Deadline

by John Sandford

  Jen Gedney said, “Viking—that’s awful. You really killed him?”

  Laughton waved his hands at them: “He was a dead man, anyway. He would have wound up shooting it out with some cops, somewhere, probably kill one or two of them. I saw the chance, and I took it. Saved us fifty thousand bucks, each.”

  They all thought about that for a minute, and Jennifer Gedney made a couple of choking sounds, almost like sobs, but her eyes were dry.

  “Let’s skip that for the moment,” Owens said. “Even if we agreed to throw Henry and Del overboard, they’re gonna deny knowing anything about Randy getting killed, or Jennifer Houser—”

  “Why’d you kill Jennifer?” Jennifer Gedney demanded. “She was in it with the rest of us, she wasn’t going to tell—”

  “I didn’t,” Laughton interrupted. “I don’t know what happened to her, but to tell you the truth, she was always a little too smart for her own good. There’s no sign that she’s dead, except a little smear of blood on her kitchen floor. I think she took off. The way she was acting the other night . . .”

  Parsons said, “You’re right. She was a little too . . . pleased . . . going out the door. I think she’s got something tricky set up.”

  They sat without speaking for a few more seconds, still digesting it all. Then Barns asked, “If we decide to throw Henry and Del overboard, as we’re calling it, how would we do that?”

  “We don’t do it right now, this minute,” Laughton said. “I keep monitoring the investigation. I’ve got a good source inside the sheriff’s office, he’ll keep me up on things. Freedom of the press, and so on. Also, he wants to run for sheriff someday . . .”

  “Josh Becker,” Jennifer Gedney guessed.

  “Whatever,” Laughton said. “If it looks like it’s all going to come down on us, I’ll go directly to Flowers and tell him that Clancy Conley suspected Henry and Del and Randy of conspiring to do this. I’ll tell Flowers I didn’t believe it, because Clancy was a pill head, and all that. How I told him it was nonsense—making myself look naive. Then I say that I’ve gone to all you board members, and all of you are horrified at the prospect that this may have happened, and that we’d all be willing to testify against Henry and Del if it came to that. Back up any evidence he finds—that Flowers finds—and help reconstruct budgets and amounts, and so on.”

  “And we’d get immunity from prosecution?” Jen Gedney asked.

  “Asking for that would be touchy,” Laughton said. “If we’re innocent, why would we need it? I could come up with some reasons, but the best reason would be that our individual attorneys insist on it before we testify. Not us. Our attorneys. We’d say we feel that we have to go with their advice, which we’re paying them for.”

  “I wonder if we could get the board attorneys to cover that, charge it off to the schools,” Owens wondered.

  “Possibly,” said the chairwoman. “If we were innocent, it’d be a legitimate expense.”

  “This idea sounds pretty sketchy, the whole story,” Gedney said.

  “It is sketchy. And it’s getting sketchier by the minute,” Laughton said. “If we wait too long, it won’t even be an option. You have to remember, though, that if we get charged, the state has to prove us guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. We don’t have to create a great story—just a serious doubt.”

  —

  THEY ARGUED ABOUT IT for a half hour, all the time feeling the prison walls closing down on them. Finally Barns asked, “If it’s our only way out, it’s worth a try. Should we tell Henry what we’re going to do? You know, about supporting the families?”

  “Not yet,” Laughton said. “Things could change. Let’s see what Flowers does next. If anyone hears anything that makes you think we’ve got to move, we’ll talk by phone, instead of trying to meet. Everybody keep your ears open. If Flowers comes to visit anyone—Jen Gedney, I’m thinking of you, since he’s already talked to you—let us know.”

  The meeting broke up, and they left a couple minutes apart. When only Laughton and Jennifer Barns were left in the newspaper office, she asked, “What about Randy? Was it awful?”

  “Awful for me,” Laughton said. He leaned toward her, talking in a hoarse whisper. “He never saw it coming. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. Fast, painless. Not a bad way to go. But I’ll remember it forever.”

  She looked him over for a moment, then said, “You couldn’t kill all of us, and get away with it.”

  “I know. Not that I didn’t think about it,” Laughton said. “It’s just not feasible. I try to stick to that standard—doing what’s feasible. If Flowers had any hard evidence against us, he would have moved already. That makes me think we’ve still got a chance.”

  “Unless he’s focused on catching the killer, and is letting the money thing go until that’s done,” Barns said.

  “I don’t think that’s likely. That’s just not the way cops think,” Laughton said. He looked at his watch. “It’s been a couple minutes. You better get out of here.”

  —

  BARNS WALKED ACROSS the parking lot and got into her Subaru, and it occurred to her that Flowers probably would place a premium on finding the killer, rather than the money thing. And Laughton had just confessed to the four board members that he’d killed Kerns. That had to be a chip worth something.

  Her phone rang, and she glanced at it: Owens.

  “What’s up?”

  “Vike just confessed to killing Randy.”

  “I was thinking that exact thought, just now,” Barns said. “It’s like you pulled it out of my brain.”

  “If the four of us board members stuck together, we might be able to throw Vike overboard along with Henry and Del,” Owens said. “We might claim that Henry and Del directed Randy, and that Vike was in on all of that. We could say that we met and that Jen Houser said she was going to confront Vike about all of this, on our behalf, and then she disappeared—”

  “But how do we explain that Vike confessed to us?”

  “Well, it’s a little weak, but we could say that Jen Houser saw him with Randy, in Randy’s truck, just before Randy was killed, and told us about it. Then Jen Houser disappeared, and we all went together and confronted him. He told us he was going to drag us all down if we didn’t support him—”

  “Okay. Listen, Bob, we need to talk to the others . . . the other board members. I think you’ve got something there, a kernel of something, but it’s not quite right yet. For example, if Vike confessed to us, why didn’t we drive right over and tell Flowers?”

  “Okay. Okay, we have to work on it. Maybe we don’t say he confessed—just that Jen Houser saw them together. Listen, let’s call the others and let it cook for a while, see what we come up with. In the meantime, stay the hell away from Vike. He has wigged out. As they used to say many years ago.”

  “Many,” Barns said. “All right. Let’s talk. If we can give them all the killers, all wrapped up . . . we might slip through this.”

  —

  SHE PUT THE SUBARU in gear, drove across the parking lot, and never saw Del Cray in his aging gray Pathfinder, slumped in his seat, eating a slice of mushroom and sausage.

  The pizza smelled so good that he hadn’t been able to wait until he got back to his house, so he opened the box and pulled a slice free . . . and saw Gedney come out the back of the newspaper office. That was interesting, but not astonishing. Then, a minute later, Owens emerged, looking guilty, checking around, before scurrying over to his car. That was even more interesting.

  By the time all four board members had emerged, he was no longer interested: he was frightened. He got on his phone and called Hetfield. “Henry. This is Del. Where are you? Right now?”

  “Getting gas at the QuikTrip,” Hetfield said. He must have sensed something in Cray’s voice. “What happened?”

  “Were you invited to a board meeting at Vike L
aughton’s office?”

  Hetfield’s voice went cold. “No. You’re saying there was one?”

  “Yeah. I’m at Village Pizza, you know, across from Vike’s back door. Not spying, just getting a pizza. All four of them came sneaking out of there, and they were sneaking—they came out one at a time, a minute or two apart, and took off.”

  “Sonsofbitches have decided to rat us out,” Hetfield said. “They’re gonna try to give us up, make a deal, convince Flowers that they didn’t know about it.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” Cray said. “I was hoping you’d come up with something else. ’Cause that’s sorta what I think, too. What’re we gonna do?”

  24

  NEAR THE END of every successful investigation in the history of the world, the suits show up to take the credit. Both Virgil and his boss, Lucas Davenport, were friendly with the governor, who’d helped find a new boat for Virgil, after his first boat had been blown up by a mad bomber. The governor, however, was planning to vacate the office, perhaps to make a run at the vice presidency.

  So, one way or another, there’d be a new suit in town.

  The current attorney general had already hinted that he was going to run for the governor’s office, and between now and then, would not be averse to favorable publicity that portrayed him as a protector of the people, a defender of freedom, but also a sincere, heartfelt, and honest spokesman for the larger and richer special interests.

  As it happened, the Buchanan County school district presented a perfect chance to protect the public: it largely voted Republican, so, since the AG was a Democrat, a vigorous prosecution wouldn’t piss off anybody critical, and would generally show up the Republicans as the pack of thieving, money-gouging, scheming hyenas that all true-blue Americans knew them to be.

  That was the general idea; the actual words would be repackaged into something much softer and much, much more hypocritical.

  —

  WHICH WAS WHY DAVE, the assistant AG, slapped Virgil on the back before he slipped into the booth at Ma & Pa’s Kettle, then ordered a pitcher of Bloody Marys—“I can’t drink bourbon at breakfast”—and began the debriefing. When Virgil outlined what he had, a slender line appeared in Dave’s forehead. “What you’re telling me is, it’s gonna be easy to nail down, but at this very moment, it’s not quite nailed down.”

  “That’s about right,” Virgil said. “I gotta emphasize, it will be. The whole pack of rats is coming apart. Two of them have run. I assume you got decent stuff from Masilla.”

  “I did—but you’re telling me it’s the whole school board, and this Viking guy and Masilla have really only handed over the heads of the superintendent and his money guy. Even that will take a little further nailing, since all those records went up in smoke.”

  “Not all of them,” Virgil said. He slid the folder of Clancy Conley’s photos across the table. Dave left the folder closed as the waitress delivered two plates of French toast with link sausage, and the pitcher of Bloody Marys for Dave, and Virgil’s Diet Coke. When she was gone, Dave opened the folder, as he sipped the first of his drinks, slowly thumbed through the photos, then said, “My, my.”

  “I’ve got some supporting documents for that stuff. They were uncovered by the reporter who got murdered, and he put a bunch of notes in a flash drive file, explaining what it all was . . . and naming a suspect in his own murder.”

  Virgil dug the flash drive out of his pocket and slid it across to Dave. “I’m gonna want a receipt for that, you know, chain of evidence and so on.”

  “Who was the reporter’s suspect?” Dave asked.

  “A guy named Randolph Kerns, who was murdered night before last.”

  “Ain’t that a pisser,” Dave said.

  “For Randy, anyway. He’s the guy who tried to shoot me up at the high school, and frankly, I wasn’t all that sad to see him go. I mean, if the bell’s gotta toll, might as well be for an asshole.”

  “Who killed Randy?”

  “You got the list—one of the school board members, one of the others,” Virgil said. “I’ve got my eye on the newspaper editor, there. He has a nice sociopathic edge on him.”

  “Any possible way of getting the killer out in the open? Or do we just start busting people?”

  “What I’d do, if I were you, is start taking the school board members aside,” Virgil said. “Be a jerk—I know you can do that. One of them will crack. You only need one, with Masilla already on your side, and those photos.”

  “If we go to court, we like to have things pretty well wrapped up.”

  “Dave, I’ve been doing this for quite a while,” Virgil said. “You don’t want them wrapped up, you want a goddamned gold-plated guarantee, because otherwise you’re afraid you’ll screw up your conviction stats. Well, by the time you get finished fucking with them all, it oughta be at least silver-plated. Dopey, Sneezy, and Grumpy could get a conviction.”

  “Unfortunately, Dopey, Sneezy, and Grumpy aren’t licensed to practice law in Minnesota,” Dave said. “The boss is thinking of handling the prosecution himself.”

  “Ah, Jesus, why do I even bother to arrest people?”

  If the AG had been a lightbulb instead of a lawyer, he would have been about a twenty-watt.

  “He’ll have good advisers,” Dave said. “Like me. But any other little bits and pieces you can find would be welcome.”

  —

  VIRGIL WALKED HIM through the records, pointing out the prices for fuel as shown in the fake books, and the discrepancies reported by the garage manager and the bus driver. “Dick, the garage guy, thinks he can walk away, because he got a legal salary, though the salary is way out of line. I told him he ought to call you, and come up and see you—”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Probably talking to his lawyer. But if you want to give him a little consideration, he’s another straw on the camel’s back.”

  “Another log on the fire.”

  “Another piss into the wind.”

  Dave frowned at his second Bloody Mary and said, “This tastes kinda strange. Wonder what kind of vodka they use?”

  Virgil was impatient: “Dave, you’re eating at Ma & Pa’s Kettle in Trippton. Pa probably made it himself, out of possum squeezin’s.”

  —

  IN THE END, Dave was satisfied that the investigation warranted a call for legal assistance. “I’ll have a couple more guys down here tomorrow, and we’ll go see the county attorney about it—courtesy call. You don’t have any reason to think that he might . . . mmm . . . have an interest? I mean, this has gone on under his nose for years.”

  “I don’t have any reason to think that,” Virgil said.

  “Okay,” Dave said. “We’re good. Now I go make a lot of phone calls, and tomorrow morning, rain, fire, and brimstone on the local Republican hyenas.”

  “And I’ll go talk to Vike Laughton,” Virgil said. “As a sociopath, it’s possible that he’ll rat out all the others.”

  “Don’t get your ass shot,” Dave said.

  —

  WHEN VIRGIL SHOWED UP at the newspaper office, Laughton was working on a story about the murders of Bacon and Kerns; he had an old-fashioned telephone receiver pinned between his shoulder and his ear, held a finger up to Virgil, telling him to wait, and two minutes later when he hung up, he said, “You know the problem with cell phones? They won’t stay between your shoulder and your ear.”

  “You put them on speakerphone,” Virgil said.

  “Then, if it’s a confidential call, like that one, everybody who wandered in would hear what was said.”

  “Well, it’s not my problem. When do you put the newspaper to sleep, or whatever you call it?”

  “‘Put it to bed’ is the phrase, though in the case of the Republican-River, ‘put it to sleep’ is probably more accurate,” Laughton said. “Anyway—tom
orrow. Finish around six in the evening, haul it over to the printing plant, pick up the papers in the morning, have them all out by early afternoon. Then start over.”

  The advertising lady came in and said, “I got the last of it,” and went back to her desk, and Virgil looked at Laughton and said, “You have time for a walk up to the Dairy Queen?”

  “Always got time for a chocolate dip,” Laughton said, heaving himself out of his chair.

  The Dairy Queen was at the end of the block, and on the way down, Laughton wanted to know everything about the Kerns and Bacon murders, and was especially curious about Bacon’s apartment up in the high school. When Virgil finished telling him about it, Laughton shook his head, his jowls flapping, and said, “Damn. Wish he hadn’t been killed, that’d be a hell of a story. The AP would want that one.”

  “The AP will want the Bacon-Kerns killings, won’t they?”

  “Yeah, but people get murdered all the time. I mean, they just get popped off like . . . like popcorn. Pop, pop, pop. People don’t want to read it, unless it’s their next-door neighbor. But a guy living for years, secretly, the high school attic . . . people would read that.”

  At the Dairy Queen they both got chocolate dip cones—Laughton was correct in his choice—and they sat on a bench outside and Laughton asked, “Was this a social visit?”

  “Not entirely. I’ll tell you what, Vike, you’ve been covering the school board for years now, and you had a reporter who dug up some pretty amazing stuff on those guys. So you’re saying he didn’t tell you about it?”

  Laughton bobbed his head. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know why. Maybe because he knew all the board members were my friends, and he just wanted to present me with a whole package. I can only tell you what I believe, Virgil—if there’s trouble with the school finances, the school board didn’t know anything about it. Neither did I. But I’m not dumb, and I’ve heard about the questions you’ve been asking, and about that camera you put up in the rafters at the meeting room. The auditorium. If there’s any substance to anything you’re chasing, the people who would have to be involved would be Henry Hetfield and Del Cray, the financial officer. And Kerns, I suspect, though I don’t know why they would have let him in on it.”