by Jeff Carson
“Yes.” Gail sniffed and glared at Baine.
Baine leaned close to the picture. “Did Deputy Tom Rachette of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department know what was in this bag when you handed it to him?”
“No.”
“What’s that?”
“No.”
“Aha.” Baine stood up, scraping the chair back.
Gail Olson leaned back.
“Why did you do this? Were you using Deputy Rachette as a runner for these drugs without his knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That was good volume on that answer. I appreciate it.” Baine paced behind his chair, showing a shot of his torso only. “And you knew this man, Tom Rachette, before you handed him this bag of drugs, correct?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Did you know he was a deputy of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then again, I have to ask, Ms. Olson. Why? Why would you so brazenly test your luck and target a Sluice County deputy sheriff? What could you possibly gain in using this man to run drugs for you? Why not choose some other random shmoe?”
She swallowed.
Baine sprung forward and slapped the table, and his angry face filled his side of the split screen. “I asked you a question.”
Gail Olson closed her eyes. “I w-was put up to it. They—”
“Put up to it? What does that mean?”
“I was told to”—she looked up at Baine—“get to know Deputy Tom Rachette, and then ask to meet him at that exact spot. At that exact time.”
“This exact spot in the photos, at the time of the photos,” Baine said.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“By whom? Who told you to do this?”
Gail Olson’s eyes welled up.
Baine sat down and folded his arms. “Let me be more specific. Did Sheriff Will MacLean of the Byron County Sheriff’s Department put you up to this?”
“Pssh, this is BS,” MacLean said from his chair.
“Be quiet.” Luke pointed her pistol at him.
“… was. Yes,” Gail Olson said on the screen.
“What did she just say?” Luke asked.
“She said yes,” Wolf said.
“Why did you do this for him?” Baine asked.
“Because he …” Again, Gail Olson looked up at Baine, this time narrowing her eyes.
“Come on, honey. Spit it out.”
“Because he paid me.”
“How much? One thousand? Two thousand?”
“Yes.”
“Which?”
“Two thousand.”
Baine placed his hands flat on the desk. “And what else? That’s pretty risky for just a couple thousand dollars. There has to be more.”
She kept silent.
“That’s it?”
She held up her hands. “And he … expunged my record.” She acted like she was pulling the words out of thin air.
Baine frowned. “Really? He did that, too?”
“Yes.”
Baine stood up again and paced behind his chair. “Intriguing. He must have had some inside help for that. Do you know anything about how he did that?”
“I don’t know? He said he would expunge my record, and pay me two thousand for the photo shoot, and so I did it. End of story.”
Picking up a remote control from the table, Baine pushed a button and the video went blank.
Wolf leaned back on the leather couch.
Bonnie was giving her tied-up husband the evil eye.
“Not exactly the most professional interview I’ve ever seen,” Luke said.
“I asked Baine to get the facts,” Wolf said. “I wasn’t looking to bust MacLean. I just wanted ammo to fight back against his blackmail attempt. I wanted Rachette and my deputies in the new Sheriff’s Department, and that’s what I used this video for. I knew Rachette wasn’t running drugs and that MacLean was behind the whole thing somehow. I just needed the proof for the careers of my deputies. Forget actual charges against this rat.”
MacLean shook his head.
“But, like I said, he ended up nabbing all other copies of this interview.”
“And you had a copy, too?” Luke asked.
Wolf nodded.
“Where?”
“In my desk, in my office at home.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “The FBI would’ve found it. We didn’t.”
Wolf nodded. “Like I said, this guy had already nabbed it.”
“And how would I have gotten that?” MacLean asked. “By breaking into your house while you were sitting there right in the middle of the living room in that hospital bed of yours?”
Wolf shrugged. “You knew how bad I was after that fall. You could have walked in during the middle of the night and searched the whole place without me knowing.”
MacLean dropped his head. “Okay, let me know when it’s my turn.”
Luke looked at Wolf and shrugged.
Wolf stood up and went to the window. “Fine. Explain away.”
“I hope you can explain,” Bonnie said, “or you’ll be looking for a new wife by the end of the day.”
MacLean ignored her and glared at Luke. “Like I said, you guys brought me those photos.”
Luke said nothing.
“Special Agent Smith came into my office one day and told us he’d been working undercover up in Rocky Points. He started talking about the county merger and you and me running against each other. He gave me those photos and said that I was free to do whatever I wanted with them. Naturally, I asked him what he meant, and exactly what I was looking at. He said it was what it looked like, that a Sluice County deputy was running drugs with the girl who’d been the biggest drug bust in Ashland in ten years. He told me they were watching your department closely and had reason to believe you were at the helm of it all.”
Wolf said nothing.
MacLean shifted. “Can you loosen these ropes? I can’t feel my left arm.”
Nobody moved.
MacLean cleared his throat. “So, yes, I brought those photos to you.”
“Blackmailed me.”
“Look at it from my point of view. As far as I know, you’re a drug dealer, running millions of dollars’ worth of drugs through your Sheriff’s Department. You’re the scum of the earth. Hell yeah, I took those photos and ran with them. I warned you to step off or I’d expose you for what you really were.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes. “But you took the pictures.”
“I did not take the pictures. I just told you, Agent Smith brought me those photos. How else do you want me to say it, in Spanish?”
“But I told you to stop running the illegal investigation in my county and you admitted you had a guy undercover who took the photos.”
“I was lying about that … but I never said I took the photos. I never said he did, either. I was careful with my words.”
“Slimy bastard,” Wolf said.
“You slimy bastard. You’re the one running drugs through your Sheriff’s Department. I was thinking on the fly. I couldn’t say the FBI gave them to me—that wasn’t part of the deal.”
Wolf wished MacLean was untied so he could see his body language.
“Then when I gave you those photos of Rachette and Gail Olson, you stonewalled me,” MacLean said. “You were cool as ice, and the evidence was right there, staring you in the face. Hell, I’d gotten the photos from the FBI, and you were just pretending that I was a rat trying to screw you over. Just like you’re doing now.
“I have to admit I knew you as too good a man to believe the photos, but when I saw how cool you were about the whole thing, how unfazed, I kind of got the creeps. And then, bam. Agent Smith and your ex-wife are dead, found shot up in a car. I put out the feelers and heard they were dating one another. So I thought, holy crap, who is this guy, Wolf? And you still hadn’t dropped out of the race for sheriff.
“Then the FBI came to talk to me, right after
your ex-wife and Agent Smith were found, but it was confusing as all hell. It’s like I was talking to a completely different FBI. They had the same pictures, with Rachette and Gail Olson in them, and they started asking if I’d ever met the girl. I said no, which was the truth. But I knew they were talking with Rachette about those pictures—hell he was in them—so I had to fess up that I’d used them. Used them with your encouragement, that is.” He pointed his chin at Luke.
Luke cleared her throat. “I think the important thing to realize here is that Agent Smith was a scumbag, and that you were, in actuality, talking to two different FBIs—one represented by a corrupt agent who dangled a carrot in front of your greedy face, and then, afterwards, one real FBI comprising special agents who abide by the law. That is, if you’re even telling the truth about all this.”
MacLean darted his eyes around the room.
“Continue,” Wolf said.
MacLean closed his eyes. “Like I said, the FBI confused me. I had no clue what to think. They were looking at me like you’re looking at me, like I was blackmailing you to get out of the race. But it was the FBI’s idea in the first place, and I told them that. ASAC Frye told me they hadn’t signed off on that, and that they didn’t sign off on that type of thing. I said, no shit?”
MacLean shook his head. “Then I just kept wondering what Agent Smith was playing at by misleading me, and then he shows up dead.”
Wolf watched two crows hopping outside. “Keep going.”
“That day when we met at your house, you said, I’m out. I’m officially out of the race, as soon as you fulfill your end of the bargain. Then you presented me with that Gail Olson interview tape and your demands to hire your deputies. After that, I was wondering what the hell I’d just walked into. I was wondering if I was now the dummy man up front while you ran this drug ring with your list of corrupt deputies on the inside. I was wondering if you were somehow working with Agent Smith, and you’d offed him. Then I started wondering if you and he were setting me up from the beginning—dangling these photos in front of me.”
MacLean was telling the truth, Wolf decided. At least a version of it he truly believed.
“And let’s talk about that video,” MacLean said. “If you look at that video from my point of view, it looks like your deputy is strong-arming her into saying whatever the hell he wants her to. She’s crying at the beginning of the interview, for Christ’s sake. Who knows what they were discussing before the cameras started rolling. Probably something like, Say that MacLean was behind this whole thing or else.”
Wolf walked behind MacLean’s desk. The chair was missing and Wolf realized that MacLean was sitting on it. Pulling open the center drawer, he found a pair of scissors and walked to MacLean’s rear.
“I showed Baine the photos of Rachette and Gail Olson, and I told him my suspicions that you were behind the pictures.” Wolf cut the twine. “I told him to confirm my suspicions. Baine followed orders, my orders, to a T. I haven’t seen that interview for some time, and when I saw it the first time my brain was spending more effort blocking out pain than noticing Gail’s behavior.”
The loose twine fell from MacLean and he massaged his wrists. “Okay. What does that mean?”
Wolf walked to the mouse and clicked on the media player on MacLean’s computer. He found the spot of the video and let it play.
“I w-was put up to it. They—”
“Put up to it? What does that mean?”
Wolf clicked stop. “She was about to say ‘they’ something, and Baine cut her off.” Wolf clicked the play button again.
“I was told to”—Gail looked up at Baine—“get to know Deputy Tom Rachette, and then ask to meet him at that exact spot. At that exact time.”
“This exact spot in the photos, at the time of the photos?”
“Yes.”
“By who? Who told you to do this?”
Wolf paused the video again. “She was about to fess up to the truth. She was distraught about it. Scared. Now I’m going to push the play button again. This time don’t say a word.” Wolf eyed MacLean and hit play.
“Let me be more specific. Did Sheriff Will MacLean of the Byron County Sheriff’s Department put you up to this?” Baine asked her.
Gail Olson’s eyes darted right, then left, and then she looked up at her interrogator. But as she did so, the fear disappeared. “It was. Yes.”
Wolf clicked the stop button. They all looked at him.
“She was going to tell Baine that ‘they’ put her up to the pictures. That ‘they’ made her do it. And Baine cut her off and asked her whether MacLean had put her up to it, and then she said yes.”
MacLean’s eyes went wide. “Yes, I saw that.”
“She was relieved to tell Baine it was you. At first she thought Baine knew the real truth, and she thought she was going to have to say it on camera. Baine was strong-arming her. He’d told her she didn’t need a lawyer, because it wasn’t an official investigation.” Wolf shrugged. “He might have threatened her. That’s probably why she was so upset at the beginning of the interview. Like I said, Baine can be a pretty persuasive guy. I’m not proud of it. It’s just the truth.”
“Yes,” MacLean said. “I knew this interview was fishy. Baine steered her into saying what he wanted, and she jumped at the chance, because the alternative was … what?”
“The alternative was to face the guys who really made her do it. The same guys who shot and killed a lawyer and his family a couple of days ago in Denver. The same guys who ambushed us yesterday, and the same guys who killed my ex-wife.”
The room descended into silence again save the panting dog.
MacLean cleared his throat. “And … who is that?”
“We’ve been calling them the Ghost Cartel,” Luke said.
MacLean blinked. “I’ve never had a run-in with any cartels other than a Mexican one a couple years ago. The Ghost Cartel? Never heard of them.”
Wolf stared at him.
“What?”
“I think you’ve unknowingly been working hand in hand with them for years.”
MacLean blew a puff of air past his lips.
“Who else in your department knew about those photos of Rachette and Gail Olson?”
“Lancaster, that was it. He was with me in the meeting with Agent Smith.”
Wolf nodded.
“Wait.” MacLean’s face turned red and he looked like he’d been punched in the face.
“And the video? Who else saw the video?”
MacLean’s eyes widened. “It was him. Lancaster was the only other person to see that video of Baine and Gail Olson. He’s working with the cartel.”
Wolf nodded. “And there’s one more thing. You told me you had pictures of me, taken the night of the murders, of me and the suspect in the Cold Lake murders. Of us going into my house, and then both of us leaving the next day.”
MacLean closed his eyes and nodded.
“Let me guess. Lancaster took those photos. He was in Rocky Points that night and he took them.”
MacLean’s mouth fell open. “Oh, Wolf, I’m sorry. It was him. He killed Sarah. It was him.”
“Those pictures would’ve been a nice thing to show the FBI to give me an alibi for that night.”
MacLean made a pained face. “I know. And when I brought them up to Lancaster, he told me the pictures were gone.”
Wolf stared at him. “And it never crossed your mind that Lancaster had killed my wife that night and that he was getting rid of the photos to destroy evidence that he was in town that night? The evidence that he’d killed her?”
The room went silent.
MacLean’s mouth fell open. “Wolf, you have to believe me. Our plan was to use the photos to make sure you were out of the race for sheriff. But you dropped out.”
“And you never thought about Lancaster being the real killer, and all this slipped your mind until now?” Luke asked. “Yeah, right.”
MacLean closed his eyes. “I told you, I
thought about the pictures. But … what can I say? I trusted Lancaster’s judgment about not showing the photos to the FBI. I swear it never crossed my mind that Lancaster was responsible. I just thought the photos made it look like, or at least brought up the possibility that, we had something to do with the deaths, so it was a good idea to get rid of them. I swear, I had no idea Lancaster was actually involved. But now ... now I’ll kill the man next time I see him.”
Wolf swallowed his anger, and decided he almost pitied the sheriff for being so naïve. So gullible. Because he saw that MacLean was telling the truth, and more importantly he saw that MacLean genuinely felt regret.
MacLean never paused to think much outside the terms of his political aspirations. If he had, perhaps the entire situation would be different. Perhaps Sarah would even be alive. But Wolf knew he would be misplacing blame if he put it on MacLean. The man was human, with flaws. Others had exploited those flaws and were responsible for all this. It was these other men who Wolf needed to let his anger burn hot for.
“So what’s next?” Luke asked.
“We need to get Margaret Hitchens and her sister out of jail.”
Chapter 33
Rachette picked a grain of coffee out of his teeth and squinted against the campfire smoke.
Burton, Jack, Wilson, and Munford sat or stood around the fire, sipping their own coffees in silence. The Stellar’s jays and popping wood provided the soundtrack of the morning, which would otherwise have been peaceful had they not known they were going into battle.
Rachette had never felt this before. He’d never been in the military and felt the certainty of mayhem and upcoming death. Sure, he’d been shot four times and there’d been ripping pain that he hoped he’d never have to feel again, but that had all been in the heat of the moment. He’d never had time to sit and meditate on the fact that he was going to kill or be killed at this time, on this day.
It was like they were soldiers sitting in the cargo plane, waiting to jump. Like a duel was scheduled for high noon.
Eyeing the others over the rim of his coffee cup, he was surprised at the composure of every single one of them, including Jack.
Most surprisingly Jack, he thought. Or maybe not. He was Wolf’s son, after all, and Rachette had never seen a man more composed under pressure than Dave Wolf.