Tax Assassin (8 page)

“
And which ranchers were
willing to raise Arabian horses.”

“
That’s smart.”

“
Brilliant,” Jocelyn said.
“On this trip, he bought a couple of ranches outside of Walsenburg
before meeting his family for Thanksgiving. His family took the
train and lingered until the first of December. His wife’s letters
indicate that she sent him off in his buggy around the first of
December.”

“
At the start of the
blizzard,” Seth said.

“
There wasn’t a national
weather forecast then,” Jocelyn said. “Like a lot of Colorado
snowstorms, the blizzard started with just a little snow. Paul
Bradley was from back East. He wouldn’t have known how things can
change on a dime here. He set out from Trinidad. His records, the
ones they found on him, indicate that he made slow progress up the
valley. The last notation is the fourth of December 1913, the day
eyewitnesses say all hell broke loose. When they found Mr. Bradley,
they assumed his buggy had gotten stuck and he had frozen to death
out there.”

“
When did they find
him?”

“
About two months after he
disappeared,” she said. “It wasn’t until he thawed out that they
saw the bullet hole.”

“
Where did they find him?”
Seth asked.

She opened the heavy map book and began
flipping the pages.

“
There.”

Jocelyn pointed to a small town off a
railway line that ran up the center of the valley. Seth pulled his
reading glasses from the breast pocket of his sports jacket and
leaned over to look.

“
In between Tyrone and
Thatcher?” he asked.

“
It’s called Houghton,
now,” she said. “All of these railway towns were named after valley
cattlemen – owners of the big ranches. Thatcher, Model, Louden,
Tyrone, Bloom . . . Most of these families
homesteaded this land in the late 1880s and early
1900s.”

“
Why do those names and
this land sound familiar?”

“
The U.S. Army has a large
training facility there.”

“
Piñon Canyon.”

“
They bought and took the
land in the 1980s,” Jocelyn said. “Opened the maneuver site in
1983.”

“
Tried a land grab some
years back?”

“
The Army?” Jocelyn nodded.
“It’s these people, the Loudens, Thatchers, Tyrones, and Blooms –
people who’ve lived in the area for a long time – they’ve fought
the Army for years. Right now, they have a reprieve, but you know
how this works. The Army is never going to give up; so the families
keep fighting.”

“
These families still live
there,” Seth said.

“
This flat, open valley
will always be home to them. It doesn’t look like much . .
.”

“
The Army says it looks
like Iraq,” Seth smiled.

“
It’s home for them,”
Jocelyn said. “Has been since before Colorado was a
state.”

“
You think they killed the
tax agent?” Seth asked.

“
No one knows,” Jocelyn
said. “The sheriff at the time thought he probably killed
himself.”

“
He knew he was stranded,
saw the storm intensify, figured he couldn’t get out,” Seth said.
“Suicide was better than freezing to death?”

“
That’s what they
determined,” Jocelyn said.

“
Then why was it marked as
an unsolved case?” Seth asked.

“
If it was a suicide, the
tax agent’s family wouldn’t get a death pay out,” Jocelyn said.
“Big expensive lawyer from Boston showed up and made a fuss. Mr.
Bradley had a wife and a couple of young kids. The sheriff felt
sorry for them.”

“
Huh,” Seth said. “And the
horses?”

“
I knew you’d catch that,”
Jocelyn said. “No one knows what happened to his Arabian horses.
That’s part of the mystery. Was he killed for the horses? Was it a
tax problem? I’ll tell you though. There’s lots of talk about the
amazing horses from this valley. They’re prized by endurance horse
race fanatics. My daughter says if she doesn’t place in the Pony
Express Trail 100 this year, she’s going to get a horse from Piñon
Valley.”

“
Are they Arabian
horses?”

“
They don’t look it,”
Jocelyn said. “But if I were still a guitar-swinging, rock ‘n roll
gal, I’d wager they’re the descendents of Paul Bradley’s
horses.”

Seth nodded. Rachel smacked her lips and
started a chant of “Ma, Ma, Ma.”

“
I hate to get info and
run, but that’s the sound she makes before she starts . .
.”

Rachel let out a wail.

“
Crying,” Seth said. “She’s
hungry.”

“
Did you bring . .
.”

Seth scowled at Jocelyn. Their long-held
disdain for each other reappeared. He dug around in the bag Sandy
had given him to find a bottle of breast milk. He was about to take
Rachel from her when Jocelyn yanked the bottle away. She checked
the temperature. She gave him a kind of “so there” look and began
feeding Rachel.

“
I heard you’re getting
married again,” Jocelyn looked up at him. “Does she know about
Andy?”

“
She does.”

“
And she’s okay with
that?”

“
She says that knowing I
love and loved someone so deeply means that I’m able to love. Being
able to love is a rare gift,” Seth said. Jocelyn looked surprised.
He lifted a shoulder. “She’s twenty-three.”

“
Young people are so much
more emotionally aware than we were,” Jocelyn said. Seth
nodded.

“
She’s Aaron Alvin’s
daughter,” Seth said.

“
Poor girl,” Jocelyn said.
“That man is a bastard. How are they doing?”

“
Not great,” Seth
said.

“
She’s lucky to have you.”
When Jocelyn looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “Andy was
too. I know that, it’s just that . . .”

“
It’s easier to hate me
than believe we couldn’t work it out.”

She gave a slight nod.

“
It’s easier for me too,”
he smiled.

She nodded and looked down at Rachel.

“
I think she’s asleep,”
Jocelyn said.

“
She sleeps for a little
bit after she eats,” he got up from his seat. “Then it’s burping,
diapers, and play. I’d better get her home, or I’ll never hear the
end of it from her teenage playmates.”

Jocelyn set Rachel in his arms. Rachel
fussed for a moment, and then fell back to sleep. Seth settled the
baby in her sling. He picked up the book of maps and they walked
into the open library space.

“
The CBI thought there
might be some connection between the tax agent and the Civil War –
Confederate Army specifically,” Seth said.

Jocelyn shrugged.

“
Anything?”

“
In that area? Sure,”
Jocelyn said. “Why don’t I take a look? I’ll let you know if I can
pin down anything specific.”

“
Thanks,” Seth
said.

Jocelyn looked as if she was going to say
something. Instead, she turned in place and walked back across the
library. Seth watched her go, then set the map book back on its
shelf. Rachel stirred and he took her into the bathroom to change
her diaper. She smiled at him and fell sound asleep.

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NINE

Somewhere between dropping Rachel off in
Uptown and his house in Park Hill, the passageway to where music
lived clicked open. As it had since that day in second grade, music
flooded in. The rhythm pounded in his brain. The sound filled his
ears. His nose filled with the sweet smell of melody. He had to
lean forward to focus on driving. He made it to his driveway before
his sight filled. Before his eyes, he saw dancing black notes on a
white page.

Seth stumbled from his car and fumbled with
the lock on the garden gate. He was about to call the house when
the gate opened. Ava stood in front of him. Under music’s spell, he
had the overwhelming desire to make love to her right there. She
smiled with the memory of the times they had done just that. They
both looked in the direction of the sound of her mother’s
laugh.

He was infused with music, not insane. There
was no way he was going to get caught making love on the lawn by
her mother. Ava leaned forward to acknowledge his thoughts.

Taking his hand, she helped him through the
gate. She slipped down the backstairs to avoid their house guests.
She took his key from his hand and helped him into his piano
sanctuary. When he turned, Ava kissed him with hard promise and
touched her hand to his heart. He smiled. With a nod, she closed
the door.

He sat down at the piano and felt the music
well. His last conscious thought was to turn on the digital
recorder.

The music took him away.

He played until his fingers hurt. He played
until he had to fight to keep his eyes open. Closing his heavy
lids, he played until the music slipped away.

He stumbled from the bench to the bathroom.
When he returned, he noticed Ava curled up on the leather couch.
Wrapped in his mother’s quilts, she had been there for hours. He
lay down on the rug in front of her and fell sound asleep.

When he woke a couple of hours later, he
knew two things – that the music he’d created last night was good,
and that all of this killing was connected in some way to property
taxes in southeastern Colorado. Once he’d polished and finished the
music, his agent would package and sell it.

It was up to him to find the killers. With
murder-for-hire, he knew where to start.

Like always, his music surge left him awake
and invigorated. He touched Ava’s sleeping face. She opened her
eyes and smiled.

“
Are you back?” she
asked.

“
For you,” he
said.

She joined him on the floor.

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TEN

Seth leaned back in his office chair to look
at the map of the U.S. he’d tacked on the wall. He’d placed a
yellow self-sticking flag over every city with a cluster of three
or four unsolved killings over the course of a summer. The map was
covered with yellow. Hearing a sound behind him, Seth rotated his
office chair around to find Ava’s sister Éowyn standing in the
doorway.

“
So, that’s what you do
here?” Éowyn spoke in her usual sneering tone. Seth heard Éowyn’s
desperate unhappiness echo between her words. He smiled.

“
What is?” He rotated his
chair back around to look at the large map. He gestured to a chair
near him. She slunk into the room.

“
Music, mystery, sex,”
Éowyn said as she dropped into the seat.

“
I was supposed to be on
vacation,” Seth said.

“
Seems like a vacation,”
she said.

“
Don’t tell anyone,” Seth
rotated to look at her.

“
Why?”

“
People pay me a lot of
money to do this, and I don’t want them to know,” Seth
said.

Éowyn’s lip lifted into a kind of sideways
smile. The rest of her face held her sorrow and exhaustion. She
seemed to be searching for something to say.

“
You make a lot of money as
a cop?” Éowyn asked.

“
Sex,” Seth
laughed.

She gave him the gift of a genuine
smile.

“
What are you working on?”
Éowyn asked.

“
Little mystery brought to
me by an old friend,” Seth said.

She went to the wall to look at the map.

“
And the flags?”

“
Cities with murders that
fit the profile,” Seth said.

“
That’s a lot of murder,”
Éowyn said. “One city per state?”

“
Looks that way,” Seth
said. “It’s hard to tell because the records only go back so
far.”

“
This has been going on a
long time?”

“
I think so,” Seth said.
“Ava thinks so. That’s part of the mystery.”

“
And the FBI?”

“
No standard protocol; no
standard weapon . . .”

“
No M.O.,” Éowyn nodded.
“That
is
a good
mystery. Serial killer?”

“
Murder-for-hire,” Seth
shrugged. “I think. Mostly it’s a lot of unsolved murders that span
the country and go on for a lot of years. Or . . .”

Seth’s eyes shifted to the map.

“
Or?”

“
Or there’s a bunch of
detectives who like Maresol’s cooking enough to massage their
unsolved cases to fit this project,” Seth said.

“
We know that’s true,”
Éowyn said. “What’s your next move?”

“
I have a call in to
someone I knew in the Army,” Seth said. “We’ll see what he knows
about murder-for-hire. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue who is behind
this. I’m still collecting murders.”

“
How many people were
killed a year?”

“
Four,” Seth said.
“Sometimes three. In the fifties, it was only two or three. But
it’s been four for a while.”

“
Odd how no one noticed all
these years,” she said.

“
It’s hard to imagine,”
Seth said. “But computers are pretty new. These murders went on for
at least seventy years before cops had access to computers and
another twenty before they were common.”