Signature: A David Wolf Mystery (David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Book 9)

by Jeff Carson

  Hannigan was wiping his hands on his napkin, the burger already gone.

  Another skinny kid with tight clothes on came over to the table. “Hi, would you like to see a menu?”

  “No thanks,” Wolf said. “I’ll just have what he had.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll take another.” Hannigan shoved a wad of fries in his mouth.

  “Beer?”

  The beer in front of Hannigan was halfway finished.

  “Burger. And beer.”

  The kid laughed. Hannigan didn’t.

  “And to drink for you, sir?”

  “I’ll have a beer,” Wolf said. “Thanks.”

  The kid recited a novella for their beer list and Wolf took a brown ale from a local brewer.

  “So what did you think about Jessica Meinhoff?” Luke asked.

  “They found Fred Wilcox’s DNA inside her, right?”

  Luke nodded.

  “I was struck by how sloppy the kill was compared to the other seven victims.”

  Luke took a bite of salad and pointed with her fork. “And no ear missing. No toe missing. No display of the body. No lashing of the arms and legs. No cuts on her skin. It’s like he was a completely different man in Silverton, then he goes down south and becomes this artistic killer.”

  “I think if there was any doubt he met somebody down here and started killing with them, then it’s gone after looking at those pictures,” Wolf said.

  Luke nodded. “Agreed. The killing in Silverton is night and day from the rest of them. The only thing connecting it at all to the ones down here is Fred Wilcox’s DNA.”

  “Here you go.” The waiter put a beer in front of Wolf and Hannigan. “Anything else?”

  Hannigan slammed the rest of the beer in his hand and gave it to the waiter.

  Wolf took a sip of his beer, savored the cool, bitter ale that had a nutty aftertaste.

  “Jesus Christ.” Hannigan pulled the beer from his lips in mid sip, sending a spray across the table. “They just got a grand slam? Rockies suck. You know, Cubs are playing tonight.” He raised his voice and looked at the bartender.

  The bartender smiled and started talking about the Cubs lacking bullpen.

  “Anyway,” Luke said rolling her eyes. “Three years ago, when we were called in after the second killing down here, we saw the stark difference in the killings, but we didn’t know what to make of it.”

  Wolf’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Patterson. He held up a finger and pushed his way out of the booth.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s …”

  He walked out the front door. “Hello?”

  “… hear me?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “We have another missing woman.”

  The statement was loud and clear, the words hitting as if he’d stepped out onto the highway and gotten plowed by a car. “Shit. Who?”

  “Lindsay Ellington. You know her?”

  Wolf knew her.

  Her father, Bud Ellington, worked at the hardware store full time and was a master carpenter.

  Once Wolf had asked him about the best way to go about making a shoe bench. Ellington had asked him questions about the dimensions, the material he was looking for, and then told Wolf he’d get back to him, that he had a great resource on it. Wolf had assumed he was going to come to him with a book, a website link, to help him build the bench, but two days later Ellington had shown up to the department asking for him, and then he brought him out to his truck. In the truck was the finished bench, just as Wolf had described it.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of Ellington’s truck that day had been Lindsay Ellington. Ellington had beamed with pride as he introduced her.

  Wolf struggled to remember her face, but he remembered she was smiling.

  “Sir?”

  “Yeah, I know her. What happened?”

  “Her father came in and said she’s been missing since last night.”

  “Since last night?” Wolf started pacing. “When?”

  “Lindsay Ellington signed a credit card slip inside the Pony Tavern last night at 11:22.”

  “Shit.” He put his hand to his forehead and began pacing.

  Luke came outside. She walked past him and to the end of the building, talking heatedly into her own cell.

  “We found Lindsay’s phone in the weeds outside the Pony,” Patterson said. “They’re interrogating Attakai again,” she said, “but …”

  “But he’s not saying anything again. What about the pictures of the maroon sedan I gave you?”

  “It’s going slow, especially since MacLean had us out all day, then we were dealing with Lindsay Ellington. I haven’t had much time to sit down at the computer. But from what I’ve done, I’m pretty sure it’s a Pontiac Bonneville, either 1994 or 1995. They’re basically the same models both years. I can tell you Fred Wilcox doesn’t have one, or if he does, it’s not registered under his name in the state of Colorado. The last thing he registered was his Ford Explorer, and since then he’s gone off the map. I can’t find him doing anything in the last two years—no credit card transactions, no cars, no insurance, no nothing.”

  He watched a pickup truck coast by into the outskirts of Durango. It reminded him of Bud Ellington’s truck.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes. Okay, that’s good work. I’m not sure those pictures are going to do us any good anyway.”

  He thought of the man across the river. The dark beard. The dark long hair. Had it been a coincidence? A guy driving through town, stopping to take a leak, and …

  Yeah, and he just happens to match Fred Wilcox’s description—a cold blooded killer, right when killings are starting to happen in your town. You need to get your ass back to Rocky Points.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  Luke was pacing at the far end of the building, talking heatedly into her phone.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know yet. Keep me posted and I’ll do the same.” He hung up and waited for Luke to end her phone call.

  A few seconds later she ended her conversation and pocketed her phone. “Bad news.”

  “Lindsay Ellington.” Wolf raised his phone.

  Hannigan came outside and put his hands on his hips, stretched his back. “What?”

  “They have another missing girl in Rocky Points,” Luke said.

  Hannigan blinked slowly.

  “There’s a big problem, however.” Luke folded her arms. “She was taken last night. We know this because of a credit card slip signed at the Pony Tavern in Rocky Points, and they just found her phone in the weeds near the tavern parking lot.”

  “And Attakai was in jail,” Wolf said. “But he could still be involved, because he had that cell phone, and we saw the pictures of that Ford Explorer, Fred Wilcox looked to be the abduction guy all along. Patterson and I were discussing the same thing.”

  Luke stared at him.

  “What?”

  “And it looks like they might let him out tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Hannigan held out his hands. “But he had the cell phone.”

  “Which his lawyers are now saying the FBI planted in his house. They’re threatening to go to the media with the story unless we play ball. It doesn’t matter, we’ll have surveillance on him.”

  He looked at his watch: 9:30 p.m., which meant they could be back in Rocky Points by 1 a.m. Maybe earlier if they pushed it.

  Luke put a hand on his shoulder. “We need to stay down here.”

  “What?” He almost got whiplash from looking at her so fast.

  “Agent Todd is up there. He’s got your entire department, plus twenty agents of ours on their way up from Denver. That’s over thirty personnel who are going to be up all night looking for her up there. What good is it going to do for us to drive all night, leaving the case here unattended?”

  “The killer is up in Rocky Points,” Wolf spoke slowly.

  “But the investigation is right her
e. We don’t have any leads up there that amount to anything, and that’s why we’re here.”

  “Yes we do.”

  “Are you thinking about those cell phone photos you took? Fuzzy pictures of a maroon Bonneville? I’m not seeing it.”

  “I know what I saw. The guy had long black hair. A beard.”

  She said nothing for a beat. “It’s a coincidence, or it’s a lead. Either way, they’re following up on it. There’re going to be those pictures you took on every unit’s dash computer. If that car is in Rocky Points and it’s findable, they’re going to find it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “But you know the clues are pointing down here. Why did Attakai have that phone? What does he have to do with this? And there’s another thing I just found out.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They checked Attakai’s cell phone records for the last few weeks. On the day Sally Claypool showed up dead he called his sister down here in Durango.”

  “Before you guys brought him in?”

  “Yeah.” Luke narrowed her eyes. “Why would he call his sister right then?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he calls his sister a lot.”

  “Nope. Todd checked. Not once in the last twelve months.” She pointed at the ground. “We have to stay here.”

  “We don’t have to do anything. Those are your orders.” There was little conviction in his voice.

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll go to our task force headquarters tomorrow, meet the guys down here on the case. You can see everything we have. And then we’ll go talk to Mary Attakai.”

  “I paid the tab,” Hannigan said. “Let’s go get some sleep.”

  “Yeah.” Wolf thought of a woman tied up by her ankles and wrists, sitting in a dark, cold place somewhere north of Rainbow Creek. Digging her nails into the dirt as a sick man slashed her with a knife. He thought of her father. He thought of his deputies working all night. “Right. Sleep.”

  Chapter 19

  Wolf’s eyes were puffy feeling. His thoughts slow. He’d slept little the night before, waking in adrenaline fueled sweats whenever he managed to fall asleep, only to wake up and repeat again a half-hour later.

  There was no news on all fronts.

  “Used to be covered in mud.” The deputy jammed a single sunflower seed in his mouth, a few seconds later spitting out the shell onto the blacktop.

  Wolf snapped on his latex glove and reached for the handle of the Ford Explorer. “You mind?”

  The deputy stood motionless for a moment. “I don’t care, do whatever you want. You’re part of the task force now, right? It’s been fully processed by the feds. I’m just an evidence clerk. Well, not just an evidence clerk. I’ve actually been assigned a field training officer …”

  Now Wolf understood why Luke and Hannigan had opted to let Wolf go alone to the impound lot at the rear of the La Plata SD headquarters building. The guy wouldn’t shut up.

  Wolf turned off his ears and pulled on the driver’s side door handle of Fred Wilcox’s Ford Explorer. It bounced open with little effort.

  He paused, staring inside.

  Cool air seemed to flow out of the vehicle, despite the early morning heat. Or it could have been that he was more intimate than he wanted to be right now with a sick killer.

  It was hard to tell what was normal Fred Wilcox wear and tear and what was the after-effect of being buried for a couple years under the southwestern high desert. The cloth seats were frayed in spots, slashed in others, like he had taken his aggression out on them with a pocketknife. The early morning sun lit up the spider web of cracks in the windshield.

  Leaning inside, Wolf dared a breath through his nose and thought he smelled blood, though it was probably impossible after all this time, with all the vehicle had gone through and all the testing chemicals applied by the forensic team. Then again, maybe it was blood.

  “… and then I’m going to make detective someday, too. It’s always been my dream to …”

  The floorboard carpets were dark brown and crusted with mud. He shut the door and opened the rear door. The back seats were folded forward. More room in back for Wilcox to keep his victims.

  Leaning inside again, he held his breath this time and studied the carpets. Blood. Clear as day against the otherwise dirty nylon loop material.

  Blue light streamed inside from above. Holes in the roof, where an excavator had discovered the vehicle with its jagged metal teeth, were now covered with a tarp.

  “ … but without no one playing, you just have to practice by yourself. That’s the only thing about it.”

  Wolf shut the door. “Thanks, I’m done.”

  The deputy blinked, looking like a blabbering demon had just been exorcised from his body. “All done?”

  “Yeah, if you could just show me back to the task force room, that would be great.”

  The deputy smiled. “You got it. Right back this way. Dang, it’s already hot today and it’s not even eight a.m. They say with climate change there’s going to be longer summers and shorter winters, but I think …”

  Wolf turned back to the vehicle and gave it one final look. It was dented badly outside, like somebody had raged on it with a sledgehammer.

  Keeping a polite smile plastered on his face, Wolf followed the deputy back into the La Plata County SD building. The guy was stalling, trying to walk slower to finish a story, so Wolf slapped him on the shoulder and walked away.

  Two right turns later he was alone and had found the small room.

  Inside Hannigan was leaning on a desk talking to another FBI agent. He turned with a smile. “How was it? Did you meet Deputy Jergens?”

  Wolf nodded.

  Hannigan smiled to his FBI colleague.

  It was freezing cold in the room and there were no windows. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought it was January. To add to the atmosphere, there were pictures of the seven victims lying on metal slabs plastered all over the walls. A pen board at the front of the room had half-thoughts scrawled all over it in poor handwriting.

  “This is Special Agent Wells,” Hannigan said.

  Wolf nodded and shook the man’s hand.

  “Nice vehicle out there, huh?” Wells asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The agent clucked his cheek and sipped his coffee.

  “Where’s Luke?”

  “Right here.” She came into the room behind him, bringing in her fresh scent. She must have brought her own soap and shampoo on the trip. “Let’s roll.”

  “I thought we were waiting for Mansor and Wines,” Hannigan said.

  “We’re meeting them at the hole.”

  “Oh,” Agent Wells stood up, “Going to see us a hole, huh?”

  “You’re staying here,” Luke said.

  Wells’s face dropped and he sat back down.

  “We’ve already seen the hole,” Hannigan said.

  Luke walked out of the room. “Not all of us.”

  They got in their vehicles once again and drove—Wolf following behind Hannigan and Luke—south out of town.

  They passed signs for Mesa Verde, which was a World Heritage Site that preserved some of the most pristine Ancestral Puebloan archeological sites in the United States, but their destination proved to be a few miles closer.

  After a short climb out of the Animas Valley, they turned south off the highway and followed a network of dirt roads that seemed to wander aimlessly. The wellheads and oil containment tanks proved the roads followed the oil deep beneath the surface of the earth to different fracking operations, which Wolf knew from Nate, ran into the hundreds in this immediate area alone.

  Luke stopped numerous times at forks in the road, consulting her telephone or a map, Wolf couldn’t tell, until they finally reached a well site that looked like all the rest—a pair of containment tanks tucked into a low juniper forest.

  They parked and got out, and then they stood in the heat for ten minutes until crackling tires approached up the
road.

  A Chevy Blazer with turret lights on top wobbled toward them and stopped.

  Wolf clamped his eyes shut and held his breath as a cloud of dust hissed over them into the desert.

  The Blazer doors opened and thumped shut.

  “Sorry,” the lead man said. The gleaming sheriff’s badge was visible through the dust before the man’s face. “Doesn’t matter how much rain you get out here, always gonna be dusty as hell. Hi there. Sheriff Ron Mansor.” He held out a hand to Wolf.

  “Detective Wolf.” Wolf shook the man’s hand. It was puffy and red, like the rest of him. His head was the shape of a saucepan, his deeply wrinkled face shaded by a wide brim cowboy hat.

  “This is Deputy Wines,” he said pointing behind him.

  Deputy Wines tipped his cap, eyeing Luke with a smile.

  Mansor nodded at Hannigan and Luke. “I heard what happened up there. And you have another missing girl?” He looked at Wolf.

  Wolf nodded.

  The sheriff wheezed, and Wolf wondered if the dust was getting to him or if he was having a cardiac event, but the sheriff seemed to think it normal and just walked.

  Deputy Wines waved an after-you hand and tucked his thumbs in his duty belt.

  The junipers swayed in a light, hair-dryer breeze, their scent mixed with the twisted bones of a long-dead deer alongside the dirt road. Insects hissed and snapped, and a lone hawk screeched while it floated in a lazy circle high above a pair of rusted cylinder oil tanks in the distance.

  Sheriff Mansor watched Wolf take in the sights and walked next to him. “All the fracking equipment has been taken off location. The company that dug the truck out of the ground was doing something with the wellhead, but they weren’t suckin’ it out of the ground, that’s for sure. There’re hundreds of sites like these around here. Most of them look like this now. Maybe one day the price of oil will go back up, and this place will be rocking and rolling again.”

  “Or maybe we’ll be driving in electric cars,” Luke said.

  Sheriff Mansor laughed like that was the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

  “Just up here,” Mansor said. “On the other side of that gray tank.”

  Deputy Wines took a silent cue and ran ahead of them, disappearing around the nearest oil containment tank.