by Jeff Carson
When the video was over, Shumway and Etzel looked at one another.
Wolf stared expectantly.
Shumway blinked slowly. “All right, you have my attention. That wasn’t Steven in the video. It was someone wearing his shoes. That doesn’t change the fact that his DNA was in these gloves.”
“Was there an anomaly with the gloves? Some sort of foreign substance they couldn’t account for?”
Etzel and Shumway looked at one another.
“Well?”
Shumway hitched up his belt. “The lab tech told us there were traces of …” he picked up another sheet of paper from Etzel’s desk and read it. “Na, Mg, K, Ca … hell, whatever these letters are. They said there were some traces of the powder from our crime-scene techs’ latex gloves.”
Deputy Etzel nodded.
“Did you talk to your crime-scene techs about this yet?” Wolf asked.
“Well, no. We just got this back a few minutes ago. Why?”
Wolf nodded. “Because there are a lot of types of latex gloves. Our CSU in Rocky Points uses powder-free gloves. The lab could probably test conclusively if they were gloves worn by the crime-scene techs or the assailant.”
“The assailant?” Shumway asked.
Wolf nodded. “That’s residue from the killer wearing latex gloves and the leather gloves over them.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I need to speak to Steven. Right now. Then I’ll let you know.”
A minute later, Wolf stood over Steven’s bed and slapped him on the leg.
Steven snorted awake, wiped drool from his lip, and sat up straight. When he saw the three men standing in front of him he pushed himself back on the bed.
“What’s going on?”
“Tell me about the day when Levi Joseph jumped you at the camp,” Wolf said.
Steven smacked his lips and rubbed his forehead. “You know about that … why?”
“Just answer.”
“Um, okay. I was lying there, just doing some work, and he came up and attacked me. He hit me on the back with a shovel.”
“Steven, we know about the two skeletons,” Wolf said. “We figured that out last night with Dr. Mathis’s help.”
Steven closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t want to talk to you. I … know I’m just going to implicate myself. I’ve talked to my lawyer, and I’ve taken law classes, guys.”
“Just listen.” Wolf squatted down and looked up at him. “I know the three of you are spooked about what you agreed to do with Professor Green. You found the extra skeleton and you guys were in the process of selling it when all this happened, and now you’re freaked. I get it. Because the bottom line is, we’ll easily prove the skeleton Green was selling came from that hole, and you’ll be in a heap of trouble. You didn’t report the skeleton to your university or the owner of the private land you were digging on. You four were engaging in criminal activity. You’re gonna have to face the music on that. But I know you’re not murderers.
“Someone else is, though. Someone else who knew about this sale. Someone who went down to Rocky Points, killed the fossil dealer, Professor Green, and Levi Joseph, and is now making it look like you did it.” Wolf pointed at him. “I need you to answer these questions or else you’re probably gonna get locked up without a key on this one.”
Steven said nothing.
“Why don’t you tell him about the shoes, the bag of money, the pistol, and the shovel we found last night, Wolf?” Shumway said.
Steven looked between them and shook his head.
“And the DNA we found matching him,” Shumway said.
Wolf nodded. “We found your shoes, the same ones that left all sorts of prints at the scene of three murders. The one’s you claim were stolen by a desert animal. We found murder weapons linked to you. We found your DNA on leather gloves caked with blood. And we also found two hundred thousand dollars in cash. It’s not looking good for you.”
Steven bit his lip and his knee bounced. “What’re your questions?”
“Did Levi see the second skeleton the day he attacked you?”
Steven deliberated for a few seconds. “No.”
“No? That didn’t sound too sure.”
“Probably not.”
Wolf blinked.
“He jumped me in the pit. And there were two skulls in there at the time. Couldn’t have been more obvious. So we suspected that he had. But he never told anyone, so then we decided he probably hadn’t noticed, you know, in the heat of the moment.”
Wolf nodded. “Dr. Talbot came and visited after that. When was his visit?”
“I don’t know. Like a week later.”
“Unannounced?” Wolf asked.
“No. Green knew he was coming.”
“And did Talbot see the second skeleton?”
“No. We’d learned our lesson from Levi. We’d kept it covered before, but we took further precautions for Dr. Talbot’s visit. Green rented a garage near a farmhouse and we started moving everything there as fast as possible. Then we started keeping everything covered even while we were working.”
“And when Dr. Talbot came to see your dig you had everything out and moved?”
“No. Not even close. Just … better covered. We even put dirt over it.”
“And how did that visit go down exactly? Was he fooled?”
Steven shrugged. “Professor Green kind of worked his magic on the whole thing. Got him out of there without even looking.”
Wolf pulled his eyebrows together. “Dr. Talbot didn’t even look at your dig?”
Steven shrugged. “He did, but not under the tarps. Just kind of nodded at them and left.”
Wolf looked at Shumway.
Shumway shrugged.
“Thanks,” Wolf said, and he left the holding cell.
Out in the hall, Wolf turned to Shumway. “Sheriff, you need to call your daughter and tell her to leave work right now.”
Shumway blew air through his lips. “Why?”
“Because I have reason to believe she’s with the killer right now.”
“What? Explain.”
“I will, on the way.” He turned and ran. “Get everyone you have. We have to go now!”
Chapter 39
“Boydell? No.”
“And Talbot.” Wolf jammed his foot on the gas. His SUV’s engine hesitated and caught and they sucked back in their seat.
“Talbot? Don’t know the guy. But Boydell? Nope. I don’t believe it.” Shumway made a sour face and sneezed into a handkerchief. “Not the killing type. Jesus, that’s what you’ve been doing all morning? Coming up with this? Pull over. I’m allergic to this smelly dog of yours and you’re wasting my time.”
Wolf turned a corner and hit the gas again. “Before we get up into a place where cell phone coverage is bad, call your daughter at the visitor’s center and get her out of there. Tell her to drive back down into town right now.”
“Explain yourself,” Shumway said, heat rising in his voice as he grabbed the ceiling bar.
“Now!” Wolf matched his tone.
Shumway shook his head and produced an ancient cell phone from his pocket. He flipped it open, pressed a button, and put it to his ear. “No answer. She’s not answering.”
“Don’t call her cell phone. Call the visitor’s center.”
“Why would I do that? She has her phone on her.”
“I have her phone.”
Shumway looked at him. “You have her phone? Why the hell do you have her phone? You’d better start doing some explaining, or it’s about to get ugly in here.”
“Call the visitor’s center. I’ll explain, but call first.”
Shumway exhaled. “Shit … where’s that number … here.” He put the phone to his ear and checked his watch. “Nobody’s answering. The place doesn’t usually open for another fifteen minutes. They don’t get to work early. There’s no answer.” He snapped the phone shut. “So talk, damn it. Don’t make me pull this gun.”
“This morning, when I left your house, my deputy in Rocky Points and I checked some phone and financial records, and we figured out Boydell is behind all of this.”
“Yeah, yeah. You said that. And Talbot, the head of paleontology up at U of U. Now tell me why you think that, and then tell me why the hell you have my daughter’s phone.”
“Talbot’s wife filed a missing-person’s report yesterday. The Salt Lake PD found him this morning buried in his back-yard garden.”
Wolf turned a corner and passed by a vehicle like it was standing still.
“You kiddin’ me?”
Wolf shook his head.
“Shit.” Shumway eyed him. “And you’re telling me Boydell did it?”
“Okay, listen,” Wolf said. “Those students, Felicia, Mo, and Steven, and Green found the two skeletons, and instead of reporting the second skeleton to the university, they decided to sell the bones. They wanted a payday. Green had contacts in the business. He’d done a lot of selling of bones around the world before, according to what we’ve learned. So Green contacted Ryan Frost down in Rocky Points, and Frost found a buyer.”
Shumway nodded. “I get that. Boydell. Why Boydell?”
Wolf gripped the wheel and pumped the brakes as he came into a corner too fast. “Boydell’s involvement has to do with Megan and Steven. As you know, the two of them were having an affair, and then Megan got pregnant. She got Levi’s help to have the abortion down in Grand Junction. Levi was in love with your daughter and he was obliged to help her. But he got angry about what Steven had done to Megan, so right after taking Megan to the clinic, Levi brought her back to her yurt, went down to the Dig 2 camp and attacked Steven. Hit him in the back with a shovel. And in the process of rolling around in that hole, Levi saw the second skeleton.”
They came onto a straightaway and Wolf gunned it again. The transition from pavement to dirt approached fast but Wolf kept his foot on the gas.
“Levi came back up to the visitors’ center and told Boydell that night about the second skeleton. June 3rd.”
“How do you know that?” Shumway asked.
“I talked to Megan this morning and she told me.”
“You saw Megan this morning?”
Wolf held up a hand. “Let me finish. Megan said she saw Levi come up to Boydell’s quarters later the afternoon of June third. I had my deputy check Boydell’s and Levi’s phone records for June third, and the records show that Boydell made a forty-five-minute phone call to Talbot up at the University of Utah.”
Shumway said nothing.
“According to the phone records, for the next month, Boydell and the head of the paleontology department talked multiple times, and then, they stopped. It looks like Boydell bought a throwaway phone and started using that to call Talbot’s office instead.”
Shumway was blinking rapidly.
Wolf chopped a hand in the air. “Levi saw the skeleton, told Boydell, and Boydell got in touch with the head of paleontology and they started concocting a plan. I don’t know what the plan was, exactly. Only Boydell knows the specifics, because he’s the only one still alive.”
Shumway looked out his window, shaking his head.
Wolf continued. “Boydell, Levi, and Talbot got together with the knowledge of the second skeleton in that hole. They were seeing dollar signs. They wanted in on the deal.
“Think about it. Dr. Talbot visited Dig 2 a week after Levi found out about the second skeleton—Steven told us that just now, and Dig 1 told us about that visit. Remember?”
Shumway nodded.
“Steven told us just now that when Talbot visited, he didn’t even look under those tarps. He barely looked at the dig. Isn’t that a little strange? He comes all the way down from Salt Lake City, and just gives the dig a cursory glance? Because the truth is, he wasn’t there to see it. He was there for different reasons. He already knew what was under those tarps from talking to Boydell. He was there to tell Green the jig was up, and if he didn’t get a cut after they sold that second skeleton then they were all ruined.”
Shumway stared out the window with a skeptical look. “Why not just uncover the tarp and say, ‘Aha! I caught you! I want a cut of the sale of this skeleton?’”
“If he did that, then he lets the students know that he knows. He lets them realize he’s as corrupt as them. More importantly, he wanted to cut them out, without them knowing.”
Shumway looked at Wolf. After a lengthy silence, he exhaled, as if resigned to go along with Wolf’s explanation, for now. “Okay. So, from that point on, the deal was Green working with Boydell, Talbot, and Levi. The students were getting used for labor?”
“Yes,” Wolf said. “Exactly. They’d been cut out. But there’s more. Because after Green was approached by Talbot, Green got greedy. Or maybe nobody knew who they were dealing with, and Green had this plan all along, who knows … but, he wasn’t going to share with anyone. He bought a plane ticket to Argentina. He was going to take the money after the sale and run.”
Wolf looked at Shumway.
Shumway narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly.
“And that’s where Boydell’s killing spree begins,” Wolf said. “Boydell and Talbot must have figured out Green was going to ditch on them. So, rather than wait for Green to go get the money from Rocky Points and leave them high and dry, they followed him down, killed Frost, killed Green, leaving a bunch of evidence that made it look like it was Steven, and came back with the money for themselves.
“It was Talbot’s vehicle in Rocky Points that night. He has the same make and model tire we’re looking for from the crime scene. Salt Lake PD confirmed this morning.”
“Shit,” Shumway said.
Wolf nodded. “My deputy looked at Talbot’s credit-card transactions. He bought gas in Windfield Saturday afternoon. He stayed in a local motel, using his Visa card. He used his cell phone to call the visitors’ center twice.”
Shumway shook his head. “That’s dumb. Why leave a trail coming down here into Colorado?”
“I don’t think Talbot knew what was really coming. I don’t think he came into the situation thinking they were going to kill people, or else he wouldn’t have left such a clear trail. I think it was Boydell who learned about Green’s plan to leave and decided to start killing. He had a whole plan that he was following, stealing Steven’s shoes a month ago, the revolver from Green’s camp, the shovel, the leather gloves, snuffing out Levi to take his cut of the money, and then Talbot.”
Shumway scratched his chin and stared into nothing. “Steven and who? Who was supposed to be the second set of prints?”
Wolf smiled grimly. “I don’t think Boydell thought that far ahead. Or maybe he didn’t even care. He just assumed we’d pin it on one of the other students. He was just worried about covering his own tracks. Literally. He got Talbot to come pick him up from the visitors’ center so he could leave his truck there and claim he’d stayed there that whole Saturday night. He wore Steven’s shoes to make it look like it was Steven. He wore a big cowboy hat to shield his face when he needed to. He burned the UrMover truck because he knew forensic evidence would be found inside—hairs, fibers. He killed Levi with Steven’s shovel, wearing Steven’s shoes and leather gloves with latex ones underneath. Buried Levi shallow in the direction of Steven’s camp— a subtle reminder of who we were supposed to be blaming for all of it. And he was even there to remind us in person.”
Shumway turned to Wolf but stared past him. “This is just … so crazy.”
“He’s slipped up in so many ways it would be comical if it wasn’t so sick.”
“But why? Why go psycho and start killing over this? For money? That doesn’t seem like Boydell.”
“I think he’s extremely desperate. The SLC FBI field office went to Boydell’s
daughter-in-law’s house this morning. She said Boydell was in the process of inheriting a lot of money from an obscure relative she’d never heard of and he was going to help her pay for her son’s blood treatment in Scotland.”
Shumway nodded. “His grandson has a rare disease. He sold his house a couple of years ago and moved into that yurt to help pay for treatment.”
Wolf eyed the rearview mirror. A line of flashing deputy trucks kept a close follow, despite swimming in stream of dust kicked up by his SUV.
“But Steven still doesn’t have an alibi. In my time, I’ve learned that usually it’s the simplest explanation, and all that evidence last night points right to him. He could be in on this, too. Couldn’t he?”
Wolf shook his head. “Steven does have an alibi. It’s on your daughter’s phone. A video with a time stamp and a phone GPS location that puts him out here in the sticks at the time of the murder.”
Shumway rubbed his forehead. “A video with my daughter and Steven?”
Wolf nodded.
“Do I want to see what’s on that phone?”
“No. You don’t. Call her again.”
Shumway flipped open his cell. “Shit. No reception.”
Wolf handed over his. “Try mine.”
“No service either.” Shumway set the phone in the center console and eyed the side-view mirror. “Shit. Okay. It’s Boydell. My daughter’s up there. We’re gonna spook him if we roll up on him like this. It’ll just make things worse.”
Wolf eyed the rearview again. “You’re right.”
“So what do we do? What’s our plan?”
“We don’t roll up on him like this. Get on the radio with your guys.”
Chapter 40
Bradley Boydell walked between the wind-twisted junipers and stopped at the pinnacle of the hill. Grains of sand hissed against his pants and dust swirled against his face. As he dug his knuckles into his eyes, giving them a good massage, a fresh vision of a man’s head jerking forward, accompanied by a spray of blood, filled his mind.