Chump Change (21 page)

The EMTs came pouring out of their vehicles and began to swarm the yard.

“Got one,” somebody cried.

“One down here,” another voice shouted.

The scene got to be a bit of a haze for a while. Cops screaming questions into my face, medics barking orders at one another, sirens and lights and radios creating a stew of sensations too thick to chew.

“This him?” I heard somebody ask.

A hand grabbed me by the back of the shirt and stood me up straight.

Big ruddy-faced guy with a veiny nose. He was wiping the sweat from his face with a red mechanic’s rag. He said his name was Peter Gallagher and he was deputy chief of the Lewiston FD.

“This your barn?” he asked.

“Temporarily,” I said.

“And there’s nothing alive in there?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

He shrugged. “Then it’s a goner,” he said. “No sense risking personnel. It’s so far along it’s dangerous. No sense in getting anybody hurt.”

I said I understood.

“We’ll keep the crew out here to make sure everything else is safe.”

I thanked him in the nanosecond before the cop slammed me back down onto the hood and stuck a knee in the middle of my back to make sure I didn’t run off.

Must’ve been twenty minutes before somebody grabbed ahold of my handcuffs, stiff-legged me over to a Lewiston Police car, and stuffed me in the backseat. I twisted myself sideways, so I wasn’t resting my weight on my manacled hands.

Another ten minutes, and a uniformed cop opened the door and sat down in the passenger seat. Neat little guy with a pencil-thin mustache and a spotless uniform. His name tag said he was Nathan Wilder and that he was chief of police of Lewiston, Idaho. He looked me over. “Hell of a mess out there,” he said finally. “We’ve got two men dead and another two shot up pretty bad. You’re probably going to want an attorney present before you make any sort of statement.”

He read me my rights. Chapter and verse. Asked me if I understood.

I said, “I want to tell you what happened.”

“I’d rather your attorney was present.”

I started to talk anyway. When I’d finished he said, “That’s not the way Deputy Moon tells the story.”

“Well, we both know how that is, don’t we?”

His face was hard as concrete. He wasn’t about to disparage another cop, even a hummer like Rockland Moon. His concern for my rights, however, told me he was a by-the-book kind of guy, and under the circumstances, that was the best thing I could hope for.

“I think I can prove to you which of us is telling the truth.”

“How’s that?”

I told him.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“There’s one way to find out,” I said.

Just before seven in the morning, the jailer came and let me out of my cell. The fact that she was alone and didn’t cuff me told me everything I needed to know. I was still huffing out sighs of relief when we got Keith from his cell, and the three of us took a silent elevator ride downstairs to the Lewiston PD’s offices.

She pulled open the door that read
LOGISTICS
and stepped aside. Keith and I wandered in. Chief Wilder and another guy in uniform were the only people in the room. Spread out on tables were the four game trail cameras, a substantial hillock of ammunition, the Smith & Wesson .38, the AX9, and the Glock 17. Everything had been removed from Keith’s overnight bag, and from mine too. For some ungodly reason, I was struck by how sad and alone my underwear looked, lying there on the fake walnut veneer, next to Gordy’s post-mortem photos. Keith’s brightly colored pile of glow-in-the-dark condoms, on the other hand, more or less spoke for themselves.

Wilder spoke first. “Had another one die this morning,” he said. “Couple of hours ago. That makes three bodies.”

I didn’t say anything.

Wilder nodded at the other cop. “This is Captain Quincy Morgan of the Asotin County Sheriff’s Department.”

We exchanged barely discernable nods.

“You want to tell us what happened out there?” Morgan said.

“Roland Moon tried to kill us,” I said. “We defended ourselves.”

“Roland Moon and his wife, Cassandra, flew out of Lewiston–Nez Perce County Airport at four-thirteen yesterday afternoon. Nearly twelve hours before the festivities began out at The Flying H. Filed a flight plan for Denver. We checked with the Hilton, and the happy couple arrived as scheduled.”

I shrugged and made a “so what” face. “All that means is he’s too smart to be around when the shooting starts.”

“What do you think? You think you’re the first one ever figured out Roland Moon was a crook? He’s been investigated by every law enforcement agency in the damn country. The FBI, the Washington State Patrol, the Idaho Bureau of Criminal Identification . . . all of them . . . hell, the SEC spent a couple of years trying to tie him to an insider-trading beef.

“And you know what they came up with? Nothing. Nada. Squat.”

“You’ve got three dead shooters,” I said.

“Along with two wounded and two intact,” Morgan added. “Patrol picked up a pair of them trying to walk back to town.”

“So what are
they
saying?” I wanted to know.

“They’re saying they want to speak to their attorneys.”

“Vegas,” Wilder said. “They all seem to be from Vegas.”

Which, of course meant that nobody was admitting anything. Ever.

Morgan wandered over to the nearest table. He rested his hand atop the prodigious pile of ammo and threw Keith and me an angry glare.

“So . . . let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he began. “Your plan—if we can call it that—was to insert yourselves into a local business deal, for the express purpose of enraging the players sufficiently to attack you?”

Didn’t sound so good when he put it like that, but I had to admit he had the gist.

“Something like that,” I said.

“So tell me why I shouldn’t charge you as an accessory. You incited this whole damn thing. Hell . . . you invited it!”

“I respectfully disagree,” I said. “What I was doing was sleeping on a piece of property to which I hold legal title. A group of people I don’t know, and with whom I’ve never had any dealings whatsoever, trespassed on my property, committed arson against me, and then tried to kill both of us. If that’s not self-defense, then I don’t know what is.”

Morgan patted the pile of ammo. “And you certainly were well prepared to defend yourselves, weren’t you?”

When I didn’t reply, his voice rose. “Thirteen hundred rounds,” he shouted.

He walked over and picked up the AX9. “An Israeli assault rifle so secret only Mossad agents get them as standard issue.” Then he fondled the Glock. “And a Glock 17 . . . one of the most reliable and dangerous handguns in the world.” He looked at both of us. “Yep . . . I think you’d have to say you two were prepared to defend yourselves.”

“I have Washington State and City of Seattle permits for all those weapons. I have—”

“Shut up,” Wilder snapped. “We’ve checked your damn permits.”

“Those game cameras of yours . . .” Morgan shook his head and waggled a stiff finger in my face. “Those are what’s saving your bacon here, fellas. Without those goddamn pictures, you two would be downstairs wearing belly chains and waiting for your ride to Walla Walla.” He threw a glance Wilder’s way. “Deputy Moon reported that when he arrived on the scene, the barn was fully engulfed and you two had opened fire on a bunch of strangers who’d stopped to help fight the fire. Said he thought maybe you two were in the process of torching the barn for the insurance money, and when you were interrupted, you panicked and tried to murder them all.”

“Deputy Moon’s full of shit,” Keith said.

“We know,” Wilder said disgustedly. “The cameras say he was the first one through the gate. Used the winch on the front of the patrol car to pull the gate off its hinges, and then let the rest of them in.”

Morgan had a speech ready and must have figured this was the time for it. “Deputy Moon has been permanently relieved of his duties,” he said. “He was arrested and is being formally charged with dereliction, felonious assault with intent to do bodily harm, and attempted murder. His bail has been set at three hundred thousand dollars.”

I could tell from the disgusted look on his face that this was about to become a good news/bad news story.

“I have been informed that one of his father’s business associates . . . a Mr. Bain,
I believe . . . has already posted the sum in cash. Rockland Moon should be back on the street within the hour.”

A strained silence settled over the room, as each of us, in his own fashion, contemplated the inequalities of the American system of justice. No matter how much we blab about social justice and personal equality, that’s not the way it works. There are damn few millionaires cooling their heels in penitentiaries. Like some writer once said, “All men are created equal, unfortunately some are created more equal than others.”

Wilder broke the spell. “The question is why?” he said.

“Why what?” I asked.

“Why put yourself at such risk? Why meddle in other people’s business affairs? What’s in it for you? What do you get out of this whole mess?”

I didn’t answer. Wilder walked over to one of the tables and scooped up Gordy’s postmortem photos. “Who’s this?” he demanded. “I got one of these over the wire last week.”

“Gordon Hardvigsen,” I said.

He started to call me a damn liar and then took a closer look at the head shot. I watched a wave of astonishment wash over his face.

“I’ll be goddamned,” he said. “That
is
who it is.”

He looked over at me. “What happened to him?” He waved a hand. “I mean . . . the man I knew . . .” He let it go.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.

He studied the picture again. Then shuffled through the pack and came up with the picture of the scars on Gordy’s back. He turned it my way.

“What do you know about these marks?” he said.

“Friend of mine thinks he was whipped over an extended period of time.”

“That’d be Dr. Rebecca Duvall?” Morgan said.

I must have looked surprised. “We pulled your file,” Wilder said.

“Yes,” I said. “That was her opinion.”

The cops passed a look between them that set my teeth on edge.

I took a chance. “You seen anything like that before?” I asked.

No matter what came out of their mouths next, I knew they had. I could tell.

“Quid pro quo,” I said.

“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Wilder said. Which, of course, meant they wouldn’t discuss it with me.

“I’ve got a couple of ideas about how we might find out,” I teased.

“I want our medical examiner to see the body,” Wilder said.

“That’s gonna be a problem,” I said and then told them the story of Gordy’s disappearing remains. They had the same question I did.

“Why would anybody do that?” Morgan asked when I’d finished.

“That’s something else I don’t know,” I admitted.

The two cops leaned together and passed a few whispers back and forth.

“What couple of ideas are you talking about?” Morgan asked me after they’d straightened back up.

“You seen those marks before?”

Another mini-conference ensued.

“Three times in the past twenty months,” Chief Wilder said. “Two young men and an older woman. All of em transient farmworkers. Nobody even reported em missing.”

“Covered all over with just that sort of scarring,” Morgan said.

Wilder picked up the thread. “Our medical people said they were suffering from both dehydration and malnutrition at the times of their deaths. Said the abuse had occurred over an extended period of time.” He took a deep breath. “They also found . . .”

“Internal scarring,” Morgan filled in.

“On all of them?” Keith asked.

“Yes.”

“Let’s hear those so-called ideas of yours,” Wilder prodded.

“First I need to tell you a story,” I said.

“Make it damn quick.”

I gave em the
Reader’s Digest
version of the old Gordy-meets-Missy, thirteen-million-bucks-goes-missing, access-road-to-casino-miraculously-gets-built story.

“I heard that back when Roland Moon was single, he used to fly hookers into his ranch for private parties,” I said.

“Where’s this going?” Morgan demanded.

“See what you can find out about the girls. Pictures of them would be great.”

“Why would we want to do that?”

“I’d be interested to hear what the girls had to say about those parties.”

“Lotta working girls in the world,” Morgan griped.

“Well . . . not to be a purveyor of stereotypes,” I said, “but since we’ve got six professional shooters, all of them from Vegas, don’t you think it might be safe to assume . . . you know . . . hookers . . . Vegas.” I shrugged. “Just a thought.”

“Shut up,” Morgan spat.

“I’ll make a few calls,” Wilder promised. “I’ve got a former sergeant working Vegas Vice. I’ll give him a jingle.”

“Which brings us back to you two,” Morgan said.

“Are we free to go?” I asked right away.

Both cops looked as if their briefs were suddenly way too tight.