“I will.”
“And you’ll let me know what you find out?”
“You can bank on it.”
He turned to leave but was stopped by the fragile hope in Sarah’s next words. “Cork, if what we believed isn’t true, is it possible-”
He spun and cut her off. “No. They’re dead, Sarah. That’s the one thing in all this that is true. They’re dead.”
She nodded and looked down at the wood floor. Cork left her that way.
THIRTY
Cork stopped at the house and checked Jo’s computer. He located the file that contained the report she’d prepared for the National Congress of American Indians. He scanned it quickly and could see nothing particularly threatening about it.
When he arrived at the Four Seasons, he found Parmer waiting. They took his rented Navigator and headed back to Duluth, where Parmer’s private jet was being readied for their departure.
“I got a call while you were gone,” Parmer said. “From the people I asked to look into Fortrell. We’re heading into stormy weather here, Cork.”
“We’re already in it, Hugh. What about Fortrell?”
“The money for a lot of Fortrell’s investments, and probably for the Realm-McCrae casino project, comes from loans secured from the Western Continental Bank of Denver. Western Continental is a legitimate investment bank, but it’s also known to be a funnel for money from investors hiding behind the veil of foreign private banks. PBs they’re called in financial circles. The chief value of PBs is the confidentiality of their services. They operate outside the constraints of banks in this country and are able to handle money for their clients with great secrecy. Because they’re banks, they can move large amounts in ways that individuals can’t. They’re the perfect mechanism for laundering.
“As nearly as my people can tell, the money for the loan came from a PB in Aruba, the Antilles Investment Bank. There are a number of PBs that operate out of that island, and many are suspected of being favored by the mob. The Antilles Investment Bank is one of them.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. You’re telling me that, in the end, the money trail for building that casino leads back to organized crime?”
“I can’t say for sure, but it certainly seems like a reasonable speculation.”
“Doesn’t anybody check on these things?”
Parmer shook his head. “There’s so much development going on that unless something raises a red flag, nobody notices. Now a casino is probably a little different. It might get more scrutiny. But my guess is that all it would take to be certain nobody asks the wrong questions would be plenty of green delivered to the right hands. Happens all the time. And even if questions are raised, we go back to the beauty of the veil of the PB. Who’s to say for certain where the money came from?”
“That might explain a lot,” Cork said. “But it still doesn’t explain why they wanted Bodine’s plane to disappear.”
“Maybe that report you told me about, the one Jo put together on Indians regulating gaming themselves?”
“I read it,” Cork said. “Just a lot of recommendations. It didn’t have any teeth. And Indians don’t do things quickly, without a lot of consideration and talk. Even if there was general agreement that the recommendations were a good thing, it would take a very long time for anything to happen.”
“Was there something really damning in the report, something that pointed fingers?”
Cork stared at the empty road ahead. “I don’t think the report is what this is about. I don’t think we’ve found the reason yet.”
They landed in Casper at 4:00 P.M. Cork rented a Jeep Wrangler, and they drove to the address they had for Geotech West, which turned out to be in a strip mall at the edge of the city. The place was locked, and when he peered through the storefront window, Cork could see that the furnishings were Spartan at best. He went to the business next door, a print shop, and spoke to the middle-aged guy who came to the front counter and turned out to be the owner. He told them he never saw anybody in the Geotech West office. He figured it was some fool prospecting enterprise that had gone bust. There were a lot of those in Wyoming, he said.
Outside, Parmer said, “Like I told you, a doll inside another doll.”
Next they drove to the hotel where Jo and the others had stayed the night before their plane vanished. At the front desk, Cork asked to speak with the manager, and when she appeared Cork handed her his business card.
“Of course I remember them,” she said. “Because of what happened to them, they’re hard to forget.”
“They all stayed here?”
“Everyone on the plane, yes.”
“Even the pilot?”
“Him, too, as I recall.”
“Did you notice anything unusual while they were here?”
“No. Except one of them put up kind of a stink just before they left. He lost his glasses and claimed he was blind without them. He couldn’t find them in his room. Had us looking in the trash and in laundry bags. Hell, everywhere.”
“Did you find them?”
“No. Seems to me his wife promised she’d send him a pair when she got home.”
“His wife?”
“Yes, she was here with him. She didn’t go on the plane, though. Lucky for her.”
“Do you remember which of the guests it was who lost his glasses?”
“I don’t recall his name, but it was one of the older gentlemen.”
“What do you recall about his wife?”
“Much younger.”
“Does the name Edgar Little Bear ring a bell?”
“I really couldn’t say. It’s been such a long time. But it is funny that you’re asking me these things. Felicia Gray from Channel Five asked me pretty much the same things.”
“When was that?”
“A few weeks ago, shortly before she died.”
“She’s dead?”
“Oh, yeah. Big news in these parts. Her car went off the road in the badlands west of here.”
“An accident?”
“I think she blew a front tire and lost control.”
Cork checked in with the county sheriff’s office and got the location of the accident. It was an hour west of Casper on the road to Hot Springs and easy to spot. The highway had been chiseled along a cliff face, and on the south side there was very little shoulder and a precipitous drop-off. A new section of guardrail had been put up to replace the portion damaged in the accident. Cork and Parmer stood on the edge looking down a steep slope that was punctuated with sharp rocks, prickly pear cactus, and squat clumps of sagebrush. At the bottom lay a dry wash that appeared to be full of dust as white as chalk. A huge boulder there was blackened along one side, evidence of fire.
“Wonder what she found that got her killed,” Cork said.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll find it, too.”
“And if we’re luckier we won’t end up down there afterward.”
They checked in at the Excelsior Hotel in Hot Springs, then drove west. It was getting late. The sun had set behind the mountains ahead of them, but there was still plenty of light, and in the valley where Jon Rude had his ranch, the spring grass looked blue in the twilight. They turned onto the gravel drive and drove up to the house. Cork saw Rude’s daughter, Anna, standing at the pasture fence, in deep communion with a horse on the other side.
