Smith's Monthly #22

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  And I had no idea what to do next.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Boise, Idaho. August 19

  FBI AGENT HEATHER VOIGHT slipped into her jogging suit and took the towel to her wet hair one more time as she wandered out of the small bathroom and into her hotel room.

  Back when she was doing field duty, she often woke up in these standard hotel rooms and couldn’t remember what city or state she was in. All the hotel rooms these days looked and felt the same. A bed, a table, two nightstands, lamps, and bad art. She had come to hate the standard colors, the standard beds, the standard sheets, while at the same time getting used to living in them.

  She missed her apartment, her two cats that she had allowed herself to get after the promotion to a Washington-based assignment, and her own furniture and things. She had no doubt that by the time she woke up tomorrow morning, she was also going to really miss her pillow-top bed.

  She had CNN on the television and muted, a habit she had always had. It was company without being distracting, news without all the stupid, trivial announcer garbage. And every hotel, no matter how far out into the boondocks it was, had CNN on its cable listings.

  She also had a traveling habit of wearing a jogging suit to bed. She had gotten called out quickly a couple of times on assignments and wasted valuable time dressing. You didn’t get anywhere in the FBI by making people wait for you. At the moment, she was the only agent on this case, so she doubted she was going to get called out in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the type of case that would have that happen. But the habit still died hard. She just didn’t feel comfortable anymore sleeping in hotel rooms without the jogging suit.

  Two years ago, she had been promoted to the Washington office and had thought she had graduated from field service once and for all. Now, here she was, back in the field, only this time she wasn’t so sure how “official” her assignment was. She knew her being here was simply a favor for Director Smith and her boyfriend, Chief of Staff Paul Hanson. And they hadn’t told her why, just where to go and what to do.

  This Carson Hill had certainly been important to some very powerful people. Important enough to put her on the NTSB team to look at the crash site.

  Important enough for someone else to kill.

  She wished she knew exactly who Carson Hill had been. By tomorrow, she would know a lot more. She hated working blind, and the moment she saw the evidence that Carson Hill had been murdered, she knew she needed a lot more information about him.

  She stared at her cell phone on the bed. She didn’t want to make the call she knew she was going to have to make. After a very long day of climbing in the rocks and watching for snakes, all she really wanted was to watch a dull movie and sleep. She was going to be very sore in the morning, she could feel it. Working out in the gym in the city just wasn’t a substitute for real field work, especially in the Idaho mountains.

  “Better get this over with,” she said out loud, then clicked off the television. She didn’t need anything to distract her at this point.

  Director Smith had told her to report directly to Paul in the White House, then send him an update. He knew of their relationship, figured it would just be easier.

  It took a minute to get through to Paul and make sure her phone was secure and she was on a secure line. It always did take time, even with the private numbers she had. She knew he had been waiting for her to call, both to tell him what she had found and to say goodnight. Their ritual, if they weren’t together, was for the first person to go to bed to call the other and say goodnight. Paul hadn’t called, so she knew he was still up.

  After she was connected, she started to tell him what had been discovered in the plane wreck.

  “Hang on a second,” Paul said. There was a click on the line. That happened at times. The White House was always a busy place, even late at night, especially for the Chief of Staff.

  She sat on the bed, watching the blank television screen until Paul came back on the line and said, “Let me put the President on. He’ll want to hear this.”

  That surprised her and made her stomach clamp down into a knot. While dating Paul, she had spent a number of occasions with the President. She liked the man and mostly believed in what he was trying to do in his policies. But she hadn’t expected to talk to him about this. Clearly he cared about what had happened out here to Carson Hill. And more than likely, he was the reason she was here, not Paul. Her news was not going to make him happy, of that she had no doubt.

  She glanced at the clock beside the bed. Almost midnight in Washington. What was the President still doing in the Oval? This was two hours past his normal time to retire to the residence.

  Heather could hear another line pick up. Both of them were now on the line.

  Then the President said, “Good evening, Agent Voight. What did you find on the crash site?”

  Heather, as quickly and concisely as giving a report in a meeting, ran over the details of the crash site, and then the preliminary, on-location conclusion the NTSB team had come to.

  “Explosive?” Paul asked, clearly shocked. “This was purposeful?”

  “Yes,” Heather said.

  “The evidence is clear?” the President asked. “You’re sure?”

  “Ninety-nine percent. The plane didn’t burn on impact, so the small explosion in the engine compartment is easy to see.”

  “Keep this quiet until you are one hundred percent sure,” the President said, his voice carrying a harshness Heather had never heard before in him.

  She took a deep breath, remembering Doc Hill and how he had sat on the rock below the crash site pretending to fish, listening to every word that the crash investigation team was saying.

  “Sir, that might not be possible.”

  “And why the hell not?” the President demanded, his anger making her lean back on the bed.

  She made herself pause to gather her wits before answering. “The victim’s son, Jonathan ‘Doc’ Hill, was close by when the discovery of the explosion in the engine compartment was made. I’m sure he knows his father was murdered, and he looks to me to be the type to take action.”

  “Oh, no,” Paul said, his voice sounding more worried than Heather had ever heard him sound in the year they had been dating.

  “Damn!” President Dolan said, “If the kid is anything like his father was, I’m sure he will take action. Look, I’ll make sure the head of the NTSB investigation team there keeps this under wraps. You keep an eye on the son, follow him, see what he knows and what he plans on doing. Hell, talk to him if you have to.”

  She was stunned that he had even suggested what he was suggesting.

  “How should I approach him, sir?”

  “Hell, tell him who you are, that I’m the one interested because I was a friend of his father’s. I don’t care how you handle it, just stay on this, stay on him, find out what this kid is thinking of doing about his father’s murder, and report back to me or Paul regularly.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “I’ll talk to Director Smith, have him give you any help you need.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And agent, do the best you can to keep the kid alive,” President Dolan said, then broke the connection.

  SECTION TWO

  SURVIVAL

  Patience is everything in a poker tournament. You are there

  to survive, build up your chips, be the only person left.

  You can’t take stupid chances early on and expect that result.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 22

  “DOC, I THINK we have another problem.”

  “What, he had a second wife and she’s home?”

  “I wish,” Fleet said.

  Fleet had stepped past me into my father’s house. I was in front of the alarm keypad tucked inside a stone column, one of a half dozen columns that ran along the front of this Las Vegas suburban mansion. I had just unlocked the place and turned off the alarms. The las
t thing I wanted to do was go in there, so instead I stood and stared at the neighborhood around the house.

  Silent, hot, and sterile. The car radio had said it was one hundred and six degrees. A cool August afternoon, actually, for Vegas. But it was made hotter where I stood by all the rocks and concrete Carson had used to landscape his place.

  I missed the coolness of the mornings on the river, even the biting cold of the water. I couldn’t imagine why anyone lived in a subdivision like this, but the desert around Las Vegas was blooming with them, like weeds sprouting up everywhere no matter how much you tried to kill them. Every funny-named grouping had a fancy front entrance and lots of twisting streets lined with expensive homes spaced evenly. Right now, every window of every house I could see had the blinds or curtains pulled. Nothing was moving. No one had even looked out to see what we were doing.

  I felt like I was in a bad science fiction movie and I was the only person left alive in the world. Where were the kids? Where were the people doing yard work, washing cars, living life? This was a street of homes, but it sure didn’t feel like anyone lived here. I’d been in ghost towns with more life.

  My mother had given me the code to turn off Carson’s house alarm. Over the last two days, she had been so upset at Carson’s death, I didn’t want to press her just yet on how she knew the alarm code to his home after being divorced from him for decades. I just filed it away with the other hundred questions I was determined to finally get answers for. Including, of course, who killed the bastard.

  “Doc, you need to see this,” Fleet said from inside the open front door.

  “Coming,” I said.

  Actually, I felt I didn’t need to see anything in this house. Going into the home of a man I had hated since I was six was not a task I had been looking forward to. Sort of like crawling into a dentist’s chair and saying, “Give me a half dozen root canals. And then pull a couple teeth just for kicks.”

  I’d rather stand in the heat and slowly just simmer in my own fat, but I doubted Fleet was going to let that happen, from the sound of his voice.

  Actually, nothing in the past three days had been pleasant. Carson’s body had been released to me two days ago, cremated yesterday. My mother had arranged to pick up the ashes, saying nothing to me.

  We scheduled no ceremony. Ace had said he would remember Carson the way he wanted to and didn’t need one. I certainly didn’t care. I’m sure Card Player Magazine would run some article or two on him. I’d avoid those issues, just like I had been avoiding their phone calls to talk to me about his death.

  Except for a very large trust set up for my mother, I was Carson’s only heir, so even without my grandfather asking me to look into Carson’s death, I would have been stuck with all the duties of the estate. Thank heavens Fleet was an attorney and knew what to do. He was taking the brunt of this for me. I was going to owe him big time for that.

  After I had told Ace what I had learned at the crash site, he refused to say anything more. He wanted me to back off. He even released me from my promise to him. But when it was clear I wasn’t going to just go back to my life without some answers, he made me promise to be very careful. I hadn’t seen the old guy look so worried before. Clearly, he knew something he didn’t want to tell me. I didn’t push, but I would at some point down the road.

  From behind me, Fleet said, “Doc, you really, really need to take a look at this before you touch anything else.”

  “Why?”

  “Just come look, will you?”

  I could tell he was starting to get annoyed at me. I sighed and moved away from the alarm control panel. There was just no escaping this, even by jumping into the hot oven of a dead subdivision. I took a deep breath of the warm air, and like walking into a torture chamber, I stepped into the darkened, cool house.

  It took me a moment before my eyes adjusted to the dim light, then a moment longer to realize what I was looking at.

  No damn wonder Fleet had been calling me.

  What might have been a tastefully done living room looked like a hurricane had gone through it. Furniture was tipped up and the bottoms ripped open, art was off the walls, sitting on the floor, backs ripped open, and in a couple corners even the carpet had been pulled up.

  Someone had clearly done a very careful search of Carson’s home.

  “Wonderful,” I said. “Wasn’t killing him enough?”

  “Seems like it wasn’t,” Fleet said. “Don’t touch anything and keep an eye on that door.”

  I doubted anyone was coming back at the moment, but I moved closer to the door and studied the big living room as Fleet dug his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and called the police.

  So, this was the place Carson had lived. Even with all the destruction, it felt comfortable. I didn’t want it to, but it did. All I wanted to do was go through the place, get the inventory for the estate, then sell it, furniture and all.

  “Three minutes,” Fleet said, hanging up after giving the police the address.

  He looked around, studying the mess just as I had been doing while he was on the phone. “Got any idea what they were after?”

  “Not a clue,” I said. “Money, more than likely. They heard he’d been killed, decided to come raid his poker funds.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Fleet said, sounding as worried as I had heard him sound in a long time.

  I didn’t say anything, but I hoped I was right as well. I had a hunch I wasn’t, and I was going to find out real soon why not.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Las Vegas, Nevada. August 22

  THE DETECTIVE WHO arrived with two uniformed officers was a middle-aged guy named Farmer. He had a bad comb-over covering a sunburned, balding head, and weighed sixty pounds too much for his five-foot-six frame, all carried like a bowling ball around his stomach. He was sweating almost constantly, even in the air-conditioning, and carried a bottle of water like it was a lifeline.

  He had known of Carson and told me how sorry he was to hear about my father’s death as I shook the detective’s sweating, slick hand. I thanked him, because it was just easier than saying anything else.

  I also managed to not wipe off my hand until his back was turned. Some of the politeness my mother had tried to teach me as a child clearly had stayed with me. Either that or I was just getting old.

  Farmer and his men spent two full hours going slowly through the place, taking pictures, fingerprinting selective areas, and looking for who-knew-what. I had expected a quick stop-by from a patrolman, a nod that yes, we had been robbed, and a report filled out and filed, never to be looked at again. But that clearly wasn’t the way it was happening. At one point, when I asked Farmer why they were doing such a careful job, he said that because of the nature of Carson’s death, they were taking extra time and making sure everything was covered.

  Made sense to me.

  After they took our statements and did their fingerprinting and picture-taking in the dining room, Fleet and I sat at the big oak dining table and said nothing, just waiting and watching. If it had been up to me, I’d have gone out and sat in the car. But with a shake of the head, Fleet vetoed that idea for some reason. So we stayed, sitting, doing nothing but watching the police.

  No matter how many ways I looked at this situation, Carson’s death and this robbery, I didn’t see money as the reason. And about an hour into the police nosing around, my hunch was confirmed. Farmer brought out a briefcase full of cash and sat it on the table. “Top of a bedroom dresser,” he said. “It was searched and then left. There’s cash everywhere, in bundles on the dresser, in one drawer, in a safe that was opened. Whoever did this wasn’t looking for money, that’s for sure.”

  “I figured as much,” I said.

  He looked at me like a beginning poker player, trying to pretend that by staring intently at me, he could get a clue as to what cards I held. “You know what they might have been after?”

  I looked the detective right in the eye and told him the truth. “Not
a clue. I wish I did.”

  Farmer nodded. “So, why so much money just lying around?”

  “Carson was a typical professional poker player,” I said. There looked to be about a half million in the case. “At least one who was winning. And you can bet we’ll find even more in the cages at three or four casinos around town.”

  “Why?” Farmer asked, clearly puzzled at the idea of someone leaving more cash lying around than he made in salary in ten years. “He need this much?”

  Fleet snorted, almost in disgust. “A professional poker player can’t seem to go to the grocery store without ten thousand in his pocket. They feel naked without it.”

  “It’s just part of the business,” I said. “When you’re playing well and things are working, you’re flush with cash. Carson played in some high-stakes games where that much cash wouldn’t get you a seat at the table.”

  “Oh,” was all Farmer said. “You carry that much?”

  I nodded. “I have at times.” I didn’t want to tell him I had less than a hundred in cash on me at the moment. I just didn’t need money up on the river, and I hadn’t bothered to get any out of my safe over the last few days. My mind wasn’t on playing poker just yet.

  With a shake of his head, Farmer left the cash with us and went back to looking the place over and taking pictures.

  One thing had now been answered clearly. Money was not of interest to the person who did this. And was not a concern. We had a very rich robber here. And more than likely a murderer.

  Two hours after they arrived, Farmer shook my hand once more with his slick grip and then Fleet shut the door behind them, trapping me in Carson’s home.

  I took a deep breath and pushed down the urge to dash for the door and the wonderful heat beyond. I needed to look through this place, at least once, then turn it over to Fleet and the people he would hire to help him inventory everything for the estate. Granted, I owned all this, but I sure didn’t want any of it.