Cruelest Month (22 page)

41

Mackenzie ran her hands back, fingers spread, through her hair
. She was Skyping with Ken Lee again, but she’d just woken up and the home video feed was a useful mirror.

“I’ve got your tracks on screen,” Ken Lee was saying, “and I’ve just imposed Sabotny’s over yours.”

“Anything interesting?” she yawned, stretching her arms and slowly rolling her head from side to side.

“You okay? I thought you were up and at it hours ago.”

“I fell back to sleep. Now I feel worse for the wear. What do you have?”

“Lots of stuff. First Sabotny. He was in town earlier in the evening. Looks like he had dinner at Outback, yet again. I’ve noticed that ex-military types think that’s the epitome of….”

“You’re ex-military. You wouldn’t go near any chain restaurant, especially that one,” she chided.

“Got close to dying too many times. Now I make sure every meal is worth eating just in case it’s my last. As I was saying, his vehicle was there for about an hour and a half, and then he stopped at that grocery complex on U.S. 31 for 20 minutes before heading back up 22. He was home for 15 minutes before going out to Moarse’s place. Looking at your track and timeline, you’d been in place quite awhile by then.”

“Yep, I was starting to go crazy. I’m not designed for surveillance work.”

“Your track is more interesting than Sabotny’s. All I can see is his vehicle’s movements. Your movements I can tie to Google Earth and know your exact location, even when you’re walking.”

“What’s so interesting about it?”

“I’m just getting to that. Eventually Sabotny leaves the Moarse place, and you plant the phantom cell. Then you hustle out of there, return to your car, drive around for a bit, then roll by again. Sabotny did sort of the same thing, only he headed south, then came back north. Then he does this really curious thing. He heads west and drives all over hell’s half acre before finally going back down to Traverse and home. You two probably passed in the process.”

“I did see a car or two. Not much moving up here at that time of night. What do you think he was up to?”

“Here’s me speculating. Sabotny does the deed on Moarse, goes off, then comes back to check on something, like to make sure the dude is stone dead. But surprise, the cops are there. Quick switch to panic mode. He’s wondering how the heat got there so fast. So he does a run, paranoid as hell, thinking maybe he’s being followed.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s good,” said Mackenzie. “I’d like the SOB to feel some of the terror he inflicted on my brother.”

“The downside is I don’t have his GPS signal anymore. The unit failed or he found it. My bet is that he found it. He doesn’t just ‘think,’ he ‘knows’ he’s being watched. I’ve told you before, baby, this guy is bad. He’s a killer, a psychopath. And now he’s feeling like a trapped animal. He isn’t going to feel safe until he finds and eliminates whoever’s after him. He’s going to take out anyone that looks like a threat.”

“I hear you Ken Lee. But what can he know? He doesn’t know anything about me,” asked Mackenzie.

“And that’s where we should leave things. It’s time to pull the plug, time to get out, time to find an exit strategy, and get your pretty ass out before things go totally to shit.”

“I don’t agree. He can’t possibly know I’m after him.”

“Do you know that for sure? One hundred percent for sure? No. And the other thing you don’t know is crazy. I mean, really crazy, smart crazy. You don’t know these people. That dude is totally wired and he’s going to use all his resources to eliminate the threat. If you found him, he can find you.”

“All right. I’ll think about it. So why did he kill Moarse?” she asked, trying to change the direction.

“Moarse was a liability. Whatever Sabotny needed from him was over. And it would have been a perfect murder. Drunk dies in sauna, someone finds the putrid body days later. Just another dumbshit, accidental death. But things don’t go down like planned. And now he’s on the hunt. Mackenzie, we need to get you out of there. Let’s bring in some pros, see if we can get enough on the dude to take to the police.”

“I want that SOB to rot in jail for the rest of his life, Ken Lee. I want him to be caged up with the other human garbage, wherever they put them in this state, Jackson, Marquette….”

“Good. Go to the cops. Tell them what you know. There might be enough to nail him.”

“Would they believe me? Do they have enough evidence to build a case, or did they screw up the scene? What if the sheriff is an old friend of Sabotny’s—and I’ve blown my cover?”

“Yeah, yeah. Lots of problems” Ken Lee admitted. “And the prosecutor might have gotten his degree online. Sabotny is going to have the best lawyers money can buy. But still….”

“You know what, Ken Lee, I like the fact that he’s crazy. I want to turn up the heat.”

“No, Mackenzie. We need to get you out of there.”

“I’ll say it again: how’s he going to find me?”

“Okay, okay. Give me a minute. I got it. When he looked up his old buddies, he was wondering about you. What happened to that skinny little girl, he says to himself? You’ve made yourself hard to trace, but he’s been trying. And don’t think you haven’t been noticed around there. That’s too small of a place. It’s not like Manhattan or L.A. You’ve got to come home, baby. We’ll come up with another strategy.”

“What’s all this ‘baby’ crap?” asked Mackenzie. “You’ve never used that term before, but it’s been creeping into our conversations lately. I’m not your baby. I’m not anyone’s baby. I’m a woman. And I’m not leaving until this is over.”

“I should come out then.”

“No. Listen. I appreciate all you’ve done, but this is mine. You can visit after everything is over. We’ll walk the beaches, drink wine, watch the sunset, the things couples do. But right now, just keep giving me the support. No more lectures. I’m going to figure this out and nail him myself one way or another.”

42

“How did your interview with Ms. Rood go?”

“Just give me a few more minutes,” Ray said, his eyes not moving off the screen. “Where is Simone?”

“She’s at home.”

“All this time?”

“I have a guest; flew in last night. He’s looking after her.”

“Sorry,” said Ray.

“It’s okay,” said Sue. “He needs to know what I do and the hours I work.”

“Sure that’s a good thing?”

“I was asking about your conversation with Sally Rood.”

“I just posted my notes. You can look at the video when you have time. In short, she’s not a morning person, and she has a certain ambivalence about law enforcement, especially when she’s pulled from the arms of her lover at an early hour.”

“I can relate to that,” said Sue, giving Ray a wry smile.

“I may be wrong, but I don’t think she’s involved in Moarse’s death. I believe her when she says that she didn’t come north again after we stopped following her. And we can easily check on her alibi if need be.

“Did you learn anything about Moarse that we don’t already know?”

“He didn’t like driving his Jeep during daylight hours.”

“Imagine that,” Sue laughed. “Hasn’t had an operator’s permit in years. Didn’t bother to update the tags on his Jeep, either.”

“Why should he?” said Ray. “Just a waste of good money.”

“I wonder how common that is?”

“More common than either one of us would want to admit. If you took a reasonable amount of care—not that most of these characters are particularly skilled at taking care of anything—I’m sure you could get away with it for years. But back to your initial question. Moarse, according to Rood, was some kind of builder who was crashing financially and had a major drinking problem. The one thing she told me that might prove to be of interest is an old friend Moarse reconnected with by the name of Ricky.”

“Last name?”

“She doesn’t think she ever heard it. But Moarse told her they were working a big deal.”

“Capone?”

“No, no Capone. Never heard of it.”

“So that’s it?”

“Well, almost. This Ricky has a large, light-colored car, perhaps an SUV that might be a Cadillac or Mercedes. No hint as to plate number or state.”

“Can we have the road patrol guys pull over every large SUV and ask the driver if his friends call him Ricky?” asked Sue.

“Only in Arizona,” said Ray. He sighed, stood up, and stretched. “I can tell we’re both way too tired given the direction of the humor. Let’s do some planning.” He lowered the whiteboard and retrieved the container with the markers.

“First, I’d like to see if we could establish the fact that Moarse was the killer of Vincent Fox. I’ll contact Fox’s daughter and see if she’s ever heard of him. We can also look through the surveillance tapes from the casino to see if he was lurking around the day Fox made the big hit. And, of course, did he act alone or did he have accomplices?

“Second, we need to know why he was murdered. Is it connected with the Fox crime or something else? We’re going to have to find out a lot more about Jim Moarse.

“And third, the phantom 911 call. Someone was watching this crime go down. They wanted to make sure we were directed to the murder scene. So why aren’t they coming in to tell us about it?”

“Okay,” said Sue. “This is how I would like to go forward. For the first item on your list, proving Moarse killed Fox: I’ll need to establish that the computer we found in Fox’s house actually belonged to Fox. That’s the easy part. Then I’ll search Fox’s house for evidence that placed Fox there or connects Moarse to his abduction. That’s the hard part.”

“Approach it like an archeologist, try to stay with the upper layers.”

“Ha ha. We also have to bring his Jeep in and go through the interior. I think we’ll get a match on the tires with the casts I made at Fox’s house. Just with that, there’s a lot of work to be done before we move onto the second part: why. I don’t even know what to say about your number 3.”

“Give me some time lines,” said Ray.

“The day’s going away, and I’m very tired. I’d like to start on the house tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?” said Ray. “It can wait till Monday.”

“Tomorrow, not early, by about noon. The area’s got to stay secured until I’m done. Let’s run one road patrol at night and two during the day. That will give us someone every shift to protect the scene.”

“Okay.”

“If I could have some help…. Brett, he should be learning this stuff. We’ll need at least two days, maybe more for the house, barn, sauna, a good look around the property, and to process the Jeep. We’ll have to cover his shifts with people working overtime.”

Ray nodded in agreement. “Until Monday afternoon?”

“No, there’s too much to do. How about Tuesday afternoon?”

“Tuesday morning is better. How about your weekend guest?”

“I’ll see how he and Simone get on. She has a really good sense of character. In fact, she might save me a lot of trouble.”

43

Mackenzie was back in front of the screen
, caught in another unrecoverable yawn.

“You still tired from the weekend?” Ken Lee asked.

“No, I’m okay. I slept about 12 hours last night and then got up early and went to TC for yoga. Good instructor. I hope I’m in that good of shape when I get to be 60-something. Ken Lee, I apologize about getting pissy yesterday.”

“No problem, I understand. Things have been….”

“Here’s what’s going on,” Mackenzie cut him off, “I don’t know what to do now. I’m back to not having a plan. I’ve made a couple of passes of the Moarse property. Looks like the local sheriff’s department is securing the scene night and day. On my last drive by, there were three vehicles, probably the crime scene team. The garage door was open with no Jeep in sight. They must have moved it to another location. I wonder what that’s all about?”

“Who knows what kind of stuff Moarse might have been into. I imagine the cops are trying as hard to figure this out as we are. And by now they’ve found the phantom phone. Bet that’s a real puzzler. What did you tell me the last major caper was up there—someone chopping down cherry trees? Lots of them?”

“Yeah, during the late winter. Made both the paper and TV. Some kind of revenge thing.”

“How’s the media covering this one?”

“Nothing yet. Not a peep. Local news seems to shut down during the weekend. Actually, I didn’t turn the TV on this morning, and there’s nothing in the paper. I imagine the sheriff’s department does a regular press briefing. I’ll watch the local news tonight.”

“I’m going to say it again. This would be a good time to say sayonara to all those pines and lakes you’ve been telling me about and get back to civilization. Let the local heat figure it out. Look at the facts. First, you’re breaking the law. You’ve observed a murder and not brought that information to the police. Second, Sabotny now knows that someone is watching him.”

“And I’ll say it again, too. He doesn’t know who I am. I’m invisible.”

“Are you? How invisible? You live in a little village. You’re new. In spite of all your precautions, people notice.”

“Like who?”

“There’s the mailman.”

“I get my mail in Traverse City or electronically,” she answered.

“Yeah, but the mailman drives by. He needs something for his brain to chew on as he covers his route. He notices the house is occupied. He sees you getting in the car. He wonders why you don’t get mail. He mentions it to his favorite waitress in town. She works at that cafe you go to; she recognizes you, and that night she tells her boyfriend…. Want me to go on? How about the UPS and Fedex drivers, the garbage man, the cop on the road patrol? How about the bag boy at the grocery who also sees what kind of car you climb into when he’s out collecting carts? How about the guys who upgraded your security system?”

“We hired a downstate company,” she countered.

“What if they farmed out some of the work to a local contractor?”

“Well, I don’t think so,” Mackenzie replied.

“Yeah, but you don’t know for sure. You don’t know anything for sure. I’m saying, you may not be seeing any of these folks, but some of them are seeing you. And now that Sabotny is tipped off, he’s trying to figure out who is watching him. Is it one of his neighbors? Someone with a view of his house?”

“Dozens of people have the same view I do.”

“And are all those houses occupied?”

“Well, no. Not during the winter.”

“So, he scans the environment and says to his old friend, the mailman, ‘Hey Herb, anyone new living along the shore on West Bay or up there on the hill?’ And Herb says something like, ‘No one permanent I’m delivering to.’ So Sabotny asks, ‘You haven’t heard about anyone new, maybe a woman in one of those expensive lakefront properties?’ And Herb thinks for a moment or two and says, ‘Well my brother-in-law put a dish on one of those trophy houses for some single woman. Says she must have big bucks.’”

“Ken Lee, that’s all just fantasy. You have a great imagination.”

“Yeah, that’s fantasy, but that’s the way things go down. Sabotny’s probably got a network of friends among the locals. Right now he’s looking in every direction. For Sabotny, this is a life-or-death situation. He’s on full alert. You’ve been so totally fixated on him, you haven’t seen anyone else, but lots of people have seen you.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“You know what I think. You reject that straight up. So I want you to go on full alert. Make sure your security system is working and always turned on. Keep weapons within easy reach when you’re at home. Any time you leave the house, go fully armed. Don’t be surprised if someone tries to run you off the road. Watch out for a car jacking. Carry that satellite uplink on you at all times so I know where you are. Hit the panic button if you’re in trouble.”

“How can I go to yoga?”

“You know the answer.”

“So now I’m a captive?”

“The game totally changed Saturday night. Maybe it isn’t a checkmate, but it’s close. You’re going to have to figure out how to escape.”

“What would you do?”

“Exactly what I’ve been saying over and over. Pull you, and put three big, ugly ex-Seals in your place. Figure out a way to put some heat on Sabotny. Get him to do something desperate and stupid, then figure out how to get justice for your brother.”