“How does that inform your investigation?” she asked rhetorically.
“It goes to state of mind of the deceased. Let’s say he met with Caroline Vetta. Let’s say when he left her, she was very much alive. Let’s say he then learns of her death, her brutal death, and understands the system well enough to know he’s going to be first in line. This puts him in a difficult, even desperate situation. He’s assuming someone like the sergeant is coming after him. He still has the step calls to make. That may sound absurd, but recovering addicts get focused, Sheriff. They get into the program, and for some, it’s all they know. All they live for. He’s there in Sun Valley to get a job done. Maybe he trespasses on that agent’s property. Maybe he’s contemplating making contact, but also fearing the word is out ahead of him. His state of mind is fragile. He’s in the process of rebuilding, redefining himself. Someone shooting at him. Who knows how he might react to that? My informed guess is: he’d walk away. He might return another day, far into the future, to make that step call, but he’s not going to press it. Contact would have started and stopped right there. If the agent had then contacted him, would he have agreed to meet? I think so, yes. And remember: he’s full of forgiveness and in need of forgiveness. Despite being shot at, I doubt he’d be suspicious of the meeting.”
“He’d walk right into it.”
“It’s possible. The point being, he’s in an almost naïve state. That first year in recovery . . . it’s kind of a pink cloud. He could have walked right into anything, his guard down. And by the look of it, that must be close to what happened. Someone snuck up on him and dispatched him. He was a very big man. We both know it had to be a decisive blow and executed without warning. Gale had his back to the killer and did not expect the blow. I think both are important considerations for you.”
Walt found himself jotting down notes. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.” “Have you found the crime scene?”
“We have not.”
I was denied the warrant
, he thought.
“Consider this an act of stealth,” she said. “I can’t imagine the area was well lit. I would think there would have been obstacles to hide behind in order to creep up quite close, both unseen and unheard. The sergeant said you’d found his rental in the woods. But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to sneak up like that in the woods.”
“Maybe the killer was the one hiding, and Gale happened across him.”
“A lot of things to consider.”
“He wouldn’t have necessarily known his killer, would he? Coming up from behind like that.”
“I’d consider that two different ways: the first, it was a random attack; possible, I suppose, but a blow like that . . . a single, killing blow . . . implies intent. Second, if it was in a remote location where he didn’t hear or see the killer, and I may be being a city girl here, but that suggests to me he was led there, invited there. It suggests, to me at least, premeditation.”
“Someone he knew.”
“I’m not always right. I’d be making a lot more money if I were.”
He grinned at the screen, his own image displayed in a tiny window in the upper left corner. “It’s helpful.”
“I hope so. I don’t mean to confuse your investigation.”
“To the contrary.”
“The sergeant and I . . . we’re here if you need us. Available any time.”
“If Boldt put you up to this, he must suspect it connects to Vetta.”
“I can’t speak for the sergeant.”
“Did he tell you about the nursery? About our witness?”
“He did.”
“And your opinion? Can I trust her? Can I trust what she saw?”
“She has everything to lose by lying to you.”
“That’s how I saw it.”
“The dumping of the body. I’m not real clear on that. On the one hand we have a physically powerful assailant, possibly premeditated; on the other, a roadside dumping. We see such dumping along secluded highways, certainly. Easily accessible by vehicle. Someplace people don’t frequent. I suppose this location of yours fits with that. But the way the sergeant described it, there are a lot more places over there to dump a body than alongside the valley’s only traffic artery. From what your witness said, the driver of that truck didn’t appear to dump something so much as collect something.”
“That’s one way to read it.”
“The sergeant mentioned a carjacking. A viable scenario, certainly. Athletes carry baseball bats in vehicles. It would have presented itself. It fits with premeditation and the dumping of the body.”
“But then we’re faced with a single set of tire tracks. Just the one set. And if what she saw is what she saw, then that truck didn’t dump him, and I don’t even know what that means,” he said, exasperated. “I suppose she got it wrong, the one set of tracks being the key.”
“Possibly. Witnesses are, if anything—”
“Unreliable,” he said. “We’re going around in circles. Besides, I have a suspect. The blood evidence from Wynn’s shoes is going to come back compatible with Gale. When it does, it’s going to be about means, not motive.”
“I wouldn’t be looking too closely at Vince Wynn for this,” she cautioned.
He didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted to disconnect the call.
She volunteered, “Of all the people, Gale’s agent would have known better than anyone the degree of threat Martel Gale represented. The kind of trouble he could make. He saw him through the assault trial. The conviction. He saw him on the playing field. All the trouble in the locker room.” She’d done her homework. “Gale had forty pounds and several inches on Vince Wynn. Wynn showed his weapon of choice in his backyard: you don’t hunt a lion with a BB gun. You don’t take on Gale with a baseball bat. More like a double-barreled shotgun. I went over this with the sergeant. It took some convincing. I realize the evidence—circumstantial and maybe otherwise—points you in a certain direction, and far be it from me to contest evidence. But if I had to describe his killer, premeditated or not, I would classify him as . . . reluctant. I realize that implies contradiction, but the other way to explain that single blow is as a crime of passion—a final, life-ending, flash of anger and rage, so intense that it required but a single strike. It happened in a single strike, a blow perhaps never intended to kill.”
“That is contradictory,” he said.
“Maybe I’m just trying to cover myself.” She laughed, somehow finding it amusing.
Walt felt uncomfortable. He was thinking maybe a woman could deliver a blow like that—an incredibly angry woman—angry at men like Martel Gale who had a record of violence against women. Never mind that it had been a single blow—the human being was capable of extraordinary acts of violence.
He wondered if Kira Tulivich had played high school softball, or if her family home was heated by wood, as so many homes in the valley still were. And if so, who in her family wielded the ax.
34
A
fter putting in a call to Royal McClure, and summoning his nephew, Kevin, to his offices, Walt returned to the Incident Command Center at Fiona’s request.
“It’s done,” she said.
Walt sat down next to her and trained his eyes on the room’s central, flat panel display.
“It’s better up there on the wall,” she explained, “because of the viewing distance. I didn’t have time to make everything perfect. The stop action helps—it being all jerky.”
She clicked the play button and Walt watched the three seconds of choppy video.
“Amazing,” he said.
“You think so?”
“Is that even Ketchum?”
“A Seattle street. But I cut and pasted the signs in and they make it familiar enough to trick the eye, I think.”
“Thank you.”
“It was fun. A different kind of challenge.”
“Do you mind showing me how to run it?”
“I can do it for you.”
“Better if I do it,” he said. “There’s a psychology involved.”
“Whatever you want,” she said. She walked him through the operation of the video software, which turned out to be straightforward, and in turn caused him to wonder why she’d offered to stay and help out. The only thing he could think of was that she wanted to eavesdrop, to stay as current on the investigation as possible, and it troubled him.
“Where’d you go?” she said.
He grimaced. “Right here.”
“I don’t think so.”
“A lot on my mind.”
“You went cold all of a sudden.”
He hated being so easily read. “Did I? It wasn’t intentional.”
Nancy saved him by knocking, and opening the ICC’s door. “Kevin’s on his way. I heard back from McClure and he’s e-mailed your request. And Brandon told me to tell you he’s here—the person you wanted.” She knew better than to name names.
Fiona stood, looking down onto Walt, and said, “Good luck. I guess. It being my laptop, I’ll need it back, so I’ll wait in the break room.” She was fishing for his invitation to remain in the room with him.
“Thank you,” he said, irritating her. To Nancy he said, “Okay. Have Brandon send him in. I want him one-on-one.”
G
illy Menquez entered the ICC sheepish and confused, clearly overwhelmed by the room’s size and the abundance of high-tech audio/visual equipment. He joined Walt at the front table where Fiona had set up her laptop. The video window on the overhead screen was black.
“What’s this about, Walt?”
“I was hoping maybe you could tell me.”
Gilly sat down in the chair Fiona had been occupying, alongside Walt. He kept his hands clenched tightly in his lap.
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he said.
“I gave you a break, Gilly.”
“I know that. Appreciate it, Sheriff.”
“And how do you repay me?”
Gilly couldn’t bring himself to look at Walt. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Think before you say anything, Gilly. There are no lawyers involved at the moment. That can change.”
Gilly dared a glance, but couldn’t hold the eye contact.
“Are you drunk, Gilly? Right now, I mean? Have you been drinking?”
“Two beers. I swear that’s all. I’m fine.”
“I need you in your right mind.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Okay then,” Walt said. “That’s going to go down in the statement.” Walt scribbled a note.
“What are you talking about?”
“Are you going to mess with me, Gilly?”
“I swear, Sheriff, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ten, fifteen years ago, a person in my position would have just beat the crap out of a person in your position. It wouldn’t have been this way.”
“I don’t mean to make you angry, Sheriff.”
“Some things we can’t help.”
That seemed to hit deeply.
“Are you going to tell me about it, or am I going to have to explain it to you?” Walt asked.
“I . . . don’t . . . know what you’re talking about.”
Walt took a deep breath and spoke in a harsh, faint voice. “Damn you, Gilly.”
Menquez ventured another look, but again couldn’t maintain it.
“The first time I suspected something,” Walt explained, “was when I saw how thick the forest was over the SUV—Gale’s rental. You said you’d picked up the heat signature from it. I don’t think so. If everyone hadn’t descended on the site at once, maybe I’d have spotted your tracks by daylight. You knew that about me—my tracking skills. I should have understood how it was you failed to hold them all back from the scene. Should have seen through that.”
“Sheriff, I . . .” He hung his head.
“Putting the ATM card back. That was quick thinking.”
“I don’t know nothing about any of this, Sheriff.”
“But it was a stupid thing to do. You could have just thrown it out. Tossed it into a dumpster. But I imagine that’s when it began to unwind for you: how to make it look like you’d just come across Gale’s rental, when in fact you’d discovered it much earlier.”
“Don’t know nothing about any ATM card.”
“Blompier mentioned the poacher case. The ATM card. The lack of a camera in that ATM.
Your
poacher case, Gilly—the case
you
handled. There were only a few of us who knew that particular ATM didn’t have a camera in it. You knew. That’s why you chose it.” Walt gave him a moment to absorb it all. “Not telling me about the SUV, that’s not exactly a crime. Not something you could go to jail for. Lose your job, maybe. But not jail time. It’s when you sobered up and realized how deep you were in this that you decided to return the card to the wallet, to let me find Gale’s SUV. You thought that card being found still in his wallet might make things okay. But we’ve been onto the withdrawals since they first started.”
A person couldn’t lower his head more than Menquez was now. “I got no idea what you’re talking about here, Sheriff.”
“You sure that’s the way you want to play this, Gilly?” Walt reached for the laptop. “I need to clear this up. I need to know what you found when you first came across the SUV. I need a clean chain of evidence, and you screwed that up for me. I can’t get that now, and you’re to blame. But you’re of value to me if you’re willing to come clean and tell me exactly what happened, exactly what you found, what you saw. You’re nothing to me if you play dumb like this.”
Menquez remained bent forward.
“Have you lost your job?” Walt asked rhetorically. “I suspect you have. Are you in jail? Not yet. Cut your losses, Gilly. Play it smart.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Gilly . . .”
He leaned into Walt and whispered harshly. “You got nothing.”
Walt dropped his fingers onto the space bar. The black and white video ran on the overhead screen, winning Gilly’s attention. But it played too quickly for him to see it for exactly what it was.
Walt hit the rewind button and played the clip again.
The screen showed an elevated view of a quiet street with the signs of Ketchum establishments lining either side. There was an Inter-Mountain Bank sign a block in the distance. The short clip played out as a series of stills—like from a bank’s security cameras. A Forest Service pickup truck entered the frame, moved down the street, and pulled into a parking space in front of the bank.