House Standoff

by Mike Lawson

  It occurred to him only then that he might be having lunch in the closest jail if McCord decided to place him under arrest after she’d heard what he had to say.

  The waitress left and DeMarco reached into a pocket and dropped two slugs on the table between him and McCord.

  “What the hell?” McCord said.

  DeMarco pointed at the slugs. “One of those came from Sonny Bunt’s hunting rifle. The other came from a small-caliber weapon I found in a gun cabinet in Sonny’s den. I brought them to you so you can see if they came from the weapons used to kill Jeff Hunter and Shannon Doyle.”

  “What! How in the hell did you get these?” McCord asked.

  “I walked into Sonny’s house when he and his wife weren’t there, found the weapons, then went outside and fired them into a rain barrel. I did a little reading online about how the CSI guys do ballistics tests and figured the rain barrel would work. Isn’t the Internet marvelous?”

  “Are you shitting me!” McCord said. “You broke into Sonny’s house?”

  “I didn’t break in. I went in through an unlocked backdoor.” DeMarco figured that sounded a little better than creeping in through an unlocked window.

  McCord said, “Jesus Christ, DeMarco. I’m going to have to report you to the sheriff and he’s going to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me for what? As best I can tell, the only crime I’ve committed is trespassing. I didn’t break into the house, I didn’t damage any property, and I didn’t steal anything. All I did was fire two bullets into a rain barrel and then I put the guns back where I found them.”

  “You stole two bullets.”

  “Okay, you got me there. I trespassed and stole two bullets. Since I’m guessing the value of the bullets is less than ten bucks, I’m guilty of two misdemeanors. And I don’t give a damn if you report me to the sheriff and he arrests me. But I’d suggest you wait until you’ve compared the bullets to the ones used to kill Shannon and Hunter before you turn me in. The way the sheriff’s office is wired into the Bunt family, someone is liable to tell Sonny what I’ve done and he may split before you have a chance to arrest him.”

  “Goddamnit, DeMarco. I don’t know if I can even use those slugs as evidence because of the way you obtained them.”

  “Sure, you can. I’m not law enforcement. I didn’t need a warrant to get the bullets. I’m just a guy who trespassed then passed the evidence on to you. And I’m willing to give you a statement saying exactly what I did so you have something to show when it comes to chain of evidence. So go talk to the lawyers and see what they have to say. But I’m guessing that what I did is no different than if you used a confidential informant to provide evidence related to a crime.”

  McCord shook her head.

  DeMarco kept talking. “While you’re waiting to hear what the lawyers have to say, go compare those bullets to the ones used to kill Shannon and Hunter. If the results show they were used in a crime, then you should have a basis for getting a search warrant to obtain the guns legally and test-fire them again. And if the ballistics tests show that Sonny’s guns weren’t used to kill anyone, then the worst thing that happens is that I get arrested for trespassing and you’ll know that Sonny’s innocent.”

  McCord didn’t allow DeMarco to have lunch. She took him back to her office and recorded a statement from him saying how he’d obtained the slugs and after the statement was typed up, he signed it. Then she took him to an interview room and told him to sit his ass down and not move until she’d talked to a few lawyers.

  She returned an hour later. She said, “Well, DeMarco, it looks like the boneheaded stunt you pulled paid off. The slug from the bullet that killed Jeff Hunter matches the bullet you fired from Sonny’s rifle.”

  DeMarco exhaled in relief. “What about the bullet from the pistol?” he asked.

  “The bullet that killed Ms. Doyle is in the custody of the Sweetwater County sheriff and I don’t want the sheriff to know anything at this point because I’m afraid he’ll tell Bunt senior and then Sonny’s rifle will disappear. Or maybe Sonny will disappear. I’ll send someone to Rock Springs to do a comparison on the pistol slug after I’ve dealt with Sonny.”

  “Yeah, okay,” DeMarco said, disappointed because Shannon was his priority not Jeff Hunter.

  “But you need to understand something, DeMarco. Based on what we now know, the lawyers are pretty sure they can get a warrant to seize Sonny’s weapons. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s a chance, depending on the judge we draw, that any evidence resulting from the warrant might not be admissible because of what you did. And what that means is that Sonny might get away with murder. Anyway, that’s the lawyers’ problem, not mine. My job is to get Sonny’s rifle, do another ballistic test, and go from there. In the meantime, we’ve all agreed that telling the sheriff that you broke into Sonny’s house can wait until we’ve executed the search warrant, but we’re going to have to tell the sheriff eventually.”

  “Why?” DeMarco asked, which seemed to him like a reasonable question.

  “Because the FBI doesn’t cover up crimes.”

  Before DeMarco could say that what he did wasn’t much of a crime, McCord smiled and said, “DeMarco, I can’t officially approve of what you did, but I have to tell you that I’m not all that unhappy about it. Now get out of here.”

  19

  DeMarco practically sprinted back to Peaches’ after McCord released him and stuffed himself with a pastrami sandwich and french fries. Belly full once again, he went to the Staples in Casper where he’d previously gone to make copies of Shannon’s journal. He bought a flash drive, transferred the electronic file of Shannon’s journal—the file that Neil had emailed him—from his laptop to the drive, and then had the kid at Staples print him out another copy.

  Following that, he made the long drive back to the motel in Waverly and took a nap. He’d been up since five. After he woke up, he took a shower then called a lawyer in Washington, D.C. named Janet Evans. Evans was the lawyer who’d represented him when he was framed for killing Congressman Lyle Canton.

  He told Evans that he was in Waverly, Wyoming and that he was most likely going to be arrested by a county sheriff for trespassing. After he explained why, Evans’ reaction was similar to C.J. McCord’s: “Jesus Christ, are you crazy, DeMarco?”

  “Can you give me the name of a lawyer out here to represent me. I’m willing to plead guilty to the crime but I’m afraid they’ll throw the book at me because of the people involved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  DeMarco explained that he’d gone after the son of one of the richest, most influential members of the community, a guy wired into the county sheriff’s office and politicians back in D.C. “And because of that, instead of getting probation and a fine, some local judge might decide I should go to jail for a couple of years. So I need a lawyer to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Wyoming,” Evans said. “Hell, I’ve never even been to Wyoming. Give me an hour or two and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Oh, and Janet, see if you can find somebody competent but who doesn’t charge as much as you.” Janet Evans charged about eight hundred bucks an hour.

  DeMarco thought about continuing to read Shannon’s journal while waiting to hear back from Evans, then decided to give himself a break. He turned on the television, found the Golf Channel, and started watching a rerun of a PGA tournament. He’d concluded a long time ago that watching golf was similar to transcendental meditation: he zoned out, his mind blank, thinking about absolutely nothing as he watched millionaires smack a little white ball around. He’d noticed that he didn’t really learn anything from watching the pros other than that even they would sometimes miss a three-foot putt—which would actually make him feel good.

  His phone rang. It was Evans. She said, “Call a lawyer named Dora Little Bear tomorrow. She has an office i
n Rock Springs. She’s young but she’s smart and has a good reputation. I called her and gave her the background on you and she agreed to represent you. One reason why is she hates Hiram Bunt. She went up against him a couple of times to stop him from drilling for gas in environmentally fragile areas, and lost both times.”

  DeMarco decided to go have dinner, and taking Shannon’s journal with him, he walked over to Harriet’s. Harriet came up to him after he was seated, order pad and pencil in hand, and said, “So you’re still in town.”

  “Yep,” DeMarco said, “but I might not be much longer.”

  “Does that mean you decided to give up on finding out what happened to Shannon?” He could tell from her tone of voice that she’d be happy to see him gone.

  “No, I haven’t given up. I think I might have found the guy who killed her.”

  “The guy?” Harriet said. “So who is it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. If you’d been willing to talk to me I might have, but since you wouldn’t—”

  Harriet shook her head. “What are you having?”

  While waiting for his dinner—tonight it was venison stew and he’d never had venison stew before—he opened Shannon’s journal and flipped through it until he found the place where he’d stopped reading.

  Something happened today and I feel really bad about it. When I got back to my room this afternoon I found my diamond earrings were missing. They weren’t real expensive, they were only worth a couple of hundred bucks, but they were my favorite pair. I’d planned to wear them to dinner and I knew I’d put them on the ledge in front of the mirror but they weren’t there. I searched my room to see if anything else was missing but nothing appeared to be. I didn’t bring any other valuable jewelry with me and the only other things in the room were my cosmetics and my clothes and those were all still there. I’m glad I always keep my laptop with me.

  I went down to the office to tell Sam what had happened. I asked him if anyone other than the maid had been in my room, like maybe he’d let someone in there to fix something. He said the only one who’d been in there was the maid and she was his daughter. He said, “Are you sure you didn’t misplace the earrings? My daughter wouldn’t steal from you.”

  The way he said this—the way he looked away before he spoke—I think he was lying to me. I think he knew his daughter stole my earrings. I’d seen the maid several times but I didn’t know she was his daughter. She’s this sullen-looking Native American girl who doesn’t respond when I try to engage her in conversation. I really like Sam. He’s been very helpful to me since I’ve been here. I feel sorry for him, knowing that his daughter’s a thief. I wonder what he’s going to do about it.

  DeMarco’s phone rang as he was eating. The venison stew was actually pretty good. The caller was C.J. McCord.

  She said, “I thought you’d like to know that I got a search warrant to get Sonny’s rifle. The judge hemmed and hawed for quite a bit, but he finally signed it.”

  “What are you going to do when Hiram shows up at Sonny’s place with a dozen armed men and tells you he won’t allow you to search his son’s house? The last encounter the FBI had with him didn’t turn out too well for the bureau.”

  McCord said, “This is about the death of a federal agent not a bunch of damn cows. Bunt’s not going to stop me.”

  DeMarco believed her. He liked C.J. McCord. He wondered what the C.J. stood for.

  20

  McCord wasn’t worried about Hiram Bunt keeping her from seizing Sonny’s weapons.

  The standoff happened in part because the BLM was polite enough to notify Hiram that they were coming to seize his cattle, giving Hiram enough time to round up his men and his anti-government neighbors. Well, McCord had no intention of being polite or notifying anybody of anything when it came to Sonny.

  She left Casper at two a.m. with five other FBI agents in a black Chevy Suburban that would seat eight. They stopped at a truck stop in Rawlins for coffee and donuts, and while there, they put on body armor and checked their weapons, a combination of automatic rifles, shotguns, and Glock pistols. At five a.m., while it was still dark outside, they drove to Sonny’s place, stopped on the road in front of the house, and approached the house on foot. They didn’t drive directly to the front door of the house because McCord didn’t want to take the chance that Sonny or his wife might be light sleepers and hear their vehicle. One of McCord’s men was holding a door knocker—a three-foot-long chunk of four-inch diameter steel pipe with handles welded on the top.

  Standard operating procedure was for McCord to knock on the door, announce that she was FBI, and tell Sonny she had a warrant to search his house. McCord, however, decided it might not be wise to follow the standard procedure in this case. For one thing, Sonny might not let her into his house and she’d find herself in a situation where her men would have to storm the house of a guy who had multiple firearms inside—a guy who she was ninety-nine percent sure had already killed one federal agent. The other possibility was that while she was trying to convince Sonny to open the door, he’d call his daddy and ask for help and she’d find herself confronting a bunch of Hiram’s men all armed with AR-15s. Then things would turn into a replay of the previous standoff.

  So when she arrived at Sonny’s front door, she knocked softly on the door—so softly the agents with her could barely hear her knuckles rapping on the wood—and then said in a low voice: “Mr. Bunt, FBI. Open the door.” Now having followed the bureau’s procedures, and with witnesses willing to say that she had, she said to the man holding the doorknocker: “Take it down, Hank.”

  Hank slammed the pipe into the door near the knob and the door flew open, making enough noise to wake the dead. McCord was the first person through the door, holding a shotgun. A shotgun had always been her weapon of choice because she was a lousy shot with a handgun.

  She knew from DeMarco that Sonny kept a pistol in the nightstand next to his bed, and her biggest concern was that he’d be able to get it out before she could enter his bedroom. Yesterday, while the lawyers were imploring a judge to sign off on the search warrant, McCord got the name of the company who’d built Sonny’s house, contacted the company, and had them email her the floor plans of the house. So she knew exactly where to go, and as soon as the door burst open, she sprinted through Sonny’s living room—gripping her shotgun—and down a short hallway and into the master bedroom.

  As she went through the bedroom door, Sonny—who’d heard the front door being bashed in— was reaching into the drawer of the nightstand for his pistol.

  McCord screamed: “FBI! FBI! Put your hands up! Put your hands up! You point a weapon at me and I’ll kill you.” At the same time McCord was screaming, Sonny’s wife was shrieking at the sight of a person in body armor, wearing a helmet with a face shield, aiming a shotgun at her husband.

  Sonny stopped reaching for the weapon and raised his hands. “What the fuck is going on?” he said.

  McCord reached into one of the pockets of her cargo pants, pulled out a folded multipage document, and tossed it to Sonny. “That’s a warrant signed by a federal judge giving the FBI permission to search this house and seize any weapons we find. That’s your copy of the warrant.”

  “Goddamnit, you can’t do this,” Sonny said.

  “I am doing it,” McCord said. She walked over to the nightstand on Sonny’s side of the bed while another agent pointed his Glock at Sonny, opened the nightstand drawer, and removed a weapon—a .45 with a shiny chrome barrel.

  Sonny said, “I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “That’s your right,” McCord said, “but we’re not waiting for your lawyer to get here.”

  McCord had no idea how long it would take Sonny to reach a lawyer at five in the morning, or how long it would take a lawyer to get there. However long it took, she planned to be gone by then.

  She turned to the men behind her and said, “Larry, find
his den and empty the gun cabinet. Hank, drive the truck down here and start loading the weapons.”

  Sonny had gotten out of bed. He was only wearing a pair of white boxer shorts. He was a lean, well-built guy. His wife, her blonde hair tousled from sleep, was still in the bed, her hands over her mouth.

  McCord searched the closets in the bedroom while Sonny was putting on a pair of jeans.

  Sonny said, “I’m calling my father, you bitch. You’re not taking anything from my house.”

  McCord said, “Call daddy if you feel like it, Sonny. Call anybody you want. I don’t care.”

  Actually, McCord did care. Hiram Bunt lived only three miles from Sonny’s place and she had no idea if any of his employees lived on his property. The last thing she wanted was Hiram driving over to Sonny’s with a few of his cowboys.

  McCord quickly finished searching the bedroom closet, didn’t find any guns in there, then looked under the bed. To the agent who was still behind her aiming his weapon at Sonny, she said, “Murphy, keep him here. If he tries to get by you, you have my permission to beat the shit out of him. I’m going to go see how the search is going.”

  While she’d been speaking, Sonny had found his cell phone and made a call. As she was leaving the bedroom, she heard him say, “Dad, it’s me. The fuckin’ FBI—”

  One of her men was carrying all the rifles and shotguns that had been in Sonny’s gun cabinet to the front door. Another one was filling a canvas bag with the pistols and the ammunition taken from the drawers of the gun cabinet.

  “Hurry up,” McCord said.

  McCord knew it would take hours to search the house, the garage, and the outbuildings thoroughly, but she didn’t intend to spend hours searching. She already had what she wanted: the hunting rifle that had been used to kill Hunter. She also wanted to be gone before Hiram Bunt showed up. She wasn’t afraid of Hiram—she’d spent two years in Afghanistan and gone up against guys a lot worse than him—but she knew her boss would be pissed if the situation escalated and someone got killed. She walked quickly through the house, looking into places a weapon might be stored—what she was hoping to find was a .22 caliber pistol—but didn’t find another gun in the house. She really wanted to search Sonny’s vehicles—a .22 was a good glove compartment gun—but for some reason the warrant didn’t allow her to search Sonny’s cars. Fucking judges. She looked at her watch. She’d been in the house for fifteen minutes. It was time to go.