House Rivals (9 page)

As she waited for the popcorn in the microwave to stop popping, her mind flipped back again to Johnson and DeMarco. What the hell had they been doing the last three days? Whatever it was, she sure as hell hoped it didn't come back and bite her on the butt.

DeMarco called Mahoney's cell phone to tell him what was going on and was shocked when Mahoney answered. DeMarco was in a bar in Bismarck when he made the call—not expecting Mahoney to answer—and it sounded like Mahoney was in a bar in D.C. when he took the call.

DeMarco summarized what was happening as quickly as possible. He had to be quick because Mahoney wasn't known for either patience or a long attention span. He told him that Sarah Johnson was obsessed with nailing a rich guy named Curtis who was bribing politicians and judges but she had no proof. On the other hand, she'd clearly pissed Curtis off because he was doing whatever he could to stop her.

“Is he behind the death threats?” Mahoney asked.

“I don't know. She names a lot of people in her blog, so Curtis isn't the only suspect.”

“But is he really bribing folks?”

“Probably. But Sarah can't prove it. I just spent the last three days driving all over the American West with her. I was hoping to get a lead on Curtis's fixer, but I struck out. So I don't know what to do next, but I can't spend the rest of my life out here in the sticks following her around.”

“You think she's in danger?”

DeMarco hesitated. “She could be. She's not going to stop investigating Curtis. She's the type who won't ever stop. And I don't know what to do about that either unless you want me to become her full-time bodyguard.”

“What am I supposed to tell Doug?” Mahoney asked.

“Doug?”

“Her grandfather, my buddy. Have you gone soft in the head?”

“I guess you tell him you tried, but there really isn't anything you can do. You can't call up the attorney general and tell him to investigate Curtis just because Sarah
thinks
Curtis is doing something illegal. Then you tell him his crazy granddaughter needs to hire a bodyguard.”

Now it was Mahoney's turn to hesitate. “You go tell him.”

“Aw, come on,” DeMarco said.

DeMarco had called Mahoney from a restaurant called the Peacock Alley American Bar and Grill. It was located in a historic building that began as a hotel in 1911, served as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and back in those days hosted illegal gambling and a few women of ill repute. The bar of the restaurant was located in what had once been the lobby of the old hotel. It was a place where the patrons dressed casually, which suited DeMarco, and it had large windows, a redbrick-like floor, a long, dark bar with comfortable high-backed stools, and an impressive number of beers on tap. There was a brass rail separating the drinkers from the diners and the walls were covered with black-and-white photos of Bismarck in the early twentieth century.

DeMarco was tired from driving all day and from listening to Sarah nag at him. He was thinking he should go to a laundromat because he was wearing his last pair of clean underwear, but who wanted to spend the evening in a laundromat? If he could get a flight out tomorrow evening, he'd go see Sarah in the morning and tell her he was sorry but he had to get back to D.C. If she ever found any real evidence—­something more than a guy getting a bargain price on a seed drill—to give him a call and he'd try to convince Mahoney to lean on the FBI. He knew if he made that offer he'd regret it because she'd probably call him twice a day.

Anyway, that was the plan. See Sarah in the morning, then go see Doug Thorpe and tell him basically the same thing: that if Sarah ever found any actual evidence that Curtis had done something illegal, Mahoney would help. Until then, his granddaughter needed to hire a bodyguard, some strapping Montana lad with a license to carry a weapon. Insofar as the dirty underwear situation, after he had dinner, he'd go back to the motel and wash out the pair of boxers he was wearing in the motel sink. Or better yet, maybe he'd swing by Walmart and just buy a pair.

He ordered a second martini and took out his phone to look at flight schedules. Using one finger—he'd never been a thumb texter—he started to tap in the Travelocity website when a voice said, “You one of those tweeters?”

He looked over at the speaker: a blond in her late thirties. She was pretty, a little plump, but not too plump, and with a pleasant amount of cleavage showing.

“Uh, no, never tweeted in my life. I was just—”

“So what are you doing here in Bismarck. Are you a roughneck?”

“A roughneck?”

“You know, a driller, one of the guys who works on the gas wells. You got the build for it.”

DeMarco figured that was a compliment. “I'm a lawyer from D.C.” He added that his boss had sent him out here to help an old friend with a problem and before she could ask what the problem was, he asked what she did.

He found out that she was a math teacher, taught fifth grade, divorced, no kids. Deep into his second martini, he asked, “By the way, what the hell is a seed drill?”

“A seed drill?”

“Yeah, I heard the term a couple of days ago and was just curious.”

“Well, city boy, a seed drill is a farm implement used to plant seeds. I mean, scientifically. These days, farmers don't plant by poking a hole in the ground with a stick and dropping a seed in. They use these fancy machines called seed drills that have computers and GPS systems and are calibrated so every possible inch of farmable space is planted.”

“I'll be damned,” DeMarco said. “You want another drink?”

And at that moment, his phone rang. It was Sarah. She was like a demon who had escaped from hell and couldn't be forced back down to the underworld where she belonged. “Just a sec,” he said to the teacher. “Yeah, Sarah, what is it?”

“I think I found something. Come over to my place.”

“Sarah, you need to get a life. We just spent the last three days together and, no offense, but I need a break from you. I'll stop by and see you first thing in the morning.” Then he disconnected the call before she could argue with him. Then he turned the phone off—the only way to escape a modern demon.

“Who's this Sarah person you spent the last three days with?” the teacher asked.

Heckler could see DeMarco there at the bar chatting up some blonde. It didn't look like he was planning to leave any time soon—which wasn't good as far as Heckler was concerned. He was tired and needed to get some sleep. He walked up to the bar and made a motion for the bartender to come talk to him. Heckler and the bartender had gone to high school together and the bartender knew what Heckler did. He asked the bartender who the blonde was, and the bartender told him. He said the woman was practically a fixture at the American Grill.

An hour later, DeMarco and the blonde left together. DeMarco followed the blonde to her place and Heckler followed DeMarco. When DeMarco was still inside the blonde's house an hour later, Heckler called it a night, thinking he was getting way too old for this shit.

On the other side of Bismarck, Murdock sat in a car. He could see the lights were on in both sides of the duplex, meaning Sarah Johnson's landlady was home and awake. He'd wait until they both went to bed.

12

DeMarco woke up feeling groggy, disoriented, and hungover. It took him a minute to figure out where he was: the teacher's bedroom. He turned his head. All he could see was the top of her head, a mass of blond curls, and one bare, freckled shoulder.

He eased out of bed trying not to wake her and got dressed. This was the one part of a one-night stand he hated: trying to figure out what to do in the morning before he left. He'd made it clear to the teacher—her name was Amelia—that he'd be leaving to go back to D.C. today. So he hadn't lied to her and he hadn't pretended that he'd be coming back to Bismarck for a second date. But still, it gave him that greasy lounge lizard feeling to sneak out of her house without even saying good-bye.

He went into her bathroom and used her toothpaste and his finger to brush his teeth. Then he hunted around the kitchen until he found paper and a pen. He scratched out a note saying he'd enjoyed last night and if he ever passed through Bismarck again, he'd give her a call. He had no intention of ever passing through Bismarck again.

He glanced at his watch as he started the car. Seven a.m. Knowing Sarah, she'd probably been up since dawn, ranting on her blog, but it still seemed a bit early to be knocking on her door. He stopped for coffee and an Egg McMuffin at the first McDonald's he saw, then proceeded on to his motel where he packed his clothes. He tossed his suitcase full of smelly clothes into the trunk of his rental car—he'd put a lot of miles on that car—and headed toward Sarah's place. She'd told him last night that she'd found something, but he'd interrupted her before she had a chance to say exactly what she'd found. Maybe she'd identified whoever was helping Curtis corrupt local politicians, but knowing the way Sarah tended to draw conclusions not necessarily supported by facts, he wasn't hopeful.

Marjorie had been in the office for more than an hour when Heckler called.

“DeMarco spent the night with a woman name Amelia Moore. He picked her up at the American Grill. Moore's a teacher . . .”

“I know who she is,” Marjorie said. Moore was Bobby's math teacher, the same gal that Bill had been screwing. Jesus! What a slut!

“DeMarco went back to his motel about seven thirty this morning. Ten minutes later, he came out and tossed a suitcase into the trunk of his rental car. It's looks like he may be leaving town.”

“Well, follow him to be sure,” Marjorie said. It would be a relief to have DeMarco gone, although she still wished she knew what he'd been doing with Sarah Johnson after he left Minot the other day.

It was after eight by the time DeMarco arrived at the duplex where Sarah lived. He knocked, but no one answered. Then he noticed the door, the area where the lock goes into the frame. The wood had been splintered like someone had taken a crowbar or a big screwdriver and ripped open the door.

He thought to himself
Oh, shit,
and pushed on the door with the tip of one finger and it swung open without a sound. “Sarah?” he called out. There was no answer. “Sarah?” The silence was ominous and he had this awful feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He took a step into the apartment and there she was, on the floor, on her back, wearing boxer shorts and an extra-large T-shirt; probably the clothes she slept in. Her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn't moving. He noticed her long legs were white as milk as the girl never took time to just sit in the sun. DeMarco took two more steps and he could see that her T-shirt, which was a burgundy color, was soaked with another color that was almost burgundy. He knew it was a waste of time, but he went down on one knee and felt for a pulse in her throat. There was no pulse.

Sarah Johnson was dead.

DeMarco walked outside and dropped down onto the porch steps. He felt completely numb. He sat there for a minute, unable to think, his mind like a whiteout in a blizzard, then reached for his phone and called 911. Five minutes later a squad car arrived, lights flashing, no siren. Two cops, one male, one female, both young, walked up the sidewalk toward him, hands on their holstered sidearms. “Are you the one who called 911?” the female cop asked.

“Yeah,” DeMarco said.

“Sir, we need you to stand up and keep your hands where we can see them.”

Heckler called again while Marjorie was on the phone with one of Curtis's lawyers, and she let the call go to voice mail. She checked the voice mail five minutes later and heard Heckler say, “You need to call me. The cops just arrived at Johnson's house.”

She called Heckler and said, “What's happening? And why are you at Johnson's house? You're supposed to be following DeMarco.”

“I
was
following him. He went to Johnson's place and then he went inside and five minutes later a squad car shows up. Now there're two more squad cars here and a couple of guys I think are detectives. Shit. The medical examiner just pulled up.”

“Hang on a second,” Marjorie said. “I gotta think.”

She knew what had happened: Murdock had killed Johnson and DeMarco had discovered the body. Should she tell Heckler to split or not? The last thing she needed was a cop spotting Heckler hanging around the crime scene. On the other hand, she wanted to know what DeMarco was going to do next.

“You stick with DeMarco,” she told Heckler. Then she lied. “I don't know what the cops are doing at Johnson's house, but you make sure they don't see you. I don't want them questioning you. But stick with DeMarco and keep me posted.”

Two hours after discovering Sarah's body, DeMarco left the police station. He told a detective how he knew Sarah and why he'd come to her house that morning. He told him about Sarah's crusade against Leonard Curtis and how she thought Curtis was bribing judges and politicians. He said the police should read Sarah's blog, that everything she'd learned or suspected had been dumped into it. He also said that Sarah had contacted various law enforcement agencies regarding Curtis, and the people she'd contacted were listed in her blog.

The detective—a heavyset guy with kind eyes—told DeMarco that he'd investigate those things, but it looked to him like Sarah had woken up and interrupted a burglary in progress, and that's why she was killed. “All the small electronics were missing from Ms. Johnson's apartment. We couldn't find a laptop or cell phone. All the drawers in her bedroom had been opened and pawed through. If she had any expensive jewelry, it's gone, and there was no cash in her purse.” The detective paused and added, almost apologetically, “Like lots of places around the country, we have a meth problem here in Bismarck. And thanks to all the gas and oil workers, there's a lot of cash floating around which tends to attract a bunch of bad actors.”

“I don't think this was a robbery,” DeMarco said.

“You think this guy, Curtis, had her killed?”

“I don't know, but the timing bothers me and it should bother you, too. She'd received two death threats and was assaulted once because she was writing about Curtis. And she'd just spent three days running around Montana and the Dakotas trying to find evidence she could use against him.” DeMarco realized as he was speaking that he sounded like Sarah: No hard evidence, just conjecture based on coincidence.

“Did the person who lives next door to her hear the gunshots?” DeMarco asked.

“No. She didn't hear the door being ripped open, either. But the next door neighbor is seventy-six years old. She doesn't wear a hearing aid but she needs one.”

“Or it could mean the killer used a silencer,” DeMarco said.

The detective made an expression that DeMarco interpreted as:
Not likely
—
and please leave the detecting to us.

The detective asked DeMarco if he knew who Sarah's next of kin was and DeMarco said, “Yeah. A man named Doug Thorpe who lives near Miles City, Montana. He's her grandfather. I have his address and phone number. Do you want me to notify him about Sarah's death?”

“No. You're a suspect and . . .”

When DeMarco opened his mouth to protest, the detective said, “I mean technically, since you found the body and admitted to spending the last several days with her. But do I really think you killed her? No, I don't. I'm just saying it wouldn't be appropriate for you to notify her next of kin. I'll call the right sheriff in Montana and have him go talk to Mr. Thorpe.”

DeMarco was relieved that he didn't have to break the news to Thorpe—and felt like a coward because he was relieved. He could imagine what Thorpe's reaction was going to be; he remembered how Thorpe had said that Sarah was the only family he had left and how he “loved her to death.” He could also imagine that Thorpe might blame him for what happened to his granddaughter—and Thorpe might be right to blame him. It was possible that someone had found out that a guy from D.C. who might have some political clout was working with Sarah, and that may have been the catalyst for her being killed. He also wondered if he'd gone to see her last night as she'd asked, if he could have prevented her death.

He remembered telling Sarah how life was short and how she ought to spend some time enjoying it; he'd just never imagined how short her life would turn out to be. He could see her the first night he met her, her unlined face, her eyes blazing as she spoke about her obsession with Curtis. He remembered the way she laughed at the YouTube video. She'd been so terribly young and naïve and earnest—and good.

DeMarco had heard the word
heartsick
before but had never been sure what the word really meant. Now he knew: he was heartsick.