Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

by Jeff Carson

  A few seconds later she came close, this time avoiding eye contact with him. “Go ahead.”

  “MacLean also said he had photos of me and Hannah Kipling here at the house that night. Those photos might be my alibi.”

  She walked away as if he’d said nothing.

  Agent Frye appeared next to Wolf, his eyes trailing Luke. “She tells me you’re innocent.”

  “She’s a smart agent.”

  “So am I. That’s how I became ASAC. And I know when emotions get involved investigations go sloppy. So I’m not listening to a thing she says.”

  Wolf closed his eyes. “Let me know what you find. I’m confident I’ll see you again soon, and you can apologize to me then, okay?”

  When Wolf opened his eyes Agent Frye was gone, back in the bustle of agents ransacking his home.

  Chapter 2

  Three Months Later – Tuesday, September 9th.

  The Sheriff’s Department SUV rocked back and forth as it passed through the head gate of Wolf’s ranch.

  Shiny new turret lights topped the spotless rust-brown vehicle, and as it slowed into the circle drive the logo stamped on the door came into view. It was like a key standing on end, with the outline of Sluice County the narrow jagged top and Byron County the boxy rest of it on bottom.

  Wolf was still not used to the new look.

  He put his hands in his jacket pocket and tucked his chin under his collar. The September morning air was chilled and smelled like wood smoke, pine, and wet earth.

  Peaks that had been bare rock all summer were dusted today with lace yarmulkes of snow from last night’s monsoon storm that had dumped hours of roof-rattling rain.

  A pinprick reflection sparkled in sunlight halfway up the mountain slope.

  Wolf dismissed the anomaly and focused on his approaching visitors.

  The Sluice-Byron Sheriff Department SUV splashed through a puddle and rocked to a stop. The passenger’s side door opened and deputy Heather Patterson approached with quick strides.

  “How are you feeling?” She asked.

  “Hello to you, too. Like a new man, thanks.” Wolf smiled against her look of concern. “Aren’t you going to close your door?”

  She walked back and shut it.

  Wolf stepped forward onto the muddy circle drive in front of his ranch house and shook her hand.

  As always, Wolf’s hand dwarfed the much shorter Deputy Heather Patterson’s, but as always, her grip sent electricity up his arm.

  Patterson was like that, tiny in stature but large in presence, and that’s why Wolf had hired her a few years ago on the spot after meeting her once, and had never looked back with regret at the decision.

  One look at her granite physique told of her dedication, as she worked out seven days a week, every week, every month, every year. Her tanned, freckled skin told of her willingness to be out doing the job. One look at her hardened blue eyes told of her intelligence, and one look at her smile told anyone with a brain that she was a real catch.

  Scott Reed, a snow cat operator for the Rocky Points Ski Resort, was a lucky man to have caught Heather Patterson. Wolf and Patterson were on strict professional terms, and if he had to stretch their relationship to something more, he would say he looked at her as a daughter he never had. A daughter who carried a pistol and had a 5th degree black belt in Kenpo Karate.

  Patterson eyed him suspiciously for a second and then turned at the sound of the SUV door slamming shut behind her.

  Deputy Baine stepped around the vehicle, shoving a phone in his pocket. “Sorry, had to send a message to Andrea.”

  Wolf nodded and shook Baine’s hand. “How’s Andrea doing?”

  Baine stepped back and nodded. “Great. Great.”

  Baine shook his head and sagged his shoulders, his posture all apology.

  “It’s not your fault, Baine. Forget about it.”

  “Shit. I just can’t believe it. It was frickin’ locked. The drawer was locked.”

  Patterson looked between them. “What are you guys talking about?”

  Wolf held up a dismissive hand. “How’re things at the department?”

  Patterson and Baine glanced at each other.

  “Interesting,” Patterson said. “There’s a definite division between the two groups of personnel. MacLean hasn’t been exactly present in the whole change management process.”

  Baine snorted. “He’s got every Sluice deputy paired up with a Byron deputy. I’ve got a douche bag who reminds me of regulations all day, and Patterson, well you’ve heard about Patterson.”

  Wolf nodded. “Undersheriff Lancaster. Nice draw you got there.”

  Patterson rolled her eyes and looked at her watch. “I figure we’ve got about fifteen minutes. Then we’ve gotta run.”

  Wolf nodded. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Wolf walked toward the red barn that sat on the north side of his one-story house and Patterson and Baine followed close behind.

  He led them past the old roll-doors, past the work shed entrance, and out into the woods along a path that had been there since Wolf could remember.

  “So what’s up?” Patterson finally said when they’d walked a hundred feet. “You sounded a little skittish on the phone this morning.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I just want to show you guys something, get the latest news.”

  “The news is, the FBI has been talking to me,” Patterson said.

  “Me too,” Baine said.

  Wolf glanced at them and kept walking.

  “Sir, you don’t seem surprised that the FBI are talking to us.”

  “You don’t need to call me ‘sir’ anymore, Patterson. I’m not your boss.”

  “Whatever, sir. The FBI? You don’t seem surprised.”

  Wolf glanced at Baine. “I’m sure ever since you were supposed to produce that digital file of you interviewing Gail Olson and couldn’t, you’ve made yourself pretty well-known.”

  “Wolf,” Baine crunched to a halt, “you know that wasn’t my fault, right? I swear it was in my top drawer of my desk. And I erased the YouTube file because I didn’t want random people watching it. I should have just changed the settings and kept it there. Someone frickin’—”

  “Relax. I’m not saying it was your fault. Someone clearly removed the file from your desk. Someone who knew about the interview file, and had something to gain by getting it. Someone like Sheriff Will MacLean. I’m just offering up reasons why the FBI is all over you now.”

  Baine nodded and looked at his feet.

  “What interview file?” Patterson asked. “An interview with Gail Olson? They’ve been asking me about her.”

  Wolf turned and started walking again. “Ignorance is your best defense in all of this, Patterson.”

  Patterson huffed and followed after him.

  “Yeah, Patterson. You’re ignorant. So that’s going to—ah!”

  Wolf smiled at the sound of Patterson’s hands thumping against Baine’s chest.

  “Shhhh…damn.”

  Wolf peered into the woods and onto a blanket of pine needles. “Follow me. Gonna make it Baine?”

  “Yeah. Shit, Patterson. Joke much?”

  A few minutes later Wolf reached a rise in the forest floor and paused.

  Ahead was a small hill by any Coloradan’s standards, it always had been, but recently it was looking like a mountain to Wolf. His body ached already, and he’d only been up from bed and moving around for just over an hour.

  For over a month now he’d been climbing up and down the smaller hills and mountains behind his property, taking in the clean air and building his strength, but it seemed to be an exercise in futility rather than exercise for his body.

  The muscles in front of his right hip were in a painful knot, a side effect of his healing broken pelvis from his fall three and a half months ago.

  His right femur, having been cracked diagonally, jarred with sharp pain on every step, and in between steps was a dull ache that registered at least a seven out of
ten.

  The three compression-cracked vertebrae in his lower back were almost fully healed according to the doctor, but there was a nagging stiffness at all times now, and he was far from confident the occasional arcing pain up his spine would ever stop in his lifetime.

  His ruptured spleen? That had healed and he was still the proud owner of that organ. He wondered why the doctors hadn’t simply taken it out, but in the end he’d kept it. Score one for Wolf.

  Tack on the other dozen or so more minor to major injuries in various stages of healing, and Wolf figured he’d been telling the truth to Patterson earlier about feeling “like a new man.”

  Despite the pain, Wolf led at a good pace up the hill and Patterson and Baine followed.

  A few minutes later, flushed with sweat and suppressing a maniacal urge to cough, Wolf reached the clearing of the trees and crested the small hill.

  “Wow, it’s beautiful up here.” Patterson whistled and turned three hundred sixty degrees.

  “Damn straight.” Teeth bared, Baine wheezed with his hands on his hips.

  Wolf nodded and cleared his throat, noting the way Patterson’s lungs pulled in air as if she were in a deep sleep.

  The valley to the north extended up to the miniature-looking buildings of Rocky Points. Even from such a vast distance, the new glass ensconced Sluice-Byron County Building—new home to the new Sheriff’s Department, numerous holding cells, and various government offices—stuck out like a beacon as the sun reflected off of its windows.

  “See that there?” Wolf pointed to the pinpoint reflection on the side of a mountain to the west.

  Patterson followed his finger and then stepped close to his arm. “That reflection?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’s that?”

  “FBI surveillance team.” Wolf gestured around them. “They have a couple guys up there watching me twenty-four-seven. Me and Rachette spotted them a few days ago taking this same walk. There’re two more men down south on that bluff, two to the north along that ridge, and there’s a couple goons in that unmarked you passed on the way to my house.”

  “Yeah, we saw them parked a half-mile down the road or so,” Patterson said.

  Wolf nodded, then waved to the reflection and scratched his nose with his middle finger.

  Patterson looked uneasy. “You think they’re listening to us?”

  Wolf shrugged. “The guys to the north are within a couple hundred yards, which is within parabolic mic range to hear us crisp and clear as if we were standing right next to them. The fact that they’re out there sitting on their asses, listening to us and not out looking for the killer of my ex-wife, shows they might be too stupid to realize they can use a parabolic mic to listen in.” He turned to her and Baine. “It’s a toss-up.”

  She blinked. “I…uh…”

  Baine straightened and backed up a step, looking like his space had just been violated.

  “They asked you about Gail Olson?” Wolf asked Patterson.

  She blinked some more. “What?”

  “The FBI. Don’t worry. We have nothing to hide. What did they ask you?”

  “They kept asking about those photos that Sheriff MacLean gave us of her and Rachette. Then they wanted to know what I was doing the night Sarah was shot. Frickin’ bastards. I saw they were interrogating Rachette before me. I don’t get it. What are they saying? That we did this? What the hell is going on?”

  “What did they want to know about the photos?” Wolf asked.

  “They wanted to know if and how I knew Gail Olson.” She turned to the woods and raised her voice. “Which I didn’t! I never saw that girl in my life before I saw those pictures, which Sheriff MacLean gave to me.” She turned back to Wolf and lowered her voice. “I don’t know. It’s like they were trying to get a confession out of me or something.

  “I ended up taking the fifth. My father used to say that it’s never, ever, a good idea to talk to a law enforcement officer. I’m beginning to realize why when I talk to these feds. They seem to be grasping for anything, and groping us in the process.”

  “And you?”

  Baine was staring across the valley, lost in thought.

  “Baine.”

  Baine flinched and turned to Wolf. “What?”

  “What have the FBI been asking you?”

  Baine wiped his nose with his thumb. “You know, what you were doing the night of Sarah’s and Willis’s deaths. That kind of stuff.”

  Wolf nodded in thought. “And Gail Olson?”

  “Yeah. And Gail Olson.”

  “Did you tell them about the video we had?”

  Baine exhaled. “Yeah, of course I did. I told them I interviewed her but I couldn’t find the file. Then they asked me about what she said, so I took the fifth, too. I don’t know what the hell is going on around here. I don’t want to say anything that implicates you or me. And I don’t think we should talk about it now.”

  Wolf eyed the reflection again. “What’s changed?”

  “What do you mean?” Baine asked.

  “They’ve been out there for three days.”

  “What changed three days ago?”

  “The FBI talked to me a little over a week ago,” Patterson said. “Not in the last few days. I’m not sure what this is about. They asked me about if you knew Gail Olson and I said no. That’s all they said about you. We’ll check.”

  Baine was lost in thought again, shifting back and forth.

  “All right,” Wolf checked his watch, “let’s get you two back.”

  Patterson and Baine followed in silence.

  When they reached the trail at the base of the hill Patterson came next to Wolf and lowered her voice. “Sir. I wanted to talk to you about Carter Willis.”

  “You find anything on him?” Wolf pounced at the utterance of the man’s name.

  She widened her eyes and looked back at Baine.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not listening.” Baine held back a few steps.

  “Thanks, Baine.” She exhaled and slid Wolf an uneasy glance. “No. I haven’t gotten anywhere with Carter Willis’s identity. Lorber can’t find anything with his contacts, and Kristen Luke is dodging me as much as she’s dodging you, too. I’ve checked with a CBI guy I know, and he came up empty, too. Said the guy’s made up. I checked with the insurance company who issued his car insurance, and they had no record of even having him as a customer. Not even online. The card was a forgery. The registration on his car? Same deal. Not registered with the state.”

  Wolf nodded impatiently. They’d already gone over all this and Patterson knew it. Wolf was asking if she had anything new, not to rehash what they already knew.

  But people didn’t know how to act with Wolf as of late, because the truth was that Wolf had also sustained a second-degree concussion in the fall, and his memory was holier than Swiss cheese.

  The head injury had also jarred something in his left inner ear, causing a sudden ringing and feeling that his ear had been stuffed with spray insulation. Vertigo and nausea were never far behind, and coupled with his other injuries acted as an off-switch for his body.

  His left ear was beginning to ring.

  “What did you want to tell me? That we haven’t already talked about?” Wolf asked, making his point.

  “I was going to say, that night I saw Carter and Sarah together at the bar, when I was there with Scott and his family?”

  “What?”

  “Remember I said I saw Carter and Sarah that night?”

  Wolf swallowed. He remembered quite well. “Yeah.”

  “I stopped when I saw Sarah to say hi, and Carter had his hand on her thigh underneath the table.”

  The ringing instantly doubled in volume.

  Wolf nodded keeping an even stride. “All right.”

  “I never told you, and it’s been eating at me recently, because I realize it might be some kind of clue. Shit, I’m so sorry.” She looked down at the ground.

  Wolf walked in silence for a few ste
ps and then put a hand on Patterson’s shoulder.

  She looked up with glossy eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it, all right?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry. I even told the FBI about it, but I didn’t tell you, and then I waited and waited, and then it got harder to tell you.”

  “I’m glad you told me. It could be important. It was already suspicious that she was wearing her nightgown in the car when they were shot. That either suggested she and Carter were intimate, or she was pulled out of the house without warning. With what you just told me, it’s looking like they were definitely intimate. That’s a clue.” Wolf turned to the trees and shook his head, trying to shake the deafening sound. “I’ve gotta get back to work. I can’t do anything from here but think in circles.”

  Patterson looked up at him. “My aunt says you’re a wreck and need more rest. From where I’m standing it looks like she’s right.”

  Wolf ignored a bead of sweat sliding down his face. “I’m…” a wreck.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Wolf was starting to get the sparkly vision again, a sign that he needed to lay down, and fast. He limped onward toward the trail. “A couple months ago the FBI came up empty with the search of my house. The ballistics didn’t match. They’ve got nothing. So I don’t know what they’re up to.”

  The red barn came into view between the trees.

  “So what do you want us to do?” Patterson said loudly as if to include Baine back in the conversation.

  Wolf lumbered forward, barely hearing himself as he spoke. “Patterson, I want you to keep trying with Luke. The FBI knows something we don’t and we need to know what that is. She’s still our best inside man.”

  “Yeah, one who clearly wants nothing to do with us,” Patterson said.

  “Baine, keep your eyes and ears open on MacLean, I guess. And if either of you can figure out what’s going on with this surveillance, it would be appreciated.”

  “I can check on it,” Baine said.

  Wolf nodded. His good leg buckled and he stumbled before standing straight.

  “My God, are you okay?” Patterson ducked under his arm and locked an arm around his waist. Baine grabbed under his other armpit.