Inadvertent Disclosure (6 page)

CHAPTER 6

Back in Russell’s uncomfortable
chair, Sasha was heartened to find her coffee still warm. She wrapped her hand
around the mug while the deputy called Bricker’s to see if her tires had been
replaced yet. After reporting that the mechanic had replaced her windshield but
had had to send someone out to Hickory to get the replacement tires, he told
her it would be at least a few more hours.

“Sorry you’re stuck here for a
while,” he said, untangling the cord to his tape recorder. He bent down and
worked the plug behind his desk, feeling around for the outlet. Then he ejected
the tape from the recorder, wrote her name and the date on it with his pen, and
returned it to the deck. He depressed the “record” button and waited for the
reel to start turning. He cleared his throat and set the recorder on the desk
equidistant between them. He announced the date and her name, then gave her a
smile.

“Let’s do this thing,” he said.
“Ms. McCandless, what were you doing in town today?”

It looked like Russell was
going to skip all the formalities about name, address, occupation. Sasha
recognized the approach. She used it herself in depositions of fact witnesses
from time to time. By adopting a conversational tone, you could make the
witness forget she was being recorded. The result was more fully developed
answers, because she wasn’t choosing each word with care. For the first time,
she got the sense that the coffee-loving deputy might actually be a skilled
investigator.

“Well, I was in town for a
discovery motion before Judge Paulson this morning.”

“So, you’re an attorney?”

“Yes. I practice in
Pittsburgh.”

“What firm?”

“Presc.. .,” she caught
herself, “The Law Offices of Sasha McCandless.” The habit of identifying
herself as a Prescott & Talbott attorney was dying hard.

“So, who’s your client up here?
And what was the hearing about?”

She hesitated then decided to
answer. It was a matter of public record. “VitaMight, Inc.”

He waited.

“VitaMight has a distribution
center outside town. The commercial landlord, Keystone Properties, terminated
the long-term lease on the property with no notice. It’s a breach of the lease agreement,
so we sued. The landlord has refused to turn over e-mail messages related to
the lease termination, so we filed a motion to compel. The judge granted it.”

She was pretty sure the attack
hadn’t had anything to do with the interpretation of clause 14(G)(iii)(c) of
the lease, but she knew Russell had to cover all the bases.

“Why’d Keystone break the
lease?”

“I honestly don’t know. That’s
why we want the discovery—they haven’t shared the basis with us.”

He was silent for a minute. She
watched him try to decide if there was anything more to the discovery dispute.

He looked down at his notebook,
scribbled a sentence, and moved on.

“After the hearing, did you go
straight to your car?”

From his tone, she knew he
already knew the answer, but she hadn’t told him. Probably the other deputy—the
one assigned to the courtroom—had already filled him in on Jed Craybill’s
outburst.

“No. As I was packing up to
leave, Jed Craybill burst in yelling at Judge Paulson. Somehow, when the dust
settled, I’d been appointed to represent Mr. Craybill at an incapacitation
hearing that was scheduled for this morning. Mr. Craybill and I went to Bob’s
Diner to get a bite and prepare for the hearing. At the hearing, I argued that
the county failed to meet its burden to show that Mr. Craybill needed to have a
guardian appointed to manage his affairs, and Judge Paulson scheduled a hearing
and ordered us to brief the issue.”

Russell reached out with his
index finger and paused the recording. “Do you think old Jed’s incompetent?”

She shrugged. “I only met him
this morning. What do you think?”

He considered the question. “I
think he’s a cranky old coot.”

He nodded and started the
recording again. Sasha walked him through her visit to the court
administrator’s office, her conversation with Showalter, and her uneventful
walk to the parking lot. Then, she gave him a blow-by-blow of the attack and
described the two men to the best of her ability. Russell let her go without
interruption and stopped her after she recounted Maxwell’s arrival at the scene
and before she could describe the jurisdictional pissing match.

“Thank you, Ms. McCandless.”

He turned off the tape
recorder, popped out the tape, and reached under the desk to unplug the
recorder.

After depositing it back into
his drawer, he leaned back, tipping his chair on two legs and regarded her.

“I don’t know anyone by the
name Jay or anyone who matches that description. But the guy who got cold feet,
that sounds like Danny. Little guy, wild black curly hair. He’s pretty much the
leader of PORE.”

“PORE?”

“Protecting Our Resources and
the Earth,” Russell said. He suppressed a chuckle. “Gotta be Danny Trees.”

“His real name is Danny Trees?”

“No, his real name is Daniel J.
McAllister, III. Heir to the McAllister timber fortune. But after all that
timber money sent young Danny to college at Antioch, he grew quite the
conscience and has devoted himself to environmental activism. He finances PORE
with his trust fund.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “What
kind of organization is it?”

Russell pursed his lips and
considered his answer. Finally, he said, “A disorganized organization. For a
long time, PORE was just Danny and a few of his college friends wandering
around, passing out flyers about reducing, reusing, and recycling. The irony of
wasting paper on those flyers, which just ended up in the trash bins all over
town, seemed to escape them. But once the drilling started up in earnest, Danny
gained a focus. He’s got a core of, oh, I’d say, twenty, protesters who were
showing up at the courthouse fairly regularly to heckle the suits, until Big
Sky got the county council to tell Danny his permit applications were faulty.
That’s when they moved down to the public park near the municipal lot. Danny’s
folks have also chained themselves to a derrick here or there on occasion.
Nothing violent, though. Until today. Danny’s no dummy, though. He reached out
to some of the local fishermen, who are unhappy about what all the fracking’s
supposedly done to the fish. They teamed up and got a petition going. They’ve
been going to all the county council meetings, too. It’s not going to do them
any good, though. Most of the commissioners own local businesses, which have
seen a huge boom from the suits. The only hotel in town is booked solid through
2014. Folks are renting out their spare rooms. It’s like the Olympics are in
town or something.”

Russell clamped his mouth shut
all of the sudden, like he realized he’d been rambling. He looked up at the
metal clock on the wall. “Well, you got some time to kill. Want to pay Danny
Trees a visit?”

* * * * * * * * * *

Russell brought his Crown Vic
to a stop in front of an old Victorian mansion on the edge of town. The house
had once been gorgeous, but its grandeur was faded. Paint peeled down from the
outside walls in long, limp curls. Several ornate, hand-turned wooden spindles
on the curved porch were either broken or missing entirely. And where Sasha
imagined starched white lace curtains had once hung, grungy woven blankets now
served as window dressing.

“This is it,” Russell said, killing
the engine. “The McAllister mansion. Now home to Danny Trees and PORE’s
headquarters. This place is on the National Registry of Historic Places.”

As they stepped out of the car,
Russell holstered his service weapon and radio. Sasha stared up at the blighted
house.

“It’s a shame.”

“It is, and it isn’t,” Russell
answered, as they picked their way across the cracked walkway, dotted with
weeds. “It’s a big, expensive house. To restore and maintain it would cost more
than anyone around here is willing to pay. Danny may not be keeping up
appearances, but he pays the taxes and hasn’t let the place crumble to the
ground just yet. He says it would be wasteful not to use the house, given how
many trees were massacred—his word—to create it.” He shrugged and pointed over
his shoulder to a house directly across the street. “It’s better than what
happened to the old Wilson place.”

Sasha turned to look. It was
another Victorian, this one with a turret and wide wraparound porch. A
dilapidated gazebo peeked out from the backyard, mimicking both the
architecture and the current state of the home. Judging by the plywood nailed
over the front entryway, and the missing glass in the front upstairs windows,
it was abandoned.

“What’s the story?”

Russell rested his arm against
a stone lion guarding the steps from the street to the front yard. “Clyde
Wilson had a prosperous home heating business in the 1950s and ‘60s. He
installed oil-fired furnaces in a territory that covered the entire county.
That’s a lot of homes. But when the oil crisis hit in the ‘70s, he missed the
handwriting on the wall. Instead of branching out into electric heat, he just
clung to the idea that his market would rebound. Instead of cutting back, he
continued to spend money like he had an endless supply. Anything his girls
wanted, they got. His wife had family money, and they ran through it pretty
quick. So, old Clyde went and got a high-interest loan and pledged everything,
and I do mean everything, they owned as collateral. The bank called the loan
and they lost their house, their furniture, you name it. The house was sold at
auction to a developer who cut it up into apartments and rented it out. Over
time, the caliber of tenants he could attract declined and it ended up, well, a
flophouse. It’s condemned now.”

Sasha stared at the sad house.
“What happened to the family?”

“They moved to the wrong side
of the tracks. Clyde committed suicide and left his wife and two daughters
destitute. They squeaked by, barely. The girls have done well for themselves.
Their mom died a few years back.”

They started up the stairs to
the porch. The wood boards creaked under their feet, effectively announcing
their arrival, if the presence of the sheriff’s car hadn’t. The wide double
doors swung open, and a woman stepped out to greet them. She wore her long hair
in a braid and her peasant skirt billowed out above her bare feet. Sasha
recognized her from the parking lot. Judging by the spark of fear in the
woman’s blue eyes, she recognized Sasha, too.

“Melanie,” Russell greeted her,
with a tip of his deputy’s hat. “Is Danny around?”

Melanie blinked and looked over
her shoulder. She swallowed.

“Uh, he’s in the community
lounge. You wait here, okay?  I’ll get him.” She disappeared back into the
dimly lit hall, pulling the door most of the way shut, but not closing it
entirely.

Sasha glanced at Russell to see
if he’d follow the woman inside, but he just grinned and deposited himself into
a long wooden glider by the door.

After several minutes, during
which they could hear the murmur of voices floating out through the open window
just behind the glider, the door reopened.

The shorter man from the
parking lot came out onto the porch and pulled the door shut firmly behind him.

Russell stood. “Afternoon,
Danny.”

“Deputy,” Danny said with a nod.
He turned his attention to Sasha, “We haven’t been formally introduced. Daniel
J. McAllister, III.” He stepped forward with an outstretched hand and a wide
smile.

Sasha took his hand but didn’t
return the smile. “Sasha McCandless. Esquire,” she added as an afterthought.

The grin faded.

“So, Danny,” Russell said, “I
guess you know why we’re here.”

“Let me start by saying I don’t
condone violence in our movement.” His eyes darted between the two of them. He
was nervous and trying to hide it.

“What do you call attacking an
unarmed woman, Danny?”

He flinched. “That got out of
hand, and I’m truly sorry. But, don’t forget, I did try to stop Jay.”

Sasha raised a brow.

“What about the vandalism,
Danny?  Slashing tires?  Doesn’t that create waste?  Now four perfectly good
tires are ruined.” There was a hint of mockery in Russell’s voice, but Danny
either missed it or chose to ignore it.

“We have some new members,” he
told them. “Some of them don’t yet understand our philosophy fully.”

“That’d be this Jay character?” 
Russell rested a hand on the butt of his weapon.

“For one,” Danny agreed.

“Who else?”

“Well, he’s the main one, I
guess. We have had several people join recently. None of them local. They
responded to our web posting.”

“Jay was one of them?”