The Longhorn family had been here for generations. They used their working ranch to raise thoroughbreds, board horses for others, and then offer a sanctuary of sorts for any abused breeds in crisis.
Their spread was run by Zeb’s parents, Theo and Rima, when they weren’t teaching school on the reservation. Zeb’s sister, Willow, kept the books and gave riding lessons. Zeb’s younger brother, Trent, had just graduated from Portland State with a business degree and planned to spend his time putting together horse shows throughout the area.
After taking Gypsy and Bandit on a short ride through Shadow Canyon, Lando and Gemma split up. She went to hunt down Leia and he sought out Zeb to go over the composite Candace had sent him from San Francisco.
Lando found him in a shed grooming Zander, his champagne-colored colt, wearing his cowboy hat. “Shouldn’t you look more like an Indian instead of Roy Rogers?”
“I’d ask you the same thing. The hat holds my hair back. What’s your excuse? You look more like John Wayne than I do.”
“How can you say that? I don’t even own a cowboy hat.”
“No, you’re afraid of messing up your hair.”
“It’s all in using the right conditioner.”
Zeb finally laughed and shook his head. “Conditioner, huh? Try wearing a bandana or a headband. What’s up?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Jane Doe’s sketch. Do you think I should go ahead and send it out? Cause I could have it gone by this afternoon. And Gemma’s ready to upload it to several more websites for even more exposure.”
Zeb straightened his back. “I’d say do it. Then when the professor gets you an updated sketch, send that one out too in a separate bulletin just in case someone missed it. That way, you have an excuse to resend.”
“Good idea. Wells paid me a visit this morning. You should’ve seen his face when Gemma mentioned a visit by a bank examiner.”
Zeb pushed his hat up. “Wouldn’t that be something? Sam Wells on the other end of an audit. You know he put several of my people through the grinder when he gave them a loan, upped the interest rate to an exorbitant twenty-eight percent. It’s legal, but jeez, what kind of guy does that to his neighbors?”
“The same man who uses the old bait and switch and then begs for a vote when he runs for office.”
“Exactly. Look, why don’t you guys stick around for the weekly cookout? Every Sunday night we hold a barbecue for the ranch hands. You guys are welcome to stay.”
“That’d be great, but I should get this composite off first.”
“Why not use the fax machine in my office? Or if you’d prefer sending an email, my computer?”
“Fine. As long as we get this on its way now.”
Afterward, Lando looked around for Gemma but couldn’t find her. He checked the barn, the paddocks, and even the outdoor arena where Willow gave her lessons. It wasn’t until he hiked over a hill that he found her sitting by herself.
“What are you doing way out here?” he asked as he plopped down beside her.
“Just waiting for the sun to go down. See how that bank of clouds is moving east over the lake? It’s leaving behind a clear blue sky. Soon the stars will pop out tonight.”
“Zeb invited us to stay and eat.”
“Sounds like a plan. There’s something I forgot to do, though. I forgot to ask Van if he’ll give me away at the wedding. If not, I’ll have to make the walk by myself.”
“He won’t turn you down, if that’s what you’re afraid of. The little time I spent with him last Sunday, I think he’s coming around.”
“He hasn’t had a sister since Silby died, and that was a long time ago. We’re both still awkward together when we’re around each other. But that has to change, right?”
“I think it will. You can’t rush these things, Gemma. It’s only recently that Zeb and I are more like friends than rivals. Any relationship takes time to build. Yours and Van’s is no different. Luke and I are getting closer than ever. Even Leia and I have come to a détente of sorts. We don’t argue as much as we used to about every little thing.”
“I’d like to believe that. I really want him to like me, Lando. Is that too much to ask?”
“No. We should all work a little harder to get along. But sometimes compromise is the toughest thing of all, especially when it concerns family.”
They didn’t realize until they wandered over to the picnic area that Luke and Lianne had been out riding all day.
Dirty and dusty from the trail, the couple found a spot around the open fire pit where Zeb and Leia were handing out drinks, pouring soda, or digging in the coolers for beer.
“What did you guys do all day?” Lianne asked Gemma, settling next to her.
She began by recalling Sam’s visit to the house that morning. “That’s how our day started. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that he already sees himself as mayor.”
“Luke and I were talking about that almost the entire day. While you guys focus on the murders, we’ll dig into his real estate holdings. Tomorrow as soon as the tax office opens, we’ve decided to spend the day going through all the foreclosures Sam directed at the bank.”
“Couldn’t you just go online for that?” Lando prompted.
“No,” Luke stated. “That only gets you a snapshot of each transaction. It’s better to sit down and go through the entire file individually, search each document one by one, and pick it apart for any hint of impropriety.”
“Like the bank examiner,” Gemma said and got a smile out of Luke.
He clinked his bottle of beer with hers. “Auditors are notoriously picky about little details that don’t add up.”
“What exactly do you think you’ll find?” Leia asked. “You’re looking at an all-day task going through the records. Do you know how much property has been foreclosed on around here since the housing bust? That’s almost ten years of economic failure that led to bankruptcy. The grill almost went under a couple of times.”
“That’s why I don’t care if it takes two days. I’m willing to push some of my appointments to the end of the week,” Luke reasoned. “I’ll do most anything to show that man up for what he is…a crook.”
“And a killer,” Zeb added. “He’s been incredibly lucky over the years. His victims have either gone unidentified or not been found at all.”
“Until recently,” Gemma snuck in. “Finding Cheri Taylor was a fluke but one that must’ve driven him crazy with worry.”
Leia sipped her beer. “Honestly, I don’t think anything makes him fearful that he’ll get caught. Sam’s always acted invincible. Remember the time he climbed the water tower, threatening to jump?”
Lando turned to stare at his sister. “When did this happen?”
“You guys must’ve been away at college. One day he seemed fine, not a care in the world, and the next day, he just snapped, climbing the water tower like a crazy person. Mom and I were working the lunch rush and we heard this commotion coming from Gull’s Landing. Next thing we know Tully Beacham takes his ladder and crawls up there with a bullhorn trying to talk him down.”
“So, Sam isn’t the kind of guy who deals with setbacks like a normal person?” Gemma reasoned. “That must be why he decided to make it look like Arlo had taken his own life. Desperate people do desperate things.”
Lando recognized that gleam in her eye. “What are you thinking?”
“Setbacks for Sam are hard to handle, right? What if he really gets backed into a corner? How will he react when everything around him is about to implode? I mean everything.”
“He’ll snap again,” Leia answered. “He’ll go freaking ballistic, OCD person that he is, will crack under any kind of pressure.”
“Exactly. And it won’t be pretty.”
22
Bright and early Monday morning, Lianne and Luke set off for the county seat where the tax records were kept.
Fortunately, the clerk had gone to school with Luke from first grade on and set them up in a vaca
nt back room with a folding table and a couple of chairs. The guy pointed to an ancient microfiche reader covered in dust.
“How long has it been since anyone used this thing?” Luke asked.
“At least a year. No one much cares for anything on microfilm these days. And since we ran out of funding we haven’t yet computerized all the county records. You want to go back to the timeframe you talked about, this is the only way.”
The clerk briefly showed them the filing system, which consisted of binders filled with film. He went through the steps of how to thread the reader before explaining how they could print out a page of information. “That should get you started. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks for your time,” Lianne said, as she sat down next to Luke and watched as he started to make a list of the binders they’d need. “Where do we start?”
“According to Dr. Song and Radley, their loans were from a company called SeaWatch Mortgage. We’ll start with them and find out when they were officially incorporated. That should give us a date in which to work.”
For the next thirty minutes they dug through corporation records and came up with the data on SeaWatch. From there, they searched all the loans issued in that first year.
Luke continued scanning the reader while Lianne looked on, stopping only to photograph any relevant originating documents. Next, they tried to match up any foreclosures with the addresses on the loans.
It was a painstaking task to sift through the paperwork, looking for any anomalies or similarities. The first hint of irregularity that popped up was the same appraiser had been used on every single loan.
Luke looked up the appraiser only to discover that the man didn’t actually exist, nor did his company. Which might explain how the property was consistently overvalued. And the fees were so much higher than any other appraiser in the area, charging as much as three times more than the average.
Something else that struck them as odd was that each loan started out with a ridiculously low introductory rate but quickly ballooned after a twenty-four to thirty-month period to an unreasonably high interest rate, hiking the payment, almost doubling the amount due. Virtually guaranteeing that no mortgage would ever get paid off without going into bankruptcy or without being refinanced. But since SeaWatch had overvalued the property in the first place, no reputable lending institution would ever be able to loan on the high-dollar amount.
“It’s a foolproof scheme that could easily be used to gain control of property throughout the county, taking advantage of people who were in desperate need of money in order to meet their obligations,” Luke realized.
“Like Radley,” Lianne noted. “His mother’s cancer caused medical bills to pile up. He was drowning in debt. Taking out a second mortgage was his only option. Now what about the other company that hiked up the interest rates?”
“That one is called Federal Rate. Sounds very official, like it’s blessed by the government.”
But it didn’t take them long to see proof that Federal Rate had used the same tactics as SeaWatch, with exactly the same results.
Luke grabbed his cell phone to call Lando and waited for him to pick up. “You’ll never believe what we discovered, and it didn’t take all day, either. Sam has personally bought up the properties out of foreclosure for a third of their value. He’s done all this through a series of shell companies, using the bank as a front. There really is no mortgage company per se, not one. They’re all dummy corporations. They all use the same P.O. Box out of Crescent City. And get this, Sam isn’t even a licensed broker. For all we’ve found so far, Sam could be arrested right now on wire fraud, perjury for filling out federal documents, and a number of other white-collar crimes that would lock him away for years.”
“Did you document all this?” Lando wanted to know.
“We’ve taken photos with both our phones for backup. Plus, we’ve printed it all out in case this information were to suddenly go missing. We’ve got him, Lando, on so many unethical bank practices.”
“Sounds like Sam might be Coyote Wells’s version of Bernie Madoff. Get your butts back here. I want to lock that evidence up for safekeeping where no one can get to it.”
With Buddy still in the hospital, Suzanne’s first day as dispatcher had started out rough. She got calls mixed up, addresses were written down wrong, and she seemed unable to concentrate. Two hours in and she was almost in tears.
“I’ll get fired for sure.”
“No, you won’t,” Jimmy assured her. “It’s just first-day jitters. Settle down and focus. Lando won’t fire you if he knows you’re trying.”
Lando walked up to the front desk. “Listen to Jimmy. We’ve all had our bad starts. Are you worried about Buddy? Because if you are you can…”
She didn’t let him finish. “The only thing I’m worried about is leaving him and getting a divorce. This time I’m serious. I’ve given him two dozen chances to change. He’s where he is because he won’t stop drinking. I thought we were finally on this road to getting our lives back on track and he does this. I’m fed up with being the only one in this marriage who’s trying.”
Lando had heard this from Suzanne so many times before he wasn’t buying it now. He figured this afternoon she’d have a change of heart like all the other times and it would start all over again. “If you need to go home and take care of personal business…”
“No, I’d rather be here working.”
“Then pull it together. Let your training kick in and remember what you learned in class. Don’t get distracted. We’re all willing to give you some time to settle in, especially under the circumstances.”
Suzanne sniffed into a Kleenex, and when the phone lit up, she sucked in a couple of calming breaths and answered in a cool voice, “Coyote Wells PD, what is your emergency?”
Luke arrived through the double doors carrying a cardboard box full of papers. “This is the first. Where do you want me to stack the others?”
“There are more?”
“Four more.”
“Bring them to my office,” Lando directed, walking down the hallway. “I want you to stay and walk me through the paperwork. I need to see for myself how a serial killer turned into a first-rate fraudster.”
Luke unloaded his box onto a credenza, opening the top. “Hey, it’s pretty simple. He began by racking up property all over the county where he’d personally overseen the foreclosure of each one and then bought it for himself through various shell companies. It’s not that hard to get.”
Zeb, who’d arrived behind Luke, overheard that last part. “No one even noticed Sam snapping up all these foreclosures?”
“That’s what the fake companies were for,” Luke explained. “Set up to hide his part in all the transactions.”
“What are you doing here?” Lando asked Zeb.
“I tried calling but your dispatcher put me through to the vacant mayor’s office. The voicemail even has Fleet still answering the phone. Irony, huh? Anyway, the crime lab called. They found a palm print on the 30-30 that didn’t belong to Arlo. I figured you’d want to know.”
Lando dropped into his chair. “That’s huge. That’s the break we needed.”
“Yeah, but do we have any way to check it against Sam’s?”
“I’ll go stake out his garbage can tonight if I have to,” Lando promised.
“Not without me. I’m itching to get this guy in handcuffs.” Zeb watched Luke bring in more boxes and flipped open one of the cartons. “But hey, if this is damaging stuff, we can use it to go after him now. No need to wait. Shell companies could also equate to money laundering.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Luke piped up. “And a long list of other charges including wire fraud.”
“Music to my ears. But we have to make sure that what we’ve got is solid enough for an arrest warrant,” Lando began. “Sam’s palm prints matching back to that rifle would be the final nail in his coffin. I don’t want him making bail beca
use he’s personal friends with Judge Hartwell.”
Zeb rolled his shoulders around and popped his neck while he considered the options. “Then maybe we should go to someone else for the warrant.”
Lando leaned back in his chair. “And who would that be?”
“Annette Ferris is our best bet. She hasn’t been here long enough to make friends with Sam, although he does probably hold the note on her house.”
Lando looked over at the boxes and at Luke. “But she’ll take at least two days, maybe even as long as a week to analyze all this. And she’ll probably get underlings to do it for her who might have allegiance to Sam. She’ll need someone to help her connect the dots.”
“Send Luke,” Zeb suggested. “He knows this stuff backwards and forwards.”
“You want me to explain this to a judge?” Luke asked.
Lando stared at his brother. “I have a better idea. We should go straight to the federal and state level on this and bypass any county prosecutors or other local officials, including Judge Ferris. Sam has connections everywhere. Who’s to say someone won’t tip him off? We don’t want that happening. Sam gets wind of this and he might just go on the run or worse, talk his way out of the situation.”
“I vote for getting the Feds involved,” Luke stated. “Only problem is, do you trust them?”
“Not really, but I went to Cal State with a guy who is now in the FBI. Robert Coley works in the Los Angeles field office. I’ll hand off copies of the evidence of wire fraud to him. That should give us the easiest road to prosecuting Mr. Hotshot Banker outside this jurisdiction.”
Just as Lando turned to pick up the phone to call his pal at the L.A. field office, Jimmy stuck his head around the doorframe. “Have you been listening to the police scanner?”
“No. Why?”
“This morning the road crew out on the highway found bones. Tuttle says they’re human.”
Lando traded looks with Zeb and then Luke. “Maybe this has something to do with that young girl who disappeared from the B Street Pier down in Crescent City.”
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