Bluetick Revenge (6 page)

The next question was why Bugg wanted to hire me. Was it to find Karlynn, the dog, or both? Or something else altogether?
The only way to know was to call him. The safe bet was to ignore him, but he’d surely hire someone else—and that could be
a problem for me. A big problem. I didn’t need anyone roaming around Boulder County asking questions about Karlynn or a bluetick
coonhound. I had to call him.

The final question was whether I could use this to my advantage. The answer was obvious. It was an opportunity to learn what
he knew about Karlynn and the dog. With a little luck, I’d pick up some information that might help the feds put Bugg and
the Sons of Satan away. On top of that, I could probably take Bugg for five or ten grand in cash without lifting a finger.

That night I had another dream about Joy. Joy was a law school classmate I had lived with for several years, but she had died
in a freak auto accident before graduation. I still carried a torch for her, even though she’d been dead more than twenty
years. In the dream we were walking through a ritzy shop, looking at extravagant china and crystal. She would see a piece
she liked, pick it up and examine it, then put it down and look for another. She bought one and we drove away in a Ford Taurus.

I woke up early Friday, made coffee, then read the paper at the dining table. I wore my usual morning attire: a white T-shirt,
tan shorts, and my Adidas flip-flops. It was cold and windy outside but toasty inside. Prince was on the floor beside me,
gnawing on a bone. Buck and Wheat were curled up near the fireplace. I tried to remember the details of my dream and interpret
it, but I could make no sense of it. In fact, I was pretty sure Ford hadn’t introduced the Taurus (or its cousin, the Mercury
Sable) until several years after Joy’s death.

At eight I phoned Matt and told him about the phone message from Bugg and what I was thinking. “Don’t do it,” he said. “The
feds don’t need your help. They’ll have boatloads of evidence by the time this thing comes down.”

“Is there any legal reason I can’t do it?” I asked.

“For starters,” he said, “you’d be guilty of criminal fraud. You’d be taking Bugg’s money under false pretenses. He could
press charges. Or sue you.”

“He’ll be in prison,” I said. “Besides, I have a hunch he’s a big believer in ‘alternative dispute resolution.’” Matt was
not amused.

“Karlynn could sue you, too,” he added. “If something goes wrong and she gets hurt, she’d blame you. She’d say it was a major-league
conflict of interest, and she’d be right.”

“Only if I really intended to do what Bugg wants me to do,” I said.

“What about Anvil?” he said.

“He could be a problem,” I admitted.

“And what about Karlynn? Who’s going to watch her while you’re meeting Bugg?”

“I’ve got a friend who can help,” I said. “Scott McCutcheon. Former Navy SEAL. Fifth-degree black belt.” There was a long
silence.

“You really gonna do this?” he asked.

“My inner child is telling me I have to,” I said.

“Can I do anything?”

“Don’t tell the feds,” I said. “If I give them information, it’s going to be my decision.”

“Fuck,” he said. “Be careful.”

Karlynn wandered downstairs sometime before nine and poured the last of the coffee into one of the colorful mugs I keep in
the kitchen. I’d purchased eight ceramic mugs while visiting my mom in Alaska, and each displayed a colorful Inupiat design.
She wore a pair of cutoff jeans and one of my long-sleeve oxford shirts. My closet was apparently her closet. She looked a
little down. “Something wrong?” I asked as she sat down across from me.

“Aside from the fact that I have no life?”

“Karlynn,” I said, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but I’m sure it’s stressful. The unknown always is. You’ll
get past it.”

“I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life waiting tables in a city I’ve never seen.”

“Think of it as an opportunity,” I said. “You said your life was a mess. This is a chance to start over. You don’t have to
do drugs or run a prostitution ring or hang out with men that beat you. You can try different things, find out what interests
you, maybe go back to school. Start a family, if that’s what you want.”

“Who’d be interested in me?” she replied. I’m not a psychologist, but I had worked with hundreds of young men and women in
the Marine Corps—many from families on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder—and I felt sure Karlynn had a self-esteem
problem. I told her so and suggested she might take advantage of our time together by contacting a therapist. She had plenty
of time and money, and I told her I’d be happy to drive her to as many appointments as she wanted to schedule. “I’ll think
about it,” she said.

Just then Prince raised his head. He looked alert. He raced to the bay window in the living room and began barking wildly,
as if a regiment of raccoons had just marched past, all flipping him the bird in unison. I stood up, grabbed my Glock from
the counter, and walked to the window. Karlynn looked to me for instructions. “Just stay put a minute,” I said. A small pickup
was making its way up the dirt driveway. There was a logo on the driver’s side, but I didn’t recognize it and couldn’t read
the writing. I saw one man in it—a young white man with short hair.

As the truck neared the house, I was able to read the writing beneath the logo: “A-l Courier Service.” The driver parked the
truck and got out, holding a large padded envelope. The truck had commercial plates. I laid the pistol down on the end table
beside the couch and went to the door. “You Mr. Keane?” the man asked. Upon closer inspection of his haircut I noticed a rattail
hanging from the back of his neck. He seemed surprised I was in shorts.

“Yup,”I said. He handed me a large padded envelope, then held out a clipboard and showed me where to sign. The label on the
package told me it was from Keane, Simms & Mercante. Then I remembered, Matt had promised to send copies of the FBI materials
the feds had provided.

“What is it?” Karlynn asked.

“Just a book I ordered,” I said. “I’d forgotten about it.” I took the package to my study and placed it in one of my desk
drawers. Then I walked back to the kitchen. “I guess I’ll take a shower and get dressed,” I said. “Then I’ve got a little
work to do in my office.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. She sounded like a fourth-grader trapped inside on a rainy day.

“Why don’t you make a list of all the things you’ve never done that you would like to do?” I suggested.

“What good would that do?”

“Sometimes it helps to write goals down,” I said. “That’s what all the success gurus say.”

“Do you?” she asked.

“Sort of,” I said. “About fifteen years ago I made a list of one hundred things I’d like to do during my life.” I realized
my mistake too late.

“Can I see it?” she asked. What the hell, I thought.

“Sure,” I said. I retrieved the list from my desk and handed it to her, then went upstairs to shower. By the time I was dressed,
Karlynn had gone back to her room. I heard the sink running and assumed she was washing her face or brushing her teeth. I
went into my study and locked the door. Then I removed the package from the drawer and sat at my desk.

The first document was a memo from Matt to me on the firm’s white linen letterhead:

FROM: Matt Simms

TO: Pepper Keane

RE:Thadeus Bugg and the Sons of Satan

As you requested, I have enclosed copies of all documents in my possession pertaining to Ms. Slade’s case and the Sons of
Satan.

After speaking with the U.S. Attorney and the agents in charge of the investigation, my impression is that the feds are focusing
on three things in connection with Bugg. First, they believe he played a role in the death of an African-American ATF agent
in Lander, Wyoming, last May. That agent, Steve Lowell, had been investigating a Sons of Satan chapter in central Wyoming
in connection with some explosives stolen from one of the ski areas in Jackson Hole. (The ski areas use explosives to trigger
avalanches before some bonehead skis into a high-risk area and causes one.) They found Lowell’s body in a wilderness area
up there. The coroner said he’d been beaten to death with a blunt object.

The second prong of their investigation is the Rankin murder we talked about. Rankin was a small-time hood and a probationary
member of the Sons of Satan. Two years ago a Denver police officer stopped him for a traffic offense, ran a check, and found
out there was a federal warrant out for him on a credit card fraud charge. Rankin immediately offered to help the feds nail
Bugg and his gang on drug charges in return for a walk on the fraud charge. The feds agreed and released him on a $10,000
bond so he could return to the gang. Bugg arranged for a bondsman to post bond. Rankin was found dead the next day. The feds
think Bugg somehow found out about Rankin’s plans and had him killed, but it’s possible the gang killed him as a precautionary
measure. Or not at all, though that seems unlikely.

The third focus of the investigation concerns the gang’s production and distribution of methamphetamine as well as their involvement
in distributing other drugs. The FBI believes Bugg is a major regional supplier, but they haven’t been able to get any help
on that from anyone in the Sons of Satan organization. They are counting on Karlynn to change that.

Bugg has a lengthy criminal history, and I have enclosed a copy of that. He has not been convicted of anything serious in
more than ten years, but he served thirty days last summer on a DUI charge. The feds interviewed his cellmates, but that didn’t
produce any leads.

With respect to Karlynn, I have enclosed copies of all FBI 302’s pertaining to her. Most of these are summaries of interviews
with women who engaged in prostitution for the gang. I’ve also enclosed a copy of Karlynn’s criminal history.

I hope this helps. I wish I had more for you. If you want some general information about motorcycle gangs and their culture,
you can find plenty on the Internet.

I had been a federal prosecutor in Denver many years ago, so I knew that Form 302 was the form FBI agents use to summarize
witness interviews. The feds had interviewed seven women known to have engaged in prostitution for the gang at one time or
another. They described the structure of the prostitution operation. Each woman was affiliated with a gang chapter, and the
chapter was responsible for protecting her and making sure the gang got paid. Karlynn’s role was to keep a stable of willing
women and to serve as something of a bookkeeper. She protected Bugg’s interests by making certain each chapter sent twenty
percent of their prostitution revenues to him. Customers called an unlisted number and described what they wanted. That information
was forwarded to Karlynn, who selected the girl, set the price, and relayed instructions to the customer. The girls and the
local chapter were each supposed to receive 40 percent, though most women interviewed said it had seldom worked out that way.

Karlynn Slade’s criminal history was remarkable only because it was better than I’d expected. She’d been picked up for shoplifting
a couple of times before she was twenty. She’d twice been convicted of prostitution in Omaha, getting probation the first
time and thirty days the second. She’d served six months on a bad-check charge at the age of twenty-five. And that was it.
No felonies.

Bugg’s criminal history was more interesting. The printout showed him to be forty-five years old, with more than a half-dozen
aliases. The physical description listed him at five-eleven and 250 pounds. Red hair, green eyes, freckled complexion, with
a long scar along his left arm and numerous identifying tattoos. Similar to the description Matt had provided when he’d first
asked me to snag Prince.

He had commenced his adult criminal career at the age of eighteen in Arkansas, where he’d been arrested at various times for
misdemeanors such as shoplifting, assault, obstruction of a police officer, resisting arrest, and drunk driving. He’d served
six months in the county jail, then enlisted in the Marine Corps at twenty-one. The Marine Corps wasn’t as picky back then
as it is today.

Upon his completion of boot camp, the Corps assigned him to Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. Less than a year later a court-martial
convicted him of assaulting an officer and sentenced him to six months’ confinement and a bad-conduct discharge.

He had apparently stayed in California, because the printout showed numerous arrests and convictions in that state over the
next fifteen years. Many of the offenses were misdemeanors such as drunk driving, theft, and assault, but he’d served eighteen
months at Folsom on a forgery charge and three years in a federal prison for interstate transportation of a stolen motor vehicle.
He had once been arrested for attempted murder in Riverside, but the charge had been dismissed due to insufficient evidence.
At some point he had moved to Colorado. The Boulder County sheriff had arrested him less than a year ago for assault with
a deadly weapon, but the DA dropped the charge after the alleged victim refused to testify. The final entry was the drunk-driving
conviction Matt had mentioned in his memo.

I placed the documents in the padded envelope and locked them in my desk drawer. I didn’t know much I hadn’t already known.
Bugg was physically powerful, fond of alcohol, and extremely violent. I dialed his number.

S
ATURDAY MORNING.
I was in the bathroom off the master bedroom. The phone rang just before seven. I ran to the bedside table, pressed the speaker
button and said hello.

“Hi, sweetie,” Jayne said. “Why do you have me on the speaker phone?”

“Need both hands to finish dying my hair.”

“I should have known,” she said. “What color are you going for?”

“Black.”

“Isn’t that somewhat unnecessary in that black is your natural color?”

“I’ve got to get rid of my stripe,” I replied.

“But I like your stripe,” she protested.