House Rivals

by Mike Lawson

  Marjorie couldn’t think of anything DeMarco could do to cause them a problem but it was worrisome that he was still in Bismarck, running around.

  She called Heckler. “What he’s doing now?”

  “He just had breakfast with Thorpe. Last night, after he lost me, the only thing I could do was go back to his motel and wait for him. DeMarco returned to the motel about two in the morning and Thorpe spent the night in his room. This morning, Thorpe left the motel before five and went to a restaurant, and DeMarco joined him an hour or so later. DeMarco and Thorpe are back at the motel now. I’ve had about two hours of sleep, Marjorie. I can’t keep this up.”

  “Well, you’re gonna have to keep it up. Or hire someone to help you.”

  “If I can get DeMarco’s phone number,” Heckler said, “and find out the type of cell phone he uses, maybe Gordy can download that spyware shit onto his phone so I can use GPS to track him.”

  “Gordy’s not here this week,” Marjorie said. “He went to some video game conference in Vegas.” She was pissed at Gordy. Technically, Gordy didn’t work for her—he was an independent businessman, not her employee—but as she and Bill were his best paying customers, she was annoyed that he hadn’t told her in advance that he was going to Vegas. Instead, he’d just left a message on Marjorie’s office answering machine saying he’d be gone for a few days and wasn’t sure when he’d return. She was going to ring his dope-smoking neck when he got back.

  “Anyway,” she said to Heckler, “I don’t want to just know where DeMarco is. I want to know what he’s doing.”

  “Well, shit,” Heckler said.

  “Yeah. So you do whatever you gotta do to stick with him,” Marjorie said and hung up.

  Goddamnit, what the hell was DeMarco up to? And why was Johnson’s granddad hanging out with him?

  She wondered, for about two seconds, if she should make Bill contact Murdock and tell Murdock to make DeMarco disappear. No murder, no accident, DeMarco just vanishes. Then she immediately decided it would too risky to do something to DeMarco. He claimed to have his own FBI agent assigned to the case and Heckler had seen him with a woman packing a gun who looked like a cop. So DeMarco was probably telling the truth about the FBI being involved in Johnson’s death and if something happened to him, they might end up with an entire FBI task force in Bismarck.

  No, she wouldn’t do anything and she wouldn’t panic. There was no reason to panic. Neither DeMarco nor the FBI would find anything because there wasn’t anything to find. Her biggest fear at this point was still Bill. Bill made her nervous. Bill was barely holding it together. When they had to deal with the swing judge, Wainwright, six years ago, Bill went through a period where he couldn’t sleep and drank too much, but he eventually got over it. The same thing was happening again, but he seemed even worse this time. Maybe she’d make him go on vacation. He could go sit on a beach in Hawaii, drink mai tais, and chase after sluts.

  Yeah, it might be smart to get Bill out of town

  DeMarco told Thorpe what he’d learned from Mahoney’s guy, that Tim Sloan was Logan’s ex-brother-in-law.

  “So I guess we go see Sloan next,” Thorpe said.

  “No,” DeMarco said. “I mean, we don’t go see him like we saw Patterson. Beating information out of Patterson was okay as it led us to Sloan and now I know Sloan’s working for Logan.”

  “But you don’t know for sure,” Thorpe said.

  “I know,” DeMarco insisted. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. But I don’t want a forced confession out of Sloan. In the long run, that won’t do any good. What I want is for Sloan to agree to testify against Logan in court. Then I’ll have something I can use to squeeze Logan.”

  “You won’t have shit,” Thorpe said. “Even if Sloan can be forced to testify, all you’ll get is him saying that Logan paid him and his pals to scare Sarah. Since they didn’t really hurt her, it’s not like you can put Logan in jail for years.”

  “I don’t know what kind of prison sentence you can get for threatening to kill someone, but whatever it is, it’ll be something.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to make my FBI agent arrest Sloan. But I need to talk to her alone. You can’t be there.”

  Before Thorpe could debate the issue, DeMarco said, “You should head back to Montana. I’ll give you a call after I meet with the FBI and Sloan and let you know what happened. Do you have a cell phone?”

  “Yeah, got one in my truck for emergencies.”

  “Good. Write down the number, and I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay, but I’m not leaving, DeMarco, until after I see what happens with Sloan.”

  DeMarco nodded. He should have known that. “All right. And if you want to save the expense of a room you can stay in my room again tonight.”

  Thorpe laughed, although it didn’t sound like a laugh. “DeMarco, the least of my worries is money. I’m the beneficiary of Sarah’s will. I could buy that motel where we’re staying. One of the things I need to do is have my will changed. My will says everything I’ve got goes to Sarah. With her dead, the goddamn state of Montana will get the money.”

  “So call a lawyer while you’re waiting to hear from me and get a new will drawn up.”

  “Yeah, but who do I leave all that money to?” Thorpe asked.

  21

  Agent Bertha Westerberg was not amused. DeMarco figured the only reason she didn’t take out her Glock and pistol whip him was that they were in a Starbucks and there were a dozen people nearby.

  He’d called her and told her that he had information that would advance the case against Bill Logan and asked her to meet him. When she arrived at the coffee shop, he said, “You told me the cops suspected a guy named Roy Patterson of being one of the people who assaulted Sarah. I have Patterson on tape admitting that he was hired by a man named Tim Sloan, and Sloan is Bill Logan’s ex-brother-in-law.”

  “You what?” she said. “How did you . . . Let me hear the tape.”

  DeMarco took his RadioShack recorder from a pocket and hit play—and a moment later Westerberg went berserk. “Jesus Christ! I should arrest you right now. You attacked a man with a gun, hit him at least twice, and threatened to kill him. I’m not even sure how many crimes you’ve committed. And who was with you?”

  “Nobody was with me,” DeMarco said. He was not about to get Thorpe in trouble.

  “I could hear you talking to someone other than Patterson on that tape,” Westerberg said.

  “Never mind what you heard. The big thing is, I got the guy on tape admitting Sloan paid him to assault Sarah. What we need to do next is go see Sloan and get him to admit that Logan paid him, except with Sloan I won’t point a gun at him. I won’t have to use a gun because I’ll have you with me.”

  Since Westerberg didn’t appear to know what to say—her lips were moving but no words were coming out—DeMarco kept talking, “The other thing is, if you play with that recording a bit, all you’ll hear is Patterson confessing. I mean, we can probably fix it so you won’t hear me telling him I’m going to shoot him.”

  “Good Lord,” Westerberg muttered.

  It took some time for DeMarco to convince Westerberg to go along with his plan. She didn’t like it at all but could see the logic in it, and since she didn’t have a better idea, she finally agreed. She knew that if she didn’t make progress on the case, she’d never get Mahoney’s big boot off her boss’s neck. It took him a while longer to convince her to let him go with her when she interviewed Sloan. DeMarco basically said that it was his football—meaning the recording—and she couldn’t play with his football unless she let him join her team.

  They drove in Westerberg’s car to Sloan’s place in silence. He could see that Westerberg was still fretting over the legal position he’d put her in. Tough shit. He’d noticed that she was wearing different clothes today: she had on
the jacket from the suit she’d been wearing the night he met her, but was wearing a T-shirt under the jacket and tight-fitting jeans that looked good on her long legs. It appeared that she’d found time to go shopping. DeMarco was wearing the one suit he’d brought with him to Montana and a white dress shirt but no tie. He was wearing the suit because the FBI guys he’d seen always wore suits.

  Sloan lived on the second floor of a dilapidated apartment building. Westerberg knocked hard on the door, hammering on it with her fist like she was trying to wake the dead. They finally heard someone inside the apartment say, “Christ, hold on, I’m coming.” An emaciated blonde in her thirties—one who looked as if she might enjoy a bowl of crystal meth for breakfast—finally opened the door.

  Westerberg held up her identification and said, “FBI. We’re here to see Tim Sloan.”

  “What?” the woman said.

  “Let us in,” Westerberg said.

  “What?” the woman said again.

  Westerberg pushed past the woman without waiting for an invitation, and said, “Where’s Sloan?”

  At that moment a man walked out of a bedroom wearing faded jeans with a rip in one knee and a soiled white T-shirt. He was barefoot. Like his girlfriend he was short and skinny and his dark hair was long and disheveled, springing away from his head in all directions. His mouth hung open and his eyes seemed to have a hard time focusing. He didn’t look like the brightest guy in the world.

  “Mr. Sloan,” Westerberg said, “I’m arresting you for assaulting Sarah Johnson.”

  “What?” Sloan said—and DeMarco was starting to wonder if these two people had another word in their vocabulary.

  Westerberg marched over to Sloan and said, “Turn around.” When he just stood there, still confused, she grabbed his left arm, spun him around, and slapped the cuffs on him. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Sloan’s brain finally caught up to what was happening to him. “Can I put my shoes on?” he said.

  Before Westerberg could answer, DeMarco said, “No. They’ll give you flip-flops at the jail.” It was May; his feet weren’t going to freeze.

  They led Sloan out to Westerberg’s car and put him in the backseat. On their way to the Bismarck Police Department on Ninth Street—Westerberg’s temporary headquarters—Sloan asked several times: “What’s going on? Why are you guys doing this?” Westerberg and DeMarco pointedly ignored the questions, saying nothing, letting Sloan’s anxiety increase on the short ride to the station.

  They marched Sloan into the police station, DeMarco gripping his upper arm. The sergeant at the desk in the lobby appeared to know Westerberg and when she told him she needed to use an interview room, he didn’t ask why, he simply directed her to one. Inside the interview room, Westerberg removed the handcuffs from Sloan’s thin wrists and pointed him to a chair on one side of a scarred wooden table. She and DeMarco took seats across from him.

  Sloan said, “I want to know what’s . . .”

  Westerberg said, “I’m Special Agent Westerberg of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and . . .”

  “FBI?” Sloan said.

  “. . . and this is DeMarco.” That was good, DeMarco thought: she didn’t say that DeMarco was FBI—he was just DeMarco.

  “As I told you at your apartment,” Westerberg continued, “you’ve been arrested for assaulting Sarah Johnson on the night of April—”

  “Hey, I didn’t assault anyone.”

  “Sloan,” DeMarco said, “your buddy, Roy Patterson, gave me a recorded statement that you paid him and another moron named Mark Jenkins two hundred bucks to rough up Sarah. You knocked her to the ground. You touched her in inappropriate places. You threatened to rape her and kill her—and Patterson has testified that you did all those things. You’re looking at five years in prison.”

  DeMarco had made up the number. He didn’t know how long Sloan would serve but he doubted it would be that long. But Sloan didn’t know that.

  “I think I need a lawyer,” Sloan said.

  Before Westerberg could answer, DeMarco said, “You definitely need a lawyer. But we might cut you a break if you admit that Bill Logan paid you to assault Johnson.”

  “What kind of break?”

  Westerberg said, “You’re in no position to negotiate, Mr. Sloan. All I can say is that we want Logan more than we want you, so it’s possible you won’t serve time if you cooperate.”

  “I don’t know. I think I should talk to a—”

  “Do you want to spend five years in prison?” DeMarco said. “And do you think Logan wouldn’t give you up if he was in your position?”

  “He didn’t pay me to assault her,” Sloan said. “You keep using that word. He told me not to hurt her. He just said to scare her, and that’s all I did.”

  “It was an assault,” DeMarco said, and took out his handy-dandy RadioShack recorder. “Now I’m tired of fucking with you. I want you to say, for the record, that Logan paid you to assault Sarah Johnson. If you don’t, you’re going to be formally charged and you’ll spend tonight in a cell. Tomorrow you’ll be arraigned and released on bail. That is, you’ll be released if you have money for the bondsman. Do you have five or ten grand in cash?”

  “No,” Sloan said. “I’m flat broke.”

  “I want you to say: Bill Logan paid me to assault Sarah Johnson,” ­DeMarco said. He hit record and held the recorder near Sloan’s mouth. After swallowing a couple of times, Sloan said, “Bill Logan paid me to assault Sarah Johnson.”

  “How much did he pay you?” DeMarco asked.

  “Five hundred. I gave a hundred each to Roy and Mark.”

  “That’s Roy Patterson and Mark Jenkins. Is that right?” DeMarco said.

  “Yeah,” Sloan said.

  “And why did Logan pay you to assault Ms. Johnson?”

  “He said she was causing him problems by writing a bunch of lies about his business or something. I guess she was a reporter.”

  “Did you kill Sarah Johnson for Bill Logan?”

  “What!” Sloan screamed. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  DeMarco hit the stop button on the recorder. “Okay,” he said. “Because you’ve been cooperative, we’re not going to charge you. But if at a later date you retract the statement you made today or refuse to testify against Logan, you’re going away for five years. And don’t even think about calling Logan. We’re going to arrest him shortly and if he’s not where he’s supposed to be, I’m going to assume you called him and then we’ll haul you back here and charge you. Now get out of here.”

  “How am I supposed to get back home?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care.” DeMarco said.

  “It’s too far to walk, plus I don’t have any shoes.”

  “Tough shit,” DeMarco said.

  “And I don’t have any money to catch a cab or a bus.”

  “Once again, tough shit,” DeMarco said.

  “Call your girlfriend,” Westerberg said, “and have her come and pick you up.”

  “I could, but her license has been suspended,” Sloan said.

  “Get out of here. Now,” DeMarco said, and Sloan shuffled out of the room.

  “Well, I thought that went pretty well,” DeMarco said to Westerberg.

  “I’m going to lose my job,” Westerberg said.

  “Nah. Mahoney won’t let them fire you. And if we get the people who killed Sarah, you’ll probably get promoted.”

  “I don’t know what DeMarco’s up to,” Heckler said to Marjorie.

  Marjorie was still in the office, she’d been there all day, working on a dozen different issues, but the whole time she’d been working she’d been thinking about DeMarco and her partner.

  “This morning I followed DeMarco from his motel to a Starbucks where he met up with that tough-looking gal,” Heckler said, “the one I told you about with a gun who
looks like a cop. And by the way, DeMarco didn’t do anything to shake a tail like he did last night. I changed cars so if he was looking for the car I was driving last night, he wouldn’t see it.”

  “The woman he’s with is probably FBI,” Marjorie said. “DeMarco told me and Bill he had an FBI agent working on Johnson’s murder.”

  “FBI?” Heckler said.

  “Yeah,” Marjorie said. She could tell by the sound of Heckler’s voice that he didn’t like the idea of following an FBI agent. “Anyway, continue with what you were saying. What happened after DeMarco met her at Starbucks?”

  “They drove in her car to an apartment building on the east side, and a few minutes later they came out with a guy in handcuffs.”

  “So who was he?” Marjorie asked.

  “I don’t know. Some little raggedy-ass doofus who wasn’t wearing shoes. He looked like a homeless guy.”

  “A homeless guy?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, they took him to the Bismarck police station on Ninth and DeMarco and the gal have been inside the station the last half an hour. Maybe they’re interrogating him, but I have no way to know.”

  “A homeless guy?” Marjorie said again. “But they picked him up from an apartment building?”

  “Maybe he was loitering around the building, sleeping in a stairwell or something. I don’t know.”

  Then Marjorie had a horrible thought: What if the homeless guy was a witness to Johnson’s murder? What if he’d seen Murdock leave Johnson’s house after he killed her? That would not be good. But if he were a witness, why would they arrest him? None of this made sense. “Find out who he is, Heckler, but stick with DeMarco.”

  A moment after she’d disconnected the call with Heckler, Bill walked into the office. He’d shown up for work at ten that morning, looking hungover and as if he hadn’t slept much the night before. To give him something to do, she’d sent him over to the state capitol to take the temperature on a bill that was winding its way through the senate. She was pretty sure the bill would pass—which was what Curtis wanted—and she’d told Bill to go see if it looked like they still had the votes.