by Joseph Flynn
“My boss.”
The retired detective smiled. Sympathetically, John thought.
Clarke said, “Probably won’t be my last time seeing someone from the BIA. Los Angeles has a growing Native American population.”
“Growing population of most kinds,” Altschul said.
A waitress brought their lunch orders. After she left they got down to business.
John had called ahead and told Clarke and Altschul about his investigation. They were the detectives who had worked the accident.“I’m coming to think the car crash that killed Vern Forger, Ted Kolchak and Bill Haney was not an accident.”
Clarke pulled up the details of the investigation on her iPad.
“The fatalities occurred on the Marina Freeway, twenty-one October, two-thirty-three a.m., temperature fifty-nine degrees, clear skies, no wind, pavement dry with no observed defects, debris or obstructions.”
“You have the time pinned down that closely?” John asked.
“As reported by the motorist who witnessed the event and called it in,” Clarke said.
Altschul added, “The guy had just dropped off some friends and was headed home. He was his group’s designated driver. After calling 911, he got off the freeway, parked and waited for a patrol unit. The officers gave him a field sobriety test and he passed, hadn’t been drinking at all. Guy was just a kid, really. Twenty-three. Distraught. Said he’d never seen anything so horrible.”
Clarke picked up the narrative. “The car with Forger, Kolchak and Haney was traveling eastbound toward the 405, the San Diego Freeway. It hit a bridge abutment at an estimated speed of ninety miles per hour. Airbags in the vehicle deployed but the ME said the victims died on impact, broken necks all around.”
Altschul added, “The abutment got dinged, not for the first time, but it’s built to resist major earthquakes. It wasn’t close to a fair fight.”
Clarke continued reading from her tablet. “Haney had been driving, Forger was in the front passenger seat. Kolchak started out in the back seat, but he hadn’t been belted in and was thrown forward on impact, passed between the two front seat airbags and struck the windshield with his head.
“Forger and Kolchak had blood alcohol levels twice the legal limit for driving. Couldn’t blame them for that; they weren’t driving. Haney was just barely twenty-one, didn’t have any alcohol in him, but tested positive for THC.”
The active chemical in marijuana.
“Kid never should have been behind the wheel,” Altschul said. “The three of them probably never knew what hit them. The witness said there was no attempt to stop. Physical evidence confirms there was no attempt to brake or avoid the abutment.”
John sighed and shook his head.
“Yeah,” Altschul said. “A lot of these things are head shakers.”
The three cops took a break to eat their lunches, and order dessert.
“Anybody notice the smell of dope on the upholstery?” John asked. “Or was there a fire?”
Clarke said, “No fire, but there were three dead bodies and no small amount of blood from Kolchak. Distractions, you know. But I don’t remember smelling any marijuana smoke. Do you, Sam?”
He shook his head. “What my former partner and good friend hasn’t mentioned … maybe you’ll permit me to do so now, Tory?”
She nodded.
“These fatalities were Detective Clarke’s first traffic investigation. She was very thorough, still is. Neither she nor I found any remnants of any alcohol, containers for alcohol, drugs or paraphernalia.”
“None of them should have been driving, but there was no sign of anything to cause their impairment?” John asked.
“Only young Mr. Haney was driving,” Altschul said.
“But there were two professional athletes with him, one sitting right next to him. Even drunk, I’d have to think Forger would have made a grab at the steering wheel when he saw they were going to crash.”
The two traffic accident investigators looked at each other and nodded.
“We wondered about that, too,” Clarke said.
Altschul added, “Best we could come up with was they’d passed out after entering the vehicle. Kolchak before he could buckle himself in, if that was something he usually did.”
“This is speculation,” Clarke said, “that’s why it’s not in the report. But we thought maybe Haney smoked out in the parking lot at the place where his friends had been drinking. The car was a rental. Maybe he thought he’d catch hell if he brought it back reeking of dope.”
“You asked around the place where Forger and Kolchak had been drinking to see if anyone had seen Haney smoking?” John asked.
Altschul said, “Of course. Nobody did, and before you ask, his parents said their son never did any drugs. He was too concerned with being in shape so he could be at his best for his hockey games. He was dedicated, they said. We found nothing to contradict that.”
Clarke added, “His teammates had trusted him to get them back to their hotel safely.”
John asked, “But Haney had spent some time with his teammates while they were drinking, right?”
The L.A. cops exchanged another look.
Clarke said, “Some time. Not all the time.”
“Where else was he?” John asked.
“At another table,” Altschul told John.
“With anyone else?” John said.
Clarke told him, “Yeah, apparently. What we were told, a number of young women stopped briefly at his table.”
“Hookers?”
Altschul shook his head. “It wasn’t that kind of place; we checked with vice. Our best guess is, his two married teammates, perhaps joking with a rookie, sent him off to see what kind of ladies he might attract on his own. The club was a place where pro athletes visited regularly, and their presence brought with it —”
“Muscle groupies,” Clarke said. “Women who get off sleeping with jocks.”
“Jocks who make big money,” Altschul added.
“So more than one woman?” John said.
“The best guess we got was three to five,” Altschul told him.
“Any helpful descriptions of any of the women?” John asked.
Clarke said, “Big hair, big boobs, tight little dresses: all of them. No names.”
John thought about the situation in which young Bill Haney had found himself; then he remembered herbal lore he’d learned from Mom and Dad, and looked at his two counterparts.
He said, “You guys know THC can be distilled, right?”
The waitress refilled the L.A. cops’ coffee cups, brought John a bottle of Arrowhead.
“You’re saying someone slipped the kid a mickey?” Altschul asked.
Clarke told him, “That’s exactly what he’s saying. We thought of it, too. Thing is, we couldn’t figure out who would do it or why, and how could it have been done without the kid noticing? The stuff would have to taste … well, distinctive. Like dope smoke smells would be my guess.”
The son of a curandera, John had the answer to that.
“You mask one herb with another. Or with a flower or a bean. Something that’s pleasant.” He paused to think a moment. “Vanilla beans might be good. Vanilla extract has a high alcohol content, but you probably wouldn’t need more than a few drops to spike a drink. Put the distillate in, say, ginger ale, it might not taste bad at all. The kid never would have known what hit him. By the time the blood analysis was done the alcohol could have been gone. Maybe THC persists a bit longer; I’d have to check.”
The two L.A. cops stared at him.
Clarke asked, “How do you know all this?”
Altschul pre-empted John. “Marlene Flower Moon knew some strange stuff, too.”
I’ll bet, John thought. He said, “My mother is a professor of cultural anthropology. She’s done a lot of field work. Knows stuff most people don’t. Taught me some of it.”
“You a doper?” Clarke asked.
“Never touch the stuff.” He held up h
is Arrowhead water. “This is my mainstay.”
“You don’t drink alcohol either?” Altschul said.
John said, “I like to practice good health habits, and resist stereotypes.”
“All right,” Clarke said, “it would have been possible for one of the bimbos to doctor Haney’s soft drink, if he was drinking anything at all. The question is why would anyone want to do that?”
John knew that Annie Forger had received a windfall, but he phrased his question generally. “Did all three men have life insurance?”
Altschul said, “The kid had what was probably the league minimum, five hundred K. Kolchak had two million, and Forger’s policy was getting on into serious money, five million.”
“Five?” John asked.
Annie had told him three. Why? Because the larger amount might have made him suspicious?
“Yeah,” Clarke said. “He was the star of the bunch, but it went to his wife and she had two small boys to raise.”
John looked at the two detectives and said, “Annie Forger, right? What was your impression of her?”
Altschul told him, “Don’t have one. She never came here. Word was she was too broken up. Just had the remains shipped home.”
“Did the families of the other victims come to L.A.?”
Clarke nodded. “Haney’s parents and Kolchak’s widow. They were as grief-stricken as any family members we’ve seen, and we’ve seen a lot. They’d have given everything they had to have those two guys back.”
So it was plausible, at least to Clarke and Altschul, that Annie Forger would have been similarly or even more distraught, what with two young children to care for by herself.
He didn’t share his suspicion of Annie with the L.A. cops.
Getting to be just another withholding fed, John thought.
Still, he thanked them for their time and paid for lunch.
Before heading to LAX to find the first available flight to Vancouver, John had two small chores to attend to. First, he called Darton Blake in Austin.
“I need a small favor,” John said.
“Small favors are my favorite kind.”
“I’m going to Canada, unofficially. It’ll be easier to do without taking my duty weapon. Can I send it to you for safekeeping?”
Darton laughed. “Sure. Who’s gonna notice one more gun in Texas?”
John confirmed he had Darton’s business address right.
Second, John stopped in at the FedEx location on West Century Boulevard, close to the airport. He showed his federal ID to a clerk with a name tag that read Oswaldo. The guy smiled at John.
“Never saw a BIA cred before.”
“First time for everything. I want to ship my duty weapon, a Beretta semi-auto, to the Austin, Texas PD.” John took the weapon out and saw the guy get a little tense. He didn’t take offense; no reason a federal agent couldn’t go as crazy as a mail carrier.
Oswaldo relaxed when he saw John make sure the chamber was clear, drop the clip out of the weapon and pop the cartridges out. He watched in fascination as John quickly broke the weapon down and reassembled it minus the firing pin, which he pocketed.
“That was pretty cool,” Oswaldo said.
“Something they made us practice in training,” John told him.
He pocketed the rounds, too. He’d leave them with an airport cop.
“I want Priority Overnight on this,” John said. He put a personal credit card on the counter.
“You got it. We’ll take good care of your weapon.”
“Please do.”
“Wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the government.”
“Don’t worry about that; worry about my mother.”
“Your mother?” Oswaldo asked.
“A sweet woman, but when someone messes with me … well, in her spare moments, when her temper is up, she’s a bruja.” A witch.
Oswaldo smiled.
“No, really,” John said. “Does curses and everything.”
Fear crept back into Oswaldo’s eyes.
John was sure his weapon would be delivered on time.
Chapter 23
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada — July 15, 2012
John was supposed to let Marlene Flower Moon know if he planned to leave the country while working a case. If he’d been going somewhere distant, say, Europe, Asia or even South America, he probably would have complied. But a neighboring country? That was different. Between John’s Athabascan race memory of Canada and the way his parents drifted into and out of Mexico like they were smugglers, there were times he didn’t pay more than perfunctory heed to the major borders of North America.
Not that he sneaked into Vancouver. He flew commercial and went through customs. He didn’t have his passport with him; he used his BIA credentials as an equivalent travel document. The Canadian immigration officer, a young woman, looked at his ID and asked, “Are you here on business or pleasure, Special Agent Tall Wolf?”
John said, “Thought I’d scout the upcoming hockey season. See how the teams up here are shaping up.”
The woman smiled wanly. “If you ask me, most of our best talent plays south of the border these days.”
“Mexico?” John asked, kidding her.
She laughed. “Maybe it’ll come to that, once Detroit loses its charm.”
John got lucky and caught the general manager of Vancouver’s pro hockey team in his office. His secretary was fascinated by John’s credentials; so many people were. That still might not have been enough to make for a successful cold call, but when John told her he was looking into the deaths of Vern Forger, Ted Kolchak and Bill Haney, he’d said the magic words.
She got on her intercom. A minute later he’d shaken hands with Maurice Satterly and was seated in front of the general manager’s desk.
Satterly told John, “It never sat right with me, the idea that Bill Haney would have endangered his teammates or himself by driving impaired. That wasn’t his nature.” Satterly emphasized his point with a shake of his head. “I’m biased, but I just can’t see it.”
“How biased are you?” John asked.
“I loved that young man like a son, but I never idealized him. I saw him for who he was. I first spotted Bill playing Mite hockey.”
John said, “Mite?”
“Three and four year olds.”
“You start them young.”
“We start with Mini-Mites,” Satterly explained. “One and two year olds.”
“Wow. Hockey must really be your national passion.”
“It is.” The GM sighed. “But the game is growing in popularity in your country, Mr. Tall Wolf, and with ten times our population to draw talent from, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“So your kids take what they do seriously?”
Satterly said, “The ones who stick with it. Bill Haney was as serious as they come, a dedicated hockey player and a fine young man.”
John spotted a signed picture of Haney on the general manager’s photo wall. Kid had even had legible penmanship. He was in uniform and was standing next to a woman who looked like she might be his mother.
“Bill have the talent to match his dedication?” John asked.
“Physically, he had enough. Just enough. But he was as hockey smart as anyone not named Gretzky. He knew how to get the most out of his skills. He wasn’t ever going to be a superstar, but he inspired all of his teammates to be better just by showing them the effort he put into his game. Someday he’s … he would have been a great coach.”
John didn’t want to let the mood get too blue.
“Vern Forger was a star, though,” he said.
Satterly smiled proudly. “Yes, he was. He was an American whose parents had left Canada, but he came home.”
“He was a good guy, too?”
The GM nodded. “Him and Teddy Kolchak, both.”
“Neither of them would have let Bill do anything foolish?”
“No damn way.”
“You ever mee
t Annie Forger?” John asked.
“I sure did. Nice lady. She and Vern had their two sons born here. The boys have dual citizenship. They’re both playing hockey in the U.S. I’ve kept my eye on them.”
“They have pro potential?”
“Yes. Guy a bit more than Louie, but they both could make the league. They come from good stock and have been fortunate to have had good training their whole lives. Ms. Forger has seen to that.”
“She’s a good mother?”
“Certainly, as far as I know.”
John got the impression Satterly had been watching the Forger boys as closely as he’d once watched Bill Haney. Which implied he kept a close eye on other things.
He asked, “Would you know anything about how Vern and Annie got along?”
The GM stared at him. “You really don’t think that car wreck was an accident?”
“The more I hear about Bill Haney, the less I believe he chose to get stoned before he got behind the wheel.”
Satterly’s eyes moistened and he didn’t mind that John saw it.
“Then you’re the man a lot of people around here have been waiting for, Mr. Tall Wolf. Truth was, Vern and Annie had been having their problems. Seemed the magic had gone out of their marriage. Then her sister came for a visit and things seemed to get worse. I try not to think too hard about the reason for that.”
The implication of sibling jealous, maybe even adultery, was clear.
“Annie Forger has a sister?”
“She did back then. Her name was Lily White Bird.”
John was struck dumb. Annie and Lily were sisters?
Lily was maybe just a bit prettier than Annie; he remembered thinking that when Annie had shown him their pictures. But the wigs and berets must have thrown him off, kept him from seeing the family resemblance. Thinking about it now —
“Are you all right, Mr. Tall Wolf?” Satterly asked. “You are going to get to the bottom of all this, aren’t you?”
“I’m fine and, yes, I’m going to find out what happened.”
John took a room at The Fairmont and set up a conference call with Detective Darton Blake and SAC Gilbert Melvin. He wanted to push things now so he told the two men what he’d learned in L.A. and Vancouver.