by Jeff Carson
When he reached the stop sign at highway 734 running into town, with supreme reluctance, like a crack addict saying no to a hit off the pipe, he shifted his thoughts from Sarah to the seven severed heads in plastic bags they’d pulled out of the lake. And then to the Pollards, who had been waiting twenty-two years to learn the fate of their missing son.
He turned down the radio. The engine idling at a soft purr, Wolf looked left and right, considering heading south toward the ski resort and Hal Burton’s house. The man would still be in bed; fully clothed just the way Wolf had left him last night. Angry. Worthless until he’d slept off the booze. Wolf twisted the wheel right and headed into town.
Chapter 8
Private Investigator William Van Wyke was used to pushback, so he sat back in the chair and waited patiently for his chance to parry.
“Whatever you think you’re doing, it won’t work with me.” The slick-dressed man looked at his gold Rolex and stood up from behind his desk. “It’s clear you are blowing smoke up my ass. Now get up, and get the hell out of my office. And let me tell you something else. You listen real, real good. If you want to do contract work for any law firms in Boise any longer, or any other firm in the state of Idaho … scratch that,”—he leaned forward and hissed—“If you want to live—”
William Van Wyke P.I. slapped the manila folder on the mahogany desk and sat back with a frown. “If I want to live? What did you say?”
The City Council Chairman and President shut his mouth, staring at the manila folder. He glanced at Van Wyke and then pulled the folder across the desk.
Van Wyke watched the Chairman’s eyes as he twisted and opened it, and it was even better than Van Wyke had imagined it would be.
“What the …”—the chairman picked up the color photo prints and gaped—“How the hell did you…?” His eyes landed on Van Wyke’s. The color drained from the Chairman’s face. He wiped his forehead and with a crumple of leather collapsed back into his chair.
“Did you see that last one? You’re a swallower. Interesting. Shit doesn’t just spew out of your mouth, it goes the other way, too.” Van Wyke bent over and picked up his shoulder bag and stood.
“What do you want? Are you working for Smith?”
“No.” Van Wyke slung the strap over his head and took a step closer to the desk. His voice dropped and he lowered his chin. “But your opponent in the race for Senate may get a folder exactly like this in his mailbox. Now how’s that going to look? A man like you, with your firm anti-gay message as the backbone of your campaign in the reddest state in the west, found to be sucking cock in a back alley at four in the morning? You piece of shit hypocrite. No, I don’t work for Smith. I work for me. I’ll be in touch with my demands, and I suggest you act swiftly.” He leaned onto the desk and bent closer. “And let me tell you, I’ve operated in a lot seedier alleys than that one where you liaise with your diseased fun-boy, and I know a lot of men who would slit your throat and drop you in the center of Payette Lake in a second if I told them to. Not if I asked, if I told them. Got it?”
The Chairman swallowed and his voice cracked. “How much we talking here?”
Van Wyke slowed to a stop. His plan was to make the man wait, to let the man shake overnight in his oversized bed while his ugly wife slept next to him, text him in the morning while he was at church, pretending to be a good Christian. That would have been perfect, but Van Wyke was also on a tight deadline.
“One.”
“One? Hundred thousa—”
“Million.”
“What? I … I don’t have—”
“By Thursday.”
“My God. What? I don’t have that kind of cash just lying around. I’d need to sell my house to get that kind of money. I have two children in Ivy League schools. I—”
“Thursday.” Van Wyke turned and walked toward the door.
“Okay, okay. Wait. Wait. I can give you two hundred thousand. I can get that. I can get that Monday. I just can’t do a million. I just can’t.”
“That’s a shame.” Van Wyke turned back to the polished door. “Good luck in the race.”
“Wait, wait.” Boise City Council Chairman Phillip Chatham all but crawled around his desk. “Please. I can get you more. It’s just not going to be now. You have to wait until I’m inside. Then I’ll be slicing the pie. Then I can get more. I can … just don’t.” He held out both hands. “Please. Don’t.”
Van Wyke stood silent and waited for five ticks on the grandfather clock that stood against the wall.
“Two hundred. Monday,” he said. “I’ll contact you from the same number. You’d better answer.”
Van Wyke walked out of the building into a sunny Saturday morning. The air was damp, heavy with moisture sliding in from Washington and Oregon, but not nearly as heavy as his thoughts.
He opened the door to his black Mercedes Benz M-Class SUV and sat on the soft, warm leather.
With an exhale, he pulled out his phone and dialed.
“Yeah.”
“Hey. It’s me.”
“Who?”
“Van Wyke.”
“Who?”
Van Wyke chittered a nervous laugh and rubbed his eyes.
“What do you want?” The voice was evil sounding today. With every passing day, the man’s voice on the other side of the line had dropped to greater depths of malice.
“I’d like to discuss a proposal.”
Silence.
“I can get you two-hundred thousand by Tuesday. Then I would like to discuss a future agreement for the remainder, plus interest.”
There was no answer, and then there was a static tick, and then there was a dial tone.
He threw the phone into the floorboards of the passenger seat, his breath wheezing, his throat constricting, his heart hammering out of his shirt. For five minutes he breathed slowly, eyes closed, trying to calm down enough so he could drive home. If only things had turned out differently. There were so many instances in his life where he’d dealt with the wrong people, taken the wrong turn, but he’d always found his way back, his way out of trouble. How the hell did he get himself into this? How did he manage to get on the wrong side of such dangerous men in Boise, Idaho? Idaho? There were more animals than people here, damn it. He was the man who dug up the dirt on other people, not shoveled himself under it.
He clenched his teeth. It was that bitch, with her perfect body, and her perfect face. And her perfect lies. Rage inside him made him shake like a boiling pot.
There were no other opportunities. This City Councilman was his last hope, and now the hope was gone.
He jumped in his seat as someone knocked on the glass next to his head. Shit. He relaxed when he saw the black man’s face outside his window.
“Hey. What’s up?” Darnell’s voice was muffled.
Regaining his composure, Van Wyke lowered the window.
“Mind if I come in?” Darnell said in that eager tone of voice he used when he had something for Van Wyke.
“I’m not in the mood right now for work. Can’t this wait until Monday?”
Darnell laughed and then looked confused. Van Wyke had always told his apprentice that a P.I. worth the fees he charged worked seven days a week.
“A P.I. worth the fees you charge—”
“Yeah, yeah. Get in.”
Darnell walked around the front of the SUV, and Van Wyke took the opportunity to pick up his phone off the floor mat.
Van Wyke’s protégé got into the passenger seat in a fluid, athletic movement.
At five foot ten and two hundred pounds of pure muscle, the high school dropout from Chicago could have played division two basketball or football had he wanted to, had he continued on with high school and gone to college, but the young man sitting in the passenger seat had not had the same opportunities as Van Wyke growing up.
While Van Wyke grew up playing junior golf, studying, and fishing on the wide Snake River, rowing himself out into the water when he needed to escape from his alcoholic father,
Darnell sold crack cocaine on Cabrini Green street corners, dodging bullets daily. His escape: hiding inside the Lincoln Park High School library.
Van Wyke had been born into opportunity, and Darnell had made his own, starting with finally getting “out”. “Out” being Boise, Idaho, because it had been the whitest place he could think of to start over when his mother had died of cancer. Darnell had never known his father.
Coming to Idaho, Darnell had found it difficult to find a job. He was black, and everyone else was not. He was alone, and everyone else had families. He was homeless, and everyone else had warm homes to go to. But somehow he’d managed to defy astronomical odds by talking his way into becoming a caddy at the Sandy Ranch Resort in Coeur d’Alene. Apparently when he’d gotten the idea he wanted to make big bucks at the golf course, he’d sat himself in the Boise Library for days on end, watching YouTube videos on the public computers and reading books, and then created a history for himself as an accomplished golfer and caddy.
The first golfer Darnell ever caddied for had been William Van Wyke, who had been on a three-day outing with a junior partner in a law firm he did investigative work for.
Van Wyke had smoked Darnell out as a fraud on the first hole, but he’d been intrigued more than angry, and by the end of the trip, and four rounds of golf later, he knew Darnell’s entire story, and found he had connected with the troubled, extremely determined young man.
“I could use an assistant like you,” he’d told Darnell back then. So Darnell came south with Van Wyke, and that was the beginning of his now three-year-long apprenticeship to become a qualified private investigator offering services to some of the most prestigious law firms in Boise, Washington, Oregon, and Montana.
“Everything cool?” Darnell asked.
“Yeah.” All that opportunity, and Van Wyke had pissed it away. He looked away from Darnell, hoping the sudden envy of his apprentice was invisible.
“The Chatham thing work out?”
“Yeah. Your pics were … persuasive.”
“But? He doesn’t have the cash.”
Van Wyke exhaled and leaned his head back. “You’re a smart man.”
“Well, I’ve got something very interesting for you to check out.”
Van Wyke remained unmoved, physically or mentally, leaning back on his headrest with closed eyes. He heard Darnell unzip his bag and the brush of him pulling out his laptop, and then a tiny beep as it powered on.
“Shit … you have to move closer to the building. No Wi-Fi signal here.”
Van Wyke shook his head. “Hey, listen. I can’t check out YouTube videos right now with you. I’ve got a lot of stuff to figure out.”
Darnell stared at him in silence until Van Wyke turned to meet his gaze.
Darnell’s brown eyes were dead serious. “You need to see this YouTube video.”
Van Wyke did as he was told, driving over and parking near the entrance to the building.
Council Chairman Chatham was walking out of the building, and flinched at the sight of them in the Mercedes, then he narrowed his eyes and shuffled off.
“He don’t look happy.” Darnell chuckled and clicked open a browser window.
After a quick Google search a news website called Channel 8 Rocky Mountain Action News materialized and Darnell clicked a button.
“What’s this?”
Darnell looked at him. “I remember a story you told me once about a guy who you helped liquidate all his assets in one day. Do you remember that?”
Van Wyke frowned at looked at him. “Yes?”
“And then you said he burned his house down and skipped town before paying you?”
“No. His house was the payment. He signed the deed over to me and then burned it down, and then skipped town. Get to the point.” Van Wyke’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Here you go.” Darnell pecked the laptop and twisted the screen towards him.
“…here at Cold Lake, twenty-seven miles northwest of Rocky Points, Colorado, where Sluice County law enforcement and rescue team divers have been working through the afternoon yesterday, and then all through the night, and now are resuming their work this morning, searching the bottom of the lake for what we are being told are multiple dead bodies. Now, I’d like to stress to our viewers now that I will be describing in detail the condition of these bodies, which may not be suitable for children viewers…”
Van Wyke’s curiosity was piqued. His pulse began to race.
“…severed heads, and torsos that have been sliced open. According to our sources, the eyes of the heads have been removed. All in all, a grim find by a local fisherman, and, the question is now, could this be the break local law enforcement has needed to crack a cold-case that has stumped everyone for decades?”
The camera panned out revealing a tall man with a hunter-orange hat standing next to the reporter. “I have with me here the man who was fishing and actually snagged one of the severed heads with his fishing hook, and then brought it back into his boat. Mr. Oliver Chevalier. Sir, can you—”
Darnell clicked the button to stop the video and looked at Van Wyke.
Van Wyke was staring out the window in deep thought. “Kipling. My God, you found him.” He felt energized, and then he snapped his head toward Darnell. “Has the Boise Sheriff’s Department gotten hold of this?”
Darnell shrugged. “I don’t know. How’m I supposed to check without tipping them off? They would swarm down there.”
Van Wyke rubbed his face, unblinking, and then after a full minute looked over at Darnell. “How quick can we get to Colorado?”
“Flying?”
“Driving.”
Darnell shook his head. “Sh …” He went to an internet map and plotted out the course. “Boise … to … Rocky Points, Colorado … Eleven hours, nineteen minutes, according to this.”
Van Wyke checked his watch and smiled with renewed hope that he might live through the week. “That means ten and a half the way I drive. That puts us there before sundown tonight. You ready for a road trip to Colorado?”
Darnell pulled his seatbelt across his chest. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.” Van Wyke reversed out of the spot and in front of a Jaguar F-Type sports car. He smiled when he saw in his rearview that it was Phillip Chatham stewing behind the wheel.
Van Wyke stopped, reached over and checked the glove box. The Kimber Ultra Carry II .45 caliber sat where he knew it would, the clip fully loaded, and he had a box of rounds in the spare wheel compartment. He pushed the glove box closed and looked at Darnell.
“You packing?”
Darnell blew air between his lips and gazed out his window. Of course he was. You couldn’t take the projects of Chicago out of Darnell.
With a push of the accelerator, they screeched out of the lot and were on their way to the Rocky Mountains.
Chapter 9
“Whoa.” Rachette leaned forward in the passenger seat and spat into an empty Coke can. “Now that’s a shithole.”
Wolf turned off the SUV’s engine in front of Wendy Pollard’s residence, silently agreeing with Rachette’s assessment of the property. He got out.
The sky was stone gray and the air damp cold, clouds having rolled in overnight. In the distance, a horizontal sliver of white cloud hung motionless against the pine-covered mountains, the tops of which were obscured by cloud. A light, almost invisible mist swirled in the air, moistening Wolf’s face.
“Let me do the talking if it comes up about the press.”
Rachette spit into the weeds. “You got it.”
Mrs. Pollard’s husband had left her three decades ago, leaving his wife and two boys to grow up in a singlewide trailer in a rental park next to the river. Of course, Nick had been missing for years, and according to Deputy Wilson, who knew the Pollards’ history as if it were common sense knowledge, Mrs. Pollard’s oldest son, Ken, left well before Nick went missing. Ken had not gone far, though, moving into a small rental apartment in downtown Rocky Points and ta
king a job at one of the two garages in town as a mechanic.
The off-white paint of the place was cracked and flaking off everywhere, what was left of it clinging like tissue paper, the exposed surface underneath brown and running streaks down the sides. The small yard in front was knee-high grass, weeds, and wildflowers that looked to have never been cut by a mower. Wolf could only imagine what the inside looked like. Unfortunately, the weather was conniving to make sure they would see first-hand.
Wolf and Rachette stepped to the metal door and knocked.
A rustle inside, and then the door opened and closed, then opened again.
Wendy Pollard poked her head out, followed by the scent of vodka. She squinted as if it were sunny, her hair was messy and matted on one side, and she was tightly wrapped in a torn lime green robe.
“Mrs. Pollard?” Wolf asked.
“Yes. Hi, Sheriff Wolf.”
“This is Deputy Rachette. May we come in to speak with you?”
“Yes. Please, come in. I’m sorry for the mess.” She opened the door wider. “My son, Ken, is coming over. I called him after you guys called. He should have been here by now.” She shook her head and bit a fingernail.
Wolf stepped up the stair and Rachette followed him in. Inside was black shag carpet, crusted with dried mud at the entrance and littered with tiny particles of trash throughout. In the kitchen, which was a counter, sink, and cabinets on the far wall, was a pile of dirty dishes that looked about to crash to the floor if they stepped too hard, and there was a line of vodka bottles on the floor against the near wall.
“Please, take a seat if you like.” Wendy sniffed and wiped the corner of a reddened eye.
She gestured to a brown loveseat that sagged in the middle.
“No thanks,” Wolf said.
“I saw the news. Did you find him up there?” She stood looking up at Wolf with desperately wide eyes.
Wolf nodded. “I’m afraid so. We’ve confirmed dental records with Dr. Unruh in town.”
“Can I see him?”
Wolf looked down at his hands. “Ma’am, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We really don’t need identification from you. It’s been a long—”