The Double Man (Jack Widow Book 15)

by Scott Blade

  Widow put the papers down in his lap and stared out the window. Keagan took him down a couple more turns and across one major intersection and pulled into the drive-through of a fast-food joint that he never heard of. It must’ve been an Alaskan thing. She told him they had the best cheeseburgers. He ordered two of them and fries, no drink. He thought about ordering coffee, but she said there would be coffee at their final destination.

  After exiting the drive-through, Keagan handed Widow a big bag of their lunch and took him back to her office. They drove to the US Coast Guard Base Kodiak. They passed through a guard checkpoint and drove along a flight line. There were huge snowcapped mountains in the distance. The flight line had parked aircraft in neat rows and in different sections. Widow saw a pair of HC-130 Hercules. One was silent and foreboding. The other one looked like it was being fueled and prepared for a flight. He saw ground crew in coastguardsmen uniforms tending to their flight checks and examining different parts of the plane.

  There were large hangar bays along the back of the flight line. Widow saw several MH-65 Dolphin helicopters parked in a row together. Then he saw numerous MH-60 Jayhawks, like the one that they thought Kloss was murdered from. He didn’t point them out the Keagan.

  After another two minutes of driving down streets at a slow speed, because speed limits on bases are strictly followed no matter who is driving, they passed white brick buildings and ended up at another white brick building with a large parking lot. There was one end that was two stories; the rest was one long floor. It kind of looked like a small airport with the tower jutting up in the front.

  Keagan parked the truck near an entrance and turned off the engine. She took out the keys, scooped her SIG Sauer from the console, and holstered it.

  She said, “Okay. This is it. Take our food and the phone records. We’ll look them over inside.”

  Widow did as asked and got out of the truck. Keagan led him to a door and down a long corridor. Suddenly, lighting cracked outside. They heard a rumble of thunder, and the lights overhead in the hall flickered several times.

  Keagan said, “That happens in bad weather. The electrical circuits in this building are terrible.”

  Widow said nothing to that. He followed her down to the end of the corridor, and they took a right into a large room. There were holding cells to one side. They were empty.

  There were two coastguardsmen in uniform. Both sat at desks; both were women. They stood up when they saw Keagan and saluted her.

  “At ease, ladies. Get back to work.”

  She didn’t introduce Widow to them or them to him. She shuffled him along and into her office like she wanted to avoid explaining to them who he was. Which made him wonder if they even knew that he was there to help free their bosses. He didn’t ask about it.

  Keagan’s office was small. There was a desk in the room and a window with a view of the parking lot. A MacBook sat on her desk. It was open. There was a single bookcase with numerous books involving maritime law and Coast Guard topics that were of no interest to Widow.

  He took the paperback of Into the Wild out of his pocket and set it on the bookcase, bookending one row of books.

  Keagan came in behind him and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I finished it. You keep it. It’s good.”

  She shrugged, and Widow took a seat in an empty chair in front of her desk. He saw pictures on the desk of people that looked like Keagan.

  He asked, “Are those your family?”

  Keagan took her jacket off and draped it over the back of her desk chair. She took her gun and holster off her belt, slid open a drawer, put it inside, closed the drawer afterward, and sat in her chair.

  She said, “It’s my sisters and their kids.”

  “You got kids?” Widow asked. He held the fast-food bag on his lap.

  She said, “No. You?”

  “Nope.”

  She asked, “You got a wife?”

  Widow said, “You already know the answer is no.”

  “You ever have one?” Keagan asked.

  Widow thought about the question, not that he needed to, but his mind wandered back in time. There were a few faces of women from the past that popped up in his mind’s eye, but he pushed them away and said, “About as close as I ever came was live-in girlfriends.”

  Keagan said, “Oh yeah. How many of those have you had?”

  “A few.”

  “Give me my sandwich,” she said, and she held a hand out over the desk for it.

  Widow fished out her sandwich, which was easy because it wasn’t a double cheeseburger, and so her bag was the smallest of the three sandwiches inside. He handed it to her, and she opened it and ate a regular cheeseburger right on her desk over the open wrapper.

  Widow made room on his side of the desk and opened one double burger and scarfed it down. A few moments later, he was well into the second one while she was still on her only burger. He emptied the fries out between them onto the old wrapper from his first burger.

  He said, “Have some.”

  “Thank you,” Keagan said, and she scooped up a couple of fries and ate them. After she ate her burger, she reached her hand across the desk and picked up the phone records from Widow. She leaned back in her chair and studied the records.

  She said, “I should’ve gotten a soda.”

  Widow said, “Did you mention something about coffee here?”

  “Sure, it’s outside the office in the next office over. It’s empty. We use it as a break room. Go help yourself.”

  Widow nodded and scarfed down the last of his second burger. Then he wiped his hands on some cheap napkins and stood up and headed to the door. He stopped in the doorway and asked, “Want some?”

  “No, but would you grab me a diet soda out of the fridge. It’s in the corner.”

  “Sure,” Widow said, and he left the room.

  He found the makeshift break room with no problem and found fresh coffee already in a pot. He took a US Coast Guard coffee mug off a shelf and filled it. He downed the coffee fast, like a man in the desert who just discovered a canteen with water. Then he refilled it and went to the fridge, opened it, and found a diet soda. He took both back to Keagan’s office, where she was scanning over the numbers on the phone records thoroughly. He set the can in front of her and popped the tab for her. The soda can fizzed and hissed. The sound filled the silence.

  “Thank you,” she said and took a swig from the can. She swallowed and set the can down.

  She put the paper down and said, “Some of the same numbers over and over again here are local. I googled them, and one is a local diner near the hotel. Kloss was probably ordering out there … a lot. This other,” she said and put her finger on it, “comes back as a local lodge and retreat company called 'Liddy’s Lodge.'”

  Widow’s eyes went wide. He had nearly forgotten about Liddy.

  She looked at him and asked, “What?”

  “I met him.”

  “Who?”

  “Bill Liddy.”

  Keagan set the phone records down on the side of her laptop and wiped her fingers on a napkin and started to type away on the keyboard. She googled Liddy and came up with a homepage set up for the business. She looked it over and said, “His business looks legit.”

  She reversed the screen and showed it to Widow.

  She asked, “Is that him?”

  Widow saw the website. It looked expensive and well made, like a lot of money was put into the talent that designed it. There was a picture of two men. They were in hunting gear and holding rifles and posing with a dead animal. It was some kind of elk, Widow didn’t know all the different families of horned animals, but it looked like an elk to him. There was snow all around them and mountains. Widow saw one of Liddy’s planes in the background. It was parked on the banks of a river.

  The two men were smiling. They looked similar ages.

  Widow saw the same goggle eye sockets that Liddy had and the same long white scar down his right
cheek. He said, “That’s him on the left.”

  Keagan flipped the screen back around.

  Widow asked, “Who’s the other guy?”

  “I don’t know. There’s no name. Looks like they’re personal friends.”

  Keagan spent some time looking over the website, and Widow sipped his coffee. After a few minutes, she looked up at him. She said, “Liddy charges an arm and a leg for some of these hunting and fishing packages.”

  Widow nodded, and said, “I’ve been to one of his lodges. It’s pretty nice. He’s clientele looks international.”

  “Do you think this guy Liddy is connected to Kloss’s murder?”

  “How many times did Kloss call Liddy’s place?”

  Keagan looked at the phone records again and said, “Only once.”

  “Could be he was thinking about staying there … maybe.”

  “Maybe. But also, Liddy could be part of Kloss’s case.”

  Widow said, “Maybe. But it might be nothing.”

  “It might be related. We should look into Liddy a bit more.”

  “Totally agree. But what are those other numbers?”

  Keagan said, “All the other local ones I’ve checked out. They’re grocers, food delivery places, and a laundromat, where he probably got his clothes dry-cleaned. But this number.”

  She pointed to a number on the first page and slid the paper around to show Widow. He leaned over the desk and stared at it.

  She said, “This number is the only one that’s not local. See? The area code is different.”

  Keagan flipped the page and scanned the next.

  She added, “And there’s a bunch of calls to and from this number. Kloss was speaking to someone on this line a lot. Hold on and I’ll google it.”

  “It’s Northern Utah,” Widow said just as Keagan punched the number into google and clicked search.

  The number came back. “That’s right. Do you recognize it?”

  “No,” Widow said. “I just remember things. I’ve seen the area code before. Does Google know the name on the phone?”

  Keagan looked at the screen on her MacBook and said, “Buck Garret?”

  Widow shook his head and said, “Never heard of him. Give him a call.”

  Keagan nodded and took out her cell phone and dialed the number. She put the phone on speaker and set it down. The phone rang and rang and rang, until someone picked it up.

  They heard breathing, and a heavy, gruff voice said, “Hello? Who’s this?”

  Keagan said, “Hello?”

  “Yeah. Who is this?” the voice was an older man. That was obvious. He sounded ancient.

  “Sir,” Keagan said. “My name is Chelsea Keagan.”

  “Okay, what do you want?”

  “Sir, do you know a Gary Kloss?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Keagan looked at Widow and then said, “Are you sure?”

  “What is this? Who are you?”

  “I told you. My name is Chelsea Keagan.”

  The gruff, ancient voice said, “Who?”

  “Sir, do you know Gary Kloss?”

  “I never heard of him. Who is this?”

  Widow shook his head. They were going around in circles.

  Keagan asked, “Sir, is there someone else there that I can speak to?”

  “Stop calling here. I don’t want whatever your selling,” the gruff, ancient voice said and hung the phone up. The line went dead.

  Keagan put her phone down and stared at Widow. She said, “That went nowhere.”

  Widow said, “Sounds like an old guy with old-guy problems.”

  “You think he might be slipping?”

  “He sounded like it. Maybe. You sure about that number?”

  “Yes. It’s right,” Keagan said, and she double-checked her computer screen. She read out the results from her search. “Buck Garret Jr. 231 Old Fort Road, Ruffalo Creek, Utah.”

  Widow said, “So it’s a landline.”

  Keagan said, “I can reach out to the local police, have them look into this guy.”

  Widow said, “Will they help us?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They don’t have any coastline in Ruffalo Creek. Except for maybe the Creek part.”

  Keagan said, “I’m law enforcement.”

  “Even so, I think we should do this ourselves. I think it’s best to put eyes on the guy and ask him straight what his connection is to Kloss. Plus, we may have to look around the place. The local cops won’t know what they’re looking for.”

  Keagan stared at Widow.

  He asked, “What?”

  “Protocol would dictate that I need special permission to travel so far away from base to investigate a lead. But…”

  Widow said, “There’s no one here to ask permission from?”

  “Right. Since my CO is in an Anchorage jail with the other three investigators from this unit, that leaves no one to ask.”

  Widow said, “That makes you the person to ask.”

  Keagan said, “I guess we’re going to Ruffalo Creek, Utah.”

  Keagan got up and went out of the office. She spoke to one of her staff and asked them to book a flight for two headed to Ruffalo Creek or as close as they could get. She returned and told Widow they would be heading out.

  23

  The Broadcaster listened in to Widow and Keagan’s entire conversation. He used a good old-fashioned bugging device that he had one of his guys slip in and put into her office the moment he got word that she visited Widow at the Kodiak Police Station. The Broadcaster dialed a number and waited for the phone to ring and for another voice to answer.

  The other voice said, “This is Babbitt.”

  “Babbitt, you recognize my voice?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s been a long time. How can I help you?”

  The Broadcaster said, “I need a loose end tied up. Three of them, actually.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know my going rate?”

  “Yes.”

  Babbitt said, “It’s not too high for you?”

  “Not for this job,” the Broadcaster said.

  “Okay. Give me the details.”

  The Broadcaster said, “There’s an old man in Utah. I need him taken care of. Also, there’s two good-for-nothings snooping around—a man and a woman. They will be headed there tonight. I need you to take care of it.”

  Babbitt said, “I’m in Denver. I can drive there within eight hours. I have to pack and get ready.”

  “Okay. Do it. If you can get there before them, take care of the old guy first. I’ll text you names, pictures, and the address.”

  Babbitt said, “Okay. No problem. Any recommendations?”

  The Broadcaster said, “The old man shouldn’t pose a problem, but the two good-for-nothings, they’re here in Alaska. They'll be getting a flight probably tonight. They could be a challenge. One of them is a US Coast Guard investigator. She’s got a badge and a sidearm.”

  “The Coast Guard has investigators?”

  “Apparently.”

  Babbitt asked, “What about the other one?”

  “He’s the one who might be a challenge. He’s a drifter turned Good Samaritan, but he’s dangerous.”

  “What’s his interest in this old guy?”

  “The two of them are looking into a corpse. It doesn’t matter. Just take care of them.”

  Babbitt asked, “Want me to make it look like an accident?”

  “No. Make it bloody. But I need them all to disappear. Maybe burn the remains in a house fire. I don’t care. Just get rid of them,” the Broadcaster said and clicked off the call.

  Babbitt was in an apartment that he rented in Denver under a false name. He was sitting at his dinner table in the kitchen alone. He got up and passed through the kitchen and through his living room, where a TV was playing the news, but the volume was all the way down. He went to his bedroom and into the back of his closet, took out a fake
panel, and pulled out a duffle bag. He unzipped it and took out a silenced SIG Sauer P365, a compact firearm. Even with the suppressor on it, he could easily tuck it under his coat and keep it hidden from sight until he’s ready to pull it out and shoot someone. He knew that for sure because he had done it dozens of times.

  He set the weapon on his bed, replaced the wall panel in the closet, took out a small suitcase, and packed a change of clothes in case this turned into an extra day.

  Within thirty minutes, Babbitt was in his car and on the road headed to kill three people in Utah.

  24

  After eight hours and twenty-nine minutes in airplanes and airports all through the night, Widow and Keagan stepped off their third plane of the trip and into Salt Lake City International Airport in the early morning hours. They didn’t have to wait for baggage because they didn’t have any. Widow didn’t carry a bag, and Keagan brought a carry-on, overnight backpack with a change of clothes, her personal essentials, and her MacBook. She was able to carry her SIG Sauer P226 with her, but she had to clear and register it with TSA. That took a little time, but ultimately, they were on the road in a rented white Chevy Impala within thirty minutes of landing.

  The weather was much nicer than in Kodiak. The temperature was in the high seventies. Both Keagan and Widow left their jackets lying across the back seat, along with Keagan’s backpack and her SIG Sauer in the holster.

  Widow rolled the sleeves on his flannel up to this biceps on both arms, revealing his sleeve tattoos. Keagan stared for a long moment before she started the car. Widow noticed but said nothing.

  Keagan drove since Widow didn’t have a license, and she wanted to drive fast. If they got pulled over by any cops, she could wave her badge and plead with the officer that she was in a hurry because of the case they were working on, which was all true.

  They drove east from Salt Lake City to reach Ruffalo Creek. The whole trip was about four hours. Ruffalo Creek was near both the Wyoming and Colorado borders. It was one of the northeast corners of Utah; the state had two northeast corners because of its shape.

  Ruffalo Creek was closer to the Wyoming border than the Colorado one. There was a problem when Keagan first entered Ruffalo Creek into the Chevy’s GPS computer. The name of the town did not come up. So she pulled out her phone and double-checked the name. It turned out that Ruffalo Creek had changed their name about thirty years ago to Maiden Creek. She and Widow talked about it for a moment while on the road. It was small car talk. What Widow had read online was something about a horrible crime that happened thirty years ago, which involved the Ruffalo family, which the township was named after to begin with. The town changed the name to Maiden Creek, which hadn’t been updated on whatever website that Keagan had originally found the name of the town on the day before.