He stared to left and right with anxious eyes. “Mr Woodle?”
Ledger stepped forward and Telsey’s eyes snapped to her. He gave an appreciative smile, showing a bank of large, overly white teeth.
“Who are you? Do you work for Mr Woodle? Where is he?”
“Taking a break. I’ll be handling things tonight.”
Suspicion darkened his eyes. “Who are you?” he repeated.
“You’re better off not knowing who I am. Let’s just get down to business.”
Ledger walked around Telsey and crossed to Rico’s pick up. She wanted to confirm he carried no weapon. He didn’t. She threw open the back door of the cab, careful not to turn her back on Telsey so he didn’t see the gun tucked into her waistband. She pitched the gym bag full of money onto the ground into the puddle of light thrown from the Viper’s headlights.
Telsey took a few steps forward, then stopped. Tossed another look right and left, still expecting Rico to make an appearance.
“We don’t have all night. You don’t want to get caught here, do you? Check it out. Make sure it’s all there,” Ledger said.
He shuffled forward. Bent over to unzip the bag. Stuffed a hand inside and took his time sorting through the cash bundles. When he straightened up, he pulled a wad of paper from his back pocket. It looked like a bunch of sheets stapled together. “The cash looks correct. I’ve got the list, but I’m only going to give it to Mr Woodle.”
“I told you he’s busy. Let me have a look.” She approached him, keeping her right hand ready to pull the gun.
After a few seconds hesitation, he showed her the papers. “I still need to talk to Mr Woodle,” he insisted.
“I’ll relay the message for him. What do you want to say?” Her eyes scanned the paper. She could see it contained three columns that looked like names in one, addresses in a second and head shots in the third. What the hell was it?
His head swiveled again. Left, right. Still looking for Rico. And looking decidedly uneasy. “Listen, Mr Woodle needs to lay low for a while. My sheriff is getting suspicious. He’s given me a few theories, some of which are hitting too close to the bone. And now ICE officers have come snooping around my town. They’re paying attention to our people.”
Our people?
What did that mean? She glanced down at the papers in his hand. Were these Rico’s people? Was Telsey supplying names to Rico? Was that what Rico was paying him for, a list of names?
“Anyway, tell him I won’t be coming to see him for awhile. My advice stands. Lay low.”
Hefting the bag to his shoulder, he stuffed the papers back into his pocket. Ledger whipped out her gun and pointed it at his chest.
“So who are these people on your list, Mayor?”
“The hell you pulling a gun on me?”
“I just want to hear you confirm your part in this sorry mess. You’re taking a cut of a crime lord’s drug money by selling these people down the river.” Ledger thought of the workers Rico had approached at Northern Shore’s cannery. “You’re supplying him with a list of illegals living in Oyster Bay, aren’t you? I have to hand it to you, at least you’re doing your own dirty work. What happens once you give these people up to the local drug lord?”
Telsey’s mouth shriveled into an angry pout. The man was used to having a bunch of government workers protect him from real world repercussions. Ledger fired the gun into the ground. Gravel burst up at his feet, striking Telsey in the calves and making him dance backward. The bag dropped.
“The hell you doing, Missy?” he demanded.
“I’m going to start at your feet and shoot my way up your body until I get answers from you, Mayor. Now, first of all, how are you coming up with these names? Walk me through the process.”
She gave him her best I mean business glare.
Telsey’s leathery face looked stressed, the deep lines on his forehead now ridged into canyons. His goatee twitched. He glared back at her with loathing as he gave up the information. “I’ve got a local guy working at the Department of Licensing who owes me favors. He’s got access to people’s application forms. If their address is listed as Oyster Bay and they’ve provided a Mexican passport to prove identity, he puts the name on a list for me. The Mexican passport’s a pretty sure bet they’re an illegal. They feel safe using that ID because Washington has a sanctuary policy. I hand the names to one of my clerical staff who matches them up with local records, including a current photo and place of employment, which is almost always one or other of the oyster farms.”
Ledger nodded as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“Then you feed the names to Dean Woodle. With all the additional information you give him he knows exactly who to approach with a nice big stick. Play the game for him or he rats the person out to authorities as an illegal. And you’ve been working in tandem for the past year? The only fly in the ointment being ICE’s recent involvement. We’re taking Woodle’s workforce out of operation. It still doesn’t answer the question, why sell out your own town? You’re so busy glorifying its pristine delights to Valentina Galliano, but underneath you’re actually promoting its seedy belly.”
Telsey’s goatee quivered with indignation. “Not true! I’d never sell out Oyster Bay. Mr Woodle makes his trades away from here and doesn’t sell within the town. I made a deal with that devil only to save the town! He gets rid of his stuff away from here!”
“While you make a tidy profit and ruin people’s lives in the process.” Anger burned a hole in Ledger’s chest. Technically, Telsey was keeping his hands clean but to her mind he was as guilty as Rico. Even if she arrested him, she was sure he and a team of highly paid lawyers would weasel his way out of a conviction. “Hand over your phone,” she ordered.
“The hell?”
“Hand me your phone.” She held out her free hand.
“This is crazy! I’m not giving up my phone.”
“Hand me your damn phone or I’ll shoot you and take it any way.” With a gentle squeeze on the trigger she shot the gravel from beneath his feet. Pea-sized stones stung his shins for the second time. Now she had four bullets left in the clip.
His hesitation evaporated and he pulled the black rectangle from a back pocket. She took it from his hand.
“Now get over to Rico’s truck, put the bag of money you took on the seat. Open it and the other bag under the back seat.”
He shuffled forward, keeping a wary eye on the pistol she held steady. He leaned into the cab and she heard the scuffle as he dragged the bag over the rubber matting, and then the faint whirr as he unzipped both bags. His head snapped back and twisted in her direction. “Hell, this is Mr Woodle’s product! I told you I don’t have anything to do with that shit!”
“I know what you told me. The truth is you have plenty to do with it. You help him distribute it right around the North West Pacific area. Just because you’re not shitting in your own nest, doesn’t make what you do right. Now, open one of the drug bags.”
The goatee quivered again, but he turned back and opened one Ziploc bag, holding it at arm’s length. Without warning, Ledger leaned in and flipped his hand up. White powder spilled, coating his beard and lips. He spluttered. She slipped the gun into her waistband and snapped several shots with the camera function on his phone, capturing the open gym bags and his white-powdered face. The photos would be highly incriminating.
Telsey’s face went slack. His eyes turned feral. Fear was churning away inside him. “You can’t do this to me!”
He lunged towards her.
She ducked under a wildly swinging arm to knee him in the crotch. Pulling the gun from her waistband she pointed it at his chest. He fell back against the truck, hands clasped over his nether regions.
“I think it’s pretty obvious to you what I’m doing. You’re always after publicity. How interested do you think the media will be in these snaps?”
“You can’t do that,” he groaned. She could almost smell the desperation sweating out of h
is pores. “Listen, why don’t you take the money and the drugs? You can sell the drugs for a fortune. The money will set you up for life. Just give me back my phone before uploading those photos anywhere!”
“Too late for you to appeal to my charitable side,” she said without a shred of pity.
“I’ll tell the truth! That you held me at gunpoint and made me do it.”
“Go ahead. Tell the world you had your ass whupped by a girl. You’ll be an even bigger laughing stock.”
His mouth creased into a vicious line. “Mr Woodle will take care of you! He’s not going to be happy that you’ve spoiled this operation. He had a good thing going here in Oyster Bay.”
She returned a bitter smile. “Don’t you worry about me, Mr Mayor. Your Mr Woodle won’t be bothering me or anyone else in the foreseeable future.”
His face puckered and paled as he absorbed her words. “What’s happened to him?”
“You could turn his misfortune into good news for yourself if you want to deflect attention from your own incriminating pictures. Tell everyone Mr Woodle and his men forced you into these lurid acts before turning on themselves and battering each other to death. There’s no one left to contradict you and it might be good to work on your alibi once the police start their investigation into this evening’s dealings.”
She reversed the gun. Holding the barrel she approached his cowering form to crack him on the temple with the butt, just hard enough to knock him unconscious. His eyelids fluttered and he slid down beside Rico’s truck.
Telsey’s phone already had Galliano’s number in it. She pressed a few keys. There was no need for a message. Those pictures were worth ten thousand words. Still using Telsey’s phone she fired off a message to Sheriff Dallenbach, also in his contacts.
Help! Trouble going down at Kendrew’s. That’s an order!
There was no doubt Dallenbach’s night would be one to remember. He was probably at Northern Shore sorting out the firebomb and two dead ICE officers. She doubted he would ignore a direct command from the Mayor, so he would leave one crime scene for another. She wiped Telsey’s phone with her skirt, then dropped it to the ground and used the butt of her gun to smash it. She didn’t want any more messages coming in or going out. She bent and pocketed the two spent bullet cartridges.
After a quick look around her surroundings, she decided to remove the tarp covering Rico. Leaving him exposed like the others would lend some sort of credence to the theory that he and his men had turned on each other after a hell of a scuffle inside the shed. Rico had made it out, only to collapse from his injuries.
She stuffed the heavy material back inside the room amongst the other debris. Then she stripped off her top to wipe down Rico’s truck to eliminate her prints from the car door. She would get rid of these clothes once she returned to the motel so there would be no fibers tying her to the scene.
She contemplated the shed, but considered the risk of authorities tracing her prints inside too small to warrant any worry, even if they did decide to dust down the entire property.
Sirens were wailing. Dallenbach on his way to answer Telsey’s call.
She slipped her top back on. Picked up the bag of money. There was no point leaving it behind. Took one final look around the scene. Then set off on foot, disappearing into the Sitka spruces edging the driveway. Her plan was to stay hidden in the tree line, following the road back to her Taurus without being seen. She estimated it would take her about 50 minutes at a reasonable jog to cover the 5 miles back to the turn off to Rico’s spread. That would bring the time to a few minutes before midnight. Dallenbach and his deputy should be occupied at Kendrew’s for at least that long trawling through the scene of devastation. Then she’d pop the starter relay back into place, drive back to her motel and slip into the cabin.
The best plan was to keep her story simple. When questioned she would say she had run into Rico and Pedro. Taken their photos. Sent them to CC. Job done, she had then returned to her motel and stayed there for the rest of the night.
The weak point to her cover was Telsey. But betting on Telsey’s silence was a sure thing. The mayor had a strong survival instinct. He would want to cover his ass by putting all the blame on Rico. Any mention of her involvement would only taint his story with his own guilt.
She felt comfortable that she had covered as many bases as possible. She couldn’t bring back CC and Wyche, but she had made sure their murderers hadn’t lived to see out the night.
Dallenbach’s cruiser crunched over the gravel, a spray of small stones firing up from beneath his rear wheels as he braked to avoid ramming into Telsey’s Viper. Red and blue strobes threw a garish light over the scene.
Ledger turned her back and set off at a jog.
15
“I didn’t want you to come home just to fuss over me!”
The words were meant to be shouted, but Gene Ledger had barely enough breath to make them heard.
“I already told you that was non-negotiable,” his daughter retorted. Plumping a pillow, she placed it behind his back to support him into a sitting position. The change in him in three measly weeks had staggered her. Now so weak he couldn’t navigate around his house without a walker. “Besides you told me to take a road trip to bring the 750 GT back here. I had to see for myself that she rides like a dream, Dad.”
He sipped water through a straw. Huge purple circles were gouged under his eyes. His skin was like paper.
She had driven the Taurus from the Long Beach motel into Portland the morning after CC and Wyche’s deaths. Headed straight upstairs to Bogel’s office to hand in her resignation. Bogel accepted it thinking she was distraught over a tragic situation. It suited her purposes to let him smirk and deride her inability to take the heat when things got tough.
While she had had to answer questions about her movements during the unfolding of events, the focus wasn’t on her. It turned out Rico was a big deal from an ambitious Columbian drug family, breaching the border so that fell within Homeland Security’s jurisdiction in a face off with DEA. A new task force of ICE agents was set up to replace Bogel’s depleted team. They muscled in to override Dallenbach’s initial investigation.
She had been on the money about Telsey’s sense of self-preservation. Galliano had published the photos with a story including plenty of cautionary words. Allegedly this. Suspicion of that. Still, Galliano made it clear the link to Rico’s drug operations was unquestionable. As Ledger had suspected, the photos were worth ten thousand words. In shares and comments and republishing in other news outlets. Telsey’s tenure as mayor was over, his reputation shredded.
So Telsey was scrambling, blaming Rico for everything under the sun. Telsey was an innocent man being blackmailed by Rico with these photos. He had only been at the site because Rico enticed him there under false pretenses. He had braved unparalleled peril to fire off a text to Dallenbach for help. Rico had struck him down so he had no idea how Rico and his men ended up dead. Their cause of death was a mystery that the authorities were still unraveling. Wild speculation abounded. A rival gang had ambushed them being the most plausible theory, according to Bogel’s new team, and accounted for the missing money bag that had been in Telsey’s photos.
Ledger had stayed in Portland to attend CC’s and Wyche’s memorial service, given by the department. She had made herself go forward and look Wyche’s widow and two children in the eye as she offered her condolences. To shake CC’s parents’ hands. She spoke to them long enough to hear about the unexpected life insurance policies their son or husband had taken out, after surprise contact from a lawyer. Three hundred thousand dollars for Wyche’s family, equating to a hundred grand for each of the survivors and two hundred thousand dollars to take care of CC’s parents’ retirement. Ledger considered that a fair distribution of Rico’s money. It hadn’t even been too difficult to set up the accounts because she already knew which offshore banks were easiest to access through her ICE training.
That was the last news she
had heard before embarking on her five-day road trip. Hour after hour blasting down the highway on the revamped Ducati with the wind smashing against her body at a hundred plus miles an hour, Ledger was able to shut out the whole world. Getting plastered would have wiped out the past more completely, but the trip was better than grueling sessions with a counselor.
She helped Gene smooth the worn sheets of road map over his lap. The maps were at least twenty years old. He had directed her to locate them in the spare room that doubled as storage for boxed household items he had brought with him from New York but never got around to opening. She had said she could pull up a digital map on her phone, but he had insisted on her finding his old AAA road maps.
“Sit down and let’s plan that road trip. We decided we’re heading west from here, right?”
That was the fiction they shared since she turned up on his doorstep without a job. He talked incessantly about the epic road trip they would undertake on the Ducati. At first he had concentrated on the east coast. Talked about skipping down to Florida, then following the coast all the way up to Maine. But they both decided it was the wrong time of year. They would end up snow bound by the Canadian border, and Gene maintained his bones were too old to take the cold.
“Best to leave Indianapolis and head back west via the sunny states,” Gene said, folding the map so it highlighted the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. “You want to stick to Interstate 70? It’ll take us all the way through to Texas. Only interstates aren’t much fun for a road trip. Don’t let you stretch your legs and explore the countryside.”
She sat down beside him, resting her elbows on her knees. They pored over the map together, estimating how many hours of riding they could handle each day, where they would stop and what they would see en route. It didn’t take long before the map slipped from Gene’s fingers. Gently she removed it, folded it into a neat rectangle and placed it on the table beside his bed.
One Way Out: Scout Ledger Thriller Page 12