Blood Silence (23 page)

“And you set up Meredith so everybody looks at the affair, and nobody looks at what they were doing professionally,” Mac mused, drinking some water. It was a good misdirection play.

Mac’s cell phone rang, and the display showed Judge Dixon. It was just after 6:00
P.M.
or 7:00
P.M.
in DC, after office hours. “Judge, what can I do for you?” Mac asked.

“It’s what can I do for you for a change,” the Judge retorted. “I have information for you on Soutex Solutions. It turns out that enterprise is owned by—”

“Callie Gentry,” Mac finished.

“You are well informed as usual,” the Judge answered. “May I ask how?”

Mac explained the events of the last twenty-four hours and the theory of the case percolating in his head. He finished with, “I might not have put this all together if you hadn’t had me look into the Weatherly case in DC.”

“Watch your back, son,” the Judge cautioned. “I certainly don’t like how that one worked out.”

“Me neither,” Mac answered, staring at his Sig Sauer and Glock 9, both sitting on the coffee table five feet away. “So what else have you found, Judge?”

“In having my contact look into Soutex Solutions, they found the connection to Gentry and to her land holdings in northwest North Dakota. Those lands are held under a different company called—”

“Gentry Enterprises,” Mac finished.

“Correct. She bought these parcels of property ten years ago from the Sioux Companies.”

“That much I knew, Judge. I don’t suppose you can tell me who Sioux Companies bought the land from?” Mac asked, typing notes on his laptop.

“They bought it from Antonin Rahn.”

That got Mac’s attention. “Old man Rahn. No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Is he even still alive?”

“Honestly, Mac, nobody really knows for sure.”

Antonin Rahn was one of America’s wealthiest and most controversial figures thirty years ago. A man Mac learned about in economics classes in college and in an environmental law class in law school.

An unabashed oilman and the only child of one of Texas’s original oilmen, Wentworth Rahn, Antonin Rahn became a lightning rod when two Rahn Oil tankers collided during a storm in the Gulf of Mexico just outside of Galveston Bay. The collision and resulting spill of over seven million barrels of oil was a massive environmental disaster, to which Rahn Oil was slow to react and take responsibility. It was ultimately determined that Rahn’s ships didn’t have functioning radar systems, and in the storm and dark of the night, the ships didn’t realize the danger until it was too late. The investigation and resulting criticism and blame caused Rahn, an outspoken anti-environmentalist, who claimed the EPA as his sworn enemy, to lash out at his critics. He was eviscerated in the press, shunned by the oil industry, particularly in his home state of Texas, and destroyed personally in the process. The only thing he didn’t lose was all of his money.

For years, the Rahn name was synonymous with environmental disasters and oil spills. It took the
Exxon Valdez
spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, seven years later, to let the Rahn name fade from public discourse.

“Rahn pretty much dropped out of public view after the Galveston Bay spill and the resulting fallout,” Dixon reported. “Then a few years later, his wife died, and he left Texas and disappeared completely. Nobody has heard from him in years, and nobody really seems to know where he is or if he is still alive.”

“Judge, how is that possible?” Mac asked incredulously. “Multibillionaires don’t just disappear. Not in this day and age. The world is too small.”

“He didn’t disappear in this day and age—he disappeared thirty years ago. And when he did disappear, he was still a very, very wealthy man. If he hid it, sheltered it, and made it hard to track by turning it to cash, he could disappear. This is especially true if he maintained the discipline to stay away and stay out of the fray.”

“And I suppose he went underground before we became so good at tracing money and where it went,” Mac speculated. “It wasn’t all done electronically as it is now. I doubt he was living check to check.”

“He wasn’t,” the Judge affirmed. “He was one of the richest men in the world at the time, and while he took a big hit, he still had plenty to spare and to live quite comfortably. That’s what is kind of amazing about this. He had billions, and nobody is really sure where it all went. He liquidated and sold everything, converted it to cash, and vanished.”

“Kids?”

“Two, both deceased. One, a son, died in a car accident before the oil spill. Another, a daughter, died of breast cancer about fifteen years ago, and his wife died not long after the spill, too. There are a few grandchildren but otherwise no real family to speak of.”

“Well, under your theory, Judge, he had twenty to thirty years to hide and shelter it. Soutex Solutions is essentially a dead end. Gentry Enterprises is a dead end. Sioux Companies is gone. So those all seem to be a dead end. You’re not finding anything else as to his business interests. He probably bought a country somewhere and is living out his days an obscure and wealthy man.”

“But then why have Gentry doing what she’s doing, assuming she’s doing it for him?” Dixon asked.

“How would we know that? Do we know that? Just because his name was once attached to this land doesn’t mean he’s still involved. I mean, is there a relationship between Rahn and Gentry?”

“Maybe,” the Judge answered. “Gentry’s father, Leroy, worked for Rahn years ago as his chief counsel out of a big Houston law firm. Maybe that’s the connection.”

“That’s really thin,” Mac replied, skeptical of the Rahn tie.

“I thought you liked thin. I’m operating on the assumption you like thin.”

“You’re looking for Rahn, aren’t you?” Mac asked, already knowing the answer.

“I have some inquiries out, but I’ve not heard anything back. He could be dead, and we don’t know it. But you said earlier the world is too small for someone like him to disappear. If he’s alive, he’s out there somewhere. So if I do find him, I’ll let you know.”

“If you do, I’d very much like to talk to him,” Mac replied, staring at his murder wall. “Maybe he would know what this is all really about.”

“Maybe he’s behind all of this?” the Judge speculated.

“Maybe. Someone with money is.”

“I’ll be in touch,” the Judge stated and then signed off.

Mac continued to work through the evidence, finally making his way back to Biggs’s pictures of Sterling and Gentry. Biggs followed Sterling and Gentry for nearly three weeks, so Meredith knew something was up with her husband. Mac never bought the stunned spouses when they found out about an affair. You know. He knew—he knew by behavior, excuses, timing, events, and just sense. He knew Meredith was being unfaithful.

Meredith knew as well.

Like him, she wanted proof.

Cynically, he briefly thought she might be looking to get back from Sterling what she’d lost from Mac. After all, it was Sterling’s infidelity clause that Mac used to blackmail Meredith into accepting his lopsided divorce terms four years ago.

Half of the Grand Brew stock would have left her with millions.

Mac got it all.

Biggs put in the work and the miles, as there were pictures from not only the Twin Cities but also Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, and Williston, North Dakota. There were pictures of Sterling and Gentry at restaurants, bars, walking into office buildings, touring land, and going into and out of hotels. It took the private investigator three weeks, but eventually he got the money shots in Bismarck at a MainStay Suites. They were similar to the ones Biggs got for him over four years ago.

Mac called Biggs.

“I wondered when you’d get around to me.” Biggs guffawed. “I suppose I should be saying thanks for the referral.”

“Funny,” Mac answered. “Where’s my commission, then?”

“The check’s in the mail.”

They discussed the case for a while, and Mac provided some insight into what he was thinking and how Meredith was set up. “So what were Sterling and Gentry up to?”

“Besides each other?” Biggs asked.

“Yes.”

“I sometimes wondered, Mac. I mean, I could tell, two days in, that there was something between them. But I did wonder what they were doing, and I couldn’t really tell you. They went to lots of meetings, met with lots of people, drove around Williston, Minot, and Bismarck, looking at land with oil fields, and I figured maybe they were scouting and looking to buy.”

Mac was looking through the pictures Biggs took and found one from Bismarck and did a double take on the third face. “Biggsy, in Bismarck, the restaurant—do you know who the third person was at the table?”

“That was at The Stockyard. Let me look.” Mac could hear Biggs shuffling through photos. “I got it, Mac.” Biggs took a moment. “I don’t know who that guy is. I think it was the only time I ever saw him. He seemed like one of many similar kinds of people they talked with. Why?”

“Because,” Mac answered, standing now, holding up the best of Biggs’s pictures with the man’s face and putting it up to another picture on the wall, “he looks a lot like a man named Adam Murphy.”

“Who’s Adam Murphy?”

“He’s a man who was murdered later on in the night that you took this picture,” Mac replied. “Let me ask you a question, Biggsy. Do you remember anyone else who looked familiar, who was maybe following Gentry and Sterling around?”

“Mac, I’ve been thinking about that for the last couple of days, and I don’t. To be honest, I was following those two and only paid attention to them and to not being seen. So you could say I had blinders on, but I don’t remember anyone or anything that sticks out. I wish I did. I feel like I ended up actually hanging Meredith out to dry.”

“Nothing you could do, Biggsy.”

“I know, but still.”

They talked for a few more minutes. Biggs promised to call if he recalled anything that might help.

It was a little after 7:00
P.M.
Mac went back to the refrigerator and took out a Grain Belt Nordeast and plopped himself down on the part of the leather sectional couch that faced his murder wall and stared at it, the lines drawn among the connections, the people, and the elements, and shook his head. There was a lot going on, and Meredith’s role and her case were but a small part of a much larger picture.

“What the hell is going on here?” he muttered, repeatedly running his eyes over the wall.

Then he heard the door to the house open and a clatter of heavy footsteps above him, which knowingly made their way to the steps to the basement. Thundering down were Lich, along with two of his best buddies, the mass of humanity that was Detectives Pat Riley and Bobby Rockford. Riles, the far more senior of the two, was Mac’s father’s last partner, and Rockford, as menacing a detective as you could ever find, was more Mac’s contemporary in age. All were great cops and even better friends, not to mention world-class needlers.

“Did you solve it yet, Hot Shot, or do you need me to do everything for you?” Lich bellowed, punching Mac lightly in the arm.

Greetings were exchanged while the boys made their way to the bar and fetched whatever they wanted.

As a group, they stared down the wall.

“A lot of bodies,” Rock remarked. “
A lot
of bodies.”

“All shot in the head,” Riles added.

“The question is, why?” Lich finished.

“What the heck have you gotten yourself mixed up in here?” Rock asked Mac and then looked back at the wall. “Because whatever it is, my brotha, it looks bad, and it’s about way more than Meredith.”

Mac spent an hour walking them all through where he was at in the case, all while they continued to repeatedly raid his bar and beer fridge.

“Thoughts?” Mac asked.

“So the Bullers are killed on April 19, correct?” Rock started, following the timeline.

“Yes,” Mac replied, standing to the side of the murder wall.

“So that’s what, seven months ago, if my math is right,” Rock said, groaning as he slowly lowered his massive frame down onto the couch. “If these are all connected, and I tend to think they are, then they’re the trigger to this damn thing. What did that family do?”

Mac shrugged. “Best answer I have right now is something. They did something.”

“And somehow what they did, or maybe their death, or maybe both, caught the attention of Callie Gentry, because it’s about that time or not long after that she starts poking around up there and hires Sterling, right?”

“Yes,” Mac answered.

“So the Bullers get Gentry’s attention, then Sterling’s, and they bring everyone else to the party,” Riles suggested, sitting down next to his partner.

“I’m not sure that couch can withstand that much weight,” Mac tweaked. “I can already see it buckling under the pressure.”

“Whatever,” Riles replied with a middle-finger salute. “A more important discussion point other than our increasing weight is that Sterling and Gentry were looking into the same thing you’re now looking into, Mac. They were on to something up there. They got this Weatherly, Murphy, and maybe this Kane involved in it,
and they are all dead
.”

“Which tells me,” Rock suggested, “that whoever killed them didn’t just show up. They were following, watching, observing these folks, and when they got too close, took them out.”

“I talked to Biggs. He didn’t notice anyone following, although he admitted he was focusing on J. Frederick Sterling and Callie Gentry. He had no idea there was a bigger game going on.”

“That’s probably why he isn’t dead,” Rock answered.

Lyman descended down the steps.

“Now it’s a party!” Rock roared. “Maybe now Mac’ll let us drink from the top shelf.”

“You know where it is,” Mac retorted. “Like I’d deny you, big man. If I did, you’d sit your big, black ass down on me.”

“Gentlemen, are you all on my payroll now?” Lyman wisecracked.

“Just helping out our former junior detective,” Riles retorted. “I don’t have to tell you that he still needs seasoning.”

“What do you have, Mac?” Lyman asked.

“Connections,” Mac answered as he waved to the wall and quickly explained. “Lots and lots of connections.”