Killer View (28 page)

“Let me get this right: you’re
mad
at me for getting us out of there?”

“I’m not
mad
at you. But they had no evidence.”

“They had us locked up in interrogation rooms. They had my phone.
My
phone, not yours. All the photographs were on my phone. Besides, don’t give me that: it’s why you brought me along, right? We established that earlier.”

“It’s
not
why,” Walt countered. “I hadn’t even thought about Hillabrand until you brought him up.”

“That’s not true,” she said.

“It
is
! I asked you along because I needed photographs shot. If we hadn’t been forced down, I’d have gone in there on foot tonight. To that construction work. But, listen, I never once considered using your . . . relationship . . . with Hillabrand to my advantage—our advantage. Your mention of it actually amused me, Fiona. You don’t know me very well if you’d think I’d do such a thing.”

“There is no
relationship
with Roger. Just FYI. I’d say that pretty much just came to an end tonight. I felt like a teenager calling Daddy. Who knows what he thought. Ten minutes later, we were released. You can thank me later.”

She hurried off toward the towplane, where the pilot was standing by. Walt packed in with her behind the pilot, and they sat pressed shoulder to shoulder for the short thirty-minute flight. She never said a word to him. He tried twice to break the silence but failed. At the FBO in Sun Valley, she marched to her parked Subaru, climbed in, and drove off without looking back.

Walt arrived home, depressed, and wondering if the INL would take legal action. Hillabrand being dragged into it complicated matters.

He parked the Cherokee out front as he almost always did, despite a garage around back. He liked the police cruiser being seen sitting in front of the house. He hurried up to the front porch, concerned—but not overly so—by the front porch light being off and the rest of the house being so dark. He always encouraged Lisa to keep several lights on.

He managed to key open the door in the dark and flip on the lights.

“Lisa?” he hissed softly.

The couch was empty. He usually found her dozing there at this hour. She’d probably fallen asleep next to one of the twins while reading a bedtime story.

“Lisa?” he repeated more loudly.

His chest tightened.

He hurried through the house, carefully opening Emily’s bedroom door first.
Empty
. Then Nikki’s.
Empty
. He checked the face of his cell phone: eleven messages. He had assumed them all to be work related; consumed with the events of the evening, he’d planned to answer them once he got home.

He tried the master bedroom.

Dark and empty.

He had the phone to his ear now, the first of the messages replaying. With no way to skip messages, he was forced to endure the mundane while anticipating the worst.

Finally, he heard Lisa’s voice, bordering on hysterical: “Walt? It was Gail. She was . . . I don’t know . . . I’ve never seen her like that. She said you two had an agreement about no women. I thought she meant me. I tried to reason, but she just stormed right past me, saying how she was the mother. The girls are fine. She has them. Please call me. I didn’t know what to do, Walt. I didn’t know what to do.”

He threw the phone. It skipped off the dining-room table and hit the window and broke the glass.

Walt hurried to the door; he knew exactly what to do: get his children back. He caught himself on the threshold, reconsidering. The girls had had enough for one night. Gail wouldn’t have taken them to Brandon’s—that was indeed the agreement.

He stepped back inside, slammed the front door shut, and locked it. Switched off the light so he didn’t have to see how empty it was without them. He heard the sounds of his own labored breathing. He extracted a single truth from the depths of his depression: they’d crossed a barrier, arriving at a finality to the truce that had been maintained for far too long.

THE HAILEY LIBRARY HAD BEEN A SUPERMARKET IN ITS former life. Walt came here often enough with the twins, but he still couldn’t shake the memory; he expected to smell fresh coffee and doughnuts. Instead, he passed the front desk and a table displaying NEW ARRIVALS. There was an end cap on the nearest stack devoted entirely to Hemingway. Walt wished the fame and lore of Hemingway could have been attributed to the work of the great writer when he’d lived in the valley, but, instead, most of the fame of the place came from the fact he’d died here. Being known as a place where a famous writer ate the wrong end of a shotgun was nothing but trouble for the county sheriff. Others had come here for like purpose. Not so great to be
the
trendy suicide locale.

He’d never paid any attention to the library’s conference room. It held an oval table that sat ten, with just enough room behind each chair to slip past. There was a pull-down whiteboard at the end of the room, carrying notes written in pink marker that appeared to have something to do with a book sale fund-raiser.

He didn’t appreciate being made to wait, but Danny Cutter had sounded frantic on the phone, and Walt made it a point to tread lightly with the billionaires and their families. And so he waited. Five minutes melted into ten.

Finally, the door opened.

Danny Cutter had that tanned, outdoorsy thing working for him. He wore blue jeans, a pressed white shirt, and an Orvis outdoor coat, black fabric with a brown leather collar and trim.

“Sorry I made you wait,” he said, shaking hands with Walt only after he’d locked the conference-room door and twisted the blinds closed. “I thought if someone followed me, they wouldn’t see you entering
after
me, and that just felt better.”

“Someone’s following you?”

Cutter shook his head with a look of disgust. “Who knows?”

“Sit,” Walt said.

Cutter took the chair next to Walt and spoke quietly. “You know about the charges at the hotel? The violation of my parole? Chuck Webb said you knew about it, said it could have been worse—much worse—and that I had you to thank for that.”

“Wouldn’t know what he’s talking about,” Walt said, stone-faced.

“Someone called it in to the Sun Valley police. Said I was drunk or stoned or both. So I ended up under suspicion, and they required a blood test because of the parole and I had coke in my system—coke I have no memory of doing, I might add. And that puts me in violation.”

“Chuck told me most of this,” Walt allowed. “I didn’t know the blood workup was back.”

“None of this matters to you, I know, but the blowback that followed is what counts.”

“What kind of blowback?” Walt asked. He was feeling edgy all of a sudden, like the room was too small.

Cutter glanced nervously toward the locked door. He lowered his voice, forcing Walt to concentrate on his every word.

“I shouldn’t tell you this. I know that. You, of all people. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. But the thing is, they warned me if I violate the NDA I signed I’m shit up the creek. The way my probation reads, you’re supposed to be informed of any possible violations, so I’m taking a big chance, Sheriff. That’s my point: a very big chance.”

“Slow down, please. You signed a nondisclosure agreement?”

“I’ve been bought off. Fifty thousand dollars
plus
all legitimate expenses arising from the contamination. I was told that if I accepted the money, the parole violation would eventually be dropped, that Trinity could return to production in as little as two weeks, and that I’d be reimbursed for lost inventory and gross revenue for the period in question. All I do is show them our books for the past three months and they’ll average my revenue stream.”

Walt couldn’t help but remember the stench of the burning sheep and Peavy’s reminder of the loss of money that any mass grave would mean for the rancher.

“Who offered you this?”

“No idea. A call to my cell phone. A private number. I tried to trace it. I even called my brother—he owns the cell company, after all. Dead end.”

“A hoax,” Walt proposed.

“The next day, five grand was in my checking account—my personal checking account, not my company account. I checked with the bank: the deposit was cash, made through an ATM. Totally untraceable.” He glanced back at the door again. “Second phone call said the five grand was just to prove the offer was for real.”

“The terms? What did they want from you?”

“They’ll provide a script for me. I’m to stick to the script.”

“And the CDC?”

“Dr. Bezel’s report will apparently support whatever it is I’m supposed to say.”

Walt attempted to process all that he’d been told. Who could control the CDC like that? “Why me, Danny?”

“Why you?” he blurted out, laughing and grimacing at the same time. “I’m already in violation of my parole—this coke thing—which, incidentally, was a
total
frame job. I’m not saying I expect you to believe that, but the way it happened—”

“I believe it,” Walt said, interrupting. “Tell me about the payoff.”

“I’ve told you everything. Two calls. Sign the NDA. The five grand up front. It all goes away.”

“Who can promise such a thing?” Walt blurted out.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I signed. Are you kidding me? You know the hit I’m going to take? My inventory destroyed. My line shut down. I’m not insured for this kind of thing. Who is? I was sunk. I mean totally screwed. And then this phone call. Fifty K, on top of costs. And they made it clear that if business is off for a while because of this, they’ll take care of me.”

“But . . . why tell me?” Walt repeated.

“I’ve got to be breaking a dozen laws, right? I had a chance to think about it and I came to you. As sweet as this deal is, if it means another twenty months in prison, I’ll pass, thank you very much.”

“It’s nothing my office would have anything to do with, beyond the parole violation.”

“But that’s the point: it’s a clear violation of my parole, right? Doing anything like this?”

“Enlisting in a cover-up? Yeah. That would be federal time. But it’s apparent that whoever is making the offer has a long reach. It could be genuine. And, how do I say this?” He paused. “You aren’t the only one to receive such an offer.”

“They came after
you
?”

“Me? No!” Now it was Walt glancing toward the door. He stood and peeked out the blinds. No one. With his back to Cutter, he said, “What’s important to focus on here, Danny, is that whoever is making the offer is the same person, or persons, who set you up for the coke.”

“I know that.”

“And this just escalates things, doesn’t it? I mean, after this, they’ll have you on accepting a bribe, avoiding a CDC investigation—any number of charges. If they want.”

“That’s why I’m here, Sheriff. Did they frame me on the coke thing just to make sure I’d take this offer or am I being set up now to take a bigger fall? Someone’s coming after me, and I’m screwed either way.”

“I don’t have the answers.”

“I’d rather go bankrupt than return to that damn facility.”

“But you agreed to take the money.”

“Yeah, but it’s only the five grand so far. And I’ve come to you to cut a deal. Buyer’s remorse. I don’t care about the money. I’ve told you everything. Honestly, I have. I will keep the money in escrow, not spend a cent of it. I’ll wear a wire, allow you to tap my phones— whatever you want. I do not want to get on the wrong side of this. Now, I understand I’ve already done that,” he added quickly, “but this is my attempt to fix it.”

“If these people can deliver, then I’m no use to you,” Walt admitted.

“They’ve got to be government, don’t they? I mean, who can make such promises?”

“Or big business,” Walt said, speaking what he was thinking, never a good call.

Cutter leaned back in his chair. “You know who it is,” he said, unable to conceal his surprise.

“I don’t.”

“You have an idea.”

“I imagine you do, too,” Walt said.

“But I don’t! Government, as I’ve said. A private firm, no matter how big, can’t guarantee legal charges dropped. Who in the government cares about my company staying in business? This guy promised my probation violation would be expunged. The NDA gave no hint of who was behind it. I don’t have any idea. Honestly.”

“I think we’re done here, Danny. For both our sakes.”

“Done? I’m not done.”

“I appreciate the information. As to the offer, there’s nothing I can do without warrants, and, if I seek a warrant and it gets back to whoever is making you this offer, that’s not good for anyone.” He thought a moment, working the corners. “I’d like to hear from you if they make contact. If you go the informer route, it’s done through the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I could help with that. But if we go to the wrong guy, my guess is the offer will be pulled and you’ll be back in a federal facility. The coke charge was about discrediting you, Danny. They’ve laid the necessary groundwork so that whatever you say in public can be quickly written off as a desperate man making cheap allegations. It’s been very carefully thought out.”

“Yeah,” Cutter said sarcastically, “let’s admire their work.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Since when is the government that smart?”

Walt cracked a smile. He stood up from the chair and said, “Good luck, Danny.”

“I came to you in good faith, Sheriff. You can’t just walk.”

“I’ve got problems of my own, Danny. I have no choice but to walk. You waited too long. I needed to be brought in before you signed the NDA and agreed to take the money.”

Cutter looked devastated.

Walt scribbled out a name. “Andy Hamilton’s in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle. Andy can’t be bought.” He passed the name to Cutter. “Use my name.”