Another thing that was nagging at him was the taser probes. He decided not to share it with Baird. It had to be a mistake to leave them behind. The latest murder was a mess, and it was possible the killers got sloppy. The probes were the same type used by police officers, and although they could be obtained by regular citizens, it was also possible one of the killers was a cop. It was a wild idea, but it made sense. Who else would be so careful and knowledgeable as not to leave clues at each crime scene? And if it was a cop, it was possible that, rather than use his own taser, he could have easily picked one out of the evidence room. Tasers that had been used on a victim were kept as evidence until an inquiry was completed. If he was right, there would be a taser missing from the evidence room. A long shot, but he was going to check on it.
“What?” said Baird. “Revenge?”
“I’m not going to repeat myself. I think someone—possibly a contractor—felt he was treated unfairly and is looking to get back at Jackson. There might have even been an overt threat at one time to get even.”
“So, you think the Revengers killed contractors and tried to make it sound like Jackson did it just to get some revenge?” asked Baird incredulously.
“Exactly. Just get on it. Now!” Stein hung up. He wasn’t taking any more questions.
“Fine,” said Baird to a dead line. All Baird could think was that Stein was missing it. Why couldn’t Stein see it? The evidence was there. Everyone but Stein was convinced of Jackson’s guilt. It was obvious. Even if Jackson produced an alibi, what did that prove? Maybe that could be explained as part of the ruse. That was only an issue if Jackson found his witness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.
—Yo-Yo Ma
Baird was rattled. Things weren’t going according to plan. While he dressed, he dialed Julia’s number. She answered after a few rings.
“Julia,” he said.
“Huh? Who is this?” She said groggily.
“Geez, um, it’s Detective Baird. Who the hell did you think it was? You sound terrible.”
“I just woke up. It’s, like, five in the morning, for God’s sake.”
“Listen, I need you to tell me how to get to Jackson’s cabin at Grand Lake.”
“You woke me up for that? I don’t know. I’ve only been up there once for a team retreat. I wasn’t driving, and I really wasn’t paying much attention. I don’t even know the address.”
“Can you get the address?”
“I suppose I can call Steve. He probably has it, since he drove.”
“Okay. Do it. Call Steve and get it. I’ll be there to pick you up in a few minutes. We need to find Jackson.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Just get the address and get dressed. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He disconnected the call before she could say anything else.
Fifteen minutes later, he pulled up to the curb in front of her apartment building and buzzed her on the phone. She came out five minutes later. Baird was already fuming by the time she got in the car.
“What took you so long?”
She didn’t answer.
“Okay. So, did you get the address?”
“No.”
He slammed his fist down on the steering wheel in frustration. “Fucking shit. You don’t have it?”
“No shit, Sherlock,” she replied.
Baird hated that line. He bit his lip and just sat there, squeezing the steering wheel and trying to control his anger. She could see he was breathing heavily.
“Okay. I’m trying to stay calm here. Do you think you could find the place if we drove up there?”
“I suppose.”
“Good,” he said as he peeled away from the curb. For the next twenty minutes, they drove in silence.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.
“Bob says he has a witness who can verify where he was during one of the murders.”
“So? Didn’t he say that before?”
“Yes. But now, he is up there, looking for him. I need to be there when he finds him,” he answered, and without another word, he drove on, squeezing the steering wheel with both hands and mumbling every now and then. She couldn’t understand what he was saying and chose not to ask. He knew the way to Grand Lake and didn’t say another word until they veered off on US 40. As they passed through Granby, he asked her where to go next.
She had him turn off on US 34. It was still early when they reached the lake; the morning sun glistened off the lake like a postcard as they passed by. Tensions were still high between them; no one said a word. Each of them was lost in their own thoughts about what was going to go down next.
“Are we close?” he finally asked.
“I think so. Keep going but slow down. I do remember we have to pass through the town before we turn off to where the cabin is.”
Baird was feeling a little more optimistic as they drove through the little town at a crawl. He could feel they were getting close to a satisfactory resolution.
“Turn here,” she said suddenly as they passed a small, residential side street.
He stopped quickly and had to back up to make the turn. “A little more warning, please,” he said curtly.
“I told you to slow down,” she replied with a hint of snark in her tone.
He snarled back at her as he backed up enough to make the turn. She directed him to a dirt road that led to another paved road. They went up and down from paved road to dirt road, until Baird realized they had been down these streets before.
Finally, his frustration boiling over, he slammed on the brakes, sending Julia forward. Had it not been for her seatbelt, she would have hit her head on the dashboard.
“What the fuck?” she screamed at him.
“You’re lost, aren’t you?”
She stammered, “I don’t know.”
“You either are, or you aren’t. How the hell can you forget where it is?” He screamed, “How fucking stupid are you?”
“It was a long time ago, Chris. We came up here at night, and I just wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry,” she said gloomily. “I didn’t realize all these roads and houses would look alike.”
Baird wasn’t about to let it go. “You said you could find the fucking cabin! Now, we’re driving around like idiots.”
“You are such an asshole! I said, I thought I could find it. I fucking can’t help it if Steve wasn’t answering the phone. I’m sorry. How many fucking times do I have to say I’m sorry?”
He took a deep breath to try to calm himself down. In a steady, measured tone, he asked, “Does any of this look familiar?”
“No. I mean, yes, it all looks fucking familiar. Goddamned dirt roads and trees,” she snarled back at him.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry I yelled at you. Let’s try to calm down and be methodical. Take a look at that road.” He pointed to a wooded road leading to the north side of the lake. “Could that be it?”
Julia was starting to feel sick. She had absolutely no clue which way to go. She honestly thought that when they left Denver, it would all come back to her, but now, she felt like every road and every tree looked familiar. She was a city person and never really spent time in the mountains.
“Look, Chris. I really don’t know. There’s three lakes up here, and all these roads look alike to me. All the goddamned cabins even look alike. Maybe we should ask someone if they know Bob. Maybe they know where he lives.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Wake up and smell the blood. That’s just not going to work. Maybe we should take an ad out in the local paper while we’re at it. We can’t ask where he lives and draw attention to ourselves. After this is all finished, we can’t leave a trail for the police to follow. Sometimes, you can be so stupid.”
Julia glared at him. Whatever she had felt for him at one time was gone. Now, she just hated him. She envisioned gutting him with her knife and leaving a trail of his blood on the dirt road. Why in the world did she get involved in his stupid scheme in the first place? He was rude, and so self-absorbed it made her want to puke. She opened the door and started to get out.
“Where are you going?”
“I’d rather fucking walk home than spend any more time with you.”
“Fuck,” he said under his breath. “Okay… I’m sorry. Get back in the car. It’s still early; we have time. We’ll go back to Denver and go to Bob’s house. He probably has some paperwork or something in the house that will tell us where the cabin is.”
She hesitated.
“Come on. If we hurry, we can be back just after lunch.”
She relented with a little snort, sat back down, and buckled her seatbelt.
Outwardly, he looked calm, but inside, he was seething. They had wasted two hours getting here, and an hour driving around. He chided himself for not getting the address from Jackson during their interview. How had that slipped by him? He was getting careless, and that worried him. Little mistakes like this weren’t his style. But he was making them left and right. The conversation with Stein hadn’t gone well, either. He realized he had tried too hard to convince him that Jackson was the killer. Now, he worried that would come back to bite him in the butt.
“Why don’t you just call Bob and ask him?” suggested Julia.
Ignoring her, he drove on down the mountain. The truth was, he had considered calling Jackson, but decided against it. For one thing, he didn’t want to alarm him just yet, and he certainly didn’t want a phone record of him calling Jackson from Grand Lake. He was supposed to be in Denver at the radio station, looking for clues that he knew didn’t exist. The thought of a four-hour round trip up and down the mountain angered him, but he saw no other way.
He struggled to keep his anger in check and not antagonize Julia any more than he already had. But every few minutes, he would curse under his breath and pound his fist on the steering wheel. He had screwed up, and no matter how much he wanted to blame Julia, he knew it was his fault. Self-control and a solid plan was what he needed now. Without that, he was doomed. Success had always come easy for Chris, because he had a superior intellect and impeccable instincts. It had gotten him through school, usually at the top of his class. Julia watched him and knew he was torturing himself. She kept quiet, not wanting to give him a reason to yell at her.
****
Ironically, as he turned back toward the little town of Grand Lake, he was just two turns away from Bob’s cabin, where Bob was just finishing up a breakfast of bacon and eggs before he would start looking for the gentleman who would provide him with his alibi, and hopefully, help him restore his reputation.
Baird had tried to do a property search but had come up with nothing. As it turned out, the cabin had never been in Jackson’s name, because he didn’t own it. His uncle on his mother’s side owned the cabin but had essentially given it to Jackson years ago… just not officially. Edward lived out east and used to come to Colorado often, but as he got older, he came less and less, and then he stopped coming at all. Edward had raised Jackson after his parents died, and since he had no kids of his own, he was planning on leaving the cabin to Jackson in his will.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“The basis of optimism is sheer terror”
—Oscar Wilde
Jackson finished his cup of coffee as he gazed out on the lake, which, over the years, had given him great satisfaction. After his parents had died in a horrific auto accident in Europe, Jackson had moved in with his Uncle Edward, who, at the time, was living in Colorado. As a novelist, Edward could live anywhere he chose, but to help Jackson deal with the sudden death of his parents, he decided to move back east and live with him there. He kept the cabin, and the two of them spent summers at Grand Lake. There, Edward taught Jackson everything he knew about boating and the fine arts of fishing and hunting. It was hard for Jackson. He never really knew all the circumstances of his parents’ death, but Edward did everything he could to give Jackson a normal life. When Jackson made Denver his permanent home, Edward decided to stay in Boston, but visited every summer until his health started to fail. The last few years were really tough, when Edward had started showing signs of dementia. Now in an assisted living facility in Boston, he’d stopped visiting Colorado altogether. The writing had also stopped years ago.
Jackson would have loved to ask his uncle for help. He had always seemed so wise, and his advice was impeccable. But, that was then, and this was now, and he would have to solve this problem on his own. From his window, he could see the lake, and he longed to get the boat out and spend the day fishing. There was calm water and temperatures due to hit the high seventies. It would have been the perfect way to spend the day. There was a storm predicted for the afternoon, but that was typical for this time of year. Jackson had learned to get his hikes and time on the lake done early, and then sit back when the storm rolled through and watch the rain and the lightning from the comfort of the cabin.
He shook his head. Not today. There was a reason he was up here today, and he had to focus on that. He had to find the man who would become his alibi. He was optimistic by nature and was confident he would be successful today. And once he located his witness and presented him to the police, he could focus his attention on the bigger question: Who wanted to hurt him so badly that they would resort to murdering five innocent people and trying to pin it on him? Admittedly, he had made a lot of enemies over the years by exposing contractors and businessmen who preyed on consumers, and he could even understand their desire for revenge. He had often wondered why he didn’t get more pushback than he did. After some serious contemplation, it wasn’t a stretch to theorize that someone was coming after him. Someone wanted to see him go down, and possibly even go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit. In a sick way, he could see the poetic justice in it.
But it felt like a daunting task to go back through history and consider all the possible suspects who might feel like they wanted to exact a little revenge on the man who’d hurt them. Where to start? How far back should he consider? How much damage did someone have to endure to consider going to such great lengths as murder to satisfy their need for revenge? It was making his head spin, but for now, the paramount task was to find his witness and secure his alibi.
Although he wasn’t sure, he had to go on the assumption that the fellow lived in the general vicinity, because if he was just passing through on vacation, Jackson was screwed. Jackson preferred not to consider that for the time being. The question was: How to find him? His conclusion was to go house-to-house systematically. He had an old map showing the entire residential area, and, except for a few new homes built in the last five years, it was accurate. Starting with the lake homes, he would work his way back and fan out from there.
He had a clear picture in his head of the man he was looking for. Well-groomed. Maybe fifty or sixty years old. Six feet tall with thinning grey hair. The man was Caucasian and had the trim look of an aging athlete. He was clean-shaven. But no matter how hard Jackson tried, he couldn’t remember the color of his eyes. He only remembered a man who had a happy countenance and seemed friendly. Jackson knew he would recognize him again, but barring that, he hoped that description would be enough for someone else to identify him.
Jackson’s cabin was situated about two-thousand feet from the lake. It was nestled in a stand of pine trees up a little embankment that wasn’t easily spotted from the road. From the upper deck, it had an unobstructed view of the lake, which was breathtaking. Edward had never bothered with satellite TV or phone service, and Jackson never deviated from that once he took responsibility for the property. Cell phone coverage at the lake was spotty at best, and even worse at the cabin. It was always meant as a getaway, and both Edward and Jackson preferred to keep it that way. Edward said that
if you had a phone that worked, it might ring, and he had no desire to talk to anyone about any business or otherwise while he was at the cabin. And the truth was that Jackson needed a getaway from his hectic life, and if he wasn’t careful, it would follow him to the lake. And the truth was, according to Edward, bass and trout fishing was much more interesting than TV. Anything happening in the world would still be there when they returned. If they really needed the news, they could walk into town and buy a newspaper. And as far as he was concerned, anyone who needed to talk to him could wait.
The cabin was Edward’s pride and joy, and that sentiment was passed on to Jackson. When Edward couldn’t travel anymore, Jackson started to share the mountain experience with his friends, and occasionally, with co-workers. Last summer, he’d sponsored a weekend retreat for the radio show staff. He’d wanted to bond with the new staff members and felt that taking them fishing and hiking was the perfect way to do it. There was a fair amount of consumption of adult beverages, and some heated political discussions, but when the topic of work came up, both he and George would steer the conversation in another direction. Their feeling was that they dealt with scumbags and rip-off artists enough during the week; they didn’t need to bring it with them up there. The point was to come up there to bond and relax, and discussing the moral depravity they dealt with from day to day would spoil that. Besides, that’s the way Edward would have wanted it if he had been there with them, and Jackson was going to preserve his legacy. The point was to get away from the day-to-day grind and bond as a team during more positive experiences. It was a time Jackson remembered fondly, and he wondered if it would ever be repeated.
All In A Day's Work Page 29