The Voxlightner Scandal

by Don Travis

  I noted the absence of glasses. “And he didn’t even offer you something to drink?” Crap, was the kid even old enough for alcohol?

  “No, sir. We went over the suggested edits. One was kind of tricky and needed explanation. So… so I brought them over. Anyway nice to meet you. I better get on the road.”

  “No need to hurry,” I said, taking a bit of sadistic pleasure in the kid’s discomfort.

  Jackie glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ve got a ball game in an hour, so need to get moving. Some of us play sandlot baseball every Tuesday.” I didn’t remind him this was Monday.

  Once the door closed behind Jackie, Paul and I stood watching his VW lurch away from the curb.

  “I gather I make him nervous.” I allowed a sharp bite to edge my voice.

  “I didn’t know he was coming over, Vince. I swear. He made up an excuse and brought the edits over even though he could have emailed them.”

  I looked Paul in the eye before turning and walking back to the den. “He’s made the first move. Now what?”

  Paul caught up and stood in front of me, his eyes blazing. “What do you mean, now what? I have to put a stop to it, that’s what.”

  “He’s kind of cute.”

  Paul’s ears turned red. “Screw that noise, B. J. Vinson. I told you we haven’t done anything.”

  “You also told me you were tempted.”

  He dropped into a chair. “I… was.”

  I thought about his reaction to Jazz Penrod, a handsome, sexy mixed-blood kid who helped me with a case over in the Four Corners area a few years ago. I sat down beside Paul and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “My time for confession.” I cleared my throat. “I understand how you feel about Jazz now. No matter that I’m committed to you and Jazz understands and respects the fact, you’ve identified him as the competition. You know why? Because if the situation were different, Jazz is who you’d like to be with. I don’t feel the same about Jackie, but the kid puts it into perspective for me.”

  Paul was quiet for almost sixty seconds. “Vince, I’m glad this happened. His coming over, I mean. When I saw you side by side, there’s no question about what my head told me. I’m yours.”

  “Paul, I’m not interested in what your head tells you. I want to know what your heart says.”

  He gave his patent, soul-melting grin. “My heart told my head what to say. My place is here.”

  He stood suddenly and moved into my arms. Our kiss burned away the jealousy and doubt still lingering somewhere inside me.

  Pedro had a ball that evening, and I slept like a log for what was left of the night.

  THE NEXT morning I sat at the desk in my office wondering if I would make it through the day. My old bones wouldn’t stand many more reconciliations like last night’s. Just as I was praying Hazel wouldn’t find something for me to do, she stuck her head in the door.

  “Gene’s on the phone. Needs to talk to you right away.”

  My hand shook as I reached for the telephone. She noticed but was prudent enough not to mention it. I didn’t even get a chance to say hello; Gene yelled for me to get down to Wick’s office right away.

  I didn’t feel up to hurrying, but I must have done a decent job of it because Gene didn’t mention my pace. Blue-and-whites, with light bars flashing, filled the parking lot and sat at the curb in front of Wick’s building. Trucks from all three local TV stations completely blocked the south side of Lomas.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I labored out of the Impala.

  “Wick’s inside. He’s threatening to blow his head off,” Gene said.

  “What happened?”

  “I sent a couple of guys to arrest him. The DA feels we’ve got a decent case in the Voxlightner and Stabler deaths. He pulled a gun and ordered them out. Because there were civilians in the building, they complied. Then Wick sent everyone else out. His secretary was scared witless, but she managed to make us understand her boss was locked in his office threatening to kill himself.”

  “What does he want? Suicide by cop?” I asked.

  Gene shrugged as a blue Ford pulled up. “Here are Roy and Paul.”

  “Thanks for including Paul.”

  “He’s done good work in the case. He’s entitled.”

  We all huddled with the sergeant in charge of the team. SWAT hadn’t been called out yet.

  “Can we talk to him?” I asked.

  “Tore out his phone when his wife called,” the officer said.

  “What about his cell?”

  “Seems to be dead. Probably pulled the battery.”

  “Could he already have shot himself?” Paul asked.

  Gene nodded to the building. “Got someone stationed outside his office window. No sound of gunshots.”

  “How about if we go inside and talk to him through the door?” I asked. “We might be able to talk some sense to him.”

  “If you’ve ever been in his building, you know there’s no way to stand outside his door without being exposed,” the sergeant said. “The wall to his personal office is completely made of partially frosted glass.”

  “We can get close enough to yell at him,” I said.

  “Yell what?” the sergeant asked.

  “Remind him of his wife and kids. And I think he’s got a grandchild or two.”

  “He won’t even talk to his wife.”

  “No, but that’s probably because he’s ashamed. He’s been a big man in this town for a long time. Now he’s accused of murder and theft. Before it’s over he’ll want to talk to her.”

  “She’s on her way down in a squad car,” Gene said.

  “In the meantime let’s try it,” I said.

  “I’m willing,” Gene agreed.

  “No way,” said the sergeant.

  “Way,” I said. “There’s a slump-block wall we can stay behind. It’s clear across the reception area, but we can make him hear us.”

  Wick’s shout greeted us the moment we stepped through the front door to Pillsner Enterprises. “Stop right there! Don’t come any closer. Get out.”

  “You can’t sit in there for the rest of your life,” Gene called.

  Unfortunate choice of words, because Wick could do exactly that. “Be reasonable, man. We just want to talk things over.”

  “I oughta invite you in and put a hole in your head, BJ. You’re the one who stirred this thing up all over again.”

  I whispered to Gene. “He’s got cameras all over the place. He can probably see what’s going on in and outside the building.”

  “Damned right I can!” he called. “Can hear you too.”

  “Pierce Belhaven is the one who stirred the pot, Wick. Killing him’s what got me involved.”

  “That’s one thing you can’t hang on me. I didn’t kill the old busybody. I mighta done bad things, but I didn’t murder Pierce Belhaven.”

  “Is this a confession?” Gene called.

  “A confession to not killing Belhaven? Yeah.”

  I pulled my digital recorder off my belt and held it in front of me. “How about the other bad stuff?”

  A long silence grew. Gene had his mouth open to speak when Wick replied, “Yeah. A deathbed confession, I guess you can call it.”

  “Hey, man!” I yelped. “Don’t do anything rash. Think of your wife and kids.”

  “I am thinking of them. I can’t put them through a trial. Another scandal.”

  “When you talk like that, you’re not thinking of them,” I said. “Can I come closer? Up to the door, maybe?”

  Gene grabbed my arm and shook his head.

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. I won’t shoot him. He was just doing his job. Yeah, BJ, come on.”

  Gene refused to let me go unless he accompanied me. He pulled out his sidearm and put himself in front as we walked to Wick’s office door.

  “The gun’s not necessary, Enriquez. I’m going to open the door, so we can see one another.”

  Gene came to a halt and raised his weapon. “Sl
owly.”

  The latch clicked, and the door opened to reveal a disheveled Wick Pillsner standing with both hands open at his sides. “Go ahead. Shoot me. It’s the easiest way out.”

  “Not gonna be any of that. Step on out and we’ll talk.”

  “I can talk fine right here. BJ’s got a recorder in his hand, and mine’s running in the office. Everything will be on record. Now convince me my family’s gonna be better off with me in the big house than in the grave. I can’t put them through the agony of a trial. Can you imagine the headlines?”

  “You don’t have to go to trial,” I said. “Talk to the DA and make a deal. A full confession and financial retribution will keep you off death row, and there won’t be the spectacle of a trial.”

  “There’s still headlines.”

  I waved dismissively. “There already are. Killing yourself means you won’t have to face them, but your wife and family will. Sounds selfish to me.”

  Wick took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. I grabbed Gene’s arm to keep him from rushing the man.

  “And there’s something else,” I said.

  Wick looked up. His stare did not look so formidable without glasses to lend his eyes strength. “What?”

  “The feds are going to come at your bank accounts and investments with a vengeance looking for pilfered money. And you won’t be around to fight for the untainted money that’s rightfully theirs.”

  “You’re an asshole, BJ, but a smart asshole. You know the right buttons to push.” He took a tentative step forward. “Okay, Lieutenant, hook me up. But take me out the back way to avoid the cameras. Please.”

  Chapter 21

  FOLLOWING THE arrest of Wick Pillsner, I avoided news interviews with a terse “no comment” until Dorothy Voxlightner publicly thanked both Paul and me for our help in locating her murdered son. Thereafter I gave as complete an interview as possible on an open case, careful to include Paul’s contribution at every opportunity. He reveled in the new-found attention at first, but soon became as sick of it as I was. Even so it gave him a professional boost. Editors, once remote, now proved receptive to stories, not only on the Voxlightner scandal, but also on other matters.

  Wick insisted I attend his first interview with the DA, perhaps hoping I would put in a good word for him. If that was his intent, he misjudged me. The man was directly responsible for multiple murders and indirectly responsible for the deaths of two VPMR stockholders. I held no fondness for my childhood football coach.

  His interview confirmed most of what we’d already figured out about the case. Stabler’s intent from the beginning was to earn a few dollars with his scam. But when he hooked up with Wick, the dream grew bigger until it reached the grandiose scale only someone like Wick could pull off. But the good doctor hadn’t reckoned with his partner in crime’s cautious and protective nature. Once Stabler witnessed the death of Barron Voxlightner and assisted in the cover-up of the murder, he was no longer safe. In the end the scammer was scammed… out of his life. Barron’s death was preordained; Stabler’s was simply a matter of eliminating an inconvenience.

  The heavy use of electricity at the Georgia Street address was what we figured, three months of producing prills with sufficient gold and silver content from real ore Dr. Stabler brought from Nevada to support the scam. Dr. Herrera, who conducted the phony assays at the School of Mines, merely substituted them for the second part of the testing process. Because a red-hot prill doesn’t look like a cool one—especially when viewed through avaricious eyes—no one caught on to the switch. The real miracle was that none of the neighbors noticed one house in the neighborhood had been converted into an assay lab in preparation for the scam.

  Wick tried to lay attorney Everett Kent’s murder on Stabler and claimed no knowledge of Belhaven’s death.

  I thought this over carefully. Nothing we’d turned up in Stabler’s background suggested he was a killer. Wick himself portrayed the man as a small-timer trying to scam a few dollars. But once Wick turned the con into a caper, perhaps Stabler changed as well.

  Paul expected things to proceed rapidly after the confession, but the more likely scenario was the feds would keep Wick on ice until after all the money they could find was recovered. But come what may, Hardwick Pillsner would never see the light of freedom again. He sent for me once more as we waited for the FBI to make its final moves. He wanted to hire me to protect his legitimate assets from forfeiture. I declined, pointing out he needed an attorney, not a confidential investigator. Looking back on it, I believe he thought I might help him hide assets to ensure their safety. Did he really think I was still a scraggly kid adoring his football hero of a coach?

  IN EARLY November before the cold winds of December moved in, interviews with cops, the district attorney’s people, and the press eased up to the point where I could devote meaningful time to the primary task of my contract with Dorothy Voxlightner, the identification of her nephew’s killer. I believed Wick’s denial of responsibility for Belhaven’s death. I also considered him truthful when he claimed Stabler killed Everett Kent. Why? Because it gained Wick nothing to protest his innocence in those two killings. In fact the denial delayed his plea deal with the district attorney’s office.

  It wasn’t clear that Dorothy remained interested in proceeding since the primary goal of her engagement had been fulfilled. She now knew with certainty her son was dead and who killed him.

  Even so I was now convinced the armed attack on us in our own backyard and the T-boning of Paul’s car were perpetrated by Belhaven’s killer. That made it personal. The investigation would go on, paying client or no.

  The close of the Voxlightner case plus Paul’s and my reconciliation—if that’s the proper word for what happened—should have given me a clear head for the investigation, but I was truly shaken by Paul’s temptation to stray. Cold chills ran down my back every time I thought about it. Yet I understood. And this shook me almost as badly as the thought of losing Paul. A thirteen-year age difference is not exactly a May-December thing, but neither is it a pairing of peers. The beginning of such a relationship should have been the troublesome part, but as I actually lived it, the future looked more dangerous than the past. Face it, Vinson, you’ll begin to dodder long before he does.

  Hazel put me to work on a couple of cases that had nothing to do with the Belhavens and the Voxlightners, which helped me shake off the mood I was in… thanks to the case and my near miss with Paul. At times it’s helpful to have a bossy office manager in your life. Thursday afternoon rolled around before I returned to enumerating the possibilities surrounding Belhaven’s murder.

  For one, a stranger could have rung the doorbell and talked his way into the house with robbery on his mind. But a stranger robbing Belhaven would have taken something other than the research on his book. Nor would Paul’s and my involvement have elicited personal attacks from a stranger.

  Someone as yet undetected in the Voxlightner imbroglio might have been motivated to try to stop Pierce from reopening the scandal. Possible but improbable. If this was the case, it was someone Wick wasn’t aware of because he’d purged his soul this past week with respect to the wrongdoers. He’d pointed to only three others besides himself: Stabler, Dr. Herrera, and Thelma Rider, who’d weakened before the scam was complete and abandoned New Mexico for her native Texas and presumed safety.

  There were other possible suspects, but they remained just that. Possibilities. The banker was semicomplicit because he failed to recognize patterns of behavior that could have tipped the authorities.

  The lawyer who enthusiastically promoted VPMR hadn’t seemed to benefit either monetarily or by reputation. He took a bath when the stock became worthless.

  The accountant was virtually driven out of business and reduced to retaining a few clients to work from his home.

  The stockbroker almost lost his business and had a long, hard slog to get back to normal. All the insiders in the scandal lost reputations and money. Still, each of these pos
sibilities would need to be reexamined and considered.

  The final option was to search for Belhaven’s killer among the members of his own household… family or bimbo or himbob. My inclination was to rush to judgment on the rash and rascally Spencer Spears. Nonetheless the obvious was not always the best place to look. Spencer with the strawberry mark on his cheek would get a close inspection, but so would the others.

  READY TO get back in the groove again, I asked Hazel to dig deeper into Harris Belhaven’s and Melanie Harper’s finances while I interviewed them again. This was a solo task; Paul was working on a paying gig for a sports magazine on the scholarship policies and graduation rates of the Lobos, New Mexico University’s football team.

  Recalling Harris’s stiff-necked retreat from the Apothecary two weeks ago, I elected to talk to his sister first. Sarah Thackerson answered the phone at the Belhaven house, which took me by surprise. Because of Harris’s dislike of the woman, I thought she’d be gone. Sarah said Mrs. Harper had returned home.

  A phone call to the residence in Grants earned me an invitation to speak with both Melanie and her husband tomorrow afternoon. I hoped Paul would make the drive with me, but he’d already scheduled two interviews at the U, chasing a story about budgeting. Things seemed like they were back on track for the two of us, but an out-of-town trip might have cemented them. Was my insecurity showing?

  EARLY THE next morning, I herded the Impala west on I-40 and began the long climb toward the Continental Divide, which lay not far on the other side of Grants, my destination. The fact that the trip was mostly uphill made playing tag with semis a bit irksome.

  As a dedicated student of history, I knew Grants began its existence as a railroad camp in the 1880s when three Canadian brothers of that name contracted to build a stretch of rail for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. It later became Grants Station, and finally Grants. I don’t know when it lost the apostrophe it presumably boasted in earlier years.