Alive and Killing (A David Wolf Novel)

by Jeff Carson

  “Could I talk to someone in forensics please?” Wolf asked.

  “And who’s calling?”

  “This is Sheriff Wolf from the Rocky Points Police Department. I was with Sergeant McCall at a crime scene yesterday, at Grimm Lake, and we gathered some evidence that you guys were testing. I’d like to discuss that with someone.”

  “Hold.” She said, and the soft music returned.

  The music cut out and a male voice answered. “Michaelson, here.”

  “Hello, this is Sheriff Wolf from the Rocky Points Police Department, I was with Sergeant—“

  “I know who you are. What can I help you with, sir?”

  “I was wondering if you guys picked up any fingerprints on that cartridge brought in yesterday, and if there was any news yet on the soil samples.”

  “No fingerprints on the cartridge,” he said quickly, “as far as the soil samples go, we need a few more hours. We’ve got the top of the line equipment here, but even that can leave ya impatient,” he laughed for a beat.

  “Okay,” Wolf shook his head at Luke. “Not even any partials on the cartridge, huh?”

  “Nope. Nothing. Clean as a whistle.” The phone rattled for a few seconds, like he’d just dropped it. “Can I take a number and I’ll call you about the soil samples when the tests are through?”

  Wolf gave his number and hung up.

  “Nothing?” Luke asked.

  “No.”

  As they drove south out of town, the valley opened a little wider, and the red earth that saturated the surrounding hills became swirled with browns and grays. They passed a golf course on the right that edged its way up to the rippling waters of the Roaring Fork River, and it was filled with people with less pressing problems.

  A few miles past it, just when Wolf wondered if Luke lived in the next town of Carbondale, she slowed and turned left on a dirt road. The road passed through a flat farm field, and then meandered up into the hills.

  There were plenty of houses along either side of the road, but there was plenty of nature in between each of them also, and Wolf could smell the wet junipers and sage through the open vents of Luke’s car.

  A few minutes later they were driving well above the valley below, and Luke slowed at a driveway and turned.

  Her house was modest, a smallish one-story, but Wolf suspected the back of the house, which faced the valley below, and west, toward the setting sun every night, would have some views that made up for any lack of living space.

  The Tahoe crunched down the driveway toward her garage door, which rose after she pushed a button on her visor. She parked and shut off the engine, and Wolf soon realized why she hadn’t parked inside. It was full of boxes of all shapes and sizes, and there were two mountain bikes leaning up against the wall, two kayaks hanging from the ceiling, and a 250 cc dual-sport motorcycle propped on a kickstand.

  Wolf got out and whistled. “I see you like the outdoors.”

  Luke walked past him and into the garage.

  Wolf followed. The space was cold and smelled like nylon, rubber, plastic and the other synthetic materials her toys were made of. She unlocked the door to the house and walked in.

  Inside was open and rather light, and thankfully to Wolf, after a long day of being damp, it was warm. They entered into a spotless kitchen with shiny hardwood floors and granite counters. A few dishes were piled in the sink, but that one untidy blemish in the otherwise clean space was easily overlooked, as a wide window yawned above the sink, framing the valley below.

  “Grab a beer in the fridge if you want,” Luke said as she walked through the kitchen, through the eating area, and creaked out of sight around the corner.

  Wolf opened the stainless steel refrigerator, and heard the faint rattle of bottles. The shelves were empty save a plastic box of baby spinach, a few sacks of vegetables, a package of tortillas, and a twelve pack of Stella Artois. He dug in the box and pulled one out.

  “I’ll take one, too.” Luke said as she entered the kitchen again. She’d lost the FBI jacket and her shoes.

  She took the two beers and opened them, and Wolf walked to the window and looked out. “Nice view you’ve got here.”

  “I wish. I’m renting.”

  “Well, still. Nice view.”

  The backyard was a flat twenty or so feet of lawn that ended at the natural shrubs and vegetation of the surrounding land. The hill swept down out of sight, and the next piece of land that was visible was a mile or so in the distance, at the bottom of the green valley. There was a small grove of aspen trees flanking the side of the house on the right, and a steep incline on the other.

  “I like it,” she said, “there're no neighbors in sight from the back, and it’s modern inside. I got lucky. It’s a family friend’s place.”

  She walked out of the kitchen, and returned a few seconds later with a wadded up paper bag that she held in her palm. It knocked against the granite countertop as she set it down, and then she pulled the bag off, and what remained were the contents, unmoved by the magician-like flourish—two rectangular bars of gold.

  Wolf pulled his beer away from his lips and popped his eyes open. “Wow.”

  Luke picked up the top piece and held it up for Wolf to inspect.

  Wolf held out his palm and she put the bar in it. It was the shape of a credit card, but a couple centimeters thick, and it was heavy. He ran his thumb across it and turned it in his hand, and felt small pits on three sides, with one side smoother. The second bar was identical, or rather, probably poured and pulled from the same mold, as it had the same pits on the three sides as the first bar.

  “These came to your house a couple days ago?” Wolf froze, holding the bar out. “Who from?”

  “There was a note.” She put a yellow piece of paper on the counter.

  It said, You deserve some of this, too. I’m sorry, written in black ink, in shaky handwriting.

  “Did you check these for prints?” Wolf looked at the bar in his hand.

  “Yeah. Nothing. I checked the note, too. Nothing.”

  “Handwriting?” Wolf asked.

  “Nothing definitive. I checked it against Brian's high school yearbook. It’s close, but I can’t say it’s an exact match. Too shaky.”

  “What about Jeffries?”

  She looked up and blinked in resignation. “No, not yet.”

  He twisted the bar for another minute, thinking, and then set it down. It rang out as he set it on the granite counter. Then he walked to the window again, this time seeing nothing of the view outside.

  He thought of Wade Jeffries on the trail, with a backpack loaded so full it almost split at the seams, with material that clanked with every step. With gold. He thought of the load he must have been carrying. It was heavy enough to compact a disc in his back at the least.

  “What are those, pound bars?” Wolf asked, turning to look out the window.

  “Yep. Sixteen ounces a piece.”

  “That’s at least thirty-two thousand dollars worth of gold there.”

  “Forty-one thousand. At least. I haven’t checked the price of gold today,” she said.

  Wolf pictured Jeffries’s eyes, with the look of fear that his handkerchief and his baseball cap couldn’t hide. “They were after the gold in his backpack.”

  “Jeffries?”

  Wolf didn’t hear her. He was over seven thousand miles away, thinking about Tora Bora, Afghanistan.

  “Bactrian Gold?” he asked to no one.

  Luke jumped up and sat on the counter next to him. “What?”

  “The caves of Tora Bora,” Wolf blinked and turned toward Luke, “they were a Taliban strong hold right around the time of 9/11. That is, until we went in. But when I was there, it was a real possibility we’d find some sort of stash, either of money, or gold, or jewels, that was part of the financial life-blood of the Taliban, and we were briefed to keep a sharp eye out before giving the orders to permanently blast these caves shut.”

  “So what did you say? Bacte
ria something?” She asked.

  “Bactrian Gold,” Wolf said.

  “What is that, a legend?”

  “No, not a legend. It was the real deal. A stash of gold that’s the national pride of Afghanistan.” He looked at Luke. “I heard the story while I was in Afghanistan, we all did. It was a local hot topic before 9/11, and after, when the Taliban was after it, it was even hotter.

  “In the seventies, the soviets uncovered some ancient graves in northern Afghanistan, in an area that used to be known as Bactria a couple thousand years ago. There was something like twenty-thousand pieces of gold and jewelry found inside. Then the soviets invaded, and the country went into civil war, and the gold disappeared.

  “Twenty years later, in the late eighties, it showed back up, in Afghanistan. The president was flaunting it, making it known it hadn’t been looted by the Russians all those years ago, and it was still a national treasure they’d kept in their homeland. But then it disappeared again.

  “Well, it didn’t disappear, it was moved to the vault of the central bank, in Kabul. Moved by a few select members of the government who chose to keep the treasure in tact, rather than melt it down for however many millions it was worth. But when I was over there, the location of it was still a mystery. There were rumors it was in the central bank, but it wasn’t known if it was in the vault or not, and nobody was telling. And right after 9/11, the Taliban wanted to find out once and for all, so they raided the bank, put guns to the heads of the bank officials, and made them open it up.”

  “Did they find it?” Luke asked.

  “No. They made off with a bunch of money and bullion, but not the Bactrian Gold. Or at least, that’s how the story went.”

  “So it wasn’t in the vault all along?” She asked.

  Wolf shook his head. “I remember hearing a couple years after 9/11 that they found it was in the vault. They had somehow tricked the Taliban. Hid the boxes under a bunch of paintings or something like that.”

  “Or,” Luke said, “the Taliban could have gotten away with some of it after all, you’re saying, and the story was wrong.”

  Wolf shrugged and took a sip of beer. “That’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to treasures gone missing in the last thirty years in Afghanistan. This gold could be the Bactrian stuff melted down into bars, or this could be some of the bullion the Taliban made off with that day, melted down from the four hundred ounce bars to more manageable, or sellable, size. Or it could be some of the national treasure that was never accounted for. We were briefed that seventy percent of the treasures were looted out of the Afghanistan National Museum during the civil war, and most of it still hasn’t been found.

  “Obviously, I can’t say what gold this is, exactly.” Wolf pointed at the bars. “But your brother’s EOD team got it, brought it home, and… whoever came after Jack and me was after Jeffries because he had this. A whole lot of this. And whoever got Jeffries has a new net worth with a long line of digits.”

  Luke set down her beer and paced, staring at the ground.

  “What’s up?” Wolf asked.

  “So how did they do it? Let’s say my brother and his team find a bunch of gold, whether it’s the Bactrian stuff, or national treasure bullion, or whatever, then what?”

  Wolf shrugged. “Then they get the gold out. Out of the hole, and into a Humvee, and blow up the cave, and disappear into the mountains, or a pay a local to stay hidden, and go MIA. It would be difficult for engineers to come in with the necessary equipment to excavate the collapsed cave, to look for your brother and his team. The terrain, and the overall atmosphere, isn’t suited for it.”

  “That’s what my CIA contact told me after my brother’s memorial. He told me the official word from the Army was that it was next to impossible to pull them out of the rubble. But he said the real reason was it wasn’t high priority. Like it was obvious my brother and his team where somewhere they weren’t supposed to be, and they got what they’d had coming to them.”

  They stood in silence for a few moments.

  “How many other people were on the EOD team, besides your brother and the other missing men?”

  “Four more,” Luke said.

  Wolf frowned. “So eight total? And what did they say happened?”

  Luke shook her head. “They said they were under orders to be there. Not in the caves, but the valley a few miles away. It was apparently a two-day convoy, and they were on their way through to Kabul, and onto Bagram Air Base.”

  “And your brother and the other three men broke off?” Wolf asked. “What was their explanation to the rest of the team?”

  “There was no explanation. One of the soldiers said Hartley, Jeffries, and Quinn disappeared with a Humvee one night, and my brother woke up the next morning and went after them, alone.”

  “Alone?” Wolf pulled the corners of his mouth down. “That’s a strange decision.”

  Luke nodded. “You’re telling me.”

  “So your brother follows the GPS transponder on the Humvee they took, and finds them,” Wolf said.

  Luke nodded. “Or, he just goes straight to some rendezvous point they’d set up before hand, and that’s why he wanted to go alone.”

  Wolf stared at the floor, “Maybe your brother wasn’t part of this? Maybe he was sucked in, somehow.”

  Luke looked at him and then to the gold. “And then why would he drop this on my doorstep with a note that says Some of this is yours, too. I’m sorry?”

  Wolf shrugged. “That’s not exactly an admission of guilt from your brother. It could have been one of the other three EOD team guys.”

  Luke sighed and took a sip of her beer.

  “Let’s talk about how they get out of the country,” Wolf said, “Four men, and a hoard of gold? How does that go down?”

  She stopped and dug another beer out of the refrigerator, and held it out to Wolf. He took it, and she bent down to get another. “They’d have to have outside help, right?”

  Wolf nodded. “Yeah, they would. They’d need to fly out of Afghanistan, or drive their Humvee into Iran or Pakistan, and then get home, which seems less likely to me. It would have been difficult to go undetected with a Humvee full of American soldiers and gold by roads. They would have been stopped. Searched. It would have caused some sort of incident that would have gotten around, and into the ears of your contacts at the CIA.” Wolf stared at the unopened beer, lost in thought.

  “Well, however they did it,” Luke said, “It worked. Just take a look at the Jeffries’s peach orchard house, maybe that was the gold money at work there. Maybe you and your son walked into Wade Jeffries being punished. You know, for going outside the circle, the pact, and giving his family money? When you saw him on the trail, they’d probably just killed his family for knowing too much. You saw Julie Jeffries. She was getting interrogated before she was killed. They must have been asking her what she knew.”

  Wolf looked at Luke, and then to the gold bars on the counter.

  She followed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “If that theory is correct, then I’m next.”

  Luke shook her head. Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and her lips moved soundlessly.

  Wolf knew what she was thinking. It was bad enough that innocent people were being killed, it was a whole new level of bad that her brother was involved.

  “How did you and your brother get along?” Wolf asked.

  “Like, would my brother be willing to come kill me?”

  Wolf shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense that he would give you some of the gold, then come after you to kill you. Unless…you two really didn’t get along.”

  “No, we were close. He was my younger bro, and I was his big sis.” She said, and then she picked the label of her beer. “I guess it’s more complicated than that.”

  “Try me. I’m used to complicated myself.” Wolf said.

  She smiled meekly, and then looked at Wolf. “My dad left us. When we were kids. I was in graduating high school, and
he was a couple years younger. And we both went through some tough times after that. My older brother, he didn’t seem to care as much, but me and Brian…I went to college, and went through my changes and struggles and whatever, and he stayed here and started doing meth and coke. I snapped out of my funk, but he just kept on digging deeper into his. That went on for years and years, the drugs, and stealing, and…and finally, right before I went to Quantico, I told him he had to shape up. And I told him I’d come back and bust his ass and throw him in jail as many times as it would take for him to stop being a coward, and to start living.”

  She stared at the wall in deep thought.

  “So, you pushed him to join the military?” Wolf asked quietly.

  “Yeah. And he did. And according to him, he loved it. I lost track how many tours in the Middle East he volunteered for. But for eight years he just kept coming and going, happy as ever. I actually wondered if he’d gone suicidal and wanted to die over there. Even asked him that once. But he told me I’d saved his life and not to worry about him over there. He said he loved it and owed me everything.” Her eyes glistened. “Now I wonder if he’d meant that or was just somehow playing me.”

  Wolf turned around and scanned the property outside the window. The bushes swayed in the wind. The grass bent in waves. The rain had stopped, and the clouds were breaking up. Shafts of sunlight lanced out of the sky onto the valley below.

  “I missed something,” Wolf said finally, turning back to Luke.

  She wiped her eyes and looked up with a hard expression, as if trying to hide the dark place she’d just allowed herself to go. “What do you mean? Where?”

  “On the mountain.”

  Luke frowned. “Okay, can you be more specific?”

  “We’re talking about four men that went missing from Afghanistan, and I killed someone at our campsite that wasn’t any of those men. I’d bet my life on it.”

  Luke narrowed her eyes. “Okay.”

  Wolf nodded. “The math doesn’t add up. There’s four guys missing from Afghanistan, including your brother, but we are talking about five different men now.”