Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (32 page)

Jack was silent. Rob waited. The office intern, a high school boy, brought bad canteen coffee. Rob considered asking him for a pack of cigarettes, but that would have caused a major scandal. The boy left.

“Maddie went off,” Jack said when he had sugared his coffee and taken a sip.

Rob waited.

Jack swallowed coffee and grimaced. “I’m worried.”

“Me, too.” Went off where? When?

Jack shot Rob a look he couldn’t interpret. Another silence.

At last, Jack sighed. “Lila’s making war.”

Rob groped in his memory. “Your sister-in-law?”

“Eddy’s mother,” Jack said heavily. “Feel like I’m living in a combat zone.”

When Rob didn’t comment, he added, “You gotta know, Madeline is a leader but she’s never been Lila’s chief. Lila don’t understand. She’s Nez Perce and not real traditional. She says Maddie stole her son from her. It wasn’t like that.”

Rob thought Lila was probably on the right track.

Maybe Jack read his mind. “Madeline can’t help it. She has that power over people. She never told Eddy anything she didn’t tell the others.”

“Searching for the artifacts in Emil Strohmeyer’s garage was his idea?”

Jack’s jaw set in a stubborn line. “She never sent Eddy on no secret mission.”

“Are you sure?”

“Maddie told me she didn’t. She don’t lie. Not Maddie.”

Except to herself, Rob thought sadly.

“But Lila keeps at her. And now she’s gone, Madeline, I mean. She was gone when I got up this morning.”

Rob said, “Gone. I’m trying to understand. Do you mean she’s gone off to think about what happened or she’s gone off to do something?”

Jack scrubbed his face with his hands. “Off to do something. She meditated. She’s
been
meditating since we found out about Eddy. This time, though, I think she had her a vision. You know what I’m talking about? Damn.” He started to rise.

Rob said, “I’ve been studying.”

Jack sank back on his chair.

“She was asking for a sign?”

“Yeah.” He said something in Klalo, shook his head, looked at Rob. “You’re not laughing?”

“No. It’s not a laughing matter.” In the silence that followed he could hear Jack breathing. At last Rob made himself take the gamble. “I’m about to ask Judge Meyer for a warrant to search Vance Tichnor’s property on Tyee Lake for the Klalo artifacts that were taken from Lauder Point. Do you know any reason I shouldn’t go in there with a team of armed deputies?”

Jack stared at him. “How’d you know?”

Rob said, “You’ve got to be open with me, Jack. That’s a dangerous man.”

“There’s an old burial ground up there.”

“Show me.” Rob got up and went to the map of Latouche County on the wall behind his desk.

Jack stood up in stages again. A lot of fishermen developed rheumatism. He walked to the map and stood looking at it. “It’s up on the hill. I can’t show you exactly. That wouldn’t be right.”

“Okay. Here’s the boundary between Vance’s land and his brother Ethan’s hillside. It follows the creek.”

“Yeah. The burial ground’s on Ethan’s property, looks down on Vance’s.” He didn’t touch the map.

Rob did. “Vance’s new house sits here in this meadow.”

“Camas meadow,” Jack interrupted with an edge of anger.

Rob waited. At one point, the camas bulb had been a staple food in the area. Women passed knowledge of good camas meadows from mother to daughter, as they also did of huckleberry patches and the stretches of forest floor where chanterelle mushrooms grew. The harvests were intelligent.

Jack walked back to his chair and lowered himself into it. “Old Man Strohmeyer was careful where he put his still, and he always let the women gather camas. And Emil, he was okay, too, and his son, Pete.”

“But not Vance.” Rob sat, too.

“Bastard brought in bulldozers. He didn’t even ask. When Maddie talked to him, he offered to
pay.”

“He missed the point?”

“Damn right. So she’s been watching him.”

It was one of Rob’s deeper convictions that the universe operated on irony. Madeline had been watching Vance Tichnor. For her own reasons.

Rob said with care, “I think Tichnor paid Meek and Brandstetter to steal the Lauder Point artifacts.”

Jack shot him a sidelong glance. Enigmatic.

“Did Madeline have Vance in mind as the collector when she was sending her young people out to find the artifacts?”

“She never said.”

Rob held onto his temper with an effort.

“Not at first. Not ten years ago.”

“That’s a relief.” And it was. So much so that Rob felt almost lightheaded. There was no point bawling out Jack Redfern for concealing information. “When did she start to suspect him?”

“August, for sure.”

“When Eddy disappeared?”

“Before that. It was something one of the construction crew said about the house.”

“A vault?”

“There’s a place in the house where he could hide stuff. She looked up the plans.”

“So did I,” Rob said grimly. But not until yesterday.

“And there’s a security system going in. One of them big electronic webs with lasers and shit.”

“It’s not in place yet?”

Jack shook his head. “Todd has a cousin on the finishing crew, one of the Welch boys.” Not a Klalo.

A spy, though. Another spy. “Madeline ought to be in charge of Homeland Security.”

Jack laughed aloud, subsiding into wheezes and wiping his eyes. Rob’s cell phone rang.

“Robert Neill,” he said, watching Jack master his amusement.

“Ethan Tichnor returning your call.” The doctor’s voice rang higher and lighter even than it had during the interview. “You said it was urgent.”

“Yes. Very urgent.” Rob covered the mouthpiece. “Please excuse the phone call, Jack. It’s Dr. Tichnor.”

Jack nodded, still grinning, as Rob rose and walked from the room. He ducked into the empty office Earl and Thayer shared. Earl was waiting at Meg’s for the testing kit to arrive, and Thayer was taking another look at the disturbed area behind the garage for something to do while they waited.

“Right, Doctor,” Rob said. “I’m about to search Vance’s house at Tyee Lake for the Lauder Point loot. I’ll have to trust you not to warn him.”

“That’s—”

“Will you listen? What do you know about DDT?”

A startled exclamation from the other end assured him he had Tichnor’s attention.

When Rob had paraphrased Meg’s article, Ethan said heavily, “Then Vance will show a level of DDT consistent with exposure to the organic items?”

“If he’s been handling them over the years, yes.”

“In the fatty tissues.” Tichnor sighed.

“I need your help, sir.”

“He’s my brother.”

“Yes, sir, he is. And you could hang up right now, phone him, phone your mother, phone your lawyer. But don’t you think it’s time to bring a halt to Vance’s obsession? He may have killed three men to protect his hoard. That’s sick. You’re a doctor. Surely you’ll agree that your brother needs help.”

A long silence. “You say three men?”

“Edward Redfern, Harold Brandstetter, William Meek. I think Eddy Redfern surprised Vance, and that the first killing was almost accidental, but the deaths of Brandstetter and Meek were carefully executed, and executed is the right word.”

Tichnor said something under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“You have no proof.”

Rob gritted his teeth. “I have enough proof for a warrant to search for the stolen items. As for the murders, I don’t have sufficient evidence yet to ask the judge for a Probable Cause to Arrest order, but I do have some proof. More will come in. Vance used his van, the Windstar, the night he shot Brandstetter. It was seen in Brandstetter’s driveway by at least two people at half past two in the morning.”

He heard Tichnor inhale sharply.

“Your brother is no genius, Dr. Tichnor.” Thank God for that. “He’s already slipped up a couple of times. Hiring Meek to take a potshot at me is just one example.”

“Now wait—”

“Please hear me out. I want you to come out to the lake with me and talk your brother into surrendering. If you won’t try that, I’ll have to take a team of deputies into his compound. There are construction workers in there. It could be dangerous to them and to us. And dangerous to Vance. Will you give it a try?”

Tichnor said sadly, “He showed me the dagger.”

Rob held his breath.

“You’ve got to understand. Vance never grew up. He was always looking for approval.”

“From your mother?”

“At first. Latterly, from anyone he respected. Maybe a year after the Lauder Point theft, he showed me a ceremonial knife with an obsidian blade. The bone handle was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I admired it, of course I did. It was beautiful. He never would tell me where he got it, just looked mysterious. Protecting his sources, he said. I didn’t think about Lauder Point. The news stories had all talked about the petroglyphs.”

That was true. They hadn’t gone into much detail about the organic artifacts either. Another nice irony.

Tichnor said, “It wasn’t until after I talked to you Sunday that I looked up the Lauder Point case. I saw a picture of the dagger on the website.”

Rob had scanned that photo with his own hands.

“So then I knew.” Ethan sounded as if he might burst into tears.

Rob thought Tichnor was sincere but there was no guarantee. “Will you come out and talk to him?”

Another pause. “Yes. I’m on my way.”

“Please don’t call your mother, sir, or your sister.”

Tichnor gave a shaky laugh. “Believe me, they’re the last people I want to talk to. Carol and I were supposed to keep Vance out of trouble.”

Carol? Rob swore silently.

As if he had read Rob’s disbelief, Tichnor said, “Carol used to be able to wind Vance around her little finger, but lately the roles have been reversed. I’m afraid my mother doesn’t understand the extent of Carol’s drinking problem.”

“But Vance does?”

“Yes. He manipulates Carol. I try to protect her. I’m coming now because I have to protect her from Vance.”

“She knows too much for her own safety?”

“I fear so,” said Ethan Tichnor. “I’ll meet you at your office within two hours.”

Rob said thanks to a dead telephone. He asked Reese Howell to send Dave Meuler to the Red Hat to check on Carol. Just in case.

When he returned to his office, Jack was looking at his map of the county.

Rob apologized for the interruption and explained.

“That doctor’s going to try to get his brother to surrender?”

“Yes.”

Jack heaved a huge sigh. Of relief, Rob thought. “That’s good. I don’t want Maddie caught in a fire fight.”

“And Todd?”

“Not Todd either.”

“Is he out there with the construction crew?”

“Taking his cousin’s place. They don’t look much alike, to my way of thinking, but Todd told Maddie he didn’t think Tichnor would notice.”

Probably not. Which didn’t mean Todd was safe. He was armed, probably, and in a reckless frame of mind.

Rob said, “Okay. I need to get that search warrant and organize my team. Backup,” he added when Jack started to protest. “Are you game, Jack? I want you to take Dr. Tichnor and me out there. Show us where Maddie is. I’m assuming she’s on the hillside that looks down on Vance’s house. I need to speak to her.”

“I didn’t talk to her this morning.”

“So you said. Is that where she goes?”

Jack nodded. “I been there with her couple of times.”

“I’m not asking you to show me exactly where the burial ground is, and I’ll keep my mouth shut about it.”

“What about the doctor?”

“He won’t know it’s there if we don’t tell him.”

Jack looked doubtful.

“He’s not a outdoorsman,” Rob said, using Tichnor’s own expression. “He wants to leave that hillside alone. No logging, no ski trails, no building. He told me that.”

“Yeah, for how long?”

One day at a time. “It’s his property for now. Don’t look for trouble.”

“I’m a peaceful man,” Jack said.

“Except about gill-netting?”

He grinned. “Hey, I’m peaceful about that, too. I just dip that old net peacefully into the water.”

Rob smiled and stood to shake hands. He suggested that Jack fuel up on breakfast or whatever and get his raingear, if they were going out to the lake. The weather was momentarily decent but a front was coming in from the west.

By the time Rob had dropped by Judge Meyer’s office and warned the sheriff and soothed his ruffled feathers, Dave had called from the Red Hat. Carol had not checked out of the motel, but her car was missing from the lot. Rob thought she must have driven out to Tyee Lake to confront Vance.

He picked up the phone and dialed the cell phone number for Akers Construction. The old man answered.

Rob identified himself. “Mr. Akers, I have to warn you that I’m going to execute a search warrant on Vance Tichnor this afternoon.”

Matt Akers gave a startled squawk.

Rob took a breath. “I want you to take your men off that site as soon as possible.

Another squawk, this time indignant.

“Yes, sir, I understand. Tell Vance you have an emergency at some other building site, that you’ll be back in the morning. Tell him whatever you think will work, but don’t warn him I’m coming.”

“Why the hell not? He’s a friend of mine.”

“Harold Brandstetter was a friend of yours, too.”

Akers cleared his throat. “Hal was a fine man, fine.”

“I’m taking Vance in for questioning in Hal’s death.”

Akers gasped. “What about that Meek guy? McCormick said that Meek killed Hal.”

“He said it was possible, Mr. Akers. I have reason to believe Vance Tichnor killed your friend. By this afternoon, I’ll have an arrest order from Judge Meyer to bring him in as a material witness. Is that the kind of trouble you want to mess with, sir?”

“I…Hal? You’re not bullshitting me, are you, Neill, because if you are—”

“No, sir. I think Vance Tichnor is a triple murderer.”

“Triple?”

“Edward Redfern, Harold Brandstetter, William Meek.” The list of names had begun to sound like a litany.

“Oh, God, okay. I’ll call my foreman.”