Dark Rivers of the Heart

As before, Duvall was going to pay out whatever he had learned in small installments.

“While I was so close, I decide to hop over from Denver to Vail, have a look at the ranch where it happened. It’s a quick flight. Almost took longer to board and disembark than it took to get there.”

“You’re there now?”

“At the ranch? No. I just got back from there. But I’m still in Vail. And wait’ll you hear what I discovered.”

“I guess I’ll have to.”

“Huh?”

“Wait,” Roy said.

Either missing the sarcasm or ignoring it, Duvall said, “I’ve got two tasty enchiladas of information to feed you. Enchilada number one — what do you think happened to the ranch after they took all of the bodies out of there and Ackblom went to prison for life?”

“It became a retreat for Carmelite nuns,” Roy said.

“Where’d you hear that?” Duvall asked, unaware that Roy’s answer had been intended to be humorous. “Aren’t any nuns anywhere around the place. There’s this couple lives on the ranch, Paul and Anita Dresmund. Been there for years. Fifteen years. Everyone around Vail thinks they own the place, and they don’t let on any different. They’re only about fifty-five now, but they have the look and style of people who might’ve been able to retire at forty — which is what they claimed — or never worked at all, lived on inheritance. They’re perfect for the job.”

“What job?”

“Caretakers.”

“Who does own it?”

“That’s the creepy part.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Part of the Dresmunds’ job is to pretend ownership and not reveal they’re paid caretakers. They like to ski, live the easy life, and it doesn’t bother them to be living in a place with that reputation, so keeping their mouths shut has been easy.”

“But they opened up to you?”

“Well, you know, people take FBI credentials and a few threats of criminal charges a lot more seriously than they should,” Duvall said. “Anyway, until about a year and a half ago, they were paid by an attorney in Denver.”

“You’ve got his name?”

“Bentley Lingerhold. But I don’t think we’ll need to bother with him. Until a year and a half ago, the Dresmunds’ checks were issued from a trust fund, the Vail Memorial Trust, overseen by this attorney. I had my field computer with me, got on-line with Mama, had her track it down. It’s a defunct entity, but there’s still a record of it. Actually, it was managed by another trust that still exists — the Spencer Grant Living Trust.”

“Good God,” Roy said.

“Stunning, huh?”

“The son still owns that property?”

“Yeah, through other entities he controls. A year and a half ago, ownership was transferred from the Vail Memorial Trust, which was essentially owned by the son, to an offshore corporation on Grand Cayman Island. That’s a tax-shelter haven in the Caribbean that—”

“Yes, I know. Go on.”

“Since then, the Dresmunds have been getting their checks from something called Vanishment International. Through Mama, I got into the Grand Cayman bank where the account is located. I wasn’t able to learn its value or call up any transaction records, but I was able to find out that Vanishment is controlled by a Swiss-based holding company: Amelia Earhart Enterprises.”

Roy fidgeted in his seat, wishing that he’d brought a pen and notebook to keep all these details straight.

Duvall said, “The grandparents, George and Ethel Porth, formed the Vail Memorial Trust well over fifteen years ago, about six months after the Ackblom story exploded. They used it to manage the property at a one-step remove, to keep their names disassociated from it.”

“Why didn’t they sell the place?”

“Haven’t a clue. Anyway, a year later they set up the Spencer Grant Living Trust for the boy, here in Denver, through this Bentley Lingerhold, just after the kid had his name legally changed. At the same time they put that trust in charge of the Vail Memorial Trust. But Vanishment International came into existence just a year and a half ago, long after both grandparents were dead, so you’ve got to figure that Grant himself set it up and that he’s moved most of his assets out of the United States.”

“Starting at about the same time he began to eliminate his name from most public records,” Roy mused. “Okay, tell me something…when you’re talking trusts and offshore corporations, you’re talking about big money, aren’t you?”

“Big,” Duvall confirmed.

“Where’d it come from? I mean, I know the father was famous….”

“After the old man pleaded guilty to all those murders, you know what happened to him?”

“Tell me.”

“He accepted a sentence of life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane. No possibility of parole. He made no arguments, no appeals. The guy was absolutely serene from the moment he was arrested, all the way through the final proceeding. Not one outburst, no expressions of regret.”

“No point. He knew he didn’t have any defense. He wasn’t crazy.”

“He wasn’t?” Duvall said, surprised.

“Well, not irrational, not babbling or raving or anything like that. He knew he couldn’t get off. He was just being realistic.”

“I guess so. Anyway, then the grandparents moved to have the son declared the legal owner of Ackblom’s assets. In fact, at the Porths’ request, the court ultimately divided the liquidated assets — minus the ranch — between the boy and the immediate families of the victims, in those cases where any spouses or children survived them. Want to guess how much they split?”

“No,” Roy said. He glanced out the porthole and saw a pair of local cops walking alongside the aircraft, looking it over.

Duvall didn’t even hesitate at Roy’s “no,” but poured out more details: “Well, the money came from selling paintings from Ackblom’s personal collection of other artists’ work, but mainly from the sale of some of his own paintings that he’d never been willing to put on the market. It totaled a little more than twenty-nine million dollars.”

“After taxes?”

“See, the value of his paintings soared with the notoriety. Seems funny, doesn’t it, that anyone would want to hang his work in their homes, knowing what the artist did. You’d think the value of his stuff would just collapse. But there was a frenzy in the art market. Values went through the roof.”

Roy remembered the color plates of Ackblom’s work that he had studied as a boy, at the time the story broke, and he couldn’t quite understand Duvall’s point. Ackblom’s art was exquisite. If Roy could have afforded to buy them, he would have decorated his own home with dozens of the artist’s canvases.

Duvall said, “Prices have continued to climb all these years, though more slowly than in the first year after. The family would have been better off holding onto some of the art. Anyway, the boy ended up with fourteen and a half million after taxes. Unless he lives high on the hog, that ought to have grown into an even more substantial fortune over all these years.”

Roy thought of the cabin in Malibu, the cheap furniture and walls without any artwork. “No high living.”

“Really? Well, you know, his old man didn’t live nearly as high as he could have, either. He refused to have a bigger house, didn’t want any live-in servants. Just a day maid and a property foreman who went home at five o’clock. Ackblom said he needed to keep his life as simple as possible to preserve his creative energy.” Gary Duvall laughed. “Of course he really just didn’t want anyone around at night to catch him at his games under the barn.”

Wandering back along the side of the chopper again, the Mormon cops looked up at Roy, where he was