Shadow Canyon

by Vickie McKeehan

  “Explain how Louise actually pulled off Mallory’s murder,” Lianne prompted. “It’s what stumped us all.”

  Lando nodded. “I admit it gave me more than a few sleepless nights. But in the end, it wasn’t as complicated as we thought. That Sunday night after the festival, Dale, Jimmy, and Louise all signed off at the same time. Ten o’clock. While the others went home, Louise did not. Phone records show Mallory texted her mother at 9:55 that night---five minutes before Louise went off duty. Mallory intended to meet Fleet Barkley on the beach and tell him what she’d found out about the heist. Mallory hoped the mayor would be so afraid for his political career that he’d offer up a sizeable fee to keep quiet.”

  “In other words, Mallory had found her perfect blackmail mark,” Gemma cited.

  “That’s because there were only two surviving sons of the original gang of thieves---Fleet Barkley and Billy Gafford. But Billy didn’t have a political career at stake like Fleet. Plus, he didn’t actually have access to a large family fortune from the heist like Fleet. Louise and Aaron had long since taken care of that by getting rid of Arnie, Gilbert, Calloway, and Lindsay, their co-conspirators. That Sunday night, Louise was at her breaking point with Mallory. She couldn’t risk anyone else knowing about how she’d gotten all that money, not even her own daughter. Everyone involved in the crime was dead. Aaron had conveniently died of cancer five years earlier, which left Louise the only person alive who knew. That is, until Mallory stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. I don’t think Louise was completely prepared to deal with the risk of exposure coming from her own daughter. I’m sure that night she tried to reason with Mallory.”

  Gemma chuckled out loud. “We all know that was almost impossible. Mallory didn’t exactly have a habit of listening to reason.”

  Lando sent her an amused look. “That’s true. Anyway, Louise and Mallory got into a heated argument that escalated into a physical altercation. Louise took Mallory down by hitting her over the head with a hefty piece of driftwood. Am I right, Tuttle?”

  Jeff stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. “The blow put a four-inch gash on Mallory’s scalp. The knock on the head would’ve been enough to daze her, if not incapacitate her long enough for Louise to get the upper hand and keep it. But it wasn’t what killed her.”

  Lando picked up the narrative again. “While Mallory’s on the ground, Louise doesn’t waste any time. She jumps on top of the younger woman’s chest, wraps a ligature around Mallory’s neck---we think it was the belt she’d worn that night. Louise used the closest item she had on hand, and tightens the noose, strangling Mallory to death in the process. Louise panicked when she realized what she’d done. She started staging the scene using her police know-how to cover her tracks, most importantly to make sure it looked like a sexual assault.”

  As if growing bored with Louise, Gemma shifted in her chair. “That’s why Louise stripped off all Mallory’s clothing. Somewhere along the route home, Louise tossed everything in a dumpster, including the murder weapon. The belt she used is probably under layers of dirt somewhere at the landfill.”

  “But the icing on the cake is that Mallory fought her attacker,” Tuttle stated. “We found DNA under her fingernails that matched back to Louise.”

  So far Holly Dowell had been silent. But now, from across the room, she shouted, “You took away my daughter! The daughter I gave you to raise. I trusted you. How dare you kill the only thing I ever loved!”

  Lando turned to see Holly standing in the doorway holding a Sig Sauer pistol. And it was aimed at Louise’s heart.

  “She was my baby and you took her from me,” Holly screamed. “Why? Why did you have to kill my baby? Mallory was my best friend! You just couldn’t stand it because she loved me more than she did you.”

  Lando took a couple of steps toward the distraught woman, who had tears running down her cheeks. But in her grief, the rage in her eyes told him she could easily pull the trigger. “Put the gun down, Ms. Dowell. Your sister will go to jail and pay for what she did. You have my word on it. Now put the gun down.”

  “I want her dead!” Holly shouted, her hands beginning to shake, the anger taking over. “She hurts everyone…eventually. Gemma had it right. She’s like a killing machine that deserves to die, here, and now.”

  Lando had moved closer. He put his hands out to take the gun away. “And we’ll put her where she belongs. I promise you. Just give me the gun now, Ms. Dowell. You don’t want to end up where she’s going. Understand? We’ll lock her away for what she did to your baby.”

  Holly sniffed and nodded and then allowed Lando to take the weapon out of her hands. “I hate you!” she roared. “I’ll tell them everything I know. Everything you’ve done over the years. I’ll tell them all what a monster you are.”

  Lando handed the Sig off to Jimmy and then turned to Zeb. “Why don’t you take Ms. Dowell home and take her statement. Take one of the federal agents with you just in case what she has to say is significant.”

  “Will do. Come on, Ms. Dowell, we’ll get you home and you can tell me all about your sister.”

  When they were out of earshot, Lando angled back to the dispatcher. “Still think we don’t have much of a case, Louise?”

  The color had drained from the woman’s face. Louise sat there defeated.

  “I’m curious about something,” Lydia began. “You said Mallory went out there on the beach to meet the mayor. But what happened to Fleet that night?”

  “He happened on the scene after everything had gone down and found the body,” Lando provided, looking over at the mayor.

  Lydia sent Fleet a look of disgust. “Why didn’t he call the police?”

  “Because as the cheating husband, he didn’t want to get involved. He’d been sleeping with Mallory off and on since May. He saw she was dead and thought his problem was now solved. But he couldn’t be the one to find the body and sound the alarm. That would be too risky. Instead her body lies there on the beach until Gemma happens along, taking Rufus for a two o’clock stroll on the beach to let him pee.”

  “How did you figure all this out?” Lydia wanted to know.

  “For several nights in a row, almost everyone in this room volunteered to go through a staggering amount of police reports from 1984. What we discovered was a trail that had been right in front of us the entire time. It was just a matter of taking Caulfield’s files and putting the dates and deaths together like a puzzle. And asking the right questions from all the witnesses around town.”

  Up to now, Fleet had remained silent, but he looked around the room knowing his political career was probably toast. “You have to believe me. I didn’t know anything about how my dad got his money.”

  “That’s okay,” Lando stated. “The feds are in the other room waiting to explain it to you. They’re more than happy to help you understand what’s gonna happen next.”

  After Louise was led out of the room, this time in handcuffs, Lando gave a press conference and a series of interviews with the FBI at his side. A couple of hours went by before the flurry of activity died down enough that he was ready to head home.

  He’d reached the lobby door when Jimmy hurried out into the hallway from the small cell block. “Before you go, Louise is asking for you.”

  “Me? Why me? Shouldn’t she be calling for her attorney?”

  “You’d think. But she was very clear. Before the feds take her into custody tomorrow, she says she has one more piece of the puzzle you’ll want to hear.”

  25

  Lando brought a chair into the cell block and placed it directly in front of the bars. He faced Louise as she sat on a cot, staring at the woman who looked drained of her arrogance and broken. “Jimmy says you have something to tell me.”

  “I’ll give you the name of the real mastermind if you’ll take the death penalty off the table. I realize I’ll never be free again, but I’d like to live out my life without having to deal with death row.”

  “You’re saying it was
n’t Dave Gilbert?”

  Louise’s lips curved ever so slightly. “Dave was a driver. His part in the scheme was simple. He let us drive him off the road that day. That’s it. Do you honestly believe Dave Gilbert came up with the plan? Someone else on the inside picked the best route that made the most sense, the one that provided the easiest place to take down an armored car, and the one route that would have the most money. He laid out the heist, one detail at a time. He even made us practice. After that, with Dave’s cooperation as the driver, it was a piece of cake. It went down exactly as planned.”

  “You want me to believe there was another inside man?”

  “Hey, it would make you look good to the FBI if you could hand them the ringleader after all these years.”

  “There’s just one flaw in your thinking. I don’t care about looking good to the FBI.”

  “Come on, Lando. Think about tying up all the loose ends on your own. You’d be the local hero…again.”

  “Convince me there’s a bigger fish. If I’m leaning that way, I need hard evidence, not just your word. If you can provide that, we have a deal.”

  “How long have you known me? Do you honestly believe I wouldn’t keep an ace in the hole for down the road? He was higher up in the company. He was the one who suggested we approach Dave in the first place. It seemed he already knew Dave had a major gambling problem. That’s why Dave had gone to Reno. He arranged for us to bump into Dave at one of the casinos.”

  “Higher up as in an executive?”

  “I’m not saying anything else unless you make me a deal. I want you to contact my lawyer and make the arrangements. Tonight. Tomorrow will be too late.”

  “Who do you want me to call?”

  “Paul Talmadge out of Humboldt.” She rattled off the phone number from memory. “I have him on speed dial.”

  “Okay. But you do realize the money in your account has already been seized by the feds, right? If you were hoping to use it to pay for your high-priced attorney, the money’s been frozen. You won’t be able to touch it even during the trial.”

  Her face went gray. Her shoulders drooped. She huffed out a defeated sigh. “Okay. Then work out a deal with the D.A. Tell him the mastermind is someone he knows, someone he has dinner with at least four times a year.”

  That tidbit got Lando moving.

  Hours went by as the D.A. and Louise hammered out an agreement. “You understand this has nothing to do with what the FBI will charge you with, right? Whatever deal you make with them is separate.”

  “I understand.”

  “Who was the ringleader?”

  “Everyone in this part of the state knows him. No one would ever suspect him of any wrong doing. Not ever. Not after all these years. He left his job at Wells Fargo in 1988, four years after the robbery and went into politics. He was a natural born charmer. His name is state senator Tyson Forsyth. I saved all Tyson’s notes from the planning stages and I’m willing to testify against him. I’ve kept the papers in a safe deposit box at the bank in San Francisco. If I’m going down for something I did thirty-four years ago, I’m taking that sleazebag politician with me.”

  Hours later, at Gemma’s house, Lando stretched out on the sofa with his head in her lap. “What a total mess Louise created. Decades built on lies and deceit.”

  “The entire thing is so twisted. Do you know how many people got hurt over this? How one event spun out and took so many people down with it? And for what?”

  “Last estimate was nine. Louise doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by the body count. She’s more into making sure we get Tyson Forsyth.”

  “How hard was it convincing the FBI she was telling the truth, though? A politician involved in stealing from an armored car? What if this is just a ruse?”

  “It’s not. She offered up conclusive proof. In 1984, it seems Forsyth was facing financial setbacks right and left. He’d made some bad investments, lost close to a million of his own money. He was desperate. He found solace in Reno’s gambling scene. It was on one of those trips that he bumped into Aaron, Lindsay, and Louise. They started kicking around a plan and brought in the others as they needed to expand on the plot. We were right about all of it, except for Forsyth. We didn’t foresee an even bigger presence as the inside man.”

  “But it makes perfect sense that Dave Gilbert wouldn’t have all the information at his disposal to carry out the entire haul.”

  “A driver would’ve been able to change the route, which is what happened. But he wouldn’t have been able to divert an extra three million into the van that day. That was one detail the FBI never released to the public.”

  “So instead of stealing five million it was eight?”

  “Big difference, huh?”

  “Did the others know?”

  “Not according to Louise. She and Aaron were the ones who transported the bags to the cave that night. They had to cut through the Longhorn property to do it without anyone noticing and then wait until daylight to unload the pickup. A month later, they met Forsyth there to divide up the money. Forsyth took his share that August. But the others were instructed to wait so as not to start spending the loot right away and raise suspicions. Once she got her share, Louise very carefully made little deposits into the bank in amounts that were small enough that no one asked questions. She says it took her five years before it was all safely tucked away in the bank. Aaron Barkley apparently did things in a similar manner with his share, choosing to keep a low profile at first and then one day pretending like he’d inherited a fortune from his parents back east. The people around town never suspected a thing. They gave Aaron the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was telling the truth. The same was true for Louise. But she didn’t flaunt her money the way Aaron did. Instead, she kept her nose to the grindstone, took a decent-paying job, and hid under the radar in the safest place there was---the Coyote Wells Police Department. No one the wiser. The only time she showed a propensity for extravagance was when Mallory got into trouble.”

  “And then she whipped out her checkbook, often going overboard with an expensive attorney.”

  “Parents will do most anything to keep their kids from going to jail. Louise was no exception.”

  “Why didn’t Louise and Aaron ever have a falling out? Why didn’t Aaron ever try to kill Louise or vice versa?”

  “Good question. I’m thinking they knew too much about each other, shared too many secrets. Although Louise does swear that Aaron had been blackmailing Forsyth for years before his death from cancer.”

  “Wow. When I wondered what secret Louise was keeping, I never dreamed it would be anything like this.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “How sad that she killed the one person she loved most in the world.”

  “No doubt she loved Mallory, but Louise loved herself more.” Lando swung his legs to the floor. “Let’s get some sleep. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

  Just as they headed off to the bedroom, Lando’s phone rang. “What now? Bonner here. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

  He draped an arm over Gemma’s shoulder. “That was the FBI. They arrested Forsyth trying to board a plane in San Francisco bound for São Paulo, Brazil. He’s in federal custody.”

  26

  On Saturday night Gemma picked comfort over style for Fortitude’s first concert under the stars. Wearing a floral sundress with short cap sleeves and a flowy skirt, she went over the songs before taking the stage, a stage volunteers had helped build and put together in the park over a two-day period. Jimmy’s dad had installed lighting and hooked up the sound system. Others had pitched in with paint and added finishing touches that included a fancy velvet curtain sewn together by Lucinda Fenton and Suzanne Swinton. Suzanne had needed to do something to stay busy since Buddy had checked himself into rehab in Crescent City.

  The point not lost on anyone was that the open-air concert had gained traction within the community.

  All week people had helped ge
t the word out. The Happy Bookers had made posters and put them up all over town. Businesses like Captain Jack’s and Babe’s had displayed signs at their counters as a reminder. It seemed to pay off. People started showing up at five o’clock in the afternoon to stake out their favorite spots near the lighthouse. They brought their blankets, their coolers and their snacks, spreading out on the green summer grass, ready to put the divisive past few weeks behind them and focus on some tunes.

  No one was happier about entertaining the locals than Dale. Back in uniform for several days, he’d taken up his old job with a lot more enthusiasm than he’d had since starting on the force. Even giving Gemma a few lessons on the piano that now adorned her living room had revived his joy in music. If he was being honest, it was a joy he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  Everything seemed better somehow. Attitudes had changed. For the first time in a long time, the whole town seemed united in camaraderie.

  Louise’s string of staunch supporters like Claude and Janet were proof that when you got rid of a bad apple, the rot soon disappeared.

  “We couldn’t believe she had such a murderous past,” Claude said when he’d ambled up to Gemma before the show. “We played bridge with that woman. All those years we sat across the table from a murderer. We couldn’t believe we’d called her our friend for so many years, couldn’t understand how she could do those terrible things.”