Shadow Man (33 page)

Special Agent Lila Mae McTeague polished off her scrambled eggs, biscuits, and extra-crispy bacon with an enthusiasm that would have raised awe among an assembly of famished lumberjacks. The avid diner noticed that the men around the table were staring at her. “I was hungry,” she said, and buttered another hot biscuit.

“It’s all right,” Moon replied with frank admiration. “A man who’s stood over a hot woodstove all morning appreciates a lady with a healthy appetite.”

Scott Parris nodded. “I like a woman who don’t pick at her food like a bird.” He punctuated this assertion with a healthy belch.

Forrest Wakefield wiped his mouth with a cotton napkin that matched the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth on the table. “That was an excellent breakfast.” He shot a look at his host. “And I appreciate the invitation to the feast.”

“You’re welcome,” Moon said. “I’m glad you’re here to finish up your work.”

McTeague smiled at Moon’s fellow plotter. As if she didn’t know, she asked: “What sort of work do you do, Mr. Wakefield?”

Pleased at the woman’s interest in his career, he blushed. “I’m with the United States Department of Agriculture.”

“Ah,” she said, “a brother fed.”

Feeling self-conscious in the company of a strikingly pretty FBI agent, a tough-as-nails chief of police, and a legendary tribal investigator, Wakefield took a halfhearted stab at a fragment of fried potato. “I’m just a county agent.”

“
Just?
Don’t be so doggone modest,” Moon boomed. “Why, without our county extension agents serving agriculture in all the fifty states, where would we be?” When no one responded to his rhetorical question, the beef rancher provided the answer himself. “Why, we’d be knee-deep in alfalfa rot, cotton-chewing boll weevils, and sickly sheep and cattle—that’s where we’d be.”

Parris regarded his improvised biscuit-bacon-potato sandwich. “And eating bread full of rat droppings and pork crawling with worms.”

“Hear, hear,” McTeague said. “Hooray for the USDA.” It was clear to one and all that she was in a fine mood.

Warmed by this unanimous praise, Wakefield blushed to the roots of his hair.

McTeague got up from her chair. “Charlie, since you cooked the meal, I’ll wash the dishes.”

The Ute was immediately on his feet. “Oh no you won’t.”

“I won’t?”

“Of course not. At the Big Hat, ladies don’t wet their delicate hands in dishwater—that’s a man’s work.”

She seated herself. “Well, if you insist.”

“I certainly do.” Having made his point, Moon also sat down. He pointed to his friend. “Scott’ll do the dishes.”

Parris glared at his host. “Why me?”

Moon ignored the pointless question, smiled at the attractive lady. “And while Scott washes and Forrest wipes, you and me can go for a nice walk, down by the creek.”

Special Agent McTeague shook her head.

“No?”

She looked from one man to the other. The dejected tribal investigator. The chief of police, who was munching another biscuit, this one filled to overflowing with blackberry jam. The county agent, who was showing distinct signs of unease. “Before we go for a stroll, I have few things that I wish to say.”

“Go right ahead.” Moon scooted away from the table, hitched his thumbs in his belt. “I believe I speak for all of us when I say you have a captive audience.”

“Thank you.” She turned to the county agent. “Even Mr. Wakefield may find my account of some interest.”

The USDA employee was staring vacantly at the remnants of food on his plate.

McTeague continued. “From what I have heard, Mr. Wakefield played an important role in the plot to persuade Mr. Trottman to return to where he had left Pansy Blinkoe’s corpse—and remove the denture from her mouth.”

“Forrest was doing a job for me,” Moon said. “And I was acting in my professional capacity as a licensed investigator working on behalf of Dr. and Mrs. Blinkoe.”

“I am aware,” McTeague said, “that Mr. Wakefield was acting on your instructions. And as far as I know, what he did probably falls barely within the bounds of legal behavior.”

To Wakefield’s sensitive ear, this sounded very much like criticism.

She added: “Though there is an ethical question when someone—particularly a U.S. government employee—misrepresents himself to a member of the legal profession.”

“He was not misrepresenting,” Moon reminded the lady. “He was
acting.
”

“That’s right,” Wakefield said. “I have always wanted to strut and fret my hour on the stage.” Caught up in his part, he thumped the table, raised his voice. “Since when is it unethical for an American citizen to practice his chosen avocation? Whatever happened to liberty and freedom and justice for all?”

“I am deeply sorry,” McTeague said. “If I had brought a star-spangled banner to breakfast, I would wave it and sing the national anthem—while tap-dancing on the table.”

All three men would have liked to witness the long-legged lady kicking up a storm, and Scott Parris barely stopped short of saying so when she gave him The Look.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking, Scott—keep it to yourself.” McTeague turned her gaze on Charlie Moon. “I also know what’s been going on.”

Moon smiled at his fanciful image of the dancing FBI agent. “Then you’re two or three steps ahead of me.”

She shook her head at the childish man. “Charlie, Charlie—did you actually think you could mess around with the FBI and not be found out?”

Moon’s expression suggested that he had certainly hoped so.

McTeague continued. “I am aware that even before that dismembered arm with Manfred Blinkoe’s watch and ring was found by the fisherman—”

“Fisherwoman.”

“Charlie, please do not interrupt me.”

“Sorry.”

She looked at the beamed ceiling. “Where was I?”

Being well fed and full of caffeine, Parris was in a helpful mood. “You were aware that even before that dismembered arm—”

“Right. Thank you, Scott.” McTeague paused to take a breath, fixed the Ute with a paralyzing stare. “I am aware that even before that dismembered human arm was found by the fisher
woman
—and not very long after the Blinkoe houseboat exploded on Moccasin Lake—you knew that Dr. Blinkoe was alive and well.”

Moon gave her an innocent look. “So?”

“So?” McTeague banged her fist on the table hard enough to rattle dishes. “So you should have informed the FBI!”

He thought about it. “That’s a debatable point—I didn’t even inform the chief of police, and he’s my best buddy.”

“That’s right,” Parris said. “And you don’t hear me whining and griping about—”

“Shut up, Scott.” She said this without taking her eyes off Moon. “That’s how you knew the dismembered arm wasn’t Dr. Blinkoe’s. And all along, Blinkoe has been feeding you information. That’s how you knew the compact he gave his wife was bugged. That’s how—”

“Whoa, Nelly.”

“What did you say?”

“Excuse me.” Moon’s tone was meant to be calming. “It’s just an old expression. What I really meant was: ‘Excuse me for a dang moment, Special Agent McTeague.’ But seeing as how you’re all in favor of sharing information, why don’t you tell us what you found on the tape in Mrs. Blinkoe’s compact?”

“There was no tape in the compact, Charlie.” She gave him a pitying look. “You really should make an effort to get up-to-date on the latest technology.”

“Okay, educate me.”

“The compact was voice activated, and had over eighty gigabytes of RAM—”

“Ram means one of two things to me,” Moon said. “Either a he-goat or a Dodge truck.”

McTeague responded with admirable patience. “It is also an acronym for random access memory.”

“Sure. Random access memory.” He didn’t bat an eyelash. “That’s the third thing.”

He is so cute.
“Because of the modest bandwidth necessary for recording the human voice, that much digital memory can hold hours and hours of recorded conversation.”

Moon propped his elbows on the table. “So what was recorded during all those hours and hours?”

McTeague shrugged. “Oh, some of this, some of that.”

“Skip the this and that—let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. The brass tacks. The bottom line. What I mean to say is—tell us the good part.”

Scott Parris nodded his agreement with this sentiment.

“Very well,” McTeague said. “In a nutshell, we were able to determine that Mrs. Blinkoe’s so-called brother—who was actually her high-school sweetheart—played no significant role in the recent spate of criminal activities.”

Moon knew as much, and was still aiming for the nitty-gritty, et cetera. “Was the tape turning that night when she thought she’d seen her dead husband at the window, and drove her pickup into town to see the family attorney?”

Ignoring his stubborn insistence on 1940s technology, McTeague nodded. “Mrs. Blinkoe drove her pickup to Spencer Trottman’s home. He tried to calm her, convince her that whatever or whoever she had seen at her bedroom window, it could not have been her husband. Manfred was most certainly dead. This being so, she was a widow and free to take another husband—someone who would appreciate her, treat her with the kindness and respect she deserved.”

The Ute had guessed the rest. “Trottman asked Pansy Blinkoe to marry him. And she turned him down flat.” Only a couple of years ago, Charlie Moon’s proposal had been rejected even before he had a chance to utter it.

“Not only did she refuse,” McTeague said, “she evidently thought it was terribly funny. When Spencer proposed, she
laughed
at him.”

Parris shook his head. “Always a serious mistake.”

“It was her final mistake.” McTeague recalled listening to the horrible curses and shrieks on the compact’s concealed digital recorder. “Trottman slapped her, she fought back, he strangled her on the spot. From a detailed analysis of the sounds for the next eighty-nine minutes, it is apparent that Trottman put Mrs. Blinkoe’s body and purse in her pickup, drove the vehicle to Garcia’s Crossing. He stopped at the abandoned church, placed her body in the Martinez crypt. Because he left the purse with the compact in the crypt with the corpse, we have no recordings after his departure. But it is reasonable to assume that he drove her pickup back to Granite Creek, left it in the motel parking lot—along with her keys. Trottman must have walked back to his home, believed he was safe. But after thinking the thing through, he realized that once the woman was reported missing, the Blinkoe telephone records would be checked—and her late-night telephone call to the family attorney’s residence would be discovered. So he not only reported Mrs. Blinkoe’s absence from her home, he also reported their telephone conversation accurately—and preserved the recording for the authorities. It supported his story about being worried when she didn’t show up, not getting any answers to his repeated calls to the Blinkoe residence—which he made after he returned from Garcia’s Crossing. To make the thing look even better, he drove out to the Blinkoe estate—presumably to determine whether anything was amiss. There’s little doubt that Mr. Trottman broke the window in the back door to make it look as if someone had entered the house before he arrived. Once the setup was ready, he called the police.”

Parris grimaced at the thought of how he’d been taken in.

McTeague paused long enough to examine her elegant hands.
I really need a manicure.
“And it seems quite likely that the man posing as Pansy Blinkoe’s brother was telling the truth. Sometime that night, he returned to his apartment above the Blinkoe garage, noticed that Pansy’s vehicle was not in its usual spot. He rode his motorcycle into town, drove around until he spotted her pickup parked at the motel—with the key in the ignition. Assuming she was in the motel with another man, Mr. Culpepper got hot under the collar. He hoisted his cycle into the back of the truck, drove it away. And so on.” She turned to Moon. “What made you suspicious of Trottman?”

Moon stared into his coffee cup. “One day last month, my aunt got a peculiar notion that she knew where Pansy Blinkoe was.” He hesitated. “For one reason or another, she thought the woman was hiding out at Garcia’s Crossing—someplace close to St. Cuthbert’s Catholic Church.”

Parris, Wakefield, McTeague—all felt a chill.

It was the woman who asked the question. “But how could she have possibly known…?”

Moon raised his palms. “Don’t ask me.” He waited for a few heartbeats. “Anyway, my aunt was anxious to tell me about it, so she used this little satellite telephone I gave her for a birthday present. She pushed the button programmed to dial my cell phone, but I had it turned off. She didn’t want to leave a message, so she called the Columbine land line. My foreman’s wife answered, told Aunt Daisy I was on my way to Spencer Trottman’s office, and gave her Trottman’s number. But when my aunt called, Trottman didn’t answer. So she decided to ring my cell phone again and leave me a message. Problem is, she pressed the wrong button, ended up leaving the message for Trottman.”

McTeague asked for clarification. “How did you determine this?”

Moon appreciated the question. “When I pressed the Redial button on her phone, Trottman’s number came up on the readout—which proves that was the last number she’d called.” He shook his head at the irony of it all. “Imagine the lawyer’s surprise when he checks his messages, and hears Aunt Daisy telling me where to find Pansy Blinkoe—and she’s got it right! He must’ve thought she’d seen him stash the body in the church cemetery. He can’t just sit around and wait until she tells me about it. So he goes out to the res that night with a green coffee can and some smelly kerosene, and sets fire to her home.”

The FBI agent glared at her image of the dead man’s ghost. “In an attempt to cover up the murder of Pansy Blinkoe, Trottman attempted to murder your aunt.”

Parris frowned. “But what about the murder of the Chicago woman on the restaurant patio? D’you suppose the shooter was Trottman—aiming at Blinkoe?”

“The Bureau has ruled that out,” McTeague said. “We have witnesses who place Trottman at a location six hundred miles away when the shot was fired. We haven’t eliminated Trottman as a suspect in the dynamiting of Dr. Blinkoe’s boat, but it seems far more likely that the event was engineered by the Colombian drug cartel.” She aimed her big eyes at the Ute. “Would you like to comment on that possibility?”