Tax Assassin (19 page)

“
Of course he is,” Delores
said. “You know how he lies!”

“
He can spin a yarn,” Jimmy
nodded. “I pulled over Hill-three, his dad, and Hillary on their
way out of town in  . . . uh  . . .
July, maybe. They were going to Gettysburg again.”

“
Pulled them over?” Seth
asked.

“
Speeding,” Jimmy said.
“The girl, Hillary, was driving. Even so, I wrote ‘em a
ticket.”

“
So, there’s a record,”
Seth said.

“
Should be,” Jimmy
said.

“
I’m having a hard time
getting a handle on how sick the man is,” Seth said. “It’s all a
little cockeyed.”

“
How so?” Jimmy
asked.

“
The principal indicated
Mr. Bloom was quite ill. The U.S. Army deputy counsel general says
he was healthy as a horse. Now you’re saying he couldn’t have been
in the hospital, because he was in Gettysburg.”

“
Sure,” Jimmy
nodded.

“
Sure?” Seth raised his
eyebrows in surprise.

“
Hill-three only has to
stop taking his pills for a couple or four days and he gets real
sick,” Jimmy said. “Take the pills a few days, and he’s better. If
he’s in the hospital, it’ll show up in his blood, so they keep him
a while.”

“
You know this because . .
.”

“
He did it a few times in
high school,” Jimmy said. “To get out of stuff he didn’t want to
do.”

“
Delores. Jimmy,” Ava gave
them a bright smile. “You can see how confused we are. You know
these people. We don’t. What do you think is going on
here?”

“
Did you say something
about the Army?” Jimmy glanced at Ava as if to say, ‘I’ll get
there.’ “Hill-three sold out?”

“
Deal’s final in August,”
Seth said.

“
Meldy must be dead,”
Delores said.

“
Why?” Seth
asked.

“
Howie’s buried on the edge
of the Wilderness Area in their favorite spot,” Delores said. “New
man or no, she’d never let the Army have the land.
Ever.”

“
She’s right,” Jimmy said.
“And I’d have to say that I don’t know what’s going on. Honestly, I
always thought Hill-three had a screw loose, and you can see how
Delores feels.”

“
Will you go out to take a
look?” Seth asked.

“
Sure as shit. This is
definitely probable cause for a look-see,” Jimmy said. “I’ll gather
up a few guys. You want to come?”

Seth looked at Ava, and she nodded.

“
We’ll be
there.”

“
I’d better go with you,”
Delores said. “My pa used to work for the Blooms. I spent my
summers there.”

“
Does your dad work there
now?” Seth asked.

“
No. They stopped hiring
in, maybe ten years ago,” Delores said. “Said the business had
changed, and they didn’t need the help.”

“
One more thing,” Seth
said. “Have you seen Hill-three lately?”

“
At graduation, like I
said,” Jimmy said. “Have you Del?”

Delores shook her head.

“
It’s not unusual,” Jimmy
said. “They live way out in the valley. We live in
town.”

“
We don’t try that hard to
see them either,” Delores said. “At least I don’t.”

“
Thank you,” Seth held his
hand out for Delores, and she shook it. Turning to Jimmy, he asked,
“You’ll let us know?”

Delores went behind the counter to make
calls for backup.

“
I’ll get the dogs,” Jimmy
said. “Give me twenty minutes then come down to the office. Del,
you’ll meet us there?”

Delores looked up from the telephone and
nodded. Jimmy winked at Ava and left the hotel. Seth and Ava walked
arm in arm to their room.

“
Well, what do you think?”
Ava asked. She bent to let Clara out of her crate.

“
What do you think?” Seth
asked.

“
I think . . .” Ava looked
at him and smiled. “I think you should take me to a really
expensive dinner, fill me with expensive wine, and then take
advantage of me.”

Seth smiled at her but didn’t respond.

“
Ok,” Ava said. “I don’t
think this is very complicated. Guy shoots people. Guy shoots
brother and marries brother’s wife to get the land. It’s like
something out of a Greek tragedy or Shakespeare or
both.”

“
And the wife? Meldy? Where
is she?”

“
I don’t know.”

“
Any sense of
it?”

“
No,” Ava said. “While they
were talking, I wondered if she was hiding out
someplace.”

“
Not a hostage or a
prisoner?”

“
Just hiding out until the
time is right,” Ava nodded.

“
I hope so,” Seth said. “I
can’t figure out why he needs the money now. I mean, he took the
rich contract in Denver. He’s selling this land that’s been in his
family forever. Why now?”

“
Because the wife is
divorcing him?” Ava asked.

“
What do you mean?” Seth
asked.

“
How about this?” Ava
smiled. “He takes the rich contract to pay the wife for the land in
the divorce proceedings. Something happens. Maybe he realizes she
had someone else or whatever . . .”

“
He kills her and has to
get rid of the land,” Seth said. “Could be. I think we’re missing
something.”

“
Why?”

“
We have unanswered
questions,” Seth said. “We know you, your father, your sisters and
your mother are on the hit list. The two marshals make seven,
right?”

“
Who’s the eighth hit?” Ava
nodded.

“
And why now?” Seth asked.
“I know I keep asking the same question, but it feels crucial. And
why finalize the deal in August? Hunting season starts in August
and ends around December down here. He’s missing out on taking all
that money from all those rich Texans. Unless . . .”

“
Unless what?”

“
Unless selling in some way
saves the land,” Seth said.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Remember, Richard said he
thought Bloom would screw them out of the land?” Seth asked. “What
if he sold it now because he knew the Army couldn’t use it? He’d
get to keep the land, title free, and this Army nuisance would be
gone.”

“
Could be,” Ava
said.

“
What does pretending to be
sick get him?” Seth asked.

“
Alibis,” Ava said. “He was
in the hospital when . . . when . . .
You’re right, we’re missing something.”

Seth nodded. She smiled at him and sat down
on the bed.

“
You up for this thing?”
Seth asked. “I can always go alone.”

“
I want to go,” Ava said.
“I want to find Meldy and those girls.”

“
You sure?”

“
I can’t just sit around
waiting for someone to shoot me, Seth,” Ava said. “I want to find
them first. Plus, I bet this backwater could use a good forensics
tech.”

Seth smiled.

“
That would be me,” she
smiled.

“
A great forensics tech,”
he said. “I thought you had a job at the DPD.”

“
Haven’t signed on the
dotted line,” she said. “Maybe they’ll make me a better
offer.”

He nodded, and she laughed.

“
Come on,” Ava said. “Let’s
go see a man about a horse.”

“
What horse?”

“
That’s what you say in the
country when you’ve got something important to do,” Ava smiled.
“You don’t know because you’re a big-city detective Hollywood music
type.”

“
I see,” Seth said. “A
horse . . . and a murder and some ranch
land.”

“
Exactly,” she
nodded.

“
And expensive
dinner?”

“
Let’s order in pizza and
snuggle,” she said.

“
Murder first, snuggle
later.”

“
And pizza.”

“
And pizza,” he
repeated.

“
What do you think of
that?”

“
I do like horses,” he
said.

“
I know,” she
said.

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TWENTY-THREE

“
It’s O’Malley,” Seth said
into his cell phone. “Where are you?”

“
At the fort,” Richard
Sarkasian, the U.S. Army deputy counsel general said.

“
You’d better get here,”
Seth said.

“
Where’s here?”

“
Bloom Ranch, southern
parcel, near the house,” Seth said. “I’m here with the Las Animas
sheriffs.”

“
What did you
find?”

“
You should just come,”
Seth said.

“
What did you find?” he
repeated.

“
You won’t believe me if I
tell you,” Seth said.

“
Try me.”

“
Let’s just say that you
were right in saying that by selling the land, he was saving the
land,” Seth said. “I think you’ll find it unusable in the near
future.”

“
How did he do
it?”

“
Fracking,” Seth
said.

“
Jesus fu . . .” The call
abruptly ended.

Seth turned around to look at the scene
unfolding behind him. Deputy Sheriff Jimmy Thatcher led six other
deputies in full body armor and gas masks into the metal barn.
Called “fracking,” the process involved injecting highly
pressurized fluid into the deep rock layer thus releasing natural
gas. In the best of times, with the best intentions and the best,
most careful technicians, fracking could be an environmental
disaster.

The Blooms were neither experts nor had the
best intentions. They had managed to both contaminate the ground
water and to release a quantity of methane that required the
sheriff’s deputies to wear gas masks. For all intents and purposes,
this portion of Bloom ranch would be unusable for the U.S. Army for
the foreseeable future.

Seth smiled when he saw Ava. When they
arrived, she had taken charge of two sheriff’s deputies. They had
gone through the Bloom residence looking for evidence of Meldy or
the girls. Walking toward him, she shook her head.

“
Nothing?” he
asked.

“
Not a hair or toy or scrap
of clothing,” Ava said. “Everything seems almost too clean – museum
clean. I doubt anyone has lived here in . . . years,
ten or twenty years maybe. Just kept it clean.”

“
Then where are they?” Seth
asked.

“
You saw . . .” Ava pointed
to the back of the house. A few Sheriffs were carefully raking
large vegetable beds where the dogs had indicated human remains
might be buried. “Did they find . . .?”

A deputy in the garden whistled and waved.
Seth and Ava jogged to the garden bed. Ava dropped to her knees
beside the small trench.

“
What is it?” Seth
asked.

The sheriff’s deputy had uncovered three
small clumps of what looked like fat and tissue.

“
Human remains?” the deputy
asked.

“
Possibly,” Ava said.
“They’ve been butchered – maybe ground or chopped up. It looks like
he expected them to decompose.”

“
Good bet,” the deputy
said.

“
Another month and we’d
never have found this,” Ava said.

Ava held up her hand, and Seth gave her a
pair of gloves. While they watched, she used her fingertips to go
through the clumps of dirt and tissue.

“
Knew it!” Ava said. She
pulled out a tiny finger bone. “These always get left
behind.”

“
Human?” the deputy
asked.

“
Fifth intermediate and
distal phalanges from a good-sized hand,” Ava said. “I bet we can
get DNA from the marrow.”

“
Is it Meldy or the kids?”
Horrified, the deputy looked every day of his fifty some
years.

“
I’d say it’s an adult –
probably male by the thickness,” Ava said as she stood up. She
turned to the deputy. “Can you do something for me?”

“
Yes ma’am,” the deputy
said.

“
Can you guard this?” Ava
asked. “We need to call in the Colorado Bureau.”

“
The CBI? Them boys are a
pain in the assets.”

Seth nodded.

“
They are,” Ava smiled.
“But there’s no way we can do the kind of job they can do in this
garden. They’re the State’s forensic experts. We need them, or
Bloom will go free.”

“
Plus, we need to find
those children,” Seth said.

“
You sure they aren’t in
one of these beds?” the deputy asked.

“
No, I’m not sure,” Seth
said.

“
But?”

“
He’s having a Magic
O’Malley moment,” Ava said.

“
You Magic O’Malley?” the
deputy asked. Rather than protest, Seth smiled. “I didn’t realize.
Okay, I’ll stay right here. In fact . . .”

The deputy whistled, and the deputy sheriffs
in the garden area turned to look at him.

“
We need to stop digging,”
the deputy said. “You, Tommy. Get the tape. We’re goin’ to tape
this off. Jerry, call the CBI.”