with an American named Shuster.”
Wales took it like a body blow, narrowing his eyes, incredulous. “Ace had some kinda bomb?”
“Don’t know.”
Wales recovered quick. “Yeah, well, you seen what Ace was smuggling last night.” Then he pointed his finger at Broker. “Don’t play games. We haven’t had a murder in this town for twenty years. Now I got three people shot to death in an hour’s time. And two missing, kidnapped…”
How do you know they’re kidnapped?” Broker said.
“Dale called in to nine-one-one that-”
Broker cut in, “The Qaeda guy in Detroit said they were working with a Shuster. You got one dead Shuster and another one telling you something on a phone…”
Wales chewed at the inside of his cheek, cocked his head. “You mean…Dale…,” he said slowly.
“Yeah, Dale. What if that distress call was misdirection?” Broker ventured.
Wales headed out the door, motioning to Broker to follow. “C’mon.”
“Where we going?”
“To the Shuster house, for starters.”
Wales paused at dispatch to put instructions over the radio. “Lyle, stay at the bar and keep an eye on the ME. And when the crime lab people get in from Bismarck, thank them for assisting but make it clear we want the jurisdiction. Break. Yeager, get Barry to the hospital, then stand by at the SO.” He turned to the dispatcher. “Karen, where are we?”
“Bismarck is started. They got the crime lab on the way and two investigators.”
“Okay. Who we got up at the border?”
“The Border Patrol. Hal Cotter from Pembina, Jack Lambert from Towner, and Gerry Kruse from the state.”
“Ask real polite for the BP to secure the scene. Kruse has the most training as an investigator out of that bunch. Ask him to meet me at the Shuster house.”
“Gotcha. Anything else?”
“Tell anybody who inquires we’re gathering the facts and trying to figure out what happened. No names.”
They went out the door, got in Wales’ Silverado, and drove to the east end of town, where a row of large ranch-style homes sat off separated from the other houses by sizable landscaped yards. Wales pulled up a driveway. There was a FOR SALE sign. The grass needed cutting.
They studied the front door, which was pretty sturdy. Next they went around to the side. “Should really have a warrant,” Wales said.
“Right. In Minneapolis, before 9/11, Coleen Rowley tried to get a warrant on that Moussaoui guy’s computer and FBI headquarters turned her down,” Broker said.
Wales grunted, stooped, pulled a brick from the edging of the side garden, and smacked the pane of glass on the side door. “It’s called reasonable suspicion.” He started in.
“Wait a minute, you smell something?” Broker, sniffing, lifted his head.
“Yeah, around back.”
They went around to the backyard, where a fifty-five-gallon garbage drum was smoldering. Wales kicked it over. Stacks of computer printout paper and magazines spilled on the patio. Like they’d been pitched into a fire in a hurry, in thick stacks and only the edges were burned.
Druer, the part-timer, drove into the driveway. Wales asked him to poke around in the burn-barrel debris. Then he and Broker entered the empty house and did a fast walk-through, careful not to disturb anything.
“Not much here,” Broker said.
Ace’s mom and dad left over two weeks ago for down south. Dale was living here until the place sold.”
Druer stuck his head in the door. “Norm? You better get out here,” he yelled.
They hurried out the side door and around the back. Druer raced ahead and squatted on his haunches, poking a thick scorched pile of bound, laminated pages with a pen.
“Cover’s gone. But this is a high school yearbook from ten years ago,” Druer said. He tapped the pen on one of the charred pages. “And look here.”
Broker stared at a burned page. A girl’s picture was circled. Wales swept his palm over it, ignoring the sparks and ashes, bringing it up cleaner. “Look at the eyes.”
The eyes had been blacked out.
“Holy shit. It’s Ginny Weller. She went missing in Grand Forks last month. Was never found,” Wales said.
Carefully, Druer started working through the pages, flipping them one by one with the pen. They came to another circle. Another picture with the eyes blacked out. This time it was a boy. Even at ten years’ remove, Broker recognized the hairy face of Gordy Riker.
Wales bent to the radio mike clipped to his shoulder. “Karen, check around on the whereabouts of Gordy Riker. We ran into something weird at Dale’s house. Somebody’s been blacking out eyes in his high school yearbook. Like Ginny Weller’s eyes. And Riker’s. So call the other dispatchers. Get ’em on the phones. Where’s Jimmy?”
“With Sauer, at the hospital.”
“No I ain’t,” Yeager’s voice cut in on the radio. “I’m on my way to the Shuster house. I heard you on the yearbook pictures. You got Broker there?’
“Yeah, he’s here,” Wales said.
“Ask him if he’s missing a.45, and a Washington County shield. We found them in Joe’s van,” Yeager said.
Wales turned to Broker who shrugged, held up his hands. “Was lifted out of my car yesterday.”
“I also found his wife’s purse,” Yeager said.
Broker did not shrug this time. Wales touched his shoulder and said, “Just wait till he gets here.”
Then Kruse, the state cop, pulled in, and Wales asked him to search the house. Jimmy Yeager arrived a few minutes later. His cruiser was caked with mud and rattled like half the undercarriage was about to drop off.
Yeager got out of the car, immediately walked up to Broker and checked his face, his eyes. “What I got ain’t good,” he said.
“Show me,” Broker said.
Yeager held up a plastic evidence bag. Broker recognized Nina’s purse. The gray quill-patterned ostrich-hide saddlebag he’d given her for Christmas three years ago. The bag was messy red around the edges. He took a sharp breath. Messy red from coagulating blood.
Carefully, Yeager put the plastic bag down on the hood of his cruiser and worked the purse out. With a pen he nudged the wallet open, then eased out the Minnesota driver’s license.
Nina’s picture ID on the license had the eyes blacked out.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Name, rank, serial number.
Something to brace on. Get ready. Sound went in and out. Light rippled on the wall, the wind slipping through leaves outside. Dale had parked off the road, in the shade of some trees. Her mind played tricks, defaulting to bad trips…
Seven years ago she’d been forced down on another bed by Virgil Fret, who tried to rape her. She had mocked his manhood and driven him into a fury of violence. He burned her with cigarettes, kicked her, and then punched her with his fists. His brother, Bevode, who was a lot scarier than Virgil, cut off part of her ear and gave it to Broker as a present.
But Virgil didn’t bind her hands because he liked the back-and-forth of physical contact, the feeling of knocking her around. She’d used that to stay alive minute by minute until Broker…
She forced away the image. Nothing personal, not now. Not Broker, not Jane…
