Cold Lake (29 page)

With a numb motion he took a sip of the warm liquid, feeling the burn slide down his throat. Sloshing a dollop onto the cart table as he replaced it, his body sank into the hospital bed as if he was pulling five g’s in a fighter jet.

As his eyelids drooped, he saw Sarah’s beautiful blues, and her wide smile. Then he saw Jack next to her with a big grin of his own. And then their image swirled and vanished.

Wolf would find justice for Sarah and his shattered family.

Through this whole ordeal, at least Margaret Hitchens had been right about one thing.

“I never give up,” Wolf said, closing his eyes.

THE END.

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Cold Lake
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David Wolf Series In Order

Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story)
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y
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Foreign Deceit
(Wolf #1)

The Silversmith
(Wolf #2)

Alive and Killing
(Wolf #3)

Deadly Conditions (Wolf #4)

Cold Lake (Wolf #5)

Smoked Out (Wolf #6)

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Read on for an excerpt of
Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6) …

Two thumps ripped Wolf out of his sleep.

Or so he thought. The silence in his ranch house living room was absolute save the ticking clock. The walls flickered in the darkened space as muzzle blasts puffed out of an actor’s revolver on the muted television.

With a slow breath he tried to blank out the throbbing pain in his limbs. Every time he woke the pain seemed to have multiplied anew from the previous conscious moment; of course being drugged up on Percocet and a smattering of other pain pills, adding doses of scotch to the cocktail of medication, made it hard to remember previous conscious moments.

This must be what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s. How many times had he repeated that thought in the last few days? What day was it?

He craned his neck as crunching footsteps approached his front door outside and then there was a knock that echoed in his skull.

He cracked his lips and peeled his tongue from the top of his mouth. “Come in.”

There was no response.

“Come in!” Pain shot through his pelvis.

The knob turned and the doorway burst with light that assaulted his eyeballs.

“Mr. Wolf?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Special Agent Cumberland with the FBI.”

Two men were silhouetted in his open doorway holding square ID wallets in his direction. He laid back and closed his eyes, staring at their after-image burned into his retinas. “I’ll have to take your word for that. Come in.”

“This is the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Denver Field Office Steven Frye. We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

Wolf reached over and grabbed the handle of the oversized plastic cup of water and sucked from the straw. He was vaguely surprised it was so full, cold, and rattling with ice. He drew a blank when trying to remember who had filled the bottle for him. It could have been any number of people who came in and out of his house as of late. Probably the big nurse.

“Open those shades,” one of the agents said.

His living room brightened and Wolf tried to straighten in his reclined hospital bed, sending another bolt of pain from his pelvis up his spine. He broke into a sweat and pulled off his sheet, and the relatively cool air caressed his skin through the damp gown.

Fumbling at his sides for the bed controls, he found the plastic box next to his leg cast and pushed the incline button.

As the bed whirred one of the agents stepped in front of the television. He was tall and wide, and filled out his suit with muscle underneath. Holding mirrored sunglasses in one hand, his badge wallet hung in his other.

“Let me see those badges and IDs again.”

The big agent looked at the other and then they both handed over their wallets.

Wolf studied their authenticity. The badges were real, and the ID cards looked real enough. Cumberland was the tall guy in front of him, and the ASAC Frye was the other guy to his left that he’d yet to look at in real life.

Both men had military cuts in their pictures and no-nonsense blank facial expressions. They wore white dress shirts and black ties cinched on muscular necks.

When Wolf looked up, the two men were identical in dress and presentation to their IDs. But from each other they were different in every way. Cumberland was tall and imposing, while Frye was short and wiry. It looked like Cumberland had to endure a grueling physical routine to hold his shape, and Frye looked like he had to eat to hold his.

Wolf handed the wallets back. “What questions?”

Cumberland tilted his chin up. “We need to ask you about the night Sarah Muller and Carter Willis were murdered. Straighten up a few things.”

“Straighten up a few things? What’s there to straighten up?”

Cumberland clenched his fists and spread his hands while gazing around Wolf’s living room.

It was a reflexive move for the big man, Wolf thought, like the agent was trying to contain anger.

Agent Frye cleared his throat. “What were you doing the night of Sarah Muller’s and Carter Willis’s deaths?”

Wolf took a deep breath. “I was out having a drink.”

“With a woman who was a suspect in your murder investigation up at Cold Lake, correct?” Frye asked.

“At the time she was a person of interest.”

“Until what time were you two having a drink?”

Wolf shrugged. “I don’t know. Nine-thirty? Ten?”

“You’re not too sure about this because?”

“I left under extenuating circumstances.”

Frye blew air from his mouth. “And I guess what you mean by that is that you were in a fight with a man named Carter Willis, knocked unconscious, and dragged out of there by this woman of interest in your murder investigation?”

“Something like that.”

Cumberland squeezed his hands into fists again.

“Did you hear that that woman of interest, Miss Kimber Grey, a.k.a. Rachel Grey, has just committed suicide at County Hospital?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Ah. Well she did. So there goes your alibi right there.”

“Actually, you don’t have your facts straight. I don’t think I was having drinks with Rachel that night. I think it was her twin sister, Hannah Kipling, whom I pulled off a cliff and killed. So, actually, my alibi was long gone before Rachel offed herself.”

Frye smiled without teeth. “So you have no alibi for your whereabouts for the rest of that night. We talked to the bartender at the Pony Tavern. You were dragged out of there at closer to nine p.m., so you had the whole night ahead of you to recover from your fight and take care of whatever you needed to take care of.”

Wolf ignored the bait.

“You’ve got motive like nobody else,” Frye continued.

“What’s this guy here for? To stand and flex? You mind moving away from the TV there, Hulk?”

Cumberland’s face darkened, and then he turned and poked the off button.

The flat screen squeaked as it rocked back and forth on its stand.

Frye smiled again, this time displaying his teeth, which seemed to glow. Clearly a fan of whitening agents. “We’ve been checking on your recent movements, specifically before the murders of your ex-wife and Carter Willis. Turns out you and Carter had a little run-in at the Antler Lodge, the restaurant on top of the Rocky Points Ski Resort?”

“Is that a question?”

“And from what we’ve been able to gather, it looks like Carter Willis and your ex-wife hugged at that encounter, and you overreacted, causing a scene.”

“I reacted the appropriate amount.”

“Out of jealousy?”

“The guy was a sleaze ball. He was groping my date in front of me.”

Frye nodded. “I’m just going to cut to the chase, maybe save us all some time here. Did you kill Carter Willis and your ex-wife, Mr. Wolf?”

“No.”

“Because it looks like you did.”

“Can’t arrest someone for looking like they might have murdered someone. Listen, I’ve got some Rifleman to catch up on, so if you guys don’t mind leaving and lifting your legs on some other tree? Thanks.”

“What are these?” Frye slapped a manila folder on the plaster cast that covered Wolf’s lap.

Wolf stared at it but didn’t move.

Frye opened it for him and pushed the contents, splaying a stack of photographs.

They were photos of his Deputy, Tom Rachette, and the girl they’d come to know as Gail Olson. They were familiar—Gail Olson handing Rachette a bag, Rachette hugging the woman, Rachette putting the bag in his car, Rachette and Gail driving their separate ways.

They were an innocuous set of photographs under normal circumstances, but Wolf knew Gail Olson had been caught months earlier by the Ashland PD with marijuana and money in her car, lots of both, and these photos were supposed to implicate Wolf and his department being involved in the smuggling of drugs.

Only Wolf knew better.

When Wolf kept silent Frye picked up a photo and studied it. “Sheriff Will MacLean of Byron County told us he brought these photos to you. He knew all about Gail Olson’s past and mentioned that he might make these photos public. He said you freaked out and dropped out of the race. He’s done right by giving the pictures up to us now.”

“Yes,” Wolf said, “these photos were a blackmail attempt by Sheriff MacLean, who set up Gail Olson to make this fake drop while he took these pictures in order to make my deputy and my department look bad.”

Frye straightened with a confused look. “MacLean set the whole thing up, which you figured out, and yet you dropped out of the race? So the blackmail attempt worked? I’m confused. You say it was a setup, but yet, you dropped out of the race in order to keep these photos under wraps.”

“I dropped out of the race because I didn’t want the job.”

“And why’s that?”

“I learned I didn’t fit the job description. MacLean did perfectly.”

Frye laughed. “That’s an interesting angle on the whole thing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that’s not what we heard.”

Wolf leaned back. “Heard about what?”

Frye smirked and walked away from the hospital bed.

“Hey, why don’t you take a look around.”

“Thanks. I will,” Frye said, his voice coming from inside Wolf’s bedroom.

Cumberland stood motionless, gazing at Wolf. 

Engines revved and tires rumbled on the drive out front, getting louder as they approached.

Frye appeared next to Wolf and gestured to the window. “The rest of our crew.”

“Why?”

Frye stepped to the window and forked open the blinds with his fingers. “Did you kill Gail Olson, Sheriff Wolf?”

Wolf frowned. “What? No.”

Frye twisted and stared at him.

Wolf looked at Frye and Cumberland in turn. “Gail Olson’s been murdered?”

Both agents held their stares.

Frye blinked first. “She’s been missing since the night of Carter Willis’s and Sarah Muller’s deaths. Vanished.”

The vehicles outside came to squeaking stops and car doors opened and closed. Chattering agents and squawks of radio static filled the silence.

“You guys seriously think I shot my ex-wife, Carter Willis, and Gail Olson?” Wolf counteracted his escalating blood pressure with deep breathing.

Frye gestured toward Wolf’s bedroom. “Could have been with that Walther PPK sitting in your nightstand drawer.”

“The bullets that killed my ex-wife and Carter Willis were nine millimeter parabellum. Since a blown off right hand isn’t one of my current injuries, clearly I didn’t use the PPK to fire those rounds. You got a warrant inside that empty head of yours? If not, then get the hell out of my house.”

“And your department issue Glock 17?” Cumberland asked.

“My deputies already checked to see if my piece was fired the day we discovered the bodies.”

“We discovered the bodies?” Frye asked. “They. Your deputies discovered the bodies. You were supposedly here with a psychotic serial murderer at the time doing hell knows what kind of sick things in that bedroom of yours—or at least, you say you were here. And when your deputy checked your weapon? We heard about that visual check and sniff. That’s not going to cut it. We’ll need to do some ballistics.” Frye slapped a folded sheet of paper on his bed. “And here’s our warrant. We’re going to take a look around now. You just sit here and make yourself comfortable while we do.” Frye pulled a radio from his belt. “All right, let’s move.”

Calls and responses echoed outside and the front door blew open. Two male agents entered in full stride.

“Go ahead, make my day,” Wolf leaned back, his confident words sounding not so confident to his ears. Because the truth was, he remembered little of that fateful night a few weeks ago, when Sarah and Carter Willis were shot dead and left in a BMW sedan.

There were still unanswered questions about that night—as in
all
of the questions.

“Agent Frye.”

Frye paused in mid-conversation with an agent and stepped close to Wolf. “What?”

“Carter Willis.”

“What about him?”

“I’ve been looking into him. Who the hell is he? Aren’t you guys worried about that? He’s not in any of the databases, no public record, nothing. He doesn’t exist. He’s a ghost. And you guys are worried about me?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Not my concern? He was found dead with my wife.”

“Your ex-wife.” Frye squinted and tilted his head. “Is that all Mr. Wolf?”

Wolf leaned back and closed his eyes. “Is Special Agent Luke here?”

Nobody answered. When Wolf cracked his eyes open Agent Frye was gone.

Wolf looked on his bedside roll-table for his cell phone, and it was gone. A young-looking FBI agent was dropping it in a plastic bag.

“Is Special Agent Luke here?” Wolf asked the agent.

The agent kept silent, but after a quick glance around the room he gave a nod.