Fortunes of the Dead

by Lynn Hightower

  “A little much for a bigamist.”

  “Have we been out here long enough?” Wilson asked.

  Carminsk was talking softly to Edgers when Wilson and Mendez sat back down. “What’s it going to be?” Carminsk asked.

  Mendez looked at Wilson, who shrugged. “When you start harping on Mr. Edgers’s reputation as a family man, your credibility starts to fade. Bigamy’s illegal even in California.”

  Carminsk just barely skipped a beat, but Wilson had seen it. The old client-does-not-tell-his-attorney-everything glitch.

  “It’s a technicality, something Mr. Edgers wasn’t even aware of until recently. He thought it best to get this matter of Cheryl Dunkirk resolved before he took steps to make the situation right.”

  Damn good, Wilson thought. Right off the cuff, vague enough to cover almost everything.

  Mendez scooted his chair back. “Let’s not waste any more time. Give us the story. There won’t be an agreement until we know what you’ve got.”

  Carminsk looked at Wilson. “What if Mr. Edgers could give you the Rodeo killer?”

  “What do you mean ‘give’?” Mendez asked.

  “Name, location, and pictures. The shots will help your case, they won’t make it. They show the killer putting things into a pickup truck. They show the stun gun and the baling wire. We can also give you the name of the next victim on the list.”

  “Who?” Wilson asked.

  “Do we have an agreement?” Cory said.

  It was the first thing he’d said. Carminsk winced and gave him a look.

  Mendez looked at Carminsk. “I’m going to walk out for ten minutes and get the paperwork going to have your client arrested for conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “You can’t make that stick,” Edgers said.

  “I’m willing to give it a try.”

  “Not another word,” Carminsk said, pointing at Edgers. He stared at his client, waiting for what, Wilson was not sure. Edgers was clearly not big on taking advice, much less orders. “Tell them your story.”

  Edgers tilted his head, as if organizing his thoughts, took a deep breath, and began.

  The suspicions, Edgers admitted, were true. He had indulged in a brief affair with Cheryl Dunkirk; he knew it was wrong. He ended the affair about the time he got a lead from an old high school buddy about a survivalist group. The buddy swore the group was involved in the murder of an FBI agent. The friend had hung out with the group, been involved in a few “projects,” and was worried. He didn’t want to go to the police; he didn’t want to be a party to murder. He went to his old buddy Cory Edgers.

  Edgers promised the friend he would keep the information to himself until he was sure there was something to the story. Cheryl knew Cory was working on something undercover, and she wanted to be involved. She wanted to make a splash, so that she would look good, so that she would be guaranteed a job.

  “She was competitive, even with me,” Cory said. “She wanted to be the intern everybody remembered.”

  Also—she was young and inexperienced, she thought she was in love, and she was pregnant.

  They fought it out the night she disappeared. She’d picked him up and they’d gone for a drive. She’d started in on him about being involved in his investigation of the survivalist group. Again, he told her no, to stay out of things. If the story was true, then the situation was dangerous. If it wasn’t true, Cory needed to protect his friend.

  She’d threatened him. Said she would go to his wife, that she would tell everyone about their affair. She would have the child and if he did not do as she said, she would make the child’s life, Cory’s child’s life, a living hell.

  He’d gone ballistic. He admitted it. She was going to take it all away; his career, his family. If she had his baby, they’d be tied together forever. He’d live in constant worry about whether or not she was abusing the child.

  They’d fought. She’d gotten furious, left the car, and taken off. He’d looked for her, couldn’t find her. Eventually he drove the Mustang back home and put it in the parking lot of her apartment house. She’d never been seen again. He felt responsible for leaving her behind.

  Edgers took a breath, hands making fists. “That’s it. That’s what happened.”

  “What a crock of shit,” Wilson said.

  Carminsk held up a hand. “I don’t think that sort of comment is constructive, Agent Wilson.”

  Edgers spoke as if solely addressing Mendez. “The rodeo killer is named Janis Winters. She works as a clown with the rodeo circuit. She has everyone convinced she’s just a liaison, but she’s it. She’s the killer. Give them the pictures.”

  Carminsk reached into his briefcase, and put a brown envelope in the center of the table. Wilson opened the flap, and took the photographs out, flipping through them slowly, then handing them to Mendez.

  Janis Winters was blond, younger than he’d expected, not hard-looking at all. Pretty. A professional quality long-range telephoto lens had caught her slinging a knapsack into the back of a green pickup truck, unzipping the sack. Inside, a small roll of wire, a tool that looked like it might be a wire cutter. Another set of shots of Janis Winters taking a stun gun out of the bag and tucking it inside her coat.

  “Who’s the next target?” Mendez asked.

  “Do we have a deal?” Edgers said.

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know the name,” Edgers said. “Somebody out of Nashville.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The ATF office in Nashville was actually in Franklin, which is an offshoot of the city; suburban, expensive, and new. Wilson sat in the little cubicle that the assistant S.A. had offered him, and looked at his watch. Alex Rugger was supposed to have met him three hours ago to orchestrate the capture of Janis Winters.

  Wilson drummed his fingers on the table. Footsteps no longer made him look up; he’d been faked out a dozen times already. He was tired and his leg was aching, and he’d had a little too much beer at the barbecue the day before. The time zone change was catching up with him, as well as the driving he was doing from Nashville to Lexington, Kentucky. Other than mountains, Wilson couldn’t see much difference between the two.

  “You’re Wilson?”

  Two men stood outside the cubicle. They gave him the glazed smile that Wilson figured was the hallmark of a southerner, and since Wilson had figured out that southerners smile at everybody, he knew it didn’t really mean a thing. Kind of like Californians, he decided, wondering if you could find honesty in the Northeast.

  The black man, thick in the middle and balding, put out his hand. “I’m Bennie Krupp.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Wilson muttered. He knew he should stand, but he didn’t trust the leg just now, and he didn’t want these men to see. First impressions were critical, and he wanted them to look at him as a fully functioning member of the team.

  “I’m Ronald Bishoff.” Bishoff was white, red-haired, and skinny. He had a long neck, and probably a pencil dick. Wilson rubbed his eyes. He’d better take some Advil before he killed the next person who wandered by.

  “We thought we’d give you a briefing,” Krupp said. “Move things along.”

  “I thought Alex was going to do that.” Wilson realized he sound whiny, like a girl who’d been stood up for a date. He was feeling like an annoyance all of a sudden, instead of a part of the investigation.

  “Yeah, Rugger was supposed to be here this morning, and he hasn’t called in. The assistant S.A.’s trying to track him down. Until then, she says we might as well start filling you in. Sort of a briefing-lite.”

  Krupp and Bishoff exchanged looks and a laugh, and Wilson doesn’t even bother to look pleasant over a joke he’d heard a million times before. Something had struck a note with him. The assistant S.A. tracking Rugger down. Something wrong with this scenario. These guys were nervous, too.

  “Hey, don’t bullshit me, okay? What the hell is going on here?”

  Krupp looked angry and Bishoff blushed. “Lo
ok, Wilson, it’s a big investigation. We’re taking care of the Tennessee end, and the assassin. You’re handling that intern business up in Kentucky and keeping an eye out for overlap. No need to get ahead of yourself on this.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”

  Wilson stood up, shoving the chair under the little desk. He walked away from the two men, keeping the limp to a minimum, which was usually painful, but he didn’t feel a thing.

  “Self-important California asshole,” one of the men said—it sounded like Bishoff. Wilson wouldn’t disagree.

  It was a long walk to the office he wanted, but Denise Asher was good enough to welcome him personally when he arrived at her open door. She was the assistant S.A., in charge of all Nashville agents. Wilson liked her. She was down-to-earth and matter-of-fact, and at the moment she looked tense. Wilson waved from the hallway. She didn’t snub him, as he feared, but motioned him in. She held the phone to her ear, said okay, and wrote things down.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.” She hung up and leaned back in her chair.

  “Problems,” Wilson said. Not a question. “Where is Rugger? Has he got something hot?”

  The woman shook her head. “No, that’s not the problem. The problem is we don’t know where he is.”

  Wilson felt it in his gut, like someone had kicked him in the stomach. “When? I mean, when was he last seen?”

  “Last night. Coming out of a Target, not seen exactly, but talking on a cell phone to his wife. He’d stopped in to get some notebook paper and a protractor for one of his kids. He told his wife he was on the way, and that he was hungry, and that’s the last thing she heard.”

  “And she’s just now telling you this?”

  Denise Asher raised an eyebrow. “No. We got people on this last night.”

  The phone rang again, and Wilson knew it was bad news before Asher picked it up. She said her name, then just listened.

  “Oh God,” she said finally. “No, just get an ambulance out there. Don’t make her do anything. I’m coming out myself. Hey, don’t worry about that. Compassion, until I get there. I know. I know.”

  Asher hung up the phone and looked at him.

  “Dead?” Wilson asked.

  “Wife found him just a little while ago. She suddenly started thinking that maybe he went to Wal-Mart, not Target. She went out herself, and found the car. Locked, but she had a key. The front seat was soaked in blood, nobody in the car. She opened the trunk.” Asher hid her face in her hands. “Come on, Wilson, you can ride out there with me.”

  Wilson tried to get the names and ages of Rugger’s kids straight in his mind on the ride out. Rugger had invited him to dinner, and he’d met all of them just days ago, but he had the feeling that he was missing one of the daughters. He finally asked Asher, who filled him in. There were four of them. A boy in high school, fifteen. Kyle. Two daughters in middle school; Amy, fourteen, and Sandy, thirteen. The youngest, eight years old. Kevin—the one who needed the notebook paper and the protractor.

  “He still have that old sheepdog?” he asked.

  “Boris? No. Boris died of bone cancer three years ago. They have a German shepherd now, though Alex swore he would never get another dog. Boris the Second.”

  “Boris the Second,” Wilson echoed.

  “There’s a cat, too. Natasha.”

  Rugger’s wife was so calm and matter-of-fact that Wilson felt afraid for her. She sat without a fidget in the back of an ambulance, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. There was blood on her shirt, a white oxford shirt, oversized, probably a cast-off from Alex. Sel was always stealing Wilson’s shirts, and she liked the white ones best. The shirt was smeared red, and the woman’s jeans were stained dark along the thighs, and blood had dried on her hands.

  “Hey, Wendy,” Asher said. Friendly and calm.

  “Denise, hi.”

  Asher took the woman’s hands without flinching, then turned them palms up. She looked at one of the ER techs. “Think we might get her cleaned up a little?”

  “She won’t let us,” the man said. He was Hispanic, and had a low voice. “I didn’t want to upset her more than we had to.”

  Wilson nodded, it made sense to him, and Asher turned back to Rugger’s wife.

  “Do the kids know anything yet?”

  Wendy shook her head. “No. I thought I’d better talk to you first, before I went home. I’m not going to want to leave them after I break the news.”

  “That was smart.”

  Wilson heard cars and voices, the arrival of the forensic team. Doors slammed, but he did not turn around. He was riveted by this woman, Wendy, Alex Rugger’s wife.

  “I told you the wrong place,” Wendy said, and laughed. “Alex always teased me about screwing things up. You know, I’d ask him to meet me at Cracker Barrel, and then go to Bob Evans. He always said that’s just part and parcel of marrying a college professor. He could always figure it out, you know, if he went somewhere and I wasn’t there. He knows how my mind works, and he’d find me. Of course, when we all got cell phones, it wasn’t so much of a problem.”

  Asher nodded. “So anyway, I was embarrassed to call you, Denise. Stupid, you know? I was just so worried, because Alex always calls me, he never makes me upset. So I just came right on out. I had to. And I was so relieved, because I didn’t see the car at first. But I drove all the way around, and I found it here, on the side. Alex would never have parked here. Whoever did it, they moved the car.”

  “That’s good, Wendy. The longer they were in the car, the more things they fooled with, the more evidence they’ll leave behind.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Listen, Wendy, have you called your sister?”

  “Oh, yeah. She’s on her way to the house. Actually, I called her before I called the office. Who was it I talked to?”

  “Carol.”

  “Yeah, Carol.” Wendy took a deep breath. “If you don’t need me here, Denise, I’d better go see to the kids, before it hits the news. They’re pretty worried about their dad. And with my sister over there, they’ll know something’s up.”

  “Let me go with you,” Asher said. “And Wendy, don’t you want to clean up a little? It’s a little rough, seeing the kids with—”

  “Oh, Jesus, yes. What is the matter with me?” Wendy laughs. “I guess we all know what is the matter with me. I know I’m acting strange, but to tell you the truth, I just don’t feel a damn thing. You’re going to think I’m crazy or I don’t love him but—”

  “No, no,” Asher said. “The less you feel, Wendy, the more you loved him. Your mind is just protecting you right now. It’ll come soon enough. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up, and get some of that blood washed off, then I’ve got a big coat we can throw over you till you can get that shirt off, too.”

  “Denise, I know you don’t have time—”

  “Of course I do. I’ll be right back.”

  Wendy looked up at the ER tech. “I guess you get your way. You have one of those wet wipe things?”

  “Right here, sweetie. Right here.”

  Asher crooked a finger at Wilson, who followed. A perimeter of barriers had already been set up, but the scene was relatively quiet. Three men detached from a huddle and made a beeline for Asher. She stopped to listen. Wilson kept walking.

  “No, leave him be,” he heard Asher say to someone behind his back.

  Alex Rugger’s car was sitting parallel to the back of the store. The trunk was open, the small bulb glowing. Rugger’s eyes were wide open, and he was still in a shirt and tie, only the shirt was drenched with blood. The wire had been wrapped so tightly and fiercely around his throat that his head sat oddly upon his shoulders. His hands, bound in front with wire, were crusty with blood, something Wilson had not seen in other crime scene photos. He wondered what was different here. He looked closely, and saw that the left wrist was cut clean to the bone. Autopsy results, histamine levels, all indications in the
past were clear that the other victims were unconscious when they were killed. Alex Rugger was conscious, and struggling. Wilson realized he had touched the man’s wrists, and gotten blood on the fingertips of his right hand. He said a small prayer in the back of his mind, just for Alex Rugger. Then he said one for each of Rugger’s children.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Janis chews grape bubble gum to stay awake. She can’t hold another cup of coffee, and in truth she doesn’t need one—she hasn’t slept since she got the note.

  I know what you’ve done. I know you have done it six times. I know you are Rodeo and not a girlfriend. It’s in your best interest to meet me tomorrow night at the Tennessee Welcome Center and rest stop at the Kentucky-Tennessee border. I will be at the top of the pathway behind the buildings. Come alone. Be there at two am.

  There is a way out if you want it.

  Janis had thought she’d gotten a glimpse of Miranda in the stands, but hadn’t been sure. Later she’d spotted the cop; that night she’d found the note. As far as Janis is concerned, the cop and Curly Girl are in way over their heads. But she still hasn’t figured out their agenda.

  If her luck holds, the two of them will come together. Janis exits from I-75 into the welcome center. It won’t be dark for another three hours. She pulls into a parking place next to a Ford Suburban that houses two annoyed looking women and six children around the age of nine. Some kind of school field trip, Janis thinks.

  The parking lot is half full, and hers is just one of several pickup trucks. Driving a pickup around Tennessee and Kentucky is equivalent to piloting a stealth bomber. No matter how big you are, nobody notices you’re there.

  People stream in and out of the welcome center, using the bathroom and picking up brochures. A long trail of vending machines are lined up behind the main building, partway up the path where Edgers wants to meet. This cheers Janis up. She never remembers to bring anything to eat when she is working and always winds up hungry. She twists her hair up on top of her head and covers it with the ball cap—this one is her oldest and most favorite, a pink cap from Banana Republic. Long blond hair attracts a surprising amount of attention and if Janis lets her hair down over her shoulders every man in the place will remember her. She wears two sweaters under the old barn coat to bulk up. Loose jeans and old barn boots, hair hidden in the hat, sweaters adding thirty shapeless pounds, and now she is invisible. Janis locks up the truck and heads into the welcome center to use the ladies’ room.