Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) (15 page)

Taken in, Wilkins seemed as if he might scream in rage.

But he looked around the restaurant and saw all the tourists present.

Decided an honest display of emotion wouldn’t be well received.

In a harsh whisper, he said, “How would knowing where the gold is help anything?”

“I don’t know yet, but I can tell you I don’t want it for myself and I won’t give it away to any white businessman. You have connections. Ask about me. See if I’m lying.”

Tall Wolf could see Wilkins thought he’d just been trapped.

The special agent asked, “How do you know a white man wanted to find you?”

“A friend told me. He misled the man, had him think my friend didn’t know me. Wouldn’t want to know me because we’re not of the same tribe.”

Tall Wolf smiled. “Prejudice is a terrible thing, but so easy to imagine in someone else.”

Wilkins snorted again.

“Did your friend describe the man to you beyond the color of his hair?” Tall Wolf asked.

He had and Wilkins shared it.

“I’ll find this man and ask what he wanted from you. We’ll talk again. Unless you refuse. Then I’ll tell Marlene what I wanted from you, and you know how persuasive she can be.”

Wilkins grew anxious at the thought of dealing with Marlene.

Maybe he knew she was Coyote, too.

Tall Wolf said, “Look, there she is now … and who’s that with her? Mayor Clay Steadman?”

Herbert Wilkins flinched, as if he might bolt from the room.

Coyote could have that effect on people. Clay Steadman could, too.

Tall Wolf put a hand on Wilkins’ arm.

He said, “I haven’t told her yet. I won’t screw you and your people, if you’ll help me. So do what I told you. See if I’m someone you can work with.”

The man who killed Sonny Sideris parked his SUV in his garage and opened the interior door to his house. Something fell on him from above and he was immediately drenched. It took him a moment to clear his eyes and see that the liquid that had doused him was blood. Some of it had dripped onto his lips. He spat it away, spraying blood and saliva farther into his house.

He took a step toward the downstairs bathroom, but he stopped to look down at his foot. There was blood on the floor and he had already started to track it into his house. He froze in place. He could feel the blood saturating his hair, find courses through the follicles to make its way to his forehead and down the back of his neck. He watched in thrall as a drop fell from the tip of his nose and splashed into the pool on the floor.

That miserable bastard, Sonny, the man thought. He was behind this horrific mess.

The thug from Las Vegas hadn’t been satisfied with the fee — the nugget — he’d been paid to kill Hale Tibbot. He wanted more gold. The man had foreseen that might be the case, had been willing to give Sonny the second nugget, the one lost to Lake Adeline. But even that wasn’t enough for him; he wanted an equity position.

Having met resistance on that point, Sonny had called to tell the man about the arrows he’d painted with Tibbot’s blood. Directional arrows. Pointing the way to the man’s house. Sonny had said he had enough blood to paint a red X on the man’s front door if necessary.

That had left the man with the gold no choice.

Sonny had to go, and the man had found a simple way to get rid of him.

He’d followed Sonny and had seen him go into the New York Shock Exchange only to come out a short time later. The brevity of Sonny’s stay at the club had struck the man as odd. He’d tailed the Las Vegas killer to Truckee. Sonny had done a fine job killing Hale Tibbot, and he might have been more watchful in an urban setting like the one he called home, but on the mountain roads of the Sierra with their sharp turns, steep descents and precipitous drop-offs, the Las Vegas killer drove like a little old lady. Keeping his eyes on the road, two hands on the wheel and a heavy foot on the brake.

Sonny never thought to look for someone following him.

The man had seen the fruitless day Sonny had spent trying to find someone at a house in Truckee. After that and making the scary drive back to Goldstrike in the gathering darkness, the man thought Sonny would have needed more than a few minutes to ease his frustrations.

He went into the New York Shock Exchange and asked the bartender if he’d seen his friend, giving him a description of Sonny. The bartender said he had, of course, and when the man said he was sorry he’d missed him, the bartender told him Sonny had said he’d be back later.

The man expressed his regrets that he wouldn’t be able to wait. He asked what Sonny had been drinking and smiled when he heard the answer. He gave the bartender three hundred-dollar bills, one for himself, the other two to buy drinks. Told the bartender to give Sonny shots of his best stuff, Booker’s if they had it. The bartender said they did. The man told the bartender to say the drinks were on the house; he’d let Sonny in on the joke later.

The big tip bought compliance.

Thing was, the standard alcohol load in, say, Jack Daniels was forty percent.

In Booker’s, it was sixty-two percent. More than half again as much, but oh so smooth.

A bump like that would hit hard, and it had.

But not as hard as the man wanted to hit Sonny at that moment. He wanted to make the miserable prick suffer. If he had it to do again, he’d hit Sonny just hard enough to stun him, roll him out of the boat and into the lake. Let him feel the water’s bone-chilling cold. Have Sonny try to swim back to the boat and rev the motor just enough to stay out of reach. Let the horror of his situation penetrate his alcoholic haze. Make him realize he was going to die.

And it was such a long way down.

But, damnit, he had made it too easy on Sonny. He was probably dead before he knew it. Hadn’t minded sinking to the bottom of Lake Adeline at all. Shit.

Now, the man covered in blood was the one who needed water. Hot water and lots of it. He’d have to clean himself off. Clean his house. He was certain the blood soaking him had belonged to Hale Tibbot. Just as it had been used to paint the red arrows.

The man couldn’t leave a trace of it anywhere in his house.

But the first thing he had to do was minimize the mess he was going to make.

He didn’t have any idea of how he was going to do that.

Caught up in his predicament, it never occurred to him that Sonny might have placed a pint of Tibbot’s blood at the back of the man’s freezer, hiding it behind a leg of lamb that had months of frost on it.

But that was just what Sonny had done.

The killer from Las Vegas was no end of trouble.

Ron Ketchum stood at the stove in his kitchen making breakfast.

Keely said, “I should’ve known you could cook.”

“How could you have known?” he asked.

“You told me your ex didn’t like to do it.”

“Not entirely true. Once a year, she’d do a mean
kalua pua’a
in an
imu
, a pig cooked in an underground oven, at a luau. Lots of food, dancing and fun.”

“Should I look for a grass skirt?” Keely asked. “The
wahines
out there in the islands don’t bother with anything up top, do they?”

“Depends on how much they’ve had to drink. You applied a little Coppertone, consumed a pitcher of mai-tais, you’d fit right in.”

Ron plated two breakfasts of bacon, eggs and toast. Keely fixed the mimosas.

She said, “You’ll have to regale me with those stories another time.” She sampled Ron’s cooking, gave it a nod of approval. “I had an idea about this guy your dad told you about. Well, not the one who died in County Jail, but the one who looks like him.”

Ron had told her about Nikos Sideris and his in-town lookalike as they’d showered together that morning, having saved any conversation about police work until they’d gotten out of bed. The blush was still on the rose.

“What’s your idea?” Ron said.

“First, you find the guy. Then you bust him on any plausible charge you can, being a mope in public, whatever. You do a hand-scan for his prints and —”

“I compare the scan to the bruises on Hale Tibbot’s head?”

“Yeah, just like that. When did you think of it?”

“When I was washing your back, I believe.”

“You were washing more than that.”

“True, but that was when I was thinking of my job.”

Keely smiled and topped off their glasses. They finished their morning meals, emptied the bottle of champagne, did the dishes and took a thirty-minute walk to burn off the calories and the alcohol.

Ron got into uniform. Keely dressed in a fashion she thought appropriate for a retired L.A. detective out for a day of leisure in a resort town. Tennis shoes, stonewashed jeans, peach polo shirt, linen sport coat the color of wet sand. Semi-auto in a holster at the small of her back, covered by the coat.

“You have paper for your weapon?” Ron asked.

“Got my CCW license before I left LAPD. I don’t go anywhere unarmed.”

Ron nodded. “If you’d like to get in any range practice here, just let me know.”

“I still shoot better than you do, I’ll bet. I won’t take out any citizens, if that’s what worries you.”

“
You’re
a citizen, but it’s good to know you’ve kept up your skills. Are you going to let me know what you’ll be working on today?”

“Not yet,” she said and gave him a kiss. “I’ll see you when I know something new.”

“You’re going to get together with Tall Wolf?”

“Later. First, I’m going where no man should ever tread.”

John Tall Wolf was sitting in front of his laptop when Keely Powell called.

“You care to check out a women’s hair salon with me?” she asked.

“Not particularly.”

“Didn’t think so. Just called to be polite. You working anything new this morning?”

Tall Wolf said, “I’m going to see if I can get together with Tibbot’s housekeeper, Glynnis Crowther, for a few minutes. She lied to Chief Ketchum and me when we questioned her on Monday.”

“What kind of lie?” Keely asked.

“I wanted to know if Ms. Crowther knew about any overnight guests Mr. Tibbot might have entertained. She said she wouldn’t know anything about that. She’d been truthful as far as I could tell before that.”

Keely said, “Overnight guest, huh? Our phantom hair comber. Our possible witness.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” John asked.

“You’ve got something on Ms. Crowther you didn’t have the other day? Something that might get her to cooperate.”

“I do.”

“Mind if I come with you?” Keely asked.

“You want to be the good cop or the bad cop?”

Keely laughed. “Let’s play it by ear.”

“I’m at the Marriott, if you want to swing by.”

“You’ll be the big guy in the sunglasses?”

“The big
modest
guy in the sunglasses.”

Keely laughed again. “Yeah, I keep forgetting that part. See you soon.”

John clicked off his phone. He looked back at the e-mail he’d received that morning from the late Hale Tibbot’s personal accountant. David Kaufman had provided the special agent — who’d queried him — with a list of the household help who’d serviced the material needs of Tibbot when he was in residence at his home in Goldstrike.

Being a man of some sophistication, Tall Wolf had opted to call Tibbot’s personal chef first. Dana Parisi had been pleasantly cooperative. Mr. Tibbot had been wonderful to her, had matched her salary dollar for dollar with money she could use to open her own restaurant. They’d been halfway to her goal when he … Well, she’d be happy to help law enforcement catch his killer.

Tall Wolf’s questions of her were simple. Had she ever prepared, say, late night snacks for Mr. Tibbot and a friend? She had, Ms. Parisi said. Did she know the names of any of Mr. Tibbot’s friends, the ones who spent the night under his roof? She was sorry, she didn’t. Did Ms. Glynnis Crowther know that Mr. Tibbot had overnight company at his Goldstrike house? Of course, she did, Ms. Parisi told him.

“I doubt anyone sneezed in that place without her knowing about it,” Ms. Parisi elaborated.

“Would it be reasonable to think Ms. Crowther knew the names of anyone who sneezed there?”

“Let’s put it this way. Glynnis was the one who told me the dinners and the snacks that Mr. Tibbot’s guests preferred, so I could plan my menus accordingly.”

“Very thorough,” Tall Wolf said. “I suspect she might know a name or two.”

“Me, too. She’s too anal retentive to tell me. Maybe you can do better.”

There was a poorly hidden note of glee in Ms. Parisi’s voice.

“I’ll bet I can,” he said.

Because now he had evidence that Glynnis Crowther had lied to a federal agent.

Tall Wolf uploaded a copy of David Kaufman’s e-mail and the notes he’d made of his conversation with Dana Parisi to a secure cloud server. One not belonging to the federal government and not accessible by Coyote. He closed his laptop, thinking that the Internet had replaced shoe leather as an investigator’s tool of choice.

He was standing outside the Marriott’s main entrance when Keely Powell pulled up.

She lowered the passenger side window, leaned over and asked, “Mr. Modesty?”

Keely brought up the subject that was too sensitive to discuss with Ron Ketchum.

She asked John Tall Wolf, “You think, maybe, Clay Steadman hired someone to kill Hale Tibbot?”

The two of them were headed to the house the late real estate mogul had rented to Glynnis Crowther below market rate. David Kaufman, Tibbot’s accountant, had provided Tall Wolf with a list of perks he’d provided to his employees.

Tall Wolf said, “It’s a possibility … I never liked his movies enough to extend him a presumption of innocence.”

Keely laughed.

“Me neither. Does that mean we’d feel more kindly to someone whose movies we did like? If so, who?”

“Paul Newman,” Tall Wolf said.

“Good one. We’d have given him a break just because we’re fans?”

“No. Well, maybe. Newman’s characters were always cool. But they were flawed, too. I could see him getting booted out of a political office and laughing about it. Like he’d been expecting it all along. He’d probably walk out the door and say something like, ‘About damn time.’”

Keely looked at Tall Wolf and laughed. She agreed.

Tall Wolf said, “I don’t see Clay Steadman doing that. He’s too smart to personally gun down someone challenging his alpha male status — the way his movie persona would — but I can see him hiring the job out.”

Keely liked the way Tall Wolf thought.

“How old are you?” she asked.

He told her. Not yet forty. She was right, too damn young for her.

He had the grace not to ask why she’d asked, though.

So maybe there was something to being a cougar after all.

“How about Walt Ketchum?” Keely asked.

“I don’t think he did it, from what I’ve read about him. If he’d killed Tibbot, it would have been a more straightforward, old-fashioned crime. A shooting. He’d probably call 911 to turn himself in. The responding cops might find him with his feet up on Tibbot’s desk and a glass of the man’s whiskey in his hand. Does that square with what you know of him?”

Keely pulled to a stop in front a small detached house with flower beds out front.

A Pinnacle Security sign on the lawn, too, Tall Wolf saw.

Keely told him, “I’ve actually met the man a couple of times. Quite the character. A real-life example of how a lot of bad-cop stereotypes get started. He retired on April 30, 1992, the first full day of the Rodney King riots. He quit when Chief Daryl Gates wouldn’t let LAPD go out and kick ass. ‘Gun the rioting bastards down,’ to use Walt’s words.”

“Really?” Tall Wolf asked.

“Oh, yeah. He told me his parting words to his commanding officer were, ‘See if you can send a mob by my house. I’ll show you how to handle this thing.’”

“A wish that went unfulfilled, I take it.”

“Yeah, but my point is, I think you’re right. Walt would have handled things head on.”

“You almost sound as if you like the man.”

Keely nodded. “I do have a bit of soft spot for him. He told me, in a private moment, he’d rather see his son with me than with his wife, Leilani.”

Tall Wolf was not about to touch that one.

He said, “Let’s go talk with Ms. Crowther.”

Ron Ketchum read the autopsy report on Hale Tibbot he’d received from Dr. Perri Dahlgren’s office. Circulatory system collapse due to severe blood loss was listed as the official cause of Hale Tibbot’s death. A contributing cause, initially unsuspected, was a displaced cervical vertebra. Not fractured,
displaced.
Like maybe the killer was some sort of psychotic chiropractor.

Dr. Dahlgren suggested that Tibbot might have suffered traumatic paralysis and had been unable to defend himself from his attacker.

Helluva combination, Ron thought. The killer wrecked the guy’s neck from behind and then drained him of half his blood. Tibbot could have been alive, maybe even conscious, as he’d bled out. Even if he hadn’t been able to feel what was happening to him, he might have
known
he was being murdered.

For who knew how long.

Ron wanted to get the bastard more than ever.

He was just about to call for Sergeant Stanley when there was a knock on his door and the sergeant stepped into his office. “Sorry to bother you, Chief.”

“That’s all right, Sarge. I was just going to call you.”

“Something you need?”

Ron nodded. “Please get in touch with LAPD. Ask them if we might have a copy of their booking photo for a man named Nikos Sideris.” He spelled the name and the sergeant took it down. “If there are photos from more than one arrest, I’d like the one where my father and his partner Paul Martin were the arresting officers. If the LA cops ask, tell them it’s relevant to a homicide case we’re working.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was there something you wanted to see me about?” the chief asked.

“Mayor Steadman would like to see you in his office, Chief.”

Glynnis Crowther took a peek through the look-see in her front door, saw John Tall Wolf and Keely Powell and said, “What do you want? Do you have a warrant?”

“No,” Tall Wolf said. “Would you like me to get one? I can leave my colleague here while I do.”

Keely gave the visible rectangle of Glynnis’ face a cheerful wave.

“I don’t have anything more to tell you,” Glynnis said with a whine.

“I believe you do,” Tall Wolf told her. “If you insist you don’t, I’ll have to arrest you for lying to a federal agent.”

“But I didn’t —”

Tall Wolf held up his hand. “Don’t do it again. That would be a separate count. Under Title 18 Section 1001 of the United States Code, you can be tried for each offense.”

“Five years for each count, right?” Keely asked.

“Eight, if there’s domestic or international terrorism involved,” Tall Wolf said.

“Shows you how serious this is,” Keely told Glynnis.

Tall Wolf summed up, “I’ve already got you on one count. You sure you don’t want to talk?”

The look-see closed. The door opened. Tall Wolf and Keely stepped inside.

Appropriate to a housekeeper’s domicile, the place was spotless.