“Kathryn James,” the woman said. “My partner, Lloyd Marks.”
They shook hands.
“You the first on scene?” Kathryn James asked.
“Other than Sheriff Kasmir, yes, ma’am.”
The BCI investigators did a three-sixty, and Marks nodded. “Good job securing the scene, except for the Basin Electric people. They should have been held back.”
“I disagree,” Christen said. “They provided the best clue so far.”
“How do you see it going down?” Kathryn James asked.
“Someone came out here this morning, I’m thinking a lone gunman either somewhere up on the hill or maybe across the creek, shot out one of the insulators, which brought down the line and caused the power outage.”
“Hell of a shot,” Marks said. “But why not right down here?”
“The super said by the looks of the damage to the insulator it had to have been from a high-power rifle. But I’ve not found any shells other than nine-millimeter pistol casings close to Sheriff Kasmir’s body, and on the road where the McKeevers—they’re the ones in the pickup truck—were shot to death.”
“Not one of your ranchers?” Marks said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, Don, walk us through your scenario,” Kathryn James said, “starting with why your sheriff was called out.”
“He got a call from Nate Osborne, who’s the sheriff over in Billings County, that there was a problem with the power line down here. Comes from the government project where we had that trouble last year. So everyone is still a bit touchy.”
“So Sheriff Kasmir drives down, in the middle of the incident?” Marks asked.
“Kas would have called it in right away. I think he got down here, parked his car, and was talking to the lineman who was up working on the line, when the man was electrocuted. Then I think our shooter probably drove up and shot Kas once in the chest, and then a second in the head.”
“The people in the pickup happened by and your perp shot them through the windshield causing them to run off the road,” Marks said. “But it doesn’t look like they were traveling very fast. Looks like they might have been almost stopped when they were hit and slowly left the pavement.”
Christen nodded.
“So your shooter takes out the insulator, waits somewhere for the lineman to show up and then what?” Kathryn James asked. “He would have been taking a big chance hanging around like that. And you said the power was out. What makes you think that?”
“The lineman was electrocuted because he wasn’t wearing protective clothing. Either he was told there was no power to the line, or he checked before going up there—or both. And he’d started to work on the problem, but at some point the power came back.”
“Your shooter somehow got the power turned back on at the same moment the lineman was up there doing his work?” Marks asked. He was skeptical, and so was his partner.
“I don’t see any of it,” Kathryn James said. “We’ll get to work, but I’d bet just about anything that we’re talking about at least two guys—one with the hunting rifle, and the other with the handgun. And I’m thinking that they were local. Only reason Sheriff Kasmir let them get close enough, and why the people in the pickup truck stopped. The guys were somebody they knew. Neighbors.”
17
THE MOMENT OSBORNE topped the rise and slowed down for the highway patrol officer motioning for him to pull up, he had a good idea that the Initiative had come under attack. Again.
The state cop was John Watcznak from right here in Dickinson, and Osborne had worked with him a couple of times when blizzards stranded truckers, and last year after an eighteen-car pileup in a heavy fog just across the county line. He was an otherwise good man except for the cynicism he’d developed working for a couple of years on a street crime unit in the Twin Cities.
Osborne stopped and powered down his window. “Looks like we’re finally going to get spring.”
“Mornin’, Nate, ladies,” Watcznak said, tipping his hat. “You’re little out of your jurisdiction.”
“Don asked me to come over and take a look. And Kas was a friend.”
“And the press already?”
“You have a problem with that, Officer Watcznak?” Ashley asked. She’d become peckish ever since she’d talked to her father.
The state cop gave her a hard look, but then glanced at Whitney in the backseat.
“This probably involves the power plant over at the project,” Osborne said. “And Dr. Lipton is the chief scientist.”
Watcznak nodded. “Your call, Nate,” he said and stepped back to allow Osborne to continue down the hill.
He parked behind Christen’s radio unit, and they got out as Don came over from where he’d been talking to the BCI people who were pulling their evidence kits and photo gear from the back of their van.
Three men stood around the Basin Electric truck, its bucket on the ground. The body of the electrocuted lineman hung from a safety strap. Yellow crime scene tape had been placed around Kas’s covered body at the side of the road and around the pickup truck.
Whitney remained by the SUV, trying to avoid staring at the gruesome remains of the lineman, but Ashley was busy taking pictures with her iPhone.
“Glad you could make it, Nate,” Christen said, shaking hands. He nodded to Whitney. “Dr. Lipton.”
She nodded, the set of her mouth tight.
“I called Kas about the power outage,” Osborne said.
“I sure hope that you’re not going to run that picture on the front page,” Christen said to Ashley.
“Not a chance, but I’m also working for the Initiative, and no way was this done by a disgruntled rancher. The Bureau will want to see this.”
“The BCI will share whatever they come up with.”
“ARPA-E is going to need it, too.”
“Your dad,” Christen said, and he wanted to take it further, but Osborne interrupted.
“What’s it look like to you?” he asked, and Christen told him everything he’d told the BCI investigators.
“They didn’t agree. Said it was probably a couple of agitated ranchers, someone the couple in the pickup truck probably knew otherwise they would have made a U-turn soon as they saw there was some trouble.”
“It’s possible,” Osborne said. “Any sign that Kas tried to fight back?”
“His hand was on his holster. He was reaching for his gun.”
“Tell that to the BCI?”
“Didn’t have the chance,” Christen said.
Osborne looked up toward the power line where the lineman had attached it to the base of the seven-foot-long insulator. “Take more than a deer rifle to knock out something that big.” He looked over his shoulder to the crest of the hill where the highway patrol car was parked.
“What?”
“Did you happen to pick up one of the nine-millimeters from the side of the road?”
Christen nodded. “In an evidence bag in my unit.”
Whitney had listened to it all. “Both of you think this was an attack on the Initiative?”
“I do,” Christen said.
“So do I,” Osborne said. “Let’s take a ride to the top of the hill.”
“I’ll stay here,” Whitney said. “Looks like Ash could use some help.”
Ashley had walked down to where the coroner and the BCI people were starting with Kasmir’s body, and it was obvious she was having words with them.
Osborne drove Christen back to the top of the hill and they got out.
Watcznak came over. “Forget something?”
“Tell you if we find it,” Osborne said absently, and he walked farther up the road ten or twenty yards beyond the crest, to a point where he could just make out the pylon’s cross arm where Bartlett’s body still dangled from the bucket.
“What are we looking for?” Christen asked.
“If I’m right, and this was an attack on the Initiative, it was carried out by someone who kne
w his business. A professional. He shot Kas once, which probably would have been fatal, but fired a head shot for insurance. Be my guess he stopped around here somewhere, took out the insulator, then packed up and went somewhere to wait for the outage to be reported and for a repair crew to be sent out.”
“To where?” Christen asked.
“I don’t know. Someplace like T.D.’s up on ninety-four.”
“He would have been taking a big chance, and Kas would have come as a big surprise.”
“Not if he was monitoring your dispatch channel.”
“Yeah.”
Osborne spotted the fresh tire marks at the side of the road, the two outer wheels on the gravel, the inner two on the grass, which had not yet sprung back. “He parked here and took his shot. Shell casing would have been ejected to the right.”
“Might take some help finding it in the grass,” Christen said.
Osborne started down the hill. “Nope. It’ll be too big to miss.”
Five minutes later, nearly twenty feet down the hill Christen found it, and he called Osborne over. “Biggest damned shell I’ve ever seen. Looks like something from an elephant gun.”
Osborne took a pen from his pocket and picked it up. “Sniper rifle. Fifty-caliber Barrett. Military. I fired it a couple of times in Afghanistan. Big son of a bitch, kicks like a mule. Our shooter stopped on the road, climbed up in the bed of his pickup truck or the tailgate of a SUV from where he could get a good bead on the insulator and to make sure no one was coming. He set up the rifle on the roof of the cab on its bipod, took his shot, and headed off. Probably took him only a couple of minutes.”
“Damned good shot from all the way up here,” Christen said.
“He’s almost certainly ex-military Special Forces.”
“One of our people?”
Osborne shrugged and they walked back up to the road where he lowered the tailgate on his Saturn and climbed up to take a look over the roof. From here he had a clear view of the pylon, maybe eight or nine hundred yards away. The rifle had been used in Desert Storm for a credited kill at just about eleven hundred yards. So this was not an impossible shot for a highly trained man. Definitely not the work of a hunter.
“Do you want me to ask the BCI people to come up here and take a tire cast?”
“He’ll be long gone by now, but if he abandoned the truck in Dickinson someone will notice it.”
“The sooner we find it the sooner we’ll find fingerprints,” Christen said. “Maybe DNA evidence.”
“He didn’t leave any, trust me. And the truck will be untraceable.”
Watcznak walked down to them. “Find anything?”
“The guy took his shot from here,” Osborne told him, getting down from the tailgate, the maneuver awkward because of the prosthesis on his left leg.
The state trooper climbed up and looked down to the pylon, and he shook his head. “Not a chance in hell, Nate. I don’t know anybody around here who could make that shot from this distance.”
“I could,” Osborne said.
Watcznak jumped down and Nate and Christen drove back to the scene where the BCI pair were watching the tape from Kasmir’s dash-mounted camera.
“Find anything we can use?” Osborne asked.
Kathryn James looked up. “And you are?”
“Nate Osborne. I’m the sheriff over in Billings County, and Kasmir was a friend of mine.”
“Out of your jurisdiction, but okay.” She nodded up toward the crest of the hill. “Find what you were looking for?”
Osborne took the shell casing he’d bagged out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Fifty-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. American made. They took the shot from up there.”
“Not likely, but the lab will have a look.”
“I’ve used the weapon, and I’m pretty well sure that no one around here has any need of something like that. No snipers in North Dakota.”
“There was this time,” Marks said, looking up from the images on the computer screen in Kasmir’s car. “And whoever it was they were either damned smart or damned lucky, because they didn’t step into camera range.”
Kathryn James bagged the shell casing. “Thank you, Sheriff,” she said. “If you come up with anything else let us know. In the meantime I’d appreciate you not contaminating the crime scene.”
“You bet,” Osborne said sharply, and he and Christen walked back up the road.
“They’re just doing their jobs,” the deputy said.
Ashley and Whitney had walked down to where the Basin Electric workers had gathered and were starting back up the grassy slope from the pylon. The morning was suddenly very quiet.
Osborne checked his watch. It was coming up on eleven thirty already, and he had the very distinct feeling that he was missing something here. That they were all missing something.
“So, after he shoots Kas, and the McKeevers, he turns around and drives off,” Christen said. “Back to the interstate, and then where, east or west? Or if as you suggest he abandoned the pickup in Dickinson, he must have had another vehicle stashed in town or nearby.”
“The airport,” Osborne said.
“He could have rented a car out there. I’ll call.”
“Too easy,” Osborne said. “Find out what flights left this morning. Sometime within the past hour or so.”
Christen used his cell phone, and it took him only a minute. “Great Lakes 7135. Left at twenty to ten.”
“To where?”
“Denver. Should be touching down any minute if it’s on time,” Christen said.
“Shit,” Osborne said. “Call the TSA agent who handled the boarding passes and IDs for that flight. Find out if anyone stood out. Anyone out of place. Anything.”
Christen got back on his cell phone and Osborne used his to call Deborah Rausch who was the FBI’s Special Agent in Charge at the Minneapolis office. He’d worked with her on the incident over the holidays, and he had a great deal of respect not only for her intelligence, but because she had heart. She really cared about catching bad guys.
He got her after a couple of rings, and she sounded a little harried. She’d been expecting his call.
“Deb, Nate Osborne.”
“I just talked to General Forester,” she said. “He says you think shit is starting to happen again.”
“I don’t have time to explain right now, but I’m outside Dickinson where there’ve been four deaths. Looks like the work of a professional, probably trained in a Special Forces program somewhere, so this guy is going to be extremely dangerous. We think he could be aboard Great Lakes flight 7135 to Denver that should be touching down any minute now.”
“Do you have a name, a description?”
“Should have something for you in the next minute or two.”
“I’ll call our Denver office now. What about TSA, or the airport cops?”
“Tell them to take care. If he’s cornered he’ll fight back.”
“Not likely he got a weapon through Dickinson security.”
“He wouldn’t need one,” Osborne said.
“Okay, stand by. I have Denver,” Rausch said.
Christen was talking to someone and he was excited. “What’d he look like?”
Rausch was back. “They’ll be rolling as fast as they can get to their cars. But they’ll need something to go on. So will the airport cops.”
“We’re working on it,” Nate said.
“I’ll need something more than that,” Christen said. “Anything you can give me. Anything even if you don’t think it’s important.”
“What the hell do the bastards want?” Rausch asked. “The project works, so shutting down Donna Marie wouldn’t do a thing to advance their cause. Or are they all just out of their friggin’ minds?”
Christen thanked whoever he was talking to and he broke the connection. “Got his name and a pretty good description.”
“Stark County Deputy Don Christen got a name and description from the TSA. I’ll put him on,” O
sborne said. He handed the phone to the deputy. “FBI Special Agent Deb Rausch.”
“Ma’am, he’s traveling under the name Edward Puckett from Los Angeles. Didn’t get an address, but the TSA agent at security said he was short, thin, hair and eyes dark, and he spoke with what sounded to her like a foreign accent, maybe British. Told her that he’d been riding with a friend from Wyoming when he got a call for a job interview in Denver, so he stopped here to catch a flight.”
Ashley and Whitney walked over. “Anything?” Ashley asked.
“Got a name and a description. Guy’s on the way to Denver.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Christen was saying. “The TSA agent said she talked with the people who scanned his overnight bag. He was carrying nothing but some old clothes, which she thought was strange. In the first place he said he’d come from Wyoming, and he acted like a real gentleman, not some oil or gas field roustabout.”
A moment later he handed the phone back to Osborne.
“You come up with anything else, give me a call right away,” Rausch said. “Do you really think that it’s starting all over again?”
“Yes, I do,” Osborne said.
“Shit. I’ll get this down to our people in Denver, and we’ll talk later. I’m going to have to re-open the file.”
18
AT DENVER INTERNATIONAL Airport, Makarov was among the first to get off the airplane. He nodded pleasantly to the attendant and flight crew, and inside the terminal walked down the busy corridor to the nearest men’s room where he washed his hands and studied his face until a man in jeans and a dark zippered jacket came out of the last toilet stall and left.
Only two other men were the restroom, both of them using the urinals as Makarov walked back to the last toilet stall, went inside, and secured the latch. No one had paid him any attention.
A small gray wheeled suitcase, of the size that would fit in an aircraft’s overhead bin, had been left for him. It had already passed through security and it was the last Mafia handoff that he’d ordered. From this point all the way to Stockholm he was on his own. And once he got home he would wire transfer the second half of the agreed-upon one hundred thousand dollars to an account number in the Caymans.
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