House Rivals (11 page)

15

Marjorie hadn't seen Bill all day yesterday, the day they discovered Johnson's body. She was concerned that he was off on a bender but when she called him, he told her he was in Belcourt. He'd driven up there to talk to Buchanan, the state senator who needed his septic system fixed and a contractor who could fudge the necessary permits. Marjorie had forgotten about Buchanan with all the stuff going on with Sarah Johnson.

Bill finally dragged himself into the office at ten thirty, unshaven, bloodshot eyes, obviously hung over.

“How'd it go with Buchanan?” she asked.

“Okay, I think.”

“You think?”

“It went okay. He's our new best friend.”

Bill dropped down in his chair but then just sat there, looking like he didn't know what to do next—and Marjorie snapped. “Hey! You have to get back on track. You need to knock off the boozing and the moping and get refocused. Johnson's out of our hair, and Curtis will be happy about that, but . . .”

“Out of our hair, Marge? She's dead.”

“I don't wanna hear it. Did you send Murdock the rest of his money?”

“Hell, yes. You think I want him coming up here to collect?”

“Then we're done with that whole . . . thing. Now get to work.”

Men were just useless! Which reminded her: she needed to call Dick and tell him to get a guy over to do the annual maintenance on the air conditioner before it got hot. She went outside to have a smoke and call her husband but Heckler called her before she could.

“DeMarco just took off in an airplane,” Heckler said.

“Thank God,” Marjorie said.

“No, you don't understand. I followed him to the Bismarck airport but he didn't catch a commercial flight. He caught a charter flight. Naturally, I couldn't follow the guy after the plane took off. It cost me fifty bucks, which I plan to expense to you, to find out where the plane's going. It's headed to Great Falls.”

“Great Falls, Montana, or Great Falls, Virginia?”

Marjorie knew, the way her luck had been going, that that was a really dumb question.

“Montana,” Heckler said. “DeMarco left his rental car in the parking lot here at the airport so I'm guessing he's coming back. The only thing I can do at this point is wait for him to return.”

To DeMarco's relief the plane landed on its wheels, on a runway, instead of upside down in a wheat field. Small planes made him nervous.

That morning, he'd woken up early and driven to the Bismarck airport where he discovered that the woman with the deep voice who'd booked the charter flight for him was also his pilot. She had dark hair streaked with a lot of gray, wore no makeup, and looked harder than granite. He handed her his government credit card and signed a bunch of papers without reading them or looking at the amount she charged to his card. He imagined the papers were an insurance waiver that said if she crashed the plane and killed him, his estate couldn't sue her company. He didn't care.

They flew from Bismarck to Great Falls in some kind of small jet. DeMarco didn't pay any attention to the type of plane it was. The only thing he did was buckle his seat belt and say a silent prayer that the lady knew how to fly. She asked him if he wanted her to point out the sights as they were flying and he said, “Sure.”

“Well, that's North Dakota down there,” she said and then didn't say anything else until they crossed into Montana.

He took a taxi from the Great Falls airport to Janet Tyler's house. Tyler was the lawyer who had dropped a water contamination lawsuit against Curtis to get her son out from under various robbery and assault charges. Sarah had told DeMarco that Tyler expressed remorse for what she'd done but refused to tell Sarah exactly what had happened or how Curtis had gotten to her. DeMarco's plan was to hit Tyler right between the eyes with Sarah's death.

When Tyler answered the door, DeMarco held up his Congressional ID like it was a badge and said, “Ms. Tyler, I'm from the United States Congress. My name's DeMarco.”

“Congress?”

“Yeah. Sarah Johnson's dead. You know, the young lady who came to see you a couple of days ago? Someone shot her twice in the heart.”

“Oh, my God,” Tyler said, holding her hands to her mouth, her eyes going wide with shock.

“May I come in?”

Tyler was so thin that DeMarco thought she might be anorexic. Sarah had said the woman was in her fifties, but she appeared to be at least a decade older. There were dark half-circles under her eyes from lack of sleep and because her face was so pale, it looked as if the skin under her eyes had been smudged with charcoal. Her hair was blond and brittle, like dried-out straw.

She backed into the living room and pointed DeMarco to an overstuffed chair. The blinds in the room were closed but enough light entered through the slats that they could see each other. He wondered why she didn't let in the sunlight; he wondered if she ever ventured out into the sunlight. There were at least a dozen photographs of a handsome young man in the room; the young man had Tyler's eyes.

“Like I said, Sarah Johnson's dead. And I think the reason she's dead is because she came to see you, and even though you didn't tell her anything, whoever killed her didn't want her asking more questions.” That was a lie and not fair to Tyler, but DeMarco didn't care. “But now I want the answer to the question she asked you, and you're going to tell me. When you dropped that lawsuit to keep your son from going to jail, who got to you? Who was the person who talked to you?”

Tyler started shaking her head.

DeMarco shouted, “Don't you give a shit that someone killed that girl?”

“Yes, of course, but . . .”

“Let me explain something to you, Janet. The FBI is investigating Sarah's death. The Bureau is also looking into the claims she made in her blog about Curtis bribing and blackmailing people to get his way. In other words,
you're
going to be investigated. But the thing is, I don't care about you and I can make the FBI back off if you cooperate.”

Now Tyler was weeping softly, but DeMarco didn't know if she was weeping for herself or Sarah.

Speaking more softly, DeMarco said, “Janet, I know you're a decent person. I know all you were doing was trying to save your son, and I have no desire to see you disbarred. I just want to find the person responsible for killing Sarah. If you give me what I want, you'll never see me again and the FBI won't come after you.”

“Do you have children, Mr. DeMarco?”

“No.”

“Then you can't possibly understand. The chances of me winning that suit against Curtis were small to begin with and even if I'd won, his lawyers would have appealed. But my son was going to go to jail and he didn't deserve to be in jail. He was sick. He wasn't a criminal. The damn laws in this country about drugs . . . Paul would have died in jail. The only time he was strong was when he was high. He would have committed suicide.”

“I understand,” DeMarco said. He didn't know what else to say.

“Then my son died anyway. After I turned my back on the people who hired me to sue Curtis, Paul relapsed again and killed himself behind the wheel of a car.”

“I'm sorry,” DeMarco said, “but Sarah . . .”

“Bill Logan,” she said. “Or that's what he said his name was. He was the one who came to see me and told me that if I dropped the suit he could guarantee my son wouldn't serve time.”

Finally. “What else do you know about Logan? What does he look like?”

“He was about your age. A tall, nice-looking man with dark hair. He was very polite, not threatening at all.”

“Do you know where he lives or where he works? Did he give you a card or a phone number?”

“No. All I know is his name. I'll never forget it because my life ended the day I talked to him.”

When she said this, DeMarco had the impression that she was being literal: her life really did end after she betrayed her clients and her son died. That she was still breathing was almost accidental.

“You said I could be disbarred. Well, I don't practice law anymore. After Paul died, I hardly ever leave this house. The only reason I'm cooperating with you is because I feel terrible about that young woman, but I don't care what happens to me.”

As DeMarco was leaving her dark house, he wondered what the odds were that Janet Tyler would eventually commit suicide. He figured the odds were high.

When he reached his car, he called Westerberg. It was nice having the Federal Bureau of Investigation at his beck and call.

“Agent,” he said when she answered, “I got a name. Bill Logan. I need to find out who he is and if he has any connection to Leonard Curtis.”

“That's all you got? Bill Logan? No address, no DOB, nothing else.”

“Just the name. What you could do is—”

“Don't tell me how to do my job, DeMarco.”

“Fine. Just get me some answers. And I need them quick. I've got a plane at my disposal and I'll be back at the airfield in half an hour and I want to tell my pilot where to go next.” DeMarco liked saying
my pilot
.

DeMarco arrived at the airfield to find
his
pilot reading a magazine with a picture of a horse on the cover. “I want to wait here for a while before flying back,” he told her. “I'm waiting for a phone call.”

The pilot shrugged. “It's your money,” she said.

He noticed the magazine she was reading was called
American Quarter Horse.
He thought a quarter horse was the kind cowboys used to cut cattle out of the herd, to brand them or something, but wasn't sure. DeMarco had only been on a horse twice in his life and both times he'd felt like the horse was the one in control. Yanking on the reins of a beast that weighed a thousand pounds and had big teeth had never made sense to him.

“You own quarter horses?” he asked the pilot.

“Yeah, I've got two. I like 'em better than my husband and my kids. In fact, I'm thinking about selling one of my kids so I can buy another one.”

Half an hour later—as DeMarco was still learning why quarter horses were better than thoroughbreds, big-footed Clydesdales, and every other four-legged critter on the planet—his phone rang. It was Westerberg.

“There's a Leslie William Logan in Bismarck,” she said.

“Leslie?” DeMarco said.

“Yeah. He's self-employed and the co-owner of D&L Consulting. His partner is a woman named Marjorie Dawkins. Logan and Dawkins are also registered lobbyists in the state of North Dakota. But if you look at D&L Consulting's website, you can't figure out what the hell they do. It says they work on creating “partnerships committed to ­integrity”—whatever that means—and “developing uncommon approaches to solving problems.” Their website says they've worked with trade associations and numerous small businesses—but doesn't name a single business they've worked with. I mean, you couldn't get any more vague if you tried and the address for the company is a post office box.”

“Are you saying you couldn't find a connection between this Leslie Logan and Leonard Curtis?” DeMarco said.

“No, I'm not saying that,” Westerberg said, “because in addition to looking at D&L Consulting's website, I called a guy at the IRS and asked him to take a peek at the company's last tax return. One hundred percent of D&L's business income, based on the 1099s in their return, comes from companies owned by Leonard Curtis.”

“This is good, Agent. In fact, this is great. Give me Logan's home address,” DeMarco said.

“No. Not until you tell me why you're asking about him.”

“I gotta think about that,” DeMarco said.

“What? Let me tell you something, DeMarco. You don't have a badge. You're not in law enforcement. I don't know what you do for John Mahoney but you are not licensed or sanctioned to investigate people for murder or any other crime.”

“Yeah, I know, which is why I gotta think about this whole thing.”

If DeMarco hadn't disconnected the call he would have heard Agent Westerberg curse in a most un-agent-like fashion.

DeMarco told his horse-loving pilot that they could head back to Bismarck. He was genuinely relieved that that's where Logan lived. He didn't have any desire to see more of Montana or North Dakota.

DeMarco hadn't told Westerberg that he suspected Bill Logan was Leonard Curtis's fixer because he wasn't sure that he wanted the FBI involved in whatever he was going to do next—and he didn't know what he was going to do next. The problem with Westerberg was that while she might attempt to build a legal case against Logan and Curtis—and maybe Logan's partner, this lady, Marjorie Dawkins—she would follow the law. This meant that she would worry about due process and warrants and people's right to counsel—and DeMarco didn't care about any of those things. DeMarco's objective was to make someone pay for Sarah's death and he wasn't going to allow the niceties of the legal system to hinder him.

DeMarco frankly doubted that Logan could be convicted of bribery, at least not based on what he knew so far or based on anything that Sarah had been able to find. Like in the case of Janet Tyler: Logan had most likely convinced a prosecutor to go easy on Tyler's son in exchange for helping the prosecutor's political career. However, there would be no hard evidence that Logan had bribed the prosecutor and the prosecutor would maintain that he had the lawful authority to reach a plea bargain with Tyler's son that didn't include jail time. So if DeMarco was going to put Curtis or Logan in jail, he need something more than he currently had.

DeMarco also figured that Logan or Curtis didn't kill Sarah ­themselves—assuming they had anything at all to do with her death. Curtis certainly wouldn't have been directly involved in a murder; he was an executive who used his minions to do things for him. And although it was possible that Logan had killed her, it seemed more likely that Curtis or Logan would have hired a pro, a guy able to make an assassination look like a robbery gone bad—but if the FBI and the Bismarck cops couldn't identify the hit man, it seemed pretty unlikely that DeMarco would be able to do so. The hit man was a ghost.