Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) (12 page)

A town this glossy, they should be ashamed if they didn’t.

Marlene Flower Moon had booked a room for herself at
Le Château du Ciel,
the Castle of Heaven. Another reference to elevation. In a metaphysical sense and in French. Which did take a good bit of hokeyness out of the name. The faux chateau’s level of luxury and room rates disposed of the rest.

Tall Wolf knew that even Marlene couldn’t slip a stay at a five-star hotel past an audit of her expense account. So Coyote had a private party picking up her tab. It was possible she knew more than one big spender in Goldstrike, but Tall Wolf’s intuition told him that Clay Steadman was footing the bill. The special agent wondered if the macho actor knew what he was letting himself in for. Marlene, if she took it to mind, would feast on him as if he were an unweaned lamb.

She and Tall Wolf were dining in a somewhat more refined fashion in the hotel’s restaurant,
La Pêche Parfaite.
The perfect peach. Tall Wolfe could only assume the name was a metaphor he’d missed in school. He was having salmon. Marlene was making short work of a filet mignon.

She’d invited him to her room and he’d declined, as always, but there were times when sharing a meal with Marlene was almost as dubious a choice. The visceral pleasure she took in consuming animal protein could be unnerving. Not that her table manners were lacking.

Unless you happened to notice that her jaw muscles, as she chewed, had unusual definition and power, and her eyes glowed as if her meal were not only nourishment but also the victory of predator over prey.

Marlene took a sip of her merlot and asked, “What are you thinking, Tall Wolf?”

“That I haven’t heard from Herbert Wilkins yet.”

The leader of the local Washoe tribal council.

“Tomorrow before noon. I’m trusting you to make both of us look good.”

A lie. She didn’t give a damn if his name attracted any public notice.

Better that it shouldn’t.

Tall Wolf knew that but he said, “Sure, PR is my life.”

Marlene shot him a look. She ate her last piece of beef with such satisfaction she seemed to be nearing sexual fulfillment. She finished her wine and waved off a second glass.

“You think the eco-terrorists will try again?” she asked.

“A caller to the local cops said they would, and they’d do better next time.”

Marlene heard the doubt in Tall Wolf’s voice.

“But?”

“But the considered opinion of Chief Ketchum, Detective Powell and me is that we’re not dealing with eco-terrorists. Something else is going on. We’re not quite sure what yet.”

“Who’s Powell?”

“The chief’s old homicide partner from L.A.”

“So is there any danger or not?” Marlene asked.

“There’s been a murder.”

“Have you found any connection between the killing and the bomb yet?”

“Can’t say for sure,” Tall Wolf told her. “But the so-called eco-terrorist says he wants to stop commercial development of the area, and the dead guy was a big real estate developer.”

“Sounds like a connection to me,” Marlene said.

“Maybe, but why not just kill the guy? Why bother with the bomb? What kind of eco-terrorist wants to kill a lake?”

All good questions, Marlene thought. She didn’t have answers to any of them. Law enforcement was only her job. Politics was her life.

To that end, she asked Tall Wolf, “Do you think you can find whoever is behind all this before any harm is done?”

“You mean, can I help the locals save the day? Make you look good to your old friend Mayor Steadman?”

“Have you met him yet?” she asked, dodging the question.

“No, not yet. But I have an idea how I might go about finding a lead on the murder.”

“Is it a good idea?”

Tall Wolf said, “I should know by tomorrow. Before noon. If I hear from Herbert Wilkins.”

Marlene grimaced. She hated it when Tall Wolf got her to jump through one of his hoops. But they both knew Herbert Wilkins wouldn’t be tardy with his call tomorrow.

By having been careful not to over-promise on what he would deliver, Tall Wolf had forestalled any question from Marlene about what he wanted from Wilkins. She knew if Tall Wolf’s idea blew up in his face, she would be better off not knowing what he’d been up to.

But if things worked out well, Tall Wolf’s saving grace was his willingness to yield credit to those who craved it. Political advancement didn’t interest him.

Marlene put their dinners on her room tab. She didn’t extend a second invitation to Tall Wolf to visit her room. She didn’t need further rejection. It would have been a comfort to her if he’d been gay, but she knew that was not the case.

John Tall Wolf took a taxi back to the Marriott. He’d yet to share the idea that had occurred to him as he woke up that day after too little sleep. What if Hale Tibbot had found — or more likely had bought information regarding — the whereabouts of the gold Timothy Johnson had discovered so long ago?

The prevalent assumption was Tibbot had simply seen Goldstrike as low-hanging fruit, ripe for standard exploitation. But what if it was more than that? What if buying up large parcels of mountain real estate was a cover for acquiring mineral rights worth what … billions?

Of course, the whole notion might be nothing more than the scenario of a waking dream. He’d have to see what Herbert Wilkins was willing to share with him. The Washoe leader might be understandably tightlipped. Nobody just
gave
away his goldmine.

On the other hand, if the tribe didn’t hold title to the land where the motherlode was to be found, maybe they’d be forthcoming. Maybe, if Tall Wolf played his cards right, he could even see to it that this might be the rare case where the original inhabitants didn’t get screwed by the newcomers. That ought to please Marlene. Be the good PR she jonesed on.

Tall Wolf, still weary from lack of sleep, tucked himself into bed by nine o’clock.

As his head hit the pillow, he wondered how gold mining got done these days.

He didn’t see it as a prospector-with-a-pick operation anymore.

If things panned out — ha, ha — he’d have to look into it.

As Ron Ketchum piloted the patrol boat back to the police dock, he wondered what might have happened if the dirty bomb had fallen into the lake before he found it. The damn thing, heavy as it was, would have sunk to the bottom. The growing water pressure, as it descended, likely would have cracked the plastic housing of the detonator, disabling it. Then the payload in its stainless steel container would have hit bottom.

The impact probably wouldn’t have been strong enough to split the metal box open, but would the jolt have been strong enough to deform the seal on the lid? Let the radioactive material leak out bit by bit. Would the tremendous volume of water in the lake have been able to absorb a slow accretion of poison without damage?

Or would islands of dead fish start to float belly up on the surface?

Would the contamination make the water impotable?

Would everyone who lived on the shoreline find their property both uninhabitable and unsalable? You thought about things that way, maybe eco-terrorists
were
involved. If they turned Goldstrike into Love Canal on high, required the land and water a millennium or more to heal themselves and shed the human population in the meantime, that might be just what they wanted.

Assuming anyone could be that radical.

Ron looked at the majesty of nature surrounding him and thought that anyone taking even the slightest chance of blighting such beauty had to be seriously unbalanced.

As he neared the dock, the chief saw he had a crowd of people waiting to meet him. He was pleased to see none of them had minicams or audio recorders. Other than their cell phones, of course. Point was, the mainstream media were not present. Just the public, expressing by their presence the concern they felt for their community.

Men, women and children, crossing decades and generations in age, longtime residents and newcomers, they all longed to hear that they would be safe in their homes, on their streets and on the waters of Lake Adeline again.

Officers Dennehy and Cardoza were also waiting for Ron. They tied off his patrol craft as Ron hopped onto the dock. Dennehy asked, “Everything good, Chief?”

Ron nodded. He looked at the faces of the crowd and told them, “I found nothing amiss on my patrol. Officers Dennehy and Cardoza will begin their lake patrol momentarily. This craft will be refueled and another pair of officers will go out mid-watch tonight. We’re doing everything we can to protect the community. Our efforts have been reinforced by agencies of the federal government, including the FBI.”

Smiles and nodding heads showed appreciation.

Roger Sutherland stepped forward and shook Ron’s hand. He told the chief, “We just had to come down to the lake and take a close-up look, you know. Just in case.”

In case a simple pleasure they’d taken for granted would soon be unavailable to them. Ron understood. Sutherland didn’t have to explain why the crowd chose the police dock as their vantage point. That was where they could multitask. Enjoy the view and make sure the cops were earning their pay.

Ron made his way through the crowd, shaking more hands and exchanging a few hugs. Pretty much everyone had some compliment to pay him for disarming the bomb. He was gracious about accepting their thanks, but he found himself in agreement with John Tall Wolf. The satisfaction came from doing the job not hearing the praise.

The chief stopped when he saw a lone figure sitting on a bench.

Jacob Burkett. Mayor Steadman had introduced Ron to the man. Told the chief that Burkett’s family had arrived in the Sierra not long after Adeline Walsh and her family had built their cabin, and had lived in Goldstrike ever since. Jake was an environmental engineer with the California Natural Resources Agency. He’d worked all over the state, but nearing retirement now he worked the nearby mountains from his hometown.

Ron sat next to Jake. Unlike the other citizens out that night, Jake’s mien was glum. He said to the chief, “Hell of a thing, isn’t it, someone would want to defile such a natural wonder?”

“Sure is, but we’re doing our best to prevent it.”

“Can’t stop sick minds from getting sicker.”

Ron sighed, patted Jake on the shoulder and got to his feet.

“No, you can’t. What I can do, though, is ask you and everyone else to keep your eyes open and let us cops know if you see anything we should act on. We’ll come in a hurry, I promise. Spread the word, okay?”

“Sure,” Jake said.

But he went back to staring at the lake, as if it might be the last time he’d ever see it.

“I finally remember who it was I saw,” Walt Ketchum told Clay Steadman.

The two of them were sitting in Clay’s living room. The night in the mountains had grown chilly and flames danced in the fireplace. Clay was sipping cognac. Walt made do with nonalcoholic apple cider.

“The bad guy?” Clay asked.

Walt had told Clay of the disturbing episode on the street that day. After the patrol officers had dropped him off at the mayor’s home, he had to lie down, thinking a nap might help him regain his wits. Waking up, he’d felt the need to speak with Esther Gadwell, the nurse who’d seen him at his worst after he suffered his stroke.

She’d thought, at first, that Walt was calling just to brag about how good he had it living in a movie star’s house up in the mountains, how she had made a mistake not coming with him. She was just about to give Walt an earful when he told her, “I think my mind is going, Esther. Not from another stroke, I don’t think. It’s just getting soft. Like some old mush-head alky.”

Esther’s response was terse. “You call your doctor right now or I’ll send an ambulance for you.”

Walt did as he was told, but called Esther back while waiting for the doctor to arrive.

They still made house calls if you had enough money.

Clay Steadman had more than enough.

“If the doc doesn’t find anything he can help with, Esther, what am I going to do?”

In a quiet voice, she told him, “You live the best you can as long as you can. You went up there to help with a movie based on your life, didn’t you? Get that done. Live to see that movie. I’ll let you take me to the premiere.”

Walt laughed. “Wouldn’t that beat all?”

Then he said he’d do just that. He thanked Esther for talking to him.

The doctor came and went, finding no evidence of another stroke.

Recommended that Walt take it easy. But there wasn’t time for lollygagging.

He and Clay had worked all day.

Doing that helped jog Walt’s memory.

“Yeah, the bad guy I saw,” Walt told Clay. “His name was Nikos Sideris.”

“Was?” Clay asked.

“Yeah, that’s the funny part. The guy Paul Martin and I arrested got shanked in L.A. County Jail and died of his injuries.”

The good thing was, Walt had remembered his old partner’s name.

The bad thing was, Nikos Sideris had been dead thirty years.

So how had Walt seen him driving by in Goldstrike?

Clay said, “Maybe you saw a relative, a son or a nephew. Do you know if this Sideris guy had any family?”

Another test of memory, but Walt was up to it this time.

He shook his head. “There was no next of kin listed on his arrest report. I remember that.”

“You said the guy you saw today was good-looking. Was Nikos, too? Was he a ladies’ man?”

Walt smiled. “Yeah, yeah. He had quite a reputation that way.”

“So maybe he had a kid or ten out of wedlock.”

Walt nodded.

“Sure, he could have. The guy I saw could have been his bastard.”

“Maybe. So what did this Nikos Sideris do?”

Walt said, “He killed people, for money.”

Sonny Sideris felt like killing somebody. To relieve his frustration, if nothing else. He popped someone, he always felt better about things. Like life was going the way it was meant to.

He’d spent most of that day wearing his ass out, sitting in his rental car in front of a neat little house in Truckee, California. What a burg that place was. Damn town looked like it got built back in the cowboy days and was happy to stay that way.

It amazed him they’d bothered to put electricity in.

Yeah, it had mountains and ski runs nearby, hiking trails, streams where you could fish and do all that other outdoors crap. So what? Sonny’s idea of a good time was a casino where you could test your luck and find Keno girls who were happy to do more than bring you a drink. He called Las Vegas home and found most other places paled in comparison.

In Truckee, the big deal was they had a train depot.

Amtrak actually made stops there.

If that wasn’t enough to make your heart race, they had a street named after the Donner Party. Sonny remembered reading about them in school. Bunch of yahoos left Springfield, Illinois in 1846 and headed west to find their fortunes in California. Getting a jump on the gold rush of 1849 would have been a great idea except the nimrods got caught in a blizzard in the Sierra and wound up so desperate for food they ate their dead.

Sonny had always wondered about that. Had those starving people eaten only the men and women who’d already croaked? Seemed like there wouldn’t have been much meat on those bones and what there was already would have been frozen hard. You wanted a good meal, seemed like you’d go for someone who was still warm and had a little fat on him.

Of course, you’d have to kill him.

Put him in the soup pot before he flash froze.

But what the hell? Things got that tough, you did what you had to.

What Sonny needed to do was find goddamn Herbert Wilkins. He’d rung his doorbell and banged on both the front and back doors of his house a dozen times. Then he’d gone back to his car and ran up and down the radio dial. Couldn’t find a decent jazz station to save his life. Last goddamn time he ever rented a car without Sirius. Left to his own devices, his mind turned to thoughts of … cannibalism.

And other useless shit.

When his bladder got too full to bear, he went to a place called The Blue Coyote.

He took a five-minute pee and had a steak and a beer. Pissed again before leaving and walked through “downtown” looking for anyone who might be an Indian. Found one, too. But the guy said he was a Paiute by the name of Bryce Logsden. He’d heard the name Herbert Wilkins but didn’t know the man personally. If he was Native American, he must be
Washoe.

Guy said Washoe like, “Not
my
tribe, brother.”

Wouldn’t let one of them mow my grass.

No point in asking any other questions.

Sonny cursed to himself. Made one last run past Wilkins’ house without success and drove back to Goldstrike before it got too dark to see clearly on the mountain roads. Most of the damn things didn’t have any guard rails. Last thing he needed would be to drive over the edge, wind up a charred smudge at the bottom of a cliff.

After a day in Truckee, Goldstrike seemed like … well, no, not Vegas but at least a step in the right direction. Sonny stopped into a club called the New York Shock Exchange. He liked the name. Place had some good looking women in it, too.

But he limited himself to looking over a couple of Scotch and sodas.

He had a few more chores to do that night.

The assistant manager at the Goldstrike Hilton gestured to Special Agent Abra Benjamin as she stepped into the hotel lobby. Not a big wave that might have been seen by just anyone, but a discreet lift of her hand that went with the look she directed at Abra. The special agent walked over to the check-in counter.

“Something I can do for you?” she asked.

“I have a message for you,” the assistant manager said, “if you’re Ms. Benjamin.”

Abra nodded, but she’d never met this woman before.

“Someone described me to you?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Chief of Police Ketchum. He left a message for you just a moment ago. I called your room, but that must have been right when you stepped out.”

“And the message is?”

“Right here,” the assistant manager said, handing Abra a sealed envelope.

Goldstrike PD stationery. Office of the chief. Unlikely to be trifled with by civilians.

“Thank you,” Abra said.

She took the envelope to a sofa in a quiet corner and opened it.

Special Agent Benjamin: If you’re thinking of taking a boat out on Lake Adeline tonight, please check in with my department first and let Sergeant Winslow know. He’ll advise the officers patrolling the lake. For the time being, town residents have been urged not to use the lake after sunset. I wouldn’t want any unfortunate case of mistaken identity or exchange of friendly fire to occur. Thank you. Chief Ronald Ketchum.

Abra Benjamin grinned.

Yeah, local cops shooting an FBI special agent would be unfortunate.

So would the reverse.

The chief wasn’t presumptuous — foolish — enough to try to tell her to stay the hell off his lake. He merely let her know what the situation was, expressed a desire that nobody should get hurt. Even said please and thank you. The epitome of a reasonable man.

Who could argue with him?

Not her, not tonight. She hadn’t planned to go out on the lake. She’d called and made an appointment to talk with Roger and Brant Sutherland. They’d told her they would be happy to help in any way they could. Young Brant thought it was cool that he’d be able to talk with a special agent from the FBI, though he hadn’t known a woman could be one.

“For a long time now,” she’d heard Roger tell his son.

Brant had said that was cool, too.

Wait until the kid saw the vehicle ID app she had on her iPad.

Abra felt optimistic they’d be able to get a close fix on the SUV that Brant had seen the morning he and his dad had gone out on their fishing trip. Narrow the vehicle down to maybe two or three makes and models. Find out who, if anyone, owned such vehicles in town. Talk to the owners.

If she got lucky, maybe that’d be enough to catch the bomber.

If not, maybe the SUV owner had seen something helpful.

If nobody in town or, say, a radius of fifty miles owned such a vehicle, she’d have to go back to square one. She had the feeling whoever had left the bomb in the boat had some personal connection to Lake Adeline, the way a local or nearby resident would. It didn’t make sense to her that some asshole with an agenda had seen a tourist brochure for Goldstrike and decided to fly in from New England.

Might be that way, of course.

But the call Chief Ketchum had told her about, the one saying there would be another attack that wouldn’t fail, strongly suggested the doer lived in the area.

The Sutherlands struck her as an affluent version of the all-American family. Brant shook her hand and asked to see her badge. After helping her narrow the SUV he’d seen down to either a Chevy Tahoe or a GMC Terrain of a recent model year, Brant had asked if he could be in a picture with her. His dad, he said, was a great photographer.

Brant wanted to show it to his school friends in the fall.

You know, in case he had write one of those papers.

How I spent my summer vacation.

Abra displayed her badge for the picture, and wore a serious expression.

Roger Sutherland said he’d send her a copy.

In parting, Jessica Sutherland gave her a fudge brownie in a plastic bag.

The special agent couldn’t remember conducting a more pleasant interview. She ate the brownie on the way back to her hotel. Terrific. Had to be homemade. Feeling a bit of a sugar buzz, she decided to take a slow cruise through the center of town before going back to her hotel. Get familiar with the locale a little.

In the glow of the town’s bright street lights, she liked what she saw. Goldstrike, no doubt as a matter of local ordinance, eschewed electric signage on all of its commercial establishments. Stylish understatement and lots of sparkling clean glass, smooth masonry and meticulously tuck-pointed brickwork were the elements of local design.

That was why the red arrow painted on the tan brick of a shop that sold mountain bikes had such dissonant stopping power. Abra pulled her rental over to the curb. She looked at the arrow from behind the wheel. It didn’t seem to be a graffito. It was too unembellished. But the placement was wrong for it to be a directional arrow put up either by the shop owner or the town.

The FBI agent got out of her car and looked around. The hour was now late enough that there were no pedestrians in sight on this particular block. She scanned the few parked cars nearby, saw nobody in any of them. Her hand went to her duty weapon nevertheless.

The red arrow gave her a very uneasy feeling.

The closer she got, the less she liked it. Damn thing looked like it had been painted with —

She leaned in and sniffed. Sure enough. Somebody had used blood to paint the arrow.

Didn’t smell like it came from a cow or a pig either. What it reminded her of was a crime scene with a lot of blood spatter. She’d seen more than a few of those.

Then there was that rich guy, Tibbot, whom she’d heard was down half-a-tank of his personal corpuscles when he was discovered dead.

Now somebody was painting the town red with Tibbot’s Special Reserve?

Courteous cop that he was, Ron Ketchum had given her his business card. She called his office. They forwarded the call to his home. He answered on the second ring.