Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

Marlene said, “I just wanted to do you the courtesy of informing you that I sent a special agent to your town. His name is John Tall Wolf. Have you met him yet?”

The mayor frowned. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, he did tell me he’s been busy. He arranged to have that bomb taken away.”

“Your man did that?”

“He did.”

“I’ll have to thank him, but how did either of you know about it?”

“A colleague in the federal government received a threat and forwarded it to me. I sent Tall Wolf. He’s a good man, but …”

“Don’t leave me hanging, Marlene.”

“As he’ll be the first to tell you, he tends to go his own way.”

Clay found that surprising, almost laughed. The idea that someone working for Marlene wouldn’t be kept on a short leash. The mayor wrote down the special agent’s name: John Tall Wolf. He’d have to make the special agent’s acquaintance soon.

Marlene said, “Tall Wolf and I are of the same mind that there will be no keeping the FBI out of the investigation. Domestic terrorism is their responsibility.”

“Yeah, it is, but something tells me you’ve got other ideas.”

“My idea is to have Tall Wolf do the work and let the FBI have the credit. I know people at the bureau who will go along with that arrangement. I wanted to know how you’d feel about it.”

“Your man is better than their people?”

“He can be insubordinate but he is effective.”

Clay offered a brief laugh. “Sounds like my chief of police.”

“So you won’t object if I put my plan in motion?”

Life was getting complicated for Clay right when he needed it simplified.

But he said, “Not at all. If Chief Ketchum agrees.”

“Tall Wolf works well with the local police.” Marlene said. “I’ll keep an eye on him all the same. I might pay your little town a visit myself.”

The warmth of the smile that lit Clay’s face would have ruined his public image.

Made him glad he was alone.

He told Marlene, “I’ll be happy to buy you dinner if you do.”

She replied, “Or we could have a cookout by a campfire.”

Ron Ketchum sat behind his desk and informed Sergeant Stanley that there would be a new face at the Goldstrike PD in the morning.

“Another one?” the sergeant asked.

It took Ron a moment to realize the reference was to John Tall Wolf.

“Yeah,” the chief said. “In Deputy Chief Gosden’s absence, I’m bringing in my old partner from L.A., Keely Powell, to lend a hand. She worked homicide with me. She’s smart and tough. Good people, too.”

Sergeant Stanley nodded, keeping a straight face.

“You’ll like her, Sarge.”

“I’m sure I will. How will she fit into the chain of command?”

“She’ll take direction from me.”

Ron sincerely hoped.

He added, “If she has any requests, she’ll let either you or me know.”

“But Ms. Powell will have no authority of her own to exert?”

“No. If she makes a suggestion, though, we’d all do well to value her judgment and experience.”

“Duly noted. What about Special Agent Tall Wolf?”

“What about him?”

“He accompanied you to the scene of the Tibbot murder. Where does he fit into the scheme of things?”

Ron wasn’t surprised that the sergeant knew about Tall Wolf’s presence at the Tibbot house. It was his job to know everything about the Goldstrike PD. That was how he kept things running smoothly. He wasn’t criticizing the presence of outsiders; he was thinking about how to integrate them into his organizational flow.

The first step would be to let the troops — the patrol officers — know how the new faces should be treated.

Ron said, “The special agent and I will be acting as buffers to the FBI. We think there’ll be no avoiding the feebs on this one. The hope is to keep them on the margins. Tall Wolf got high marks from a homicide detective he worked with in Austin, Texas.”

Sergeant Stanley began to feel more at ease.

“Anything else I can do for you, Chief?”

There was something else, but before he could bring it up he finally realized what had bothered him when he’d seen Hale Tibbot’s body at the crime scene. The man’s hair had been too damn neat. Not a lock was out of place.

It was one thing for a killer to figure out a way to stick a guy and avoid spilling blood on himself and everything else. But could even a criminal genius do that without so much as mussing his victim’s hair? The chief didn’t think so.

He sat up straighter as it came to him neatness wasn’t the only thing wrong with Tibbot’s hair. If he remembered right, having seen the man at a number of campaign speeches, it was parted on the wrong side.

Had the killer
combed
his victim’s hair, getting the part wrong?

What kind of freak was he dealing with?

“You okay, Chief?” Sergeant Stanley asked.

Ron looked up at Sergeant Stanley and said, “I’m okay, Sarge, and there is something you can do for me. Search the public records. Find me a dozen or so head-shots of Hale Tibbot. Before and after he came to town.”

“Photographs?”

“Yeah. Hero shots, glamour shots. The more definition the better.”

Sergeant Stanley felt he’d inspired the chief somehow, but he had no idea what the boss was thinking. The sergeant’s talent lay in administration not solving mysteries. But if the chief wanted pictures of the victim, he’d find them. In whatever number was required.

“I’m on it, Chief,” he said.

Ron smiled to himself. He wasn’t sure what he’d learn, but he felt he’d seized on something important. Instincts he’d taken for granted in L.A. hadn’t deserted him.

In fact, he had an insight how to impress Keely when she got to town.

He could have had the sarge reserve a hotel room for Keely’s arrival tomorrow.

Instead, he called Marjorie Fitzroy at the Renaissance.

Didn’t ask for the biggest suite in the hotel.

Told her he wanted the special one the public didn’t know about.

John Tall Wolf was pleased when Ron Ketchum called him and asked if he wanted to be in on the interview of the man and boy who discovered the bomb that morning.

“Very much,” Tall Wolf said. “You won’t mind if I do a little more talking this time?”

Ron gave it a beat before saying, “Sure. But let’s see if we can get our timing right.”

Meaning don’t interrupt, talk over each other.

“No problem,” Tall Wolf said.

“Meet you in front of your hotel in ten minutes.”

Tall Wolf hadn’t told the chief where he was staying, but wasn’t surprised he’d taken the time to find out.

“Sure, be right down.”

The special agent felt the chief was playing things straight with him, so far. He also knew that the man was under pressure. Had to deal with things he’d rather not discuss. Wasn’t hard to figure out what.

Tall Wolf wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t googled Hale Tibbot’s name after he got back to his room. The local paper, the
Prospector,
had dozens of stories on the guy. How he’d had the nerve to run for mayor just a year after moving to town.

The way Tall Wolf saw it, Tibbot must’ve made his plans
before
he moved to Goldstrike. The developer saw the town as a plum ripe for picking, but only if he could displace Clay Steadman. The mayor had run for reelection unopposed more often than not. Tibbot also had a long record of getting his own way. You put the two on a collision course and …

Tibbot wound up not defeated but dead.

Might make a cop wonder, that sort of thing.

If the cop, in this case Chief Ron Ketchum, had been given a second chance in his professional life by the man he might otherwise consider a prime suspect in the commission of Tibbot’s murder, why, that particular cop might feel a conflict of interest.

Tall Wolf, not beholden to the mayor, certainly considered him a suspect.

The fact that Marlene Flower Moon knew Clay Steadman only added a reason to be suspicious. With Coyote working her wiles, there was no telling who might be to blame. Or who would wind up taking it.

Roger Sutherland didn’t have a big money house on the lake shore. He had the next best thing, a medium big money house on a ridge opposite a public park and an unobstructed view of the lake. The chief and the special agent introduced themselves to the Sutherland family.

Jessica Sutherland surprised Ron by leaning forward and kissing his cheek.

“Thank you for saving our lake,” she said.

Roger and Brant Sutherland shook the chief’s hand.

John Tall Wolf kept a straight face.

The men in the family led the two coppers into Roger’s home studio.

A photographic portrait of the Sutherland family hanging on the wall behind Roger’s desk was lit by a sunbeam as the foursome entered the room.

John Tall Wolf smiled. “Beautiful picture, great placement. Must get that light most of the day, this time of year.”

Ron looked at the glass wall and the skylight that admitted the sunshine.

He could guess how Roger Sutherland would feel if the city condemned the nearby public park and allowed a high-rise filled with condos to be put up between his house and Lake Adeline, “our lake,” as his wife thought of it. The Sutherlands and their peers in scenic privilege would file suits to stop construction. Others with a more rustic turn of mind might just unload their firearms on any politician who dared to consider doing such a thing.

If Hale Tibbot had been elected mayor, he might not have survived his first term.

Come to that, if some ornery soul, other than Clay Steadman, had gained advance notice that the picturesque vista he’d long taken for granted might be stolen from him by a scheming real estate developer, he might decide to take a prophylactic approach. Ding the sonofabitch with the big plans before he even got his financing in place.

That thought enlarged Ron’s possible suspect pool beyond reckoning.

The chief felt Tall Wolf give him a light nudge.

“Sorry,” Ron said. “I was just taken by your view.”

“We love it,” Roger told him.

“I don’t ever want to live anywhere else,” Brant said.

Ron and Tall Wolf declined the offer of a drink and took the seats Roger offered. The homeowner took a chair opposite them and his son stood next to him.

“How can we help you?” Roger asked.

“Tell us about your morning,” Ron said, “from the moment you left your house until you called 911.”

“That’s a pretty short story, I’m afraid,” Roger told the lawmen. “Sunrise today was 5:36 a.m. Our plan was to be on the water by then, and we were. We got up an hour earlier, brushed our teeth, got dressed, packed our gear and provisions for the day and drove to the marina. We were the first boat out that I could tell … except for that boat we found, of course.”

Roger turned to Brant. “Is that about the way you remember it, buddy?”

Brant furrowed his brow in concentration.

Then he said, “Well, on the drive down to the marina, I did see this one truck.”

Ron and Tall Wolf stood on the police dock at the shoreline of Lake Adeline at sunset, scheduled that day at 8:20 p.m. The lake patrol coppers told Ron there hadn’t been a recreational boater on the lake for the past fifty minutes. No one intended to get sideways with Clay Steadman when it came to preventing a disaster.

That and they didn’t want to be on the water if a bomb off nearby.

“That’s the whole point of terrorism, scaring people,” Ron said.

Tall Wolf asked, “Who are they more afraid of, the mayor or the bad guys?”

“Bad guys come and go, the mayor is forever.”

Brant Sutherland had told them the truck he’d seen was either dark green or dark blue. Maybe a little of each. It wasn’t new. At least it wasn’t shiny. But it didn’t look
real
old either. It wasn’t a big truck. More like an SUV. He wasn’t sure if it was a personal vehicle or the kind someone with a city job might drive.

“I was still kind of tired,” Brant said of the moment he’d seen the vehicle.

And he was eight years old.

Roger Sutherland sketched a vehicle from his son’s description.

Shaded it with green first. No, Brant said. Roger added some blue shading.

“That’s sort of it.”

Roger made a copy for himself and gave the drawing to the chief. “If Brant remembers anything else, I’ll send you an update.”

The chief and the special agent spent two hours driving around town looking for any vehicle that came close to resembling Roger Sutherland’s rendition of his son’s memory. They made three stops, spoke briefly to the drivers, two residents and a tourist. Eyeballed them. Talked to them. Weighed the information they collected and didn’t get the least tingle of guilt from any of them. They did keep the information gleaned from the driver’s licenses and the vehicle’s tags. They entered the names and numbers into Ron’s computer. You never knew. Someone with a far darker nature might be driving one of those SUVs the next time they spotted it.

Ron bought dinner for himself and Tall Wolf at a Japanese steak house.

“You up to working through the night, special agent?” he asked.

“Patrol? The mountains or the lake?”

“Both. You have a preference?”

“I’ll take the water.”

“Okay. Just remember, it’s cold and deep.”

Tall Wolf nodded. “I’ll wear my life vest. You have some woolies I can put on?”

“We’ll find something to keep you warm. Probably won’t be
too
small.”

“Snug’s okay.”

The Goldstrike PD managed to outfit its federal colleague without discomfort. But Tall Wolf didn’t want to take one of the department’s patrol craft. Damn things had cops written all over them, literally. He wanted something less conspicuous. Lull any bad guys he might meet into underestimating him.

Ron got the keys to Officer Dennehy’s Sea Ray Bow Rider. It was tricked out with all sorts of electronics. And, being a cop’s boat, it had a spotlight. Dennehy took the special agent through all the controls. Pretended like he didn’t worry about someone else using his boat.

Said he’d topped off the gas tank that afternoon.

After the patrol officer left them, Tall Wolf turned to Ron.

“So what do you think, Chief?” he asked. “Just a coincidence you find a bomb the same morning Hale Tibbot turns up dead?”

Ron said, “I think the same thing about coincidences you do, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. I don’t see the connection yet, but I’ll be surprised if we don’t find one.”

A more honest appraisal than what Tall Wolf had offered Marlene.

The chief said, “Maybe we’ll both be smarter tomorrow.”

The two men shook hands on that. Tall Wolf set off onto the lake, handling the Sea Ray like it was something he’d done before. Ron watched until he was out of sight. They’d agreed to check in with each other hourly. Tall Wolf took the odd numbers, Ron the even ones.