David Wolf series Box Set

by Jeff Carson

  “Zack,” he said.

  “Zack? Listen, Zack, either you can give me his phone number, or I can call the Truckee FBI field office and have them send down an agent to get the information I need, and your department can foot the bill for the interstate invest—”

  “Okay, okay. What did you say your name was?”

  “Wolf. Sheriff David Wolf of Sluice County, Colorado.”

  “Okay. I’m transferring you to his cell phone,” he said. “Will that work, sir?”

  “If he answers that will work. If not, I’ll call you back and I’ll need to speak to someone else.”

  “Well, let’s hope to God he answers.”

  The phone line clicked and then it began ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “Chief Gunnison?”

  “What?” It was a demand, not a question.

  “This is Sheriff David Wolf from Sluice County, Colorado.”

  “Oh, hi. What can I do for you?” Gunnison had a deep voice.

  “I need to speak to you about a death that happened in your town two years ago.”

  “Uh, okay. Wait a minute.” The phone rattled a little bit and Wolf could hear footsteps and then a door closing. “Who are we talking about here?” Gunnison asked.

  “A woman named Cynthia Ash.”

  Chapter 25

  Charlie Ash’s home was situated on a vast tract of flat land, smack in the middle of the valley floor six miles to the north and east of Rocky Points. The front of his house faced west toward a treeless meadow filled with flowers and cattle in the summer and herds of elk stomping through wind-crusted snow in the winter. A few neighbors populated the horizon, but so far away that on a night like this they were blobs of light rather than imposing structures.

  The rear of his house facing east was a decent-size snow-covered lawn that butted up against a wall of virgin pine forest that extended for miles along the valley floor to the north and south.

  Charlie Ash was worried about the rear.

  He had been sitting in the pitch dark of his house for over two and a half hours now, ever since the sun had gone down. He wasn’t going to be snuck up on. He wasn’t going to be taken out.

  Built to offer close to a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of his surrounding land, his home office had a semi-circular cluster of windows facing the west, and an identical yet opposite cluster facing the east. To see those final few degrees of view to the north and south, he had to press his face to the glass.

  He was doing this now, feeling the cold window against his nose as he searched for movement outside.

  The grounds surrounding his house were bright yellow, reflecting the halogen floodlights he’d turned on at sundown. Beyond them lay dark-blue snow and black forest.

  Ash switched his pistol to his left hand and wiped the sweat off his palm, and then walked across his darkened office to the other set of windows—a movement he’d repeated at roughly ten-second intervals for the past two and a half hours.

  An outside observer would have deemed the behavior ridiculous, but Ash knew what was coming. It was a sure thing. Only vigilance would protect him, and standing his ground when the time came.

  His house was big and had five outside entrances. Two were vulnerable and all he could do was make sure he saw his intruder coming. Then it should be simple enough to make his way downstairs, take up position somewhere, and shoot.

  He reached the rear windows and looked outside again. The darkness of the old-growth forest was absolute. No matter how hard he peered, details eluded him any further than fifty feet into the pillowed pine boughs.

  Nine … ten. He looked down, along the edges of the exterior walls of the house, seeing no footprints except the two elk tracks from earlier in the afternoon, and then he turned to walk again.

  Oily lines of light reflected off his circular $120,000 Parnian desk in the center of the room. He ran his hand across the top of it as he walked by, feeling the small depressions of the exotic wood inlays. The small gesture gave him a reassuring sense of control. He was ready.

  As he looked out into the dim night, panic hit him again, and he cursed himself for having not bought some night-vision binoculars at some earlier point in life. Then he could’ve seen everything happening in that meadow and out in those trees.

  Nine … ten.

  He walked back and stopped at his desk this time. He pulled the plug on his crystal whiskey decanter, poured a couple of fingers in a glass, and then threw the liquor down his throat.

  “Dah!” he said to the empty room as the liquid burned all the way down. He shook his head and jogged to the rear windows.

  Chapter 26

  Wolf listened intently as Sheriff Gunnison finished recounting the details of Cynthia Ash’s death.

  “Looking at the physical evidence,” Gunnison said, “the condition of the car and the way it’d tumbled into the forest, we figured her going one hundred and twenty miles per hour.”

  Wolf grunted in surprise.

  “Yeah,” Gunnison said. “There was no surviving a crash like that. Car disintegrated in seconds. Her body was torn and burnt to nothing recognizable.”

  Wolf walked back out into his living room and picked up the half beer sitting next to his chair and sipped it. “You get a BAC?”

  “Did you just hear what I said?”

  Wolf nodded. “I take that as a no.”

  “No.” He chuckled without humor. “If she was driving under the influence when she crashed, we’ll never know. It was bad.”

  “Did you suspect any foul play?” Wolf asked.

  “What foul play?”

  “I don’t know, tampered brake lines?”

  Gunnison chuckled again. “Nah, I don’t think so. First of all, the car was too wrecked to check on something like that, and, yes, I did think about it. But here’s my take. She was going one hundred twenty miles per hour”. He paused. “That’s just suicidal fast. She was blitzed, and that’s all there was to it. If she was going slower and missed a turn, I’d think maybe brakes. But this was just a swerve into the trees on a straightaway.”

  Wolf stood thinking.

  “You still there?” Gunnison asked.

  “Yes. So what was the whole story?” Wolf asked.

  “I just told you the whole story.”

  “No, I mean, what bar was she at?” Wolf asked. “Who was she with? What can you tell me about before the crash?”

  “She was at a bar on the lake, called Swanson’s. Just a local joint, kind of upscale. Wasn’t with anyone. Came in by herself. I guess she was upset, cryin’ with makeup all over her face. She’d had an argument with her ex-husband, went to the bar and started drinking.”

  “Wait a minute, ex-husband? Charlie and Cynthia Ash weren’t married at this time?”

  “Nope. Got divorced earlier that year as I recall.” Gunnison sipped something and exhaled into the receiver.

  “And that would be something you’d recall?” Wolf asked. “Them being divorced, I mean.” He walked back into his office and flicked on the light, pulled out a pen and paper and sat down at the ready.

  “Yeah, you know, small town and all. And Ash was a pretty prominent figure here. Treasurer of the city government. Why you so interested anyways? Whatchu got goin’ on over there in the mountains of Colorado?”

  “Charlie Ash lives in my town, now,” Wolf said.

  “Pretty nice guy, huh?”

  Wolf couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “We’ve had two murders in town; I’m just looking into the Ashes. There may be a connection. I don’t know yet.”

  “No shit? Two murders?” He whistled. “And you think they have to do with Cynthia Ash’s car accident?”

  Wolf took another sip of the beer and set it down, then figured it was time to come out with it. “Have you had any murders, unsolved or otherwise, with the killer painting a red X on or near the victim?”

  “No,” Gunnison said. “That’s definitely not something that’s happened around h
ere.”

  “What about unsolveds at about the same time of Cynthia Ash’s death?”

  Gunnison let out an impatient sigh. “Look, I understand you’ve got a job to do, but I’m sittin’ here smellin’ steaks that just came in off the barbecue and they’re getting colder by the second. I can send you an electronic copy of the entire file tomorrow morning, first thing.”

  Wolf didn’t answer. The silence mounted for a few seconds and then Gunnison caved in.

  “Ah, Jesus Christ.” He huffed into the phone. “Okay … unsolveds. Shit, you know how it is. Things get all mashed up over the years.”

  “Unsolveds?” Wolf asked. “Those stick in my brain for years. The specifics haunt me until the case is wrapped, and I’m talking about two years ago.”

  Gunnison sniffed and paused for another moment. “There was a woman beaten and strangled, but up the road in Truckee. Younger, mid-twenties. A real-estate agent. It was a Truckee county investigation in the end, but it was called in by a realtor from South Lake Tahoe, so we were in on the beginning of the case.”

  “And that was right about the same time as Cynthia Ash’s death?”

  “Yep. I remember we were still pickin’ Cynthia and her car out of the forest, and we got the call about the murder.”

  “Can you give me a few details of the scene?” Wolf asked.

  “I’m sure the Truckee Sheriff’s Department could,” he answered curtly.

  “Listen, I just think things aren’t done here, you know? This guy could be killing here in my town now, and he could be killing tonight.”

  “Jesus. Yeah, all right,” Gunnison said. He slurped again and ice tinkled in a glass. “We brought the whole cavalry in there, but I was one of the first in. I saw her. She was laid out on her back, lyin’ in a pool of blood. It looked like there was a lot of anger involved with the whole thing. Our coroner said she’d been strangled first, and then beaten with a blunt object on the head. So she was extra dead when this guy got through with her.”

  Wolf took fast notes.

  “After a thorough search of the house, it looked like the killer entered through an unlocked window at the rear of the property. But the front door was also unlocked, because she’d done a ‘walk-through’, as they like to call it in the real-estate biz, and she’d left it that way. So we figure she walked in on a robbery in progress, and the guy had a psychotic streak and killed her.”

  “Any sign of sexual assault?” Wolf asked.

  “None.”

  “And what was her name?”

  “Mary. Mary … Richardson?” He sighed. “Mary Richardson.”

  Wolf wrote down the name and circled it a few times. “What about the neighbors?”

  “None of them saw anything. This is in an area where the houses are few and far between. Lots of money. Multi-millions.”

  Wolf frowned. “And someone got in through an unlocked window? Pretty lax security on a multi-million-dollar house, no?”

  “That was a whole thing. The house was for sale, and real-estate agents were coming in and out of there. We think one of them left it open. Nobody fessed up to doing it, of course.”

  “How about prints?” Wolf asked. “The murder weapon?”

  “No prints on the body”—he sighed yet again, sounding impatient—“and no murder weapon found at the scene. Otherwise, clean as a whistle forensically. Large hand bruises on her neck, gloved hands—like I said, no prints. The blow marks to her head were on the left side of her face, the killer standing over her. Forensics said blood spatter was consistent with a right-handed male, and that was as far as we got. Since that narrowed it down to about fifty percent of the population, we ended up getting nowhere fast with this, and it just cooled over the past couple of years.”

  “What about other agents? Showings on the—”

  “I’ll send our file on Cynthia Ash tomorrow morning, Sheriff Wolf,” Gunnison said with finality.

  “Okay, thanks,” Wolf said. “You got a contact I can talk to at Truckee Sheriff’s Department?”

  “Yeah, the sheriff.”

  The line clicked dead.

  Wolf set his phone down next to the scribbled notes. He stood up and walked into the family room, picked up his beer and brought it to his lips, then stopped short and set it back down. His body was heavy, felt bruised all over, and tacking on a hangover would make tomorrow unbearable.

  He took a deep breath and stretched, sniffing his armpit. No deliberation needed—it was time for a shower. He walked to his bedroom and flicked on the light, then went into his bathroom and hit the switch there, too.

  Pulling off his T-shirt, he cried out as a sharp pain stabbed deep in his lower back. It was the pinched nerve, or whatever the hell it was, and it was so painful that he collapsed to his hands and knees.

  After an agonizing minute on the ground, stretching and twisting his torso into various positions, the pain finally subsided.

  He opened his eyes and stood up, feeling faint as he did so, so he put his hands on the counter and stared in the mirror. He looked like a tired hobo, he thought. His brown eyes were bloodshot, half-closed with swollen eyelids, and his dark hair was sticking up like he’d just woken up from a nap against a brick wall.

  Wolf felt the tickle of an idea that had been niggling at him, waiting in the dark to spring out into the light. He peered deeper, wondering what it was and just how long the feeling had been there. He willed his brain to unlock his subconscious.

  What was it? Something in the details of Cynthia Ash’s death? Details from Mary Richardson’s unsolved murder? Some passing comment from Chief Gunnison of the Tahoe PD that he needed to make sense of? Some tenuous connection with Charlie Ash’s past and the murders occurring now?

  Of course, it was. It was all that.

  He blinked and stood up, and then froze as adrenaline pulsed from his head to his feet.

  No, it wasn’t.

  The feeling spawned from something he’d seen moments before but not registered. He was sure of it now, because he was staring at the reflection of a bright-red X scrawled across his bedroom window.

  Chapter 27

  Wolf reached back and flipped the light switch, sending the bathroom into darkness. Then he reached out of the doorway and turned off the bedroom light.

  He stood against the bathroom wall and stared at the reflection. The X looked black in the dim light, and it appeared to be on the outside of the window. He focused beyond it, into the night. There was no movement, no silhouette of a person in the trees.

  His service pistol sat in its holster on a chair just inside his front door. He never locked that front door when he was at the house. Would he have noticed if someone had come inside? Surely a cold wave of air would have blown in the door and wafted over him. But he was unsure with most of his house being new construction. He hadn’t spent enough time in the place to learn the subtle nuances.

  One other gun was much nearer, a Walther PPK, next to his bed inside the top drawer of his nightstand. But it wasn’t loaded. The clip was hidden in the lowest of the three drawers. Though Jack was well versed in firearm use, it had made Wolf feel safer to store his gun that way. He would need to move fast.

  Forgetting the crippling pain that had brought him to his hands and knees a minute before, Wolf sprinted to the bed and jumped, landing in a roll and sliding off next to his nightstand. To his surprise there was no pain.

  He kept his eyes on the doorway into the living room as he slid open the drawer and reached inside the unzipped case for the pistol. His hand closed around the small grip and he pulled it out, then he opened the bottom drawer.

  For agonizing seconds, he felt vulnerable as he dug for the clip, like a deer frozen in semi-truck headlights as certain death barreled toward it. All the killer had to do was turn the corner and shoot him as he fumbled for ammunition. Or stick his arm out from under the bed.

  Wolf rammed the clip home and racked the slide, and then bent to look under the bed.

  Nothing.<
br />
  He looked over at the window, now only a few feet away. The mark was clearly on the outside of the glass. He wasted no time walking to the bedroom doorway and peering out into the living room. His holster and pistol were undisturbed on the chair next to the front door.

  He held his breath and strained to listen. Blood pounding in his ears and the twang of a Telecaster guitar coming from the speakers was all he heard.

  He turned around and looked back out the window past the red mark of death. Still no movement.

  Then he looked closely at the linoleum floor inside the front door. It was completely dry, save a small puddle of meltwater surrounding his boots underneath the wooden chair where his pistol sat. Since Wolf hadn’t been home enough to shovel a path to his front door in the past few days, anyone entering would have tracked in snow with them. That left two options: either someone had been inside the entire time, or nobody was inside.

  If they’d been inside the whole time, why wasn’t he dead? He had given the killer ample opportunities—digging in the refrigerator, sitting as he mindlessly drank beer, pacing the house during distracting phone conversations.

  There hadn’t been any noticeable footprints outside when he’d arrived. That was something you noticed living alone and in the middle of nowhere—a strange set of footprints to your front door that disappeared inside. Had he left the kitchen door to the carport open? The thought raised his pulse.

  First things first, he thought. Straight ahead of him was a hallway bathroom and his spare-bedroom door. He swept both rooms and found everything exactly like he’d left it—undisturbed and without murderers inside.

  Keeping the pistol aimed in front of him, he walked through the family room. Looking outside was out of the question because all the blinds were closed and he hadn’t bothered to open them when he’d gotten home.

  That last thought stopped him in his tracks, and then he back-shelved it and continued to the kitchen. He twisted the knob. It was locked.

  After another five minutes of checking every conceivable hiding spot in the house, Wolf walked back into his bedroom and over to the window.