Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller

by T. J. Brearton

  His head came up, eyes hungry. “What do you want from me?”

  Kruse leaned forward. “Who’s in this thing, Dan?”

  Reed rephrased it: “The more you help us, the less legwork we have to do, the easier things will be on you.”

  Wheeler’s gaze dropped. “Ah, hell,” he repeated. “I ain’t a snitch.”

  Kruse started to talk, but Reed help up a finger. “Hey, Dan? Your ex-wife, she lives in Vermont, yeah? Over in Rutland?”

  Nothing, then a nod.

  “She coming for the funeral?”

  Another nod. A single tear slipped down. “I would expect so.”

  “You talked to her?”

  Wheeler sniffed and rubbed the back of one hand roughly against the tip of his nose. “I ain’t her keeper.”

  Reed sat back, sensing the emotion that wanted to come out. The unburdening.

  Wheeler’s lower lip shuddered. Tears welled in his eyes. “I was stupid.” He could barely get out the words. “I was stupid and young. This thing. You know, it’s not just the sex part. It’s about businesses and helping each other out. We’re a community…”

  Reed and Kruse relayed glances. Then Kruse was writing in his notebook as Reed kept up the gentle pressure.

  “You’re a community, exactly. People share things in a community, right?”

  His eyes snapped up. Hooded, with his head tilted down, they contained that killing spark. “You know what things were like? For the majority of the time people been on the planet?”

  Reed sighed. “Rotten teeth and short life spans, as I understand it.”

  Wheeler answered his own question, speaking quietly now. “Men took what they wanted. Ninety-nine percent of the time since they been on this planet.”

  “All right, Dan. If you’re not going t–”

  “People say we haven’t evolved since the Stone Age. But a man tries to take a young woman, and it’s horrible. ‘Oh God, oh God’ – everybody freaks out. Well? What if you think a young woman is beautiful? Full of life? Hope?”

  Reed made a sound by sucking his cheek. “Well, you just got to wait for her to be of age, that’s one thing.”

  Wheeler stared.

  “You didn’t wait for Kasey. What did you do to her when she was in your home? Huh? She rejected you; she left. And when she did, you decided to kill her. You’d planned to do it – that’s why you got the scalpel from Aaron Mosier. That’s premeditated, buddy, no manslaughter charge for you – murder one. Life in prison. Because she wouldn’t have you, you decided to kill her, and you wanted to leave a little mark on her. To show a little solidarity, right? With the girl from 1998. A little high five between you and your other morbid, cultist sex offenders. You know – these girls that won’t put out – they just don’t know how beautiful they are, huh?”

  Reed realized he was seeing red. In another second, he was going to leap on top of Wheeler, just start punishing.

  Kruse sensed it. He pushed a blank pad across the table and dropped his pen on it. “I want names, Dan.”

  Wheeler shook his head. “No. I can’t do that.”

  Kruse planted his hands down and got in Wheeler’s face. “I want names of everyone in this thing so we can ensure this never happens to another child in this county ever again. You understand me?”

  Wheeler’s whole body was shaking, tears streaming, snot bubbling. He swung his head back and forth. “You don’t understand what it’s like.”

  Reed said, “I understand. It opens up the animal in you.”

  “You don’t know…”

  “I know,” Reed said. “I’ve seen it.” Then he said, calm as milk: “Talk. Give me the names of the people in this thing, Dan. Every last one of them.”

  Wheeler moaned and looked away.

  Reed said, “All right. Let me ask you this: Why did Daryl Snow kill himself?”

  Wheeler sniffed back snot and tears. After a silence, “When I come out of the woods, that retard, there, Cox, was on his bike. So he seen it, but he didn’t say anything. And I knew Daryl wouldn’t talk because of what I had over his head. I knew about Julia Hetfield. I’d seen her and him out one night, sneaking off together. We’re all allowed to swap when we want, but the Hetfields are outside of FM. He’d never get a piece of Julia Hetfield again after I spilled those beans. And if Ida knew, she’d kill him anyway.”

  Reed kept steady. “You’re supposed to molest and assault all the young women you can find, but don’t cheat on your old shriveled-up common-law wife or she’ll castrate you?”

  Wheeler said, “Jealousy is still there. Selfishness. She’s guilty, I’m guilty.”

  “What about Tyson? What was he guilty of?”

  Wheeler’s gaze slid back, and Reed saw killing in his eyes. Wheeler said, “You either got power and keep power in this world, or you don’t. Zach Paine understood that. Zach Paine understood a lot of things – he was ahead of his time. Here. Look. Look at the work I got done.” He jerked his head, indicating his back.

  Reed glanced at Kruse, then walked around behind Wheeler and lifted his inmate shirt. The face of Zachary Paine dressed his back, looking a bit like Jesus Christ in shades of black and gray, but with shorter hair. It was true, Reed thought – Aaron Mosier was a talent.

  Reed let go of the shirt and returned to his chair.

  Wheeler said, “There’s no cure. You have to see things for what they are. We’re all jealous, we’re all selfish. Us in this group – doesn’t mean we’re perfect. We just see human nature for what it is. My son knew what was happening. Between me and Kasey. He knew it was in him too – the animal. And in her, too. She even liked it.”

  Reed: “Dan, the next words out of your mouth are going to be the names of everyone in your group. Freedom Mission. You give me the names, and you give them to me right now, or I’ll make sure you go to the hardest prison in the state. And I’ll make sure you never get out alive.”

  Wheeler swallowed. His eyes switched to Kruse, back to Reed. “Okay,” he said.

  27

  Full circle

  “What if she’s not there?” Kruse asked. “She could’ve read the article, too. She could be in Canada. Mexico, by now.”

  Reed sat in the car with Kruse outside Ida Stevens’s smallish modular home. A light rain was coming down, beading on the windshield. Reed flipped on the wipers, smearing it away. “She’s there,” he said. Even though the house windows were dark, he felt it in his bones. Ida Stevens was territorial. She was stubborn. She wasn’t going anywhere. This was her home.

  That was the reason, partly, for the bulletproof vest he was wearing. Kruse, too. Also why they weren’t alone in the dirt road outside Ida’s house – the other four cars were two sets of FBI agents, two sets of New York State troopers.

  Reed spoke into the radio. “We’re all set. I’m headed up to the front door.”

  “Copy that,” said a voice.

  Reed opened the door. He clipped the radio to his belt near his back, but far enough from his holstered Glock that he didn’t grab the radio when he needed the gun. Kruse popped the trunk and came up with the shotgun. He racked the slide, and then the two of them approached the house.

  In the past twenty-four hours, a task force of local, state, and federal cops had arrested eighteen individuals in connection with Freedom Mission, from Carmen down to Orville. Dan Wheeler had provided a dozen names, and law enforcement had connected those names to nearly a dozen more. There were others still out there, of course; they’d get them in time.

  In Reed’s pocket was the arrest warrant for Ida Stevens, as well as Vincent Morrow and August Wheeler. The rain peppered his face with small wet kisses. Just a mist, really. A wind picked up and swayed the surrounding maples. Halfway across the front yard, Reed saw someone appear in the window. Then they ran out of sight.

  Both Reed and Kruse saw it. Both men got to cover, Reed behind a large SUV, Kruse in front of the single-car garage.

  “Ida!” Reed called. “We know you’re in there!
”

  They also knew she could have at least one gun in there. Morrow’s. But probably more. Nobody wanted a repeat of the Wheeler arrest.

  Reed kept his breathing under control, his pistol in his grip, and a view across the hood of the vehicle. After a moment watching the house, he signaled to the waiting troopers and agents. Already out of their vehicles, they dispersed, running in the rainy night to surround the place.

  The rain came a little harder, or at least – a gust of wind spit some more rain against his face, like a spray over the gunwales. He felt that sensation again, the ground rising and falling beneath his feet. The world tilting one way, yawing the other. And somewhere in the midst of it, a face. Like a siren at sea, floating in a vision: Virginia.

  Men shouted from the other side of the house, breaking the spell. Something was going on back there. The radios all went at once, most of it cross talk and indiscernible. Just a few words that stood out: someone went out the rear entrance and was running.

  Reed was just able to meet Kruse’s gaze through the dusk and rain. Reed nodded, and Kruse took off, going around to the back to join the chase.

  Seconds after Kruse was gone, the front door burst open. Perhaps thinking that all the cops would be drawn off by whoever had lit out the back, Ida Stevens stood in the rain, surveying the vehicles in the road. At first, she didn’t see Reed.

  He stepped out from behind the SUV, holstering his weapon, holding his hands out.

  “Easy, Ida. Let’s just keep it nice and easy.”

  She locked eyes with him. It was the kind of moment that hangs suspended, without thought, without anticipation. Completely grounded in the here and now; just bodies, people, breathing, occupying this singular moment in time and space.

  Then she turned and ran.

  He followed her across the yard, then wound his way through the police vehicles in the road, grabbing his radio as he ran. “This is Reed. I’m in pursuit of Stevens on foot, headed south.”

  She was ahead of him by ten yards. He was faster. Five yards. Closing the gap, breathing hard, feet pounding. There wasn’t much in the vicinity besides a few other homes, similar to hers, connected by the dirt roads. But she could try breaking into one, hiding in one, hurting someone.

  “Ida!”

  It was the scene at Mandalay Park all over again. Ida rushing off into the woods. Impulsive Ida, always breaking the rules.

  “Ida – you didn’t know what Dan Wheeler was doing to Kasey.”

  His voice quavered with the vibration of his running, but she heard him. She slowed a little, though didn’t stop. Soon they’d be out of dirt road. Just the woods to surround them.

  Reed, sensing opportunity, continued: “Daryl didn’t tell you. And he was ashamed. They all were, Ida.”

  She slowed from jogging to walking. Then she stopped and turned.

  Her face shone in some proximal light, and he saw it all in her expression: the sadness, the resignation.

  But then he wondered at the source of light and heard an engine.

  Another pickup truck came barreling down the dirt road toward them. They must’ve turned off the main road – Route 9 – just moments before. The truck bore down on Reed and Ida as he put up his hand to shield his eyes from the light. It looked like more than one person in the cab. And then, when the truck braked and ground to a stop in the dirt road, multiple people jumped from the open bed in back.

  “Hey!” Reed shouted. “Reed Raleigh, New York State Pol–!”

  The first punch cut him off mid-sentence. His weapon was stripped from his grip. Men surrounded him, their faces either dark in the drizzling night or suddenly bright in the glare of the headlamps. The truck engine growled; the men panted and grunted and struck him. Reed threw a punch, hit nothing. He drew his forearms up to his face to protect himself.

  Before he closed himself down against the pummeling of fists and feet, he thought he’d seen that the pickup was white. And that he’d recognized a face – Bob Zurn. A friend of Ida’s, Andy Zurn’s brother. Or cousin. One of those.

  God, these people just kept on coming. The blows took him down to the ground, where he could only curl into a fetal position and take it.

  “Stop it!”

  Her voice was muffled by the grumbling truck, the scrape of feet, the blows to his neck and head.

  “Get off him!” Ida shouted.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” someone said. “Get in the truck, Ida.”

  Reed stayed where he was, but heard the sound of the truck doors opening and slamming closed, the banging as men jumped into the back. Then grit spewed into his face and hair as the truck backed up.

  The driver switched gears and spun more dirt and shot forward as Reed got to his feet. The truck didn’t get very far though – the troopers from Ida’s house came roaring up from her road just as more came down Route 9 and turned in. The white pickup slammed to a stop.

  Reed sagged on his feet. He watched the men get out with their hands in the air. Then the men were surrounded, cuffed, and brought to the ground.

  One of the troop cars drove up to Reed. At the same time, Kruse jumped out of another vehicle and came running over.

  Pitch and roll, pitch and roll. Life on the high seas, the captain used to say.

  The world grayed out. More people were moving toward him. Someone caught him as he fell forward. Someone else grabbed him by his arm. He was dimly aware of Ida Stevens being brought out of the truck and handcuffed – she didn’t resist. Then he was lifted up, carried away. He felt the rain on his face, but it was almost gone now, dissipated to the finest drops of moisture. In the night sky, the darker clouds were sliding off to reveal the white punctures of stars behind them.

  He thought about his lost daughter.

  I’m so sorry, Sarah. That I wasn’t there for you.

  I love you.

  28

  New start

  Overman: “You got your search.”

  After a night’s stay at the hospital, and against doctor’s orders, Reed went south to Orville.

  Unlike Hume, where the rich people kept their summer condos on Long Lake, there were no affluent homes in Orville. It looked more like a western ghost town that met a village from a third world country and had a tempestuous offspring. The bar, anyway, looked rowdy. The small local grocery store was understocked. The library was unoccupied, and the volunteer fire department was a single-bay garage with one brush truck.

  The Paine farm was about as far as one could get before dropping off the end of the Earth. The corn furrows were hard and desiccated. The barn listed deep to one side, waiting for a strong enough wind to blow it over.

  State police had an Incident Command Center that was part RV and part small village of tents. By the time Reed got there, coffee had already been distributed to the searchers – most of them volunteers – and there was talk of bringing in a couple of Porta-Johns so that all that coffee had an ultimate place to go.

  But it didn’t take long. A K-9 unit found something at noon, at the back of the lumpy old cow pasture along the tree line where a stink in a dilapidated structure had alerted a German shepherd. After ten minutes of pulling away the boards of an old foaling shed, they got digging, and then the body, heavily decomposed, was unearthed, the smell pluming up.

  The remains were taken to the county medical examiner up in Plattsburgh.

  After that much decomp, no way to tell about tattoos or scarring. There was nothing left of Laurie Paine but bones.

  And sometimes, you know, that’s how it goes.

  In fact, Overman had once said: Cops go to crime scenes, walk around, and think. They sit at their desks, do research, and write up arrest reports. Then they think some more. Return to crime scenes. Talk with witnesses. Form timelines, form theories, and interrogate those theories.

  They talk with witnesses again and see if stories stay straight.

  And finally – they determine suspects based on a process of elimination.

  That was it.


  “Reed?”

  He came out of it and looked at the therapist. Same guy: Crane. Hey, Crane wasn’t so bad. Maybe he was making a dent.

  “Yeah?”

  “You were saying, about the case?”

  “Yeah…” It was a month later, and a closed case, okay to talk about. But Reed looked around at the office first. His ribs still ached – they’d been bruised – and his lip and eye were still healing, but otherwise, he felt pretty damn good. “What happened to one of the plants?”

  Crane looked confused. He glanced behind him and said, “Oh. One of my succulents? I was opening the window and knocked it over.”

  “You didn’t re-pot it?”

  Crane faced Reed again, something going on in his eyes. Like he was reading into this. “I brought it home, actually. Three was crowding my little shelf there.”

  Reed nodded. Made sense. He, on the other hand, wouldn’t mind a little crowding. More people in his life. Family. Love.

  But anyway, about the case: “I kept thinking, you know, that no one seemed to go to church. No one had any religious paraphernalia, not a single cross. I know it’s a changing world, but not that fast. Not in a rural community like Elliston, and all the people I’d seen, all the lives I’d looked into. They were all agnostic? Not a single Catholic or Presbyterian or Methodist?”