Cold Call: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “Actually,” Lott said, “this will be a hard choice.”

  “Truck is away,” Agent Munn said in their ears.

  “But I have one thing I’ve really wanted to do when I came in here,” Lott said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Julia said, laughing.

  Julia’s laugh sounded odd and Andrews turned slightly toward her just as Lott kicked Andrews as hard as he could right in the groin.

  Lott knew that the trick to such a kick was to pretend that the target was about halfway up the spine, which then meant the foot hit the actual target with full force.

  Lott felt his foot and upper shin connect perfectly with Andrews’ soft genitals.

  The force of Lott’s kick almost lifted the man off the ground.

  Andrews went down hard on the thin, blue carpet, trying to breathe and holding his crotch.

  Annie and Julia were on Andrews instantly, expertly yanking his hands behind his back and zip-tying them there. Then they quickly searched him as he struggled to catch even the slightest bit of air.

  “He’s clean,” Annie said after patting down his pants cuffs.

  “Target is down,” Lott said. “Send in the guards.”

  “Perfect,” Agent Munn said in his ear.

  Lott reached down and yanked the red-faced man to his feet. Andrews still hadn’t caught his breath and any movement seemed to be sending waves of pain through him.

  Good, as far as Lott was concerned.

  As Lott held Andrews between the caskets, facing the two women, Julia said, “That was some kick.”

  “Thanks,” Lott said, smiling.

  “How exactly did you do that?” Julia asked, smiling.

  Lott laughed. “I just pretended I was trying to kick a spot about halfway up his back.”

  Then, as Lott held Andrews, Julia said, “You mean like this?”

  And she kicked Andrews in the groin even harder than Lott had done.

  Andrews went instantly back to the floor in a silent scream.

  “That was for Trish, you sick bastard,” Julia said, almost spitting on the man on the carpet.

  Annie just laughed and shook her head. “You know, you two are made for each other.”

  “We think so,” Julia said, smiling at Lott and winking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  May 16, 2015

  9:15 A.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  “Agents at the service door dressed in electric company uniforms,” Agent Munn said.

  Lott moved over and unlocked the service door the caskets had come through, then stepped back so no one outside could see him if they happened to be looking.

  Julia and Annie went up front to make sure the closed sign was up and the lights across the front were shut down. It would look like Andrews was gone at the moment, which is what they needed, since the mortuary was on the main road and a lot of traffic passed the building.

  The two agents lifted Andrews from the floor and quickly taped his mouth shut. Then one told him he was under arrest for murder. One agent carefully read Andrews his rights while Lott and the other agent listened.

  Then as Julia and Annie came back in, the agent asked Andrews if he understood his rights.

  Andrews nodded.

  “He nodded affirmative,” one agent said.

  “Perfect,” Agent Munn said over the com link. “Get him on ice and don’t let him even move a muscle until this is finished.”

  “Copy,” one agent said and they hauled Andrews roughly up the stairs to his own apartment where the agents would hold him until everything was done tonight.

  “Remember,” Agent Munn said through the com link, “we don’t have a search warrant yet. So we need to get on to the second part of this to get that warrant.”

  All three of them knew she was right. With the casket delivered there, they clearly could have gotten one, but at this point, they didn’t want to take any chance at all in alerting Williams.

  But Lott really, really wanted to see what was in the basement. But they had the sheriff to take care of first. And this was going to be the tricky part.

  Then they could come back.

  They headed out the front door of the mortuary, making sure that the door was locked and all the closed signs were in place. It took them only a couple minutes walk to reach the white Cadillac SUV in the ski-shop parking lot.

  Doc was in the driver’s seat, Annie climbed into the other front seat beside him and he leaned over and kissed her.

  Agent Munn and Fleet were in the back seat, so Lott and Julia climbed into the middle seat.

  “Anyone have a sanitary wipe. I had to shake that pervert’s hand.”

  Annie laughed. “And great job there, Dad,” she said, digging into the glove box and handing him a Wet Wipe.

  “I loved the kicking the casket tires,” Julia said, bumping Lott’s shoulder.

  “How did you take him down?” Agent Munn asked. “We heard no struggle at all.”

  Annie and Julia laughed.

  “At my age, I sometimes have muscle spasms in my legs,” Lott said. “This one was a pretty violent spasm, on the scheme of things.”

  Agent Munn and Doc broke into laughter, but Fleet looked confused.

  “After we searched him and had him standing again,” Annie said, turning slightly and winking at Julia, “Detective Roger’s leg also had a violent spasm. It must have been something we ate at breakfast.”

  “Just our advanced age,” Julia said, smiling.

  Both Doc and Agent Munn were laughing so hard, Lott thought Doc might fall out of his seat.

  “Do you mean you kicked him in the nuts?” Fleet asked, looking almost horrified.

  “Not intentionally,” Lott said, turning to smile at Fleet. “Muscle spasm is all.”

  Fleet just shook his head and turned to Agent Munn. “Are the communications links down at the moment?”

  “They are,” Munn said, nodding, still grinning from ear-to-ear.

  “Then I have some more information about the sheriff,” Fleet said. “He is the one who hires our friend in Las Vegas for the cars. I have traced the money finally on that.”

  Lott nodded.

  “And the sheriff gets all his money from a Williams holding company that is three levels deep, but Williams has nothing to do with any of it. No trace at all that Williams even knows about the money, and it will be hard to trace, to be honest.”

  “Damn,” Annie said.

  “What about deputies?” Lott asked.

  “The second in command is living well, also in theory on an inheritance,” Fleet said. “Still digging on that one.”

  Lott could feel his stomach twisting. They needed something to tie Williams into all of this. Or far too much would rest on Williams showing up at the mortuary. And since he had a company that owns the mortuary, his presence could be explained away as well by a good attorney.

  Right now all they had was a lot of circumstantial evidence, much of which had been obtained without a warrant. Unless the women’s bodies had evidence that attached Williams in some way, and Lott doubted Williams would be that careless.

  “We need to flip the sheriff,” Lott said. “Get him to turn on Williams.”

  “And get Andrews at the mortuary to flip as well,” Munn said. “Then if we catch Williams in the act in the mortuary, we’ll have him rock solid.”

  “We trap the sheriff as planned,” Lott said, glancing at Julia. “Get him to think he’s going to lure us to kill us. And then we make him think he’s going to go down for all the murders.”

  There was silence in the big car.

  Lott turned to Julia. “You ready?”

  “As I’m ever going to be,” she said, smiling at him.

  Agent Munn handed them both new Idaho driver’s licenses. “Just in case,” Agent Munn said.

  Lott’s license said his name was Rick Guiss. Julia was Betty Guiss. They lived in Boise.

  “The blue sedan beside us is your car,” Munn said. “I already have
agents in place on both sides of the sheriff’s office. He is in his office now.”

  “And we won’t be far away,” Annie said.

  “Shall we go catch a bad guy, Mrs. Guiss,” Lott asked, smiling at Julia.

  “I think we should, Mr. Guiss,” Julia said, laughing.

  And with that they climbed out of the car and moved to the blue sedan and crawled in. This time they weren’t going up against a mortuary owner, but an armed sheriff.

  There were so many more things that could go wrong, Lott didn’t even want to think about them all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  May 16, 2015

  9:45 A.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  Julia felt scared to death as they climbed out of the sedan in the side parking lot of the sheriff’s office. It had concrete block walls painted off-white, a shingled pitched roof, and the entire building seemed to sprawl fairly deep away from the road. From what she could tell, the back side of the building consisted of jail cells with thick metal screens over the windows.

  The parking lot beside the office was small and a couple of white with black letter patrol cars were there. It hadn’t occurred to Julia to ask how just how many deputies the sheriff had.

  The front was glass doors and a wooden secretary’s desk sat to one side of a small entry room. The desk was empty and didn’t look like it was ever used. A dozen vinyl-cushioned metal chairs filled the small room with a few magazine racks that had some very old magazines in them, most of them gun or hunting magazines of some sort.

  The door on the right was standing open showing a hallway leading to some office. As the glass front door closed behind them, a bell went off in the back.

  A man about forty with broad shoulders and dark hair came into the hall from an office near the end and smiled. He was wearing a tan uniform and a gun on his hip.

  “Hi, folks. Come on back,” the officer said.

  “You are coming in loud and clear,” Agent Munn said in their ears. “And we heard whoever that was as well. All communications from the building have now been cut off.”

  Julia was very glad to hear that. They had both left their badges and guns in the car just in case the sheriff had a good eye for such things.

  The man waited for them as they moved down the cement block hallway with worn linoleum on the floor. The other two offices they passed looked like they were used regularly, but at the moment no one was in them. The hallway smelled of burnt coffee, something most police stations smelled like at one point or another.

  As they got closer, the man in uniform smiled and indicated they should come into his office, then turned and led the way inside.

  Julia had no idea if this man was a deputy or the sheriff. They were about to find out. But they knew that the sheriff was in the building somewhere.

  Julia went in first as the man in uniform went around behind the desk and indicated they should sit in the two chairs facing him. Over the years, Julia had done the same thing with numbers of people who came into the station in Reno. Did they all feel this scared?

  She and Lott both sat and the man said, “I’m Sheriff Blake. What can I help you with on this fine spring day?”

  They had their man. Now to set the trap.

  Lott introduced them both as Julia sat watching Sheriff Blake’s face. Then Lott said, “We’re from Boise and are here to look for our good friend, Trish Vittie.”

  At Trish’s name, Julia saw the sheriff’s eyes squint just slightly. On a poker table, that would have been enough of a tell to cost the sheriff a lot of money. In this office it was crystal clear.

  “What seems to be the problem?” the sheriff asked. “Why are you looking for her? Has she gone missing?”

  “She usually contacts us about once a week,” Julia said, staying on the script they had worked out. “We are her only real family. And we haven’t heard from her for a few weeks so we’re worried.”

  The sheriff acted concerned and took out a pad as he would have been expected to do. “Do you have her address and I can send a car past her home.”

  “She lives in an isolated cabin up in the mountains,” Lott said. “No real address, but we know it’s on the other side of something called Lick Creek Summit. We’ve never been up there, but she sent us a map and it looks very isolated.”

  “So maybe her car broke down and she can’t get out,” the sheriff said.

  “Possible,” Julia said. “That’s why we are going up to her place this afternoon. And if she’s not there, we’re going to stay for a week or so. She told us where the key is. But we wanted to check in with you first to make sure you hadn’t heard anything.”

  When she had said they were planning on staying for a week or so, the sheriff’s eyes squinted even more. He had a really bad tell. And he didn’t much like at all that they were going in to the lake.

  He stood. “Let me check to see if her name has come through any accident or hospital reports.”

  “Thank you,” Julia said and Lott nodded.

  The sheriff left and turned to the back of the building. At this point Sheriff Blake was playing his part perfectly. They had rattled him, of that there was no doubt.

  But what was he going to do next? That was the question. If he really worked for Williams as it seemed, he couldn’t take the chance that they would be in there for another body dump, not after Trish clearly reported the last one and it cost her life.

  Now they just had to sit here, being bait on the end of a hook, and wait for the fish to bite.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  May 16, 2015

  10:05 A.M.

  McCall, Idaho

  Lott sat patiently beside Julia in Sheriff Blake’s office. They didn’t talk, but just waited as any good couple would do in this situation, hoping that law enforcement might help them.

  “He tried to call the mortuary,” Agent Munn said in their ears. “We let that call go through since no one is home there.”

  Lott looked at Julia and nodded. That linked the sheriff with the mortuary. Perfect.

  “You have your agents in place?” Lott whispered.

  “We do and they can be through the door in a matter of seconds,” Agent Munn said.

  “How many others besides the sheriff in the building?” Julia whispered.

  “Jailer in the back, no one else,” Agent Munn said. “All are on patrol.”

  “Be ready,” Lott whispered. “This guy is already rattled. I think we can break him here.”

  “You sure?” Agent Munn asked.

  “I’m sure,” Julia whispered. “He clearly has never been confronted like this before. We’re going off script to shove a stick in this hornet’s nest.”

  “We’re ready,” Agent Munn said.

  Finally the sheriff came back in and sat down, shaking his head. “Good news is that there are no accident reports on her and the hospital shows no one admitted by that name.”

  “That is good news,” Lott said and Julia nodded, playing along with the script. But right there Lott decided it was a fine place to leave the script completely. “But did you also check the morgue?”

  Sheriff Blake actually jerked slightly on that.

  Lott had dealt with a lot of criminals and this guy was going to fold like wet tissue paper, of that there was no doubt.

  “I had a horrid dream,” Julia said, “that my friend was embalmed and floating on a smooth lake surface.”

  “She woke up screaming,” Lott said, smiling at the sheriff.

  The poor guy seemed to suddenly be sweating a little. This guy would have been the worst poker player in recorded history.

  “Why would my friend be embalmed and in a mountain lake, sheriff?” Julia asked, staring at Sheriff Blake, her voice intense.

  “We’re moving in,” Agent Munn’s voice said in their ears. “We’re coming in silent, so keep going.”

  “That is a good question,” Lott said to Sheriff Blake. “How did our friend end up embalmed in a lake?”

  The s
heriff sputtered, then shook his head, but he had broken out in a sweat. The man knew something bad was happening to him and he had no idea what to do about it. Or how to stop it, so he tried to stay on a normal conversation. “That is an amazing dream.”

  “And I dreamed her car was there as well,” Julia said, staring at Sheriff Blake. “On top of a large pile of older cars, all with embalmed women in them.”

  “This is too crazy,” the sheriff said, standing and pulling his pistol and aiming it at them.

  Lott and Julia both stood and stepped back. The sheriff clearly had not drawn his gun in a very long time and it was clear he had forgotten to put a clip in. He was so flustered, he didn’t even realize that.

  “Outside in the hallway,” Agent Munn said in their ears. “We’re holding here.”

  “No need for the gun, sheriff,” Lott said to let the agents outside know what was happening.

  “Who are you two?” Sheriff Blake demanded.

  “Friends of Trish Vittie,” Julia said. “As we said. But we are not sure why you had to kill her and all those other women as well.”

  “Who said I killed anyone?” Sheriff Blake demanded. “You two are nuts.”

  “Oh, we know you killed Trish,” Lott said. “And we’ll be pinning all forty or fifty or so murders on you as well. DNA you know, inside the bodies will be preserved in that cold water.”

  Lott doubted that would be possible, but he was wagering Sheriff Blake didn’t know for certain that was the case. It was just another part of the bluff.

  And from the look of how Blake went almost white and started sweating even more, he knew he had left DNA in many of those women.

  “You have fun with the dead women?” Julia asked. “You and Andrews liked killing them all and then having sex with them?”

  Lott smiled at Sheriff Blake. “We have your guy who bought the cars in Las Vegas. He’s singing like a bird about you paying him a ton of money to get them. You know, the cars at the bottom of that lake with all the bodies in them?”

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Sheriff Blake said, almost whining like a child. He was now sweating even harder.