by Mike Markel
“I very much doubt that, Mr. Kress. What were you talking about?”
He shook his head.
I couldn’t tell if he was saying he wasn’t going to tell me or he couldn’t talk. I didn’t move.
After a minute, Kress began to pull himself together. He retrieved a tissue from his pants pocket and tried to dry his face. “He said he wanted to meet with me. Said he needed to talk with me.”
“What about?”
“I asked him that. He wouldn’t say.”
“Where did he want to talk to you?”
“He said it didn’t matter. In Marshall, here in Rawlings, somewhere in between.”
“So what did you say?”
“I told him this wasn’t a good time. I had some commitments here, with Rivers United, I mean. And with my family.”
“So what did he say?”
“Just that it was important. That he needed to meet with me. I was the only person he could trust.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. It was too dangerous to discuss on the phone. But that I had to meet him.”
“So how did you leave it with him?”
“I said I’d get back to him later today. I needed to check my schedule and see what I could do.”
“Mr. Kress, is there anyone who can vouch for where you were yesterday?”
A look of horror came over his face. “Do you think I might have had something to do with this?”
“Is that a no?”
“No, of course it’s not. My wife—she knows I was here all day. I work right here, in the house.”
“All right, Mr. Kress.” I straightened up and stood. “If you can remember anything more specific—I mean, about what you and Bill Rossman talked about—I want you to get in touch with me.” I handed him my card. “We’re going to give this information to the Marshall Police Department. They don’t know who attacked Bill Rossman. They might want to get in touch with you.” I let that idea hang in the air.
Chapter 26
We were driving back to headquarters, somewhat down because Nathan Kress didn’t tell us anything useful about what he and Bill Rossman chatted about on the phone, when I got a call from Detective Carpenter in Marshall.
“Hey, Detective,” I said. “Good to hear from you. What’s up?” I put the phone on Speaker.
“Calling to let you know we got the guys who beat up Bill Rossman.”
“Talk to me.”
“We tracked down Bill Rossman’s roommate from the man camp. Guy named Andy Bellows. He was home for a two-week R&R. Anyways, he told us three roughnecks came to the room looking for Bill, the night before the attack. They were real pissed off, but he wasn’t there. The roommate knew the guys, gave us their names. Turns out they’re on the same crew as Bill Rossman.”
“Why were they looking for him?”
“They saw him draining some wastewater out of the truck that hauls it away. They asked him what he was doing. He gave them some answer they didn’t like. So next morning they confronted him again, beat the crap out of him. After he was unconscious, poured the wastewater down his throat.”
“What did the guys think Bill was doing?”
“Not exactly sure, but they concluded it wasn’t good. If you’re pulling some dirty water out of the truck, they figure you’re going to analyze it. Guess they thought Bill was working for someone who wants to prove that the wastewater is dirtier than the company admits.”
“And if the wastewater is dirty, the rig could be shut down—at least temporarily.”
“The three guys aren’t the smartest boys in town, but that seems to be their thinking.”
“Okay, so where do you stand with the three guys?”
“We separated them, offered them each a good deal for rolling on the others. Two of them wouldn’t talk to us, but the third one says he didn’t actually kick Bill Rossman or pour the shit down his throat. He’s the one who talked to us. We’re working with our prosecutor right now to figure out what charges to file on them. But I wanted you to know that we got it under control. The crime occurred right where we thought it did: on the drilling site.”
“Excellent work, Detective. That’s great news. Thanks for catching us up,” I said and ended the call. “Shit.”
“I understand the ‘great news,’” Ryan said. “But why the ‘Shit’?”
“‘Shit’ because the two cases are now in two jurisdictions, and it’s gonna be harder for us to link them together.” I kept driving toward headquarters.
“Talk me through that.”
“Nathan Kress on the phone with Bill Rossman a couple minutes before he gets beat up. What do we do with that? Write it up, send it to Carpenter?”
“Well, yeah, we ought to do that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it on the Lee Rossman case.”
“All right,” I said. “We’ll be at headquarters in five minutes. You’re you; I’m the chief. Explain to me what we ought to do about Nathan Kress and how we link Bill Rossman and the dirty water to the murder of Lee Rossman. Remember, the crimes occurred in different jurisdictions. And were committed by different people.”
He was silent. Finally, he said, “The key is to understand why the three guys beat up Bill Rossman. Right now, all the police in Marshall have is the one guy who says it’s about dirty water.”
“But that guy only made a statement. He wasn’t deposed, wasn’t testifying under oath. For all we know, he didn’t even have an attorney present when he talked.”
“All of which works in our favor,” Ryan said. “If we can push Nathan Kress a little more and get a better idea of what Bill Rossman was up to, we might be able to link the dirty water to corporate.”
“And if we can do that,” I said, “there’s the link to Lee Rossman. Which lets us investigate Cheryl Garrity, the number two in the company.”
“Maybe,” Ryan said. “But unless she’s willing to formally report the hacking, how are we going to investigate her?”
“Like I said before, shit.” I pulled the Charger into the parking area behind the headquarters, and we made it to our desks. I hung my coat over the back of my chair.
“How are we going to go after Lauren Wilcox if Cheryl Garrity doesn’t report a crime?”
“If we could look at Lauren’s account at the university, we might be able to tie her to Nathan Kress and Bill Rossman and link the two cases that way.”
“You’re thinking maybe Bill Rossman was working with both of them but he used phones with Nathan Kress and email with Lauren Wilcox?” Ryan said.
“I’m not sure what I’m thinking, but if Bill was attacked because of something at Rossman—”
“Not because he was snaking someone else’s girl—”
“That’s right, the two crimes have to be related. We’re just not getting it yet. Why was Bill taking the dirty water? And how does that link up with his father’s murder?”
“Let’s take a walk down to the incident room,” Ryan said. “I want to come at this a different way.”
We left the detectives’ bullpen and rushed to the incident room.
“We’re not having any luck linking the two crimes. Let’s see if we agree on who we still like?”
“For which crime?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s just see who we think is clean, who isn’t.”
I waved at him to go ahead. I settled into a chair. Ryan walked over to the board. “Susan Warnock, Lee Rossman’s girlfriend. Any evidence she’s involved with either crime?”
“Not that I can put my finger on.” I thought a second. “Put it this way: There’s nothing we can use to push her harder.”
“Agreed,” Ryan said. “Ron Eberly, Florence’s boyfriend.”
“Except that he’s a scumbag who stabbed his best friend in the back—”
“But there’s no evidence he stabbed him in the front.”
“Very nice,” I said. “But yeah, nothing we can pursue unless some new evidence turns up.”
&n
bsp; “And it’s the same with Florence.” Ryan said. “We can come up with motives for almost everyone, but nothing that gives us probable cause to go looking for more.”
“So unless Lee Rossman was stabbed by a hooker or a thief, we’re left with only three players we can squeeze: Lauren Wilcox, Nathan Kress, and Cheryl Garrity. Am I leaving someone out?”
Ryan looked at the board again. “That’s all there is.” He stood there, hands on his hips.
“Of the three of them,” I said, “the one who’s gonna talk first is Nathan Kress. Obviously, Lauren Wilcox is gonna do everything she can not to cooperate, and Cheryl Garrity has lots of experience dealing with regulators and protesters. She’s tough. I say we go at Nathan again.”
“How?”
“Drive back to his place. Put him in the cruiser, throw him in Interrogation, let him look at the bracelets on the table for twenty minutes, then we come at him hard. I don’t believe him when he says he doesn’t know what Bill Rossman wanted to talk about.”
“You want to tell the chief?”
I thought a second. “No, it’s just a follow-up interview.”
We headed out, back to Nathan Kress’s cold, dark house. Through the gate, up the walk. I rapped on the door, hard. Ryan looked at me. “It’s all in the wrist.”
The footsteps were rapid. Kress opened the door. “Detectives,” he said, “you scared me.”
“Sorry, Mr. Kress.” There was no sorrow in my voice. “You need to come to the station with us, right now. Make a statement.”
“I don’t understand.” His voice was high-pitched, his eyes wide. “We just spoke. I told you everything I know.”
“You’re gonna tell us again. Let’s go.”
“I need to tell my wife where I’m going.”
“You have fifteen seconds. If you’re not back in fifteen seconds, you wear handcuffs. Understand?”
He nodded and rushed back into the house.
“Easy does it,” Ryan said.
“I’m tired of people jerking me around. Every damn thing he knows, I’m gonna get it. Now.”
Nathan Kress hurried back to the front door, looking flush and out of breath. Ryan put him in the back seat, pushing his head down like they do on TV, to add to the atmosphere.
“What are you doing?” Kress said. “What do you think I’m not telling you?”
“We’re bringing you in to make a statement. We’ll turn the recorder on. That way, when it gets to court, there’s no question about who said what. In the meantime, sit tight and do what we say.”
“When what gets to court?”
That was a good question. I had no idea. So I didn’t say anything.
We walked Kress in through the front entrance, with its lobby full of flags and photos of the president, the governor, and all the police chiefs. Then, inside the steel door, around the sergeant’s desk, where a couple of uniforms were processing the misdemeanors and low-level felons wearing cuffs and sitting on the wooden benches. Coming through the front entrance gives you a clearer sense that we’re cranking up the machine.
We put Kress in Interview 1, the room with handcuffs attached to a bar on the beat-up metal table. “Stay here,” I said to him. Ryan and I left, walked through the door labeled Utility, and checked on him through the glass. He was squirming and sweating.
“He’s not going to need twenty minutes,” Ryan said.
“Okay, ten,” I said. “I’m gonna hit the ladies’. See you back here in ten.”
When I got back, Ryan was still looking through the window. Kress was sitting there with his head in his hands. It was time.
“Let’s go,” I said. I’d brought with me the dummy folder full of scrap paper with the words “Rossman, William” written in Sharpie on the tab. I dropped it on the table. Ryan walked over to the controls for the video recorder on the wall. He turned it on. I announced the date and time and who was in the room.
“Okay, Mr. Kress. You told us earlier that you were in communication with Bill Rossman early yesterday morning, before he went to the rig and was attacked. You told us Rossman said he wanted to meet with you. That is what you told us, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” His voice was shaky. “Yes, that is the truth.”
“And you said you didn’t know why he wanted to meet with you. Is that correct?”
He tried to speak, but his throat seized up. He cleared it. “Yes.”
“That’s not true, Mr. Kress. You do know why Bill Rossman wanted to meet with you.”
Nathan Kress looked terrified, which was what I was hoping for. I’ve done this at least a hundred times: accusing people of knowing shit they say they don’t know. Their faces tell you what will happen next. If they really don’t know, they look real confused about why you think they’re not telling you everything. If they’re hardasses, they look defiant, sometimes even confident, like you can bully them all you want, but they’re not going to answer because there’s nothing more to say and you can’t prove there is. But when they look terrified like Kress did now, it’s because they’re thinking a few moves down the board, wondering how we got the information that’s going to ruin their day.
“Best thing you can do right now, Mr. Kress, is tell us the truth. We don’t think you’re implicated in the attack on Bill Rossman, but if you withhold evidence, we have to re-think that. Bill Rossman told you why he wanted to meet, didn’t he?”
Kress’s eyes darted to the left, then back at me, then down to his hands on the table. He was about to tell me.
He lowered his head to the table and started to moan in agony. He started hyperventilating and crying, the snot and spit all over the scratched steel table. Ryan looked at me, as if he wanted to do something to help him or get help or something. I put up my palm to tell him not to move.
The three of us sat there, Kress falling apart, trying to get control of himself. After a couple of moments, he raised his head and looked at me, his face pale and wet and disgusting. “He was going to give me the sample of the waste water.”
“Why was he going to do that?”
“I told him I could get it analyzed for him.”
“What did he think you were gonna find out about it?”
“That it was dirtier than the company reported.”
“Reported to who?”
“The EPA.”
“Why did he come to you?”
“Said he trusted me.”
“Why did he trust you?”
“I don’t know. His father trusted me. I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you just tell us this?”
“It’s illegal.”
“What is?”
“The dirty water is sealed after it’s pumped into the truck. Breaking the seal is a violation.”
“So you were afraid you’d conspired to break the law?”
He looked at me, wiping his face with the palm of his hand. “I should have told him not to do it. Not to get mixed up in something like that. I should have known. The guys he worked with …” He started breaking down again.
“What about them?”
“What happened to Bill is my responsibility.”
“What was Bill going to do with the information, the analysis? Who was he gonna tell?”
Nathan Kress shook his head, unable to speak.
“Did Bill Rossman say anything about Lauren Wilcox?”
He looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Those times you talked to Bill Rossman on the phone, did he mention Lauren Wilcox? Did he say anything about going to her the way he was going to you?”
“No, he never mentioned Lauren Wilcox.”
“And did you ever say anything about her? Anything about you working with her on analyzing the dirty water?”
He wiped at his nose. “No, I never did. Nobody ever said anything about Lauren Wilcox.”
Chapter 27
“Chief, we want to get you up to speed on the Bill Rossman case.” Ryan and I were sitting in his offic
e. The chief had also invited Larry Klein, our prosecutor, because we needed his help.
“Go ahead,” the chief said.
“Nathan Kress told us everything he knows about what happened with Bill Rossman out in Marshall. At least, we think he did. We came at him pretty hard. Bill Rossman was attacked because he grabbed some dirty water and was gonna take it to Nathan Kress, who offered to get it analyzed.”
Larry Klein leaned forward in his chair. “Who attacked him?”
“Three of his buddies on the drilling rig. They thought he was trying to shut down the rig or something by showing that the wastewater was dirtier than the company said it was.”
“Okay,” the chief said. “The crime occurred in Marshall, right? It’s their case, then.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s the key to the murder of Lee Rossman.”
The chief shifted in his chair. “Explain.”
“The attack on Bill Rossman was motivated by his actions on the drilling rig. It had something to do with company policy and operations.”
Larry Klein spoke. “Not necessarily. That hasn’t been established yet. That’s what the three guys are asserting—”
“Actually,” I said, “it’s only one of the three guys—the one who wants to cop to a lesser charge.”
Larry Klein waved his hand dismissively. “Worse yet.”
“All right,” I said. “I understand it’s not proven, but at least it’s evidence. It’s the link we’re looking for to tie it to Rossman Mining.”
“Tell me the story.” Larry Klein sat there in his black suit, his right leg folded beneath his left knee. His expression was beyond skeptical. Just this side of contemptuous. “What are the issues?”
“Cheryl Garrity says Lauren Wilcox hacked the Rossman Mining data system,” I said, “planted some spy software on them.”
“Has the company brought it to you?”
“No.”
“Until she does that—or files it in civil court—it didn’t happen. Next?”
“I want to look at Lauren Wilcox’s email at the university.”
“I want to be taller,” Larry Klein said.
“If we can see that she did hack the company, that brings us one step closer to understanding what was going on at the company, which gets us one step closer to understanding why someone killed Lee Rossman.”