The Old Gray Wolf (27 page)

Seeing an opportunity, Moon whispered, “She looks good in spectacles, don't you think?”

The lovely woman almost succeeded in suppressing a smile. “Thank you, Charlie—that was very gracious.” She looked over her reading specs at the lawmen. “Have either of you ever heard of a Mrs. Francine Hooten?”

Parris leaned forward. “I don't think so—but the name has a familiar ring to it.”

McTeague addressed the onetime boyfriend she'd dumped like a bucket of dirty dishwater: “Charlie?”

“Last week, me and Scott had a run-in with a purse snatcher by the name of LeRoy Hooten. He ended up in the morgue.”

“Oh, right.” Parris slapped his sunburned forehead “That's where I've heard the name.” The cop wondered whether this was the preamble to some seriously bad news—such as that an assistant U.S. attorney general was taking an interest in a suspect's allegedly wrongful death.

The same thought had crossed Charlie Moon's mind.

McTeague read the hint of alarm in Parris's blue eyes, but the Ute's face might have been carved of dark hickory. She hastened to alleviate any distress. “Francine Hooten is LeRoy Hooten's mother. The Bureau has been interested in this woman—and her notorious family—for quite a long time.”

Parris exhaled a sigh of relief. “Bunch of bad apples, huh?”

“Indeed.” Haunted by the recent murder of Special Agent Mary Anne Clayton and the conviction that neither Francine Hooten nor her British butler would ever be charged with this outrageous crime, McTeague presented a bitter, brittle smile. “Sufficiently so that we take a close interest in Mrs. Hooten's business affairs—and also her personal problems. What can you tell me about Mr. LeRoy Hooten's final hours in Granite Creek?”

“Well, there's not all that much to tell.”
And you probably know all about it already.
Nevertheless, the chief of police did his best, and when Scott couldn't remember a detail he deferred to his Indian deputy.

Both lawmen were under the mistaken impression that all the FBI wanted was a cops-on-the-spot version of their encounter with Francine Hooten's son.

SPECIAL
AGENT
MCTEAGUE
DROPS
THE
BOMB

After she'd heard all that she needed to know about how a pathetic pickpocket had met his end in Granite Creek, Colorado, the fed edged her thumb close to the detonator button. “The Bureau greatly appreciates your cooperation, gentlemen. I believe we're about finished, but before we disconnect I am authorized to read some remarks recently made by Mrs. Francine Hooten. Be advised that her comments are necessarily of a fragmentary nature—I will specify missing commentary by inserting brief pauses.” Adjusting the reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, McTeague focused on a page in the notebook. “I want those two … suffer like I am suffering … don't want … them killed—not until after … you may feel free … at my expense … arrange payment through … intermediary.”

Both of the small-town lawmen instantly realized the connection to the so-called Cowboy Assassin, whom Miss Louella Smithson—aka Miss Susan Whysper—expected to find skulking about Granite Creek. Neither Parris nor Moon had any intention of revealing their hole card before Agent McTeague had played out her hand.

Scott Parris glared at the flat-screen display. “So what're we supposed to glean from those few words?”

“You have posed the critical question, to which a team of expert analysts has been working around the clock to provide an answer.” The FBI special agent's attractive face managed to look dismal. “About three years ago, Mrs. Hooten suffered a serious fall which rendered her an invalid.” McTeague removed her spectacles and laid them on the table beside the three-ring notebook. “She experiences continual severe discomfort in her lower back and legs. Medications provide moderate relief, but on a scale of one to ten, her level of pain is deemed an eight. Based upon this knowledge, Bureau Intel's assessment of Mrs. Hooten's intentions—and her express instructions to the contractor—is as follows: the two police officers whom she holds responsible for the death of her only son must be punished.” She inhaled a short breath. “Punished in such a manner that they will suffer
as she suffers
.” She paused to let Parris and Moon absorb this grim news.

They did.

The Ute didn't blink.

Despite a sour coldness twisting his gut, Parris affected a nonchalant shrug. “So you figure some thug with a pistol intends to
cripple
us?”

“Not I.” McTeague's enigmatic face stared back. “That is Bureau Intel's majority opinion.”

Noting the addition of the modifier, Charlie Moon leaned forward to peer intently at the digital image of the woman he'd once come
this
close to offering a slightly used engagement ring to—the very same ring that Patsy Poynter was now wearing. “So what's the
minority
opinion?”

Having provoked the hoped-for query from her alert ex-boyfriend, the do-it-by-the-book fed replied, “I am not authorized to reveal minority opinions.”
Even when they are firmly held by forty percent of the expert analysts and myself
. She produced a Mona Lisa smile. “But you clever fellows are free to draw your own conclusions.” Losing the smile, she fixed her gaze firmly on the Ute's image on the high-definition screen in the Hoover Building.
I'll call you in a few hours, Charlie, and tell you what the more likely threat is.

Whether by ordinary lawman's intuition or some form of extraordinary telepathy, Moon had read the gist of the underlying message in the lady's flippant, seemingly empty remarks. Perhaps he perceived a hint from his former sweetheart's extraordinarily expressive violet eyes. By whatever means, the unspoken communication boiled down to …
Lila Mae knows something that she can't tell me on this secure Internet link, which is probably being recorded for Bureau records.
Would Special Agent McTeague leave him to guess what she knew? No. At least …
I don't think so. She wants me to call her on her mobile phone later on tonight
. Charlie Moon hoped that he could find the number he hadn't dialed in a long time. And …
I hope she hasn't got a new number.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE OLD GRAY WOLF

What was the sinister senior citizen up to during the teleconference being conducted in the Granite Creek DA's office? Nothing that would attract any unwanted attention.

About half an hour before Scott Parris and Charlie Moon were to be briefed by FBI Special Agent Lila Mae McTeague on a potential threat from some unknown gun for hire who apparently had a contract to put both of them in wheelchairs, the rangy old cowboy was whiling away his afternoon at Fast Eddie's hair-clipping shop, reclining contentedly in the barber's comfortable chair while the proprietor took his own sweet time snipping away at wiry iron-gray sideburn hairs with a pair of shiny stainless-steel scissors. Clickety-snick. Also tufts of curly ear hairs: snickety-click.

When this process was completed, the customer agreed to a shave and settled happily in while the barber added steaming-hot water to a sixty-year-old flowered soap mug and used an equally venerable brush to apply soothing, warm, sudsy foam to the lean stranger's weatherworn face. The so-called Old Gray Wolf found this nostalgic experience immensely comforting—even to the scrape of the lethal straight razor over the stubble under his chin. And except for when he was tilted back in the chair for his shave, this most singular of all the out-of-town cowboys visiting Granite Creek this week had kept his steely-eyed gaze focused on Copper Street.

As soon as his Shave-and-a-Haircut (twenty times Six Bits!) was completed and the barber duly paid and appropriately tipped, the freshly sheared tourist donned his wide-brimmed Stetson and departed—his face set toward the shiny pickup he'd rode in on. This old-timer (who couldn't have counted all the lives he'd snuffed out without pulling off his cowboy boots and over-the-calf cotton socks) was a remarkably uncomplicated man, and his plan was as straightforward as hunting down a chicken-stealing coyote. After having given some thought to the young woman who'd hit town in the beat-up old Bronco, the OGW decided that it might be prudent to steer well clear of her.
At least until I understand more about what's going on around here.
A man in unfamiliar territory should always take some time to acquaint himself with the lay of the land. He gazed up at a graying sky.
Maybe I ought to burn some daylight outside of town.
His lips curled into a satisfied smile.
I might go take a look at some rural real estate.
Or he might not. Whatever he decided to do, there was no need to hurry; one of his favorite mottoes was “easy does it.”
Tomorrow will have twenty-four hours, just like today
.

Indisputably true in the arithmetic sense intended, but one day's hours are never identical to another's. Moreover, how a fellow spends his allotted quota of minutes is a highly pertinent issue, and one that our Old Gray Wolf should have put some serious thought into. Time was slipping by like silvery minnows in a crystalline mountain stream—and well before tomorrow arrived, it was highly likely that someone's ticktocking clock would have stopped.

Correction: make that …
several
someones.

How many?

At the moment, the body count is problematic.

But for that final slumber—
five
is a not-so-nice, not-so-round number.

As is
three
. Which reminds us of that trio of law-enforcement officers (one in D.C., two in the Granite Creek DA's meeting room) who, as the Old Gray Wolf drove away in his pickup, were still palavering via the secure Internet link.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

A SMALL-TOWN LAWMAN'S NATURAL SUSPICION OF THE FED

Scott Parris could have spent an hour and change expressing his misgivings about J. Edgar Hoover's illustrious organization, but here's what it all boiled down to: the way he sees it, every last pistol-packing employee of the FBI will withhold critical information from the local police—including two particular underpaid public servants (himself and Moon) who might be about to get their butts shot off.

Yes, that assertion does seem a bit over the top. You might well ask: for what conceivable reason would the nation's premier law-enforcement agency deny critical, buttocks-saving knowledge to a pair of their lesser colleagues? Parris will roll his eyes even as the query is posed, and yell loud enough to blow your hat off, “So the FBI can make an arrest
after
me and Charlie get popped, that's what—and then take all the credit for apprehending the perp!” A intemperate and thunderous response, but the longtime ex-Chicago lawman has a U.S. citizen's inalienable right to state his earsplitting opinion—and a pair of uncommonly powerful lungs.

In addition to his congenital distrust of Uncle Sam's finest, the Granite Creek chief of police smelled something particularly fishy about this report from Special Agent McTeague. It was not so much the gist of the thing; Francine Hooten might very well have dispatched a hired gun with instructions to seriously maim the lawmen who'd killed her son, so that they would spend the rest of their days in a wheelchair—like herself. But McTeague's elliptical remark that the crippling theory was “Bureau Intel's majority opinion” (which she'd hinted was not necessarily her own)—was galling enough to make a man want to …
bite the head off a rabid badger and spit it into McTeague's face!
(This was his own appalling metaphor; suffice it to say that the feat should not be attempted by amateurs. Aside from the obvious hygienic issues and the general inadvisability of spitting rabies-infected animal parts into the faces of armed-and-dangerous federal agents, one should take account of the fact that various associations dedicated to the protection of furry nonhuman creatures would be bound to make trouble for a deliberate badger decapitator.)

More to the point, Scott Parris was extremely chagrined with the fed, almost to the point of apoplexy. But not to worry; such challenges from the D.C. bureaucracy serve merely to energize our stubborn small-town cop into enthusiastic verbal combat. Charlie Moon's best buddy was primed to make a big score—by making Special Agent Know-it-all look pretty danged silly—and
for the record
on a teleconference that was undoubtedly being recorded for posterity.
I know how to pry the information out of her.
Toward that happy end, Parris produced a semisnort that served as the setup for: “I can't believe you arranged this time-consuming meeting with no more to tell us than
that
.”

A good try. Or perhaps not. But it was the cop's best shot. And as Charlie Moon had once advised his five-card-stud–playing friend, Scott Parris's best poker face was as easy to read as a Little Lulu comic book.

Not only was Parris's assertion patently false (he could believe it in a Denver minute), but the FBI agent had instantly discerned the ulterior intent behind his curt remark. She responded thus: “All I can say by way of summary is that Bureau Intel has ample reason to believe that Mrs. Hooten may have already dispatched an assassin to Granite Creek—the very same person who murdered a Chicago plainclothes detective who, several years ago and in the line of duty, shot her husband dead.” McTeague thought that would take the smirk off the stocky cop's beefy face.

It did.

Scott Parris nodded, vaguely muttering to himself, “Cowboy.”

Though startled, the so-cool lady did not so much as blink a perfect eyelash. But she was obliged to ask, “Where did you hear about Cowboy?

Recovering from his error, Parris returned a blank gaze. “What?”