“Good.”
“There’s one other thing I want to let you know about Asa Larkin before you fetch him from the dining room. You don’t have to say anything, just hear me out.”
“All right,” Bach said and lifted the box holding the Remington sculpture.
“Ariel Pritchett tells me the Nodines acquired the Ram 3500 through some kind of transaction with Larkin. Payment for doing something in return. I don’t know what, but I plan to press him on it.”
Al couldn’t mask his desire to join the questioning of Larkin. “Do you have a theory about what they were supposed to do in return for the truck?”
“I’ll just say this, Asa Larkin has a keen interest in getting ahold of Frank Sylvester’s wealth.”
“He does indeed. Shall we head downstairs now? We wouldn’t want to cause Mr. Larkin any more anxiety.”
I nodded toward the package he held. “I’ll take that. I plan on beginning with his Remington fascination.”
“While you question Mr. Larkin, I’m going to finish what’s left of our first-floor search.”
Larkin was shepherded to the office, where I waited, the boxed sculpture on the desk in front of me. Spying it, his face reddened.
I switched on the recorder and stated the purpose of the interview.
He plopped himself in the chair across from me. “I want my attorney.”
“Sure. Have him meet us at the county jail.”
“He hasn’t answered any of my calls since yesterday, nor has he answered the ones your officer made.”
“And I understand he checked out of his hotel.”
“That’s right.”
“We’ve got lots of time. What’s the number? I’ll try calling again.”
“I’ve already left several voicemails.”
“So would you like us to contact a local attorney?”
“No. But I might refuse to answer your questions.”
“So noted. First let’s talk about Frederic Remington. Mr. Sylvester is a collector. So are you, it seems. A collector of Sylvester’s Remington artwork. For example, this sculpture and the painting in your dining room.”
I expected to get no reply to that. Instead he nodded.
I indicated the recorder. “A verbal response, please.”
“Yes, the sculpture and the painting in the dining room belong to Frank Sylvester, at least until his demise. As I told you before, in his state, what use are his earthly possessions?”
Larkin’s justifications were always rich. And imbued with some tinge of the biblical.
“Remington’s The Blanket Signal is upstairs where you found the sculpture. You couldn’t have missed it,” he added.
“It now resides in the Oregon State Police evidence room in John Day. It was found in Guy Trudeau’s storage locker after he was killed.”
“What?” He was stunned. “How’s that possible? It was wrapped and leaning against the far wall of the storeroom the last I knew.”
“When was that?”
Larkin quietly considered the question. “Well, not more than a week ago.”
“Think about it. Guy Trudeau and you had a heated discussion about the cattle he hoped to sell you on Thursday last. Eight days ago. He was killed three days later.”
His self-confidence had begun to wane. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Between that Thursday and the following Sunday when he was murdered, at least two of your men traded the painting to Trudeau for his cattle.”
He took that in. “Had to be John and Ruben. Those steers were worthless, really. Puny and sick.”
“Seems a couple of your ranch hands didn’t recognize the difference between good or poor beef stock.”
He sat silently for a moment. “But John would’ve figured out the Remington was potentially valuable.”
“Possibly up to four or five million, right?”
He closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Vickers did figure that out, but too late. It had already been turned over to Mr. Trudeau.”
“Did they kill that old man over the painting?”
Smith nearly convinced me they had, but Trudeau’s murder was not the direction I wanted to take the interview at the moment. “What I’m wondering is this. Did they have something to do with the deaths of Dan and Joseph Nodine?”
“Why would you think that?”
After what had happened earlier this afternoon, it seemed an obvious question. “Apparently the Nodines reneged on a deal they had with the Vickers men.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Stolen steers for cash.”
He almost smiled. “Six months working my ranch, and they’d begun to fancy themselves as cattlemen, I guess. Explains those ridiculous cowboy hats.”
“I know how you met Wayne Smith, but how did you meet John and Ruben Vickers?”
Larkin hesitated, but only briefly. “They were working an embezzlement scheme on one of my clients. I intervened, offered them something better. Life out in the country and no prison time.”
“Ah, I get it. It’s always wiser to employ thieves if you’re a thief yourself.”
He sipped from the glass of water he’d brought with him from the dining room.
“Back to the Vickers men and the Nodines. I’ll be interviewing the surviving brother later tonight. What might his answer be?”
“He’ll deny it, of course.”
“Here’s another question I’ve been wondering about. Did you kill Dan and Joseph Nodine over that one-ton pickup?”
Larkin slowly raked a hand through his dyed hair. “As I’ve said before, possessing it was pure vanity. God judged me a hypocrite and rendered His reckoning.”
I couldn’t handle much more of his Sunday school dogma. “You were willing to let them get away with stealing your expensive diesel truck, the one you had coveted?”
“To save my soul, the Lord exacted a fitting punishment. And I had come to terms with that.”
“Really? You followed them to Logan Valley and watched them shoot a mule deer. Then you called the poacher tip line and reported them.”
He was mildly surprised I’d put it all together. “Wasting that animal for sport was disgusting and evil.”
I bit my tongue, judgment being up to God and all that. “It was against state law, Mr. Larkin, but they killed the doe to eat.”
“Being against state law should have been enough for you, Sergeant.”
“Oh, I planned to arrest them for it, but someone murdered them before I had the chance.”
Larkin’s bloodless lips trembled. “Could I please have some more water?”
I stood, opened the door, and called for Bach. He emerged from a closet in the hallway.
“Mr. Larkin needs more water.” I handed Larkin’s empty glass to Al and took my chair. “I have another theory to pass by you.”
“What’s the theory?”
“What if the Nodines didn’t steal your beautiful Ram truck?”
Al knocked, placed a full pitcher on the desk, and closed the office door behind him.
Larkin filled his glass with water, swallowed some, and sighed heavily. “I don’t understand.”
“What if it was payment for agreeing to provide a service, let’s say?”
“I’m still confused.”
“Oh, I get that. Fifty grand is a heck of a down payment, especially since you really wanted to keep the truck, I suppose. Plus there’d been all that rigmarole getting ahold of Frank Sylvester’s money to buy it in the first place. I mean by rights, that diesel one-ton should be yours.”
“Except it’s not.”
“Yes, I know. It belongs to Mr. Sylvester. Problem is, he’s not dying fast enough for your purposes. So you hired the Nodine twins to kill him in exchange for that ostentatious piece of equipment.”
“And your evidence?”
“Joseph Nodine had a fiancée. She came forward and told us everything.” An exaggeration, but she’d revealed enough to inspire
me to coax Larkin to disclose the details of the deal between the twins and him.
“Did she tell you they would have gotten another fifty grand when the deed was done? It wouldn’t really have been that hard to arrange, but they kept putting it off.”
I wondered why he kept digging himself a deeper hole. Guilt, maybe? “Go on.”
“Then I learned they talked Brady into getting his pal to pilfer cattle prods and other supplies from his uncle’s store. My son traded it all to the Nodines for marijuana.”
Brady Wakefield, the boy who didn’t lie. Since I had never asked him about the theft from Duncan’s store, he hadn’t expressly fibbed to me. But plainly, he was dishonest and disingenuous. What else was he hiding, and what did all of this say about Rain?
“Was that the last straw?”
“Last straw?”
“The Nodines. Had they crossed some line even God wouldn’t forgive?”
“I don’t speak for God.”
Like hell.
“Did you kill the Nodine brothers, Mr. Larkin?”
“It was John and Ruben Vickers who were angry enough to kill those men.”
“Start from the beginning.”
“They were anxious to have it out with the Nodines, probably over that cattle deal you talked about. They had gone looking for them earlier that day, to no avail.”
He gulped down more water. “I had once followed the Nodines and found out where they kept the red Ram truck. So we took my Bronco to the abandoned mill.”
“Were the Vickers men armed?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew they had served time for multiple felonies, that it was illegal for them to carry weapons?”
“I follow God’s law, not the government’s. Besides, I bought the Beretta 9s for all three of my men.”
I could’ve countered that the law refers to possession, not ownership, but I needed to stay out of my own way. “So you follow God’s law? Such as ‘thou shall not steal’?”
Larkin had no answer, perhaps in part because he clearly didn’t consider the absconding of Frank Sylvester’s money and artwork to be theft.
I tried another one of God’s laws. “How about ‘thou shalt not kill’?”
“I only accompanied John and Ruben to make sure things didn’t get out of hand when they met with the Nodines.”
“So it was an accident that you ended up shooting them to death?”
The man wasn’t biting, so I kept pushing. “The Nodines weren’t killed with a Beretta. Your Kel-Tec 9 was the murder weapon. But you already knew that.”
“That proves nothing.”
“You forget. Ruben Vickers is still alive. My guess is he’ll be eager to name the shooter.”
“My word against his.”
Then it came to me how I might compel this fraudster’s confession. “Did you know Brady was inside the wigwam burner when the Nodines were shot? He was there hiding on the floorboard in the backseat of the Ram 3500.”
The color left his face.
I leaned closer to Larkin. “He heard them scream, heard them beg for their lives. Heard the shots. Two for each man.”
His breathing intensified. “You’re lying.”
“No, Mr. Larkin, I am not.”
He shut his eyes tightly. “What have I done?”
“You tell me.”
His eyes remained clenched.
“Did you shoot and kill Daniel and Joseph Nodine?”
His eyes snapped open. “It’s unfortunate your detective only wounded Ruben Vickers. He and John were blackmailing me, you see.”
“For the murders they witnessed you commit?”
“A momentary lapse. But I’ve made my peace with it.” He extended his arms dramatically, waited for me to ratchet up and clamp down the cuffs. “I wiped the Nodine brothers from the face of the Earth.”
24
Night, March 1
Stepping out to the hall, I called for Bach. He was busy in the living room rummaging through cabinets, but I needed his set of handcuffs. Mine were still locked around Wayne Smith’s wrists.
Back inside the office, I found Larkin holding a tiny Derringer .22 against the thin flesh of his temple. Yesterday, Brady had inadvertently passed along the combination to his father’s safe, and we’d opened it during our search. No baby gun was stashed inside.
“You fools missed the small compartment in the underbelly of my desk.”
Underbelly. The word brought to mind a snake. I drew my Glock. “Put the weapon down.”
“No, Sergeant. I don’t think I’ll do that.”
Al moved in beside me. “Mr. Larkin. Think carefully, now. Consider your son.”
“Detective. Welcome back. Did you know what I put my son through just to rid the world of that bit of scourge?”
Bach searched my face for an explanation.
I nodded, hoping to convey news of Asa Larkin’s confession.
Al edged slightly forward and extended an open palm. “For the Lord is a God of justice: blessed are all they that wait for him. Hand over the pistol.”
“So you can bring me to man’s justice?”
Bach nodded. “Yes.”
Larkin smirked. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”
I nudged closer to the desk. “I don’t have any cherry-picked Bible verses, Larkin, but ‘that bit of scourge’ you murdered had loved ones who deserve to see justice done.”
“You’re not very good at this, are you. Sergeant? You’re supposed to say something uplifting and call out the mental health unit.”
“How about this for uplifting? You’re under arrest for the murder of Daniel and Joseph Nodine.” In speaking those words, I lifted a heavy load of sorrow from my heart.
He jabbed the gun barrel deeper into his temple. “I’d rather be dead than go to prison.”
“At least you have that choice. The Nodine brothers didn’t. Do you want to know how they died? The bullets ricocheted through their bodies, but that’s not what killed them. They bled to death.”
The man smiled. “You don’t really care if I shoot myself, do you?”
I shrugged. “Go ahead. Spread your brains all over your office and leave the mess for someone else to deal with. That won’t traumatize Brady much.”
“Leave my son out of this.”
“Why? You’re using him as an excuse for offing yourself.”
“What do you know about it, Sergeant?”
“My mother killed herself when I was fifteen. It’s not a thing you ever get over.”
He shut his eyes tightly and stood with them closed. “My own father gave me away and never looked back.”
I inched my hand slowly toward Larkin’s revolver. “That’s not a thing you ever get over either.”
I slapped his weapon and sent it skidding across the desk and onto the floor. Larkin opened his eyes, screamed, and dove for the Derringer, but Al and I managed to restrain him and force him to stand.
“Detective Bach, I need to borrow your set of handcuffs,” I said.
“Anytime, Sergeant Blackthorne.”
We delivered Wayne Smith and Asa Larkin to the Grant County jail. After making sure the night deputies had set up a suicide watch for Larkin, we drove straight to Blue Mountain Hospital, where Hollis was still in surgery. We found Lil and baby Hank in the waiting room seated next to Dorie.
I hadn’t remembered the multistory bank of windows from the times I’d hung out here waiting for Tate to get patched up after his many inebriated falls. Outside, the sky had faded to dark, allowing the crescent moon to shine emblematically: A sign of hope?
I sat in the seat on the other side of Lil and put my arm around her. “How are you holding up?”
She smelled of clean sweat and lavender soap. “I’ll let you know after I talk to the surgeon.”
“I think it’s a good sign they didn’t fly him to Bend.”
“At first I thought they might. I would’ve had to drive. Three hours in the car wit
h a crying baby, trying not to freak out the whole time wondering whether or not Hollis was still alive.”
“What did the doctors say?”
“The same thing you told me. He’s very strong.”
Dorie stood. “Let’s take up the offering, and I’ll go get us some pizza.”
We pooled our cash, and Dorie traipsed off to the Cave Inn, satisfied in having a task that involved delivering sustenance.
Beside me, Lil nursed the baby and held my hand. “Thanks for Dorie. She’s kept me sane.”
“She’s a real sweetheart.”
The surgeon, Dr. Zahn, appeared. “Mrs. Jones? Can we step into the hall?”
“I’d like the sergeant to come along. She’s our best friend.”
I shook the doctor’s hand. “Maggie Blackthorne.”
“Of course, then.” She led us to the hallway outside Holly’s room.
The doctor’s tone was all business, her manner direct, and she was exquisitely beautiful. “Your husband was very lucky, Ms. Jones.”
“Thank God.” Lil breathed deeply as tears formed. I placed my arm around her. “Please, call me Lillian, Dr. Zahn. And my last name is Two Moons.”
“Sorry to assume. The bullet missed the large intestine and the bladder and grazed a hipbone, slipping out through the right buttock. I did the initial repairs, but we’ll want to watch for complications. Plus he may need follow-up reconstructive surgery.”
“When can I see him?”
“He’s back in his room, but a bit groggy. Only one visitor at a time for now. And it’s best, for tonight at least, that he be isolated from the baby.” Dr. Zahn shook hands with Lil. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Lillian.”
I held out my arms for Hank, who was sound asleep. “Go check on your husband.”
Lil kissed both her baby and me on the cheek and hurried off.
Back inside the waiting area, I shared Dr. Zahn’s good news and rocked Hank in the visitors’ rocker while Team Hollis ate cheesy cheese pizza and drank flat cherry cola. The gathering had been almost festive, but we were all ready to put this day behind us.
After our supper, Al sought me out for a side conversation. “You did a great job out there today.”
Dead Point (Maggie Blackthorne Book 1) Page 31