Bluetick Revenge Page 21

“In January?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “You think Bugg had something to do with it?”

  “He’s the obvious suspect,” I said. Bugg, someone associated with Bugg, or perhaps Skull or one of his local contacts.

  “This is getting out of hand. You want me to go up and interview him?”

  “He’s out of your jurisdiction,” I said.

  “The crime took place in my jurisdiction.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but don’t do anything. Let me think it through.”

  I said good night to Glen, again assured him that everything was fine, and leaned back in my recliner. Eventually I fell asleep.

  I woke up around nine with a mild hangover from the Jack Daniel’s. I walked into the kitchen, poured some orange juice, then swallowed four Motrin. I checked all the doors and windows to see if there was any sign of forced entry. Nothing. Whoever did it had a key or was very good with locks.

  After I’d had some coffee, I got dressed and walked the few hundred yards over to the home owned by my aging hippie neighbors, Luther and Missy. The dogs came with me.

  Missy answered the door wearing something with half moons on it that was either a dress or a nightgown. A dog I failed to recognize was at her side. At any given time Luther and Missy usually have three or four dogs and a couple of houseguests.

  “Hi, Pepper,” she said. “Come on in. Do you want some herb tea?” I stomped my boots on the steps to get the snow off them, then entered the home, leaving Buck and Wheat to play outside. Then I noticed that another woman, much younger, lay asleep on the sofa. She was covered by quilts, but her feet were sticking out from the covers and I could see she was wearing orange hunting socks. “That’s our daughter,” Missy explained. “She goes back to college in a few days.”

  “Luther around?” I asked.

  “He’s in Rapid City for a week,” she said. Luther plays in a rock band named the Stress Monsters, so he’s on the road a lot. They’re actually damn good, and I don’t know why they haven’t ever become more than a regional band. I guess there could be worse jobs than touring the American West and playing great music.

  I sat down at their kitchen table and Missy handed me a cup of herb tea. Red Zinger, I think. She sat down opposite me. I heard soft flute music in the background.

  “Did you hear those gunshots last night?” she asked.

  “That was me,” I said. I did not elaborate.

  “I’m sensing tremendous tension in you,” she said. Missy is into a lot of new age mysticism.

  “I’m dealing with some bad people,” I said. “Did you or Luther see anything unusual at my house recently? I had to go up to Alaska for a few days.”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you and Luther would let me know if you see anything strange around here during the next few weeks. If anything strikes you as funny or out of place, just pick up the phone. Don’t be afraid that you might be making something out of nothing.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not healthy for you to carry so much tension,” she said. “Your aura is the color of mustard. Why don’t you let me lead you through a guided visualization to help you relax?” What the hell, I figured. Why live in a hippie town if you can’t take advantage of its resources?

  She turned up the flute music and lit some jasmine incense and some candles. I closed my eyes and listened as she began to speak in a calm and somewhat monotonous voice. I don’t know how long I was “out,” but I felt much more relaxed when I left Missy and walked back to my home with Buck and Wheat.

  I looked at the dogs and said, “Do you guys notice any difference in the color of my aura?”

  * * *

  Later that I night was watching old fights on ESPN Classic. I was watching the first Ali-Spinks fight, one of my favorites. Ali was without question the greatest, but on that night in 1978 the 197-pound Spinks pushed Ali around the ring like an unrelenting bull and pulled off a stunning upset.

  I tried calling Jayne when the fight was over, but there was no answer. I thought about calling Kendra Carlson but decided against it. I would have been doing it for all the wrong reasons.

  The dogs started barking and I saw Missy walking toward my front door with her daughter. I invited them in.

  “This is Allison,” Missy said.

  I extended my right hand and said, “Pepper Keane.” They sat down on my couch. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.

  “Herb tea,” Missy said.

  “Beer, if you have any,” Allison said.

  I made a cup of peppermint tea in the microwave for Missy, then pulled two bottles of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from the refrigerator, handed one to Allison, and sat down in my recliner.

  “You’re home from college?” I said to Allison.

  “Just for a few more days,” she said.

  “Where do you go to school?” I asked.

  “Cal Tech,” she said. You could have knocked me over with a rabbit sneeze. I would have bet money that any child of Missy and Luther attended Berkeley. Or maybe the School of Arts at NYU.

  “What are you studying?”

  “Nuclear engineering.” Another shocker. Luther and Missy take great pride in heating their home entirely with solar panels and a wood stove.

  “Top ten percent of her class,” Missy added.

  “I’m impressed,” I said.

  “Don’t be. I have a photographic memory. It just comes naturally.”

  “Tell him,” Missy said to her daughter.

  “Mom says you wanted to know if there had been anything strange at your house in the past few days.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A few days ago I went jogging with our dogs and I saw a pickup truck on the road in the front of your house. There were two men unloading something from the back of the truck. One was very big and the other was taller than average height and skinny. It was a black nineteen ninety-four Dodge Ram fifteen hundred with Bridgestone tires and a dual exhaust. It had Wyoming plates.”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  “Would you like to know the license plate number?”

  “I would like that very much,” I said.

  40

  MANY PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS are former police officers. I had never been one and consequently did not have as many contacts in law enforcement as some others. But I had a few. Glen was the obvious choice, but I didn’t want to put him in the position of having to do something illegal. In a town where one-third of the voters have dreadlocks and smoke pot, his job was tenuous enough. He couldn’t afford to get caught doing something questionable.

  My second choice was a police lieutenant in Walla Walla, Washington. I had met Dick Gilbert a few years back in connection with another case. Like me, he had been a Marine. He was a chain-smoker, but if he hadn’t died from lung cancer yet, he would probably run the Wyoming license plate number for me.

  “Pepper Keane,” he said. “I haven’t heard from you in a while. You must want something.”

  “Just want you to run a license plate number. And maybe a criminal history on whoever owns it.”

  “Anything else I can do for you today?”

  “If you feel like it, you can send me a box of those Walla Walla sweet onions. I love those things.”

  “Give me the plate number,” he said.

  It was a beautiful Thursday morning. Unusually warm for January. Warm enough to run in shorts as long as I kept my upper body warm. I put on a T-shirt, then put a sweatshirt over it. The dogs looked at me, each hoping to be the chosen one. Taking both was out of the question—trying to control both took all the enjoyment out of running. Anyhow, since I was going to have to run with the Glock in my hand for the foreseeable future, taking even one dog was not practical.

  I headed up to Ridge Road. Once you get there, it offers about two miles of level road and a great view of Barker Reservoir. There is little traffic on it, and since I
was carrying a loaded handgun, I figured that was a good thing. I know of at least one runner up here who carries a handgun whenever he goes running, but in his case it’s for protection from mountain lions.

  The red message light was flashing when I returned home. It was Gilbert, and his message just said, “Call me.”

  I dialed his direct number. “What are you involved in?” he asked.

  “Somebody put a rattlesnake in my bedroom a few nights ago. This license plate number might tell me who did it.”

  “The truck is registered to a company called Wind River Locksmiths in Lander, Wyoming.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I called Lander PD and learned that Wind River Locksmiths is a trade name used by an ex-con named Monte Corliss.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Monte is sometimes known by the nickname ‘Mongoose.’“

  “That’s right. And he has a very impressive criminal history. It’s so long that I decided to scan it and e-mail it to you. You should have it already.”

  “Thanks. I owe you.”

  “Yeah, you do. I don’t know what you’re into, but this guy looks like bad news. Be careful.”

  I looked through my copy of Bugg’s address book and found a Wyoming phone number with “M.C.” written next to it. I dialed the number. The man on the other end of the line just said, “Locksmiths.” I told him I had dialed the wrong number, and hung up. Now I could connect Bugg with Mongoose even without Karlynn’s testimony.

  I checked my e-mail and reviewed Mongoose’s criminal history, which included a number of federal firearms convictions. He was thirty-seven years old, six feet tall, and 175 pounds, which was consistent with how Missy’s daughter had described him.

  I dialed Scott’s number. “McCutcheon,” he said.

  “Moe’s Bagels in forty-five minutes?”

  “Hey, Bobbi,” I heard him shout in a smart-aleck tone. “May I please meet Pepper at Moe’s in about forty-five minutes?”

  “Yes, you may,” I heard her say. “Bring back a half-dozen bagels and some cream cheese.”

  Forty-five minutes later I guided my truck into the parking lot of the shopping center in Boulder where Moe’s Bagels is located. I arrived before Scott, so I ordered a turkey-and-onion with Swiss cheese on a garlic bagel, and a large diet Coke. I was reading the Rocky Mountain News when Scott walked in. He ordered some food, as well as the bagels and cream cheese Bobbi had told him to purchase, then sat down across from me.

  I told him about the rattlesnake incident and Wind River Locksmiths. I said, “I figure the big guy was Anvil and the other guy was Mongoose. If Anvil was one of them, that pretty much kills our theory that he’s an undercover cop.”

  “Maybe not,” Scott said. “An undercover cop might do something like that, if he had to, to maintain his cover. Very few people die from rattlesnake bites, maybe one in one thousand. Maybe Anvil figured he could help Mongoose with the snake job without putting you in any real danger. Realistically, what’s the worst that could have happened? You would have had a swollen leg for a few days.”

  “Now we’re going on the theory that Anvil is a humanitarian?”

  “The bottom line is, we still don’t know who Anvil is, and we still don’t know if he told Bugg that he saw you with Karlynn.”

  “He saw me again at Bugg’s house,” I said. “I know he recognized me.”

  “You think he recognized you,” Scott said. “And even if he did, we don’t know whether he told Bugg about that either.”

  “The snake is pretty strong evidence that he told Bugg.”

  “We need to be sure,” Scott said. “If we go after Anvil and he hasn’t told Bugg about you, we could be stirring up a hornets’ nest.”

  “I’ve got rattlesnakes in my bedroom. I’m not too concerned about stirring up a hornets’ nest.”

  “Let’s say we beat Anvil and Mongoose half to death in a few hours. That still doesn’t tell us whether Anvil said anything to Bugg about you.”

  “Why would Bugg want a snake in my room if Anvil hadn’t said anything to him? How else would Bugg know about me and Karlynn?”

  “Maybe he never bought your story in the first place?”

  “All I know is, I can’t live like this much longer.”

  “If Bugg is onto you, you’ll be living like this until you kill him or until the feds put him and his entire gang away.”

  “We need Mongoose to talk,” I said. “If he says Bugg gave the order to kill that ATF agent, and he hired Skull to do it, Bugg goes away for life. Maybe even gets the needle.”

  “S.P.D.,” Scott said. “Slow, painful death. Mongoose won’t talk.”

  “Sure he will,” I said. “We just have to make sure he fears our version of slow, painful death more than he fears Bugg’s version.”

  I said good-bye to Scott. It was a little after noon. I used my cell phone to call Adrienne Valeska.

  “Hi, Adrienne,” I said. “Pepper Keane.”

  “Mr. Keane, what can I do for you?”

  “Can I buy you lunch today?”

  “I’m already involved with someone,” she said.

  “It would be a business lunch,” I said. “I’ve got some information you might want as part of your investigation of Bugg and the Sons of Satan.”

  “Why not call Agent Livingston?”

  “You’re better-looking,” I said. “If I have to have lunch with a federal agent, it might as well be you.”

  I met her about forty-five minutes later at a little Mexican place in Larimer Square, just a few blocks from Coors Field.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  I told her about Anvil seeing me with Karlynn in the mall, but that Anvil had denied seeing Karlynn for several months when Scott had questioned him at the bar in Longmont. I did not tell her about running into Anvil at Bugg’s house; I did not want her to know I had double-crossed Bugg or that I had a copy of his address book. Not yet. I did not tell her about the snake. As far as she knew, I had never met Bugg, and the closest I had ever come to having contact with him was when I had liberated his prized bluetick coonhound.

  “You think Anvil is working for some other agency?” she asked.

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “He’s been with Bugg for several years.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you care?” she asked. “Karlynn’s gone. You’re out of it.”

  “I used to be a prosecutor. I thought you might want to check it out. If Anvil’s undercover and you guys blow it for him, you could destroy years of his work and your own careers at the same time.”

  “We’ll look into it,” she said.

  We continued eating. I recognized a few people in the restaurant as lawyers I had known when I had practiced law. I tried to make small talk with Valeska.

  “What kind of name is Valeska?” I asked.

  “It’s Polish. What kind of name is Pepper?”

  “Poor white trash. On my mother’s side.”

  “What’s your ancestry on your father’s side?”

  “I don’t know. Irish or English, I guess. Someone told me Keane derives from O’Kane, but someone else told me it meant ’keen’ or ’sharp’ in medieval England.”

  The waiter brought the check. I snagged it and set my American Express card down beside it.

  “I’m not supposed to let you buy lunch,” she said. “The Bureau has strict rules about that.”

  “I’m not good with rules,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that,” she said. “From a number of sources.”

  “I’m flattered that you would check up on me. Who did you talk with?”

  “Some people in the U.S. attorney’s office. A couple of agents who don’t work in Denver anymore. Tim Gombold spoke highly of you. He said you’re very intelligent, incredibly persistent, and you think you’re funnier than you really are.” Gombold had been an agent in the Denver office for many years and was now the Bureau’s resident agent in Flagstaff. We had been friends a
long time.

  “I’ll thank Tim for that glowing reference. Did you also speak with Mike Polk?”

  “He said you’re a dick.”

  I laughed. Polk had been one of my law school classmates and had later been an agent assigned to the Denver office of the FBI. We had never liked each other.

  “Is Polk still in Alabama?”

  “Mobile,” she said.

  The waiter reappeared to take the check and my credit card. “There’s one other thing I want to tell you,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Even though Karlynn’s gone, I can help you get a search warrant for Bugg’s property.”

  “How?”

  “I scoped his house out three or four times before I stole his dog.”

  “Tim said you were the consummate professional.”

  “I can testify he’s got a meth lab on his property. Every time I was there I saw empty bottles of antifreeze outside the cabin. Lots of them. Every so often one of Bugg’s men would walk out to the cabin with a machine pistol to make sure things were okay.”

  “Can I list you as a confidential source if we apply for a search warrant?”

  “You don’t have to keep my name confidential. I’ll sign an affidavit, testify to a grand jury, whatever you want.”

  “It could put your life in jeopardy,” she said.

  “I could use a little excitement,” I said.

  41

  SATURDAY. THE SUN was just coming up. My brother, Scott, and I were rolling along a Wyoming state highway on our way to Lander. We had been on the road for several hours in my brother’s Jeep Grand Cherokee. The dogs were with Troy’s wife and kids. My truck and Scott’s Land Rover were parked in front of my house to make it look as though I were still in Nederland. The lights and the TV were on timers.

  Scott and I had spent Friday keeping an eye on traffic to and from Bugg’s house. We hadn’t seen any black Dodge Rams, so we figured Mongoose had headed home. We had discussed the pros and cons of visiting Mongoose and had decided that the pros outweighed the cons.

  My brother was driving and now he was raising some of the same issues Scott and I had struggled with two days ago.

  “Even if we get this guy to admit he hired Skull to kill Lowell,” Troy said, “he’ll deny it later. He’ll say he only confessed because we beat it out of him.”