Blood Silence (39 page)

“How’d you come up with that?” Brock asked in wonderment. “How would you even think to look for that?”

“I kept trying to think why the sudden urge to take the two of us out last night,” Mac replied. “Only reason is if they knew what we were actually thinking and discussing. Nobody sat near us in the bar, nobody in the bar could have possibly overheard our conversation so the only other answer was …”

“A wire. Unbelievable,” Brock muttered.

“Get your camera ready.” Mac recommended.

He jumped back on the table, pulled a rubber glove on his left hand, and then reached up into the recessed lighting canister and pulled down a thin cord with a small microphone on the end of it.

Brock snapped several photos and started jotting down notes.

“How long has that been up there?” Leah asked in a whisper, taking pictures with her phone. “I mean, how would they know you and the sheriff would even be here?”

Mac thought for a second. “I bet it’s been up there since the Buller murders. I mean, that was the sheriff’s case, right?”

“Yes.”

“And he had reservations, right?”

“He did.”

“If he got too close …”

“They would act. But he never got anywhere, despite his reservations.”

“Until last night, that is,” Mac answered. “We noodled the case for a couple hours right at this table, under this light, and both of us were talking Deep Core and that we needed to pursue Deep Core, and then what happens?”

“You got too close,” Leah stated.

“And they had to act.”

W
heeler sat at his desk, anxiously drinking his coffee. There was a little whiskey mixed in as well, a little something to calm his nerves.

He was on edge, things having spun completely out of control. When the Bullers came into the offices in downtown Williston, complaining of the headaches and the vomiting, he knew it was trouble. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen it.

Right away, he knew what was causing the Bullers’ issues. It was just like Wyoming.

He had warned O’Herlihy repeatedly that there would be problems when they increased the use of the diesel fuel among other things. It worked in enhancing the output of the wells, but other oil and drilling companies had done it, and it always led to trouble, particularly with water supplies. The well casings simply couldn’t handle the pressure. But he was told there was little choice—North Dakota had to pay, or they were all finished.

And it wasn’t just Deep Core that needed the money.

There was a reason Wheeler went along with this.

He needed the money.

There was a lot of land and plans in west Texas he’d yet to pay for, and he needed the money soon. The wells had not to just pay but pay big. The greater the production, the larger the profit, the more his bonus would be, the more his small interest in the company he’d negotiated from O’Herlihy would be worth. He bartered for that. If he was going to be a part of all of this, bring in Clint and Royce to do what he knew they did, the risk had to be worth the reward.

As he looked at the monitor, if they could get the wells running, produce what they needed and then sell the leases, which was the long-term plan, he could walk away, go back to Texas, and be a rancher. That was what he really wanted. It was why he’d subjected himself to the hellhole that Williston was to him. No man in his right mind could possibly want to stay here, to live in a man camp or hotel and suffer the cold and isolation of this part of the country. It was a place only the locals could love. He wanted out of his long-term hotel room, out of the endless continental breakfasts and sterile dinners. West Texas—the flat land and the warm weather—was what he wanted.

The reports for the day—for the past several days—since the North Station went online showed the kind of production they had to have. And it wasn’t that they had to produce for years. The reality was that if the wells hit for four to five months, they would be out of the woods. At that point, Wheeler figured he could get out. If not, at least they could start drilling a little more safely.

He pulled out his cell phone to call his man watching McRyan’s hotel. “Any sighting of him yet?”

“No,” the man answered. “His truck has not moved.”

“Do you have a man in the lobby?”

“I do.”

“And nothing?” Wheeler asked, checking his watch. It was getting into the midafternoon now.

“Nothing. It was a late night, lots of stress—he’s probably still sleeping.”

“Or holing up until nightfall.”

“Maybe so. He might be looking to sneak out of town after dark. Do you want me to keep on this?”

“Yes.”

• • •

Brock cut the seal, inserted the key, and opened the door to Adam Murphy’s apartment. There was a short hallway the led into the main living space, which was furnished in young-single-male style—a cheap, soft couch, an easy chair, and a coffee table for holding remote controls all arranged to view a fifty-five-inch flat screen situated on a low-cost television stand. To the right, there was the small galley kitchen and then a hallway back to two small bedrooms, one serving as an office.

“Now, you said this looked like a robbery, correct?”

“Yes, looked like,” Brock replied, pulling out her case file. “I always had my doubts.” After a few minutes of watching McRyan walk around, she asked, “What do you see?”

“Nobody heard the murder take place? Nobody heard any shots?”

“Not a sound.”

“They used a silencer. They always do,” Mac stated as he walked down the back hallway and into the office. “So the computer was gone?”

“The company said he had a laptop they issued him. It was gone, although if you’re right, they have it. If he had another one that was his, it was gone as well. We searched the apartment, his car, and his small cubicle with the company here in town.”

“Did he have a safe deposit box?”

“Not that we found. No evidence of one.”

“He was so naive; he didn’t understand what and who he was really dealing with until it was too late,” Mac answered. “If he sensed that kind of danger, he’d have done something like that and given himself an insurance policy.”

“He was a geologist. Who kills a geologist?”

“These guys do. They killed two of them. They kill anyone who gets in their way.”

Mac made his way back to the small room used as an office. There were two file drawers for the desk. One drawer was full of hanging folders with various records regarding insurance, bills, and tax records. The other drawer contained his work history, resumes, and previous work, and there was a large gap in the files. “Just like at the Bullers’, it looks like someone grabbed some folders,” Brock observed.

“How long did Murphy work for Deep Core?”

“At least five years, as I recall.”

“Yet there isn’t one single record, not a piece of paper relating to the company. As if they were looking for any evidence of—”

“What he found at the Bullers’.”

“That’s right. Stage it like a robbery, but the watches, the money, the credit cards, jewelry—all of that was for show. What they were after was right here. Computers, files, anything that related to Deep Core were what they were after. It’s the same as what they did at Sterling’s lake house. Killed them, made it look like a crime of passion, framing Meredith, and then they grabbed all the papers about Deep Core out of Sterling’s briefcase and simply took Gentry’s. It’s why they took all of Weatherly’s documents and his computer in DC. It’s why they cleaned out the files at the Buller house. They were cleaning up.”

“But you have the memo,” Brock replied. “By the way, are you going to tell me where you got that?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“You ever hear of a man named Antonin Rahn?”

Brock looked at him quizzically. “The oil guy? Isn’t he dead?”

Mac shook his head. “No. He is very much alive and appears to be very much a different man. He actually owned the land the Bullers lived on. Callie Gentry was his goddaughter and worked for him. She had the memorandum and gave him a copy. Turns out Adam Murphy, after some pressure from Ms. Gentry, developed a conscience and reached out to her and gave her a copy of the memorandum. Rahn gave me a copy.”

Brock was in shock, shaking her head. “Antonin Rahn. Go figure.”

Mac walked back into the hallway, looking at the crime scene photos from Brock’s file. Murphy was found lying flat on his back, shot in the forehead. “He comes down the hallway, probably because he heard something. He takes a couple steps, and one of those guys is waiting behind the wall. In fact, he could see Murphy coming down the hallway in that mirror.” Mac pointed to a small mirror hanging on the wall to the right of the coat closet. “He can see Murphy coming down the hall. He takes one step around the corner and pops him before he ever knew what happened. Clean and silent, the kind of thing only someone who’s killed before could do—what only a pro could do.”

“And it was these two”—Brock held up the DMV photos of Wilton and Hutchinson—“who did Murphy.”

“I’d bet big on it. They did Weatherly and Kane in DC; I think we can prove that. They did Sterling and Gentry; we can prove that. They tried for Meredith; I can prove that. All these murders are connected. They did the Bullers, and I think they did Murphy.”

“Find them and …”

“You close your case. You close your case and the sheriff’s case. We close all the cases.”

Brock’s phone rang. “It’s the chief.” She answered. “Uh-huh … uh-huh … that sounds right… uh-huh … uh-huh… okay … really? That’s a relief. Yes, we’ll go over there right away. Thanks, Chief.”

“What?” Mac asked anxiously. “Tell me.”

“Two things,” Brock answered, deliberately putting her phone in her coat pocket, keeping him in suspense. “Wilton and Hutchinson flew into Bismarck and then made their way over here to Williston on April 16. There are intermittent credit charges from that day through April 22, which was the day they flew out of Bismarck to Minneapolis and then on to Dallas, and from there, we don’t know.”

Mac gave her a satisfied grin. “They were here when the Bullers were killed. Tell me they were in the area when Murphy was killed.”

“In fact, they were. The chief checked that as well. Credit card charges at a local gas station. And one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“There are credit card charges from yesterday—gas station, four blocks from the County Line. The chief sent an officer over to look at the surveillance tape. Guess what they were driving.”

“A black Tahoe.”

Brock simply smiled.

“Man, we’ve got them.”

“It’s still all circumstantial,” Brock suggested. “We don’t actually have the Tahoe.”

“It’s not all that circumstantial anymore. All you have to do is break someone at Deep Core, like that Dan Wheeler, the guy who Adam Murphy wrote the memo to, and it’ll all come crashing down. The sheriff and I rattled that guy’s cage yesterday, and we had zip. You now have significantly more. He’ll fold under pressure. All you have to do is apply it.”

“Speaking of the sheriff,” Brock replied, “that was the other thing the chief told me. Sam is awake.”

• • •

O’Herlihy drank from his Scotch as he looked east out the window of his fortieth-story luxury condo, looking down on Houston and, in particular, the late-day emptiness of Minute Maid Ballpark, the home of the Astros. Ironic, he thought, that the ballpark was originally known as Enron Field.

He walked back to his desk and looked at his computer monitor. The wells in North Dakota, particularly those at the North Station, were roaring today—had been for the last few days. His investment partner, sitting in the chair in front of his desk, was also having a Scotch, cool as a cucumber, looking at the same information on his iPad.

“Five to six months like this, and we’ll be golden, absolutely golden. You and the company and me—I’ll be very, very happy,” the investor noted gleefully. “The payoff will be huge.”

“The price we’ve paid is huge. The risks we’ve taken? We can’t go back. Even with all we’ve done, I’m not sure how long we can dodge this.”

What O’Herlihy alluded to did not escape his guest, who remained unbothered. “Business is business, and you do what you have to do. It is far too late in the game to have second thoughts now. You didn’t have a choice—you were going down. There is no getting out of this now, so sit back and watch the cash roll in. Your boys just have to take care of McRyan.”

“You never know. He might take care of them.”

“It’s possible, except McRyan will still play by the rules. Your boys won’t, and that gives them the edge.”

O’Herlihy nodded, accepting the reality of this situation.

“
Relax,
” the investor suggested, raising his glass. “Like I said, five or six months, and everyone makes out and makes out big.”

“If we can make it that long,” O’Herlihy replied. He wanted to get out of the city. “I gotta get out of here and get away from all of this. Let’s head out to my ranch. Nobody’s out there.”

“That’s a helluva a good idea.”

• • •

“You’re awake,” Mac exclaimed as he walked into the hospital room for Sheriff Sam Rawlings.

“And you two have been busy,” the sheriff replied with a raspy, heavily medicated voice. His eyes were slits. He had casts on both legs and heavy dressings over his abdomen, not to mention the many stitches and butterflies on his face and in his scalp. He had a broken hip, two broken legs, a fractured wrist, a concussion, and internal injuries. Alive and awake, he was. Out of the woods, he wasn’t.

Mac noticed how Brock came alongside the sheriff and touched his left hand while he gave her a small, familiar smile.

Rawlings turned his attention to Mac. “Have you found the men who did this to me?”

“Not yet. But we know who they are.” Mac pulled out the photograph of the two men.

Rawlings held the photo in his right hand, took a look, and then looked up at Mac and asked, “Why? Why do …” He coughed. “Why come after us?”