by Jeff Carson
“You can check it all for certain. They’ll have the funding package on file at the university, you can bet on that. And really, you couldn’t hide a second skeleton if it came up on the readout. There are smart people who write those funding checks.”
Wolf nodded.
Dr. Mathis chuckled and shook his head. “Okay, so all this is making sense now. The fossil dealer that was killed? Did Professor Green kill a fossil dealer? What happened, was he selling the bones and decided to … or wait a minute … did Professor Green die?”
Karen and Dr. Mathis stared at him.
Wolf said nothing.
“He did.” Karen covered her mouth. “That’s why he’s gone all of a sudden?”
Wolf waved a hand. “I’m sorry. I really can’t discuss the details of the case. But you’ve really helped.”
“How did he hide this from Dr. Talbot?” Dr. Mathis chuckled. “That’s what I want to know. Must have crapped himself. What if he got caught? ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, we found a second skeleton.’”
Wolf turned to leave.
“Mr. Wolf?” Karen called after him. “Are you leaving?”
Wolf kept walking. “I’m headed into town. You guys don’t mind walking back up to your camp, do you?”
Wolf heard an answer but didn’t listen. He and Jet climbed in and drove away from the main camp toward Steven’s truck. He passed the pickup, passed Steven’s tent, and passed underneath a swarm of lights on the side of the mountain, some of which pointed his way. As he followed the tracks into the northwest Colorado desert, he thought he heard a voice through the open windows say, “Wolf! Where are you going?”
He switched on his radio and it auto-tuned to their active frequency.
“Sheriff Shumway, this is Detective Wolf, come in.”
“Wolf!” Shumway’s voice was crisp and clear. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the station. I need to speak to you.”
There was a long hesitation. “Negative, Wolf.”
“It’s urgent.”
“Then stop and come back up here and tell me about it.”
Wolf kept his foot on the gas. “I need to speak to the students again.”
Another hesitation. “What the hell’s going on?”
Wolf pressed the button. “I’ll tell you at the station. Over and out.”
“Shhhhhhhhit. I’ll see you there.”
Wolf switched off the radio and spun the wheel to avoid a clump of cacti.
Chapter 30
Wolf rubbed an eye as he descended out of the high country toward Windfield while Jet snored in back. His dash clock said 9:04 and Wolf was looking forward to joining Jet in dreamland, but he knew it might still be a long time coming.
Picking up his phone, he checked cell service and still had nothing.
Wolf felt the pressure mounting to get the job done—for Cassidy, and Keegan, and Trudy Frost.
Wolf knew how it felt when someone took away a person you loved with all your heart. After the initial shock and longing for ridiculous things like time reversal, or a miraculous resurrection, next comes an insatiable desire for justice. There was no way of moving forward until that justice was served.
The Frosts were stuck in a kind of mourning Purgatory, and it was up to Wolf to help them out. And for once he felt like he was close.
Wolf’s phone buzzed and he picked it up. He’d missed calls from Jack, MacLean, and Patterson.
He pushed Jack’s number and listened to it ring.
“Hello?” Jack’s voice was barely audible over the rumbling of Wolf’s SUV.
“Hey, man. How’s it going?”
“What’s going on? Are you all right?” Jack asked. “I’ve been calling you.”
Wolf nodded. “Yeah. I’m all right. Bad cell service up here. How about you?”
“I’m all right.”
“How are Cassidy and her family doing?”
A long pause. “They’re not doing too well. They keep crying and they don’t talk. They’re sleeping now, though. I guess that’s good.”
Wolf and Jack sat silently with one another for a few seconds. “Everyone still at Nate’s?”
“Yeah.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Sitting out on his deck worrying about you.”
Wolf smiled.
“Are you finding anything out?”
Two pinprick headlights shone in Wolf’s rearview mirror—Shumway finally catching up. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. Listen, get some sleep. You need it. It’s been a long day.”
“I will.” Jack said. “How’s Jet?”
“He’s fine. Get your ass to bed.”
“I will. Love you.”
Jack had scarcely said those words since he was much younger.
“I love you, too.”
Wolf hung up and opted to dial Patterson. MacLean could wait.
“Hello?” Patterson answered in a weak voice.
“Hey, I saw you called. Crap, I guess it was a few hours ago. Sorry, you asleep?”
She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry. I was just resting. Yeah, I called. Did you listen to my message?”
“No.”
“I went through the footage … actually Deputy Munford helped … anyway, the guy at the gas station was pretty careful with not letting the cameras catch his height against the height strip. He walked out of the building stooped over.”
She was talking about the multi-colored height indicator that was drilled into the wall next to most convenience store doorways nowadays.
“But what we noticed outside was the man wore the Converse All-Star shoes. And the guy’s feet were enormous. If you’ve met a guy with clown feet up there, then he’s your man. But otherwise, I think the guy was wearing shoes that were too big for him. In fact, I went back to the crime scene and confirmed the pressure the person exerted onto the front of the shoe was conspicuously low. Like, either someone never put their full weight on their toes, or they were wearing huge shoes. I’m going with huge shoes by the looks of the video.”
The headlights grew in his mirrors.
“Sir?”
“Yeah. Okay. You got a color on those shoes?”
“Black and white footage, so no. But they’re a dark color. Like a blue or black.”
“Or purple.”
“Yeah. Or purple.”
“What was the guy wearing?”
“A cowboy hat, Carhartt jacket, jeans … I can make a video snippet and send it to your phone.”
“Good idea.”
She paused. “I’m … um …”
“What?”
“Well I’m at home now. I don’t have the footage on my laptop. I left it on a flash drive in the station.”
“Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow morning is good enough. Get some rest and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Anything else?”
“Not really. We went back to the gas station and couldn’t get any prints off the gas terminal. Let’s see … they found a .38 slug lodged in Professor Green’s skull. Matched the other two in Frost.”
“Okay.”
“And that’s about all we’ve got here. MacLean’s on pins and needles waiting to hear from you.”
Wolf said nothing.
“I hope that shoe thing helps.”
“It does.”
“What’s going on up there?”
Wolf had slowed to a crawl and now Shumway was on his bumper, his headlights lighting up Wolf’s cab.
“I gotta go. Talk to you later.” Wolf pushed off the phone and dropped it in the center console.
Pulling over, Shumway pulled up next to him with a rolled down window.
“What the hell’s going on with you?” Shumway asked.
“You find anything else up at the scene?” Wolf asked.
“No.”
“I went down to Dig Two with Dr. Mathis and Karen Orpia.”
“Yeah?”
Wolf told him about t
he second skeleton.
“Two skeletons … that’s not possible, is it? What, two dinos were doin’ the nasty and got hit by a comet?”
Wolf told him about the location of the bones the team initially found and the second skeleton, and how the university would have pictures on file in something Dr. Mathis referred to as a “fund package”.
“All right. So we go to Utah tomorrow.”
Wolf nodded.
Shumway rubbed his chin with his hand “This case against these kids is more solid than the rocks up at that dig. If this second skeleton theory is right? That means all three of them are lying. Which means we go back to our original motive we talked about on day one: They were in on the deal four ways and figured out Green was going to take the money and run so they killed him. They’re acting like they don’t know about this second skeleton, because they knew they were going to ditch it and take the money.”
“But why kill Levi?” Wolf asked.
Shumway shrugged.
“And why come straight back and wait for the cops to come ask them about everything? They would have known we’d come to them, right? And the plaster … they left plaster in Steven’s truck. They left buckets down there with plaster all over the place inside of them. If they wanted to pretend like that first skeleton didn’t exist, why didn’t they wipe away all the evidence, especially if they knew they were going to kill Green and the cops would be crawling all over them at any time?”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’m just saying, these three students are acting like the last thing they expected was for cops to show up. Their actions are not consistent with having just killed three people. And why Levi?”
Shumway shook his head. Lifted a hand.
“I just talked to my deputy. She has the gas station video footage showing one of our perps wearing Converse shoes.”
Shumway raised his eyebrows. “There we go. So?”
“She says the man’s face is covered and he ducks down as he’s leaving the convenience store so she can’t get a height. But she also says she’s positive the man’s shoes were too big for him. He either has clown feet or is wearing shoes five too-many sizes big for him.”
Shumway gave him a dubious smile. “She thinks?”
“If this deputy thinks something, it’s usually right. She’ll send us the footage tomorrow morning so we can see for ourselves.”
Shumway took a huge breath and let it out. “So what now?”
“Now we know they had a second set of bones. I want to know where they kept them,” Wolf said. “There might be a clue there.”
“What are you going to do? Ask those students? That’s why you wanna talk to them? Psh. Why do you think they’ll talk now?”
Wolf said nothing. He had a point.
“I’m stopping for food on the way back.”
“Had to have been a storage unit,” Wolf said. “There aren’t any in Windfield, so how about east? East of the UrMover truck rental place.”
Shumway shifted into park and his truck rocked back and forth. “I told you that Pamela was crazy. She didn’t know where she was pointing.”
“And if she wasn’t crazy?”
“Then she’d be pointing to the nearest town, which is Logan’s Ferry, which is an hour east toward Steamboat Springs on 40.”
Wolf shrugged. “That would fit our timeline. They rent the truck at 12:30 pm, drive into Logan’s Ferry, start loading up the bones at 1:30. Let’s say it takes an hour to load them, so they finish at 2:30, come back to Windfield by 3:30, and then the students and Professor Green split—Green goes south to Rocky Points, and Felicia and Steven go back to the dig.”
Shumway nodded. “Then Steven and Felicia make their drive by of Dig One, and they come full circle, past their camp, and back down out of the quarry. They follow Professor Green … wait, Green was already driving south, so they couldn’t follow him. They must have known where Frost lived.”
“And why was it someone else in the video footage wearing Steven’s shoes?” Wolf asked.
Shumway rolled his eyes as if he was ultimately annoyed by the facts. “I’ll believe that footage when I see it.”
Wolf had his phone out and was searching for storage rental units in Logan’s Ferry. “There aren’t any storage unit rentals in Logan’s Ferry.”
“Ah Christ.”
They sat listening to their idling motors for a few seconds.
“Where else?” Wolf asked.
Shumway started to say something then his face dropped. “Wait.”
“What?”
“I know where they kept them.”
“Where? Let’s go.”
Shumway pointed to his dash clock. “It’s nine frickin’ thirty. You said you wanna go talk to these students, and we got a murder scene up there, and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. If anything, let’s go eat, and we can get a fresh start on this in the morning.”
“You’re right. The students aren’t going to talk anyway. Tell me where this place is, I’ll let you know what I find.”
Shumway rolled his eyes and rolled forward. “Yeah, right. Follow me.”
Chapter 31
Wolf followed Shumway down a cracked asphalt county road, five miles past the Windfield Moving Company. They were traveling in the direction Pamela had pointed earlier, along flat country lit by the moon, surrounded by dark hills that blotted out the blanket of stars.
Shumway’s brake lights blossomed as he slowed and took a left at a grove of deciduous trees that hugged the banks of an unseen river.
Wolf slowed and followed, and hundreds of insects swam through Wolf’s headlights as he bumped onto the rutted and potholed dirt.
Continuing on for a quarter mile, Shumway slowed as their bobbing headlight beams lit a ranch house squatting in the trees ahead.
The windows of the broken down house shined, revealing cracks and holes in the glass. A wall of weeds higher than a grown man stood against the warped wood panel siding. Next to the house sat an aluminum building that looked much newer.
Shumway slowed at the outbuilding and parked. Keeping his headlights on, he illuminated two white oversized garage roll doors.
Slowing to a stop next to him, Wolf shut off the engine, grabbed his Maglite and got out.
Jet moved an ear, but otherwise remained dead asleep, so Wolf left him inside and shut the door.
“This is it.” Shumway swiveled and looked into the dark recesses of the property.
The sweet smell of weeds and grasses was thick, and the call and response of crickets came at them in stereo from every angle.
“This is what?”
“Where my great grandparents homesteaded a hundred years ago,” he pointed, “where my grandfather taught me how to shoot a .22.”
Wolf nodded and waited patiently for Shumway to finish a flashback, and then Shumway turned around and took hold of a roll door handle and twisted it. The clack of the locked handle echoed through the huge metal building. The other one was locked too.
“There’s a side door.”
Wolf followed him and clicked on his Maglite.
The side of the shed was overrun with huge weeds and grass that grew out of gravel. Behind the foliage was a window, and next to the window was a tan door with a cracked concrete landing at the foot of it.
Shumway twisted the knob. “Locked. Damn it.”
Shumway parted the weeds and pushed his way to the window. An orb of light glowed on the glass and the interior of the building lit up.
Wolf stepped next to him and shone his own flashlight inside.
Inside was vaulted space with metal crossbeams above and a crumbled concrete floor. A dusty pickup truck was parked inside.
“Professor Green’s truck?” Shumway asked. “Dodge Ram. Black. Can’t see the plates but that’s gotta be it.”
Shumway flipped his Maglite around and smashed the butt-end into the window. It smacked and the glass broke into large pieces and dropped. “Watch out!”
Wolf glared at Shumway.
“Sorry.” Shumway straightened his pants. “You can probably reach inside and unlock it now.”
What was left in the window frame was a yawning mouth of glass fangs.
Shumway patted his belly. “I can’t reach. Too fat.”
Wolf stepped up and knocked the rest of the glass out with his flashlight, then reached inside and twisted a lock on the knob. “Try it now.”
Shumway twisted the knob. “I think there’s a deadbolt.”
There was a deadbolt, so Wolf leaned back in and pulled at it. The bolt was sluggish, like pulling a nail out of wood, and Wolf suddenly felt exposed in his position, so he pointed the light in Shumway’s eyes.
Shumway held up his hand. “Hey, watch it.”
“There.” Wolf said as he opened the deadbolt and lowered his flashlight.
“What the hell?” Shumway said.
Wolf ignored him and opened the door. Snapping on a light switch, two fluorescent tube bulbs buzzed overhead. Wolf squinted at the sudden blast to his retinas and walked inside.
The interior was vast, dwarfing even the full-sized pickup truck inside. The once-smooth concrete floor was chipped and crumbly, darkened with old oil stains where farm machinery once sat, and on top of that were chunks of white plaster.
“I don’t remember that being there.” Shumway pointed at a steel cabled winch attached to a boom arm. The base of the six-foot high contraption was bolted to the concrete floor.
Wolf pulled on some rubber gloves and went to the passenger side door of the truck and opened it. Inside the glove compartment was a registration card.
“Jeffrey Green’s truck.”
“You’d better take a look at this.”