STATE OF BETRAYAL: A Virgil Jones Mystery (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 2) (19 page)

Powell looked at the pictures. “That’s
Frank Brackett’s cruiser. Looks like he’s driving. So what?”

“Is he working today?” Virgil
asked.

Powell looked at his watch. “Not
any more. He’s third shift. Would have gotten off a couple hours ago.”

“You want to tell us about him,
Jerry?”

“Yeah. Brackett’s an asshole.
Consider yourself up to speed.”

“What makes him an asshole?” Murton
asked.

“For starters he’s the guy running
against me. He’s wanted my job for years and now he thinks he’s ready.
Personally I don’t think he’s qualified for chief kennel cleaner at the pound,
let alone my job, but I’m running out of time and he’s up by five points.”

“Hmm, I heard it was six,” Murton
said.

Powell ignored him and looked at
Virgil. “What about Brackett?”

Virgil told him about their
surveillance and the brief encounter with his deputy. “Do your guys turn their
squads in at end of shift, or do you have them on the take-home plan?”

“We let them take their cars home.
They’re not supposed to drive them if they’re not on duty, but some of the guys
do. You know how that goes…wife is at the mall, they’re out of beer or need to
run to the hardware or whatnot…I don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“But Brackett wouldn’t have any
reason to run lights and siren out of an abandoned industrial park two hours
after his shift ended, would he?”

Powell scratched the fat under his
chin. “No, I guess he wouldn’t. So you’re saying Brackett is the one setting the
fires?

“We’re saying it’s a possibility,
Jerry,” Virgil said.

“A pretty strong possibility,”
Murton added.

Powell turned away and looked at
nothing in particular. “This is a problem for me. You understand that, don’t
you? If you’re wrong, I’ve just accused a veteran of this
department—asshole or not—of arson and when that gets out I’ll be finished
as sheriff. There’s no way I’d get reelected after that. If you’re right,
Brackett’s the kind of guy that will scream bloody murder and accuse me of
framing him because I’m down in the polls and about to be out of a job. My
tit’s in the wringer either way.”

Virgil took a chance. “You knew it
was him all along, didn’t you, Jerry?”

Powell rolled his lips together and
squinted at Virgil. “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t. I only suspected it. You
just confirmed it for me. That’s why you hired us, isn’t it? You’re only weeks
away from the election and you didn’t want to have to investigate the guy who
is running against you.”

Powell dropped his cigarette butt
and crushed it out with the toe of his boot. “Nasty fucking habit. Can’t quit
‘em though.” He was quiet for a long time before he spoke again. “Yes, that’s
exactly why I hired you. I just didn’t think you’d get to it quite so quick.”

“So what are you going to do,
Jerry?”

Powell pulled his sunglasses from
his pocket and put them on. “I’m probably going to flush my career down the
toilet by taking a drive out to Brackett’s house and having a little chat with
him. I’ll need impartial witnesses. You two are coming with me.”

Murton looked at Virgil. “This
ought to be fun.”

__________

Hector saw Brackett
start to stir so he gave him another little zap then grabbed his ankles and
pulled him from the kitchen into the family room. He placed him in a recliner
that sat opposite a flat screen television that was mounted on the wall in the
family room. He made a quick run through the house and checked that all the
windows were closed tight, then went into the furnace room and broke the gas
line loose. Then he went back into the kitchen, turned all four of the stovetop
burners to their highest setting and blew the flames out one by one. After
that, he turned the oven on, left the door open, walked out the front door and
drove away.

Problem solved. Precedent set.

__________

Virgil and Murton got
back
in the truck and followed Powell out to Brackett’s house. Brackett
lived about six miles from the county police station, down an empty gravel road
that had houses spaced every quarter mile or so. They were tight on Powell’s
bumper and had just turned into the drive—a gravel path with weeds
growing up the center—when the house blew apart.

The explosion was so strong it
caused Powell to lose control of his vehicle and he drove the cruiser
nose-first into an oak tree next to the drive. Virgil hit the brakes and
slammed the truck’s transmission into park. He heard Murton shout something but
his mind refused to register what he’d said. Vigil was too busy watching the debris
and wreckage that rained down across the whole of Brackett’s property. He saw
the brick chimney chase from the side of the house launch itself like a
missile, then fall back and land on top of Brackett’s cruiser, crushing it
flat. A refrigerator flew up through a hole where the roof should have been and
landed upside down in the front yard. A flat screen television set buzzed over
the cab of the truck, the noise like the sound of a helicopter’s rotor blades.
An old-fashioned washtub basin landed in the tree above Powell’s car. A smoking
lampshade tumbled past like a box kite with its strings cut. Murton yelled to
him again and this time he grabbed Virgil’s arm and pulled him flat across the
seat, below the level of the dashboard. Just as he did, a chunk of concrete smashed
into the front end of the truck and crushed the hood. A heavy wooden chair hit
the windshield and all four legs of the chair punched completely through the
safety glass.

All of it happened in a span of less
than five seconds. When the falling debris subsided Virgil and Murton sat up, worked
their way out of the truck and looked at the devastation. Virgil thought his
truck looked like something you might see parked on the back forty of a salvage
yard. Along with the chair that was stuck through the windshield, the entire
front end was demolished, both side windows were blown out and the front tires
were flat. Steam and liquid coolant gushed from behind the grill.

Brackett’s house was gone, reduced
to a pile of rubble. There was no fire, but the smell of natural gas hung heavy
in the air and small pockets of wreckage smoldered everywhere. Powell stumbled
out of his cruiser, his sunglasses askew and shook himself like a dog that had
just jumped from a swimming pool. He kept opening and closing his mouth. When
Virgil spoke to him, he didn’t answer.

“Jerry? Hey, Jerry. You better sit
down here for a minute.” Powell began to stagger toward the spot where
Brackett’s house used to be. Murton caught up with him, grabbed the back of his
uniform collar then gently sat him down in the grass and told him to stay put.
Virgil walked over to where Powell was and sat down next to him. “You okay,
Sheriff?”

Powell wiped the airbag residue
from his face and tried to straighten his sunglasses, but they were bent across
the bridge and one of the lenses had spider-webbed from the impact. He finally
gave up and flung them in the grass. Virgil stood, retrieved the glasses and
handed them back. “We’re probably looking at a crime scene here, Jerry. We
shouldn’t contaminate it any more than we have to. He didn’t respond and Virgil
wasn’t sure if he’d heard him or not. “Sit tight, partner. Help is on the way.”

Virgil reached inside Powell’s cruiser,
grabbed the microphone, identified himself and gave the dispatcher their
location and a brief description of the situation, then told her to get the
fire department and any available deputies headed their way. When he turned
back and looked at Powell, he was standing, his hands on his knees. Murton
jogged over from the other side of Brackett’s cruiser. He kept looking up at
the branches of the same tree that Powell had hit with his squad car. He
grabbed Powell’s arm and led him a few yards away, closer to what was left of
Virgil’s truck.

“Let’s sit down over here. You took
a pretty good wallop, Jerry.”

“What the hell just happened?”

Virgil had seen this type of reaction
before. So had Murton. During their time in Iraq they’d both been near IED’s
when they exploded. “Brackett’s house just blew up, Jerry. Probably a gas
explosion.” Virgil noticed Murton staring at him. “What?”

As usual, Murton’s remarks were
nothing short of factual. “Brackett’s legs are stuck up in that tree above
Powell’s cruiser. What’s left of his torso is laying about a hundred feet past
the back porch.” The three of them looked up in the tree. Then, as if his point
might have been missed, he added, “Congratulations, Jerry. You’re about to be
reelected.”

22

__________

P
owell
refused medical treatment and took charge of the crime scene while Virgil and Murton
helped where they could, though there wasn’t much for them to do. They helped
the crime scene technicians identify bits of debris that might be classified as
evidence, but everyone knew that any forensic value associated with what was
left of Brackett’s belongings was going to be slim at best. The majority of the
pieces scattered around the property would either have to be picked up with a
backhoe or a pair of tweezers.

Brackett’s body parts were
photographed, bagged and taken away. His squad car was completely destroyed. Both
Powell’s cruiser and Virgil’s truck had to be towed from the scene as well. The
crime scene technicians would have a long day. When it was clear there was
nothing left for them, Powell told them they could leave. Before they did
though, he said, “If Brackett had a computer here at the house no one has found
it. Not even pieces of it. I don’t think he had one. Nobody has found a cell
phone yet either.”

“Have one of your people pull his
cell records from the phone company. His house too, if he had a landline,”
Virgil said.

“I’ve already got someone on that.
There’s no chance this was a suicide, was it?”

“Probably not, Jerry. There are
easier ways to go. Ever try to stay in a room with the smell of natural gas?
It’s all but impossible.”

“Besides,” Murton added, “show me a
cop suicide and I’ll show you someone who either ate their gun or went to town
on pills. You know that, Jerry. We all do.” Virgil felt like Murton made a
point of looking away from him as he spoke about the pills. “Besides, why would
he take himself off the board? You said yourself he was beating you. He had a
real shot at being the next sheriff. It doesn’t add up.”

“Accident then?”

“Probably not,” Virgil said. “At
least according to the firemen. Look, Jerry, you don’t really believe that
anyone is going to try to hang this on you, do you?”

“Brackett and I were on opposite
ends of the spectrum. He had the support of the people. We’re plenty short on
jobs around here and this private prison system the state is moving toward is
something that I have opposed since the get-go. It was also something that
Brackett was leveraging in a big way.”

“How so?”

“Jobs, how else? Jobs to build the
prison, jobs to run the prison, jobs to maintain the prison. Brackett was
backed by Pate’s construction company and the harder I pushed against the idea of
a private prison in my county the harder they pushed back. Have you seen any of
their TV ads? They turned Brackett’s entire campaign into one big job fair for
the county. And not only that, they managed to make it look like I was the one
pulling the tent pegs out of the ground while everyone was underneath the
big-top handing out their resumes.”

Murton clapped Powell on the back.
“Relax, Jerry. Everything is copasetic. If nothing else, you’re going to win by
default.”

Powell shook his head. “That’s just
not good enough, Wheeler, and you damn well ought to know it. If I don’t have
the trust of the people I serve, how in the hell am I supposed to be an
effective leader?”

“I think Murton is right, Jerry. You
might be overthinking it. Everything will work out.” Powell stared at Virgil
for a moment then shook his head and walked away. After he was gone Murton
looked at Virgil. “What?” Virgil said.

“Nothing. All’s well that ends
well, that’s all.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Jerry’s going to get
reelected. A dirty cop is dead. We’ve invested about four hours tops into our
first case and we’re walking away with ten grand. What’s the downside?”

“The downside is this: Pate is
playing us like a couple of rag dolls. Brackett might have won the election but
he was going to be Pate’s puppet no matter what. That means Pate controls the
county, the prison, and all the revenue it’s going to generate. While all that
is happening, he and Pearson have put together a plan that essentially allows
Pate to walk away with every single dime of any unclaimed lottery winnings.
Pate not only set himself up in the county, he had his hand in the state’s
cookie jar.”

“Except none of that is illegal, is
it?”

“No, it’s not. But Pearson has tied
himself to Pate, and Pate’s company controls the lottery, which is where Nicholas
Pope was employed. If we want to find out who killed Pope, we need to go where
the answers are. I want you to get together with Nichole Pope and find out
everything you can about her brother’s job, his background, the works. Nobody
gets butchered like that without cause. We’ve got to figure out what he was up
to.”

“Didn’t I hire you?”

“Yeah,” Virgil said. “I’m teaching
you about murder investigation. It was your idea, remember? Let’s call it
on-the-job training.”

“So what are you going to do?”
Murton said.

“I’m going to go over to the
lottery office and interview the rest of the programmers. One of them has to
know something.”

“We need a ride,” Murton said.

__________

Becky dropped Virgil
at his house first so he could get Sandy’s car. Once inside he spent the better
part of a half-hour looking for her car keys. The longer he looked the more
frustrated he became until he finally gave up. He went out to the backyard and
without purpose began to walk down toward the pond and his father’s willow
tree. Virgil looked for him under the branches, but he wasn’t there, nor did he
really expect him to be. He pulled his phone from his pocket and called Sandy. The
governor answered. “Hi Jonesy. How are you?”

“Why are you answering Sandy’s
phone, Governor?”

“I’m well, thank you for asking. I
don’t think Sandy is though. If I were you, I’d get her an appointment with the
doctor when we get back.”

“Where is she now?”

“Still in the bathroom. She took
one bite of the hors d'oeuvres and made a beeline for the can. It seems I’m in
charge of her purse and her phone.”

Virgil sat down in one of the lawn
chairs near the edge of the pond. “How bad is she?”

“Hmm, not too bad. I wouldn’t say
it’s anything to worry about, but she’s been a little green around the gills
ever since we got here. Can’t seem to keep anything down. Maybe she got some
bad shrimp at that bar of yours.”

“I doubt it, Governor. Listen, have
her call me right away when she gets back to, to…” Virgil suddenly realized he
didn’t know exactly where Sandy and the Governor were.

“To our table?”

“Yes. To your table.” He said it
through his teeth.

“What’s the matter, Jonesy? You
sound a little irritated.”

He took a deep breath. “I am
irritated, sir. I cannot seem to find my girlfriend’s car keys, which, at the
moment I need quite desperately. I was hoping to ask her where they are.”

The governor made a clucking noise
with his tongue. “Better be careful there. Fiancée is the word you should be
getting used to.”

“Governor, maybe it’s just my
imagination, but you seem to be enjoying yourself lately at my expense.”

“My goodness, you’re awfully
sensitive for a cop.”

“See? That is exactly what I’m
talking about. I believe you meant to say former cop, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes. Once a cop, always a cop,
though. Isn’t that what they say? Anyway, have you looked in the ignition? I’m
telling you, with God as my witness I couldn’t get my wife to take the keys out
of the ignition if I paid her. Did you know the insurance company won’t pay on
an auto theft claim if they discover you left the keys in the car? I suppose I
could get them to pay if I made a claim, given the fact that I appoint the
insurance commissioner for the state, but for the average Joe—”

“Goodbye, Governor,” Virgil said, then
hung up. When he got to the garage and opened the driver-side door of Sandy’s
car, he saw the keys hanging in the ignition.

__________

Proving he was the
better
man, Virgil called the governor back to let him know he was correct; the keys
were in fact in the ignition. Proving he knew he was correct, the governor
refused to answer. Sandy’s phone went straight to voice mail. Virgil could
actually picture McConnell sitting there, a little smile across his lips. Virgil
left Sandy a message and told her he loved her and asked her to call him back
when she could.

__________

When he arrived at the
lottery office the front door was locked and the windows were dark.
Well what
did you expect on a Saturday in the late afternoon, Jonesy?
When he walked
around to the back of the building though he found two young men standing next
to a steel door that was propped open with a wastebasket. Both were smoking
cigarettes. “You guys work for the lottery?”

“Who’s asking?” one of the men
said. They were both young, skinny and had hair that grew past their shoulders.
Both wore T-shirts emblazoned with the names of rock bands Virgil was
unfamiliar with, their jeans had holes in the knees and their sneakers were
covered with grime. The only discernable difference between the two was the
color of their hair. One had light brown, the other black. They were either programmers
or janitorial staff. Virgil hoped they were programmers.

“I am. It’s a yes or no question.”

Black hair looked at light brown hair
and spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Cop.”

Virgil didn’t correct him. “I need
to ask you guys a few questions about Nicholas Pope. You knew him?”

Light Brown looked him right in the
eyes. “Knew him? Are you kidding? He was my idol. That dude could fly. He
taught me everything I know.”

“Fly? He was a pilot?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, no. His
fingers, man. He could fly on the keys faster than anyone. He was amazing.”

“Is that important? With what you
do? The speed?”

He laughed. “Not here…not so much.
But as any coder will tell you, sometimes…hell most times, you gotta go fast. You
gotta stay ahead of the traps. If you don’t have the speed, you’ll get backtracked
and boxed in so fast the cops’ll be at your door before you can log out and
shut down.”

Black hair cleared his throat. “Uh,
don’t you have to, like, have a warrant or something before we talk to you?”

“What’s your name?” Virgil said.

“Mike. Mike Snowhill.”

“Okay, Mike, Mike Snowhill. You’re
mostly right. You don’t have to talk to me. But if you don’t I have to ask
myself, why not? Why wouldn’t you? The only real reason I could come up with is
that you’ve got something to hide.”

“Hey man, I’ve got nothing to hide.
We’ve got legit jobs here.”

“Uh huh. And how about after hours?
Got anything going on the side, Mike, Mike Snowhill?”

Light brown looked at Snowhill,
then at Virgil. “My name is Bobby Epps. Maybe we better go inside.”

“Sounds good to me.”

And Virgil was in.