Dire

by Jeff Carson

Wolf nodded. “Of course I do. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  “So, your nose looks better today,” she said with a smile that warmed the room. “How does it feel?”

  “Better.” His t’s sounded a little like d’s, it hurt to sniff, and the bridge of his nose now took up a big part of his vision, but he was generally telling the truth.

  Rachette said hello and backed away, taking up position by the closed door.

  “And your hand?” Lauren asked. “I can get you stronger pain meds if you want. Just give me the word.”

  Michael Coulter was silent. He looked unhealthy, his skin pale and covered in sweat. Countless hoses ran to and from his body, some attached to bags filled with different colored liquids, all of it powered by beeping machines.

  “So … what’s up?” Lauren asked, following Wolf’s eyes to her brother.

  “What’s going on?” Michael Coulter croaked.

  Wolf stepped up to Lauren and made to move past. “May I?”

  She nodded and stood out of the way.

  Wolf walked to the bedside and brushed his hand along the scabbed sores in the crook of Michael’s arm. His skin was cold.

  “That’s where that guy was shooting me up with heroin.”

  Wolf nodded. “How’s the withdrawal going?”

  He smiled with exasperation. “I was up all last night shivering. I’ve never felt like that in my life. I wanted to scream, but the staples in my stomach wouldn’t let me. Basically, it was like the worst fever I’ve ever had and I felt like I was getting stabbed every other second. I wanted to cough, but the staples … It was absolute hell. They say it’s not over yet, either.”

  “You’re not used to the stuff,” Wolf said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re used to cocaine, marijuana, lots of booze. But not heroin.”

  The joviality vanished from Michael’s face.

  Soft canned laughter came from the television mounted on the wall.

  Wolf stuck a thumb on Michael’s eyebrow and lifted it, studying the yellow tint of the skin surrounding his bloodshot eye and the horizontal sliver of purple just under his lower eyelid.

  “Hey.” Michael flinched. “What are you doing?”

  Wolf poked at the bruise with his index finger.

  “Ahh, what are you doing?”

  “David.” Lauren stepped up and put her hand on Wolf’s shoulder.

  Wolf lowered his hand. “How old is that black eye?”

  “What?”

  “Where’d you get that black eye? Did Matthew Bristol give you that?”

  His eyes narrowed and then opened. “No. I got it before.”

  “Before what?” Wolf asked.

  “Before … I came up to Rocky Points and this whole thing started.”

  Wolf stood rooted, looming over Michael.

  “What?” Michael asked.

  Wolf looked long and hard into Michael’s eyes, and saw none of his sister in them. “The FBI has been going through your apartment for the last few days.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Michael said with a scowl, as if his personal privacy had been invaded. But he said nothing else.

  “They’ve also been searching Matthew Bristol’s home. They saw the connection between you two pretty quickly. Your phone records show that you call his little network of phones often. You place bets with him, don’t you?”

  Michael said nothing.

  “Baseball, basketball, hockey, horse races. There doesn’t seem to be any common theme, other than you lose a lot and, most recently, you pay very little.”

  “You knew that man?” Lauren stepped to the end of the bed. “You knew him?”

  Michael looked like a cornered animal. His eyes darted around the room.

  Wolf looked up at the television, then reached across Michael’s cowering body, grabbed the remote control, and shut it off. “You saw your sister on television, didn’t you?”

  Michael shut his eyes.

  “She was on the news, with me, the same day you got that black eye from Matthew Bristol.”

  Sweat streamed off Michael Coulter’s forehead now.

  “We know it was the same day, Friday, because the FBI looked at the security footage of your condo building and saw Matthew Bristol visiting you around lunchtime, and then leaving a few minutes later. Two hours after, when you left your apartment, you looked up at the camera and had a fresh bruise on your eye. It wasn’t there when you came home from the bars the night before. We checked.”

  “Oh God …” Lauren put a hand over her mouth, her gaze on her brother hardening.

  Michael held his eyes shut.

  “Why did Matthew Bristol do that to you?” Wolf asked.

  Michael said nothing.

  “According to Matthew Bristol’s records, it looks like you owed him upwards of one hundred thousand dollars. Is that right?”

  Michael kept his eyes clenched tight and shook his head.

  “You owe your sister an explanation, Michael. Open your eyes and look at her.”

  After what seemed like a minute, he did as he was instructed, unleashing a torrent of tears.

  “Still not going to talk? I guess I’ll explain.” He turned to Lauren. “Your brother was out of money and desperate to get some. Matthew Bristol had just punched him, probably threatened his life, because he wasn’t paying back what he owed. Later that night, in a state of desperation, probably hopped up on some cocaine and liquor, he saw you on the news, standing next to me while I was interviewed by those reporters.”

  Wolf turned back to Michael.

  “You saw your sister on the news and you remembered the family pendant. The one Lauren got after your parents died. The pendant you didn’t get, because you were screwed up on drugs back then just like you are now, and your parents didn’t trust giving you anything in their last wills and testaments. Nothing, except, the honorary job with the family company. Which should have been enough … but not for a guy like you.”

  Michael closed his eyes again.

  “Is that true, Michael?” Lauren asked with a thick tongue.

  He said nothing.

  “And so you saw your sister and came up with a plan, but you needed somebody else to carry it out, somebody with motivation. So you enticed Bristol with five hundred thousand, half of the fenced price of the pendant when all this was said and done. You told him, why take a hundred grand when you can take five hundred, right?”

  Michael started sobbing.

  “Am I on the right track here?” Wolf asked.

  He nodded.

  “Words, please.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell your sister about the plan—how you were going to have her and her daughter killed.”

  “What? No. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “But they did! Three good people are dead, and only our intervention kept your little five-year-old niece, your sister, and you from dying too. The FBI looked at the browser history on your computer and found the website you used to make the anonymous email. You knew that Bristol going up and stealing the pendant wouldn’t work. Not many people can just break into a house, then crack a safe and leave, so you came up with the whole kidnapping scheme, because you knew Lauren would have to open the safe.

  “So you set up the misdirection to make it look like it was Ryan Rome, the prisoner pulling the strings from behind bars, the guy who had a personal vendetta against the family. It was perfect—you knew about him trying to steal the pendant six years ago, so you could exploit that. You sent the fake email from Ryan Rome at the same time Bristol and Zeke went inside to kidnap your niece, get the pendant, and then come back to Denver.”

  Michael closed his eyes.

  “You actually thought Matthew Bristol and that lowlife druggie were trustworthy enough to put your niece and sister’s lives in their hands?”

  “That’s not what the plan was.”

  “Then what was it?” Wolf stepped back, giving him a clear line of sight with Lauren.


  Michael looked up, finally meeting Lauren’s gaze. “Bristol, not Zeke—I’ve never even met Zeke in my life—was supposed to go inside with a mask on, wearing gloves. You know, so nobody could identify him later …” He shook his head and let the words die.

  “Tell me.” Lauren’s lips were wet with saliva.

  Michael shook his head, locking his mouth shut.

  “Maybe you didn’t want anything to happen to your niece, or to Lauren, or to the nanny,” Wolf said in a quiet voice, “but you were partnering with Matthew Bristol. The guy has a real history of violence.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Michael said. “I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. It was supposed to be quick and easy. In and out. He was supposed to get Lauren to give him the pendant, maybe tie them up at worst, or lock them in a room—that’s it, I swear—and then come back to Denver. But she didn’t have the pendant, so it screwed everything up. And then he called me, and he went crazy, went on the run … and when I drove up here and we went up that canyon, he killed those people.”

  “The pendant wasn’t at your sister’s house,” Wolf said, “which was definitely one of the gears coming off his plan, but he was prepared to wait it out at Lauren’s house while she went down to Denver, got the pendant from the family bank, and returned to Rocky Points. The pendant missing from Lauren’s safe was the least of his worries. I was coming over for a date I’d scheduled with Lauren and that’s why the plan went to shit for him. You coming up to Rocky Points, on the other hand, was always part of his plan.”

  Michael frowned. “What?”

  “Your plan was to have Bristol carry everything out, come back, and you guys would split the money raised from the sale of the pendant. Everyone’s happy. But Bristol thought of his own counterplan well before he ever came up to Rocky Points. He decided to recruit a lowlife ‘friend’ who’d do anything for another hit of heroin. Somebody easily manipulated because of the drugs coursing through his veins, much like you. A man named Zeke Jacoway.”

  Michael scrunched his face, trying to comprehend.

  “The security tapes from your building in Denver show that Matthew Bristol returned to visit you Sunday night. You guys were undoubtedly going over the final stages of your plan. Did you know that Bristol stole a paring knife from your kitchen at that time?” Wolf asked.

  Michael shook his head.

  “He did. So when he and Zeke went to Rocky Points bright and early the next morning, in order to catch your niece before she went to school,” Wolf injected some disgust into his voice, “he and Zeke forced their way into your sister’s house and called her home from work. And Bristol ordered Zeke to kill Ella’s nanny with that knife, which had your fingerprints on it, along with Zeke’s. Tell me, did Bristol have gloves on when he visited you on Sunday night?”

  Michael closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the pillow.

  “That was phase one of Bristol’s plan complete,” Wolf continued. “Phase two was to lure you up to Lauren’s house in Rocky Points. His plan was to have you go there, and then have Lauren withdraw some money. Not so much to raise red flags at the bank, just a little. Just enough to make it look like a couple of lowlife druggies had done everything for a quick payday.

  “He’d leave this small amount of money, ten thousand dollars, along with five dead bodies—you, your sister, Ella, the nanny, and Zeke. It’d look like you and Zeke had masterminded the whole thing, but had had a spat in the end. Maybe Bristol’s idea was to have Zeke shoot you, and then he could keep injecting heroin into Zeke until he died, making it look like an overdose. In the end, Bristol would get the 1.8 million-dollar pendant, leaving no trace of him ever having been there. There’d just be you two fools looking like you’d gone off the deep end, all for ten thousand measly dollars.

  “We probably would’ve learned about the pendant with the email pointing to Ryan Rome, but the ten-gallon hat that Bristol wore every time he visited you pretty much hid his identity on the security tapes at your apartment. He never left a trace of usable physical evidence anywhere. He would’ve vanished. And you and your whole family would have been dead because of your stupidity in thinking a plot to kidnap your niece was going to work out.”

  Wolf pulled out his phone and tapped the screen to start the audio recorder. He held it out. “I need you to confess everything right now. They’ve subpoenaed the email-scrambling site to get the IP address of where the email from Ryan Rome originated. In the end, it’s all going to come back to you. The least you can do is confess and take your punishment like a man. You owe that much to your sister and her daughter.”

  Michael nodded, whimpering as he put a hand over his stomach.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me for money, Michael?” Lauren stared at her brother with dead eyes.

  For the first time in minutes, Michael Coulter looked up at his sister. “I didn’t want to see that again.”

  “See what?” she asked.

  Michael closed his eyes. “That look. I always get that look. I’ve always gotten that look.”

  Lowering her gaze, Lauren walked to the door, pausing while Rachette stepped aside, and then she left.

  Wolf held up his cell phone toward Michael. “Let’s get started.”

  Chapter 49

  “Sir! Can you hear me?” Wolf’s voice was barely audible, like a man shouting through a pillow, and then hissing background noise and gurgling poured out of MacLean’s desktop-computer speakers.

  Wolf eyed Barker in the seat next to him, impressed at the man’s balls for showing up to the meeting in the first place. He had not expected Barker to show. He’d never expected to see him again.

  Barker held his chin up, looking MacLean in the eye, but he had yet to make eye contact with Wolf.

  Sheriff MacLean held up a finger. “Here’s the window break.”

  A sharp crack blasted out of the speakers, the sound of Wolf punching out the river-crash-victim’s car window with the Life Hammer, and then the background noise dropped in pitch.

  “I gotcha!” This time there was no dispute. It was Wolf’s voice coming out of the speakers.

  MacLean tapped the mouse and leaned back in his chair. Bridging his fingers, he crossed one leg over the other and volleyed glances back and forth between them.

  They had just finished listening to a recording made by LoStar, the in-vehicle emergency service that had been installed in the SUV lying upside down in the river that fateful day the previous week.

  Through due diligence, Detective Patterson had learned of the call the LoStar dispatcher had made to 911 and requested a copy of the company audio, which consisted of a few minutes of an employee trying to speak to the unconscious driver, and then several interesting snippets of sound while the victim was being rescued by a member of the Sluice–Byron County Sheriff’s Department.

  With sound-enhancing software, Patterson had prepared the digital file they’d just listened to, all while lying in a County Hospital bed after her emergency C-section delivery.

  Wolf had to admit it—he was relishing the moment.

  MacLean sniffed, and then locked eyes with Barker. “Do you have your report from Friday’s incident, Greg?”

  Barker closed his eyes and nodded.

  It was only then that Wolf noticed the manila folder tucked in the chair next to Barker.

  Barker slapped the folder on the desk and pushed it to MacLean.

  MacLean palmed it and pulled it to the side. “Thank you, Sergeant. You can leave now.”

  Wolf watched in confusion as Barker stood and left the room. He was expecting the words “You’re fired,” or “Get the hell out of here,” at the very least. At most, a discussion of the criminal charges that would be brought against the former employee of the SBCSD.

  As the door clicked shut, MacLean pushed the manila folder toward Wolf.

  Wolf tilted his head. “What just happened?”

  MacLean gestured to the folder.

  Wolf opened it. It was an incident report,
written in the same chicken scratch Wolf recognized as Barker’s handwriting.

  Last Friday, on the morning of January 25th at approximately 8:30 a.m., I was riding in the passenger seat of Chief Detective Wolf’s cruiser when he pulled to the side of the road, reporting he had just seen a vehicle that had crashed in the river. When he reversed back a few yards I saw the SUV lying upside down in the river.

  Chief Wolf immediately instructed me to contact dispatch. As I called in for assistance, Chief Wolf lowered himself down the incline, went into the water, and proceeded to rescue the man from the upturned vehicle, putting himself in considerable danger …

  Wolf lowered the report, feeling the heat redden his face.

  MacLean held his gaze, his face a mixture of embarrassment and defiance.

  “What the hell is going on?” Wolf asked.

  MacLean stood abruptly, turning to the window. “This is the official report he’s filing about the incident last Friday.”

  “I thought Barker already filed a report. Already leaked his previous version of events to the media.”

  Turning back around, MacLean narrowed his eyes. “I hadn’t filed it yet. And he never leaked it to the media … I was just …” He finished his sentence with a twirl of his hand.

  “What does that mean?” Wolf stood up.

  He must have looked intimidating because MacLean held both hands in the air. “I wanted you to take the situation seriously, so I said he went to the media with it. But he hadn’t yet … but he did say he was going to. He said he was going to.”

  Wolf blinked rapidly. “So this was all something concocted by you two—”

  “What? By me?” MacLean’s eyes were about to drop out of his head. “No, you had it right before. Like you said, it was Barker working with that asshole Adam Jackson and Judy Fleming on this. They must have gotten to him. Told him if Adam Jackson were in office, they’d have Barker promoted five times by now, instead of none.

  “So, like you said in your report, Barker was hanging back, he was hesitating, because he was thinking.” MacLean tapped the side of his head. “He was going to really start makin’ us look bad. Maybe he could even get you fired, which would be a huge blow to us.”