Bluetick Revenge (27 page)

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.

S
ATURDAY.
T
HE 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.”

“It’s not about getting a confession,” I said. “Even if we got him to confess on videotape, we couldn’t give it to the feds.
The judge would throw the confession out because we beat it out of him, and the feds would indict us for violating his civil
rights.”

“Then, other than retribution for the snake incident,” Troy said, “why are we doing this?”

“Retribution for the snake is good enough for me,” Scott said. “It’s about time our team went on offense.”

I explained it to my brother just as I had explained it to Scott. “Maybe he’ll tell us something we can give the feds, some
little fact, some little thread they can pull on until the whole thing unravels. Maybe he’ll help us fill in some of the gaps
in Bugg’s address book.”

“I hope so,” Troy said. “This was supposed to be my leg day. I don’t like missing leg workouts.”

Lander is a town of about seven thousand people near the Wind River Mountains. We arrived in the early afternoon, then drove
up into the mountains and found a four-wheel-drive road. About a mile down that road we found a clearing that was free of
snow.

“This will do,” my brother said.

We set up a big winter tent Scott had provided and moved all our gear into it, including three small camp chairs. Then we
took the cross-country skis off the top of the Jeep and laid them up against a tree. The only other people driving on this
road would be outdoor enthusiasts in four-wheel-drive vehicles, and they would assume we were just nice Colorado folks taking
advantage of the area’s winter recreation opportunities.

We gathered firewood and put some rocks in a circle to make a place for our campfire. Someone came by on a snowmobile and
waved at us. We waved back.

When we had gathered an adequate supply of firewood, we drove back into town and found Wind River Locksmiths. It was one block
off the main street. There was a black Dodge Ram 1500 parked in the alley behind it, and the license plate matched the plate
number Missy’s daughter had given me. There was also a white van with “Wind River Locksmiths” painted on both sides. There
was one entrance from the street and another from the alley. I told Troy to park on the main street.

“Now what?” Scott asked.

“We need to know how many people are in there,” I said. “Go in and ask them to make a copy of a key for you.” Scott shrugged,
got out of the car, and started walking toward the shop.

He returned a few minutes later and climbed into the backseat of the Jeep. “Just two guys,” he said. “One guy fits the description
of Mongoose perfectly. The other guy was just shooting the bull with him. I don’t think he works there. I didn’t see any weapons.
How do you want to do it?”

“Listen,” my brother said. “Here’s an idea. We tell him we have another SUV at our campsite and my dumb-ass brother locked
the keys in it. We need him to come out to our campsite and get us into the vehicle.”

I looked at my watch. It was three-thirty. “That won’t work,” I said. “He’ll want to take his truck, and we can’t afford to
have it seen anywhere near our campsite.”

“It will be dark in a few hours,” Scott said. “Why don’t you two take a drive? I’ll have a cup of coffee in that place across
the street and call you on your cell phone as soon as his pal leaves.”

“Works for me,” I said.

We let Scott out of the Jeep, then drove a few miles out of town and parked. “Have you given any more thought to the Jayne
situation?” Troy asked.

“Yeah, I think no child should have to live in a home where rattlesnakes drop in whenever they want to.”

“Snake is a delicacy in China,” he said. “The finer dining establishments will let you select the one you want for dinner.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Any other women on your radar?” he asked.

“Too many,” I said. “A therapist, a bush pilot, an FBI agent, and a Denver homicide detective that was in my high school Latin
class. Where were they when I was twenty-five?”

My cell phone rang. “Now’s the time,” Scott said. “Pick me up on the main street where we were parked.”

“Time to rock-and-roll,” I said to Troy.

We drove back into town and found Scott. He climbed into the backseat. “His buddy is gone,” Scott said. “I think we should
go in through the alley. We’re less likely to be seen.”

Troy drove around the block and into the alley, stopping his Jeep in front of the back entrance to the shop. The sun had gone
down. It was dusk. We put our ski masks on. “Keep her running,” I said to Troy. He nodded.

I attempted to quietly open the back door to the shop, but it was locked. I rapped on it a few times with my knuckles. As
soon as Mongoose opened the door, Scott zapped him with the taser and down he went. How Scott had acquired a taser, I did
not know. He’s always liked gadgets.

We carried the stunned locksmith to the Jeep and loaded him into the backseat. Scott climbed in beside him while I took my
seat up front. Troy drove out of the alley at a cautious speed, then turned and headed out of town toward our campsite, being
careful to obey all traffic laws.

Scott used duct tape to bind Mongoose’s arms and legs. He was regaining his senses now. He realized something bad had happened
and that his ability to move was restricted.

“I don’t know who you guys are,” he said, “but you’re fuckin’ dead.”

“If you say one more word,” Scott said to him, “I’m going to bash your skull in with this flashlight.” He picked up the flashlight
I had purchased in Anchorage. It had six fresh “D” cells in it.

By the time we returned to our campsite, it was dark. And with darkness came the cold. “Start a fire,” I said to my brother.
“We’ll deal with him.”

Scott and I helped Mongoose into the big canvas tent we had erected earlier. It was the kind hunters use for a base camp,
and it was tall enough that we could stand up straight if we were in the center of it.