Cold Lake (28 page)

“Maybe you two would like to come get lunch in town?” Michelson asked, clearly directing the question more to her than Rachette.

“Sorry. I have some other things to attend to. I’ll follow you guys back to Rocky Points and get that report for you, though.”

Michelson nodded, taking the rejection in stride. “Yeah. Sure. We’d appreciate that. We’ll head into town and see you when you get there.”

The two men from Idaho walked to their vehicle doors and got in. The engine fired up, and Michelson backed away. With a wave and a nod he drove off in a cloud of dust.

Patterson had no clue why she’d let herself mislead the man so much on the phone the last few days. She had needed someone to talk to, someone besides Scott, someone in the business, and Michelson had been there for her. To think for a second she should jeopardize what she’d built with Scott over the last year for—what? An out of state flirtation?—was ridiculous.

Patterson shook it off and eyed Rachette. “How you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“Get in my car. I’m taking you home.”

He nodded but he didn’t move.

“What’s up?”

“You know,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next month with our jobs and everything, but I want you to know I’ve enjoyed working with you more than anyone else on the force. You’re a good cookie.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve … liked working with you, too.”

“I know I’ve been a pain in the ass to you over the last couple years. And I’m thankful for your loyalty despite everything. I know that was a bad situation with those pictures of that girl and me. And I know you didn’t want to get on the wrong foot with MacLean, and I’m going to talk to him this week. Make sure he knows loud and clear that you had nothing to do with any of that BS.”

“You don’t have to do that, just—”

“No. I do. And I’m going to. I’ve already called and made an appointment with him down in Ashland.”

Patterson exhaled and nodded.

Rachette took a deep breath. “You know, there was this time way back, when I was a senior in high school, when I really liked this girl, and she really liked me too. We even said the L-word to each other, you know? It was that kind of thing.”

Patterson lifted her chin. “Look, Rachette. You don’t have to tell me this. Whatever it is.”

“I know. I just … want you to know where I’m coming from, all right?”

Patterson nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

“So me and this girl, her name was Libby, we were tight. My dad used to be real tough on me growing up, and she was always there for me. Helped me through the bad times. She even helped me realize I wanted to be a cop.”

Watching Rachette speak, Patterson swallowed back a tear when she realized this was the first time she’d ever seen him really open up.

“Because I suspected she was cheating on me. So I put an audio recorder in her car. You know, to try and catch her in the act?”

Patterson tilted her head.

“And then I caught her. Got her right on audio tape, getting it on with some guy from the marching band.” Rachette glared into the distance. “I beat the crap out of that guy. And then I had a topless picture of her on my phone, so I sent it to every—”

“Okay, okay.” Patterson closed her eyes and shook her head. “Listen. Are we good?”

Rachette looked at her. “Yeah.” He nodded. “We’re good.”

Patterson smiled and stared at Rachette.

“What?”

She shook her head and walked toward her SUV. “Let’s go.”

Three Weeks Later…

Wolf started at the knock on his front door. He looked over at the roll table next to him and reached over for the TV remote control, pushing it further away.

“Shit.” He gripped and wheeled the table closer, sending the almost empty bottle of scotch thumping to the carpet.

The second knock was more insistent.

Wolf picked up the remote and lowered the volume. “Come in!”

The hinges squealed and there was a shaft of morning sunlight, and then the silhouette of a man with a cowboy hat stood in the doorway.

Wolf squinted. “Come in and shut the door.”

MacLean did as he was told. “It’s pitch black in here.”

Wolf screwed his eyes shut, his eye sockets throbbing as MacLean hit the light switch. “Shut it off.”

There was a soft flip and the room went dark again.

Wolf opened his eyes. With the sound of shots ringing out, he looked at the TV in time to see The Rifleman squeeze off five rounds from his customized Winchester. He pointed the remote and pushed mute.

“You look like shit.” MacLean walked to Wolf’s hospital bed that was set in the middle of his living room, crunching a plastic cup with his boot on his way over. “Jesus. Really. Don’t smell much better either. Don’t you have someone to come give you a sponge bath? I can probably get someone up here to do it. A girl if you want.”

Wolf glared.

MacLean held up his hands. “Or not.”

“Sit down.”

MacLean looked around and turned up his palms.

“There’s a chair in the kitchen. Grab me a glass of water while you’re in there.”

MacLean eyed him for a second and walked away.

Wolf picked up a plastic bottle and rattled out two pills into his left hand. Cupping his fingers around the pills, he felt a lance of pain in his purple and yellow middle finger. 

“Where’s that water?”

MacLean appeared and held out a glass.

Wolf stared at it, holding up his other hand.

MacLean smiled and walked around the rear of the bed to the correct side.

Wolf popped the pills in his mouth and tipped back the glass. Some water streamed off his chin, down his chest and onto his crotch beneath his hospital gown, but the pills hit the inside of his stomach.

“You’re not gonna sit?”

MacLean shook his head.

“Can you pick up that bottle of scotch and put it back on the table please?”

MacLean snorted and smiled in response.

Wolf stared at him.

MacLean walked around the back of Wolf’s inclined bed and picked up the bottle with a grunt. With deliberate steps that squeaked the floorboards under the carpet, MacLean walked back into the kitchen and rattled around in Wolf’s cabinets. There was the sound of a glass slapping on the counter, a cork being pulled, and the glug of the bottle.

A second later MacLean strolled back in, put the full glass of scotch down his throat and slapped the empty glass on Wolf’s plastic roll table.

“That’s enough dicking around now.” MacLean walked to the front of the bed and assessed Wolf. “How would the voters like it if they saw their favorite candidate now?”

Wolf felt a drip of water leave his chin.

“You’ve been ignoring me, Sheriff. And since you garnered the sympathy of the voters with your personal tragedy and”—he quoted his fingers—“
heroics
of late, your numbers have surpassed mine. And you didn’t even have to speak in front of a podium.”

Wolf gazed at the television.

“Well?” MacLean bent in front of him and jutted out his lower jaw.

Wolf blinked and looked at him.

“Fine.” MacLean waved a hand in the air. “That was your last chance. Your time is officially up. I’ve called a press conference today up at the resort, where I’m going to let our voters know about everything—your drug running deputy, and the way you covered it up. And it’s really a shame what you’re doing. I actually liked Deputies Rachette and Patterson. They’re good kids. Deputy Rachette had the balls to come down and apologize to me about the whole thing. And Patterson? She seemed like she would have been a good addition to my department. But, thanks to you, they’ll be packing up and looking elsewhere for work. And with that on their record, I doubt they’ll find anything in the field of law enforcement.”

MacLean turned toward the door and stopped. “Oh yeah. And I’ve decided to add a few more pictures to the mix. I’m not going to show them to you now, but I can describe them if you like?” He raised his eyebrows, and when Wolf kept silent he continued. “They’re of you and that dead serial murderer woman. A few pictures of you and her coming into your house, and then a few of you two coming out the next day. All within the time period of your investigation. Good stuff.”

“I’m out.”

MacLean stood straight. “What?”

“I’m out. I’m officially out of the race, as soon as you fulfill your end of the bargain. I’m out.”

MacLean’s laugh boomed in the dark space, and after making a show of forming his hat he wiped his eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t care. Any sympathy I had for you or your deputies is long gone, and I think the voters of our new county need to know what kind of fraud you really are.” Pulling his thumb and forefinger down the corners of his silvery mustache, he turned and walked to the front door.

“I’ll be releasing what I have to Renee Moore,” Wolf said, “from Channel 8, down in Denver. The FBI will also be interested in what I have to say.”

MacLean stopped and turned. “What are you blabbering about? What do they have you on, there? Percocet? Hydrocodone?”

Wolf lifted a finger and pointed it toward a manila envelope laid conspicuously on the otherwise bare coffee table. “That’s yours.”

MacLean walked over and looked at it.

“That’s right.” Wolf smiled. “I have an envelope for you now.”

“What is it?”

“Pick it up.”

MacLean picked it up and pried it open. With a frown he pulled out the single sheet of paper. “What the hell is this?”

“My demands. I admit my handwriting is less than stellar, but I’ve been barely conscious for almost four weeks now, and when I’m awake I’m usually pretty buzzed on pain pills and scotch. And since I can’t get up to use my printer, I had to write it.”

MacLean shook his head with impatience and reached into the envelope. Burying his hand to the elbow, he pulled out a USB memory stick.

“My Deputy Baine, you’ll want to keep a good eye on that guy by the way, tracked down your friend Ms. Gail Olson. He brought her into the station and had a little chat with her, and you’ll see he’s a persuasive guy with his technical and legal jargon, and the way he uses cuss words. He had her spinning, and then shitting her pants, and then spilling everything, about how she was coerced by you to first seduce Deputy Rachette, then to carry out a drug transfer with him in the pre-arranged place and time, where we all know your photographer was in waiting. It’s all there on that USB in your hand, the interrogation video, her confession that she took your payment, everything.”

There was a thwack as MacLean dropped the USB into the envelope. His eyebrows slid down and one side of his mouth turned up. “Bullshit. It’ll be her word against mine.”

“And expunging her record? Did you go through the official court procedures for that? Or was it you and your pal, Lieutenant Bentman in the Ashland PD records department, who made that deal happen off the books?”

MacLean’s eyes darted back and forth.

Wolf lifted his eyebrows. “You and Bentman will be looking at hard jail time for that little move. Gail Olson put us onto that track. She told us about that little carrot you hung on the stick in front of her in addition to the two thousand dollar payment. Again, it’s all on the video.”

MacLean blinked. “Touché.” He looked at the crumpled piece of notebook paper and frowned. “And what’s this chicken-scratch say? Because I can, in fact, not read a single word of it.”

“That’s just saying that once you’re sworn in as Sheriff you’ll hire deputies Rachette, Patterson, Wilson, Yates, and Baine into the department at their current rank or higher. I’ll be adding names to that list as I see fit in the coming two weeks, and the employment contracts will be looked over by my associate Margaret Hitchens. When I get the word that all has been done, I’ll continue to hold myself back from releasing this information.”

MacLean shoved the paper into the envelope and dropped it to his side. With a puff of air from his lips he looked at Wolf. “You’ll continue to
hold back
from releasing this information?”

Wolf nodded. “And I’ve already told Deputy Rachette you had a change of heart about the photographs, and you’ll have to tell him the same as soon as possible. He doesn’t know anything about you setting him up, and I don’t want him to know. That would only cripple your and his relationship going forward, and cripple his ability to do a good job for the department. But, as far as I’m concerned, you owe him. You owe him big time. So you’d better tell him something that makes him feel off the hook for good, like he never even made a mistake. I don’t care how you do it, just do it.

“Deputy Baine, however, can’t un-learn what he’s figured out about you. But he’s agreed to keep silent about our counter-investigation into your activity, of course, I’m sure it will cost you in the terms of his employment.” Wolf raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, but you reap what you sow there.”

MacLean’s chest heaved as he wiped his nose. “And what about you?”

“Me?” Wolf’s eyes glossed over. “I have to take some time to mend things.”

“Well, no shit. I mean after that, what do you want from me? You clearly don’t want Sheriff, so what do you want? Undersheriff? Money? What the hell?”

Wolf dragged his eyes back to MacLean. “For now, I’d like you to go into my kitchen, go into the cabinet to the left of the refrigerator, and pour me a scotch.”

MacLean stood still, his eyes hardening.

He locked eyes with MacLean. “And then I’ll let you know.”

MacLean bit his upper lip, and with a shake of his head he marched into the kitchen. A few seconds later he slammed the bottle next to Wolf and stormed to the front door.

The hinges shrieked, and a shaft of light burned into Wolf’s retinas, and then the door slammed shut.

As the sound of tires crackled into the distance outside, Wolf reached over and picked up his phone. There were nine missed calls from Rachette, Margaret, Patterson, Burton and his mother.

He ignored them and pushed the voicemail button for the hundredth time.

“Hi, David. It’s me.” Sarah’s voice was timid, full of tension. “I need to talk to you. Call me back. Okay?”

Need
to talk to you.

Wolf closed his eyes and lowered the phone. He cursed the political game he’d been roped into over the last few months, because it was so clear to him now—Sarah was dead because of that game. If he hadn’t been so pissed off about Chama’s visit that night, Wolf would have answered this very phone call. He would have helped her. She would be alive.

Wolf reached over and picked up the bottle of Glenlivet 18 year he’d gotten from Burton on his fortieth birthday. A twinge of pain arced up his back as he twisted the cork, but the paper seal gave way and the stopper slid up with a squeak and then popped.

He poured a few fingers in the water glass and scrolled to Jack’s phone number. Wolf swallowed and stared at it, once again pulling forth the fuzzy memory.

He knew it was a memory now, but for weeks Wolf had thought it had been a bad dream. One of many of late. But now he was certain. Through the haze of pain killers and agony of healing wounds, Wolf had only recently realized Jack had not been once to see him. And he wasn’t answering his phone calls, either. And then the truth had settled on him like a pile of rocks.

It hadn’t been a bad dream. It was a memory.

After one of Wolf’s hip surgeries in the county hospital, Wolf had cracked his eyes and Jack had been there waiting for him. He had gotten up from his cloth covered chair, stood next to Wolf’s bed, leaned over so close Wolf could smell his son’s breath, and Jack had said those words.

“It’s your fault she’s dead.”

And then his son had left.

Wolf’s breath caught at the vague recollection, and then he gritted his teeth and pressed Jack’s phone number.

After a single ring it went to voicemail.

“This is Jack, you know what to do.” The crack in Jack’s voice on his voicemail greeting had the simultaneous tone of confidence and self-consciousness.

Wolf inhaled and shuffled the right words in his brain, and then the beep sounded in his ear.

“Hey, Jack.” His voice wavered. “It’s dad.”

After a few breaths, he screwed his eyes shut, then opened them, staring at the ending credits of The Rifleman as they flashed on the TV screen. He pushed the call end button and dropped the phone on the bed.

“One of these days you’ll answer,” Wolf mumbled to himself. “I’m not giving up.”