“I’m not much of a hunter myself. Give me my 16-foot Alumacraft and my nine-horse Merc and there’s nothing better than an evening throwing Red Devils along a rocky shoreline.” He tilted his head and sighed.
Outside, a car came down the icy street. They turned to watch Bill Grebs’s police car slow in front of the hotel, then pass by.
“Wonder what he wants?” the old man asked with unguarded derision. “Not in any trouble, are ya‘?”
“Nothing that anybody knows about,” Sam smiled.
Elwyn smiled back. “That’s Bill Grebs, Defiance’s police force. Not sure what a town this size needs with a police force, but he’s it. Had the job for years. He likes harassing strangers and rolling bums. Saw him just last week. He was out back.” Through his rear office window he motioned to the abandoned building by the tracks. “Picked up some bum. Big fat old man. Now don’t get me wrong, no way I’m for vagrants filling our streets. But if you’re down on your luck the only free shelter in town is that abandoned depot, and Grebs is out at dusk harassing him, trying to make a vagrant believe Bill Grebs is important.”
Clearly there was no love lost between Bill Grebs and Elwyn Baxter.
“Made him get into his squad car and crated him off. Probably scared the shit out of him and ran him out of town.” The old man looked at Sam. “What’s a dying town like this need with a cop?” he repeated. “I expect Defiance is keeping Bill Grebs around for forty grand a year when everyone else is out of work. But it’s not likely to last,” the old man smiled. “What’s he gonna‘ do when there’s nothing left in the Defiance treasury? And from what I hear that day isn’t far off.”
The old man continued for a while: mostly talking about Grebs’s uselessness, though his derision wasn’t limited to the town cop.
Sam imagined Grebs harassing the homeless. From what he remembered Grebs would appreciate a vagrant’s vulnerability. Grebs had a predator’s instinct for finding the weakest animal in the herd. He probably whacked him a few times and drove him to the outskirts of Vermilion Falls before kicking him into the cold.
From the look in the old man’s eyes Sam knew he was ready to speak at length about any subject Sam cared to discuss. But Sam was long overdue for a warm bed and rest. A long drive, larceny, and then another long drive were exhausting work.
He thanked Elwyn Baxter, excusing himself with an apology, and went out to his jeep to recover his bag and the duffel. As a source of information the proprietor might be useful, Sam thought. But he recognized a small town gossip, and knew whatever Sam told him would be fodder for the hotel’s next guest.
Room seven was austere as a hermitage. The bed was narrow and flat. When Sam sat on it, the mattress absorbed nothing. He felt beneath the mattress and touched a seven-by-four-foot plywood board. For support, he guessed, and to give the mattress five more years of wear. Every mattress in the place probably felt like slate. But he was too tired to care.
A nicked up dresser stood to the side of the window. On the opposite wall there was an old picture in a natural birch wood frame—a northwoods trapper checking his trap line, the setting not much different from what Sam could see out his window. The bathroom, sink and shower were behind a door at the end of the hall. Sam set down his bags, took out his Dopp kit and went down to brush his teeth, more tired than he could remember.
The simplicity of the place was fine by Sam. He planned on resting here, nothing more. And truth is, he preferred his mattresses firm. Sam lay down on the unyielding spread. His watch said 9:30 a.m. He lay flat on his back with his clothes still on. He lifted his wrist, setting his watch alarm for 4:00 p.m. Then he closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
January 30th—Vermilion County Courthouse
In the Vermilion County Courthouse Sheriff Dean Goddard stepped into Jeff Dunlap’s office.
Dunlap looked up and said, “Hey, just a second,” and then returned to his papers.
Dunlap’s office was a ten-by-fifteen rectangle with a window overlooking the parking lot. The long wall was lined with file cabinets. The cabinets were topped with archive boxes. His table was covered with several neat piles of paper, each pile an open case. He had one of those green glass desk lamps Dean figured was standard issue for everyone passing the bar. Other than the desk lamp and files, nothing about Dunlap’s demeanor or appearance would have indicated he was one of the best prosecutors in the state.
Next to the 5’ 9” county attorney, Dean Goddard felt big and rangy. Jeff Dunlap had feather-short brown hair parted on the side. His mustache looked like the frayed end of a worn toothbrush. He wore round, wire-rimmed glasses with tortoise shell enamel. The Sheriff had known him for almost a decade, but the man’s appearance never changed.
The assistant county attorney and the Sheriff had been friends since their first days in local government. Dean Goddard was born and raised on a small farm outside Worthington, Minnesota, a rural community in the southwest corner of the state, about as far from Vermilion Falls as you could get and still call yourself a Minnesotan.
Dunlap was raised on a small acreage outside Defiance. His parents hunted, fished, guided, subcontracted lumber with the County and local sawmills, and cleared over four acres on which they planted Christmas trees. The tree farm was a long-term investment the elder Dunlap called his ten-year tax strategy, since the acreage wouldn’t show a profit until the trees matured. Dunlap had grown up with a cabin roof over his head, and plenty to eat, much of it wild. But it was a season-to-season existence. They survived. He loved his parents, but when he was young, he swore he was going to have more than a pot to piss in, and so he did.
He’d spent four years as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota–Duluth, on an academic scholarship. He got help to attend law school at the University of Minnesota. And then he got the county job, a good one. He was one of the office’s top attorneys, and was considered the heir apparent to take over when Percy Lange, the current county attorney, strode into the sunset. There weren’t many observers of county politics, but those in the know suspected Percy Lange’s departure wasn’t far off.
“For Christ’s sake,” Dunlap moaned, looking up from his pen. “I believe if Jedd Connors has one more DWI I can put him away for six months and force him to go through treatment for the second time this year.”
“County would be better off,” the Sheriff observed.
“Think it’ll help?”
The Sheriff shook his head. “But we can hope.”
“I guess.” The two men were in agreement on most county law enforcement matters. Dunlap closed the folder, leaned back, and put his feet on the only open corner of his desk. “And I suppose the county’s better off without that old crook Will Winthrop, though damned if I’m feeling good about it.” Dunlap had been mulling Winthrop’s death.
When Dean entered, he’d noticed a familiar yellow file in the middle of Dunlap’s desk. It was the folder containing the draft subpoena he was going to serve Winthrop with until his untimely accident. He’d wondered about it.
As far as Dean Goddard knew, the only person aware of his relationship with Susan Wallace had been Williston Winthrop. There was a time he’d considered turning to Jeff Dunlap for advice, just to have someone with whom he could confide and help him figure out how he could clean up the awful mess he’d gotten himself into. But instinct told him his good friend would give him advice he wasn’t willing to follow: end the affair. Given Williston’s demise he was thankful he’d kept his mouth shut.
“What’s his death mean for your investigation?” Dean asked.
“Our investigation,” Dunlap corrected.
Dean was glad to hear it. The best way to search Winthrop’s properties was to have the investigation remain open. He needed that video. He needed to send every second into the unmagnetized ether. The ongoing investigation would give him legal cover.
&nbs
p; “It preempts justice,” Dunlap quipped. “I wanted to make that old man swing by his thumbs. Gallows would have been too good for him, from what I can figure. I know Minnesota is no longer a hanging state, but there are times I wish it was a simpler day, when we could provide people like Winthrop with swift, certain and absolute justice. From what I can figure, that guy wasn’t only a crook. He was a cruel S.O.B. capable of just about anything a criminal mind can conjure.”
It was a familiar subject, though they only broached it with each other. Rigorous in their pursuit of criminals, they were just, above all else. And that made the Sheriff’s infidelity all the more painful.
“I guess he got what was coming,” Dean observed.
“Goddamn right,” Dunlap said, staring off at the filing cabinets lining his wall. “But that doesn’t mean his beneficiaries should enjoy the fruits of his labors.”
The file in the middle of Dunlap’s desk contained much more information than the names the Sheriff had shared with Williston Winthrop, well ahead of actually serving him the paper. The fourth investigation into Winthrop’s law practice involved three widowed pensioners; Betty Jo Kalumet, Mary Slavenoh and Gertie Wendell. The three had been housed in an assisted living foster care facility called Pine Grove Estates, just outside Hibbing. Betty Jo died two years ago. Mary Slavenoh had been dead less than a year. Gertie was still alive, but had extreme dementia.
The three women shared several characteristics. The first and perhaps most important was their mental status: impaired. They slipped in and out of history with the ease of time travelers, rarely visiting the present. And they were a little fuzzy about particulars. Their own names, for instance, had been as elusive as everyone else’s. They had no living next of kin. And in the sense that a pensioner is someone who lives on a small stipend, generally from a qualified benefit plan, these three only appeared to be financially stressed senior citizens in need of a safe home.
Beneath the corporate veil of Pine Grove Estates was a Minnesota Corporation with one Limited Partner and one General Partner. The limited partners were Bill and Matty Harris. They were paid by Iron County Care, the general partner. It was a Minnesota corporation with a P.O. Box address in Virginia, Minnesota. Beneath Iron County Care there were some additional limited and general partners that made the entire structure holding up Pine Grove Estates one of the most sophisticated and Byzantine corporate shell games Jeff Dunlap had ever seen. He’d retained a friend in corporate law down in the Cities to help him sort it all out.
Over the years the spinsters not only managed to accumulate considerable estates, but once they entered the comfortable foster care and assisted living provided by Pine Grove Estates, their stipends, and eventually their entire estates, had cascaded down through several corporate entities until they had finally been signed over to attorney Williston Winthrop, General Counsel. It was similar to the mortgage-backed securities crisis, when homeowners searching for the corporate entity that actually held their mortgage found pieces of it with different companies all over the world. In the case of Williston Winthrop, it appeared as though he’d managed to gain the necessary assistance from a local district court judge to make the scheme work, but Jeff was still trying to figure out all the angles of the complicated scheme.
In the end, Williston Winthrop was clearly the attorney identified as the individual who cared for the specific needs of the three women. And judging from their considerable medical requirements (at least on paper), their care was extensive and costly. Automated wheelchairs, intensive drug regimens, 24/7 attention by private nurse practitioners, special meal preparations, dietary supplements, and so on. The care, of course, was difficult to track, with the Medicare reimbursements managed by their executor (the attorney referenced by title).
Iron County Care managed the schoolteachers’ last days. If they lived beyond their estates, stipends and insurance benefits, Pine Grove Estates agreed to continue their care ad infinitum. It was a safe wager. Actuarial tables opined the women would need to live well into their twelfth decade before their estates ran dry. Since no one in Minnesota history had reached the age of 120, the care facility (and those behind it) figured to make a substantial profit.
“Goddamn crooks” was how Dunlap described them. So far, the Corporation had been fortunate, and the deaths of the first two pensioners had left the Company with a significant largesse.
Everything had continued to operate well below the radar, until less than a year ago. Gertie Wendell had a brief bout with pneumonia and her regular physician was unavailable. Doctor Susan Wallace examined her. What Wallace saw made her wonder if Pine Grove Estates’ care was adequate. She mentioned it to the Sheriff, who drove over to have a look. He found the place clean, filled with plenty of sunlight, the air smelling of antiseptic. And Gertie looked as reasonable as one could expect, considering she seldom got out of bed and was recovering from a nasty respiratory infection. Still, the Sheriff wondered about it, mentioning the place to his friend Jeff Dunlap, who had a peek into the care facility’s operations. He started digging. After almost three months of to and fro with the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, and the assistance of his corporate law expert in the Cities, Jeff Dunlap had finally figured it all out. Now he smiled.
“So this doesn’t end it?” the Sheriff finally asked.
“No way. But it complicates how we proceed. God knows we’re not going to get any answers to our subpoena.”
“Dead men don’t talk,” the Sheriff agreed.
“Not in so many words. But we might yet hear something from his grave.” Dunlap considered it. “For starters, I obtained a copy of Winthrop’s will. It’s a large estate, considering how he lived. He kept his net worth well under the radar. There’s plenty, and those buddies of his are going to make out like bandits.”
“Bill Grebs?”
“He’s one of them. Along with that mongrel Angus Moon. And Hank Gunderson and Hal Young. You know them?”
“Moon’s an outdoorsman. Lives pretty far out. Off the grid, far as I can tell.”
“That’s the guy. A hunter, trapper, not particularly pleasant. Tell you the truth, it surprises me Williston Winthrop had anything to do with him. But a lot of things about Winthrop surprise me. Did you know he had a son?”
“Where?”
“Nobody knows. He was ahead of me in school a couple years. He was a quiet kid, kept to himself. Then one day he just disappeared.”
“Anybody look into it?”
“Nope. No reason to. He was old enough. Apparently the mother knew where he was. Rumor had it that old prick beat him up pretty bad and Clayton—that was his name—bolted. Didn’t come back, and I don’t blame him.”
“What about Gunderson and Young?”
“Respectable enough. But it’s a curious thing about Winthrop’s estate. Over two million comes from a term life insurance policy. Who in the hell keeps that kind of insurance for a bunch of his buddies?”
Dean shrugged, but agreed that so much life insurance was surprising. Particularly considering his beneficiaries.
“I’ve learned a little about that business,” Dunlap added. “Life insurance companies do a lot of research to make sure they understand a client’s total life insurance picture; the companies, policies, amounts, dates of ownership, beneficiaries, that kind of thing. When consumers buy life insurance they’re entered into databases. If some guy takes out ten $50,000 policies on his wife, making himself the beneficiary, they want to know about it.”
The Sheriff wasn’t surprised. Insurance companies were hesitant to part with money, so they took precautions.
“And any policies less than a year old are subject to pretty intense scrutiny,” continued Dunlap. “For obvious reasons.”
“So how old was Winthrop’s?”
“You can be Winthrop’s age and get a 2.5-million-dollar term life insurance policy for a little more than $3,000 a y
ear, providing you took out the paper almost ten years ago.”
“He’s been paying on it for ten years?”
“Just about eight. Not cheap, but for a man like Winthrop, benefiting the way he did from these lady’s estates, it would have been chicken feed.”
“But he wouldn’t gain anything. Just his beneficiaries. What’s the point?”
“That part bugged me,” Dunlap agreed. “The policy’s beneficiaries are the four men mentioned in this will. I double-checked on who paid the annual premiums. It was Will Winthrop, out of an account setup for Gun Club expenses.”
“Maybe they had something on him? Or he was a better friend than we give him credit.”
“I don’t for a second believe he was a good buddy. And here’s the real kicker. That Club has been paying premiums on the same policies for every one of its members!”
The Sheriff didn’t get it. “You mean every Club member has a 2.5-million-dollar term life insurance policy?”
“Every one of them. And they list all the other members as beneficiaries.”
“That’s a little bizarre.”
“That’s a lot bizarre. For almost eight years Will Winthrop, through that Club, has held paper on every member. The listed beneficiaries for each policy are the same, the members of the Gun Club. It looks like Winthrop, through the Club, has paid the premiums all along. That’s over fifteen thousand a year.”
Goddard was surprised. “That’s a load of money. You think he was just gambling?”
“First of all, the cost was minimal, if I’m right about how much he bilked out of those pensioners. Second, it could have been an incredible gamble, if any of them died before him.”
“Maybe he was thinking about offing one of them? Maybe a couple?”
“Maybe the whole damn group,” Dunlap agreed. “Though it’d be tough to get away with it.”
“Car accident,” the Sheriff suggested. “House fire during an all-night poker game. Boating accident.” He thought about it. From what he knew of Winthrop, anything was possible. “Maybe they got him first?”
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