by Susan Slater
“Good time to talk?”
“Look, about yesterday—”
“No explanation needed. I’m just looking for a second opinion.” Dan moved to stand in front of the sheriff. “I’m assuming you haven’t gone to the Feds, or am I wrong?”
“You have to ask?” The laugh Dan got said it all—Sheriff Howard wasn’t any more enamored of letting someone else call all the shots in his own backyard than Dan was. “Pull up a chair. How can I help?”
“Probably not do more than just listen.”
“You got it. Shoot.”
“Some of this might tread on sensitive issues—”
“Nothing sensitive here and I mean that. But before we start I just want to say thank you.”
“Thank you? For what?”
“Not telling the Feds the whole truth about the necklace. If they’d gotten ahold of Penny, that story about stealing for me—for our future together…well, I don’t have to tell you I’d be fodder for a review board. And it’s a little late in the game for that.”
“Some things best go unsaid. No need for anyone to know who doesn’t have a need.”
“I appreciate it. Just want you to know that.”
Dan nodded, then reiterated how Gert thought the boyfriend was none other than the late bank president, and how Elaine had seen Penny’s tattoo earlier while she was locked up. Making it look very much like Penny knew more about the abduction than she’d reported—maybe even knowing something about Amber’s death.
“Let me interrupt here to say the boyfriend was Woods. Penny came clean yesterday—seems Woods had a wife somewhere and he didn’t want to be put in the position of getting cleaned out. But it was going to cost him to get free. I was a good cover. Sort of one boyfriend stand in for another. I never suspected.” The sheriff stopped and cleared his throat. “Penny and I had had a relationship at one time but I married someone else—I’m not proud of what I did but I guess vindictiveness knows no limits. As I just said, a hint that I’d been in on the theft and my career would be over—pension and all. I think she planned to hold that over my head in case she got caught with the necklace. The whole thing could have been Woods’ idea. I really don’t know. And tattoos? She’s got more than that single four-leaf clover.”
Dan watched as red crept up the sheriff’s neck. Dan would just bet he had first-hand knowledge of Penny, probably not restricted to the forearm.
“But the Clovers are a gal’s group of riders. More than one Clover in the community or, at least, there used to be. A good clue but doesn’t necessarily point a finger at only Penny.”
“Any way we could get a list of names?”
“I doubt the group keeps a roster.”
Another dead end. Dan looked at his notes. “But the ricin, what do you make of that? Obviously, it was important enough to keep in the bank. I’m willing to say it was the reason for the tunnel—and maybe the reason Lawrence Woods was killed.”
“Could be. Black market toxins fetch pretty good prices—at least that’s what I’m told. It doesn’t take a lot to make the stuff, it’s just so dangerous to handle. Few are willing to take it on. Head to toe body protection and I’ve still heard of people getting sick. Small doses are lethal—a hand full of castor beans and you’re in business.”
“Castor beans? Ricin comes from castor beans?” Dan wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because I know where there’s at least one plant.” He quickly explained that Doc had given him a tour of the greenhouses. Said something about using the castor bean in research.
“Interesting. Remember how last August several government agencies received packets of ricin in the mail? It was pretty much a nationwide scare aimed at those who were most likely to vote yes for a bill allowing fracking in the southwestern United States.”
“Any evidence that the bill targeted New Mexico?”
“No, none that I remember reading about, but a fracking operation would more than disrupt the lesser prairie grasslands—pretty much put Doc out of business.”
“I don’t remember that any group took responsibility.”
“Don’t think anyone did. Of course, it was treated as an act of terrorism. Wouldn’t that be something if ol’ Doc Jenkins was sending out packets from Wagon Mound, New Mexico?”
“He had the operation in place for it. They send seed worldwide.”
“You up for a chat with the good Doc? I’d like to question him, not just throw him to the wolves. He’s been a top supporter of this community. I want to hear what he has to say.”
Dan was more than up for a chat. For the first time he felt like answers were right in front of him—maybe not clear quite yet, but there.
“I’m assuming you carry a little fire-power?”
Dan figured that would include the .38 strapped to his calf. “Yeah.”
“Tell you what, if you’re going to cover my back I’d like to know there’s a chance you could do some damage. Let me make a copy of your permit and driver’s license and you stick this in your belt.” The sheriff unlocked a drawer and slid a 9mm across the desk.
***
Penny opened the door and, if looks could kill, as the saying goes, there’d be a couple bodies on the porch, Dan thought. Frosty didn’t begin to describe the atmosphere.
“Hello, Penny, is the Doc in?”
Dan had to hand it to him, the sheriff was cool and business-like. And just when it looked like Penny was going to refuse them entrance, Doc Jenkins came down the hall.
“Hi, boys, what can I do for you? I just bottled a fresh batch of brew, a couple longnecks have got your names on ’em.”
Somehow drinking before noon meant nothing to this man and remembering the coffee, Dan allowed as how beer would be his beverage of choice—regardless of time of day. “I’ll take one.”
Once again, in less than twenty-four hours, they were seated around the same oak table. Dan deferred to the sheriff to get things going.
“Just want you to know this visit is unofficial. Just friend to friend.”
“Anything I can do to help. Just name it.”
Dan wondered if the Doc was aware of Penny’s transgressions. Somehow, he thought not. And there didn’t seem to be any reason to enlighten him.
“Guess there’s no good place to start.” The sheriff paused. Collecting his thoughts? Dan thought so. “I lost a deputy last week from ricin poisoning. Seems like a cache of it was being kept in the bank—safe deposit box. He came in contact with the powder when he was lifting prints.”
“Whew. That’s powerful stuff. Deadly, as you know, and not something the public knows much about.” Dan noticed the Doc looked genuinely concerned as he spoke.
The sheriff nodded in Dan’s direction and he leaned forward, elbows on the table. “When I took a tour of your greenhouses, you mentioned doing research on the castor bean—coming up with a new feed?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t worth following through with the plan. That stuff is just too dangerous to work with. And it doesn’t take much to have a lethal dose.”
“But you were raising plants here.”
“A few but I didn’t have the room to grow them to maturity. I did what everyone else does—I ordered beans online.”
“There are on-line suppliers?”
“Mr. Mahoney, castor beans are not a controlled substance. If you don’t alter them, they’re as safe as can be. They’re a naturally occurring lectin—a carbohydrate-binding protein. I’d say there’re a few hundred growers—all legit—who’d be glad to send you a packet or two.”
“Just out of curiosity, what kind of investment are we talking?”
“You can get more than you’d need to do some damage for twenty bucks. It only takes a few grains the size of table salt to take out a full grown man.”
“You kn
ow I’m going to have to give this information to the Feds.”
“Not a problem, sheriff. I have nothing to hide. My failure at producing a viable feed is well documented. Taxpayers are always looking at ways to cut the ‘pork’ out of special projects and our government was hoping I could come up with a cheap alternative to grains and alfalfa. Those chicks can put away the calories.”
“What kind of set up does it take to make ricin?” Dan was curious.
“Initially, just stuff you’d have in the kitchen. Coffee grinder, filters, a blender. You could walk right into the middle of a lab and not know what you were looking at. Purifying it causes a bit more of a problem, but a liter of manganese heptoxide will purify the ricin from eighteen castor beans.”
“Tough to get this manganese heptoxide?”
“Not if you have access to a bunch of depleted car batteries.”
Car batteries. Dan sat forward. Who did he know with a yard full of old cars? Someone who had to sleep in the garage and hadn’t gone into the house—not for any sentimental reasons involving his grandfather’s death but maybe because the place was toxic. Probably couldn’t even go in without full protective gear.
“Sheriff, could I talk to you for just a minute?” Dan pushed back from the table and walked to the front door. When they were out of earshot, he told the sheriff of his suspicions. “Tim Echols fits the profile. And Emily could be in it with him. Or maybe that’s why she moved out…he could have set up the excavation of the tunnel—he was a guard. And he had reason to scare me away and someone who could do it.”
“Worth looking into.” The sheriff ducked back into the dining room and offered their apologies, then followed Dan to the cruiser. “ I think you’re on to something. Sure won’t hurt to look around out at his place.”
The sheriff deftly guided the cruiser back to the highway and they rode several miles in silence. Something was eating at the sheriff, Dan just didn’t have a clue as to what.
“Something wrong?” Might as well ask, Dan decided.
“Yeah…well, maybe…if your suspicions pan out, then I have myself to blame—for a lot.”
“How so?”
“I lost sight of being a good cop. I always treated Tim Echols as if he were my own. I was blinded by trying to help a home-grown kid. It was my recommendation that got him into the police academy. I don’t have any kids so supporting a local boy…well, ol’ Chet was a friend of my father’s. My family came from around here before we moved up the road to Las Vegas. Chet took Tim in as a youngster—his daughter was an unwed mother with more problems than she could handle without trying to raise a baby, too. And Chet did a good job—with some help from the community. Whoever said ‘it takes a village’ got that right.”
A couple more miles of silence, then—“Ol’ Chet was a pillar of the community. Minor celebrity and all that. Sure, we’d all heard the Hollywood stories one or one thousand times, but to do what he tried to do to you…well, looks like he was just trying to help his own. I guess blood’s thicker than water.”
“What do you think went wrong?”
“Whatever goes wrong today for young as well as older folks—greed—get rich, get what you think is owed to you.” Dan knew the sheriff was thinking of Penny. “And they all think they can get by with it. Never get caught. As long as I live, the arrogance of the criminal mind will always astound me.”
“So how’d Tim get mixed up in it all?”
“Can’t tell you that. Connections are made electronically today that could’ve never happened just a few years back. The tunnel could have been his work. The cutting tools? Laser cutters and blowtorches? All part of a good car repairer’s inventory. Tim would have had access, but I’m wondering if the tunnel hadn’t outlived its usefulness. That as a drop it wasn’t finished.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, and I know what you’re going to think, that I’m trying to make excuses for Penny…but I wouldn’t put it past that snake of a bank president to seize an opportunity to line his own pocket, set up a robbery and talk Penny into declaring the necklace stolen. There wouldn’t have been any good reason to uncover that tunnel otherwise. It could have been there for years. But an extra few hundred thousand? And knowing the tunnel operation was coming to a halt, he had the time to loot the necklace before using it as a decoy and going for the whole banana. Problem was, they didn’t count on you.”
“I gotta say you’re making sense.”
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t have taken much romancing to turn Penny’s head. She wasn’t getting any younger. They don’t call ’em the weaker sex for nothing.”
Dan silently thanked his lucky stars that Elaine wasn’t with them. That way of thinking could get a guy in real trouble nowadays. And nothing was farther from the truth.
“I gotta feeling that Lawrence Woods got crosswise with whoever was behind the tunnel operation. Don’t think his double-dipping was appreciated especially after it put Wagon Mound in the spotlight. I’d hate to think Tim did Woods in…but it’s a real possibility.”
***
The obligatory junkyard dogs still on chains bayed a chorus of warnings as Dan and the sheriff got out of the car.
“No knocking on the front door unless you don’t value your extremities.” The sheriff unsnapped his holster.
“Tim lives and works in the back. I’ll see if he’s there.” Dan was headed in that direction when the first shot rang out. And it was from something big. His guess was an AK-47.
“Dammit. Grab some cover.” The sheriff was already prone wiggling his way underneath the bed of a rusted out truck. “No heroics. Let’s see who it is and what he wants. I’m calling for backup.”
Dan slid down between a panel truck and a flat bed with one wheel turned on its side. He couldn’t see the sheriff and only pinpointed his position by voice. Backup had a really nice ring to it. He eased the 9mm out of his belt and held it steady. If there was some way he could work his way around to the side, get a bead on Tim without him knowing it. It was going to be tough, Dan dropped to one knee still afraid to give his location away.
And that’s when the blue Sonata roared into the yard. The driver braked hard, then just left it running as she ran toward the front steps of the mobile right through the dogs who were turning themselves inside out trying to follow. Emily. And in a hurry and not in a very good mood if Dan could judge by her demeanor and how she was pushing dogs out of the way.
“Emily. Stop. Don’t go in there.” The yell came from Tim Echols who stepped from the garage door still holding the assault rifle. But he was too late.
The blinding flash, lightning-bright in intensity, was followed one nano-second later by an explosion so violent that it hurled empty propane tanks through the air in a rain of slivered glass and bits of metal. Dan was knocked against the side of the panel truck and buffeted to the ground face first—debris in his hair, dust up his nose and a trickle of blood oozing from his ear. And he knew he was the lucky one. The dogs and Emily had to have been obliterated. And the sheriff? He had been closer to the center of the blast than Dan. He could only hope he’d escaped.
But his bigger worry was Tim. Would he come looking for them? It was pretty certain that he’d escaped serious injury protected by the metal building. But now Dan could feel his skin start to blister. The heat from the fire was at a meltdown level. He had to move; he had to find the sheriff.
Pushing to a crouch, Dan stood against the truck thankful for its paneled sides. In the swirling particles of dust and ash it was difficult to see as far as the garage. But his hearing wasn’t impaired. A 4 by 4 truck roared to life just beyond the drive, driven no doubt by Tim. It careened around the Sonata and bolted up and over the low ravine separating junkyard from county road.
Dan couldn’t wait. He started yelling the sheriff’s name and moving in the general direction where he’d last seen him. He didn
’t get an answer back but dropped to all fours to scramble under the smoke checking under vehicles. He tripped over the pair of legs before he saw them. The sheriff wasn’t moving and Dan grabbed his ankles and pulled. If it was really true that adrenalin kicked in under adverse conditions, he needed a jolt of it now. The sheriff outweighed him by seventy-five pounds and getting him up and out of there was going to be challenging. He had the sheriff in a sitting position when two hands reached in to take one side. Dan hadn’t seen the fireman but, boy, what a welcome sight.
“Got the wind knocked out of him.” Dan shouted, indicating the sheriff. “But somebody should check him out.”
The young man leaned close and yelled. “Lucky for you we train about five miles from here. We saw the fireball and thought it was an exercise. We’ve got a full crew here and an ambulance. We’ll get the sheriff to a hospital in no time. Anyone else injured? ”
“This is it for outside. A woman on the porch was too close to the center to have survived. I doubt anyone was inside.”
The fireman nodded and between them they carried and dragged the sheriff back through the yard of trucks and junked cars to the emergency vehicle. By the time they got there, the sheriff was coughing and wheezing, taking gulps of air but definitely looking like he’d live. And against some pretty loud protests, the EMT folks were ushering him into an ambulance. He could be out of the hospital in an hour, but it was best to not take chances. The retreating wail of the siren was a welcome sound. The sheriff was on his way to help if he needed it.
The fire burned hot and several smaller explosions kept the crew at a distance. The pump truck was in place but depending on the accelerant, the fire was not going to be an easy one to control. Dan lost track of time but knew a couple hours had passed. He stayed out of their way. Finally he watched as they bagged Emily’s remains and placed her in another emergency vehicle. There had been too many deaths.
He texted Elaine to say he’d been held up. Understatement, but he didn’t give details. He’d left the Cherokee at the sheriff’s office and would have to bum a ride. Guess it was about time to make that call to the Feds. But then again it looked like he didn’t have to. He watched as four cars pulled up behind the fire tape and several officers got out. Dan walked toward the officer nearest to him. They’d want a statement and he might as well get this over with.