Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2)

by Joseph Flynn

  “You look great in that shot,” Keely told Veronika. “Must have been some big do.”

  A film of tears appeared on Veronika’s baby blues.

  “It was the best night of my life.”

  Keely could imagine what the worst one was. Veronika walked her to the front of the shop. Keely made another appointment for six weeks hence, and tipped fifty percent of the cut. That almost made the stylist forget her sorrows. Then Keely spoiled the recovery.

  She said to Veronika, “My boyfriend could use someone with your talent. Do you cut men’s hair, too?”

  For a heartbeat, the stylist just stared at Keely.

  Then she broke down, sobbing, and ran through a doorway at the back of the shop.

  The retired LAPD detective had considered questioning the woman herself.

  Now, she thought she’d leave it to Ron Ketchum.

  It was his town, after all.

  “You don’t drink coffee?” Herbert Wilkins asked John Tall Wolf.

  The two of them had a booth at the back of the diner. The morning rush had come and gone. The staff was getting ready for the lunch crowd. As long as the two men kept their voices down, they didn’t have to worry about being overheard.

  Tall Wolf shook his head. “About the only stimulant I’ll allow myself is chocolate.”

  The special agent was having herbal tea and wheat toast with raspberry preserves.

  Wilkins was having bacon and eggs, hash browns, white toast and black coffee. He seemed to think his choice was a man’s breakfast. Tall Wolf’s fare was …

  “Not enough to keep a bird alive,” Wilkins said, disapproval in his voice. “How can you survive on that?”

  “I enjoy every bite, savor every sip,” Tall Wolf replied.

  “And chocolate’s the big thrill in your life?”

  “In terms of what I eat.”

  “So, you don’t drink?”

  “No. Never have. So how long have you been sober?” Tall Wolf asked.

  “What makes you say that?” Wilkins asked in a flat voice.

  “There’s a look in your eyes when you pick up your cup. Like you wish there was a shot of whiskey in it. I’ve seen it before. Half the time, the guy has a half-pint in his hip pocket to give his coffee beans a little extra flavor.”

  Tall Wolf’s description brought a look of longing to Wilkins’ eyes.

  “More than twenty years,” he said. “That’s how long I’ve been sober.”

  “Good for you. Hope you have another twenty. So you have any news for me?”

  “I do, but not exactly what you asked for.”

  John Tall Wolf smiled, bobbed his head. “Not because you don’t know. You just don’t want to tell me. Yet.”

  “If that was the case, would you blame me?”

  “Not yet. You checked me out, didn’t you?” Tall Wolf asked.

  “Yeah, I did. Everybody I talked to says you’re honest.”

  “But you still don’t trust me.”

  Wilkins leaned forward and lowered his voice. “With what we’re talking about, trusting someone you just met doesn’t make sense. No matter how nice people talk about him.”

  Tall Wolf closed the distance from his side of the table. “I did some checking on you, too. You’re a working man. Your have a day job as the assistant manager at a home improvement store. I imagine you make a living wage, but you’re not a rich man. So, unless you have a heroic sense of self-restraint, you haven’t cashed in on the gold.”

  “Maybe that’s all a tall tale,” Wilkins said.

  Tall Wolf shook his head. “You know better than that. The gold Timothy Johnson gave Adeline and Michael Walsh is on display at the Municipal Complex. Right under the sign, ‘How Goldstrike Got Its Name.’ Did you really think I might have missed that?”

  Apparently, Wilkins had. Instead of answering, he devoted himself to his breakfast before it grew entirely cold. Tall Wolf cleared what was on his plate. As he had fewer calories to consume, he finished first.

  “You might try telling me that’s all the gold there was to be found,” the special agent said.

  Wilkins gave him a sour look, as if lingering in Tall Wolf’s company too long might put an end to his sobriety.

  “No?” Tall Wolf asked. “Then why don’t you tell me what information you have to share with me?”

  Wilkins took a sip of his coffee, put the cup down as if disappointed by its content.

  He told Tall Wolf, “You want to find out who killed Hale Tibbot maybe you should look and see who was taking him to court. Might give you some ideas.”

  The special agent found that interesting. He nodded his thanks to Wilkins.

  “I’ll do that … and I’ll tell you something else. I know you know where the gold is. I can feel it. My mother is a curandera. She taught me how to see inside people.”

  Wilkins shrank back on his seat. He was scared now. Anyone with two eyes that were merely functional could see that. John Tall Wolf pushed Wilkins’ breakfast plate aside and leaned farther forward, closing the distance with Wilkins, letting him know who was the predator and who was the prey.

  “I don’t want your gold. Talk to your people. I’m sure they know where the gold is, too. The only reason your tribe isn’t rich is something must be standing in your way. I might be able to help you with that. But not if you don’t open up to me.”

  Tall Wolf sat back. He put money on the table to cover their tab and got up.

  “Thank for the tip on Tibbot,” he told Wilkins. “That’s a good start.”

  Chapter 18

  Walt Ketchum reached his son soon after the chief returned to his office.

  “How about you and me go out to dinner tonight, Ronnie? I’m fairly flush these days for a retired old copper. You pick the place, I’ll pay.”

  It was an offer without precedent, as far as Ron could remember.

  “I pick a nice place, you’ll have something to wear?” he asked.

  “I need a monkey suit, I’ll rent one. A sport coat and a tie will do, I’ve got that.”

  Ron laughed. “The only people who wear tuxedos up here are guys in a wedding party. Okay, Dad. Brush off your sport coat and press your tie. I’ll make reservations for eight o’clock. Pick you up at seven-thirty.”

  “Great,” Walt said. He sounded cheered that he hadn’t had to cajole his son into eating with him. “See you then.”

  “Hold on. Let me ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  “This guy you busted, Nikos Sideris, was he mobbed up? He ever hit anyone to help out organized crime?”

  Walt said, “That was a topic of real debate back then. The man had a legit job, lived only slightly beyond his visible means of support. Meaning he was more restrained than most people. So we could never use money as a means to tie him to the killings we liked him for.”

  “He was that good at hiding his loot?”

  Walt laughed. “I was never much at accounting; your mother handled paying the bills for us. But none of the pointy heads in the department with their fancy computers could figure out where Sideris kept his money. Paul Martin said the guy was probably a Greek hillbilly. Hid his cash in Mason jars he buried someplace only he knew.

  “Anyway, to get back to your original question, four of the murders we thought Sideris did had definite consequences for mob families either in California or Las Vegas. The guys who got whacked weren’t the kind of people who get done in by drivers they cut off in traffic, if you know what I mean.”

  “They were dangerous but they came out second best to someone who was even more deadly,” Ron said.

  “Bingo.”

  “So where’d you come down on the question of Sideris and a mob connection?”

  “Oh, he had one all right, but to my mind it was a business thing, not a family thing. He had good word of mouth for people who needed a hit-man.” Walt laughed again. “These days, there’s probably a website for assholes like him. In the end, though, I think he ran his own sh
ow.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That it?”

  “One more thing,” Ron said. “You’re not dying, are you?”

  “If you mean in the next five minutes, I don’t think so. Beyond that, I’m probably living on borrowed time.”

  Keely Powell picked up John Tall Wolf outside the diner she’d seen him enter. The two of them went back to the Muni Complex together. Sergeant Stanley made sure the chief wasn’t on the phone and then let them enter Ron’s office.

  They all had something to share. Being gentlemen, Ron and Tall Wolf let Keely go first. She told them about finding Veronika Novak and why she was sure Veronika was not only one of Hale Tibbot’s girlfriends but the very one who had given him his perfect post-mortem coif.

  Her two male colleagues concurred with her judgment.

  Tall Wolf followed and he knocked the ball out of the park.

  “You think the local Indians really know where Timothy Johnson’s lost gold mine is?” Ron asked, incredulity filling his voice.

  Tall Wolf replied, “Yeah.”

  Keely was grinning ear to ear. “Come on,” she said, “you’ve got more than that.”

  “At the risk of appearing immodest, I do. First off, Timothy Johnson was a relative latecomer. You can bet the Native Americans knew where the gold was first. Heck, the story is an unnamed NA woman showed him where it was. I read that and asked myself why no one ever asked the first locals how to find the gold.

  “You know why,” Ron told him.

  “Sure, the Indians wouldn’t give them a straight answer. Just like I haven’t gotten one yet. But they do know. Maybe somebody else found out, too. That’s what I thought, anyway, and maybe that knowledge was another reason Hale Tibbot had been buying land around here.”

  “The rich getting richer,” Keely said. “I believe I’ve heard that one before.”

  Ron followed up on that thought. “Maybe some weekend prospector found it, but he knew he’d need financial backing to fully exploit the gold deposit.”

  “Hangs together, but it could all be pure speculation,” Keely said, now taking the role of the rhetorical skeptic.

  Tall Wolf shook his head. “Timothy Johnson, with the help of a native woman, found gold. We all know that’s true. That kind of knowledge isn’t kept secret in a tribal society; it gets passed on. Talking with Herbert Wilkins today, I saw that he knows.”

  “Because you’re a smart cop,” Keely said.

  “Right.”

  Tall Wolf knew his new colleagues would be skeptical if he told them about the skills his mother had taught him. People believed what they wanted to believe. Truth was, Tall Wolf had been able to read Wilkins because he’d been trained both at home and in Glynco, Georgia.

  Ron wondered what would happen to his town if knowledge of a big gold strike became public. Before he let himself be distracted by thoughts of a twenty-first century gold rush, he shared his news: Clay Steadman was dying and organized crime might be involved in Hale Tibbot’s death.

  That and how the man Walt had seen in town resembled a man suspected of doing hits for organized crime in L.A.

  Keely smiled again but this time she shook her head, too.

  “Real exciting little town you’ve got here, Chief,” she said.

  Ron added, “As if all that’s not enough, my father invited me to dinner.”

  Keely beamed brighter than ever. “Hey, can I come with?”

  Marjorie Fitzroy took a late lunch and met Caz Stanley in the grill at the Renaissance Hotel. The room was largely empty and their table had a large buffer of open space between them and the few other diners present. Their service would have wowed an undercover reviewer for Le Guide de Michelin. Everyone in the hotel loved the concierge. Sergeant Stanley rated a close second in their affection.

  He was gracious, tipped well and it never hurt to be on the good side of an important cop.

  “My treat,” he told Marjorie.

  “I believe it’s my turn,” she said.

  Marjorie loved Caz, appreciated greatly that he hadn’t felt the need to propose to her, but despite the lack of pressure, she still insisted on paying her fair share on their dates.

  Sergeant Stanley said, “This is city business, Marjorie. It’s on the town’s tab.”

  She was also pleased he never called her Margie.

  Maybe someday she’d propose to him.

  “In that case, I’ll order something expensive,” she said with a smile. “What is it the Goldstrike Police Department wants with me? Has one of our guests done something naughty.” Marjorie would never betray a guest’s confidence as long as he or she stayed on the right side of the law. Misdemeanants and felons, on the other hand, were out of luck.

  Sergeant Stanley reached inside his sport coat. He’d changed to civilian garb for his lunch date. He took out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Marjorie. She opened it and her eyes went wide. Then she saw something that puzzled her.

  “These are mug shots, right?” she asked.

  Caz Stanley nodded.

  “But they’re from, what, over thirty years ago.”

  “Correct.”

  She went back to looking at the photos she’d been given. Looked at them for half a minute, making a careful examination. She put the piece of paper on the table and told Caz, “The resemblance is remarkable. Our guest has to be his son.”

  Sergeant Stanley folded the mug shots and put them back in his pocket.

  “I didn’t know you’d be the one to help us, but Ms. Fitzroy you’ve just earned your lunch.”

  He picked up his glass of sparkling water and tapped it against the one Marjorie raised.

  They sipped and she said, “I don’t understand one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Sergeant Stanley asked.

  “The man in those photos, his name is Nikos Sideris?”

  “Was. He’s no longer with us. Got himself on the wrong end of a knife in the L.A. County Jail.”

  Marjorie winced. “That makes it all the stranger. Our guest is also named Sideris. Helios Sideris. Wouldn’t he have changed his name if … well, if he was doing anything that might put him in trouble with either the police or the bad guys?”

  Sergeant Stanley nodded, “You’d think so, yeah.”

  He hoped that the chief didn’t have the department running around looking for the younger Sideris because of a big misunderstanding. If the guy wasn’t a criminal, he’d have no reason to change his name. That or he was too stupid to take simple precautions.

  Maybe not stupid. Maybe arrogant.

  The possibilities seemed to be multiplying.

  One thing he could ask Marjorie for sure: “You’ve done more than just see this guy around the lobby? You’ve talked to him?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Sideris asked for my help on two occasions.”

  “What did he want, if I may ask?”

  Marjorie frowned, trying to decide the proper thing to do. She was about to ask Caz if she could trust him, but she knew better than that. If she’d ever met a man she could trust, he was the one. She didn’t even have to tell him she was taking a risk here.

  Her hesitation had already done that.

  Just to be careful, though, she lowered her voice. “The first time he came to me he asked for the names of local banks with a sense of discretion.” She told Caz the names of the banks she’d provided.

  He listened closely. He was not about to make a note or a recording.

  Once he had the banks’ names firmly committed to memory, Sergeant Stanley asked, “What else did he ask of you?”

  Marjorie said, “He wanted me to find him an Indian.”

  Ron Ketchum was out in his department SUV patrolling Goldstrike by himself. John Tall Wolf was meeting with his boss, and Keely was checking out Hale Tibbot’s other girlfriends from the list that Glynnis Crowther had provided. She wanted to make sure there was no other hair stylist among the late real estate mogul’s sweeties. Or even a mortician, another t
ype of professional who might not mind combing a corpse’s hair.

  On the second pass through the information they’d each come up with, Tall Wolf mentioned the newsflash he’d received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The dirty bomb’s case was so well made that should it have fallen into Lake Adeline it wouldn’t have leaked until well after the Cobalt-60 inside had lost its toxicity.

  The special agent had also said the NRC wanted to salvage the detonator Ron had thrown into the lake, but the bureaucracy might not be up to the job anytime soon. The chief wondered if the private sector, in the person of Clay Steadman, might finance a retrieval effort.

  Whatever happened, Ron wondered if the bomb’s whole purpose was what Tall Wolf had suggested. To scare people about what might have happened.

  Ron couldn’t think of a more likely possibility.

  That was why he’d gone out on patrol. Looking for signs of mundane wrongdoing sometimes helped him find answers to more significant problems. Cop Zen. That day, however, the populace of Goldstrike was a model of civic propriety. When Abra Benjamin called, her sense of professional courtesy was also laudable.

  “Just checking in, Chief. Did a preliminary online check of all the vehicle leads we got from Brant Sutherland’s SUV sighting. I’ll be sending two teams of agents out to do in-person interviews, but I’m not hopeful at this point.”

  “We all do what we can,” Ron said. “I’ve got something else you might want to look into, if you’d care to broaden your investigation.”

  Benjamin took a moment to consider before she replied, “What’s that?”

  “My father saw a man in town who closely resembles a hit-man he locked up years ago. That guy died a long time a—” Ron’s phone beeped to indicate a call waiting. “Can you hold just a minute, Special Agent? I’ll be right back to you.”

  Sergeant Stanley was calling. He filled Ron in on his lunch with Marjorie Fitzroy. The chief thanked him and got back to the FBI agent.

  “Still there?”