The Red Power Murders

by Thomas King

  “They’ll get over it.”

  Noah’s lip was cut, the side of his face bruised. But it was his hands that had taken most of the damage. The knuckles had been smashed, several of the fingers dislocated.

  “Mr. Ridge and I have been having a chat.” Asah ran the barrel of the gun through Dakota’s hair. “Perhaps you can persuade him to be a little more forthcoming.”

  “Leave her alone.” Noah was in pain, but he hadn’t lost any of his arrogance.

  “I assume you have a gun.”

  Thumps opened the parka slowly, lifted the pistol from his waistband, and placed it on the table next to the drinks.

  “You’re a lot of help,” growled Noah.

  Thumps had stopped feeling foolish, but he was in no mood to be sympathetic. “It’s your own damn fault.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Asah collected the gun. “Technically, he’s correct about that.”

  “Yeah,” said Thumps. “But he put everything in motion.”

  Dakota’s hands were beginning to tremble, not out of fear and not out of rage. Something deeper and more painful. “Do you plan to kill us?”

  Asah sighed and tried to look sympathetic. “I’d prefer not to. It’s bad for the bureau’s image to have its agents running around injuring taxpayers.”

  “But Morgan Energy probably wouldn’t mind,” said Thumps. “Would they?”

  Noah tried to turn his head to one side. “Morgan Energy?”

  “He’s not FBI,” said Thumps.

  “Touché,” said Asah. “So, what gave me away?”

  “Hockney called Denver.”

  Asah nodded. “And there is a Special Agent Spencer Asah in the Denver office.”

  “I know,” said Thumps. “The sheriff talked to him.”

  “Ah, yes, well, he was supposed to be on vacation.” Asah shrugged. “Just can’t depend on the government anymore. Have you put all the pieces together yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Me neither,” said Asah. “But I’m curious. You want to compare notes?”

  “You first,” said Thumps.

  Asah closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay. Here’s what I know. Twenty-five years ago, Clinton Buckhorn, Wilson Scout, and Wallace Begay kidnapped Matthew Colburne, Morgan Energy’s CEO, and forced him to open the safe at corporate headquarters.”

  “But they weren’t looking for cash or bearer bonds.”

  “No,” said Asah. “They weren’t. They were looking for documents that would incriminate Morgan Energy in the bribing of state and federal officials. Over the years Morgan had been quite successful in getting drilling and mining contracts on Indian reservations. Problem was, it was a little too successful, and it tended to play fast and loose with environmental regulations.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Thumps could feel his courage beginning to return. “To get that kind of evidence, they would have had to go through all of Morgan’s files. It would have taken them weeks, maybe months, to find anything of use.”

  “It would have,” said Asah, “if Matthew Colburne hadn’t saved them the bother. As a CEO, the man had a great many admirable characteristics, but he wasn’t the book of the month. He tended to be a bit on the obsessive side and quite secretive. Over the years, he had taken the time to organize all the pertinent documents into one file. There were probably a great many good reasons why he wanted to keep all the damning evidence close by and in one package, but as it turned out, the decision was exceptionally indiscreet.”

  “He kept the file in the safe?”

  “Right next to the bonds.”

  “So, the bonds were a bonus.”

  “Dumb luck,” said Asah. “The bonds were part of Morgan’s bribery slush fund. Almost impossible to trace.”

  “But things didn’t go as planned.”

  “Colburne grabbed a gun from his desk and began blasting away. By the time both sides ran out of bullets, Colburne and Wallace Begay had been wounded, and what had started off as an extreme act of social and political activism had turned into a federal offence.”

  “And a potential public-relations nightmare.”

  “Buckhorn and the boys fled the scene and wound up in Salt Lake City at Reuben Justice’s place.”

  “They were cousins.”

  “Buckhorn told Justice that Begay had shot himself by accident. Colorado wouldn’t have made the national news yet, so Justice would have no way of knowing what his cousin had been doing in his free time. Neither the local police in Denver nor the FBI got up to full speed until Monday morning, and the feds were still trying to tie their shoes by Wednesday.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been reading Street’s field notes.”

  “Street had the file with him.” Asah looked pleased with himself. “Most considerate. The man kept very detailed notes.”

  “What happened to the package? The bonds and the documents.”

  “No one knows. They were never recovered.”

  “Mitchell Street.” Thumps had the answer at the same time he asked the question. “Street came to you?”

  “To Morgan Energy, to be exact. Said he could recover the bonds. For a finder’s fee.”

  “But he didn’t know about the documents.”

  “No. The FBI knew about the bonds, but not about the documents.”

  “Because the documents were more explosive than the loss of the bonds.”

  Asah’s eyes were bright and alive now. “Oh, yes. Twenty-five years ago, the release of those documents would have been dynamite. Today, it would be nuclear. When Street showed up with his Xerox, it sent shock waves right through upper management. After all this time, Morgan thought that the file had been lost or destroyed. But if Street could find the bonds, he might also be able to find the documents as well.”

  “So, Morgan sent you.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “True,” said Asah, “but a great many of those executives and politicians have gone on to bigger and better things. Morgan Energy is a multinational corporation now. A scandal like that, even if it never went to court, would have brought everyone down.”

  “Did Street know who had the package?”

  Asah nodded. “Someone named Massasoit. From his notes, it would appear that this Massasoit was an FBI informant, highly placed in the Red Power Movement.”

  Noah sat stone-faced in the chair, his teeth clenched.

  “Lucy Kettle.” Thumps said the name slowly and without emotion.

  “The woman who disappeared right after the raid. In his notes, Street was quite sure that Lucy Kettle was Massasoit.” Asah squatted down next to Noah. “But I could tell when he called me at the hotel that he had another name in mind.”

  “Did he say?”

  “He didn’t know for sure.”

  “So, you shot him.”

  “He was a blowhard,” said Asah, running his hand over Noah’s shoulder. “Almost as bad as this one. He didn’t know where the documents or the bonds were, though it shouldn’t have been that difficult to figure out. There weren’t many candidates left. Reuben Justice, Dakota Miles, and Noah Ridge. When it was clear that Street wasn’t going to be of much use, he became a loose end.”

  “And Reuben’s dead.”

  “Yeah, that was unfortunate,” said Asah. “Wrong place, wrong time. But it did reduce the possibles to two.”

  “Lucy Kettle could still be alive.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Asah. “When I raised that question with him, Street said there was no point wasting any time with ghosts. Personally, I think his money was on Ridge.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “I had hoped that if I could arrange a little quality time with Mr. Ridge, we would be able to come to an agreement,” said Asah. “But as you can see, he’s proven to be surprisingly difficult.”

  “Fuck off!”

  Asah helped himself to one of the glasses of fruit juice. “Of course, B
uckhorn could have stashed the package somewhere between Denver and Salt Lake, and this would have all been a waste of time.”

  “Buckhorn didn’t have the bonds or the documents when he left Denver.” Thumps glanced at Noah. “It would have been too risky. If they got caught, all the evidence they had grabbed would have disappeared.”

  “But you know what they did with it.”

  “I’m guessing.”

  Noah glared at him. “Fucking apple!”

  Asah put the gun to Dakota’s head. “Guess away.”

  “Buckhorn mailed the bonds and the documents. He and the other two men got into Morgan through the mailroom. On the way out, it would have been an easy matter to put everything into a box and mail it to a friend.”

  “I like that,” said Asah. “Morgan delivers the instrument of its own destruction into the hands of its enemy. It’s almost biblical. Certainly Shakespearean.” He walked over to Noah and pressed the barrel of the gun on his hand. Noah didn’t scream, but Thumps could see the pain bead up on his face. “Do you know to whom they mailed the package?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re good at guessing.”

  “Lucy Kettle.”

  “The woman who disappeared. That’s rather convenient.”

  “Buckhorn wouldn’t have sent the bonds and the documents to Noah. He didn’t trust him. Lucy was Justice’s lover and in that sense family, but she was also the only one in RPM with the integrity to follow through with what they had found in Denver.”

  Asah finished the juice and put the glass back on the table. “So, where is Ms. Lucy?”

  Dakota began to pull at the skin around her fingers. Thumps had seen this before. The distress. The desperation. At the train station in Salt Lake.

  “Lucy’s dead.”

  “And you don’t know where the bonds and the documents are, do you?”

  “No,” said Thumps. “So, what now?”

  “Well,” said Asah, “I have a number of intriguing choices. I can kill Mr. Ridge and assume that he’s the only person who knows where the package is. But if I do that, then I have to kill the rest of you too because you’d be witnesses to a murder, and that would never do. Or I could cut my losses and disappear.”

  “I like the last choice.”

  “Actually,” said Asah, “so do I. But I don’t think my employers would be too crazy about my coming home empty-handed.”

  “Do the math,” said Thumps, hoping he could make four plus four add up to nine. “Street led the raid on Justice’s house, but he didn’t find the package. If it had come to Noah, why would he have sat on it all these years? Those documents would have given him an international platform. The bonds alone would have funded every project RPM ever dreamed of starting.”

  “I wouldn’t want him for a friend,” said Asah. “I’ve read Street’s files. Ridge would let his mother die to save his skin.”

  “If the package was mailed to Lucy,” said Thumps, trying to complete the problem before Asah saw the flaw, “the bonds and the documents vanished with her.”

  Asah smiled and looked at his watch. “The sheriff should be heading back from the lake about now. I need a couple of hours.”

  Thumps nodded. “You have my word.”

  “By the way,” he said, “I’m not Kiowa. I thought you would want to know that.” Asah slipped the gun into his pocket. “Oh, and check the refrigerator. You’re out of orange juice.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Thumps sat in the chair and listened to the front door shut. There was no sound of a car starting, but Asah wouldn’t have parked it in front of the house anyway.

  “Cut me loose.” Noah worked his arms from side to side.

  Thumps looked at his watch. “I gave him my word.”

  “Are you crazy? The man’s a fucking murderer!”

  Dakota sat on the couch and quietly tore at her fingers.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Damn it! Cut me loose!”

  With his handkerchief, Thumps picked up the glass that Asah had used and took it to the kitchen. It would have prints on it, though he was reasonably sure that Asah would not pop up on any of the databases. The man was too careful for that.

  He slipped the phone in his pocket, took a knife from the drawer, and opened the refrigerator. Asah hadn’t looked closely enough. There was a carton of orange juice on the top shelf. Right next to it, tied together with string, was a thick folder. There was dried blood on one corner. This is what had been on the desk in Street’s motel room. Even before he opened it, Thumps knew what it was. Street’s field notes. A goodbye present from a killer.

  When Thumps got back to the living room, Noah was still raging in the chair.

  “It’s about fucking time!”

  Thumps put the phone and the knife on the coffee table and held up the glasses. “Anybody want juice?”

  NOAH, NOT SURPRISINGLY, was not in the mood for juice, and by the time Thumps cut him loose, he was sorry that Asah hadn’t shot the man.

  “Sheriff’ll hear about this.” Noah rubbed his wrists and tried to work his fingers back in place.

  Maybe it was all the tension, but Thumps found himself thinking about a nap.

  “You listening to me!”

  “Not really,” said Thumps. “But while we’re all here, why don’t we get a small matter cleared up.”

  “What the hell is there to clear up?”

  “Massasoit.”

  Noah stopped rubbing his wrists. “That’s old news,” he said. “Lucy’s gone. Leave it be.”

  “Sure,” said Thumps. “But Lucy wasn’t Massasoit.”

  Noah tried to lift himself out of the chair. “I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

  “I just saved your life,” said Thumps. “Make time.”

  Noah sank back into the chair, more out of pain than agreement.

  “I’m going to tell you a story, and when I wander off course, you let me know. Okay?”

  “I need a doctor.”

  “RPM comes to Salt Lake and sets up shop. Almost immediately the FBI takes an interest and assigns Mitchell Street to watch the organization. Street takes an instant dislike to one Noah Ridge and makes it his life’s work to bring you down. How am I doing so far?”

  “How about calling an ambulance?”

  “That’s just the opening. So, for the next number of years, Street tries to find something with which to hang you. But you’re too smart. In the meantime, the organization isn’t doing so well financially, and one day you get this bright idea. It’s brilliant, actually. You take on a persona, in this case the name of the Indian who helped the English at Plymouth, and you sell information to the bureau. Nothing large, nothing critical. No one is hurt. The FBI thinks it has an informant in RPM, and the money you make from the feds goes to help fund the organization’s social programs.”

  “That’s a great story.” Most of the blood on Noah’s hands and face had dried. “I wish I were that smart.”

  “Oh,” said Thumps, “you are. There was only one little problem. The more information you gave the feds, the closer they were to finding out who the informant was. You couldn’t have that. If they had known it was you, they might have exposed you, which would have destroyed RPM from within and kept the bureau from looking like the heavies. So, you had to keep them busy looking in other directions.”

  Dakota slowly put her hands to her mouth. “Is that true?”

  “Of course not. It’s bullshit.”

  “No, it’s not. And here you could take care of two problems at the same time. Lucy didn’t like the way you managed the organization. She thought you were an egotist, more interested in your own image than the work that needed to be done. Given enough time, she might have pushed you out. She was smart, and she was committed. So, you used Lucy to take the heat off yourself. You pointed Street at Lucy. Street wouldn’t have said anything, because he wanted the flow of information to continue. Everything was just fine u
ntil Clinton Buckhorn and Wilson Scout and Wallace Begay arrived in Salt Lake with the FBI hard on their heels.”

  Noah lurched out of the chair. “I’ll call the damn ambulance myself.”

  “Sit down,” said Thumps, taking the phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call for one.”

  “How much of what he’s said is true?”

  “Jesus, Dakota, you really think I would do something like that?”

  “Ambulance is on its way.” Thumps put the phone on the table. “But we don’t want to miss the good part. When Buckhorn, Scout, and Begay came to town, they headed for Reuben Justice’s house. Begay was wounded and couldn’t be moved. Now, the cops don’t know that they’re in town. The FBI has only just figured out who hit Morgan. They’re at least two days behind. Yet somehow or other, they raid Justice’s house the next morning.”

  “What the hell is your point?”

  “The only person who knew where Buckhorn, Scout, and Begay were was Reuben Justice, and the only person he would have told was Lucy Kettle. But Lucy would never have turned them in. She cared too much for Reuben to do that, and she had too much integrity. So, how did you find out?”

  “About what?”

  “About Buckhorn and his buddies. The only way the cops could have found out where they were staying that quickly was if someone told them, and the only person who would have had any reason to tell them was Massasoit.” Thumps took a deep breath. “Lucy told you, didn’t she? And you told the feds.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Dakota. “Noah would never have done something like that.”

  “It’s the only thing he could do.” Thumps tried to conjure up some sympathy for Noah. “If Buckhorn, Scout, and Begay were caught in Salt Lake, it would only be a matter of time before the FBI would be able to link them to Lucy and then to RPM. The only way to avoid such a disaster was to get the three men out of town before the cops found them.”

  “Listen to yourself,” said Noah. “You sound like a cheap television show.”

  “It gets worse. I’m betting that Massasoit called Buckhorn to warn him that the FBI knew where they were and to get out of town immediately. And here’s where you made your mistake. You waited to allow the men enough time to disappear before you called Street. How am I doing?”