timberland road at seven in the morning. The policemen were from Opal: a gaunt, old sheriff, and his deputy, a tall, big-boned kid who seemed like a pretty dim bulb.
Nick told them his girlfriend had been shot by someone in the woods, and their car had broken down. The sheriff took a look at Sean and radioed paramedics. Nick helped him move Sean into the warm police car. They covered her with a blanket. She didn’t regain consciousness.
It was another forty minutes before the paramedics arrived. Once they’d loaded Sean in back of the ambulance, Nick pulled one of them aside, and asked about her chances. The medic frowned. “She’s in bad shape, and the hospital’s fifty miles away in Lewiston. Doesn’t look good.”
Once the ambulance sped away, the old sheriff asked him for more details about the shooting. Nick reluctantly forfeited his gun, showed him his private detective credentials, and explained that he wasn’t answering any questions without his attorney present. However, he did volunteer to lead them back to where he’d left the car.
They found the original trail and, eventually, Larry’s Honda Accord. The backseat had been kicked through from the trunk, and Larry was gone. The sheriff sent his deputy to look for him.
When he finally hauled Nick into the Opal police station, the sheriff was greeted by a chorus of ringing telephones. Once a line cleared, Nick was allowed his one call to Dayle. The phones kept the old sheriff busy, while Nick remained cuffed to the desk. Over the police radio, the deputy reported that he’d located Larry Chadwick, staggering along a forest trail in his undershorts. With a bullet wound to his left hand and a gash on his forehead, Larry explained that he’d been kidnapped and assaulted.
Two hours later, he marched into the police station as if he owned the place. The dim-witted deputy was on his heels. Cleaned up, and with his wounds bandaged, Larry now wore an aviator jacket, an Izod sport shirt, and pressed blue jeans. “There’s the scumbag!” he declared, stabbing a finger in the air at Nick. “He’s the one! Asshole….”
With his free hand, Nick snuck Sean’s tape recorder from the pocket of his jacket. He let the tape rewind for a moment, while Larry continued his tirade. “You’re gonna get yours, prick….”
The sheriff and his deputy restrained Larry. They gently guided him to the other desk, then sat him down.
Nick pressed play on the recorder, then slowly increased the volume to compete with Larry’s diatribe. “… close-knit group,” Sean was saying. “You and your hunting buddies had a real time of it in those woods outside Portland back in September, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it felt good,” Larry answered on the recording.
Larry stopped yelling as he listened to the sound of his own voice.
“It felt good murdering Tony Katz and his friend? It felt good torturing two fellow human beings?”
“Faggots aren’t human beings. And right now, those two deviates are burning in hell….”
“Turn that off!” Larry barked. “You can’t use that, you son of a bitch. You had a gun to my head the whole time….” Red-faced, he glared at Nick. He didn’t seem to notice that the sheriff was pulling out another set of cuffs. The old man locked one cuff around the desk drawer handle, then slapped the other around Larry’s wrist. “What is this?” Larry let out a stunned laugh. He yanked at the handcuffs, and the heavy desk moved a bit. “Hey, what gives?”
The tired-looking sheriff shook his head. “Sorry, Larry,” he said. “The feds are on their way. Within the hour, they’re gonna have a net over this whole town. You and the guys are finished.”
“Goddamn it!” Larry shouted. “Let me go! You can’t do this! What the hell is happening here anyway? Son of a bitch, LET ME GO!”
Nick Brock shut off the recorder. He sat back and smiled at him. “Hey, Lare. You know, you have the right to remain silent.”
One of the nurses at Lewiston General Hospital showed Avery the bullet they’d extracted from his thigh. Stored in a small glass jar, the tiny, dark-gray projectile couldn’t be kept as a souvenir just yet. It was part of the state’s evidence against Officer Earl Taggert, now charged with two counts of attempted murder and a growing list of misdemeanors.
Avery and Deputy Peter Masqua had shared an ambulance to Lewiston General. Earl Taggert had ridden behind them in a police car. After doctors had treated his broken nose, split lip, and other bruises, the soon-to-be- ex-cop had been escorted to jail. His cohort, an unemployed timber-mill worker named Don Sheckler, had pulled up to the old train depot in his new Cadillac to find three state troopers waiting for him in the station house.
Officer Peter Masqua was in stable condition. Confined to a wheelchair, Avery kept trying Sean’s cellular. No answer. He called her hotel, but she wasn’t in her room. He knew something had to be wrong.
After all of Taggert’s talk about the impending arrival of the “federal guys,” the real FBI had shown up at the hospital early in the morning. Both Avery and Officer Pete had given them enough information to expose the Opal Chapter of SAAMO. The FBI clamped a tight lid on the hospital to keep the information contained and the press oblivious about what was happening. No more outside calls for Avery. Rumors spread among the Lewiston General staff about a gag quarantine of hospital personnel for the next twenty-four hours.
“You’re the biggest thing to hit this little hospital since the Chichester quadruplets were delivered here in 1987,” said Judy, the nurse who had shown Avery his bullet. A petite redhead, she had freckles and a cute face that belied the fact that she had a son in college. She was pushing Avery in his wheelchair down the corridor after a visit with Pete Masqua.
Avery liked Judy. On her morning break, she’d dashed out and bought him pajamas and a flannel robe. “K- Mart’s best,” she’d joked. But it was a big improvement over his skimpy hospital gown. He made a point of telling Judy how grateful he was.
“Well, as an Idaho native and a Christian, I’m on a mission here,” she said, steering him down the hall. “I want to prove to you that we aren’t all hate-mongers. A tiny fraction of nutcases have given this beautiful state a bad rep. And most
“I know that,” Avery assured her.
Judy patted his shoulder. “Okay then, end of sermon. Did you hear? The FBI is now monitoring all calls going in and out of here. Visiting privileges are temporarily suspended. There’s even talk that none of us on staff will be able to leave today.”
“I’ve really screwed things up for everybody, haven’t I?” Avery said.
“Oh, I think it’s kind of exciting,” she said. “But maybe you could use your influence with the warden to release me in time for Thanksgiving.”
Avery managed to smile at her over his shoulder. “I can’t promise anything but an autographed eight-by-ten glossy.”
“Just the same, maybe you can offer me some inside information. I seem to be the only one around here who sees a connection with you and Pete Masqua—and this third gunshot case who came in this morning.”
Avery shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, that’s my point. The paramedics brought in a woman at eight o’clock. She’s upstairs in intensive care, practically in a coma. She has an infection, and her temperature’s a hundred and five. Apparently, she was wandering around with a bullet in her shoulder for seven hours. I heard it was a hunting accident in a forest outside Opal. But snoop that I am, I checked her admission chart and she’s a lawyer from Los Angeles….”
Tom watched
Tom sat on the bed, wearing one of the hotel’s terrycloth bathrobes, sipping champagne and snacking on some foreign crackers from the honor bar. The night final of the
By the time the evening news came on, several arrests had been made, including seven of Opal’s most solid citizens. But Howard Buchanan—a.k.a. Hal Buckman—had eluded authorities, and so far, Tom’s story still had no detractors.
