by Joseph Flynn
After that was done, she turned to his guitar case.
No way she was donating Jackson’s guitar to anyone. It was hers now.
She opened the case and saw that the Gibson Hummingbird gleamed like new; not a speck of dust on it. She took out the guitar and embraced it as if it were her lost love. She could see Jackson’s beautiful smile as he played it. No sooner had that image entered her mind than she knew what Jackson would have called the unfinished song.
“If I Had Known.”
She saw the verses, bridge and chorus in her mind.
She looked down at the guitar and thought, of course, Jackson must have used it to play the new song, sing the lyrics as he played. The instrument had been patiently sitting in its case just waiting for her to pick it up. If Jackson continued to live anywhere, it was through his guitar.
She’d use it to finish the song, use it and her own six string to write new music. She’d need to tune the Hummingbird and use a capo for “If I Had Known,” but —
When she opened the compartment in the case where the capo was kept, she found a key. She took it out and looked at it. There was a number engraved on one side: 2521. On the other side was the name of her bank. It was a key to a safe deposit box.
Her bank had also been Jackson’s bank. More often than not, they had gone there together. People mistook them for a married couple, though they had never had anyone but themselves bless their union. They’d talked about making it official … but that was another thing that was never going to happen.
Coy lay Jackson’s guitar on the desk. She hadn’t known about his deposit box or the key. He’d kept that from her, but why? The only thing she’d left in the closet after removing Jackson’s clothes was the box where she kept his unopened mail. She’d left everything sealed. For the first several months after he’d left, there had been mail for him in almost every delivery. After that, it diminished and stopped.
She searched through every envelope. Most of it was junk; none of it was suspicious. She didn’t find anything from the bank that looked like an invoice for a safe deposit box. The way she thought that kind of thing worked, a renewal bill got sent out annually.
She called the bank and identified herself as Coy Wilson White. She asked if a payment was due on the box. She was told no, there were two years left on an advance ten-year payment.
Coy took a shot and asked, “Has my husband included my name as a box holder?”
She was told: “Yes, Ms. White, he has.”
Chapter 26
Santa Fe, New Mexico — July 16, the present
Haden Wolf was at his desk in the clinic when his son called.
“Hello, John. How are you? All’s well?”
“Doing just fine, Dad. How are you and Mom?”
“No complaints for either of us. We’re still fully engaged in life.”
Though John and his parents all lived in Santa Fe, his job took him all over the country and on occasions like the current one even out of the country. Mom and Dad were officially retired, but Dad still kept an eye on the free clinic he’d started, and the two of them might disappear for a month or two at a time on what they called scholarly journeys, usually to places where the only roads were unpaved and there were no cell towers whatsoever.
It had been several weeks since John had spoken to either of his parents.
“Still out gathering herbs at first light?” John asked.
“More often than not.”
“Find Coyote yet?”
“I had to scare off a mountain lion with a couple rounds last week, but we haven’t seen Coyote, no. How about you?”
“Other than my boss, all’s clear.”
“Your mother and I would like to meet Ms. Flower Moon someday.”
John knew his parents’ interest was more than just social.
They wanted to see for themselves if their son’s suspicions were accurate.
John didn’t want to get into that now.
“Dad, I’m glad I could get in touch. I could use a little medical information.” John was sure if his father didn’t have the answer to his question, he’d know someone who did.
“What can I tell you, John?”
“Is there a way to determine the age at which a person died from his physical remains, in this case just a skeleton?”
“Sure, there is,” Haden said.
John’s father told him just how that could be done.
Chapter 27
Vancouver, B.C. — July 16, the present
Shortly after speaking with his father, John got an e-mail from SAC Melvin. The FBI man had followed through on John’s requests. Guy and Louis Forger, Annie’s sons, were still enrolled in their respective colleges and were both training for the upcoming hockey season in Boston. Each of them had a trust fund initially capitalized at five hundred thousand dollars; each fund had grown to just over a million dollars today.
Melvin asked if John wanted him to interview the Forger boys or if he wanted to do it. Maybe with their common Native American ancestry, Melvin suggested, it would be better for John to handle that task. Melvin provided John with an address and a phone number.
Vancouver to Boston was a long haul, but John replied that he would interview Guy and Louis. He went to the Kayak website and found a flight. He could have booked his travel through the BIA. He was supposed to do that so he could get the discount the airlines offered federal employees, but he liked to make Marlene work to keep tabs on him. So he always made his own travel plans. He’d leave Vancouver that afternoon.
Before he left town, he stopped in to see Maurice Satterly again. He now had a few more questions for the man. In response to Satterly’s query on the progress of his investigation, John said he was making progress.
The GM wasn’t satisfied with that vague description.
“You mean you know something you didn’t before?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But you can’t or won’t tell me what it is right now.”
“What I’ve learned is directional, which way I should move.”
“But you think it’s the right direction?”
“I do.”
“You won’t cover things up if you find out what happened to Vern, Teddy and Bill?”
“It might not become public knowledge,” John said, “but I’ll tell you. The information might come with a hold-it-close restriction. You and the Haney and Kolchak families. Could you live with that?”
Satterly sat back in his chair and thought about it. Then he nodded, gave John his mobile and home phone numbers.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Were you surprised when Annie Forger left Vancouver for Rapid City?”
Satterly shrugged. “No disrespect to South Dakota, but I would prefer British Columbia in general and Vancouver in particular.”
John didn’t take offense; he felt the same way.
Satterly continued, “From what I heard, the Forger boys hated to leave town.”
“Vancouver was their home?”
“The only one they’d known. They’re Canadian, though they have dual citizenship. This was where they’d lived and started school, and —”
“Where they first put on ice skates?”
“Exactly.”
“Did they start as mini-mites?”
Satterly nodded. “Of course. Vern saw to that. The only thing he enjoyed as much as playing the game was teaching his boys to play it.”
“Was that part of the trouble between him and Annie?”
“What do you mean?” Satterly asked.
“Well, between playing a full season of hockey, training to get ready for next season and instructing his sons in the finer points of the game, how much time did he have for his wife?”
Satterly got indignant.
“Vern was a good man. It should have been obvious to Annie, should be obvious to any woman who marries a professional athlete, that his sport is where his focus has to be. It’s a short car
eer. You have to be dedicated to succeed. You have to be passionate to be great.”
“And you told me that Vern was great.”
“I did. After their playing days, that’s when great athletes have time for their wives.”
That sounded to John like a speech Satterly had given more than once.
He didn’t doubt that impressionable young athletes took it to heart.
But if you didn’t have time for your wife, and you were young and healthy …
Vern Forger may well have been a good man, but he was human, too, and if there was trouble at home, there was a predictable reason for it.
Taking things a step further, if Vern was having his fun, John could guess where Annie would turn to have hers. Randy Bear Heart. Assuming he was still alive, John didn’t see Randy resisting an invitation from one of his two best Bonnies.
Especially if she’d decided to become his angel and help out with his cash flow problems.
Turning to another matter, John asked Satterly, “Do you know if Annie Forger became a Canadian citizen?”
That seemed to be another sore point with Satterly.
“Vern did. It was easy for him, of course. Both of his parents were born here. He fell in love with Vancouver and the city fell in love with him. He decided he wanted to stay. We were all very pleased.”
John returned to his question. “Annie didn’t feel the same way?”
Satterly shook his head. “She was content to have permanent resident status.”
“Are there any requirements to maintain that status?”
“Yes, you have to spend at least two years of any five year period living in Canada.”
“Any exceptions?”
“If you’re the spouse of a Canadian citizen whose business takes him or her out of the country.”
“Like Vern Forger.”
“Before he died, yes.”
“One last thing,” John said. “Did Annie Forger ever ice skate with her sons?”
“You mean did she take an interest in the game the boys shared with their father? Not as far as I know. I never saw her so much as put on a pair of figure skates.”
Satterly made the omission sound like both a crime and a scandal.
“No winter sports at all for her?”
With a lip curled in contempt the GM said, “I heard she liked to ski.”
Chapter 28
En route to Boston — July 16, the present
On the Air Canada flight to Boston, John made one phone call and received another. Canada, like the U.S., forbade cell phone calls while a plane was in the air. The purported reason for this was that cell phones might interfere with a plane’s navigational system. The real reason was that the airlines and a majority of the flying public hated the idea of turning a cramped airplane cabin into a babel of competing conversations.
As with any rule, however, there were exceptions. Two classes of people were allowed to make and receive calls in flight. The aircraft’s crew and law enforcement. John had presented his credentials before boarding.
John’s privileged standing was enhanced when he got bumped to first class by Madeleine Comfort, a cabin attendant who was also Native American. She whispered that fact into John’s ear. He might have guessed regardless.
He wasn’t sure, though, that he deserved special consideration.
“Ethnicity,” he told Madeleine, “is just an accident of birth.”
She said, “Oh, no. Our destinies are planned for us. No accidents involved.”
She also told him he should call her Maddie.
Maddie was a tall attractive woman. John did his best not to argue with such people, the exception being Marlene. He tried to see any sign that Maddie might be Coyote. Maybe if he could get her and Marlene into the same room there would be some sign.
“I was hoping you liked my mysterious good looks,” John told Maddie.
The first class compartment was sparsely populated. Didn’t see that much in the U.S., but it made for easier flirting.
“What I’d like is a peek behind those sunglasses,” Maddie said.
John lowered the Ray-Bans to the tip of his nose.
Maddie must have liked what she saw because the service was exceptional, his maybe a bit better than the others in first class.
The call John made was to SAC Melvin. He told the FBI man of his conversation with Maurice Satterly, and mentioned that Annie Forger had permanent resident status in Canada.
“What I’ve been thinking,” John said, “is that Annie got five million dollars from the life insurance policy, but she also must have inherited an estate of some size. Vern Forger had to be making a small fortune as a star athlete.”
Melvin said, “Yeah. Not as much as a baseball or basketball player, but real nice money compared to your average government employee.”
John laughed. “So, anyway, if Annie wants to keep her permanent resident status in Canada, and I bet she does, she probably has a house up there. You think you could find out where?”
“Sure, but you could, too, if you wanted.”
“You saying we should stop sharing?” John asked.
“No, it’s kind of refreshing. Makes me wonder what could be accomplished if everyone cooperated.”
“Yeah, so, you’ll check it out?”
“Uh-huh. Find Ms. Forger’s Canadian digs.”
“You have anything I should know?” John asked.
“Would have told you by now,” Melvin replied.
But there had been half-a-beat of hesitation before he answered.
And his goodbye was just a bit rushed.
Which left John wondering just what the FBI man was holding back.
John turned down a champagne cocktail from Maddie in favor of sparkling water. She saw he had something on his mind and didn’t linger to chat. Consideration. A good move for both the kind hearted and the calculating. But John didn’t have time to classify Maddie at the moment.
He was thinking of how much he should share with Melvin from now on.
Not everything, of course. But if he cut him off completely, Melvin would stop running John’s little errands for him, and he liked the idea of having the FBI act as his time saver.
Before he could decide just how to play things, his ring tone sounded.
Darton Blake was calling.
The detective started the conversation by asking John, “Do you watch much television?”
“Hardly any.”
“Other than sports, I’m the same. Maybe we’re missing something that way.”
“Like what?” John asked.
“Well, there are these science based mystery shows and —”
John knew right where Darton was going.
“They can tell you how old someone was when he died,” he said.
John listened to the jet engines thrum as Darton fell silent.
He continued, “They look at things like teeth, ribs, face structure and a lot of other stuff. You put it all together you get an accurate reading on the age at time of death.”
Darton jumped right back in now. “How’d you know that? How’d you know I was going to tell you that?”
“Guessed,” John said.
But it had been an intuitive guess. Something he’d felt.
“You guessed how they work out a body’s age at time of death?”
“No, I guessed what you were going to tell me. My father told me about the details; he’s a doctor. I thought he might know, so I called him.”
“Huh. Looks like we had the same idea.”
“Who’d you talk to, seeing that you don’t watch TV.”
“The anthropologist who worked the crime scene at Lake Travis.”
“Her report came in and you read it?” John asked.
“I called her and she told me.”
John needed only a second to understand what that meant.
“Melvin got the report first. He already knows whose body went into the lake, and he’s been holding out on us.”
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That was the reason for the hesitation John had heard from the SAC.
“You’re spoiling all my fun,” Darton said. “Technically, Melvin wasn’t holding out. He just fixed things so he got the information first and it’s available to us upon request.”
“So who’s dead?” John asked. “I think I can guess, but I don’t want to.”
“Jackson.”
“Damn.”
Darton felt the same way. “Yeah. It would have been better if our murdering bank robber had been Mr. Bag o’ Bones.”
John brought Darton up to date on his end of things.
“Thanks,” the detective said, “I’ll know better now than to distrust all you feds.”
“Best to remain somewhat skeptical,” John advised and said goodbye.
Thirty minutes before landing in Boston, Maddie asked John if he’d have any free time after they touched down. He said he was busy, but he thought he’d be visiting Canada again soon.
“Really? Where are you going?”
In the way cops often responded, he answered her questions with a question.
“Well, if you like to ski in the winter and, say, hike in the summer, and you have plenty of money, where in Canada would you live?”
Without hesitation, Maddie told him, “Banff.”
John said, “That might be the place.”
Chapter 29
Austin, Texas — July 16, the present
As John’s flight was taking off for Boston, Coy Wilson arrived at the bank with her heart in her throat. She felt as if she was going to rob the place not access a lock box to which she had the key. Still, she would be posing as Jackson’s wife. Well, who the hell knew, she thought. As long as they’d lived together, maybe under Texas law she had qualified as a common law wife. The thought reassured her, somewhat.