Deadline (13 page)

The flash drive was duct-taped into the top part of the swing, just to the left of the rope tie, where nothing could get at it, where it would be nice and dry and safe. Like a mosquito, it was going to sting somebody.

Virgil held it in the curl of his hand and smiled.

—

B
ACK AT
J
OHNSON’S CABIN,
Virgil got a Diet Coke, plugged in his laptop, and brought up the flash drive, where he found a half-dozen Pages files and a couple hundred photographs.

He started by checking the files. All but one had cryptic titles, meaningless to Virgil but presumably not to Conley. The non-cryptic one was entitled “To Whom IMC,” which to Virgil meant “To whom it may concern,” which certainly included him.

He opened it and found a rambling note:

—

I
F THIS IS
me reading this, I told you that you were a dumb shit. They’re a bunch of small-town school board members, for God’s sake. They aren’t killers.

If this is not me reading this, and especially if it’s a cop, then, uh-oh, I was right, and I’m probably dead. If I disappeared and you can’t find me, I’m probably dead, too. Probably shot. The guy who probably shot me is named Randolph (Randy) Kerns, the school security officer and a gun nut. If you’re a cop, be careful, because Randy has more guns than any other single human being.

If this is Randy reading this, fuck you.

Anyway, assuming that this is a cop, and you’re reading this because of one of the hints I scattered around, good for you. (And for me.) Here’s the situation, and you might not believe it, but it’s true.

The school board—all of it—with the
help of the superintendent of schools, Henry Hetfield, the financial
officer, Delbert Cray, the security
officer (Randy Kerns, who I
mentioned above), and Vike Laughton, the editor of the
Republican-River,
have been systematically ripping off the school district for
years—as of this writing, seven years, ever since Evelyn Hughes
was defeated in her effort to be reelected to the
board. If you look at my file entitled “Hughesrun” you’ll
find the paper’s coverage of that campaign, and you should
interview Hughes, who lives in Elixir Springs. Vike drove her
off the board so they could start stealing.

What’s the take? At least a half million, and maybe as much as a million dollars a year. As I said, hard to believe, but they rip off some of every single transaction that the board is involved in, and they legitimately spend just under forty million dollars a year on the school system.

The theft is done in a variety of ways: in the transportation area, they over-budget and overspend on fuel and maintenance. The overspending part mostly involves fuel, on which they overstate costs and mileage. They also have a maintenance contract with Lanny Brooks at Brooks and Mann Automotive, on which I believe Brooks kicks back about twenty percent. I can’t prove the Brooks part, but if you look in my file “MainCom” you will find comparative maintenance records for several nearby districts, and for buses of equivalent age and mileage. Maintenance costs in Buchanan are running about twenty percent ahead of where they should be.

I think Viking Laughton gets much of his money from printing what the district lists as “educational materials,” which supposedly are custom lesson sets for social studies, English, and mathematics classes. I have spoken privately to two teachers, whose names I won’t include here, because this might be Randy Kerns (fuck you) reading this, but who will tell you they have never seen these lesson sets. You will need to investigate this on your own. The Minnesota Department of Education issues some of these
lesson sets, which supposedly were reprinted here, and you can find the titles purchased by Buchanan County and copies of the reprints filed with the MDE. (Viking actually made reprints with materials from the MDE, but I believe he only made enough copies to file with the school archives and with the MDE, and pocketed the money from the rest of them.)

There are several ghost workers with the school system—they simply don’t exist. This is much harder to see than you would think, because none of the school district’s salary numbers are broken out by job or by salary amounts—they are always aggregated. I can’t tell how much is missing, but I think they could be taking out a quarter of a million dollars with this skim alone. To find these workers you would have to go check by check through the entire system, which I have been unable to do. The system supposedly holds these records for three years and then destroys them, so there might be some way to dig out the amounts for the last three years. One problem: Fred Masilla, the auditor, is in on the deal, and he certifies the payroll as accurate, but only in aggregate amounts. If the district should have a fire, and if the mini-computer in the accounting office should be destroyed, I’m not sure there would be any way to tell what happened.

The whole board has been fighting for the new sports complex, which will be paid for with a bond issue; the vote is in September. I have to believe that they plan a major rip-off on that thing. . . .

—

C
ONLEY’S NOTE WENT ON
for a while, outlining a scheme, which, if it was actually occurring, would be one of the biggest public embezzlements in Minnesota history, Virgil thought. The photographs, Conley wrote, were taken from the system’s computer system, which he said he had hacked into. Virgil suspected he was lying
about that, because the computer screens in the photographs looked nothing like Conley’s laptop screens. What he had done, Virgil thought, was find a way to break into the school system offices at three o’clock in the morning.

—

V
IRGIL SPENT THREE HOURS
going over all the material on the flash drive—skimming some, because there was just so much, and some of it would take an accountant to untangle.

One thing: he found no mention of Buster Gedney, although Buster’s wife, Jennifer, was mentioned frequently. Conley seemed to think she was one of the ringleaders in the scheme.

Virgil checked the time: he’d read into the late afternoon. He had to do several things—one was to get some backup. If not real-time, in-person backup, he at least needed to tell Davenport what was going on, and where he was headed. And he had to copy the flash drive and send the copy to Davenport for safekeeping.

Davenport was in California, delivering his adoptive daughter to Stanford University. Pacific time was two hours ahead of Central time, so Davenport should be up and moving around.

Virgil called, and Davenport answered: “I’m on vacation.”

“I know. I just want to tell you, I’m going to the post office and I’m mailing a flash drive to you. This is in case I’m shot to death or I disappear.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Davenport said, “You’re serious now.”

“Yeah. Tell you what, Lucas, I’ve come up with the damnedest thing. . . .”

Virgil described the contents of the flash drive, and when he finished, Davenport said, “First, send me the drive. Then, you’re going to need to harden up the information. Nail down what is what. Interview the people you can, without getting back-shot. Then find the weak sister—”

“I think I’ve already done that,” Virgil said, thinking of Buster Gedney.

“Good. I’ll ship Jenkins and Shrake down there, they’ll be there tomorrow morning. The three of you can squeeze him. Or her. Or whatever. In the meantime, this is going to be a big enough stink that the AG—”

“I’ve already talked to one of his guys.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to him about providing a lawyer and a forensic accountant. We’ll keep them on tap, until you need them.”

“That sounds right,” Virgil said.

“And hey,” Davenport asked, “what about the dogs?”

“That’s a whole ’nother problem,” Virgil said.

—

V
IRGIL WENT OUT
to Blackbeard’s Steak & Brew for dinner. BS&B was a roadhouse a mile south of town, and probably the best place around, if you liked meat and beer. He was thinking about a second beer, and was picking at the remnants of a New York Strip, when Johnson called and said, “Darrell and Bill called, they were in the tent tonight and said that a truck pulling a horse van just busted out of Orly’s Creek and headed north on 26 at about a hundred miles an hour. The thing is, there’s no horses up Orly’s Creek. They called
Ben and Winky—Ben lives up north of Orly’s Creek, and Winky’s down south—and they both hauled ass up and down the highway and they met up and didn’t see a horse trailer. Whoever it was, cut up through the hills.”

“Goddamnit. Maybe they spotted the tent.”

“That’s what we’re thinking,” Johnson said.

“What are they doing now? Your dog guys?”

“They got a couple more of the boys and they’re running all over the place looking for the trailer.”

“What if it was a decoy?”

“Well, Darrell and Bill moved out to the road,” Johnson said. “They, uh, they’ve maybe got some guns with them. They’re not gonna let anybody out Orly’s Creek without checking them out.”

“Aw, for Christ’s sakes. Johnson, somebody’s gonna get killed,” Virgil said.

“It’s got me worried.”

“I don’t want to go up there and bust your friends. You gotta get them to back off.”

“I already told them. They think the truck is owned by a guy named D. Wayne Sharf, who was pals with Zorn. Sharf wasn’t there when you guys hit that cookery. But we know he’s sold off dogs in the past.”

Virgil: “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, you’re not going to keep the guys from looking for Sharf and his truck, but if you could talk down Darrell and Bill, that would be good. I’d meet you up there.”

“I’ll see you there in twenty minutes.”

—

J
OHNSON GOT THERE
faster than Virgil, because Virgil had to get out of the restaurant and then head north through the entire town. When he arrived, the three men were standing behind Johnson’s truck. They didn’t show any weapons.

Virgil got out of his truck and said, “Guys, I know you love your dogs, and I really don’t want to drop you in the county jail, but if you go shooting at somebody, that’s probably what’s going to happen. The county attorneys around here don’t want to hear about dogs, if somebody gets shot. They got no patience for guns.”

“Not gonna shoot anybody,” Darrell said.

“Yeah? You’re standing here with your dicks in your hands, looking to stop cars coming out of Orly’s Creek. What are you gonna do if somebody does come out with a load of dogs? Throw rocks at him? Wave good-bye? What?”

“Talk to him . . .”

“Yeah? Want me to give you the dialog? ‘Get out of the truck, you motherfucker.’ ‘Fuck you.’ ‘Yeah? Fuck me? I’ll pull your ass out of that fuckin’ truck . . .’”

Bill started to laugh, and when Virgil stopped talking, said, “That’s pretty much how it’d go.”

Darrell nodded.

Johnson said, “Tell you what, guys. Virgil’s got an idea for tomorrow morning. If you want, we’ll just sit here in my truck, right on the road. I don’t think they’d try to run past us with a load of dogs. So, that’d probably keep them up the valley, at least until Virgil can get something going again.”

Darrell said, “I guess that sounds okay.”

Virgil slapped Johnson on the shoulder and said, “You oughta be secretary of state.”

Bill: “Maybe not.”

—

V
IRGIL TOOK
J
OHNSON
aside and said, “Keep talking to them. Keep them calm. Don’t go jumping into anything yourself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to bed. I gotta be out here before first light.”

“Probably still be here,” Johnson said.

“Call me if there’s trouble.”

A
T FIVE O’CLOCK
in the morning, Virgil crept up to Johnson’s truck and pulled in behind it. Johnson was asleep, but Bill got out, shoulders hunched against the early morning damp and cool. He scuffed dirt off the shoulder onto the empty road and said, “Nothing much. Empty pickups and a couple cars. No dogs. Didn’t see Sharf, either coming or going. God knows where he is by this time.”

“See any movement up on the hill?”

“Not a thing. Darrell’s up there now, listening. Johnson was up there for a couple hours, before he came down to catch some rack time.”

Virgil said, “Okay. Call Darrell down, and you guys can take off anytime. Get the boat back, so the day shift can take over.”

“If they know we’re there . . .”

“Yeah. We’ll talk this afternoon,” Virgil said. “Might be time to call off the watch. At least for now.”

“Need those goddamn dogs, Virgil. This is as mad as anyone’s been—if they beat us this time, they’ll just keep coming back.”

“We’ll get them, Bill. Swear to God.”

—

V
IRGIL GOT BACK
in his truck and drove up Orly’s Creek Road, all the way to the end, and then up the Ruffs’ driveway. He parked in front of the house, and as he turned off the engine, saw a light come on in what he thought was probably a bedroom. As he walked up to the porch, the motion-sensing porch light snapped on, and Julius Ruff looked out the window at him, then met him at the door.

“What happened?” He was wearing a white knit Henley bed shirt and blue boxer shorts.

“Nothing, so far. I’d like to talk to Muddy for a minute if I could.”

“He’s—”

“I’m up,” Muddy said from the darkened back of the house. He came to the door, barefoot, wearing a T-shirt and jeans.

Julius pushed open the door, and Virgil and Julius and Muddy gathered around the kitchen table, and Muddy sketched out the best route up the hill and down the bluffs to the dog pen, where Virgil planned to wait.

“You can’t leave from here, in our driveway,” Julius Ruff said. “You gotta start down the road. I don’t want the assholes to know we’re talking to you.”

“Neither do I,” Virgil said.

Muddy said, “Okay. If you go down the road, maybe a two-minute walk, you’ll see this mailbox with a big wooden rooster cutout on top.”

“I’ve seen that,” Virgil said.

“Then a little ways further, there’s a turnout where you can park, and there’s a trail along the creek there. Follow down the creek about, mmm, a little ways, and there’s a place where the creek breaks between some rocks. You can walk dry across the rocks, and there’s a little trail that goes up the hill from there, and hooks up with the trail under the bluffs.”

“Thank you,” Virgil said. “If I use a flash for part of that, is somebody going to see me?”

“Probably not, if you don’t use it too much. And that turnout is where some trout fishermen park. So . . . you could be a fisherman.”

Virgil said to Julius, “Don’t let Muddy out of the house until eight o’clock or so. I don’t want somebody up there that I don’t know about. I’ll be carrying a shotgun.”

“He’ll be here,” Julius said. To Muddy: “We’ll work on your theory for an hour, and then do some licks from
Guitar Techniques
.”

“I’d just like to get some more sleep,” Muddy said.

“That’s because you think I don’t know about you sneaking out the window. I want you where I can see you,” Julius said. To Virgil, he said, “Good luck.”

—

V
IRGIL FOUND
the turnout two hundred yards back down the road, fifty yards past the rooster mailbox. His watch said that it was 5:30, and though sunrise was more than a half hour away, there was
enough light to see the hole in the brush that led to Orly’s Creek. He wouldn’t need the flash.

He got the shotgun out of the back, loaded it with buckshot, put some extra shells in his jacket pocket, along with a squeeze bottle of DEET. Stopped and listened, and heard nothing but birds announcing with the dawn.

The transition from darkness to full light comes suddenly in the woods. Virgil walked down the creek, where the rocks were barely visible, poking up through the black water. He crossed carefully and began climbing the hill, and by the time he got to the trail along the bluff, he could see a hundred yards through the heavy brush and trees. He moved slowly, no hurry, stopping to look and listen.

With his slow movement, he took more than a half hour to make it to the dog pen. No dogs. He found a downed tree, back in the brush, and sat down behind it. Listened.

The sun showed up on schedule—which, when he thought about it, was a relief, given the alternative. If the dog feeders showed up at 7:30, as they usually did, he’d have another hour to wait. A mosquito buzzed past his ear. . . .

At eight o’clock, he was still waiting. He could see squirrels running up and down the oak trees, all the way down to the road, which meant nobody was creeping up on him. He waited a while longer, but was about to give up when he noticed a growing silence behind his position. He settled back, and ten minutes later, saw Muddy Ruff easing from one tree to the next, his rifle under his arm.

He got downhill from Virgil, twenty yards away, following the trail toward the dog pen. Then he stopped, looked around and
finally up the hill where Virgil was hidden. Virgil said, “I asked you to stay away from here.”

“Got to be eight o’clock, I was done with my lessons. We figured you’d be gone.”

“How’d you spot me?” Virgil asked, as he stood up.

“I could smell that insect stuff,” Muddy said.

“Okay.”

They walked over to the dog pen, and Muddy said, “I can smell the dogs. They were here, not long ago. I don’t know how long, maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of hours.”

“Not a couple hours,” Virgil said. “Nobody was moving in the woods.”

A dog barked. Faintly, but not clearly. Muddy looked at Virgil: “You hear that?”

“Yeah. Where is it?”

“Didn’t sound like it was far away,” Muddy said. “Sounded like it was close, but the dog was gagged or something.”

They both looked at the pen, which looked the same as it did when Virgil was there the first time. Virgil said, “Weird place for a pen. Got to walk all the way up the hill every day, got to carry bags of dog food.”

The hurricane fencing was eight feet high, a semicircle stapled to 4×4 posts, with both ends of the fence pinned to the bluff. Part of the bluff was undercut, with a shallow cavity perhaps two feet high and two feet deep, where the dogs probably went to get out of the sun. They both walked over to the gate, and into the pen, and they both bent to look at the undercut: just an undercut. They could see both ends, and it was empty.

They’d backed off and were looking up at the bluff when they heard another bark.

They looked at each other, then Muddy handed Virgil his rifle and said, “Hold on to this.” He went over to the bluff, lay down, and looked up at the roof of the undercut.

“There’s a board here. Must be a cave.”

“What?”

Virgil stacked their guns against the bluff, took a look around, then got down on his back and looked up at what should have been the sandstone ceiling of the undercut. Instead he saw an eight-foot length of board, fourteen inches wide, two inches thick. The board had toggle bolts at one end, and hinges at the other.

“Keep an eye out,” Virgil said to the kid.

Muddy rolled out of the cavity, and Virgil humped over to the end of the board and twisted the toggle bolts. The board dropped down at one end, and a minute later a beagle hound ran down the board.

“Holy crap,” Muddy said.

More than a dozen dogs, including four beagles, a half-dozen Labrador retrievers—four black and two chocolate—a golden retriever, two Brittany spaniels, and two black-and-white dogs and one speckled brown one that Virgil couldn’t name, but looked like serious gun dogs, followed down the board and milled around, sniffing for food. They looked like they needed it. One of the beagles started baying at them—where’s the food?

Virgil picked up the shotgun, waved Muddy out of the pen, closed the gate, and said, as a couple other dogs joined in the howl, “Keep an eye out down the hill, in case the noise pulls somebody in.”

“Right.”

Virgil got on the phone to Johnson.

“You hear them?”

“We all can. Where the hell are you?”

“At the pen. Get up here. Don’t have to be subtle about it, park on the road and come on up.”

When he was off the phone, he said to Muddy, “I owe you one. I don’t think I would have seen that plank.”

Muddy nodded.

“You got any idea of who might’ve done this?”

“Roy Zorn is the one everybody thought did it. His best pal, his assistant, is D. Wayne Sharf—not Duane, but D, the initial, and Wayne, everybody calls him Dee-Wayne. He lives almost straight down the hill, and I’ve seen him up here in the spring, looking for mushrooms. He might’ve been the one who found the cave.”

“Okay. D. Wayne Sharf, we’re already looking for him,” Virgil said. “You go on home. I don’t want anyone to see you up here with me. You’ve got to live here.”

Muddy nodded again and said, “You should get some different insect stuff. I could smell you a mile away.”

And he was gone down the trail.

—

J
OHNSON PARKED
straight
down the hill from the pen and started climbing. He was alone, and when he got to Virgil, gasping for breath, Virgil asked, “Where are the rest of the guys?”

“I called them, they’re coming. I told them to look for my truck and climb straight up from there.” He looked at the dogs. “Where were they?”

Virgil showed him the undercut. Johnson took Virgil’s flashlight and stuck his head into the hole above the undercut, then stood up. Virgil was the tiniest bit claustrophobic, and said, “Careful, think about a cave-in.”

Johnson dropped back to his knees and crawled out of the undercut, handed the flashlight to Virgil. “Stinks like hell. Looks like a regular sandstone cave—they’re all over the place around here. Should have thought of it before. Could have hid a hundred dogs in there. Smells like dog shit and dead animals . . . probably ought to send somebody up there to look around.”

“Not me,” Virgil said.

“What if they killed somebody and stashed the body up there?” Johnson asked.

“Goddamnit, Johnson, why’d you go and ask that?”

“Because I’d rather have you up there, than me—and you’re skinnier, anyway, so you could walk right up that board, if you did it sideways.”

Virgil thought about it for a while, and Johnson saw him thinking about it, and said, to encourage him, “Try not to be too big a pussy, pussy.”

—

E
VENTUALLY,
Virgil agreed that he should at least do what Johnson did, which was get his feet on the bottom of the plank and stand up. Sweating a little, he did that. Using his flashlight, he could see the roof of a fairly roomy cave, maybe ten feet high and fifty across, with a floor that showed shovel marks. A pile of fallen rubble sat at one end. The cave got shallower as it went deeper into the bluff, and
finally, twenty-five or thirty feet back, twisted out of sight. He couldn’t see much on the floor of the cave, because of the angle he was at.

He called, “How solid you think this plank is?”

“Felt pretty solid to me.”

Virgil edged up the plank until he could see into the cave in some detail. The doggy odor was so strong he could hardly breathe, but he could feel a thin draft of air from the back of the cave. There’s another hole going out, he thought, and maybe another room farther back. With the plank closed from below, the dogs must have been held in total darkness. He didn’t see any bodies.

Enough. He backed down the plank and crawled out of the undercut and Johnson asked, “Why didn’t you go up inside?”

“’Cause I’m not a stupid asshole,” Virgil said.

“You see anything?”

“Not much to see, except dog poop.”

“Bet you could find some old Indian stuff in there, if you dug it out,” Johnson said.

“Good luck with that,” Virgil said. And, “Here are some of the guys.”

A red Chevy pickup had pulled to the side of the road below, and two men got out and looked up the hill. Johnson shouted, “Manny. Winky. Right straight up.”

—

M
ORE TRUCKS STARTED ARRIVING,
and a line of climbers stretched down the hill. When the first two came up, one of them said, “I believe those are Dan’s beagles. That one was a rescue, and had fly-bitten ears, and there he is. Are there any more?”

“This is it,” Virgil said. “They had them up in a hidden cave, which is how they could hide them so fast.”

“Six Labs, but not mine,” Butterfield said. “Where’n the fuck are my Labs?”

“Goddamn Sharf took them out in that horse trailer,” the second man said. “Find him, we find the rest of them.”

Butterfield said, “These are all high-grade dogs. They supposedly were snatching some mutts, too. Where are those? Sharf take them, too?”

Johnson said, “I bet they were stealing the high-enders for resale, and the mutts were going to the dog bunchers.”

Butterfield said, “Dan is coming up the hill.” He turned and shouted, “Hey, Dan, might have some of your dogs up here.”

“Hope to Christ nobody has a heart attack climbing that hill,” Johnson said.

“Good thought,” said Virgil. He looked at the roiling swell of dogs. “Let’s see if we can get these dogs wired up or roped up and get them down the hill.”

After some more yelling down the hill, one of the younger men got a roll of twine from a truck and started up the hill.

In the meantime, Dan arrived, a big man in jeans and a cotton work shirt. He looked at the beagles and started to cry, and the beagles gathered around his knees, whimpering, trying to climb on him, and he gave Johnson a big hug, which made Johnson look seriously uncomfortable, and then Dan sat on the ground and the beagles gathered around and tried to lick him to death.

He was followed by the woman who’d been at the Shanker’s meeting, and had spoken about rescue dogs and ordinary mutts
being stolen. She looked at the dogs still in the pen and said, “None of my dogs. My God, they could already be in the laboratories.”