“Well, he’ll get disbarred for life, that’s for sure, and he’ll be charged with forgery and conspiracy to launder money. But he’s the government’s star witness against Stanislav Anapolsky, who’s a top target of the FBI, so he’s got considerable leverage to cut a deal. He’ll be okay, I think, but life as he knew it is over.”
“What will they charge the oligarch with?”
“International money-laundering, narcotics-trafficking, and racketeering, among others. The charges are enough to put him away in a U.S. federal prison for quite a while.”
“No murder charges?”
“I doubt it. It looks like Karlo Grabar was contracted by Boyarchenko, and he’s not cooperating.”
“Yeah, but Anapolsky put him up to it.”
I nodded. “Most likely. I’m just not sure the case can be made.”
“What about Grabar?” Her look turned to disgust. He’s long gone, isn’t he?”
I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t know, Angela. The trail’s cold, for sure, and he doesn’t have any reason to hang around. But he’ll make the FBI’s most wanted list, I’m sure.”
I slept in that Sunday and awoke feeling fully rested for the first time in a long time. I fed Arch, took him for a short walk, then after a couple of cappuccinos, made blueberry pancakes that I served with Canadian maple syrup and a rasher of crisp bacon. While I cooked and ate I listened to some early Lucinda Williams and when she came to Big Red Sun Blues, I found myself singing along.
But the bubble burst around midmorning, when my realtor, Valerie Thatcher, called. “I’ve got the offer for the Aerie, Cal,” she said with that ring of enthusiasm I found so irritating, “and it’s dated June twenty-third, the day after your hearing, like you requested.” She went over the numbers with me, and I had to admit it was generous. I’d still take a beating, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. “My advice is that you lock this in right now,” she said. “It’s not binding on him until the effective date, and he might change his mind. You won’t get another offer like this.”
“Nope. I’m going to wait for the hearing.”
I spent that afternoon going back over all the sales records and other information I had on the quarry situation, and then reviewing all the pertinent land-use laws and regulations. I found nothing I could build a legal argument around, which of course was no surprise. I was promised the results of the quarry dust analysis I’d requested but didn’t have much hope I’d find a stopper there. No, it looked like the only chance I had was to appeal to the emotions of the members of the Land Use Board. I could bring in Gertrude Johnson and other long-term neighbors and have them testify about how the mining degraded their quality of life—the blasting, truck traffic, diesel fumes, crusher noise. But it would be just that—an emotional argument. Meanwhile, McMinnville Sand and Gravel had the law on their side, as their counsel would quickly point out.
I’d pushed away from my desk in disgust when the aerial view of H and S Landscaping and Builder Supply that I’d seen that day in their office popped into my head. I still can’t explain why that happened. It made me think of satellite imaging. I logged in and started a search….
Arch and I got in a good run that afternoon, although the sky opened up on the way back, and we both got soaked. I just changed clothes when Angela texted me that she’d nearly finished Jogging Woman and wanted me to come by to take a look. I jumped on it, anxious to see the latest version. Since Arch was snoozing on his mat and smelling like a wet dog, I left him there with orders to guard the castle. Angela buzzed me in fifteen minutes later, and when I walked through the open door of her studio, my head became the clapper in a bell.
The last thought I had as I spiraled into unconsciousness was how could I be so stupid?
Chapter Forty-seven
I heard somebody groaning, and then realized it was me. As I came to, I tasted blood, which had found its way down my face from the blow that knocked me out. I opened my eyes and saw Angela staring at me in terror. She sat in a chair at one end of the studio, her hands bound with plastic handcuffs, her feet tied together with nylon cord, and her mouth taped shut. Her floor mate, Darius, lay next to her, bound like she was. The side of his head was bloody, and his eyes were closed. I looked carefully and was relieved to see he was breathing. At the other end of the studio, a man was busy with his back to us at the workbench. I was slumped in a chair against the wall that ran along the street, my hands and feet done up like theirs. In the center of it all, Jogging Woman stood mute, her legs striding, her arms pumping.
Angela gave a muffled sob and swung her eyes in the direction of the man. Hearing the sob, he turned around and looked at her before settling his eyes on me. They were flat and hard, like I’d seen in the mug shot, and his body had the well-muscled tone of the man I’d faced in the alley.
“Oh, you’ve come to,” he said. “I didn’t tape your mouth because I wanted to chat. If you raise your voice, I’ll immediately execute the boy and the girl. Are we clear?”
I nodded. “This isn’t necessary, Grabar. It’s all over. You won’t even get paid for this. Ilya Boyarchenko and Stanislav Anapolsky are both in jail.”
He put his hands on his hips and faced me. “I know what happened. And it’s not the money, it’s my reputation. I was supposed to take care of this young woman, and you got in the way. I can’t let that stand. Bad for business.” He flashed a smile. “But don’t worry, the three of you won’t feel a thing, and the cops will think it was a tragic accident.” He smiled again. It was laced with pride. “It’s what I do.”
Grabar turned back to whatever he was working on at the bench. I glanced over at Angela and saw she was straining to loosen one of her boots. I understood immediately—if she worked her boots off, she might be able to slip the nylon cord off her small feet. But then what? I had no idea, but I nodded encouragement and tried loosening my own shoes, but without success.
I looked at Jogging Woman, who was poised between Angela and Grabar as if striding to catch the assassin. Her face and the rest of her body were now fully detailed, the only exception being her right hand, whose stout wires still thrust forward, unshaped. Jogging Woman’s face was haunted by Margaret Wingate’s visage, now more than ever. Did Karlo Grabar see the resemblance of the statue to the woman he murdered? If he did, he wasn’t showing it.
Grabar finished at the bench, walked over to the oxygen and acetylene tanks chained to the wall, and with a small file set about gently abrading the flexible hoses that carried the gases to Angela’s torch—first one, then the other. Then he repeated the process at two other points on the hoses. When he finished, he looked up at me and smiled. “Worn hoses can be such a hazard in this type of work. Both these gases are colorless and odorless and highly explosive, you know.” He pointed to the abraded areas. “These are for the forensic team to discover in the ruins, if there’s anything left of them.”
“Think about it, Grabar,” I said. You’re just incurring more risk here. The FBI’s in the middle of this. Look what happened to Analpolsky and Boyarchenko and the others. Cut your losses, man. Get out of Portland while you can.”
He looked up again with annoyance. “I explained to you why I can’t do that.” From the gas tanks he went over to the exhaust fan, where I watched as he loosened one of the electrical connections at the back. “Well,” he said with a satisfied look on his face, “it looks like the exhaust fan is not working properly. Such inattention to safety.” He looked in Angela’s direction and added, “By the way, young lady, I wanted to thank you for your website. The pictures of your studio here were invaluable as I planned this.” He glanced over at Darius. “And it was kind of that young man to let me in. Saved me a lot of trouble.”
From there, he went back to the bench and busied himself unpacking items from a briefcase. Meanwhile, Angela had one boot loose and was now focused on the other, a look of deadly determi
nation on her sweaty face. I didn’t know the plan, but my attempts to talk Grabar down sure as hell weren’t working.
Grabar turned to face us, holding a small ampule between his thumb and index finger. “This is succinylcholine, considered by many to be the perfect poison. Why? Because the metabolites are natural body constituents. Can’t be traced at low dosages. But relax, I’m not going to poison you, I’m just going to inject enough to incapacitate you for fifteen minutes or so. Then I’m going to unshackle you, turn the gas tanks on, and leave. I’ll be blocks from here when I detonate a digital fuse on the workbench by cell phone. Boom.” He smiled and the satisfied looked returned to his face. “I might have to put this at the top of my hit parade.”
“You’ll never fool the FBI,” I said. “Don’t do this, Grabar.” But he ignored me, turned back to the workbench, and began withdrawing the chemical from the ampule with a syringe.
I glanced over at Angela, who had slipped off one boot and was working on the other. She grimaced and tugged, and the second boot popped off. She slipped her feet out of the rope, rose to her feet quietly, glanced at me for a moment—I’ll never forget the look on her face, a mosaic of rage and fear—then sprinted toward Jogging Woman. She hit the wire statue going full tilt, which ripped it from its temporary moorings. Grabar whirled around at the sound just as the statue arrived with Angela riding its back. He screamed as the sharp, stainless steel wires of the unfinished right hand drove through his neck, knocking him back and pinning him to the wooden floor like an insect in a collection. He howled in agony but was unable to move as his blood began pooling on the floor.
“You little bitch,” he snarled in a gurgling, barely audible voice. “Get this off me.”
Angela stayed on top of the statue, staring straight into his face without saying a word. When I realized she wasn’t going to move, I said, “He’s not going anywhere, Angela. Come over here and get the rope off my feet.
She did, and after we clipped off each other’s handcuffs and I removed the tape from her mouth, I had her call 911 while I set about trying to staunch Grabar’s bleeding. Judging from the blood loss, one of the wires must have nicked his jugular, and the fact that he could breathe meant his windpipe had been spared by the second wire impaling his neck. The other three wires had missed his neck but were as firmly imbedded in the floor like the two that had done the damage. I was afraid of trying to unpin him for fear of making it worse, and I didn’t know if there was a pressure point for neck veins. I ripped off my shirt then my undershirt, folded the latter, and pressed it against the left side of his neck. The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop, and by the time the paramedics arrived, Grabar’s face was the color of wet plaster, and he was babbling weakly in a foreign language I assumed was Croatian.
Unfazed by the bizarre scene of a man pinned to the floor through the neck by the hand of a steel sculpture, the paramedics set to work on Grabar. First, they clipped the wires above his neck and righted Jogging Woman, then they eased his head up just enough to get a pair of wire snips under him. Once the wires were cut, they wrapped his neck, put him on a stretcher, and hustled him out of the studio. By this time, Grabar had lost consciousness, and as he passed by Angela, she said, “Will he make it?”
The lead paramedic said, “He’s got a shot. It’s a miracle he’s alive.”
While Grabar was being extricated from Jogging Woman’s grasp, I called Harmon Scott to tell him what had gone down. A long silence ensued when I finished. “Jesus, Claxton,” he said, finally, “with you it’s never a dull moment.”
“Yeah, it’s a long story and he’s in a bad way, but you better tell your first responders here to send an armed guard with him to the hospital. “He’s not to be underestimated, even with a couple of steel spikes in his neck.”
“Put one of them on.”
I handed one of the uniformed officers my cell and said, “Captain Scott wants a word with you.” The young officer looked at me incredulously but took the phone, then nodded a couple of times, said a couple of yes-sirs, and left with the stretcher.
They carried out Darius Bentley next. As he passed by Angela and me, he looked dazed but decidedly sheepish at the same time. “I’m sorry,” he implored. “I never should have let that maniac in.” Angela patted him on the shoulder, and I just shook my head.
Angela held up like a trooper through the rounds of questioning, which began at the scene and then continued at police headquarters until late that night and included spending time with Special FBI Agent in Charge, Aldous Jones. When we were finally released, I called Nando, who came across the river and picked us up, and it wasn’t until Angela was sitting in the front seat of his Lexus that she broke down crying. We let her cry for a while, knowing this was a common reaction after the fact for people who have been called upon to do extraordinary things. When she regained control, she turned to me and said, “Thanks for saving Grabar’s life, Cal. At the time, I wanted him to bleed to death, but I’m glad I don’t have that on my conscience now.”
“Thanks for saving my life. What you did tonight was an act of true heroism.” I smiled and shook my head. “I wasn’t sure what you were up to with taking your boots off. What gave you that brilliant idea, anyway?”
“Grabar didn’t tie my legs very tight.” She smirked. “I guess he figured I was no threat to him. Anyway, I got those boots at Goodwill, and they’re a little big for me, so I figured I could get my legs free. The idea for the rest of it just came into my head.” She smiled wistfully and her big chocolate eyes filled with tears. “It was like Mom was there, you know? In the flesh.”
I nodded. “I think she was, Angela. I think she was.”
Chapter Forty-eight
June 22nd. The Yamhill County
Land Use Board of Appeals
“To conclude,” Mason Goodings, President of McMinnville Sand and Gravel, said to the five board members, “we have every right to start mining again at McCallister Quarry. As you’ve heard from the testimony and seen from the evidence, although the quarry was idle for twelve years and ten months, sale of our gravel continued for another eleven months at H and S Landscape. Therefore, the operation as a whole has been idle for less than twelve years.” He paused and looked confidently at the panel. “It’s as simple as that, ladies and gentlemen. I ask you to allow us to continue to mine at this quarry to provide this valuable resource to the people of Oregon. Thank you very much.”
Prior to Goodings’ concluding remarks, the attorneys for the gravel company entered into evidence the sales and shipping records from the mining operation and the gravel sales at H and S. I made no objection to the quarry records but noted to the panel that the records from H and S were not backed up by their tax returns or any trucking invoices. “And you heard the testimony of the owner, Dudley Cahill,” I pointed out, “that the records were not available that far back in time. This means their accuracy can’t be independently verified, ladies and gentlemen.”
A glancing blow, at best.
When Goodings stepped down, I began my appeal by having several of my neighbors, including Gertrude Johnson, testify about how the resumption of mining was, once again, degrading their quality of life. I finished with a personal description of what the blasting did to Archie, hoping there were some dog lovers on the board. It was a spirited, emotional rebuttal but nothing board members hadn’t heard before. Living near an active mine had consequences, after all.
Next, I held up a large copy of the “Quarry Dust” photograph I’d taken on my deck that day and introduced into evidence the analysis of the dust I’d collected. I caught a break there—the analysis showed the dust contained a high content of crystalline silica, a known human carcinogen, owing to its presence in the blue basalt being mined. I went through the dangers of silica, playing it for all it was worth, but the reality was there were was no way to prove an actual threat to human health. The limits weren’t established for this type of op
eration and data simply weren’t available.
Another glancing blow.
When I finished, the chairwoman looked at me a bit impatiently and said, “Is that all, Mr. Claxton?”
“No, I’m not quite finished. I’d like to ask Dudley Cahill a few more questions.” Cahill looked surprised, then angry, when he was asked to take the chair again. After he sauntered up and took his seat, I approached him with a folder in my hand. I opened the folder and handed him a large photograph. “Do you recognize this?”
He took the photo reluctantly and examined it. “Uh, yeah, this is a satellite photograph of our operation.”
“What’s the date on it? It’s in the right-hand corner.”
He looked at the photo again. “Uh, it’s dated April 2, 2005, I guess.”
“There’s no guess work, Mr. Cahill. That’s the capture date for the satellite image, the date the photo was snapped from space. Can you see the bays that hold the gravel?”
“Sure, they’re those four rectangles on the southeast side of the property.”
“Are they stocked with gravel?”
He looked again. “You bet.”
“You can see that they’re stocked?”
“Yeah. They’re obviously full. And you can see a truck being loaded at Bay Three.”
“Have you ever sold gravel from any other location on the property?”
“No. We’ve always sold out of those bays.”
“Thank you.” I took the photo from his hands, turned to the panel, and explained again what he said, to make sure they understood. Then I handed the photo to the chairwoman of the panel, so she could pass it around. “This was the heyday of the McCallister operation, when things were booming,” I added.
Moving Targets Page 28