“What aren’t you telling the sheriff, you old goat?”
“Chief—sorry I was thinkin’ out loud. Old goats tend to do that.”
“You call me to talk livestock?”
“Nope, called about a possible threat to two of your hoopsters.” He gave the Chief the names. “Thing is, I should know more in the mornin’ but I got nothin’ but suspicion to give you. Thought I should give you a heads-up.”
“Are you thinking protective custody?”
“More like a kinda ostentatious welfare check. Your call, Chief.”
“As always, Micah, talking to you is like—”
“Heard the game was a real barnburner.”
“Oh, man, it was a dream. You didn’t watch it?”
“I was workin’. Now I’m goin’ to bed.”
Micah let his frustration out by slamming the nurses’ station counter. “How could he be in a coma? He was talkin’ last night!”
“Keep it down, Micah,” the nurse said. She leaned toward him. “He had some swelling in his brain—it’s pretty common now to put the patient in a medically induced coma. Let’s the swelling go down from a trauma.”
“For how long?”
“Hard to say. Depends on how long it takes the swelling to go down—and don’t smack the counter again.”
“Deputy, may I have a word with you?”
The familiar voice came from behind him. He turned to find his daughter’s bright blue eyes focused on his. “Sarah Anne, I was hopin’ to talk to Darby but these good folk put him asleep.”
She motioned for him to follow and began to walk to the doors.
Micah turned back to the nurse. “I’m sorry for my unruly and impolite behavior.” Then he followed the sheriff’s retreating figure.
“You left awfully early this morning, Dad.”
“Wanted to talk to Darby.”
“Hoping he’d tell you who ran him off the road?”
“Nope. Was goin’ to ask him who he was rushin’ off to protect. The person who still needs protectin’ an’ Darby ain’t in any condition to do nothin’.”
Sarah stopped. “We need to talk. Meet you at that new coffee shop on Sycamore.”
“They serve regular coffee?”
“New horizons, Dad. See you in ten.”
Eight minutes later, Micah looked over the red and white striped café curtains and saw Sarah seated at a corner table. He pushed into the hiss and turbine sounds of espresso. Smelled good though.
He sat at Sarah’s table and glanced at a cup she pushed in front of him. “What’s this?”
“Cappuccino.” She took a sip of hers. “Now, start from the beginning.”
He did and told her about the call from Dog through his call to Chief Lykins at IU. “The road where Darby went off is the backdoor route to the Bloomington campus. His nephew, Toby, is there…an’ Darby weren’t just a coach but his uncle.”
“Have you talked to Toby or his family yet?”
Micah shook his head. “Thought I’d suss it out with Darby. Didn’t want to get Toby off his game.”
“Oh, Lord…‘off his game.’ This is one of the times I think Hoosier Hysteria is such an understatement. We’re conducting an investigation, Dad, and I don’t give two hoots if Toby Mueller is off his game or not.”
“I’ll interrogate the boy if it’s OK with you. Believe it or not, I remember what it’s like to be young and in love with playin’ basketball.”
Sarah glanced at him. “And I’ll find out if Darby’s family knows anything. Oh, by the way, paint scratches from Darby’s truck are from a GM SUV, recent model, color called raven black. We ruled out a truck from the height of the impact.”
Chief Lykins led the way up to an older double in a quiet Bloomington neighborhood. He turned to Micah. “Toby said he’d stay home today except for practice.” He hesitated. “Is Toby suspected of some criminal activity?”
“Don’t rightly know,” Micah said.
“I’ll be hung from the backboard if I have to arrest him.”
“How ‘bout, should there be a need, I send Sarah over to do the dirty deed?”
The two men grinned. “He’s all yours.” Lykins turned and walked away.
Micah mounted the steps to the porch and rang the doorbell. He heard someone pound down the stairs from the second floor and the door was flung open by a tall young man who needed a shave. “Sheriff Barrow?”
“Can I come in?”
“Is my family OK? Mom and Dad? Uncle Darby?”
Micah motioned to the interior. Toby stood aside and Micah walked into a tolerably clean living room.
“You’re scaring me,” Toby said when they were seated.
“Far as I know, they’re fine, all except for your Uncle Darby.”
“Uncle Dar? He didn’t show up last night after the game and …What’s happened?”
Micah decided to take it straight down the lane. “He got run off the road last night comin’ up to talk to you.”
“Aw, Christ.”
“You want to tell me ‘bout it, Toby?”
Toby buried his head in his arms. “Is he going to be OK?”
“Got banged up pretty good, but the doc said he should get through this.” Micah shifted in his chair. “But you ain’t. Help me get to the bottom of this an’ find out who did this to Darby. He’s a good man and don’t deserve to suffer cause he was tryin’ to protect you.”
“Oh, God!”
Micah waited until Toby settled down.
Finally the boy wiped his eyes and looked directly at Micah. “I’ve really screwed up. I owe money to some guys and they started making threats. I asked Uncle Dar what I should do.”
“Who do you owe?”
“A website—and whoever owns it.”
“Start from the beginning, don’t leave nothing out.”
“Last year, some of the guys in my dorm were playing on-line poker. I thought it was fun and it didn’t seem real—like using beans instead of cash. By the end of the year, I was down by a little over two thousand bucks.”
“Lotta money for a scholarship student.”
Toby brushed his hands through his short hair. “I wasn’t worried because I had a job lined up for the summer that would’ve covered it.”
“Doing what?”
“Long-haul trucking with my Uncle Brad. His business has picked up enough, he could afford to take me along. Summer before, I went up to Alaska and worked on a trawler.”
“Adventure an’ a lotta hard work.”
“Yes, sir. But Coach got me a scholarship to the best basketball camp I could ever dream of. I only ended up working for a month or so. Then I had to pay my expenses and I ended up about nine hundred bucks short.”
“You paid some?”
“Yes, sir. Didn’t stop them from coming after me. I’d get email almost everyday saying I’d better pay up or there’d be trouble.”
“They say what kind of trouble?”
“There wasn’t anything like pay by tomorrow or we’ll kill you. Just these ‘how can a player play with broken kneecaps?’ Other stuff like that. They charged interest and now I’m into them for twenty-six hundred.”
“You know who they are?”
Toby wrapped his hands around the back of his neck, the veins standing out in his arms. “Wish to God I knew.”
Micah rubbed his chin. “We need to track them.”
“I’ll turn over my computer and passwords to you if that would help. I can’t study anyway.”
“Darby was talkin’ ‘bout a draft—yours?”
Toby nodded. “I thought if I could get drafted this spring, I’d get enough of an advance to get them off my back for good. Uncle Dar didn’t want me to.”
“Preciate your honesty, Toby. An’ your help. I know the perfect consultant who can find these guys. In the meantime, get somebody to watch your back.”
Micah called Chief Lykins and heard his sigh of relief. Then he called Sarah and gave her the basic outline.
“Thought I’d take the computer to Nathan.”
“Bring it in to the station and ask Nathan to meet us here. I’ll get a search warrant—Judge Bragg graduated from pre-law at IU and the law school.”
“Sounds like an easy three.”
“Dad, I want to nab the guys who forced Darby into the hospital as badly as you do. But I want to see them stand trial right here in McCrumb County.”
“By the book, yes ma’am.”
He knew she was right, but he muttered all the way back to Greenglen. He walked into the department and saw Nathan Cloud’s long body lounging against a file cabinet in Sarah’s office. Nathan was the best tracker he knew – both in the woods and in cyber space. He tightened his grip on Toby’s laptop and walked into the office.
“One computer, one consultant, one sheriff—and one warrant?” Micah asked.
“You bet—all I had to do was mention coercion of a certain point guard and we got a pretty wide-open search parameter.”
Nathan repositioned a chair and opened the laptop. “You have his password?”
Micah took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to him. “All his passwords and accounts —you know, Twits an’ stuff. An’ he wrote out permission for us to examine all his files.”
“Nice work, Dad. Thanks.”
Micah’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and walked away from the desk. “Micah Barrow. What you need, Toby?” He nodded a couple of times. “Just now? You see the caller’s number? Blocked, dang. Do yourself a favor and call the Chief right now. Don’t need to say nothin’ but you got a threat.” He turned toward Sarah and Nathan as he pocketed the phone. “Now we know what them vermin is after—if IU gets to the Elite Eight, they want Toby to be off his game.”
“Throw the game?” Sarah asked.
“Yup. The money he owes them will get forgotten ‘bout if he plays ball. Bad ball, so to speak.”
“Let’s get to work,” Sarah said. She looked over Nathan’s shoulder.
“That there,” Micah said, pointing to the files, “is the gamblin’ site. Said a guy in his dorm last year was pushin’ it. Whole bunch of guys used it. Got their names, too.”
“You think he was set up in advance?”
“He was in the runnin’ for Mr. Basketball his senior year. Folks knew he was on the team. Whadda you think?”
Nathan looked up from the screen. “I’d like to take this home where I’ve got more resources. If one of you came with, would that guarantee the chain of evidence?”
Sarah nodded, then looked at Micah. “We’ve got a regional list of black GM SUVs. None have come into a county shop, so we’ve got two deputies checking each car. But it could be imported muscle, so I’ve asked IMPD to keep an eye open.”
“This here machine seems to be our best lead, Sarah Anne. Wanna flip a coin?”
“I’ve got plenty to do here, Dad. You go—but be on good behavior, both of you.”
Micah had followed Nathan home, though he knew the way blindfolded. They bumped up a narrow tract to the clearing that held Nathan’s cabin. Micah reckoned it was close to two hundred years old, though perfectly maintained. A tower with satellite dishes rose behind it. The kind of contradiction Nathan was.
They walked into rustic simplicity, except for the one wall covered with electronic gear. Nathan settled at a workstation and plugged in the laptop. “I want to start with the e-mails because they’re easier to backtrack. I’ll print them out so you’ll have hard copies.”
He clicked his mouse a few times and a printer began spewing out pages. Then he executed a series of commands that left Micah without a clue.
“These guys are either stupid or lazy.” He pulled up a screen on another monitor, scrolled down a list, then double-clicked. “That’s your threat-sender and his address.”
“I’ll be danged.” Micah got his notebook and wrote it down. “You got documentation down for all this?”
“Hard copies coming. I wonder if the cyber casino is as sloppy? Let’s take a look.”
On another monitor, the poker site came up. Then the screen split and what Micah assumed was code scrolled down the left side. “How come that don’t happen on my computer?”
Nathan grinned. “You don’t know the magic word.” His smile disappeared. “This site is sucker-rigged. High rate of success at first, then intermittent, then they lower the boom.” He turned to Micah. “We’re straying into federal territory. I can probably trace the site’s deposits and withdrawals, but we need a federal warrant.”
“To use in court. Let me make a call.” Micah walked into the kitchen, held a long conversation. Finally he grinned, walked back and handed Nathan the phone. “Give him your e-mail address.”
After Nathan handed it back, Micah said, “FBI friend, we go way back. He thinks we got a good chance of gettin’ a federal warrant. Which he’ll send to you. Until then, I guess it’s time for a nap. OK if I stretch out on your couch?”
“Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to call Sarah?”
“You’ve always looked out for her, since you two was no higher than a good stump. Good idea.”
Ten minutes later, Micah was winding down the conversation with Sarah. “Thanks, Sarah. While Nathan’s waitin’ for the warrant, I’ll pay a visit to Darby. See if he can add any information. An’ if Nathan’s finished with it, I’ll drop the computer back at the station.” He nodded a couple of times, then closed the phone.
“Nurse said it was OK for you to have a short visit,” Micah said, sitting in the chair next to Darby’s bed.
“Reminds me of the first time you scraped me off the pavement.”
Micah looked at the bandaged head, swollen eye, and bandito bruises around his eyes. “Pretty awful time for you and your family, both times.”
“My own fault the first time. I had one good shot for a great life and I blew it. I didn’t want Toby to do the same thing. Talked to him just now and he said he told you everything.”
“He’s a good boy, just got sucker punched. The site was rigged.”
“Damn!”
“You remember gettin’ pushed off the road? Somethin’ from that night?”
“Nope. But I do remember what I’d found out before that.”
“You’d been investigatin’? On your own? Why the hell didn’t you tell Sarah what was goin’ on?”
“I thought if I could fix this for Toby, he could go to the NBA after he graduated. Have a great life.”
Micah was silent. Dwellin’ in the past, he thought, tryin’ to make the past right in someone else’s future was pure folly. But what man wouldn’t try for redemption? He sighed. “So tell me ‘bout this investigation.”
“I’ve been to all of Toby’s games—middle school through now. And I haven’t missed IU’s home games since I could get around after the motorcycle accident.”
“I like a story as well as any man, Darby, but you need to get to the point.”
Darby clenched his free fist. “Point is, I know most the regular fans. This year, when the team started practice, I saw this guy hanging around. Could’ve been an agent or a pervert. Not a fan.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Like a bouncer from a sleazy club. He was watching Toby, so I started watching him. Name’s Ward Foreman.” “How’d you get his name?”
“I’m getting tired, Micah. Just listen. Foreman hangs out with two other guys. Don’t know their names, but their meetings are at Morgan’s Raid. Early dinners, around 5:00.”
“You know where Foreman lives?”
“Clear Creek.”
“Thanks, Darby. We’ll take it from here, you just use your energy to get better. Toby’d be here, but he’s confined to campus. Chief’ll keep him safe.”
The sheriff’s office had a busy forty-eight hours. The federal warrant had come in and Nathan had tracked the poker site’s operators right back to McCrumb County. The warrant had also brought a conference with the DA about the feds.
They
got Ward Foreman’s photo from the BMV and Micah had snuck a couple of photos of the “meeting” at Morgan’s Raid. Foreman’s black Escalade, found in the parking lot of Edinburgh’s discount mall, had front-end damage and paint scrapes that matched Darby’s old truck.
The morning of the third day, Micah and Sarah were seated in her office with Cam Skillman, an FBI special agent from the organized crime unit. He handed them files. “The Las Vegas mob would be more than happy to take this scum off your hands.”
Sarah looked up from the file. “Why? Does LVPD have warrants out on them? The Bureau?”
Cam shook his head. “They were minor players in the Vegas scene, but they committed the sin that can’t be forgiven. They skimmed from their bosses.”
“They’re on the run from the mob?”
“For their lives.”
“Mebbe we should just write a polite note with their addresses an’ send it to Vegas,” Micah said.
“Dad!”
“Hell’s bells. We got nothin’ to charge them two with. We got Foreman on attempted murder, maybe we can push him to roll over on them other two.”
“Unlikely,” Cam said.
“What about wire fraud?” Sarah asked.
“We can pick them up, get them to trial, and send them away for a couple of years,” Cam answered.
“So what’s your problem?” Micah asked. “You do have a problem, so spit it out, Special Agent.”
“OK,” Cam said, sitting back. “If we put them in prison, they’d be lucky to last a month. Even in a federal facility. And all the intel they have on the mob dies with them.”
“Oh, man, I can see where this is goin’. Witness protection, bye-bye prosecution. Fly away, them devils, to a new, good life.”
Cam nodded.
“All three?” Sarah asked.
“You want Foreman, he’s yours. A present from the Bureau for locating them. But I’d like to coordinate arrests. 6:00 in the morning?”
Sarah nodded. “But it grieves me to let those two walk. Foreman had to be acting on their orders. Meanwhile, Darby Mueller is in the hospital where he’ll be for a couple of months. Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Hoosier Hoops and Hijinks Page 19