“Sorry. I’ve got him now,” I said.
Linda groaned. “You’ve got to train the mutt better, Hank.”
Nobody would believe my explanations about how incorrigible he was. I didn’t even try to explain anymore. “Hey, Pauline, so, you saw something?”
She took a leisurely pull on her beer and smacked her lips.
This was one of the worst parts of police work. The woman was an old friend who loved to talk, and she had center stage. She was going to milk the situation for as long as she could. I tried not to get too annoyed because we were pals. I’d spent quite a few nights watching Rockies games in her bar.
“Just a fine example of the male of the species,” she said. “Hubba-hubba, Alex was only wearing his trunks and a grin.”
She pretended to swoon. Linda smiled at her. Although I didn’t swing that way, I normally enjoyed ogling Alex, too. But now wasn’t the time. “Really, is that it?”
It was, but it took me ten minutes to make sure.
As I turned to walk away, Pauline asked, “So, Hank, what the hell’s going on?”
“We don’t really know much more than you,” I said. “Alex’s boat seems to have run over a corpse. The impact probably tore it apart. We’re trying to identify the victim. Thanks for your help.” And stop wasting our time.
Linda, Boomer, and I headed off alone. “I’m going to talk with the two sailing desperados,” I said. “I’m curious to see how they react to the splendiferous news.”
“Count me in for that.”
We strode over to the table with Charlotte and her bodyguard. Again, I balanced on the fake foot for a couple of seconds before its brain began to work right.
He ran through his story again.
When he finished, I said, “I just want to get one thing straight. Did either of you see the corpse before the boat hit it?”
They both shook their heads.
“So, in other words, it was fully submerged?”
“Exactly,” Alex said. “I’m sure a boat without a keel would’ve passed right over it.”
Charlotte teared up again. What was that about? Fear? She wasn’t likely to have known the rapper from Hong Kong.
“I apologize,” she said in that snooty English accent from BBC shows. “This has been a very trying day. Is there any way you can keep my name out of your reports and out of the press? I must keep a very low profile. And it truly was an accident. I wasn’t even piloting the boat.”
The more she spoke, the more her hands waved around. What was going on?
She obviously hadn’t come back to a place where she’d dumped a body three months ago. “Have you known anyone who suddenly disappeared?”
“No, of course not. This has nothing to do with me.”
Something else had to be wrong. “Okay, let’s take it from the beginning. How long have you been in town, and what exactly do you do for a living?”
She spoke with a new edge to her voice. “I arrived four months ago. I advise global financial institutions with regard to Internet security issues. I’ve had no involvement with any missing persons or deceased individuals.”
If she was being persecuted because she was gay, I certainly didn’t want to endanger her. “Are you hiding from someone or being harassed?”
She bit her lip. “I’ve done nothing wrong, madam.”
Why wouldn’t she give me a straight answer? “Are you undercover or in witness protection?”
“No, not in the way you mean. I truly prefer to keep my situation private. You can’t seriously believe I had anything to do with that poor man’s death.”
“I didn’t, until I noticed you looking guilty as hell. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve stumbled upon one crime while investigating another. Please show me your identification.”
With jerky movements, she pulled a Gucci wallet out of a Yves Saint Laurent purse and handed me a Colorado driver’s license that had been issued four months ago.
I jotted down her personal details and returned the card.
“Okay,” Alex said, “this is ridiculous. You’ve gotten the full story from us. We stumbled across some unknown floater and did the right thing. Notified the authorities. Instead of thanks, we get the third degree.”
He obviously hadn’t ever experienced a real police interrogation. “Are you kidding? I still have my kid gloves on, but I don’t like being jerked around while I’m investigating a murder.”
That shut him up. It was time to see how they reacted to the tidal wave about to hit all of us. “The body you churned up is probably Splendiferous Wang. You know, the international musical sensation who vanished into thin air a few months ago.”
Their mouths dropped open but nothing came out.
“Your little boating accident is probably going to be headline news in Colorado for weeks to come,” I said in the same tone. “Even better, I expect the story will run in most national papers tomorrow. All the news networks will beg you both for interviews.”
Charlotte gasped. “I cannot be mixed up in this. Some quite dangerous people would love to know my whereabouts.”
“I’m more than happy to help you stay safe, but you need to come clean. Who are you really, and who’s after you?”
Instead, she clammed up.
“When I get back to the office,” I said, “I’m going to do a full search. I’ll just bet Charlotte Higgins appeared full-grown like a genie four months ago. What’s your real name?”
She wouldn’t say another word.
My choices were simple. I either had to charge one or both with a crime, or I had to let them go. The best I could do would be to hit Alex with a reckless driving charge but no proof of that either. I had nothing on them, and she hadn’t said she was being persecuted for being a lesbian. Without much choice, I cut them loose.
Colorado had turned much more liberal lately, and we had a gay governor, but there continued to be harassment of the LGBTQ community, particularly in conservative rural areas like the Western Slope of Colorado. My parents, who owned a ranch in remote Gunnison, Colorado, were typically hostile to gays. So, when I was discharged from the Marines and told my parents how I preferred romance with women, they weren’t thrilled.
In fact, Dad exploded. Finally, the bastard understood why I had always been such a tomboy. Even a decade after that conversation, a chill still ran through me every time I remembered us sitting around the dining room table. And it haunted my dreams. Every few months, I’d wake up shaking from a nightmare after hearing his roar of fury again.
Mom had also disapproved, but thank God, not like that. We could still speak to each other without screaming. Not that we talked often, but we made an extra effort on special occasions.
“You okay, Hank?” Linda asked. “Your face is pale.”
“Fine. Just remembering an old wound that won’t heal.”
A call came to my rig’s radio. The desk sergeant said he’d put Aspen PD’s case file on my desk. I thanked him.
Jenkins had set me up to take the fall for failing to solve the biggest murder in our county in decades. But I’d always been a stubborn snot. I was going to prove him wrong.
Then it hit me. There were two other people I needed to prove something to—my parents. Time to get my ass in gear and find Splendid’s killer.
-o-o-o-
To make sure we weren’t missing any evidence, Boomer and I walked along the shore and across the dam. He found plenty of things to sniff, but none seemed pertinent to my new case. We watched from the shore as Jason and Dr. Dan pulled the second body bag into their boat.
The reservoir’s water level had dropped dramatically since the spring. We’d survived another dry summer, and the water level was down a good ten feet since I last came this way at the end of May. Whoever had dumped the body back then probably hadn’t counted on the drought.
By the time the dog and I returned to the loading dock and campground area, the coroner
had set his two body bags on the dry section of the ramp. He opened one end of each bag to let water drain out. They reeked with the distinctive stench of death. Even Boomer refused to go closer.
The clear water included tendrils of a milky, viscous fluid I chose not to examine closely. I already had enough nasty memories of dead and mutilated bodies to haunt my dreams.
Then the coroner unzipped one bag completely. It held the bottom half of the corpse. He checked the pockets and removed a wallet and a cellphone. I opened two evidence bags, and he dropped one item in each.
We didn’t have much of a crime lab, and that meant all the sophisticated analysis would be done by the CBI’s lab. But I could handle simple checks, like reviewing the victim’s identification cards and removing the data from his cellphone, assuming the long soaking hadn’t destroyed the memory chips.
“I hope you realize,” Dr. Dan said, “it will be extremely difficult to determine cause of death on such a badly decomposed body. Pray that I can find something obvious, like a bullet in the chest or a deep stab wound.”
“Yeah, I figured. The problem is, Aspen PD didn’t collect much physical evidence for this infuriating case. I’m sure you’ll do your best.”
He nodded and continued working.
I put the sealed bags in my SUV and partially rolled down the windows to reduce the stench.
Aspen Public Radio’s Prius pulled up nearby. The media horde had begun to descend on us. Three months ago, those folks hadn’t hesitated to rip into Aspen’s cops for failing to find Splendid. Now, it was my turn to run their gauntlet of slashing blades.
The closest local TV news stations were in Grand Junction and Denver, too far away for them to send a van to check out every apparent drowning. But Aspen had its own community cable station, a newspaper, and a popular local public radio station.
Their reporter, Jasmine Williams, was a squat, friendly twenty-something woman from Jamaica. She homed in on me like a laser-guided missile.
“Nobody official will tell me a damned thing, Hank,” she said as she stuck a cellphone in front of my face. “What’s going on, sister, off the record?”
She was the only reporter I’d talk to, even off the record, and that was only because she’d supported my candidacy from the beginning. “Before noon, a sailboat snagged an underwater object. A body in two halves floated to the surface. It’s badly decomposed and must’ve been submerged in the water for quite some time. We’ve collected several personal items from the corpse but haven’t had a chance to examine them. In short, don’t know who the deceased is.”
Jasmine peppered me with other questions in her friendly, persistent way, but I didn’t tell her any more. Actually, didn’t know much more that I could say with any confidence. When I began to walk away, she asked, “Wait, while I’ve got you, how’s the campaign for sheriff shaking out?”
“Too busy to campaign. Seems like I’m always on the job or sleeping. I’m sorry to run, but I’ve got to help the medical examiner.”
Chapter 3
Linda, Jason, and I helped load the body bags into the coroner’s large SUV, which happened to have a Grateful Dead sticker on the back. Dan hadn’t forgotten his hippy days back in the seventies.
After he took off, Linda was sent by our dispatcher to handle another call.
I asked Jason, “Can you put on your wet suit and scuba tanks? We really need to find the contraption the killer used to keep the body submerged.”
Boomer and I rode with him in the skiff. The mutt loved swimming, but I didn’t have any way to get him back into the boat without flipping it. At a hundred and thirty pounds, he was too awkward to lift. So, I tied his harness to a seat in the center of the skiff and tried to ignore his frustrated howling. Jason didn’t have to listen for long because he flipped backwards over the side into the lake.
It took him longer than I expected to surface again. When he did, he popped up twenty feet away. “Over here.”
I raised our anchor and rowed to reach him.
“Three cinder blocks are connected to a chain,” he said. “The other end formed a loop that must’ve circled the body at the waist. This is all stuff the killer could’ve picked up at any home improvement store.”
We had little chance of tracking down video from three months ago that might show us the purchaser’s identity, but I’d still check.
With an awkward effort, we managed to pull the blocks and chain into the boat without flipping it. Plenty of the folks nearby offered to help, but I didn’t want to potentially compromise evidence by having any of them touch it. Jason drove the blocks and chain back to our office in his rig.
By then, it was past dinnertime. Boomer and I headed to Basalt. A pizza shop along the way sold pizza by the slice. That would be a quick meal. We hadn’t eaten any lunch, so I rationalized Italian food’s negative impact on my not-so-slim waistline. I weighed one-eighty, most of it muscle. Eating pizza often wasn’t going to keep me that way, but I had bigger problems to think about.
As soon as we reached the outskirts of town, my phone beeped a half-dozen times. A text came from the sheriff, saying, call me ASAP. The rest were voicemails, mostly reporters or friends checking in. The news about me taking over Splendid’s case had spread fast.
The last voicemail was different. “This is Harold Martin. I’m the Operations Supervisor for the Denver US Marshal’s Office. I understand you’re interfering with the security of a person under our protection. I insist you immediately cease harassing said individual. Call me as soon as you get this message to confirm you understand your obligations under federal law. Of course, our authority supersedes any state laws you may believe justify your actions. If you do not contact me by seven p.m. today, I will move forthwith to obtain a temporary restraining order at the Federal court in Denver.”
He finished his charming message by leaving me his phone number.
He had to be complaining about Charlotte. That made me more curious than ever about what she was up to and why she was so damned important. But before I could duke it out with the Feds, I needed to get something in my stomach.
Boomer and I wolfed down five slices of pizza, all the shop had available at that moment. As usual, he ate more than I did. What a pig. Pizza wasn’t good for him either, but I couldn’t stand the guilt of eating in front of him and forcing him to wait for his kibble back at the office.
Then I called Sheriff Jenkins and held the phone away from my ear. Good thing. He chewed my ass for a good five minutes, claiming I’d screwed up his critical working relationship with the Feds. That wasn’t the first time he’d called me a crazy bitch, but I didn’t care anymore. That nightmare would be over in a few months. Even if I lost the election, Randy had to be a better sheriff than Jenkins.
Unless I really screwed up, the worst our current sheriff could do would be to badmouth me in the press. And he was already doing that. The man had seemed genuinely shocked when I’d challenged Randy for the sheriff’s job. Like I apparently had no right to further my own career or to question his decision about who should fill his tiny shoes.
Too bad, asshole. I just let him rant.
When he finished, I asked, “Do you want me to call Martin or would you prefer to?”
“It’s your case, Morgan, at least for the time being. You’d better make things right.”
I called the Operations Supervisor, and after I introduced myself, I asked, “Are you the least bit interested about my side of what happened today, or should we just proceed to your blowup?”
He practically snarled. “Did you tell Higgins you were going to publicize her presence at the lake?”
“No, but I told her I couldn’t give her any special protection as a witness, not based on some vague danger she claims. I gave her plenty of opportunity to tell me who was after her and why, but she clammed up.”
Some of the edge came off of his voice. “What the hell. Go ahead, tell me your side.”
For five
minutes, I did.
Finally, he said, “Okay, I got things third or fourth hand. Maybe garbled a bit in the process. The point is, some vicious killers are after Higgins, specifically a faction of the Russian mob. She apparently prevented a bratva cell from stealing millions out of the Belgian national treasury.”
“Any reason to believe they’re in Aspen?”
“Can’t say that, but we just learned that Denver’s bratva cell are looking for Sylvie Moreau, one of her former aliases.”
No wonder she was scared shitless. “She could’ve hinted at this without giving me details.”
He sighed. “Frightened people often make bad decisions. Lucky for Higgins, several very senior people within the US Treasury Department want her alive. I don’t know the woman from Adam or Eve, but I’m generally in favor of keeping folks alive, too.”
“I’ll go for that, too,” I said.
“Good to know. Without getting into any more details, the US Marshal’s Office would consider it a great favor if you were to keep Higgins’s name to yourself while we work on a new location for her.”
“I’ll be happy to treat her as a confidential informant, even though, she hasn’t told me a damned thing in confidence or otherwise. And keep this in mind, too—plenty of other people saw her at the reservoir today. Most were locals, and some of them might’ve recognized her. Pulling a bloated corpse out of the drink tends to draw a crowd.”
“Then we definitely have to yank her out of your little town.”
“Your call,” I said. “By the way, we’ve tentatively identified the deceased as Wang Chao, aka Splendiferous Wang, a musical sensation apparently known the world over.”
Martin snickered. “I’d never heard of him until he vanished up in your neck of the woods. I know there are some Chinese mob connections. Be damned careful, Hank. Those triads are incredibly vicious.”
“Thanks for the warning.” He probably doubted that I’d survive the encounter. I couldn’t disagree, but I had to try to track down Wang’s killer. That, or turn in my badge.
-o-o-o-
Back at the office, I took the victim’s wallet out of the evidence bag. The stench was incredible, and the folks in the neighboring cubicles groaned. “Stop whining, pansies,” I yelled at them, “and be glad most of you aren’t working this case.”
His Song Silenced Page 2