Drifted

by Jeff Carson

  DRIFTED

  A David Wolf Novel

  Jeff Carson

  Cross Atlantic Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Carson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  David Wolf Series in Order

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  David Wolf Series in Order

  David Wolf Series in Order

  Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)– Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.

  Foreign Deceit (David Wolf Book 1)

  The Silversmith (David Wolf Book 2)

  Alive and Killing (David Wolf Book 3)

  Deadly Conditions (David Wolf Book 4)

  Cold Lake (David Wolf Book 5)

  Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

  To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)

  Dire (David Wolf Book 8)

  Signature (David Wolf Book 9)

  Dark Mountain (David Wolf Book 10)

  Rain (David Wolf Book 11)

  Drifted (David Wolf Book 12)

  Chapter 1

  “Twenty-one inches dropped at the base of Points.” Detective Tom Rachette stepped up next to Wolf and put his hands on his hips. “Said thirty on the top. Did you ski last week?”

  Wolf said nothing as he stood at the rear of the luxury SUV, squinting against the nuclear-blast reflections coming off the snow. It felt like he was standing next to a perpetual lightning strike.

  “Where are your sunglasses?” Rachette asked. “And, my God, it looks like you need them. You get into it last night?”

  They were sitting six miles down the valley on his kitchen counter.

  Rachette dangled his mirrored lenses in front of Wolf’s face. “Take ’em.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Suit yourself. I feel your pain. But, believe it or not, I didn’t touch a sip of alcohol last night.”

  Wolf narrowed his eyes to slits, a glancing blow of pain hammering in his temples. He felt semi-dizzy, and his mind was slow to form sentences worth speaking, so he opted for silence.

  “You didn’t touch alcohol last night?” Detective Heather Patterson finished her trudge up from the vehicles to where Wolf and Rachette stood. “Then who …” She crinkled her nose and looked up at Wolf. “Geez. Looking fit today.”

  Wolf closed his eyes and savored a breeze sprinkling his face with ice crystals. It was unseasonably warm, the sound of trickling water permeating through the never-ending blanket of snow. The sun had warmed his beard to an uncomfortable temperature from the second he’d stepped out of the SUV.

  “There you guys are.” Rachette nodded to Deputy Ryan Yates, who walked up behind Patterson.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Yates said. “Got here as soon as we could. The drive is brutal up that last stretch. I guess this guy’s not a fan of plowing, or he pissed off somebody on the council. Holy cow, what happened here?”

  Patterson whistled at the vehicle in front of them. “That’s not going to be good for the upholstery.”

  A gold Lexus SUV sat half-buried in drifted snow with all four windows rolled down to the doors. The interior had collected an impressive amount of snow, piling high enough to cover half the steering wheel. It was as if a giant had opened the sunroof and poured a dozen shovel-loads inside, then left the wind to smooth it over.

  A breeze whistled through the pines and pushed through the SUV’s openings, kicking up more snow. Wolf unzipped his Carhartt jacket, letting the cool air wick the hot alcohol leaking from his pores.

  “What’s the story?” Patterson asked. “I heard from Wilson that Chris Alamy came in looking for his boss. I take it these are Chris’s tracks.” She gestured toward the twin vehicle ruts in the snow that led up to where they stood at the front of the house.

  “Rachette.” Wolf stepped away from their powwow and took in the scene as best he could without facing the sun. A single set of footprints led from the spot where Chris Alamy’s car door would have been, then up a flight of sturdy wooden stairs to a sun-sheltered porch.

  Rachette cleared his throat. “Chris Alamy came in this morning and filed a missing-person report with me. Said his boss, a man named Warren Preston—”

  “The rock guy,” said Patterson.

  “Yeah.”

  “The place on the north edge of town.”

  Rachette blinked. “Yes. Can I finish my briefing? Or do you want to guess?”

  “Sorry. I just didn’t know where Chris Alamy worked.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Chris Alamy,” Yates said. “Me and Rachette know him from the bars, but where have you met him?”

  “He did karate for a few months last year,” she said.

  “Hey. Tweedle-stupids, I’m talking here.”

  Wolf broke through thick, water-compressed snow toward the steps.

  They moved after Wolf while Rachette continued.

  “Anyway, Chris came in this morning. Apparently, Warren Preston left work last Friday, so, what? Ten days ago?”

  “Eleven,” Patterson said.

  “Whatever, the Friday before last. I guess Preston left and said he was taking a week down in Arizona to do some warm-weather camping, and said he’d be back the following Monday. Yesterday. When he didn’t show up for work, Chris and the rest of his crew thought it odd. Called him, didn’t get any answer, but thought he’d show up soon enough.

  “When Preston didn’t show up this morning, Chris decided to drive out here to check on him.” Rachette stomped his feet on a dry spot of the front porch and gestured down to the buried Lexus. “And found that. Look, he even opened his sunroof.”

  Wolf turned away from the reflection lancing off the windshield to a window next to the front door. He peeked inside, feeling his pupils dilate for the first time in an hour.

  “It snowed last weekend,” Patterson said. “Started that Saturday night, ended … what? Monday morning? So, if the interior’s filled with snow, looks like Preston didn’t get to his Arizona destination. At least, not in that car. Could have taken a Winnebago or something. But then why leave your car like that, and leave the state when it’s snowing balls?”

  Rachette nodded toward the door. “Chris said he went inside the house to check on him.”

  Wolf reached over and pressed his thumb on a cast-iron handle. A thick glass and wood door pushed open.

  Warmth billowed out from the interior.

  Wolf paused, stomped his boots, and took them off. The action of bending over sent a pulse of pain into his skull. He stepped inside onto a stiff-ha
ir welcome rug and continued onto a rough-finished dark-wood floor.

  Patterson followed first, Rachette and Yates behind her, and soon an open and airy entrance to the house was filled with their sniffling and breathing.

  A cat came around a corner and meowed.

  “Oh, hey there.” Patterson bent down and held out her hand.

  The cat meowed over and over, keeping its distance a few feet away.

  The noise felt like a violin bow sliding across Wolf’s brain.

  “Have you had any Advil yet today?” Patterson asked.

  “Huh-uh.”

  She looked at Rachette and shook her head. “Why did you call him? It’s his day off.”

  “I don’t know. I thought he should know. I didn’t think he’d drive up here and meet us.”

  Her gaze rested on him again.

  The cat meowed again.

  Wolf put on a pair of rubber gloves and walked toward the cat.

  It screamed some more as it rounded the corner, then sat at a closed door and looked up.

  “What the hell’s that thing’s problem?” Rachette asked.

  Wolf pulled open the door and saw it was a food pantry.

  “I never liked cats,” Patterson said.

  “You’re telling me,” Rachette said. “Give me a dog any day over those clawed little demons.”

  Wolf took a bag of cat food off the shelf, poured a pile on the floor, and put the bag back.

  The cat pounced onto the food and purred as it ate.

  “Ah.” Rachette pulled on rubber gloves. “And there’s the reason he’s our boss, folks.”

  “His wallet’s on the counter,” Wolf said. “Along with his keys, sunglasses, lip balm. Doesn’t look like he ever left the house.”

  Rachette walked over. “That’s what Alamy said. Said he came in and saw his stuff sitting on the counter, the open windows in the car, and wondered what was going on.”

  Wolf walked to the sliding glass door looking out to the rear of the property. Waves of snow stretched out for a few treeless acres and ran into a wall of pines. There were no other houses in sight, and there had been no other properties for at least a mile down the road.

  “Why would he roll down all his windows like that?” Rachette asked. “And then come in here? Drop all his stuff out of his pockets?”

  “Maybe he’s lying dead in a bathroom,” Patterson said.

  “Chris said he searched the house, thinking the same thing. Didn’t find him.”

  “Rachette and Yates, take upstairs,” Wolf said. “Me and Patterson will take downstairs.”

  “Let’s do it.” Rachette headed back down the hall toward the entrance and a stairway that led up.

  Wolf stepped around the cat and walked through the kitchen to a laundry room. An older-model washer and dryer stood on a dusty linoleum floor opposite another door. He cracked it open and poked his head inside a two-car garage. One side was filled with equipment and a work bench. The other sat empty.

  “Why not park in the garage when he got home?”

  Wolf started at the sound of Patterson’s voice next to him.

  “Geez,” she said. “You are not looking good.”

  “I think you said something about that outside already.”

  “Yeah, but now I can smell you. Jesus, I think I might vomit.”

  “That’s what you get for coming into work during your first trimester.”

  Her jaw dropped. “How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “I guessed. You have that easily disgusted demeanor lately.”

  “Well … good guess. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t vomit and your secret will be safe.”

  “What were you doing last night?” She softened her tone and tilted her head. It was the same tone he’d heard Margaret Hitchens use last time he’d seen her in town. The same tone his mother used on the phone.

  “Nothing.”

  She nodded and looked past him. “Doesn’t make any sense that he would have parked outside with all the windows open if he has an electric garage door-opener and this nice open space for his luxury SUV.”

  He shut the door and pushed past her back into the kitchen.

  The cat was a few paces away from the pile of food, licking its paw.

  Searching the rest of the lower floor of the house took little time. They walked a lap through a family room adorned with large leather couches that suggested a budget at odds with the old washer and dryer. The dining room was off the family room toward the front of the house, darkened by closed wooden slat shades.

  Patterson twisted a hanging rod and let in some light, and Wolf silently cursed her for it.

  The photons that didn’t assault his eyeballs illuminated stacks of bills, organized by type, and other papers that looked like invoices. A single wooden chair sat against the table facing the window. The space seemed to be used as a home office by Warren Preston when he was not at the rock yard, which Wolf knew sat along the river outside the north end of town.

  Plastic file holders stood along the walls, and the floor was coated with dust where it met the floorboards. Crumbs littered the corners.

  Wolf knew the signs of a single man living alone when he saw it. His floors, too, held a coating of dust at the edges, specks of food tracked around the house, kicked into corners.

  “There a basement?” Wolf asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  They left the dining room and headed toward the front entryway just as Rachette and Yates were coming down the stairs.

  “Nothing,” Rachette said.

  Patterson ducked into a hallway bathroom and flicked on the light. “Nothing down here, either.”

  They convened back at the kitchen, where the cat had dug in for a second helping.

  “I have an idea about what happened.” Yates tilted his head down and narrowed his eyes, a movement that accentuated his hawk’s beak of a nose.

  Deputy Yates was thirty-nine years old, had short blond hair underneath his SBCSD cap, and a religiously fit figure beneath his winter clothing, which was apparent just by looking at his chiseled face. He had been a recent addition to Wolf’s squad, hired at the beginning of the fiscal year after Sheriff MacLean had relayed the county council’s wishes that they add another detective from within the existing force of the Sluice–Byron County SD.

  Wolf had always liked Yates. The man had plenty of ideas and was unafraid to voice them. His thoughts might have been wrong on occasion, but Yates fought a smaller ego than most deputies in the department and was rarely self-conscious—a combination Wolf found refreshing. Plus, Yates seemed to temper the fire between Rachette and Patterson.

  “Warren Preston’s at the office,” Yates said. “And he takes off, drives home. But on the way here, he’s feeling flush. Gets some chest pains. Opens his windows to get some air.”

  “And drives all the way home?” Patterson frowned.

  “Sure. There’s no cell reception on the way up the valley. He has to come all the way home to use his landline.”

  Rachette pulled out his cell. “I have reception.”

  Yates shrugged. “I’m just spit-balling here. Okay, fine, he’s not in a life-or-death heart attack situation. He’s just uncomfortable on the way home.”

  “Has the shits.”

  Patterson frowned at Rachette.

  “What? He feels flush, starts to sweat. Rolls down the windows, gets home just in time, puts his stuff on the counter, runs into the bathroom, paintjobs the—”

  “Stop speaking.” Patterson took a deep breath. “If he came home Friday night, it was dumping snow. It would have been like he was in a washing machine.”

  Yates put his hands on his hips. “Well, my initial idea was, what if he had a heart attack? Maybe he felt bad on the way up, rolled down the windows. Comes in. Feels better for a second, or whatever, puts his stuff there on the counter. Then goes back outside for more fresh air. Keels over, dies. Gets buried by the snow.”

 
; They turned and looked outside the sliding door. The cat went to the glass and meowed.

  Wolf stepped to the window and scanned the waves of wind-blown powder. “We need K9 units up here ASAP.”

  “I’m on it.” Rachette went down the hallway toward the front door.

  “It’s not a bad theory,” Wolf said. “But the car’s open windows are concerning.”

  Yates shrugged. “He does it to get some fresh air.”

  “Or air out the car,” Patterson said. Her blue eyes stared into nothing. She was on the same track as Wolf. With his hungover mind flipping the switches, she’d probably got there before him.

  “There’s no better eraser of forensic evidence than sub-zero weather, twenty-five inches of snow, followed by a soggy melt,” Wolf said.

  Yates’s mouth upturned in a disbelieving smile. “So Warren Preston left his car wide open so forensic evidence would get erased?”

  Wolf’s brain hurt, and his throat felt like it was coated with hundred-grit. “I don’t know. It all doesn’t make sense. And then there’s those tracks down by our cars.”

  “What tracks?” Patterson asked.

  Wolf looked at Yates.

  Yates shook his head. “I didn’t see tracks.”

  “Tyler’s on his way up with Mittens.” Rachette walked up with cell phone in hand. “What tracks?”

  “Well, would you look at that.” Rachette swiveled and looked around.

  They stood back at their parked vehicles. Wolf felt energized after the fresh-air walk, just enough to get back down the valley and to the couch calling his name.