"And?"
"The point is, I seem to remember Mr. Palmer running afoul of the authorities, much as I did myself eons ago. Of course, yours truly could at least blame the dreaded disease of alcoholism for said inappropriate and maladaptive behavior. In Wilson Palmer's case, I believe he was merely your garden variety thief."
"Oh, this is so
cool
," Jerry said. He bounced up and down in his chair. His voice broke on the last syllable. Hal peered into the European monitor and squinted.
"I beg your pardon?"
"That wasn't me, Hal. That was our hacker buddy."
"Oh. Callahan, for a moment I thought your voice was revisiting puberty."
"So this is where you learned to be a dick," Jerry said. Hal laughed out loud. The sound reached us two seconds before his face changed. Jerry shrugged and mumbled something about having strained his pixels.
"Hal, go on about Palmer," I said.
"He used to pull the pump-and-dump," Hal said. "This was perhaps forty years ago, long before the high-speed Internet version. One had to have a certain gift back then. You had to build a little penny stock very slowly and carefully and lure only the very best people. You used one person's capitol to pump up the stock, hyped it as it rose higher, and then offered it to yet another and another as a so-called hot tip. Every
putz
involved thought he was in on a sweet little slice of insider trading. Spread a bit of carefully placed gossip, add some good old-fashioned bullshit, and
presto
. Your stock, which was of course entirely worthless to begin with, has now been successfully pumped."
"And the dump part is self-evident."
"Sure. You take the money and run," Hal said. "You see that was the portion of the scam that required such exquisite timing in those days. As soon as you had reached a truly insupportable level of face value, you would suddenly, and without warning to the others, dump all of
your
shares in a matter of hours. The stock would crash without explanation, and you would be gone with a profit."
Jerry laughed. "That must have pissed off a lot of people."
"Oh most certainly," Hal Solomon said. "But you see no one could come after him, at least not legally, because it was all insider trading to begin with. They could have gone to the authorities, but they would have been confessing to a felony. It was such a lovely scam." He sounded wistful.
"Hal my friend, you still have a larcenous heart." I got up and stretched. "I doubt it was much fun on the other end."
"At the time, the pump-and-dump was almost an art form."
"And Palmer was a gifted practitioner."
"He was indeed."
I rubbed my eyes and thought for a moment. "What puzzles me is that the operative word would appear to be
was
. Because . . ."
"Because as you indicated in our previous discussion, he still lives in a somewhat luxurious manner, even now."
"It's a decent-sized spread," I said, warming to the thought. "He's keeping it up and he's driving a brand new foreign car. He's not making money from my stepfather's old ranch or any of his other properties around Dry Wells. They've all been standing empty for years."
"So perhaps Palmer has moved out into cyberspace with his stock scamming?"
"I'm on it," Jerry said. "If he has anything wired, I'll run it down."
"Good." Hal's forehead moved, the mouth remained frozen for a millisecond. "I heard through the grapevine about numerous reversals of fortune. I know his reputation eventually preceded him into every undertaking. He might also merely have stashed quite a bit away. They say living well is the best revenge. Or perhaps the son is gainfully employed?"
I was pacing, lost in thought, so Hal started shuffling through some papers on his desk. He drank from a bottle of mineral water that had a German label.
After a time: "Hal?"
"Sir?"
"The answer is no. I don't think Will Palmer has a job. I'd be surprised if he's ever been employed. Maybe that's relevant. Maybe this mysterious source of funds has something to do with the death of our girl."
"Let's hear from you, Jerry," Hal said. "What have you learned about the other gentlemen in question?"
Jerry scooted forward in his seat. He held a long, lined yellow notepad covered with scribbles. "I went asking around after Bobby Sewell first. He was a high school star, made all-state. I hacked the newspaper and college computers and even got this footage from the television station down in Elko. Check it out."
Jerry moved his hands. Streaming video replaced Hal on the monitor: Bobby Sewell, holding up a high school conference trophy. Young Bobby playing football, slamming his opponents to the turf. Bobby suited up and facing a quaking opponent, screaming: "I'll hit you so hard your houseplants will die."
"The various files say he got recruited by a bunch of colleges, including UNLV," Jerry said. "He wanted a good football program, though, so he ended up at Arizona State. Bobby got Cs in any class that wasn't basket weaving or finger painting. He played himself some damned good football, though. The Arizona Cardinals drafted him in the ninth round, but he got hurt in training camp, before he officially made the squad. He blew out his right knee. That left him with some minimal insurance coverage, but no serious bucks. I've heard he's still pissed as all hell about that."
"Life is a bitch," I said. The screen flickered to black and then Hal reappeared.
Jerry continued reading from his notes. "So our Bobby Sewell moves back to Dry Wells maybe six years ago, parties and works a little on local spreads, tossing bales around. Couple of years ago he takes up with Sandy Palmer. He seems pretty tight with her family. That's about it."
I perched on the edge of the desk. Jerry cracked his knuckles. I jumped at the sound and shot him an annoyed glance. Hal, oblivious, yawned.
"Okay, Sandy claimed she dumped Bobby," I said. "And she wanted to talk to me about her boyfriend. So I don't know if she meant Sewell or someone who might have just entered the picture. If it was Sewell, maybe he couldn't handle losing her. He seemed pretty unstable."
"Possibly," Hal said. "What about our local representative of law and order, Mr. Bass?"
Jerry thumbed his notes, spoke again: "Glen Bass was born in Ely, and grew up around Elko. He never went to college. He served in Viet Nam in l970, this according to the newspaper story about his becoming sheriff. I knew he was with the 101st Airborne, so I found their website and started digging. Hal got me the rest of this from television archives, Mick."
The kid worked magic again. Old combat footage from Viet Nam appeared on the monitor. Then some interviews with young boys at war; one of them was an incredibly young-looking Glen Bass. "He won a Bronze Star for valor on August 13th, 1970," Jerry continued, "when his unit assaulted a place called Hill 848 somewhere near Khe Ta Lao in South Viet Nam. I guess half the North Vietnamese Army was parked there. Lieutenant Bass single-handedly killed five enemy soldiers while protecting two of his own wounded."
"Impressive," Hal said. We could now see his face again. "Bass was a brave young man."
"That's not all, though," Jerry said. "What got left out of the newspaper story was that he left the service in 1978 under suspicious circumstances. I E-mailed a couple of people, made a call or two, but all I could find out is that his ex-wife accused him of battery. He was arrested by the MPs, but the domestic violence charges were dropped when he resigned his commission and left the service."
"Something he might understandably neglect to add to his biography when applying for work as a law enforcement officer."
"Exactly, Hal."
"So we also consider Sheriff Bass. Perhaps we can endeavor to establish with certainty whether or not he and Ms. Palmer were an item at some point?"
"Whatever," Jerry sighed. "But this is getting to be one hell of a long list."
I shrugged. "It is what it is. Like I said before, this happened in broad daylight with most of the town nearby. Forget alibis, Jerry, we need to find motives and work from there."
"Okay, then," Jerry said. "Mick, you may be especially surprised to hear this. Your good buddy Loner McDowell might not exist."
My stomach lurched. "Come again?"
"I mean that Lawrence P. McDowell may not be your friend's real name. He claims to have been born in Boulder forty-two years ago, but turns out his biography on the website is pretty much bogus. If he has a driver's license or a Social Security number I couldn't find them, and I'm good. Ditto a credit card history. The news footage was all carefully controlled shit about his radio show. How well do you really know him?"
"Not as well as I thought. You're throwing me a curve ball with this one." I shook away a dark feeling. "Okay. Hal, one last report. Did you two geniuses find anything on Doc Langdon?"
"The good doctor is a licensed veterinarian," Hal said. "His record as a physician to stricken farm animals is pristine."
Jerry continued: "He always pays his bills on time, has one VISA and an American Express card. He owns his home. Doc spends most of his discretionary income on trips to Reno or Las Vegas. He stays in the best places and eats only the best food. I found several charges on credit cards that have 900 prefixes, so he digs phone sex."
"That's it?"
"Almost. He was also arrested for practicing medicine without a license, but eventually the charges were dropped."
Another bad feeling. "Explain, Jerry."
"I hacked the court computers and the cop files too. It seems Doc Langdon was making money on the side patching up mob soldiers when they got injured or shot. See, no pesky police reports."
Mob soldiers
. I thought of the body in the alley, and wondered why Bass had wanted me to keep my mouth shut. He and Doc were good friends. "That's a little disturbing. It makes me less inclined to trust him."
"You think this ties in to Sandy?"
"Maybe, maybe not." It sure seemed to. A queasy feeling told me I didn't know people half as well as I thought. "Man, this damned town has secrets to spare."
Jerry dropped his notes. I sat on the edge of the desk and crossed my arms. "That's it, then. At least those are our only live ones for the moment."
"Yes," Hal said. His face was flickering again. "Young Callahan, I must say it does my old bones good to be focused and busy again. How did it go at the Palmer ranch?"
I filled them in on my strange confrontation with Will Palmer. When I explained how I had tried to provoke him, Hal seemed worried.
"Mick, you have indicated to townsfolk that you are in possession of potentially inflammatory information. The word will spread. Considering the other murder, there may be more here than just one angry lover. If so, someone already guilty of murder could assume two wrongs would make a right."
Jerry was picking at his teeth. He missed the reference to the second body so I let it pass. "Killing is kind of like eating peanuts? It's hard to stop once you start? Come on, lighten up, Hal. Something bad happened, but it was probably a crime of passion."
"I'm serious," Hal said. "You may as well have painted a target on your forehead, should Miss Palmer's demise prove to involve more than a simple case of jealous rage."
"He's got a point," Jerry said. "You carry a gun?"
"Guys, lighten up for Christ's sake," I protested. "I'm not planning on playing the hero, here. If we find out anything of substance, we turn it over to the authorities. Well, providing our suspect is not the authority in question."
"Let us hope it isn't Bass," Hal said. "By the way, did you ever reach our obnoxious producer, Mr. Young?"
"I did indeed. He was not pleased."
"Did he allow you an extra day or two to reach the City of Angels?"
"He did not. He made noises about inquiring, but I think we're screwed."
"What are you going to do, then?"
"It's Sunday afternoon. I'm staying through tomorrow night, and then I'm going to Los Angeles. Listen, Hal, thanks for lending your ear and expertise."
"Think nothing of it. I am enjoying myself a bit. In fact, this investigation is as close as I dare come to pulling another sting without violating my fragile spiritual principles. It is bedtime here, good sirs. Good night to you."
The monitor clicked off. Jerry shook his head, rubbed his burn scar. "Jeez, does he always talk like that? How the hell can you understand him?"
I grinned. "Jerry," I said. "You are amazing. Give you a few hours and you give me the world."
"Sorry about the pixel glitches," Jerry said. "If something isn't moving, it tries not to refresh it, so the signals get thrown a bit out of synch. Also, the larger the surface, the more the pixels have to stretch to cut it. I used a pretty big screen, so I probably overloaded the video card."
"I'm impressed," I said. "You did a great job."
We grinned like possums, the way redneck men will do when they feel affectionate but homophobia gets the best of them. "Well," Jerry said, "what do we do now?"
"We go to lunch," I said. "We continue to spread the rumor that I know a lot about what is going on around here. We see what happens."
"And what if nothing happens?"
I didn't answer for a moment. "I'll tell you something, Jerry. I want to be on a plane for Los Angeles. I want to float around a pool with a beautiful woman and an unlimited supply of iced tea. And I mean
real
iced tea, not that pansy persimmon-flower stuff from West Hollywood. I want to make boodles of greenbacks talking to a camera. What I
don't
want to do is hang around here any longer than I have to." I stood up and cast a very long shadow. It was almost noon. "So if nothing of importance turns up by tomorrow evening, then by the end of this Memorial Day weekend, I intend to be out of here."