by Jeff Carson
MacLean snorted. “You think he can’t? You’re lucky I took this job. You wouldn’t last a single term.”
There was movement and sound on the street below. A young man, early twenties, was marching away from a vehicle that had been parked across the street—illegally. Another man of the same age had gotten out of the passenger side and was jogging after him.
A muffled honk filtered through the glass as a car stopped just short of hitting the lead kid, who didn’t flinch or bother looking.
“I gotta go,” Wolf said.
“Listen.” MacLean grabbed his shoulder. “I just … want to make sure you’re taking front and center on this.”
Wolf glanced over into the squad room, catching Deputy Barker studying their conversation. “What? You don’t want to put your man Barker on this?”
MacLean looked down and hitched up his pants.
“Detective Wolf, please come to reception. Detective Wolf,” Tammy’s voice said over the speaker system.
Wolf left down the hall.
Chapter 6
“Detective Wolf, please come to reception. Detective Wolf,” Tammy said again, this time with a tinge of impatience.
Wolf upped his pace and skipped a stair between steps. As he reached the stairwell door to the first floor, he could already hear the furious barking.
Launching into the hall, Wolf sprinted to the lobby.
Amid shouts and squeaking shoes, and Jet barking on the perimeter, a swarm of men were tangled in a standing wrestling match. Cassidy’s brother had arrived.
“Hey!” Wolf shouted.
Jet flung saliva into the air from his bared fangs as he barked.
“Jet! Heel!”
Jet went quiet, backed up, and sat.
Wolf sprinted to the center of the chaos, peeling Jack and Nate’s arms off. Jack saw Wolf and backed away, but Nate stayed in close.
Amid the sweat and adrenaline, the stench of alcohol was strong.
Keegan Frost’s eyes were wild, his lips drooling, teeth bared.
“What the fuck did you say?” he yelled at Nate.
Nate shook his head and backed away, slapping at Keegan’s hand to let go of his T-shirt.
“Stop it, Keegan!” Cassidy screamed at the top of her lungs.
The room went silent at the ear-splitting outburst.
Keegan looked like he’d been punched between the eyes. He swallowed and panted, staring at his little sister.
“Stop,” she said.
“Is it true?” Keegan asked her.
Cassidy stepped to her brother and hugged him.
“Is it true?” The young man stood motionless, staring past them all for a few seconds, and then he dropped his head, his body racking with sobs.
Wolf locked eyes with the second man who had come in with Keegan. He looked early twenties, straight out of a sleeping bag and into the car for a few hours—and he seemed dumbstruck. His pupils were pinpricks, eyes frozen open.
Wolf walked to him, grabbed the sides of his head with both hands and pulled him close, taking a big sniff of his breath. “You been drinking?”
“Last night,” the kid said.
“And him?” Wolf thumbed toward Keegan.
“Last night.”
Must have been some kegger.
“Where?”
“Blue Mesa. The reservoir.”
“Where do you live?”
“Off fifth. Fifth and Wildflower.”
“Walk home.”
Wolf walked up behind Keegan and squeezed his front pockets. “Give me your keys.”
Keegan let go of his sister and twisted violently, just missing Wolf with a flying elbow.
Wolf locked one of Keegan’s muscular arms behind his back and pushed him into the corner.
Keegan fought but Wolf had him solidly. He put his lips to Keegan’s ear. “You need to calm down and give me your keys. You’re in the Sheriff’s Department and reek of beer. Now I said I want your keys. Got that?”
Keegan’s body slackened and he nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
Wolf held tight for another few seconds and then let go.
They bounced apart, and Keegan faced him and wiped his lips. He dug into his pocket and tossed Wolf the keys.
Wolf caught them and flung them at Nate in one motion. “Can you move that to a proper spot?”
Nate wiped his nose and nodded. “Yeah.”
Keegan looked like the fight had left him now, and he searched the room for his sister again. Without another word, he stumbled to her and hugged her tight.
Nate was about to leave, then hesitated and walked to Wolf. “You all right?”
“Yeah, you?”
Nate nodded.
“You going to talk to him? Take some sort of statement?” Nate asked.
“Not right now.”
“Okay. I’m going to take them to my house. And you don’t have to worry about Jack. I’ll take him to my place and give him a ride home if he needs it.”
“Thanks.”
“And you?”
Wolf shrugged. “I’ll go pick up Trudy Frost and get back to work on this thing.”
They stared one another down for a few seconds. Nate broke first and looked at his feet, scratching his chin. A classic I-want-to-say-something Nate gesture.
“What?”
“I could take Jet … but …”
Wolf waited for the rest of the sentence, then understood. “But Kenny’s allergic.” Kenny was the youngest of Nate’s three sons, and the allergy was no joke. “Okay.”
“I could just put him outside. It would be no trouble.”
Wolf shook his head. “No, I’ll keep him here and take him back to my house later.”
“You sure?” Nate asked.
“Let’s go, Jet.” Wolf looked around the room.
Jet was already by the bank of elevators, sitting patiently.
“Huh.” Wolf raised his eyebrows. “I’ll talk to you soon.”
Chapter 7
“Jeffrey Green, professor of paleontology at the University of Utah.” Patterson’s high-pitched voice echoed through the amphitheater squad room. “He was using his university email account to communicate with Frost.”
Wolf stood at the front of the situation room. The polar-opposite of the tiny one he’d been used to for over a decade, this room could seat sixty, with rows that climbed up at a twenty-degree angle. He also knew that the room could fill up to capacity and beyond, because twice he’d spoken to the entire department, and both times the room had been packed like the ski-resort parking lot on New Year’s Eve. Both times he’d felt out of sorts in front of such a crowd, but today there were only a few of them. The only discomfort he felt now was in his nose from the smell billowing out of Jet.
He walked to the bank of windows and pulled up the blinds. The panoramic view of the mountains to the east was brightly lit by the late-afternoon sun. He opened two windows a foot and took a greedy inhale of the fresh, pine-scented air.
Patterson clicked the mouse on her laptop and a website for the University of Utah’s paleontology department flashed on the giant screen at the front of the room.
After a few more clicks, a bio revealed itself on the projector screen. The heading said Professor Jeffrey Green, PhD.
In the photo, Green wore round, black-framed glasses that hid the color of his eyes behind glare. His mouth was small and his smile puckered, only a few crooked upper teeth showing. His greasy black hair contrast starkly with his white skin, and was combed straight to the side to try and cover a prominent bald spot on the top of his small head.
“Harry Potter did not age well,” Rachette said.
Hernandez and Lorber laughed, and Rachette leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile.
Patterson clicked again and an email came up. “According to this email, Green was due to deliver the bones to Ryan Frost last night at 8 p.m.”
Hernandez’s mustache stretched in a smile and he turned to Rachette. “She’s such a smar
t woman. If you could cook like my wife, then you would be fighting me off.”
“Down, boy,” Rachette said.
Jet lifted his head off the floor and gave a curious grunt.
“Not you. You stop farting,” Rachette said. “My God, what is Jack feeding this animal?”
“It’s a common gastro-intestinal disorder with German shepherds,” Dr. Lorber said. “Especially those that have gotten on in age. You need to put him on, and keep him on, proper medicine.”
“Thanks, everyone,” Wolf said aloud. “Can we get started?”
“We have fourteen exchanges back and forth between Green and Ryan Frost,” Patterson said.
“Professor Green?” MacLean descended the center aisle with Undersheriff Wilson behind him. When he reached the front of the room, he wrinkled his nose and sat down, eyeing Rachette suspiciously.
Wilson nodded to Wolf and Patterson and sat quietly with a notepad and paper.
“It’s the dog,” Rachette said.
“Who’s Professor Green?” MacLean asked.
“He works at the University of Utah,” Patterson repeated. “He’s been there eleven years according to his bio, and he teaches a few classes in the paleontology department on Jurassic fauna.”
“Jurassic fauna?” MacLean asked. “Animals?”
She nodded.
“Why don’t they just say that?” MacLean asked.
Rachette nodded. “That’s what I told her.”
MacLean ignored Rachette and blinked.
“When ... we found out it was Professor Green,” Patterson said, “I took the liberty of checking his financial records, and according to his credit-card statements he rented a UrMover truck from Windfield, Colorado, two days ago—Saturday afternoon—at 12:25 p.m.”
“Windfield is south of Dinosaur National Monument,” Rachette said. “I’ve been there.”
“And?” MacLean asked.
Rachette cleared his throat. “And there’s a dinosaur quarry there.”
MacLean grunted.
“All right,” Wolf said. “So Green presumably exhumed the bones from his dig, which is somewhere near Windfield, Colorado, loaded them up and brought them down to Rocky Points, where he was to deliver them to Ryan Frost, who procured the sale with Senator Levenworth. Has anyone called the university? Talked to the paleontology department to track Green down?”
Rachette raised a hand. “I called and got nowhere. Everything’s closed on Sundays. But we have Green’s cell number. I called twice and it seems like he has his phone switched off. I didn’t leave any messages at the university or with Green.”
“I’ll take over on the calls,” Wolf said.
“I’ll call the locals,” MacLean said, referring to the local law enforcement in Windfield.
“Keep me in on that,” Wolf said.
MacLean widened his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
“Let’s get back to the crime scene,” Wolf said.
Lorber leaned forward. “We have two slugs inside Ryan Frost. Both .38 special. And no brass at the scene, so a revolver. But there’s more. Hernandez and Rachette?”
“The nearest neighbor,” Rachette said, “is a guy named Sam Tinniker. You know him?”
“He drives ski-resort shuttles,” Wilson said.
“And he lives down the hill from Frost,” Rachette said. “He says he heard three gunshots at 8:15 p.m. at dusk. He swears he heard three.”
“But Ryan Frost only sustained two gunshot wounds,” Lorber said.
Wolf nodded.
“‘The gunshots were like pop-pop …’” Rachette was reading from his notepad. “‘And then a minute passed, then there was another shot.’ That’s what our witness said. He says it was strange to hear three shots like that, because usually Frost is, quote, ‘blasting off a lot more rounds when he’s practicing shooting.’”
“And the other neighbors?” Wolf asked.
“They didn’t hear anything,” Hernandez said.
Lorber crossed one long leg over the other. “Judging by the proximity of the shots fired into Frost, I’m going to venture that the third shot didn’t miss.”
“Then where did it go?” Wolf asked.
Lorber splayed his hands.
“Obviously, we need to search for that bullet. Fingerprints?”
Lorber looked at Dr. Blank, the assistant medical examiner.
Blank shook his head.
“The only ones that are coming up are Frost and his family’s,” Patterson said.
“And the pistol in the bushes?” Wolf asked.
“Kimber TLE II .45 cal,” Hernandez said. “Registered to Ryan Frost. No shots fired. Only prints on the gun are his.”
“What about the tire tracks and footprints?” Wolf asked.
Patterson clicked her computer a few times and pulled up a file with photographs in it.
A picture came up on the screen with an imprint of a tire-tread pattern clearly visible in fine dirt. “This tread is our UrMover truck. Tread pattern matches that on the UrMover Moving truck, according to the file we received from the rental agency.” Patterson was clicking through the photos continuously now. “The tracks that come after it are from a full-sized pickup truck with Goodyear P265/70R17-model tires.”
“That’s specific,” Wolf said.
“Yes. But the bad news is that many American-made trucks from 2009 to the present have this exact tire model on them straight out of the factory. That includes Chevy, Ram, GMC, and Ford. In fact, half the vehicles in this department have the same tires as our SUV, but sixteen- instead of seventeen-inch. The only thing we can gather is that we’re looking at a full-sized American-model pickup.”
“Why not a Toyota?” MacLean asked. “Nissan?”
“Because of the wheel spacing.”
“And the shoe prints?” Wolf asked.
Lorber stood up from the chair, and the vision of a giant climbing out of a clown car came to Wolf’s mind. The Sluice-Byron county medical examiner stood six foot seven inches tall, four inches taller than Wolf, but weighed at least twenty pounds less. A former hippie that had kept the hair as a memento, Lorber stroked his pony tail with one bony hand and pointed at Patterson with the other. “Patty, hit me with the folder I sent you.”
Patterson clicked and a picture of the driveway came up on the big screen. The photo had been taken with a wide-angle lens to get the entire space in the frame.
Lorber produced a laser pointer and swirled a green dot around Ryan Frost’s body. “Here we have Frost, and around him we have five sets of footprints we’re worried about, and one set we’re not, which was Sheriff … uh, sorry, Detective Wolf’s. Next.”
Patterson took her cue and clicked the button.
“Here’s a photo of Cassidy Frost’s shoe prints. Clearly her prints were left last, as they go on top of the other four in question. It jives with her story that she found her father this morning, and, besides, we’ve established that Cassidy was out camping with Jack Wolf,”—he looked at Wolf over his frameless spectacles—“your son, last night. Jack also confirmed this in his statement to Deputy Munford.”
Wolf felt heat rising in his face, and when Lorber stared at him for a few seconds Wolf raised an eyebrow.
“Right … so that leaves—next—the other four sets of footprints around the body and the rest of the crime scene. Next.”
A picture of the ground, filtered digitally with some effects to highlight the footprints, appeared. “We have two sets of prints—Converse All Stars, size sixteen, and work boots of unknown brand, size approximately ten or eleven, walking behind two more sets.”
“Christ,” MacLean said. “My head’s going to explode.”
Lorber stopped and stared at MacLean. “I don’t …”
Patterson cleared her throat. “The prints tell us a story: Two men escorted Ryan Frost and someone else from the front door to the spot we found Frost’s body. We’re assuming this someone else with Frost was Professor Green, because of the emails. We know the two in
question escorted them because their footprints go over the top of Frost’s and whoever else was next to him.”
MacLean twirled an impatient finger. “I get it.”
Lorber nodded. “Yes. Right. Thank you, Patty. Next.”
A hissing sound, like a deflating tire, pierced the air.
Jet lurched awake from a deep sleep, licked his teeth, and then dropped his head to the floor again.
“My God,” MacLean said. “I tell you what, give me the short version, or a gas mask.”
Lorber backed away from Jet and nodded for Patterson to take over.
Patterson scrunched her nose and clicked the mouse, bringing up some more pictures of treads and shoe prints. “Basically, the story goes like this. One man drove in with the UrMover rental truck—a box truck we’re assuming was rented by Green from Windfield.
“One set of footprints comes out of the rental truck, and a different set, the Converse All Stars, goes back in and drives it away. Following the rental truck into the driveway was a full-sized pickup truck.” She clicked further. “Converse All Star and Work Boot got out of the pickup that followed. We’re reasonably certain that Work Boot got out of the full-sized pickup from the passenger side, then left driving the full-sized pickup truck.”
Wolf nodded, seeing what she was getting at. “And let me guess, Converse All Star leaves driving the UrMover truck instead of the pickup truck.”
“Exactly,” Patterson said.
“So, we think Green drove the moving truck in to deliver the bones,” Wolf said, “and it looks like two people followed him in and got out of their truck.”
“Yes,” said Lorber. “But the delivery doesn’t happen. Because there’s a shitload of bones in the garage.” He pointed to Patterson.
Patterson clicked and a picture of the garage interior came up.
Lorber swirled his laser pointer on the screen. “But no Allosaurus fragilis. No delivery.”
Patterson clicked her mouse again.
A picture of an empty space on the smooth concrete floor of the garage came up. It was cordoned off with blue masking tape and had a sign that said Allosaurus fragilis—Levenworth.
“And,” Patterson raised a finger, “that brings me to the most interesting transaction on Green’s credit card. He bought a plane ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina, scheduled to depart DIA this morning at 8:27 a.m. Guess who was not on the flight?”