They turned to see Walt Southern standing at the door. His wife was beside him.
Decker turned to face them and said, “I take it the guy who let us in called you.”
Southern entered the room and his wife followed. He saw the clothes draped over Ames’s corpse.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Why are those things on the body?”
“Just verifying some details that weren’t in your report,” said Decker.
“You saying I missed something?”
“There was nothing in your report about the lividity presentation.”
Southern came forward and picked up the report Decker had set on a table.
“I hadn’t finished it yet.”
“Regardless, it should have been in the preliminary report.”
“Okay, what about the lividity?”
“It was off. She was killed earlier than you said, and then after lividity was set, she was dressed in those clothes and placed in the shed on the ATV.”
“That’s only speculation on your part.”
“It’s a conclusion based on the evidence.”
Liz spoke up. “Anything else that struck you?”
“Well, if there is, there’s no need for you to know,” said Decker bluntly. “Your husband provides us information based on the forensics of the body. We don’t keep him apprised of our investigation. Even if you trust the person doing the post.” Decker fell silent and stared Southern down.
Southern dropped the file on the table and gazed pointedly at Decker. “I really don’t like your attitude.”
“I’ve never felt the need to be liked by anybody.”
“We’re all on the same team.” This came from Liz Southern, who had advanced farther into the room and now stood, in solidarity it seemed, next to her husband.
“My confidence has been shaken in my ‘teammate.’ ” Decker moved closer to the couple and leaned down. “Maybe you can help me out on that.”
“If you’re accusing me of some sort of negligence—” began Southern in a loud voice.
“No, I’m not accusing you of negligence.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Because negligence implies a mistake was unwittingly made.”
Liz Southern sucked in a breath while her husband glowered at Decker.
“What exactly are you saying, Decker?” asked Kelly.
“You want to tell us, Walt?” asked Decker. “I mean one big mistake, okay, that happens, if rarely. But two? Now that’s what I call a pattern.”
“I’m not going to stand around and listen to this garbage,” exclaimed Southern. “You can talk to my lawyer.” But then he took a provocative step toward Decker, his face flushed and his features angry.
Kelly quickly stepped between the two men.
“Now, just hold on. This is getting way out of hand.” He turned to Southern. “But, Walt, there are some weird things going on here. Now, I’m not directly accusing you—”
“Oh, shut the hell up,” roared Southern. He turned and stalked out of the room.
All eyes turned to his wife, who looked wobbly on her feet.
“Liz?” said Kelly. “What is going on here?”
“Walt is upset, naturally.” She flashed an angry look at Decker. “Who could blame him with all the foul things this big jerk is implying?”
“I’m implying nothing,” said Decker. “I’m saying that your husband intentionally misstated the postmortem results in order to interfere with our investigation.”
“That is a damnable lie.”
“Who made him do it?” persisted Decker.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. My husband would never do such a thing.”
They all jerked when they heard the shot, which was immediately followed by something hitting the floor.
They rushed out of the room, with Jamison in the lead.
Down the hall a door stood partially open. Jamison pushed it open all the way and hurried inside. Then she stopped as the others piled in behind her.
This was apparently Walt Southern’s office, with diplomas and certificates on the wall. A desk was set by one wall. The high-back chair behind it had been pushed back against the wall.
Jamison, Kelly, and Decker peered around the corner of the desk. On the floor was Walt Southern. The gun he’d used to shoot himself in the mouth was on the carpet next to him.
“Walt!” shrieked Liz as she saw the body.
When she tried to push past them, Kelly held her back. “You can’t Liz, this . . . this is a crime scene now, I’m sorry.”
She punched and slapped at him until Kelly pinned her arms to her sides. She slumped against him, sobbing.
Decker looked first at Kelly and then at the dead man.
Well, I didn’t see that one coming.
THE ROOM AT THE POLICE STATION contained three people but was quiet other than the sounds of comingled breathing.
Decker, Jamison, and Kelly sat there staring at the scuffed linoleum-tile floor.
It was early in the morning, the dawn not yet broken, and Walt Southern’s body was on a gurney in his funeral home. A stricken Liz Southern was at the home of friends. Another coroner from Williston was traveling to do the post, though everyone in the room knew the exact cause of the man’s death.
He had scrawled a note, which they’d found on his desk: “I’m sorry for everything. I hate myself. I—”
He obviously had chosen not to finish it.
“So why?” asked Kelly. “Was he really compromised?”
Decker said, “Clearly somebody made him fudge the post results to throw us off. First, with Cramer having ingested something, and then with Ames’s going out there to meet with Parker. It wasn’t for sex, it was for information. They blackmailed Walt to leave out the parts of the autopsy that would have led us to know that.”
“Do you think Walt really was blackmailed?” asked Kelly. “Maybe they just paid him off.”
“People doing this sort of thing for cash don’t usually blow their heads off when they’re discovered. They try to cut a deal by ratting on whoever paid them. And despite what I told Southern, we had no direct proof that he did anything intentionally wrong. I just called him on it, and he reacted the way he did. It was clearly because of a guilty conscience. Just look at the suicide note. ‘Sorry for everything’? ‘I hate myself’?” He added, “But I didn’t think he’d kill himself over it. I was clearly wrong about that.”
“So what did he have a guilty conscience about?” asked Jamison.
“For that, we’re going to have to talk to his wife,” answered Decker.
* * *
Later that evening Liz Southern looked pale and worn as she sat up in the bed of a guest room in a house belonging to a close friend of hers. She cradled a large cup of tea, and her bloodshot eyes spoke of the misery she was enduring. She looked at Decker with an unfriendly gaze as he sat down next to the bed. Kelly and Jamison stood immediately behind him.
“You couldn’t wait even one damn day?” she said harshly. “My husband killed himself!”
“If we could wait, we would. But we can’t. So anything you can tell us will be much appreciated.”
“I don’t know why Walt did what he did.”
Decker leaned forward in his chair. “Then let’s work through it together. Starting with what he wrote in the note.”
Southern closed her eyes and sighed.
“It’s important, Liz,” chimed in Kelly.
“I know that, Joe!” she snapped, her eyes now open and blazing at him.
Decker cleared his throat. “If Walt was forced to fudge the autopsy results for Cramer and Ames, we need to know how and by whom.”
“I have no idea why he would do that. I still don’t believe that he did intentionally mess up those reports. If it’s anyone’s fault he’s dead, it’s yours! You accused him of all those terrible things.”
Decker sat back, not looking convinced. “If the guy was innocent
of what I accused him, no way he’s taking his own life. Before he walked out of the room he mentioned his lawyer. That’s not a guy looking to off himself over what I said.”
“Then why would he kill himself instead of calling his lawyer?” she shot back.
“I think he was just blustering, grasping at anything he could in the heat of the moment. I think as he walked to his office, reality set in. And that’s when he made his decision.”
“You really want me to provide dirt on my dead husband? Is that what you’re asking me to do?” she added shrilly.
“What I’m asking you to do is help us solve a series of murders. And whoever blackmailed your husband and drove him to kill himself deserves to be punished. We need your help to get to them.”
“Well, if you hadn’t accused him like you did—” she began.
“If I missed something like that, I’m in the wrong line of work,” Decker interjected. “You know something of the forensic business. Do you think he could have really missed big items like that on two separate posts?”
Southern drew a deep breath and settled a shrewd gaze on him. “I think you’re in the exact line of work you should be in, Agent Decker.”
“Okay,” he said expectantly.
Southern reached out and plunked a tissue from a box on the nightstand. She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose before crumpling the tissue in her hand. “My husband was a good man.”
“I’m not suggesting he was a bad guy,” said Decker.
“But he had . . . issues.”
“What sort of issues?”
The woman’s eyes welled up with tears. “He . . . was into some things that others, particularly around here, might have found . . . troubling.”
“What sort of things are we talking about?”
“Was it something criminal?” said Kelly.
“No, but it would have done a lot of damage to his reputation.” She let out a long breath. “He was having an affair with the wife of a friend.” She clutched the edge of the sheet, and her eyes filled with tears.
“How did you find out?” asked Kelly.
“Text messages. Something I saw on his computer. Late-night phone calls. And I had him followed.”
“Did you . . . confront him about it?” asked Decker.
She grabbed another tissue and wiped her eyes. “Yes. At first, he denied everything. Said I was mistaken, said it was all a misunderstanding. But he finally admitted it. We talked about getting a divorce, but we hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
“That must have put a strain on your marriage,” said Jamison.
“I finally told myself to ignore it. He did what he wanted and so did I. We have no children. So I would get glammed up and go out and have some drinks, and if I didn’t come back at night and I was in someone else’s bed, so what?”
“That night I saw you at the bar?” said Decker.
“I left you to attend to just such an appointment,” said Southern, avoiding their gazes.
Decker moved a bit closer to her. “So someone else might have found out about his affair. They might have sent him photos or other incriminating evidence and threatened him with exposure if he didn’t do what they said.”
“It’s certainly possible.”
Jamison said, “But people do have affairs. Would the threat of exposure be enough to make him alter postmortem reports? He had to know that whoever wanted him to do that might have had a hand in the murders.”
“Walt was a very proud man. A very upstanding citizen of this town. I agree that it seems crazy that he would do the bidding of what could be a murderer in order to keep his reputation intact. But I also know that’s what he did.”
“Who was he having an affair with?” asked Kelly.
Southern shook her head. “No, I’m not going to tell you. It has nothing to do with the murders.”
“You don’t know that,” said Kelly.
But Southern shook her head.
Decker took all this in and said, “Did he mention anything, even in passing, that might shed some light on who was making him do this?”
“I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of just that,” she said. “And I can’t come up with anything.”
She sank back against the pillow and closed her eyes.
JAMISON AND DECKER dropped Kelly off at the police station and drove back to their hotel.
Along the way Jamison said, “We’ve got three people dead, two murdered and one suicide, including the coroner who did the post on the other two and screwed them both up because he was possibly being blackmailed for sexual indiscretions. And the guy who found the first body is missing and presumed dead. What a mess.”
“And an old man in a nursing home who knows a lot but won’t tell us anything,” added Decker, gazing moodily out the window.
“I agree that Cramer came here possibly because of what Brad Daniels told her. But if he won’t reveal to us what he might have told her, what do we do? We can’t waterboard the guy.”
“We can threaten him with obstruction and put him in prison,” pointed out Decker.
“A ninety-something-year-old war veteran in a nursing home? Really? Do you see the FBI or a court doing that?”
The phone that Robie had left him started to vibrate.
He pulled it out of his pocket and hit the green button. “Yeah? Robie?”
Robie said, “Be at this address in a half hour.” He gave the destination and clicked off.
Decker looked at Jamison, who said, “What?”
“Change of plan.”
He punched the address into his phone, and they set off.
* * *
It was fifteen miles outside of town at what looked to be an abandoned apartment building.
“I guess this was a casualty of the last bust,” said Jamison as she pulled their SUV to a stop in front of the structure and they climbed out. “So where’s this Robie guy?”
Robie stepped out from the shadows of the front entrance and called out softly to them. “Follow me.”
He led them down a covered walkway that led to the rear of the building.
He opened a door there and motioned them inside.
As she passed him Jamison said, “Nice to meet you, Robie.”
He simply nodded.
Inside, Robie closed and locked the door and led them past an empty, stained pool and down an interior corridor, illuminating the way with a small tac light. He opened another interior door and motioned them in.
When he closed the door behind him, a small light came on in the room, brightening it, if feebly.
In a chair sat Blue Man, dressed in a regulation suit and tie that would have allowed him to blend in at most any event in Washington, DC, but made him stick out conspicuously in London, North Dakota.
“Mr. Decker, Agent Jamison, please sit,” said Blue Man.
“Who the hell are you?” said Decker.
“A wise question. Your phone should be buzzing any moment, ah.”
Decker lifted out his vibrating cell phone and hit the answer button.
“Ross? What’s going—? What?” Decker glanced at Blue Man. “Yeah. We are. Okay. You’re sure? Right. Thanks.”
He clicked off and looked at Jamison. “Bogart says this guy is on the up-and-up, and we should listen to him.”
Jamison nodded and noted that Robie stood with his back to the door they had come through. “I don’t think we have a choice anyway,” she said, studying Robie’s granite expression.
Blue Man motioned to the two chairs in front of him. “Please.”
They sat.
Blue Man said, “I understand there have been developments?”
“If you call the coroner on the case offing himself a development, then, yes, there have been developments,” said Decker curtly.
“And the reason?” said Blue Man.
“His wife thought it possible that he was being blackmailed for sexual indiscretions,” said Jamison.
“And you believe h
er?” said Blue Man.
“I don’t believe anybody just because they tell me something,” said Decker. “And I’m not sure if present company is excluded or not.”
“I would have been disappointed had you answered otherwise,” said Blue Man benignly. “Any other developments?”
“I’ve got somebody tracking down Ben Purdy. He has family in Montana.”
“The ‘ticking time bomb,’ as you told my colleague?”
“Yes.”
“Any thoughts on that?”
“Yeah, all of them apocalyptic.” Decker paused and studied Blue Man. “And you’re involved in this why? Because you don’t strike me as the law enforcement type.”
“I have no authority whatsoever to do anything in this country. Neither does Robie.”
“Well, you’ve run right over that rule.”
“That certainly is one interpretation. Anything else?”
“We think Pamela Ames was the target, not Hal Parker.”
“Why?”
“They tried to make it seem that she was there servicing Parker as a hooker, but I believe that was fabricated.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Robie.
“To explain away why Ames was at Parker’s house. If it wasn’t for sex, then why? She lived at the Colony. She would have known Irene Cramer. It’s perfectly plausible that when Ames left the Colony she would reach out to Cramer for assistance. In fact, I think she did. And it might have been then that Cramer told Ames something that later made Ames suspicious. Whoever killed Cramer might be very worried that Ames knew something that could lead back to them. And it’s also possible they might have had reason to get rid of Parker. It was a stroke of genius to get them both out of the way at the same time, and make it seem like Parker was the only target and Ames was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What would Parker have known that could hurt them?” asked Blue Man.
“He was a trained tracker. He found the body before the rains started. Now, the killer had to get the body out there. And it couldn’t have been lying out there long at all because it hadn’t been attacked by animals. So I doubt the killer carried her for miles to place her there. And the ground out there is relatively soft.”
“So he would have left tracks,” noted Robie.
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