In Harm's Way

by Ridley Pearson

“Whatever you want,” she said. She walked him through the operation of the video software, which turned out to be straightforward, and in turn caused him to wonder why she’d offered to stay and help out. The only thing he could think of was that she wanted to eavesdrop, to stay as current on the investigation as possible, and it troubled him.

  “Where’d you go?” she said.

  He grimaced. “Right here.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “A lot on my mind.”

  “You went cold all of a sudden.”

  He hated being so easily read. “Did I? It wasn’t intentional.”

  Nancy saved him by knocking, and opening the ICC’s door. “Kevin’s on his way. I heard back from McClure and he’s e-mailed your request. And Brandon told me to tell you he’s here-the person you wanted.” She knew better than to name names.

  Fiona stood, looking down onto Walt, and said, “Good luck. I guess. It being my laptop, I’ll need it back, so I’ll wait in the break room.” She was fishing for his invitation to remain in the room with him.

  “Thank you,” he said, irritating her. To Nancy he said, “Okay. Have Brandon send him in. I want him one-on-one.”

  Gilly Menquez entered the ICC sheepish and confused, clearly overwhelmed by the room’s size and the abundance of high-tech audio/visual equipment. He joined Walt at the front table where Fiona had set up her laptop. The video window on the overhead screen was black.

  “What’s this about, Walt?”

  “I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”

  Gilly sat down in the chair Fiona had been occupying, alongside Walt. He kept his hands clenched tightly in his lap.

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he said.

  “I gave you a break, Gilly.”

  “I know that. Appreciate it, Sheriff.”

  “And how do you repay me?”

  Gilly couldn’t bring himself to look at Walt. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Think before you say anything, Gilly. There are no lawyers involved at the moment. That can change.”

  Gilly dared a glance, but couldn’t hold the eye contact.

  “Are you drunk, Gilly? Right now, I mean? Have you been drinking?”

  “Two beers. I swear that’s all. I’m fine.”

  “I need you in your right mind.”

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “Okay then,” Walt said. “That’s going to go down in the statement.” Walt scribbled a note.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you going to mess with me, Gilly?”

  “I swear, Sheriff, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Ten, fifteen years ago, a person in my position would have just beat the crap out of a person in your position. It wouldn’t have been this way.”

  “I don’t mean to make you angry, Sheriff.”

  “Some things we can’t help.”

  That seemed to hit deeply.

  “Are you going to tell me about it, or am I going to have to explain it to you?” Walt asked.

  “I… don’t… know what you’re talking about.”

  Walt took a deep breath and spoke in a harsh, faint voice. “Damn you, Gilly.”

  Menquez ventured another look, but again couldn’t maintain it.

  “The first time I suspected something,” Walt explained, “was when I saw how thick the forest was over the SUV-Gale’s rental. You said you’d picked up the heat signature from it. I don’t think so. If everyone hadn’t descended on the site at once, maybe I’d have spotted your tracks by daylight. You knew that about me-my tracking skills. I should have understood how it was you failed to hold them all back from the scene. Should have seen through that.”

  “Sheriff, I…” He hung his head.

  “Putting the ATM card back. That was quick thinking.”

  “I don’t know nothing about any of this, Sheriff.”

  “But it was a stupid thing to do. You could have just thrown it out. Tossed it into a dumpster. But I imagine that’s when it began to unwind for you: how to make it look like you’d just come across Gale’s rental, when in fact you’d discovered it much earlier.”

  “Don’t know nothing about any ATM card.”

  “Blompier mentioned the poacher case. The ATM card. The lack of a camera in that ATM. Your poacher case, Gilly-the case you handled. There were only a few of us who knew that particular ATM didn’t have a camera in it. You knew. That’s why you chose it.” Walt gave him a moment to absorb it all. “Not telling me about the SUV, that’s not exactly a crime. Not something you could go to jail for. Lose your job, maybe. But not jail time. It’s when you sobered up and realized how deep you were in this that you decided to return the card to the wallet, to let me find Gale’s SUV. You thought that card being found still in his wallet might make things okay. But we’ve been onto the withdrawals since they first started.”

  A person couldn’t lower his head more than Menquez was now. “I got no idea what you’re talking about here, Sheriff.”

  “You sure that’s the way you want to play this, Gilly?” Walt reached for the laptop. “I need to clear this up. I need to know what you found when you first came across the SUV. I need a clean chain of evidence, and you screwed that up for me. I can’t get that now, and you’re to blame. But you’re of value to me if you’re willing to come clean and tell me exactly what happened, exactly what you found, what you saw. You’re nothing to me if you play dumb like this.”

  Menquez remained bent forward.

  “Have you lost your job?” Walt asked rhetorically. “I suspect you have. Are you in jail? Not yet. Cut your losses, Gilly. Play it smart.”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “Gilly…”

  He leaned into Walt and whispered harshly. “You got nothing.”

  Walt dropped his fingers onto the space bar. The black and white video ran on the overhead screen, winning Gilly’s attention. But it played too quickly for him to see it for exactly what it was.

  Walt hit the rewind button and played the clip again.

  The screen showed an elevated view of a quiet street with the signs of Ketchum establishments lining either side. There was an Inter-Mountain Bank sign a block in the distance. The short clip played out as a series of stills-like from a bank’s security cameras. A Forest Service pickup truck entered the frame, moved down the street, and pulled into a parking space in front of the bank.

  “Recognize that truck? Traffic cams, Gilly. Did you know Ketchum has traffic cams now?”

  Menquez’s face went a pasty gray. He looked at Walt and back to the overhead screen as Walt played the clip again.

  “You see the time stamp?” Walt asked. “Days before you claimed to have found the SUV. There’s a time stamp on the withdrawal as well.”

  Menquez licked his dry lips. He looked like a beached fish.

  “We can get you into treatment, Gilly. We can do that before all this comes out, so the Service will foot the bill for it. You’ll come out clean and sober and on your feet, and maybe you even keep your job.”

  “I got kids. A family. I needed that money. I wouldn’t have taken it.”

  “You’ve been drinking up your paycheck, Gilly. I see this all the time. This is nothing new to me. Let me help you.”

  “I didn’t mean to screw things up for you. I found the truck. I swear I was going to tell you. But there was the wallet on the floor. The guy had written his PIN number on a piece of paper tucked into his wallet. I mean, how stupid is that? It’s like he was asking me to do it.”

  “I need you to run it down for me. I need every detail exactly as it happened.”

  “Including the bat?” Gilly said.

  Walt felt a bubble in his chest and did his best to suppress his surprise.

  “How come no one found that bat?” Gilly asked. “That wouldn’t have nothing to do with you, would it, Sheriff?”

  Walt wasn’t going to answer that. “Every detail,”
he said.

  “Including the bat? Or am I supposed to leave out the bat? Then again, maybe this is up for negotiation. Maybe both of us have something the other guy wants. Maybe we both got something to hide. Maybe this works out for the both of us.”

  “I need to know exactly what you did,” Walt said. “The chain of evidence is corrupted. It’s not going to hold up in court, but I need this evidence. Do not play with me, Gilly.”

  “But then that bat’s going to need explaining. That’s evidence too, right?”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “I imagine you are worried about that.”

  “You don’t want to go there.”

  “We’re already there-you and me. I’m not going anywhere but to treatment and jail, isn’t that right, Sheriff? Or maybe you’re buying me my next drink and we get all chummy-like.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.”

  “I saw you go to the back of the Jeep just when everyone showed up. I didn’t see you take nothing out of the Jeep, so maybe you put something in. You want to talk about evidence, Sheriff?”

  Walt pushed the legal pad toward Gilly. “I’ll give you thirty minutes. Every detail exactly as it happened. What you found, when you found it, what you did.”

  “I’m going to include tossing that bat into the woods,” Menquez said, taking a deep breath. “That’s right: it was lying there on top of the wallet. Didn’t see the blood on it until I moved it. But when I did, I chucked it out of there. That goes down here,” he said, tapping the pad, “unless you tell me otherwise.”

  “Did you see who drove the SUV?”

  “No. Engine was cold when I found it.”

  “You said there was blood.”

  “A stain on the bat. I know dried blood when I see it, Sheriff. You track poachers for thirteen years, there’s not much you haven’t seen.”

  “The bat and wallet were on the floor. Anything else? Was there anything else of value in there?”

  “Maybe there was, maybe there wasn’t.”

  Walt sensed there wasn’t. He pushed the pad even closer to Menquez. He needed a few minutes to get in front of the baseball bat as evidence. He hoped Boldt would answer the phone. “Exactly as it happened,” he said. He stood and headed to the door.

  “Whatever you say, Sheriff.” Gilly Menquez gurgled up a laugh.

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Walt said. He’d placed the call from his office phone where there would be a record of it. He felt like a juggler who kept adding balls to the circle he kept alive in the air. There was a limit to it all and he was quickly approaching it.

  “They developed prints,” Boldt said, half apologizing. “Three different sets. Last I was told, those prints were being run through ALPS. Not sure of the hang-up. Let me put you on hold.”

  The phone line went dead in Walt’s ear. Thirty seconds gave way to a minute. Closer to two minutes before the line popped and Boldt returned. “The delay was with ALPS. Their e-mail went down. They’ve had the results, we just never got them. My guy made a call just now. No hits, I’m afraid. The guy said he can and will e-mail them some other way. I’ll send them along when I get them.”

  Walt thanked him, and asked for the bat to be returned by overnight courier. “And all the paperwork, please.”

  “Chain of evidence.” Boldt didn’t miss much.

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You spoke with Matthews.”

  “Smart lady.”

  “Hang on,” Boldt said. “I just got them.” Walt heard a keyboard tapping, and a moment later an e-mail notice popped up in the lower corner of his screen.

  “That was fast,” Walt said.

  “She shared your conversation with me. I hope that’s all right?”

  “We’re in this together,” Walt said.

  “You get anything back on the blood evidence?”

  “Never went to the lab. Wynn’s lawyer, Evers, put a noose around it. The shoes are still in limbo. We’ll be lucky if we get them before the next millennium.”

  “It’s got to be either your case or mine,” Boldt said. “He didn’t cut himself shaving.”

  “My deputy got a little overzealous. If they take a deposition, we’re going to lose the evidence.”

  “Blood shadow,” Boldt said.

  “I didn’t catch that.”

  “You’re going to lose the blood evidence on the shoes,” Boldt explained. “But then there’s the matter of the shoes themselves.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

  “That’s ironic,” Boldt said, “because I think you may have just saved me. Do me a favor and send across the manufacturer and shoe size, will you please?”

  “Happy to do it.”

  “And if nothing else, convince the judge that it’s worth holding Wynn in town until the evidence is sorted out. I may need him to claim those shoes and I don’t want him going anywhere. I don’t want someone doing it for him.”

  “I’ll make a couple calls. You going to let me in on this?” Walt asked.

  “You’ll be the first to know,” Boldt said.

  They ended the call and Walt opened the e-mail that included nine attachments, all high-resolution scans of latent fingerprints. The Automated Latent Print System was a national fingerprint database for felons in all fifty states. The fact that these prints had not kicked out identities didn’t tell the whole story. Most states, including Idaho, also maintained databases of fingerprints of state health workers, teachers, law enforcement officers, politicians, judges, attorneys, and even some ministers and priests. There were national databases for federal employees as well. With the push of a button, Walt could initiate additional database searches. The searches would then generate candidate lists and the results would be scrutinized by hand by latent print experts. The results could take anywhere from hours to days, sometimes weeks, depending how Walt labeled the request, and the workload at the facility. Potential homicides moved to the top of the list. Aggravated assault would move a request down the list.

  Two people lived on the Engleton property full-time. One was a small woman just twenty-one, the other a part-time fishing guide who had single-handedly rescued a drowning child from a raging river.

  Walt typed up the request in the frame of the e-mail message set to be forwarded to several departments, both state and federal. His finger hovered over the enter key.

  “Kevin’s here.” Nancy’s voice, coming over the intercom.

  Walt pulled his hand away from the keyboard and into his lap. He pushed back his chair, the wheels squeaking.

  35

  Walt watched as his nephew worked on a Mac laptop on the opposite side of his desk. The physical similarities to Walt’s dead brother-the high cheekbones, the nearly permanent five o’clock shadow, the perfect teeth, a darkly brooding rugged handsomeness-reminded Walt how much he missed the beers on the back porch, the softball games, their shared dislike of their father. He’d tried to step in to fill the void for Kevin after Bobby’s death and would always wonder how much that had affected the failure of his own marriage. He and Kevin had been through some challenging times together. Looking at him now, his intense concentration, the singular focus, reminded Walt of Bobby even more.

  Alongside the laptop lay a scaled color printout of a human skull, with curved arrows indicating a region on the top of the skull that looked like a jigsaw puzzle. There were measurements written in McClure’s hand at the blunt end of the arrows, while their sharper ends pointed to the area of impact that had resulted in the death of Martel Gale.

  “Regulation baseball bat is forty-two inches,” Kevin said. He sat on the guest side of Walt’s office desk, facing his uncle on the other side of the open screen.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m doing this two ways-with and without a choked grip. Come on around.”

  Walt came around the desk and leaned in behind Kevin, his left hand on the boy’s shoulder. The screen showed two animated figures, looking like ma
nnequins against a plain background. Several boxes spread around the screen outside the center window held software tools, including one that contained two other, much smaller mannequin-like figures.

  “On the right is your victim,” Kevin said. “All six-foot-four and a half of him. A frickin’ giant. On the left is the giant killer. The bat is to scale and I Googled the average arm length for specific heights. You gave me five-foot-four, so this guy on the left is five-foot-four. So check it out.”

  He set the screen into motion. The figure on the left-not “a guy,” but Kira Tulivich, in Walt’s mind-hoisted the baseball bat and, in frame-by-frame slow motion, brought it down onto Gale’s head. Kevin used the mouse to draw an arrow at the area of impact and then pointed to the printout to his left.

  “Not even close,” Walt said.

  “He’s too short,” Kevin said, referring to the Kira figure. “This guy was hit way up on top of his head. Even if I set it so he doesn’t choke up,” he said, adjusting the bat in Kira’s hands and animating the action for a second time, “the bat hits the skull in about the same place, the problem being this guy just isn’t tall enough to reach the top of the victim’s head. So what I did was put him up a single step. Seven inches. Because maybe the guy with the bat’s standing on a step when he connects with this guy.” He repositioned the smaller figure. “And though it’s better, it’s actually too high, too tall. I mean if the victim is at the perfect distance away… sure. It can be made to work this way…” He moved Gale forward and this time, when animated, the bat landed squarely on the top of Gale’s head. Walt shuddered, able to see beyond the world of computer-realized mannequins. “But if it isn’t absolutely the perfect distance, what happens is a length of the bat connects from the back of the skull to the front, making like a trench instead of a pit.”

  “So, no good,” Walt said.

  “It takes a perfect storm,” Kevin said. “That’s all I’m saying. A step height and the perfect separation between the two. My guess, you could run this a dozen times and you’d be lucky for it to come out right once or twice. It’s not a high-percentage shot.”

  “And the high-percentage shot?”