Blood Silence (38 page)

“Hutchinson rented it?”

“Yup,” Coolidge answered. “We also have the odd traffic camera operating in and around the East Union Tavern, particularly as a vehicle would come over the Eleventh Street bridge, and lo and behold, what do we see?”

“The Tahoe?”

“Better than that. I have the taxi
and then
the Tahoe.”

“And I would say it was this Wilton who was in the East Union Tavern,” Mac stated, looking through the photos again.

“Mac, I’ve re-watched the video several times, took some more screen captures, and I sure think it’s him. Perhaps we could have some people do some enhancement on this footage, and we could even get a better look, but I’d bet my pension it’s him.”

“Did they stay in DC that night?”

“Yes,” Coolidge answered. “They stayed at the Hampton Inn and flew out first thing in the morning, first to Minneapolis, and then up to Bismarck.”

“Which fits,” Mac concurred, “because the next night, I’ve got a photo of the two of them in a bar in Bismarck.”
Thank you, Johnny Biggs,
he thought. “That’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.”

“I’ve worked with a lot less, but even so, Mac, I have guys out right now checking with businesses in the area of the tavern again. Now that we know exactly what to look for, I want to see if we can tie this up further.”

“Great work, Linc. Keep me posted,” Mac clicked off from the call as he descended the steps of the jet and walked across the tarmac to a waiting black Ford Explorer driven by Leah Brock. “What did you find?”

Brock handed him a manila folder. “A week before they died, the Buller kids were seen by their family doctor here in Williston. In fact, the whole family reported headaches and difficulty breathing. The two kids were vomiting, and Melody reported constant diarrhea.”

Mac read through the folder. “It’s like they were being poisoned. Why didn’t this show up on the autopsy report?”

Brock shook her head. “Because the cause of death was obvious—lead poisoning via execution. Why look for anything else?”

“Right, because if there was evidence of poisoning—”

“People might start wondering why,” Brock finished as she drove east on Highway 2, toward the Buller residence.

“You guys have people on the lookout for our two cowboys?” Mac asked as he closed the folder.

“Yes. It’s going out as we speak in conjunction with the sheriff’s office, and it will be statewide within hours. Of course, the chief asked how I happened across this information.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I got it from you, that it came from your contacts in Minneapolis, and that in general he needed to pull his head out of his ass and start helping and not hindering you.”

Mac laughed. “How’d he take that?”

Brock shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really care.”

“Thatta girl. Did it feel good to do the job?”

“It might cost me my job.”

“Nah,” Mac answered. “And if it does, you just let me know. I’ll get you a job.” And then he added with a mischievous smile, “Or maybe I’ll find a way to get rid of your chief. I know people.”

She gave him a horrified look.

“I mean political people.”

“Speaking of people, do you think these two killers are really still hanging around?”

Mac looked up and stroked his chin and then slowly shook his head. “I kind of doubt it. Did you ever watch the HBO show
The Wire
?”

“
Shiiitt
.” Brock smiled, doing her best Clay Davis. “Best show ever.”

“I
knew
there was a reason I liked you,” Mac answered, smiling broadly. “These two guys went after the sheriff. Remember what Omar yelled to Wee-Bey after he shot Stink?”

Brock grinned broadly. She knew the quote and repeated it in Omar’s voice, “Yo, listen here, Bey. Come at the king—”

“You best not miss,” Mac finished enthusiastically and then raised his eyebrows. “They missed, and now the heat is going to be too much.”

Brock turned left off of Highway 2 and drove along the dirt road then turned left onto the driveway, bringing them to the back of the house. A sheriff’s deputy awaited their arrival and then cut the seal on the door. Brock and Mac pushed inside the house.

When Mac was in here twenty-four hours earlier, he was under the belief that the crime scene had been staged to make it look as though meth heads had robbed and killed the family. He went to the room the family had used as an office. This was the one room that had been left largely undisturbed, in part because there would be no reason there would be anything in this room of interest to a meth head. But there would if the crime scene was staged and the killers were after more than simply killing the family.

He opened the first file cabinet, and it was clear it was the farming cabinet, with folders containing the records for the farm. Mac turned to the second filing cabinet. While the upper drawer contained more farm records, it was the lower drawer that proved more illuminating. “I love organized people—they make it so much easier to investigate,” he exclaimed. The lower drawer contained several empty slots where green hanging folders once hung. Documents had been removed.

“Did you run their credit cards and bank statements?”

“I did, and we also got copies of the store receipts from Walmart and Albertsons,” Brock answered and pulled out another folder. “It was as you suspected.”

The Bullers’ credit cards charges and receipts going back two months showed increased purchases for bottled water. Even more importantly, there was the purchase of a water cooler from Blue Water starting in February. Mac walked the whole of the house, and there was no water cooler anywhere. “Why remove the water cooler?” Mac asked, looking at Brock.

“Let’s call Blue Water and see what happened.” Ten minutes later, Brock had the answer. “The water cooler was never returned. The company stopped the deliveries after they found the police tape up.”

“It was taken because they didn’t want to leave any evidence behind that there was a problem with the water. The credit card charges show four cases of bottled water were purchased two days before they were killed. They’re
all
gone. No family of four drinks four cases of water, ninety-six bottles, in four days,” Mac stated as he took one last look in the small kitchen pantry. There were still dry and canned goods in the closet as well as some soda, but no water.

“It’s circumstantial,” Brock suggested as she followed.

“Yes, but add piece after circumstantial piece and you get a pattern, you get a picture, and you end up with an incontrovertible answer,” Mac replied. He looked off in the distance, out the kitchen window toward the oil well a half mile up the road, and thought of one of the things he’d discussed with Rahn. “I wonder,” he muttered as he pushed out the back door.

“You wonder what?” Leah asked, following him out the door.

“Let’s go ask.”

“Go ask what?” She didn’t understand.

“You’ll see,” Mac answered. “Let’s drive down to that well.”

“Okay.”

Brock drove farther north, back to the Deep Core 4 oil well. She put the Explorer in park, and Mac jumped out of the passenger seat and made a beeline for the foreman, the man he spoke with yesterday.

“Mr. Westrum, do you remember me from yesterday? I was out here with Sheriff Rawlings.”

“I sure do. I heard what happened to the sheriff. Is he okay?”

“We’re still awaiting word,” Mac answered. “I asked you about Adam Murphy yesterday.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Okay, Mr. Westrum, I want you to think back to last spring. Do you ever remember him being out here last spring, maybe in April sometime?”

Westrum turned his head slightly in thought, and Mac could tell something was registering with him. “Now that you mention it, I … I think he was.”

“Doing what?”

“He was running some tests of some kind, or at least that’s what it looked like.”

Mac and Brock shared a quick look. “What kind of tests?” Mac asked.

The man shrugged. “I don’t really know. I never asked.”

“How do you know he was running tests?” Leah asked.

“Well, that’s what it looked like to me, ma’am. I saw him doing things, using equipment and computers out in the pasture there where the horses used to graze, but I didn’t really watch him, if you know what I mean. I have enough right here to keep me busy. But he was out there, and I noticed him.”

Mac was jotting down notes and asked, “How long did he run tests?”

The man thought about it for a bit. “At least a few days.”

“What’s a few? Two? Three?” Brock pushed, taking notes of her own.

“I think it was two, ma’am, but I can’t be sure. It was more than one day, I know that much.”

Mac looked up from his notepad. “Was it before or after what happened at the Buller place?”

Westrum took off his hardhat and scratched his head. “You know, Mr. McRyan, I think it was before.”

“Do you know why he was running tests?” Brock asked. “Assuming that’s what he was doing.”

The man shook his head. “No, ma’am. I don’t even think I talked to him. I just saw him out there, might have waved to him, but he was out there working.”

“He was in the Bullers’ pasture. Did he ever talk to the Bullers?”

“The family killed down the road?”

“Yes.”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know. He could have, I suppose … but I honestly don’t know.”

Mac and Brock spent another five minutes following up, and then she tipped her head for them to leave.

They drove halfway back to the farmhouse, and Mac said, “Stop for a second.”

Brock pulled to the side of the road.

Mac jumped out and approached the barbwire fence, carefully slipped through, and walked out in the pasture fifty yards or so to a thin wood stake with a small orange streamer flittering in the wind. The stake was hammered into the ground in the middle of a large, round, bare patch of the pasture. Mac crouched down and lightly picked at the dirt of the bare spot. He was halfway between the farmhouse and the well. He stood up, took out his phone, took pictures of the site, and then walked back to the truck.

“What did you find?”

“Maybe the place Murphy was running those tests. It’s just a stake in the ground, but if you look closely, it appears some digging took place. He runs his tests, gets his results, writes his memo, and gives it to someone at Deep Core. The tests show the water is being poisoned by the chemicals used to drill that well and probably the one farther in the distance. The date on that memo is April 14, the same day they went to the doctor, and then five days later, the Bullers are dead.” Mac shook his head and muttered, “Those fuckers.” He turned to Brock. “Leah, I should have thought of this sooner. We have these cover IDs. We need to see what kind of activity is on their credit history around the time of the murders of the Bullers. Were they in the area? Did they fly up here? We know they flew from Bismarck to Minneapolis to DC and then back. Do you have someone who can run that?”

“I do,” Brock answered and called it in while she drove past the Buller house and turned right on Highway 2, heading west back toward Williston. “I have the chief on it,” she reported.

“The chief?”

“Let’s just say he’s coming around on you.”

“Self-preservation.”

“That too. He’s over his head and kind of a dick sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to get it right.”

“He just doesn’t know how to get there.”

“Sometimes, no.”

Mac’s phone rang. It was Bud Subject. This was the call he’d been waiting for the most.

“Bud, tell me good news.”

“It took Ed and I awhile, but I’ll be damned, Mac, we found it. R.C. Wilton rented himself a silver Mercedes S550 from Twin Cities Mercedes the day Sterling and Gentry were killed. They returned it the next morning. It’s an exact match to the model Meredith drives, Mac. And guess what, you were right about that and …”

“The GPS?” Mac asked excitedly. “It was turned on! Tell me,
tell me
, it was turned on!”

“Bingo!” Gerdtz bellowed. “Turns out you don’t rent a Mercedes without turning on the GPS, at least not from Twin Cities Mercedes. We’ve got the track on it, Mac. They drove it out to Lake Minnetonka, right to the lake house.”

Mac closed his eyes, smiled, pumped his fist, and grunted a quiet “yes” through a gritted smile.

“What?” Brock asked.

“I just cleared Meredith.” Then he said to Subject, “Ed and Bud, I love you guys! I really do. I can’t thank you two enough.”

“All in a day’s—or make that night’s—work,” Subject answered.

“Bullshit!” Gerdtz bellowed in the background. “I expect an open tab at the pub, Mac! And I get to smoke inside.”

“That’s against the law, Ed.”

“Aren’t the McRyans the law in St. Paul?”

“On that night, we will be.”

“Okay, now get your ass out of there, would you,” Subject ordered. “Your work is done. You’ve got her clear—that was your job, and mission accomplished—get your ass out of there.”

“My work is
almost
done,” Mac answered. “There are a couple more things to take care of.”

Mac hung up as Brock rolled them up to the County Line.

“Are you going to tell me why we’re here?” Brock asked when she put her Explorer into park right in front of the bar.

“Just come with me. I’m satisfying a hunch,” Mac ordered as he jumped out of the truck and strode inside and back to the sheriff’s table. He looked under the table and around the pictures hanging near Sam Rawlings’s favorite table, and then he looked up to the light canister in the ceiling. He pushed the table out of the way and pulled over one of the stools and stood on it. Peering inside, he saw it and shook his head, almost in amusement.

“What?” Brock asked.

Mac held his finger up to his mouth and climbed back down, went to Brock, and whispered in her ear. “The man I got on the plane with last night saw the whole thing go down outside. He said the Tahoe that hit us timed it perfectly. The only way they could do that is they knew we were coming out. I was thinking they either had eyes inside or …”

“Ears!”

“Give the girl a cigar.”