Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) (31 page)

Any time another vessel approached, one of the outside boats warned them off.

Oliver watched Burkett through a pair of binoculars. The man was just putt-putting along, doing his best apparently not to raise any of the cops’ blood pressure. Even so, Oliver took note of the big outboard on the back of Burkett’s boat.

“Could he outrun us, if he wanted?” the deputy chief asked Dennehy.

“Maybe. We’ve got more horsepower but we’re pushing more weight, too. It’d be close. You want me to edge up on him?”

Oliver shook his head. “No, don’t spook him.”

The deputy chief called headquarters, asked for Sergeant Stanley.

He got Officer Bettencourt, filling in for the sergeant.

He gave her the description of the boat they were following and the motor propelling it. “Can you find out if that boat has significantly more speed than we do?”

“Will do, sir,” Bettencourt told him.

A moment later, she said, “Difference in top speed is negligible.”

Dennehy grinned and nodded.

Bettencourt said, “Where he’s got a big advantage, Deputy Chief, is in draft.”

Dennehy saw a lack of comprehension on Oliver’s face and explained, “He can run in shallower water than we can. What’s his draft, Amity?”

“Six to eight inches.”

“Jeez,” Dennehy said, “the guy can scoot across a mud puddle.”

The deputy chief frowned. He didn’t see a way to offset that advantage.

Worse, neither did any of his men.

Ron Ketchum was just about to call John Tall Wolf to touch base with the special agent when Officer Bettencourt knocked on his door and said Special Agent Benjamin would like to see the chief. Ron nodded and Benjamin stepped into his office. Bettencourt shut the door behind her.

Benjamin seated herself with a rueful smile and said, “You and Tall Wolf are messing with my world view.”

Ron said, “It’s a conspiracy.”

Feds always loved to investigate a nest of conspirators.

Benjamin said, “Yeah, that occurred to me. But I’m going to keep pretending that local cops and feds can work together for the moment. I’ve even suspended disbelief that different agencies of the federal government can work together. Once I get out of this little West Coast Shangri-La, though, I’ll go back to being territorial and paranoid.”

“To thine own self be true,” the chief advised.

Benjamin laughed. “I just stopped by to tell you I obtained a search warrant for Jacob Burkett’s house from a federal judge.” She showed him the paperwork that had been faxed to her.

Ron beamed. “Well, good for you, Special Agent Benjamin. How’d you do that?”

“Okay, here’s the hard part. I have to give the lion’s share of the credit to Tall Wolf.”

She told him what the BIA agent had uncovered. Burkett’s lawsuit. The disparity between Burkett’s income as reported on his federal tax returns and the offer he’d made to buy the piece of land that Hale Tibbot had snatched from him.

“You got Burkett’s tax returns?” Ron asked.

“He’s a suspect in a terrorist act, and he appears to have huge hidden assets. The judge had no problem issuing warrants for his tax returns and the search of his house. Do you object?”

Ron thought about it. “No, I guess I don’t. Takes a little getting used to, though.”

“Yeah, well, we’re good to go. You want to come along and watch me work?”

“You do your own searches?”

Benjamin smiled. “It’s my specialty. One of them. I love figuring out where creeps hide things. Whether it’s up a chimney flue, in a zombie computer or a Caribbean bank account.”

“In that case, I’ll come. I always enjoy watching a virtuoso at work.”

This time there was real warmth in Benjamin’s smile.

“Thank you, Chief, I appreciate that.” She paused and then added, “You’re a good cop and a good guy. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to share something personal with you.”

“I don’t mind,” Ron said. Wondering if he would.

“I’ve decided I’m going to put my baby up for adoption.”

Ron didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“I might call you up in six months or so. Ask if you know any solid citizens who might like to adopt. A kid could do worse than to grow up in this town.”

“You’re right about that,” Ron said.

The two of them left for Jake Burkett’s house, taking with them Officer Benny Marx to document the search on video and a locksmith to open the front door and any other barrier that might impede their snooping.

On the way, Ron suggested they call John Tall Wolf to join them.

And Keely Powell, too.

John Tall Wolf was getting ready to leave his hotel room when a thought occurred to him. Jake Burkett had left himself vulnerable to a tax evasion charge by mining a significant amount of gold and not reporting it as income. Tall Wolf should make sure Herbert Wilkins and his people didn’t fall into the same trap. He called Wilkins and warned him.

“Thanks, but we’re okay.
We
haven’t touched any of the gold yet.”

Tall Wolf wasn’t sure he believed that, but he took it at face value.

The man had been put on notice. What he did now was up to him.

“I talked with Marlene,” Wilkins said.

“And?”

“She says she’s good with forty-nine percent.”

“Sure, she says that now, but she’ll still come at you.”

“She’ll have to find me first. I left my job, on good terms, and I’m going to do a little traveling.”

Tall Wolf
really
doubted the man didn’t have some gold now.

But he liked the idea that Wilkins would make himself hard to find. In the normal course of events, Tall Wolf would refuse to identify a confidential informant. If the FBI or anyone else put unusual pressure on him to do so in this case, he’d honestly be able to say he didn’t know where the man was.

Also, if Coyote was out hunting Wilkins, she’d have less time to bother him.

“Stay safe,” Tall Wolf told him.

He was just about to leave his room when his phone rang.

Chief Ketchum was on his way to Burkett’s house to assist Special Agent Benjamin conducting a warranted search. Something clicked for Tall Wolf upon hearing that.

“You have a bomb-disposal unit, Chief?” he asked.

“No, why do you ask?”

“Better have your fire department on hand before you try to open any doors.”

“Do you
know
something, Special Agent?” Ron asked.

“Well, there was that firebombing at the Jade Emperor and …”

Tall Wolf told the chief about Norris Burkett burning down his house on his way out of town. “Probably be a good idea to approach the man’s residence with a degree of caution.”

Ron said, “Yeah, thanks. I’ll make the call. You still coming?”

“Sure. I don’t want to miss the fun.”

Sergeant Stanley put Axel Larsen in a holding cell and hurried back to his desk. Officer Bettencourt wasn’t there, a bit of a surprise, but his desk was in perfect order. Just as he’d left it. No, there was a new message, for him, neatly placed atop the appropriate stack.

Bettencourt had left him a heads-up.

The chief and special agents Tall Wolf and Benjamin were conducting a search of Jake Burkett’s house. Looking for something that would let them lock Jake up, no doubt, the sergeant thought. He already had that with Larsen’s confession that Burkett had inveigled him into burgling Helios Sideris’ hotel room.

The sergeant picked up the phone to call the chief.

Let him know Burkett could be arrested without delay.

Then he paused. Maybe he shouldn’t interrupt the search. The chief and the feds might find something to support a more substantial charge. It might be a mistake to put them off their game with a distraction.

He put the phone down and radioed Deputy Chief Gosden.

It had been good to see him back on the job that morning.

“Hello, Deputy Chief. I’m checking to see if you might need anything.”

The sergeant didn’t want to intrude on the deputy chief’s doings either, not to any serious degree. So he made the call sound perfunctory.

“How about an XXXL life vest, Sarge?”

“You need one that big?”

“To go over my Kevlar, yeah.”

“I’ll order one right away. Sorry I didn’t think of it sooner.”

“No one’s perfect, Sarge. Not even you. But if you can get one out here to me in the next fifteen minutes, that’d be great.”

Sergeant Stanley knew he was being kidded, but he’d see if any of the sporting goods shops in town had one. If they did, he’d do his best to beat the deadline. “I’ll see what I can do. All’s well otherwise?”

“Yeah, the man’s just fishing like he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

The sergeant almost contradicted the deputy chief, but he held back.

He wanted to confer with the chief first.

Maybe he should talk with the mayor, too.

He told Oliver, “I’ll get right to work on that life vest.”

“Where’s he going now?” Oliver asked, referring to Burkett.

The man had taken his line out of the water. Took a fish off his hook. Released it back into the water. Burkett was crossing the lake for the third time that day. All of the cops trailing him knew he was up to something. Just what that was, they didn’t have a clue.

All they could do was putt-putt along fifty yards behind him.

As he approached a small island near the eastern shore of the lake, though, Dennehy began to get edgy. “Deputy Chief, I think we’d better cut him off.”

“Why?”

“That little spit of land ahead?” The islet was maybe three hundred yards long and half as wide. It was thickly covered with conifers. “The water in the passage on the other side of it is too shallow for us to enter, but he can make it easy.”

Oliver looked at terrain beyond the islet. It was also densely forested and rose sharply a few feet in from the water. There was a roadway at the top of the rise, but the deputy chief estimated Burkett would have to make a climb approaching four hundred feet to reach it.

If Burkett was able to manage that, he’d be looking at several cops waiting for him.

The deputy chief radioed for two patrol units to take up positions above the islet.

He dispatched each of the two patrol vessels accompanying his boat to block either end of the passage from which Burkett might emerge should he stay with his own craft. The deputy chief and his boat stayed on the western side of the small island, able to reinforce the patrol boat to either the north or south as needed.

In short, he chose not to take Dennehy’s advice. That was a mistake.

“Where can he go now?” Oliver asked.

Dennehy answered, “Somewhere we can’t see what he’s doing, Deputy Chief.”

The fire department arrived at Jake Burkett’s house seconds ahead of John Tall Wolf and Keely Powell. The firefighters had brought with them a robot equipped with a TV camera and floodlights. Its purpose was to give the men and women who had to enter a burning structure an idea of what they might encounter. One of the robot’s design features was the ability to push through many obstructions, including most closed wooden doors.

With only a little reluctance, Fire Chief Vern Kasen was willing to risk sacrificing his robot to a booby-trap so no cop would die trying to enter the house. The machine did its job, knocking down the door, touring the ground floor and revealing no sign of any trip wire. After that, the cops took over.

Abra Benjamin led the way.

“We’ll go with all the cliché places first because people love their clichés,” she said.

She checked every dresser drawer, top and bottom, the back of every closet, all four toilet tanks. She took the mattresses off both beds, looked in the box springs and behind the headboards. She checked all the bathroom cabinets and medicine chests. She checked the kitchen cabinets and the three boxes of cereal found therein.

Her efforts turned up no gold, plastic explosives or incriminating documents.

When she got to the refrigerator, though, and cleaned out the freezer she found …

“Is that blood?” Ron asked. “It looks like blood.”

A plastic bag with a ziplock top was filled with a frozen substance that looked black as much as it did red.

Tall Wolf leaned in and sniffed. “Not much smell, whatever it is, being frozen, but I think I’m getting just a whiff of blood.”

Benjamin, who knew the smell of warm blood, wondered if the BIA agent was bullshitting all the white people.

But Keely asked, “Animal or human?”

“I’m not that much of a connoisseur,” Tall Wolf said.

Whatever it was, Benjamin put it back into the freezer, to keep her hands from getting frostbite and the frozen substance from melting.