In the Company of Wolves: Thinning The Herd

by Larranaga, James Michael

  He’d been living in Minnesota six months, long enough to get comfortable with most places, but not here. He still hated everything about the Land of Ten Thousand Frozen Lakes: too many polite people around here. All he had to do was close a few more deals, add a few more sales people, and he’d be out of here and onto warmer business opportunities.

  Even though Ben was a death broker, he was far more comfortable with the business transactions of death than the human side of it. Wills, insurance claims, and probate were comfortable ground, but watching somebody like Pilson die never got easy.

  Pilson’s death made him think of his mother at home in her final days. She had been in pain for months before the doctors sent her home for what they promised Ben would be a more natural way for her to die. They showed Ben how to administer her morphine, to make her comfortable—hospice was about comfort, not a cure. After only a few days of watching her suffer, Ben thought of a solution for her endless suffering, and he simply increased the morphine and set her free. It was the humane thing to do, he’d reminded himself over and over, but it was her unexpected life insurance proceeds that eased Ben’s guilt. He’d discovered there was money to be made from all the people who were sick and dying.

  “Well, we did it,” Sheriff David Carlson said, startling Ben by plopping himself into the leather chair next to the fire. He wasn’t wearing a uniform under his parka; instead, he wore blue jeans and a cotton polo sweatshirt.

  Ben glanced at his watch. “You’re early, David.”

  “Don’t worry. All the police have gone home. Too cold out there,” he said, pouring a full glass of wine. He sat back, sinking his round, Humpty-Dumpty body deep into the leather chair.

  Smiling to himself, Ben poured more wine. Munroe’s death was a big relief. “What are the cops saying?”

  “That FBI agent Spencer Lunde is stopping by my office in one hour. I think we could’ve waited a few weeks to kill Munroe Pilson. I’m not sure why you had to do it so soon after Cassy’s disappearance.”

  “I know. I caught Harold by surprise, too,” Ben said. “It was time to move things along.”

  “Pretty bloody out there,” David said, gulping his wine as if he were slamming a beer. “How did you get Munroe to come out waving his gun? It’s all recorded on the dashboard camera from the squad car.”

  “I taunted him,” Ben said. “Her first shot hit Munroe dead in the chest. Beautiful shooting.”

  “I worked on her for weeks,” David said, smiling proudly. “I sent her to the firing range every day.”

  “That chick can shoot,” Ben said, staring into the fire. “How is she, anyway?”

  “She’s either a really good actress or she’s pretty shaken by the whole thing,” David said. “She’ll calm down once she gets her portion of the money.”

  This made Ben nervous; inviting an amateur like Deputy Monica into their investment ring courted uncertain risks. He’d wanted David to shoot Munroe, but he blabbed their plan to the deputy during a late-night pillow talk, getting her involved, too.

  “I’ll have to answer the cops’ questions for a few days, but when we’re in the clear, I’ll submit the paperwork to the insurance company,” Ben said. “All the investors should receive their portion within a month.”

  “A month? C’mon, we’ve been waiting half a year already,” David said, like a greedy investor.

  The guy wasn’t getting it, Ben thought. David couldn’t understand the complexity of this deal. “When an insured is shot, insurance companies get suspicious. They sometimes investigate,” he said. “It beats waiting another six months for the cancer to kick in, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I suppose,” David said.

  “Stay cool. Even with this kind of investing, you have to be patient. If you can’t play by my rules, you’re out,” Ben said.

  David drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair and licked his lower lip. He was thinking something; he had a way of slowly easing into a question that Ben had noticed on other occasions.

  “You hired that new intern because he’s Indian, isn’t that right?” David asked.

  “Let’s just say that it didn’t hurt,” Ben said.

  “What tribe?”

  “He’s Wakan Sioux from across the river.”

  “I knew it,” David blurted out. “He’s one of those Indians that own that casino. He’s got money, right?”

  “Harold did the research,” Ben said. “Quin’s not rich, but some of his relatives might be. We’re still running a background check.”

  David shook his head. “Those Indians make millions with their slot machines and blackjack tables. What are you up to?”

  Ben grew tired of the sheriff’s questions. David sometimes missed the obvious. “Wealthy Indians need a place to invest their money, David.”

  “You want this intern to ask his relatives to invest in policies?”

  “There you go, you’re catching on,” Ben said sarcastically. People in Minnesota aren’t dumb, it just takes longer for new ideas to melt through their frozen skulls.

  David’s expression twisted into shades of disappointment, as if he knew he’d missed out on a big opportunity. “Why are you recruiting new investors? Are you cutting me out?”

  “I’m bidding on a $10 million life insurance policy soon. We’ve never had a bid on a policy of that size. I’ll need more cash,” Ben said. “You’re not in on this one, David.”

  “C’mon, you wave a $10 million policy in front of me, and then you tell me I can’t have a piece of it?” David asked. “I’ve got money.”

  “I’m not splitting this deal up among twenty or thirty investors,” Ben said. “I need a small group of investors or even a single investor who can access money quickly. We‘ll have competition on this one. Other brokers will want to bid on the policy.”

  “How do you know this intern will even let you talk to his relatives?” David asked.

  Ben sipped his merlot, swishing the bitterness in his cheeks before swallowing. As dumb as David was, he had a point. Ben couldn’t just walk up and ask Quin if his family and friends had millions of dollars to invest. “I don’t know. I’ll have to spend some time with him first.”

  Even though Monica Jensen had taken Valium, she hadn’t rested much since the shooting earlier that morning. Her boss David and the FBI investigator, Spencer Lunde, sat across from her at a wobbly table in the break room of the sheriff’s department. Ordinarily, the staff used the area as a place to eat lunch or meet with volunteers. Candy machines, a refrigerator, and too many chairs overran the small room.

  She had no appetite, and after vomiting twice from the anxiety she felt about Munroe Pilson’s death, she certainly wasn’t hungry for dinner. For weeks she had practiced a mournful look in the mirror, and she’d even rehearsed how she would cry, but today’s tears were real. She actually felt true remorse.

  How come? He had been terminally ill and would have died a slow, agonizing death.

  David had convinced her she would be doing Pilson a favor, and she’d make herself enough money to get out of her mountain of credit card debt. But for some reason, all she could stomach was a glass of water, which she held tightly in both hands.

  “Want more water, Monica?” David asked.

  Even that simple question left her with self-doubt. Did she deserve more water? After all, she was a murderer. What beverages do murderers drink? “No, thank you.”

  “I know this is hard for you,” Lunde said. “But I need a few more details, and we’ll be finished for a while. Once again, who shot first?”

  “He turned his gun at me,” Monica said.

  “And you told him to drop his weapon?” Lunde asked, gently. His soft voice didn’t match his wide shoulders and rugged outdoor hands. He looked more like a lumberjack than an investigator.

  “Yes,” Monica said, now visualizing the script. She had to keep this in her own words, make it sound natural. “I thought he would fire. So I fired first.”

  She
began trembling, tears dripping off her face as she took another sip of her water. She couldn’t erase the image of Munroe Pilson taking her shots before he collapsed like a marionette without strings. How much money would it take to erase that image? Maybe she should tell David she wanted a bigger cut of the settlement, since she’d done the shooting solo. He was supposed to be there taking the blame with her.

  Lunde read his notes. “You told him to drop the weapon, and what did he do?”

  “He turned directly at me, aiming it,” she said, regaining her composure. “I shot him, and when he fell, he fired back.”

  “I’m amazed you weren’t hit,” Lunde said. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  What is luck supposed to feel like? She wished she had taken a hit; at least a flesh wound would make her feel as if she’d earned the money.

  She closed her eyes and recited her speech. “I read the situation wrong. I’d been working so hard on my shooting lately, watching training videos on domestic disputes, and I guess I just misinterpreted what was happening.”

  David offered her a handful of tissues. “OK, that’s enough.”

  She was exhausted. The police had asked her questions most of the morning, and other FBI agents had been by before Lunde. How many more people would she have to speak to?

  “The media is all over this story,” Lunde said. “You’re required to take time off during the investigation. No talking to reporters.”

  “Time off with pay, of course,” David said.

  She nodded, blowing her nose into the tissue. Time off sounded wonderful. She wouldn’t hold up well in a crowd of reporters. It would be smart to take time off to decide how this incident would affect the rest of her life. With the money, she could quit and pursue her other interests. She had once thought she could work in ski patrol in Aspen. Maybe David would finally divorce his wife and come with her to Colorado. If they both asked for more money, they could start a new life together.

  Quin’s heart raced as he sat up in his sofa bed, dripping with sweat. He checked his watch. It was 11:55 p.m., and he clocked his pulse at 145 beats per minute. He’d had a nightmare; the image of Pilson sprawled on the street was hard to forget. Quin leaned back on his pillow to regain his peace.

  He raised his left forearm to his brow to wipe the sweat and felt the scars on his arm, old wounds he’d suffered many years ago, but he didn’t want his mind to go there right now either.

  He kept his eyes open, fixating on the moonlight across the wall. If he closed his eyes, he’d have to relive that horrific night all over again.

  Quin rechecked his watch. It measured the barometric pressure, registering that a winter storm would pass through soon. There was no way he could stop the flood of images and the screams he heard a long time ago. The memories flickered through his mind, and he’d once again have to relive that horrific night years ago when he became a bloody victim like Munroe Pilson.

  He woke to the sound of his parents shouting. He thought they were having another one of their drunken arguments, but this time he heard other men too, shouting at his parents. His mother screamed and shrieked while his father shouted and fought what sounded like two men attacking him.

  In the bedroom Quin shared with his sister, they sat up in their beds trying to make sense of what was happening, and then there was silence, except for a fading moan.

  Quin heard footsteps in the hallway coming toward their room. Who were they? What did they want? Were they drug runners or thieves? The door burst open, and one figure stood breathing heavily in the dark. He lunged for Quin and grabbed him by the arms while his sister, Autumn, screamed. Quin thought the man was kidnapping them, which was common along the border towns of Arizona and Mexico where they lived. But instead of pulling Quin from the bed, the man kneeled on top of him and swung a knife as Quin deflected the blows with his forearms.

  “Run, Autumn!” he screamed. “Run!”

  Quin grasped at his blanket and sheets, buffering himself from the blade while Autumn opened the room’s only window. Quin could smell the scent of the desert air rushing into the room. His attacker noticed it too and paused, dropping his knife to the floor before walking to the open window.

  “Ella esta corriendo! She’s running,” Quin’s attacker said in Spanish to another man down the hallway. The man climbed through the open window and chased after Quin’s sister, laughing and howling like a coyote.

  Quin heard more footsteps heading toward his room. Could he make it to the window? Could he escape too? Instead, he reached down to the floor and grabbed the knife.

  Lying in bed in his apartment, Quin reached down to the tile floor under the bed and grabbed the knife. He studied the blade’s reflection in the moonlight. This knife had killed his parents, and it had saved his life on several occasions since. Holding it gave him comfort.

  He set the knife under his bed and reached for a tattered Vince Flynn paperback novel Consent to Kill. He’d already read it twice, searching for insights on how to handle bad guys: WWMRD—“What Would Mitch Rapp Do?”—was Quin’s motto. He scanned the tattered pages with his eyes growing heavier.

  He reached for his phone and opened the Safe Haven e-mail program Harold had installed. How many other apps could he have downloaded onto the phone?

  Quin sent Zoe a text: Hey, you awake?

  He waited for her reply, for that familiar vibration that told him he had a friend out there somewhere.

  His eyelids bounced as he stared into the glow of his phone and drifted off to sleep.

  Quin awoke to the sound of his watch beeping. A short night of fitful sleep had left him with a headache, made worse by the low barometric pressure registering on his digital watch. He couldn’t hit the snooze alarm again, or he’d be late for work. He rolled out of bed searching for a clean towel to take with him to the shower.

  Quin had recently moved into this apartment. The landlord had furnished the efficiency with a threadbare couch that pulled out to a bed, a lamp with a yellowed shade, and a black-and-white television. Quin had never seen cable hooked up to a black-and-white television before.

  Where are the towels?

  The lime-green kitchenette came with a card table, two chairs, and an avocado refrigerator. The landlord claimed the microwave was new, but Quin’s toaster oven back on the reservation could cook a meal hotter and faster.

  The only view to the city was out the dirty bathroom window overlooking a coffee shop and the other small buildings along Hennepin Avenue.

  Bingo: a towel hanging on the bathroom door.

  Quin ran through the rest of his morning ritual, throwing an extra splash of aftershave on his face before sliding into his gray Armani suit. He checked his ensemble in the mirror, realizing how out of place he looked standing in this shabby apartment.

  Not exactly luxury living, but Quin wasn’t planning to stay long, and after all, this was how college students were supposed to live. He had to maintain the poor college student image because his new employer did background checks, and Harold Reiker, the old wolf, might follow him home one night.

  His laptop sat on the kitchenette table. Last night he had surfed the web learning about viatical settlement companies. He wanted to know who regulated the industry so he’d have a better understanding of how Big Ben Moretti might be breaking the law.

  He popped a few pills and checked his e-mail before heading downstairs to the coffee shop next door. He had an update from his psychiatrist, Dr. Kirsten Hayden, who was winter camping in Yellowstone. She had promised him that in her absence, she would write to him regularly and describe her experiences tracking wolves in the park.

  She’d been assigned to Quin to help him with his anger, and over the last several months, he’d turned her onto his passion: wolves. He was proud of that, hoping she’d eventually dump the boyfriend and notice him.

  Kirsten and her beau had been e-mailing him for advice on winter survival and insights on the wolf pack they were tracking. Quin preferred text messages to e
-mail, but Kirsten said she didn’t text patients; all communications flowed through her business e-mail.

  Today’s e-mail had a single question: Lost the pack in deep snow over the ridge. Any suggestions?

  In the winter, wolves travel long distances to find food. In deep snow, they will tire easily unless they can run in the tracks of elk or moose.

  Quin wrote back: Don’t worry about wolf tracks. Look for elk instead. Remember, wolves circle back. They’re behind you.

  Quin sent the e-mail, fumbled with his silk tie in the mirror. He turned and was surprised to see his girlfriend Zoe standing in the doorway. She looked taller today in her Anne Klein knee-high boots. Her black leather jacket made her petite frame look badass. Quin had bought her these clothes as gifts while he shopped on eBay for his Armani suits.

  “Hey, I got your late-night text,” Zoe said.

  He gently whisked a stray hair away from her face and kissed her lips. “I had a nightmare and needed to talk, but it was late.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “Do you want to talk about it now?”

  Quin checked his watch. “Running short on time.”

  “You’re not returning to that job, are you? You said somebody was killed there yesterday.”

  “That’s probably what brought on my nightmare,” Quin said.

  “So what happened? Give me details.”

  Quin described the shooting incident to Zoe, and he could see the horror in her eyes when he said, “And Pilson died in the street.”

  Zoe covered her mouth. “What?”

  “I couldn’t believe it either. It seems suspicious.”

  “You’re going back to work today?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You were nervous when you landed this job,” she said. “Trust your instincts. Don’t go back there.”

  He was nervous, and he knew he couldn’t fool Zoe. She had an eye for detail, and she had a sixth sense about people. They had met over the summer in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. She was solo camping—he was too, and they’d run into each other while portaging their canoes. They joked that out of the thousands of acres of wilderness, how did their worlds collide? They had been hanging together every day since.