House Rivals (8 page)

It seemed only reasonable that he should take the shot over from where he was standing. It wasn't fair he should have to hack his way out of a sand trap because of a badly timed phone call.

10

“She just called DeMarco,” Heckler said.

“Yeah?” Marjorie said.

“She said, I got four names.”

“So what were the names?”

“No, you don't understand. All she said was
I got four names
and before she could say who they were, DeMarco said he'd meet her at her place and hung up. So I don't know who she was talking about. I'm just telling you she sounded excited and said . . . Well, I already told you what she said.”

“You stay glued to that girl like, like . . . you stay glued to her.”

“I will.”

She called Bill to tell him that taking care of Johnson was even more urgent than she'd originally thought, but the call went to voice mail. She'd wondered if Bill was already on the plane to Denver. He'd better be on the plane; he'd better not be ignoring her phone calls.

But four names. What four names? Who was that crazy bitch talking about? What did these people know?

DeMarco pulled up in front of Sarah's place. He saw that she lived in a duplex—an old two-story white clapboard house with a big front porch and two brick chimneys—and not an apartment complex as he'd expected. He knocked on the left-hand door—the one with the letter B following the address—and she answered a moment later. Instead of inviting him in, she came through the door pulling a roll-on bag.

“Uh, what's with the suitcase?” DeMarco asked.

“I told you, I got four names. We're going to go see them.”

“And you need a suitcase?”

“Yeah. We'll go to your motel first and you can check out.”

“Wait a minute. Where are these people located?”

“The first one's in Minot. The next one—”

“Where's Minot?”

“In North Dakota,” she said, looking at him like he'd asked where Paris was. “It's about a hundred miles from Bismarck. The next one's in Great Falls.” Then she added, “That's in Montana. It's about eight hours from Minot.”

“Eight hours!” DeMarco said. Then, because he couldn't help it, he said it again. “Eight hours!”

“Yeah. I figured we'd go in a loop. Minot to Great Falls, then Great Falls to Billings, then Billings to Rapid City.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Can't we fly?”

“We could but it will be faster to drive. You can't get direct flights to most of these places.”

He tried to think of a way to get out of this. Maybe he should tell her that he'd wait for her in Bismarck, and when she learned something, to give him a call. But he didn't. Instead he followed her down the sidewalk like a man walking to the gallows and opened the trunk of his rental car so she could toss her suitcase in. Thirty minutes later, he'd checked out of the Holiday Inn and gassed up his car. He wondered where they'd be staying that night.

She directed him turn by turn out of Bismarck until they reached US 83. Minot was due north of Bismarck.

“So who are we seeing in Minot?” DeMarco asked.

“A retired judge.”

“And what did he do wrong?”

“He didn't do anything wrong.”

“Then why—”

“This guy, his name is Parker, had a case before him involving forced pooling.”

“Forced pooling? What's—”

“Curtis was suing landowners in Ward County for blocking surveys on their land to determine where to drill for gas. The lawsuit said Curtis's company had been negotiating in good faith with the landowners but the landowners weren't playing ball as required to do by the law.”

“I still don't understand. What's forced pooling?”

Sarah gave an exasperated sigh to indicate what she thought of ­DeMarco's abysmal ignorance. “I'll keep this simple. Gas companies don't drill straight down to get the gas. What they do is get a lease to drill on one parcel of land that has gas under it, then they basically drill sideways or horizontally to get at the gas in adjacent parcels. The gas under all these parcels combined is called a
pool
. And you can look this up if you don't believe me, but thirty-nine states in this country have laws that essentially mandate that the owners of these adjacent parcels have to allow the companies to drill under their property if the company can get leases from a certain percentage of the landowners over the pool. That's what they mean by
forced
pooling.”

This was just like Sarah's blog—totally confusing—but he imagined she was right about the law.

Sarah continued. “Both Republicans and Democrats in the areas affected are against these forced-pooling laws. Some people object for safety and environmental reasons, like they're afraid their well water will become contaminated. Others object on principal, feeling that they're being forced to give up their property rights, which they are. But somehow the gas and oil companies always prevail, no matter how many people object. Anyway, to get back to Judge Parker.

“Like I said, Curtis filed a suit in this one county against a bunch of landowners because they were doing everything they could to block him from drilling. Curtis's suit said they weren't acting in the spirit of the law. Well, Parker stands up in court one day and makes a raving speech about how he can't be bought but then recuses himself from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety. It was obvious that Curtis had tried to buy Parker off, but . . .”

Once again, what was obvious to Sarah wasn't a matter of what could be proven; it was just her opinion.

“. . . but when I asked Parker what happened he refused to tell me. He was a prick. He said that if he wouldn't discuss his reason for recusing himself with the legitimate media he sure as hell wasn't going to talk to some wet-behind-the ears blogger.”

“What makes you think he'll talk to you now?”

“Because he's retired, so maybe he'll feel differently. The other thing is, Parker isn't really a bad guy. I researched him a little more after I started to think about who might help me, and he works at a homeless shelter on weekends, volunteers at polling booths, that sort of thing. I called him a prick, but he's more of a curmudgeon. I'm hoping now that he's no longer on the bench he'll change his mind about talking to me.”

They arrived at Parker's home in Minot about four in the afternoon. The house was a nice-looking place with a well-tended front yard but not ostentatious. In other words, the kind of house an honest judge might own.

“You want me with you while you talk to him?” DeMarco asked.

“I don't think so. You look kind of intimidating.”

“I thought that was the reason for me coming with you. To be intimidating.”

“Intimidation isn't going to work on this guy.”

DeMarco watched her walk up the sidewalk to Parker's house, sulking about the intimidating comment. He could
act
intimidating but he didn't think he
looked
intimidating, like he had a face that would scare little kids or something. He had dark hair he combed straight back, a prominent nose, blue eyes, and a cleft in his chin. He'd been told he looked just like his father, and he had to admit that his dad could look intimidating, particularly if he was angry, but he didn't think
he
looked that way, at least not when he smiled.

DeMarco saw Sarah ring the judge's doorbell and a moment later a balding guy in his seventies wearing an apron answered the door. Sarah talked to him for no more than a minute before he shut the door. She came back to the car and said, “What a prick.”

“Where are we going next?” DeMarco asked.

“I told you. Great Falls. We can drive at least halfway there today, maybe stay in Glasgow tonight, and get up early tomorrow. We can be in Great Falls by midmorning tomorrow.”

“Glasgow, Montana?”

“Yeah. Did you think I meant Scotland?”

Marjorie's cell phone rang just as she was getting ready to leave the office to go to Bobby's baseball game. It was Heckler.

“What's going on?” she said.

“She went to see a guy named Raymond Parker in Minot. He used to be a—”

“Yeah, I know who Parker is. So what happened?”

“As near as I can tell, he slammed the door in her face. She talked to him for about two seconds and that was it.”

“Good. Was DeMarco with her?”

“Yeah, but he just sat in the car when she talked to Parker. He's driving her.”

“So where is she now?”

There was a long pause.

“Heckler,” Marjorie repeated, “where is she now?”

“I, uh, I ran out of gas.”

“You ran out of gas?”

“Yeah, they left Minot and started driving west. I didn't think they'd drive too far and . . . I mean, they just kept going and going and going and gas stations aren't all that close together on US 2 and—”

Marjorie just lost it. “Goddamn, son of a—”

“Jesus, I'm sorry, Marjorie.”

“So what in the hell are you going to do?”

“I guess I'll head back to Bismarck and wait for her. By the time I get somebody way out here to gas me up, she'll have a three-hour lead on me.”

“But can't you track her with the GPS in her phone?”

“She's out of range already,” Heckler said.

Marjorie wondered if he was lying about the tracking software having some sort of limited range. She suspected that Heckler, the lazy shit, didn't want to drive any farther and try to catch up with Johnson. But she didn't know for sure and she didn't see any point in continuing to swear at him—but she felt like killing him. She wanted to know who that crazy girl was going to see next. The good news was that if Murdock did his job right they wouldn't need Heckler anymore because in the future Marjorie would always know where Sarah Johnson was. She'd be in a grave.

The problem with taking a long road trip with Sarah was that she only cared about one thing in life: crucifying Leonard Curtis. When she spoke about what Curtis was doing—undermining Mom, apple pie, and the American way—she became animated, waving her arms, talking so fast she sometimes sputtered. But there didn't seem to be much else that interested her.

At one point DeMarco asked, “Have you got a boyfriend?” Then he added, “Or a girlfriend.”

She'd been looking at something on her smart phone when he asked the question and she sighed—as if she didn't appreciate the ­interruption —and said, “Not anymore. I was going with a guy in Billings for about six months. I met him at a Sierra Club rally. Then I found out he wasn't really passionate about anything. I mean he cared, but he wasn't really committed. When I told him this, he said I was too intense for him . . .”

No shit
, DeMarco thought.

“. . . and we broke up. I don't really have time for a boyfriend right now, anyway.”

She sounded regretful, however, and DeMarco imagined she must get lonely. He almost said that Joan of Arc didn't have a boyfriend either—but decided it wasn't the time to be a smart-ass.

“Sarah, I admire what you're trying to do. Honest. I really do. But you're a young woman and there's more to life than chasing after Leonard Curtis. I mean at your age and with your money, you ought to be traveling through Europe, snorkeling in Tahiti. It's not healthy to be so obsessed with Curtis.”

“Yeah, people are always telling me that. One of my friends said I should see a psychiatrist.”

“Well, maybe . . .”

“The thing is, nobody else cares about what people like Curtis are doing. If somebody doesn't try to stop him . . .”

“That's not true, Sarah. Lots of people care. There are all kinds of folks out there trying to reform campaign financing and reduce the influence of lobbyists. But these people also have lives. They have families. They have hobbies. They have fun.”

“Don't you understand?” Sarah said. “There's a crisis in this country! People like Curtis are buying politicians to get their way. Things have to change.”

“Yeah, I know but—”

“Like judges. Why the hell do we elect state judges? Judges shouldn't be elected. If they're elected then it's easier for guys like Curtis to corrupt the legal system by contributing to their campaigns and running negative ads against them on television. State judges ought to be like the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. You know, appointed for life.”

DeMarco almost said: U.S. Supreme Court Justices are sort of elected, too. When you put a president in office, you're basically electing the kind of guy that the president will appoint to the Supreme Court if he gets the chance. But he knew that would just start her on another rant.

“Sarah, all I'm saying is that life is short. Enjoy it while you have the chance.”

She just turned away from him and looked out at a field, a green sea of barley.

They stopped at about eight p.m. in Glasgow—the one in ­Montana —and checked into a place called the Star Lodge. Sarah offered to pay for his room but DeMarco said he'd pay for it, not bothering to tell her that if she paid taxes, she was paying for it anyway.

“I'm going to find out where to get a martini in Glasgow,” DeMarco said. “You want to come along?”

“No, I've got things to do, people to call.”

“Jesus, Sarah. Have you ever heard that expression about stopping to smell the roses?”

“And vodka smells like roses?” she said.

11

Bill Logan arrived at the steam bath in Denver an hour early, hoping the steam would lessen the hangover he had. When he'd arrived in Denver the night before, he had dinner, then just sat in the hotel bar and started pouring scotch down his throat. This thing with Murdock and Sarah Johnson was turning him into a drunk.

It was even affecting his sex life. He was a guy who usually got laid four or five nights a week. He knew so many women he could always get laid. But last night, sitting in the bar of the Hilton, there was a woman who looked like she might be a stewardess. She was close to forty, not a beauty queen, but not bad-looking, either. And she'd glanced his way a couple of times. Normally with a woman like her, Bill figured he'd have to buy her two drinks and then it would be off to her room to do the hokeypokey. But last night, he hadn't been able to work up the energy for romancing her, and he just sat there drinking scotch, imagining what it would be like to be in prison. With his luck, his roommates would be two psychopaths who would take turns beating and raping him.

Murdock walked into the steam room at ten, wearing a white towel around his waist. He made a motion for Bill to stand up and Bill did, knowing what he was supposed to do. He dropped his towel on the bench where he'd been sitting, and made a slow turn so Murdock could see he didn't have anything taped to his back. Then Murdock did the same thing, after which he looked under the bench to make sure Bill hadn't hidden a recorder there.

Murdock looked exactly as he had the last time Bill saw him six years ago. It didn't appear as if he'd aged a bit. Apparently killing people was good for his constitution. And like the first time Bill met with him, he couldn't help but think the guy just didn't look like a professional killer. He should've had barbed-wire tattoos circling his arms or those teardrop tattoos the gang guys had to show how many people they'd killed.

Bill told him what they needed him to do: take care of Sarah Johnson. He said, “It doesn't have to be an accident this time because we're in a hurry. Make it look like a robbery gone bad or maybe a rape.”

“I don't rape people,” Murdock said—and he said this like he was
offended.
Apparently killing people didn't bother him but he considered rape to be repulsive.

“Sorry,” Bill said, not sure what else to say. “All I'm saying is, we don't need something fancy. Just make it look like it's part of some other crime, but not like she was singled out. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Murdock said.

Jesus, he couldn't believe what he was doing and saying. His hangover was almost gone thanks to the steam, but when he left the gym he was going straight to the airport and start tossing back drinks until the plane landed in Bismarck. They were going to have to carry him off that plane.

DeMarco was in a deep, dreamless sleep in his room at the Star Lodge in Glasgow, Montana, when someone began to pound on the door. He looked at the bedside clock: six a.m. He got out of bed dressed in boxer shorts and his favorite Nationals T-shirt and opened the door. Not surprised, he found Sarah standing there, looking impatient.

“What are you doing, still sleeping?” she said. “We need to get going.”

“Sarah, it's six in the fu . . . It's six. Are you insane?” Before she could say anything, he added, “Go away. I'll see you at eight, then we'll go have breakfast—or I'll have breakfast—then we'll take off.” He shut the door, trudged over to the bed, and fell on to it. What a nut!

She spent the first hour of the drive to Great Falls sulking and he was in no mood to cajole her. Finally he asked, “Who are we going to see in Great Falls? Another judge?”

“Do you really care?” she said.

As he was trying to decide how he should answer that question, Sarah said, “I'm going to talk to a lawyer. She represented a group of ranchers suing Curtis for well water contamination caused by fracking. If she'd won, it would have been a huge blow to Curtis. Like this year, forty plaintiffs sued a natural gas company in New York and the gas company, after fighting the case for years, finally settled with them for millions and that's what could have happened to Curtis. Anyway, the lawyer involved was a woman named Janet Tyler. She's really good and it looked like she might have been able to beat Curtis. Then she backed out of the case and after she did, the whole case fell apart.

“I went to see her because it was obvious that Curtis had done something to get to her. I didn't think he'd bribed her because Tyler has money, and when I saw her speak on some local news program, I could tell she had a fire in her belly about the issue. I called her office and when she wouldn't speak to me, I hung around outside her office until she went out to lunch and—”

“Ah. So you stalked her.”

“You're not funny, DeMarco. Anyway, when I asked her why she dropped the lawsuit I could tell she felt bad about what she'd done, but she wouldn't tell me what happened. I finally gave up but as I was leaving she said, “I didn't have a choice.” When I asked her what she meant, she got into her car and drove away.

“After I met with her, I did some more research on her, the kind of research I should have done before I met with her. I found out that she had a son, but she was divorced and her son used her ex-husband's last name and she uses her maiden name. Well, her son had been busted by the cops. He was an oxycodone addict and he broke into an old lady's home to steal shit. He thought the old lady was gone but she wasn't and she tried to stop him, and he pushed her down and she smacked her head. But she was a tough old bird. She followed him out of the house after he ran, got his license plate, and called the cops. The cops went to his house to arrest him, and he punched one of the cops. So her kid was charged for breaking and entering, robbery, assaulting an old lady, assaulting the cops, and resisting arrest. They had like a dozen charges against him and he was going to do time, maybe four years. Well, voilà. After Tyler drops out of the well water contamination lawsuit, her son's case is pled down to two years' probation, drug counseling, anger management classes, mandatory community service, blah, blah, blah. Everything but jail time.”

“Did you find anything resembling evidence that Curtis had anything to do with her son's case?”

“No. And fuck you for that
resembling evidence
crack
.
But the answer is no. I couldn't find any evidence that the judge or the prosecutor in her son's case had suddenly come into money or had some work done for free on their houses. But if you think it's a coincidence that her son got off scot-free at the same time she dropped the suit, then you're a complete idiot.”

DeMarco was thinking maybe they should send
her
to anger management classes. Or charm school. “What makes you think Tyler will talk to you now?” he asked.

“I don't know that she will, but her son's dead. He got high, ran his car into a ditch, and broke his neck. I know she felt guilty about what she did, and since her son's gone, maybe she'll talk.”

Sarah again decided to meet with Janet Tyler by herself.

DeMarco said, “I thought the whole point of me coming with you was for me to lean on these people. You know, I say I'm from Washington and I'm here to crush you with the entire weight of the federal government if you don't tell the truth.”

“Yeah, but I've been thinking that's not the right approach, not with these people. The four I picked are all people who I think have a conscience and might feel bad about what they did, so I don't really want to scare them. I just want to convince them to do the right thing. And, frankly, you don't exactly look like you're from the government.”

“What does that mean? What do I look like?”

“Well, you look like a guy a loan shark might send to break the legs of somebody who owes him money.”

“You gotta be kidding,” DeMarco said.

Sarah spent twenty minutes with Tyler and when she came back to the car she said, “I can't believe how bad that woman looks compared to the last time I saw her. She's lost about thirty pounds and looks like she's seventy years old. I know she's in her fifties.”

“Yeah, but did she tell you anything?”

“No. She started crying and saying she was sorry about what she'd done and how I didn't understand that she had to do it for her son, but she wouldn't give me a name or tell me how they got to her.”

“You sure you don't want me to talk to her?” DeMarco said.

“Yes. It won't do any good.”

They spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express in Great Falls. ­DeMarco was thinking about buying stock in the outfit.

The next morning—the day after seeing Janet Tyler in Great Falls—Sarah and DeMarco were on the road again, off to see the next two people on Sarah's list: a man in Billings, Montana, and a woman in Rapid City, South Dakota. Both people had served in their state legislatures but were no longer in office.

Only one memorable thing happened on this leg of their journey—or at least it was something DeMarco would remember for a long time to come. They were traveling southeast on Highway 87, along the eastern perimeter of the Lewis and Clark National Forest. DeMarco was driving and enjoying the scenery while Sarah was looking at her iPad. DeMarco figured she was investigating something online related to natural gas or Leonard Curtis, when she suddenly let out what he could only describe as a peal of joyful, girlish laughter.

“What's so funny?” he asked.

She laughed again and said, “One of my girlfriends sent me this YouTube clip of this kitten swatting this big dog on the snout. The dog, it's a huge St. Bernard, comes close to this little kitten and the kitten smacks it on the nose and the dog blinks a couple of times and backs up, then he comes close to the kitten again, and the kitten smacks him on the nose again. It's hilarious!”

DeMarco didn't say anything for a moment, then said, “You need to do that more often.”

“What?” Sarah said.

“Laugh like that,” DeMarco said.

But that was the only memorable thing that happened. The man who Sarah had planned to see in Billings wasn't home; they learned from a neighbor that he'd left unexpectedly the night before to go see a brother who'd had a heart attack. The woman in Rapid City refused to talk with Sarah, slamming the door in her face the way Judge Parker in Minot had. By the time they reached the duplex where Sarah lived, she looked like someone had killed her puppy and ate it while she watched.

“I gotta regroup,” she told DeMarco as they pulled up in front of her duplex. “I think you had a good idea about running down whoever's acting as Curtis's middleman and I have to think more about how to find him. And you need to call John Mahoney and convince him to get the FBI involved.”

She'd said this—about getting the FBI involved—maybe sixty times as they'd been making a trip that covered three states and almost fifteen hundred miles. He liked the kid, but she was starting to drive him bonkers and he was relieved when she got out of the car.

Marjorie was sitting in the family room, watching a stupid zombie movie with Dick and the boys. Dick was sulking as she'd just about ripped his head off when she got home because the kitchen was a disaster: unwashed dishes, food all over the counter, mustard spilled onto the floor, the milk just sitting there spoiling. So she had a right to get angry, but she probably shouldn't have called him names. Maybe she'd make it up to him by giving him a blow job tonight, something she considered the ultimate sacrifice for marital harmony.

She wasn't really watching the movie, either. She was stewing about her partner. Bill Logan was turning into a drunk. The day after he returned from Denver, he went out to lunch and came back to the office two hours later, completely shit-faced. Maybe after Murdock dealt with Johnson he'd get back on track. She sure as hell hoped so because things couldn't go on the way they were.

As for Johnson, she still hadn't gotten back from wherever she'd been. And because Heckler lost her when he ran out of gas, Marjorie still had no idea who'd she'd gone to see. All Gordy could tell from the spyware planted in her cell phone was that she made what appeared to be overnight stops in Glasgow and Great Falls, Montana. Marjorie needed to . . .”

Her phone rang; it was Heckler. Into the phone, she said, “Hang on a minute.” To Dick and the boys she said, “Excuse me, I have to take this.” Then she patted Dick on the thigh and said, “I'm sorry I got so mad earlier.” But he ignored her and sat there pouting.

She walked into the kitchen. “Yeah, what is it?”

“She's back,” Heckler said. “DeMarco just dropped her off at her place.”

“Good. Now I want you to forget about her and get on DeMarco. I want to know what he's up to.”

Heckler said, “Shit, then I gotta go. I gotta catch up with him before he's out of sight.”

“Go,” she said and disconnected the call.

She couldn't tell Heckler that the real reason she wanted him following DeMarco was because she couldn't afford to have him hanging around Sarah Johnson when Murdock made his move. Wouldn't that be the icing on the cake: Heckler stopping Murdock from killing the brat. Plus, she really did want to know what DeMarco was doing. She figured that after Johnson was gone, he'd most likely go home, but since she didn't really know why he was here in the first place, she couldn't be sure.

She called Bill next. “She's back home. Text the guy. You know who I mean.”

Bill said, “Yeah, geez, okay.” He sounded like he was drunk. Again.

“You better get your act together, Bill,” she snapped. “This boozing shit can't go on.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said and hung up.

Men! If it wasn't her husband, it was Bill Logan.

She went back to the family room. The good guys were mowing down the zombies with machine guns. When she'd left the room to talk to Heckler, they'd been doing the same thing. That seemed to be the entire plot of the movie, but her sons didn't seem to care. “Anybody want popcorn?” she said, trying to sound perky and cheerful. The boys said, “Yeah!” Dick, he just pouted. Okay, no blow job for you tonight, asshole.