Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (17 page)

Rob thought a judge would refuse to issue a warrant for the Wheeler house, but it wouldn’t hurt to try. Eddy Redfern was an Indian. Dennis had been known to make racist cracks about Indians, not to mention blacks, Jews, Mexicans, feminists, and gays, with the occasional jab at dumb Swedes. Rob thought Dennis got his opinions from talk radio. Maybe they ran deeper than that.

“You’re talking to Tammy this morning?”

“Yeah. Mack made a ceremonial visit to her last night. He figured he owed it to the commissioner’s widow. He told her about Hal.” If she didn’t already know.

“I bet that’s a relief to you.” Earl sounded almost congenial.

“He wasn’t sure she took it in,” Rob said wryly. “I’d better get over there. They’re releasing her this morning. Can she use her car?”

She could, but Earl didn’t want anyone messing around in the garage, so he backed the rusty Toyota out himself and parked it in front of the house. He gave Rob the keys and Tammy’s handbag, which he’d found in the bedroom. No sign of a handgun in Tammy’s domain, apparently. Certainly not in her purse. That was good to know.

W
ILLIAM (“Digger”) Meek had been booked in Montana for simple assault the previous April. He had since disappeared from sight. The Kalispell detective who phoned Rob said Meek’s girlfriend had refused to file charges.

They talked awhile. Meek was a known associate of half a dozen white supremacy groups, but not a mover and shaker. He had once had the shit beaten out of him by a Colville tribal leader who heard him boast of grave robbing. Nobody involved in that episode, not even Meek, had been willing to file charges. He had spent six months in jail for an earlier assault. In his younger days, he had been fined repeatedly for possession of amphetamines. He was forty-nine years old. The Kalispell detective was sending fingerprints and an old photograph.

Some of these details Rob already knew, but he was glad to have confirmation. The connection with Lauder Point was tenuous, though, no more nor less than Chief Thomas’s word. The Fish Commission investigator had sent an e-mail confirming that they hadn’t been able to prove anything against Meek.

Rob brooded about the pothunter as he rode to the hospital with Tom in Tammy’s car. What was needed was a connection between Meek and Harold Brandstetter. Maybe Tammy would give it to him.

He waited for Linda Ramos outside the two-bed room while Tammy shed a few audible tears behind the privacy curtain and Tom said nothing much. Busy care-givers stalked the halls, some pushing carts laden with sinister containers or stacked linens. The reek of disinfectant hung on the air. Rob hated hospitals.

When Linda showed up, she looked tired. “My Mickey threw up all night.” Mickey was her five-year-old son, Miguel.

“Good God, have you taken him to the doctor?”

She gave him the pitying smile of an experienced mother. Mickey was on the road to recovery in the care of his
abuela,
she said, but
she
was exhausted. Not surprising. Besides dealing with a sick child, she had just moved over to the day shift.

Rob commiserated. He also filled her in on the latest developments. When she heard about Dennis Wheeler’s keys, she scowled. When she heard that Meg was busy sorting papers and books in a quasi-official role, she laughed aloud. “I like her. She was too polite to ask dumb questions while we searched the house.” She gestured toward the hospital ward. “What about this one?”

Rob glanced at his watch. “We give her five minutes, then we wring her dry.” He handed Linda the recorder. “Always assuming she doesn’t demand a lawyer.”

“The son is here?”

“Our dog-sitter,” Rob assured her.

Linda grinned.

Tom came out almost at once, said hello to Linda, and told them his mother was getting dressed. He’d brought her clothes and makeup.

“Is she okay?” Rob asked.

Tom made a face. “I guess so. It’s hard to tell. She wants me to stay in Klalo for a while.”

“Can you do that?”

He shrugged. “My boss won’t like it, but it’s not as if I’ve got a high-end job.”

“You going to college?” Linda asked.

He flushed. “I’m taking a class at the Culinary Institute. I want to be a chef.”

Linda gaped.

Rob said, “Good idea.” He tried to imagine how Hal would have reacted to a son who devoted himself to the perfect soufflé. Maybe that was the point. Maybe Hal had reacted and Tom had left.

When Tammy was finally ready to receive them, Rob wondered if he’d been wise to wait. She was composed and almost confident. The shiner gleamed purple beneath a coat of pink makeup base. He sent Tom off to wait in the hospital cafeteria.

He introduced Linda, who set up the recorder on the formica top of the bedside table, pulled a chair from beside the untenanted bed, and took out her notebook. She always made useful notes on visceral responses—eye dilation, clenched muscles, color rising and falling. She also indicated which questions she thought ought to be repeated.

Rob remained standing as he went through the preliminaries. When he read Tammy the Miranda Warning, she said she didn’t want a lawyer.

She was sitting in the “death-watch” chair with the pale light of day shining on her from the side. She wore pull-on pants and a flowered top. Her dim brown hair was neatly combed, but she needed a haircut. She kept her hands folded on her lap.

“I’m sorry to have to question you, Tammy.”

She inclined her head, self-possessed, forgiving.

“Tell me about Friday. When did you go to work?”

Her eyes widened, or the good one did. He’d surprised her. He was ready to bet she had meant to tell him she couldn’t remember anything.

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I have a four-day week. Hal wanted it that way. On Fridays, I shop for the next week at Safeway and the bakery.”

“And the liquor store?”

Her jaw set. “And the liquor store. Three fifths of vodka, two jugs of Collins mix, and a bottle of Jim Beam. Want the receipt? I have it here.” She tapped her handbag. “Hal always checked the liquor store receipt.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” And the clerk’s word. “Did you come straight home?”

“Yes.”

“Was Hal there?”

“He’d got up. He wanted lunch.” She snorted. “Two Hungry Man dinners and a quart of chocolate chip mint ice cream. Same thing every day. He was easy to shop for.”

“What happened then?”

“I made myself a sandwich and a drink—vodka Collins. Then I stuck the dishes in the washer and set up for dinner. I laundered some clothes.”

“Where was Hal?”

“In his office. He had DSL and spent a lot of time on the Internet.” She shut her eyes briefly, opened them, and said, “We were going out after dinner to the Timberland Tavern. I called my friend Betty Krause to see if she and her husband would be there. I don’t like the Timberland on Friday and Saturday. It’s too rowdy. Betty wasn’t in, so I left a message. Hal hates, uh, hated Betty. When I hung up he started in on me.”

Rob waited.

“He slapped me around.” She touched her black eye and went on, toneless, “I made myself another drink. When I worked up the courage, I said I didn’t want to go out, that I’d stay at home and watch a movie on the DVD. He slapped me around some more, but we were interrupted.”

Rob waited. He half sat on the second bed. Outside, an orderly pushed a metal cart heaped with soiled linens. The RA. system called a doctor in hospital code.

Tammy shot Rob a sideways look out of the good eye. “Somebody called on the cell phone.”

“Who?” He kept his voice unemphatic with an effort.

She shrugged. “No idea. A man. Hal went into his office and didn’t come out.”

“What time was that?”

She shrugged again. “Midafternoon. I fixed the pot roast and had another drink.”

“When did he leave?”

“I dunno. I was pretty foggy by then. I served dinner around six-thirty. He hogged it down, as usual, and then he complained about it, as usual, and somewhere in there he gave me a black eye. Oh, yeah, that was after he went into the backyard to check on the weather. He got a faceful of rain and stepped on a dog turd.”

Linda shifted in her seat and made a note.

“He yelled at me to walk the dog. Then he left.”

“In the SUV?”

“Of course in the SUV. Hal weighed three hundred and twenty-two pounds. You think he could fit into my Toyota? I shoved Towser out the front door, climbed into my night clothes, and got some ice for my eye and the vodka bottle. You know the rest.”

“The timing’s confusing me. When did he leave?” Rob stood again, walked to the foot of the bed, and turned back.

“I wasn’t looking at the clock.”

“After dark?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“He may have. I wasn’t listening.” She bit her lip. “Portland. He said something about driving to Portland.”

“Where in Portland?” It was an hour-and-a-half drive to reach Portland Airport, another half hour to downtown. If Hal had left before eight… “Where?” he repeated.

“I don’t know.” She drew a long, shaky breath. “After you showed up with Towser and the short woman, I dived into the bottle. I don’t remember anything after that. I was drunk, so sue me.”

“You were beyond drunk.” Rob could’ve bitten his tongue. The censorious tone was not useful. And not fair.

“I think Sheriff McCormick came by here last night, but I was still pretty muzzy. Is Hal really dead?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Jesus.”

Rob rolled his eyes at Linda. “Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer, Tammy?”

“Absolutely. I didn’t kill Hal, but I’d like to give the man who did a big, spitty kiss.”

“The man? What man?”

She shrugged. “Man, woman, whoever.”

Rob decided to come back to that later. “Tell me about Hal’s friends.”

“Hal didn’t have friends, he had toadies. Sycophants.” She smiled a gentle smile. “Hey, yesterday I couldn’t have pronounced sycophant.”

“His associates, then.”

“Hal was a bully. That’s a funny word, bully. Bully for you. It sounds sort of harmless.” Her hands began working, clenching the loose fabric of her tunic.

“He could be intimidating.” As soon as he made the banal remark Rob wished he hadn’t. The woman had been beaten routinely.

However, she went on, her face as serene as if he had not spoken, “A bully is not just intimidating. A bully enjoys watching intimidated people crawl to him. A bully gets off on hurting people. A bully has no soul.” She leaned toward him, very earnest, hands pleating the fabric. “This country is run by the bullies, of the bullies, for the bullies. Listen to our so-called foreign policy. Look at the mentality of business leaders. Listen to rap lyrics. Watch a football game.”

“You didn’t agree with Hal’s political ideas?”

“He had slogans, not ideas.” Her lip curled and she leaned back in the chair. “And all the wannabe bullies clubbed together to make him a county commissioner. I got drunk for a week after that election.”

“As I recall, he had strong backing in the Sport Fishermen’s Association.”

She nodded. “And the gun clubs and the loggers and every tavern between here and The Dalles, plus the preachers who were disappointed when the world didn’t end on January first of that year, and at least two talk show hosts. You want me to name names?”

“Yes.”

She did. They discussed Hal’s supporters, but there were no surprises. The board of county commissioners was nonpartisan. Neither major political party had endorsed Hal, nor had the unions.

Commissioners were paid only a token salary, so they had independent sources of income or they didn’t run. They tended to be lawyers or real estate developers. Some fools had seen Brandstetter’s unexpected victory as a refreshing change. It was a change, all right.

When she wound down, he said, “Where did Hal get his money?”

“For the campaign?”

“For that and in general.”

“He got some funds from right-wing action groups for travel and advertising. The gas station’s in a good place for tourists, so it’s profitable. He paid a manager to run it but stayed in the black, and then there was my income.”

A nurse’s aide stuck her head in the room, said oops, and withdrew. Linda flipped a page in her notebook.

Rob said, “You’re a freelance bookkeeper?”

“I’m a good bookkeeper. I have clients here and in Two Falls. Hal was always pushing me to take on more.” She gave a sharp, unamused laugh. “I kept the books for half the small businesses in town, but Hal wouldn’t let me look at our finances. He gave me a fucking allowance. I don’t even know if he had life insurance. Probably not. He thought he was immortal.”

Rob remembered Hal’s computer, still to be accessed. “What did he use, Quicken?”

“Yes. Password ‘Perot.’”

Rob suppressed a grin. “As in H. Ross?”

“He thought I didn’t know it. The sucker wrote his passwords down, kept them in the family Bible, the one in German that he couldn’t read. Not that he wanted to. At least he wasn’t religious.” She said that dispassionately, as if Hal’s religious sentiments would have been another blow but not a serious one.

Though Rob would have figured the passwords out eventually, knowing them would speed things up. “You didn’t access his computer at all?” He found that hard to believe.