He struggled to his knees, then flopped into a sitting position. Where was everyone? Or where was he?

He blinked. Same cooler. Same tents. This was his campsite. He was here, everyone else was missing.

Or hiding?

“Hey!” he called out. Waited. No response. His team would have answered. Of course, if the bad guy was hiding, Ed had let him know he was awake.

His weapons. In his tent. He crawled across the campsite, away from the firelight and into the darkness. His mind cleared, his strength returned as he inched his way on elbows and knees. Visualized where he’d left his rifle. His flashlight. The battery-operated lantern.

Chastised himself for dropping his guard. But he was alive. Until Mary Ellen killed him.

He pulled the tent flap aside. Someone grabbed his wrist.

This was
not
going to happen again. Ed shoved himself to his knees, yanked on whoever had him. Reached for whatever body part he could find. An arm. Ed followed it upward, reached for the throat. His assailant jerked away. Ed ducked. Went for a head to the torso. Or where he thought the torso would be. Connected with something soft. A hand grabbed his chin. Twisted. Ed jabbed backward with his elbow. Whoever he was fighting was wearing enough clothing to dampen any blows.

Something hard connected with Ed’s temple. Stars flashed bright in the blackness behind his eyes.

“Don’t move, scumwad. Ed, stay down.” A voice from behind him. A gunshot ruptured the quiet, replacing the sounds of breathing with a dull ringing.

Hands on his shoulders. Ed thrashed away.

“Hey, Ed. Chill. It’s me. Woody.”

He was being helped to his sleeping bag. “Lie there. Let us handle things.” Not Woody’s voice. Benjamin?

“What—?” Ed struggled to get the word out.

A yellow glow filled the tent. Ed pushed himself to a sitting position. Damn, his head hurt.

Someone handed him a bottle of water. Ed let the cool liquid slide down his throat. The stranger, the man who’d managed to convince all of them he and his partner were hurt, lay crumpled on the tent floor. A dark stain covered his jacket and pooled onto the nylon. Ed’s first thought was that the blood would never come out of the tent. He forced his brain to stick to the important stuff. He counted the men. Isaac was missing. “What happened?”

“You up to moving outside?” Woody asked. “Isaac has the other guy in custody. This one’s not going anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said. “Let’s go tell stories around the campfire while we wait for the cops.”

“We
are
the cops,” Woody said, “but I know what you mean. The paperwork will be a mother.”

“Will someone tell me what happened,” Ed demanded.

Woody continued. “After we left, we found the ravine—more like a six foot ditch—where your guy’s partner was supposed to be injured. Only he wasn’t hurt. He had his rifle. Lucky for us, he wasn’t a great shot. And there were three of us, so he had to pick one target.”

“That was me,” Benjamin said.

Ed looked more closely. Benjamin’s left parka sleeve was torn and stained. “Wait. He
shot
you? Are you all right?”

Benjamin shrugged. “Just a ding. Woody patched me up.”

“Go on.” Ed rubbed his temples.

“Not much to tell. We overpowered him, recorded his statement. Isaac’s taking him to the local S.O.” Benjamin nodded to Norris. “You can take it from here.”

Norris added another log to the fire. “Our
guest
—” he chinned toward the tent— “hit me with whatever he gave you, but not so much, I guess, because when I came to, you were still out. I couldn’t wake you, but your breathing was strong and regular, so I risked leaving you for a few minutes, to see if the others needed help, to tell them to contact the locals.

“By the time I got there, Isaac had already left with his prisoner, so we came back here. Heard a scuffling in the tent, went to see what was going on. It looked like you could use a little assistance. When the jerk was stupid enough to go for his gun, Woody shot him. Several times. Center mass.”

Woody shrugged. “Like on the firing range. But real.”

Ed took a moment to find his voice. “Thanks, man.”

Another shrug. “Hey, you’d’ve done the same thing.”

Ed replayed the conversation, processed it. “You got a confession?”

“A good start,” Benjamin said. “He tried to blame everything on his partner, who was supposed to be killing a—and I’m quoting here—‘a worthless piece of scum who didn’t deserve to be on the planet.’ When we pointed out that by helping, he was also guilty, he lawyered up.”

“Did he mention how he found us?” Ed asked.

“They got here early, too,” Benjamin said. “Recognized you from a picture they’d been given. Their plan was to drug you, then move you and toss you over a cliff or something. Make it look like an accident. He wasn’t clear on the details before he lawyered up.”

The men sat, silent, for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts.

Norris tossed a pine cone into the fire. “I’ve got some bourbon in my tent. But we should be sober when the locals show up to work the crime scene. It’ll be a while. Anyone know any good ghost stories?”

A week later, the excitement around the station had finally died down, to Ed’s relief. Standing in the spotlight was outside his comfort zone. He’d turned over his list of possible victims, and had been heralded as the man who broke the case with his persistence. The news media had glommed onto what they’d dubbed the Deadbeat Dad Assassination Ring.

The real turnaround had come when Al Cardona’s death was deemed a homicide. A sedative—the same one used on Ed—had been found along with insulin levels higher than could be expected from an accidental overdose. After that, law enforcement offices all over the country were digging deeper and reopening cases that had been ruled accidental deaths. Colfax’s sister had been cleared of any complicity.

The assassin Woody had shot was identified as Harold Kamen—along with half a dozen other aliases. With the names of contacts supplied by the second man, at least four more of Paula Brassington’s killers for hire had been arrested.

As for Paula—she claimed no knowledge of the entire operation. “I write blog articles. My team vets suggestions, and I go places they suggest or that interest me.”

Although Ed had seen firsthand how carefully the ring kept its members isolated, and how nothing was worded in such a way that could point to assassins for hire, he had confidence her story would come apart once the authorities traced the money. It would connect her, of that he was certain.

In fact, more digging had turned up several sharpshooter awards in Paula’s history. Her father, it turned out, was an army sharpshooter, and apparently had passed along some of his skills to his daughter. Given her presence at the Bed and Breakfast near where the pickup truck driver had been shot, Ed had faith the cops would eventually tie her to that killing.

Mitch and Jeremy were still talking about their dad, the hero, although he’d repeatedly explained there was nothing heroic about what he or the other deputies had done. It was part of the job. At which point Mary Ellen would leave the room under the pretense of urgent web design work.

By Halloween, Mary Ellen was speaking to him again. At least in front of the boys. Mitch had gone to the peer counseling sessions Ed had found, and had made some new friends. When Mary Ellen suggested that perhaps she and Ed needed someone to help them work through their own problems, he’d agreed to a few sessions. They’d been to two, and they hadn’t totally sucked. He found himself thinking more about the consequences of his actions, beyond keeping law and order. He slipped his arm around her—and she didn’t pull away—as they waited at the foot of the stairs for Jeremy to make his appearance in his Halloween costume.

Mary Ellen burst into applause as the boy clumped down the stairs, hanging onto the rails with black-gloved hands. “So
that’s
why he needed a yellow turtleneck,” she said. “And why his new sneakers had to be black.”

“And that’s where all the yellow stains in the laundry room sink came from,” Ed added. “And where the newspapers disappeared to.”

“Not bad, kid.” High praise indeed from Mitch.

Jeremy wore a pair of overalls over the yellow turtleneck. An oversized yellow paper-mâché helmet covered his entire head, a diving mask with painted-on eyes secured at the center. The real eye opening, Ed noted, was behind the mouth.

“What do you think?” Jeremy’s muffled voice came from behind the mask.

“I’d say you’re the best looking minion I’ve ever seen,” Mary Ellen said. “I can’t believe you did this all by yourself.”

“Ramon’s mom helped,” Jeremy said. “Me, Ramon and Kirk, we’re the Three Minions.”

“We’d better get going,” Ed said. “Will that headpiece fit in the car?”

Jeremy wrested it off his head. “It’s hot in there. I’ll carry it for now.”

At the station, Mitch seemed immersed in the spirit of the holiday as he helped hand out candy from the trunk of the police unit. Ed even let him flash the lights and turn on the siren a couple times. The trick-or-treaters adored Buster, who alerted once or twice to the scent of marijuana on parents. Ed merely let them know why Buster was being so attentive, rewarded the dog, and no harm, no foul. Tonight was not the night to check for legal quantities.

Charlotte Strickland came by, dressed as a witch, and Ed tried not to laugh. “Nice event,” she said.

“That it is,” Ed replied. “Happy Halloween.”

At eight, Mary Ellen gathered the boys and Buster. “School tomorrow,” she said.

“I’ll finish here.” He shook Mitch’s hand, man to man, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Good job, son.”

Mitch’s smile was the biggest treat of the night.

As things wound down, and Ed was about to close the trunk, one more pair of trick-or-treaters stopped by. Ed glanced up at a large bear costume and a masked fairy princess, and peered beyond them for a kid or two. None in sight.

The bear pulled off his headpiece. Extended a paw. “Good work, Chief Solomon.” The fairy twirled and removed her mask.

“Gordon? Angie?” Ed’s mouth hung open.

Gordon wrapped Ed in what could only be called a bear hug.

“Where the
hell
have you been?” Ed said once he’d pulled free.

“Caribbean cruise the last two weeks.” Angie held out her left hand, displaying a good-sized diamond that sparkled in the glow of the street light.

“Judging from what I’ve been seeing in the news, I assume you got my note,” Gordon said. “You can tell Titch he’s a hard man to sneak around, by the way.”

“So it was you? You tell him yourself,
Chief.
”

“After the mayor and I have a little chat about my contract,” Gordon said. “You think Finnegan’s will serve a bear, a cop, and a fairy princess?”

“If the bear’s buying,” Ed said. “And explains how he got in and out of a police station at four in the morning without being seen.”

They strolled, bear paw in fairy princess hand, a cop behind them, down the block toward Finnegan’s.

Some days, it was good to know you wouldn’t have to be the Chief much longer.