“We have a way in now,” Dent declared, repeating his earlier words with certainty.
“And,” Fifth threw in, her voice pitched higher than normal, “I’m the one who found it.”
From past experiences with the girl, Dent knew that he would be reminded of that fact time and time again. And Bobseyn’s smiling at her would only make it worse.
XIX
It had been too late to make a trip to the local bank branch after coming up with a plan of action, so Dent and Bobseyn had to wait for the next day to pay a visit to the bank’s manager, one Fred Frederickson.
It was just before noon when the well-dressed woman showed the sheriff and Dent into Frederickson’s office. The space was done in greys and chrome trim, and the sunlight angling in from the wide windows along the wall to their right bathed the office in a warm glow. Frederickson, slightly overweight underneath his dark blue three-piece suit topped with a salmon tie, came around his desk and shook hands with both men before waving them into leather chairs before his desk. He resumed his seat and folded his hands lightly on his desk, waiting for the sheriff to explain more in detail why this meeting had been penciled in.
“Fred,” Bobseyn opened with, “like I said on the phone this morning, Agent Dent and I are looking into the financials of the recently deceased individuals.”
Frederickson let his eyes drop down as he said, “Terrible, just terrible what’s been happening, Sheriff.”
“That it is, Fred. Which is why I’m sure you understand why we need your help in this matter.”
The bank manager cast a look Dent’s way. His body language was subtle, but Dent derived from it that the man was hesitant to speak. “You have to understand, Agent Dent, Sheriff, that as much as I want to help with the investigation there is only so much I’m legally able to tell you.”
“I know, Fred,” Bobseyn said lightly. “We’re not asking you to break any privacy laws here. Just some information, something to point us in the right direction. It’s more of an ‘are we on the right track or not’ kind of thing.”
Frederickson gave a conceding nod. “The recently deceased individuals’ accounts I can give you. Anything else ….” Again he looked Dent’s way, quickly, unsure.
“That’s fine, Fred.” Bobseyn looked to Dent, his cue to speak.
Dent leaned forward, pointed at the back of the computer, which had the screen facing the bank manager. “Did the victims have any ties with The Ranch? We’re looking for transfers of funds or accounts, property being transferred, anything to that effect.”
Frederickson glanced at the screen briefly, but Dent knew the man already had the answer. “None of the victims had any financial dealings with The Ranch, Agent Dent.”
Dent leaned back. The bank manager spoke with finality, but there was something else there in his tone of voice. Something he was sure Fifth would pick up on, but that he did not. Both sheriff and bank manager looked at Dent, like they were expecting him to say something.
He tried again, the same question but worded differently. “Did the victims have any contact with The Ranch?”
“The victims did not, Agent Dent.”
Again, both men stared at Dent. The bank manager had put a slight inflection on the word victims, Dent realized. Was that a hint? A cue of some sort?
Dent tried asking, “Does The Ranch have any ties to any individuals living in Graftsprings?”
Frederickson nodded quickly and punched some keys on his wireless keyboard. “Now that you mention it, Agent, The Ranch has had recent activity with a number of people in town.”
Why didn’t you say that from the start? Dent silently wondered. Nevertheless, Dent pressed on, now that the man was willing to talk.
He asked, “What type of activities?”
“Now, I can’t go into personal finances, but,” Frederickson said carefully, “I can tell you that some of the people currently residing at The Ranch have made sizable donations to the same company. Donations, being public records, can be reported to authorities investigating a crime.”
“You mean the murders?” Dent inquired.
“Murders, fraud. When a large group of people start giving up their worldly possessions to a single entity then, as their financial advisor, I have a reason to be concerned.”
A large group? Dent thought to himself. “How many people have had dealings with The Ranch?”
“Again, I can’t go into personal detail,” Frederickson reiterated, “but I can tell you that over forty people in the past year have made sizable donations and monetary and estate gifts to the owners of The Ranch.”
Now Bobseyn leaned forward, placing his hands on the edge of the bank manager’s desk. “Over forty, Fred?” he breathed out. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Frederickson leaned back in his plush chair, as far away from the suddenly animated sheriff. “Rick, you know I couldn’t give out information like that. As much as I would have liked to, I just couldn’t.”
“Was Cherry …?”
Frederickson loosened his tie. “Yes, Rick. She was one of the forty. I wish I could have told you sooner. She emptied her account and then closed it right after. Said she had no need for it anymore.”
“Was she being coerced? Did somebody force her?”
A slow shake of his head. “She seemed … happy to do it. Whatever the reason, she did it out of her own volition. I’m sorry, Rick.”
Cherry, Dent recalled, was Bobseyn’s daughter. So she was somehow caught up in this mess. He asked the bank manager, “Is there anything to indicate that The Ranch is behind the recent murders? Did the people there get violent when they asked for donations and people refused?”
“That, Agent Dent, is not something I could even begin to guess at. I can only tell you that the victims had no ties with The Ranch. Not a single cent went to them while they were alive.”
“So,” Dent summed up, “the victims did not donate to The Ranch, over forty people of your community have given their possessions over The Ranch, and there is nothing else you can tell us.”
“Without a warrant, Agent Dent, I’m afraid so.”
He looked to the sheriff, but the man was staring off into the distance, and Dent doubted the man was paying any attention to the conversation at hand. He guessed it was up to him to close this meeting. He stood, and after a three-second staring match with the bank manager, offered his hand to the portly man, who quickly stood as well. Almost as if out of reflex, Sheriff Bobseyn came to his feet.
Dent was ready to leave, and thought he would have to physically lead the sheriff out of the office, when Frederickson looked at his desk, picked up a picture frame and moved it next to his computer screen.
He looked up at his two visitors and said, almost in a demanding way, “Rick, you haven’t seen my boy’s new football pictures have you? Come on over, take a look.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “Agent Dent, you should take a look too. I’m proud of my boy.”
Something in the sheriff changed and he came out of his stupor. He tugged at Dent’s sleeve and the two of them came around the desk to look at the picture frame right next to the computer screen. And that was when Dent saw it.
Not the picture of the nowhere-near handsome, dark-haired boy in a traditional high school football uniform before a set of bleachers, but the bank manager’s computer screen. It displayed some type of financial form with numbers and accounts and a few small paragraphs of text. Atop, the entity’s name was highlighted, reading: The Ranch, Graftsprings County, Utah. And at the bottom, in one of the paragraphs, there was more highlighted text.
Dent froze.
Plain as day, the highlighted text read: Subsidiary, HelpTouch, Los Angeles County, California.
The Ranch was run by Grant Chisholme. Entrepreneur, real estate mogul, eTech pioneer, killer, extortionist, and all around bastard.
Dent had been hired by Chisholme almost half a year ago to kidnap Fifth from her mother’s company in Japan. Then Chisholme reneged on the contra
ct and had tried to kill Dent and lock Fifth away.
Dent didn’t need the girl’s influence to feel the heat burn inside his chest, pump through his veins, force his hands into fists.
Like none other before, Dent truly hated Chisholme.
And his influence was here, in Graftsprings.
Otto had been right.
XX
Pearline pushed open the backdoors with her backside, careful not to let the trash bags she was holding in front of her to make more than the briefest of contact with her pants. She turned around, walked into the alley behind The Moonphase, and heaved the bags into one of the closest bins. The smell that whooshed up at her made her clamp a hand to her nostrils as she fought back the gag reflex in the back of her throat. This trash was a rat’s paradise, and the traps and poison laid out practically every day did nothing to keep them away.
Her shift was over, finally, and she planned on heading straight home, relieving her mom of babysitting duties, but not before taking a long, hot bath. By the time she got home it would be just past midnight and Tracie-Anne would be down for the night, hopefully sleeping all the way through again.
She kneaded the muscles in her lower back and was about to walk back inside when movement down the dark alley caught her attention.
“Pearly!” a shadow called out to her.
“No way,” Pearline announced as Cherry stepped out of the shadows and spread her arms for a hug.
After a warm embrace and a few heartfelt squeezes, Pearline pulled away, taking in the sight of her old friend.
“It’s so good to see you, Cherry!”
Cherry ran her eyes up and down Pearline’s figure and, grinning crookedly, pointed out, “You lost some weight, eh?”
“Funny,” Pearline drawled out. “I had Tracie-Anne near six months ago, girl.” She smiled warmly and said, “Really wish you’d come visit her, Cher. She’s got the cutest little smile.”
“I can’t, Pearly. Got a new family of my own now.”
“Eh, The Ranch.” Pearline scrunched up her face, much like she did when the smell of the trash bins assaulted her, to show her friend what she thought of her new family.
“They’re nice people, Pearly.”
She waved her arm in a show of dismissive peace, saying, “Hey, to each their own. Still, you can’t forget about the rest of us.”
But Cherry wasn’t paying attention to her. She turned her head back over her shoulder as two more shadows stepped into the light. A black man and a young boy close to his side.
“This,” announced Cherry cheerfully, “is Jeffery. Jeffery, this is Pearline.”
The moment the man materialized from the dark, something deep inside told Pearline to run. But as the man and boy stepped closer, she realized just how stupid she was acting. Though she’d never met this man, she could somehow tell that he was trustworthy. In fact, she could see herself dating him. That was a random thought if ever, but it was true. She flashed her most winning smile, the same she gave to customers when it was tip time, and hoped he could tell how into him she was.
“Pearline,” Jeffery greeted, his voice dreamy, the fact that he used her name almost ecstatic. She giggled, like a sixteen-year old.
“Jeffery wanted to talk to you, Pearly,” Cherry informed her.
Pearline nodded dumbly, glad that this man came all the way out here just to talk to her.
He smiled at her. “You spoke to an FBI agent recently, did you not?”
“Oh, yes,” she blurted out, happy that she could answer his questions. “He was asking about your compound, actually. I told him all about you guys.” The words were dripping from her lips before she could form them. She wanted to do right by Jeffery, she wanted to tell him everything she knew.
“What exactly did you tell him?”
“Not much. That you guys are up there in that old government plot. That plenty of people from town have been moving up there with you guys.” She was practically rocking back and forth on her feet, eager to please Jeffery.
But then Jeffery looked at her and his eyes dropped down.
Why? He looked so sad, almost like he was disappointed with her. Did she do something wrong? She truly hoped not. It would tear her up inside if she had done something to upset him.
Jeffery put an arm around the child next to him and said to Pearline, “You gave him a bad impression of us.” His voice was low, hushed, like he didn’t like the words he spoke. Like having to say them hurt him. She didn’t want that. She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let him be so hurt because of something she had done.
“No,” she told him with all her heart. “I didn’t mean to, Jeffery, I swear. I can … I can talk to him again for you. I can tell him he must have misread my words. I can tell him how wonderful you are. He’ll listen to me. He might be kind of cold, a little rude, but I bet the girl will listen to me. She seem—”
“Girl?” Jeffery cut her off.
Pearline sent her head bobbing up and down. “Yeah. She was nice. Cute. Asian. Japanese, I think. Unhealthy diet though.”
But the wonderful man wasn’t interested in what the girl had for lunch. “And they asked about us?” he pressed her again.
“She did. I liked her. But not as much as I like you, Jeffery.” She wanted to make that clear, let the man know that the Asian girl meant nothing to her.
Cherry stepped forward, put a gentle hand on Pearline’s left shoulder. “We like our privacy, Pearly. Jeffery likes his privacy.”
She saw betrayal in her friend’s eyes and knew that that betrayal was aimed at her. She looked to Jeffery, saw sadness in his eyes, saw the same betrayal in the way his lips drooped at the corners.
No! She didn’t want that! Anything but that!
“I can make it up to you!” she vowed.
His shoulders sagged and his forehead angled down. He spoke to the shadows, but she knew, in her heart, that he was speaking to her, to her very soul.
“You hurt me, Pearline. Disappointed me. I wish I could take you in, but you hurt me so much.” She couldn’t see his eyes, but she could imagine the tears pouring freely from them.
Tears like the ones pouring down her own cheeks. Her fingers curled and straightened and her mind raced, trying to find a way to redeem herself, trying to find a way to make Jeffery happy again. Anything ….
“I can prove my devotion,” she told him, hoping to dry his eyes.
He looked up. “How?” he asked. Odd, but his eyes were completely dry. “I’m afraid you’ll talk again, say something bad about me.”
Mind racing, Pearline had an idea, a stroke of genius. She bent down quickly and snagged a box of rat poison, the pellets within shaking about.
“I didn’t want to betray you,” she swore to the man she had never met before but would do anything to see smile.
He raised an eyebrow at her, inviting her to prove her devotion.
With a determined heart she said, “I will never talk again. I promise, Jeffery.” And to prove her worth, her devotion to this man, she tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and upended the box of rat poison into her mouth. She didn’t bother chewing, just went and swallowed mouthful after mouthful, each swallow solid proof of her devotion to Jeffery.
Her throat began to burn and she had to drop the half-empty box. She coughed, once, twice, and her eyes blurred and burned. But even through it all she could see Jeffery.
And he smiled, and he said, “You did well, I’m proud of you.”
But wait ….
He wasn’t smiling at her, wasn’t praising her. He smiled and spoke to the child next to him. She tried asking why he wasn’t talking to her, but the only thing that came out was a flash of fire, originating in her belly and tearing through her throat as it came up.
She vomited.
Before she even wiped her mouth clean, Jeffery, Cherry, and the child were already walking away, melting back into the shadows. She cried out again, but only blood and bile and God knows what else came up.
/> My body! she thought, falling to her knees, another painful wretch cavorting her insides. She threw up again, no longer bothering to wipe her mouth because she knew it would be pointless.
It felt like her entire stomach and chest were on fire, like someone was scraping away at her from the inside out. The pain overwhelmed her devotion to Jeffery.
And then cold realization dawned on her. Jeffery was gone, why she even cared about him in the first place was a mystery. What had she done?
What had she done?
Her last thought in this life was the most horrific thought ever.
What have I done?
I have left Tracie-Anne motherless ….
XXI
Bobseyn stepped into the alley, the cloying stench from the trash bins mixing with the stale smell of death. Death itself didn’t truly have a defining smell, a telltale odor that lit up a neon sign in one’s brain, but it did have something, something that twisted your olfactory senses and told you it was there.
Timson greeted him as he came around the corner of The Moonphase.
“Sheriff,” the courteous African-American offered, nothing more, nothing less. With the stench of death in the air one tried not to talk, lest one’s breath would kick up unseen particles of the horrific scene and forever be coated with the stuff.
Bobseyn returned the nod.
The sun just managed to peek its way around the back corner of the hardware store abutting The Moonphase, illuminating the back alley in reluctant light. Hell, Bobseyn thought, even the sun acted as if it wanted no business being in that back alley.
Chin and Ramirez, his other two deputies, were near the backdoors to the restaurant, both taking notes. Chin, tapping away on her EB, Ramirez studiously scribbling on a small pad of paper. The two women, who had been on vacation together, had been with Bobseyn for close to eight years, and after half of that time the two had become an item. Funny, how he worried that Timson would be the one he’d have to keep on a tight leash around the two women, only to find that Timson never had a chance with either one of them.
Hard Wired Page 9