The mountain mans badge, p.31
The Mountain Man's Badge, page 31
A victory smile creased Ferguson’s face. “Well, I have some advantages,” he said. “Experience, legal training, a crack staff. And of course, the evidence is on my side. I’m glad you can now see how this is all going to end.”
“Oh, definitely,” Lehigh said. “And I don’t want to be crushed by it all, you know?”
“Understandably,” Ferguson said, his tone congenial. Downright friendly, even.
“I’ll be frank,” Lehigh said. “I know you’re tired of fighting me. And I’m tired of fighting you. But if I’m going to get out of your way, I’m going to need a soft landing of some kind. You know? Some sort of job to fall into. And I don’t see myself going back to chopping down trees.” He focused on Ferguson’s eyes and got what he wanted: a glimmer of satisfaction. He’d appealed to Ferguson’s prejudices and hit a bullseye.
“I understand,” Ferguson said, “but I’m afraid I don’t have anything appropriate to offer you. You’re not an attorney, after all, and—”
“Oh, I’m not asking you to put me on your payroll,” Lehigh said. “What I would like, though, is to be able to walk out of here with a clean slate. No prosecution hanging over my head, no accusations, no besmirching of my reputation. Folks out in the business world won’t be so keen on hiring me if they think I’m in trouble with the law, you hear what I’m saying?”
Ferguson sat back, as if calculating. “You want me to drop the obstruction charges in exchange for you resigning. Is that it?”
Lehigh smiled. “Sounds like a fair deal to me.”
Ferguson mulled it over a moment, but Lehigh could read victory in his eyes. As he suspected, this had been Ferguson’s objective all along. “Well,” Ferguson said after a moment, “there are some people who might object to you walking away scot-free after all of this. But I’m willing to stand up and take the heat on that, if it clears a path to a more cooperative relationship between our departments.” He stood and extended his hand. “I’ll have my assistants draw up the paperwork.”
Lehigh ignored the offer of the handshake and pushed his chair away from the table. “Send it on over and I’ll have my lawyer give it a read-through,” he said, standing.
“Carter,” Ferguson said, also standing. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”
Lehigh cocked his head. “Sounds like we do, but the devil’s in the details, ain’t it?” he said. “And like you said, you’ve got all that legal training and experience. So, just to be safe, let’s let my attorney help me sort all that out, shall we?”
“Fair enough,” Ferguson said, deflated. Irritation tinged the edge of his voice. “One more thing, though. What sort of job are you looking to land, once you’re out of office?”
“Well,” Lehigh said, “those investors I mentioned? They’re looking into taking over some of Mr. Downey’s properties. I thought I’d try my hand at doing some development. Sort of as a thank-you for all that Mr. Downey’s done for us.”
Ferguson paled. “You don’t mean—”
“Yes,” Lehigh said, suppressing a haughty laugh. He adjusted his hat and headed for the door, unable to suppress a childish grin. “They want to build a whole string of new strip clubs,” he said, enjoying the shock on Ferguson’s face, “and I’m going to help them.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Lehigh hustled out of the county building and headed for his truck. He wished he could have stayed to enjoy Ferguson’s apoplectic reaction more, but he needed to be ready when the Rev responded. He felt some guilt about his fibs, and he was shocked at how easily the prosecutor had swallowed his story about wanting to quit and build a bunch of strip clubs. But if his ploy didn’t work, he might have to quit and find a new job anyway, giving the truth to the fiction after all. Now he had to wait and watch. Where Ferguson went next would tell him all he needed to know about whether or not he was in on the conspiracy, and with whom.
Ferguson did not disappoint. Lehigh had just started the engine when the prosecutor hurried outside, barking something into a cell phone. Moments later his county vehicle sprayed gravel against a half-dozen other cars, and he left a cloud of dust in his wake as he spun onto the highway.
Lehigh followed at a safe distance, allowing a few other vehicles to weave their way between them. Dozens of “Latner for Sheriff” signs filled the grassy median dividing the highway into downtown, and almost as many lay on the ground, as if someone had mowed them down. Like, he mused with a smile, county road crews when they mowed the grass. A few billboards sported Dwayne’s face and campaign slogans, his laconic grin making him look half-stoned. A few lawn signs dotted the parking strip in front of local gas stations and banks. None appeared in the front lawns of private homes. He reminded himself to get his own signs ordered. He’d had no time to campaign since the Downey murder, and he’d lost his two key supporters—Stacy and George McBride—who’d handled things like ads and event scheduling for him.
Ferguson turned onto the main drag into town and parked in the cramped lot of Yang’s, the restaurant where Lehigh had spotted Bobby Wills with Teresa McBride. Lehigh parked in the lot of a strip mall a half-block up the road and sauntered back to the restaurant. He peeked in the back window and spotted Ferguson at a table, still on his cell phone. A moment later, the white-haired balloon-shaped figure of Elliott Jackson slid into the booth across from him. A busboy trudged by with a cart full of dishes and grimaced at two more tables loaded with dirty dishes, one on either side of Ferguson and Jackson.
Lehigh slipped away from the window and found an open door in the rear of the building, revealing a kitchen bustling with energetic busboys, cooks, and dishwashers in T-shirts and white aprons.
“Who’s in charge here?” he asked the first dishwasher, a teen-aged boy with dark hair. The boy pointed to a short, thin Asian man with straight gray-and-black flecked hair, chattering to his assistants in a language Lehigh guessed as being Cantonese. Lehigh strode over to the man and pointed to his badge.
“I need your help,” he said, enunciating each word.
The man frowned at him. “I speak English, sheriff,” he said. “My name’s Bill Yang. What do you want?”
Lehigh reddened and cleared his throat. “I need one of your staff to listen in on one of your customer’s conversations and tell me what they hear.”
“Are you investigating a crime?” Yang asked with awe in his voice and a proud smile forming on his face. “Like on CSI: Miami?”
“Yes, and you’ll have to be very discreet,” Lehigh said. “Preferably the customer shouldn’t realize they’re being overheard. Can you help me out?”
“I can,” said an Asian teenage girl in a white apron. “I always wanted to be a spy!”
Lehigh pulled her aside. “What’s your name?”
“Kim Yang.”
“My granddaughter,” Bill Yang said. “Very smart girl.”
“Kim,” Lehigh said, “there are two men in a booth in the back of the restaurant, in between two dirty tables. Can you take your time clearing the dishes away and report back to me?”
“Dāngrán,” she said, and grinned. “That’s Cantonese for ‘Of course.’ Right, Grandpa?”
“Perfect!” Yang said. He turned to Lehigh. “I’m first-generation. My parents immigrated from Guangzhou when I was a kid. I make sure all of my family knows the native language and culture.”
“Can you speak only in Cantonese out there?” Lehigh asked her.
“Enough to fake it,” she said under her grandfather’s reproachful glare.
“Twenty bucks,” the old man said, pointing to himself and to Kim. “Each.”
Lehigh sighed. “Deal.” He’d pay twice that if they could find anything solid on either man.
Kim grinned. “Awesome! I need it for my college fund! I’m going to study criminology.” She grabbed an empty bus cart and disappeared into the dining room.
“Bad guys, eh?” Yang asked while loading two plates with fried wontons. “Is it those guys who say all that crap about you on TV? If you ask me, those guys are the ones we should be putting in jail. Crooked and crazy, every last one of them!”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” Lehigh said. “But if you’re asking my opinion, yeah. They’re bad.”
“You go get ’em, sheriff!” the old man said. “I’m voting for you. Throw the rascals out!”
Ten minutes later, Kim returned with a cart laden with dishes. “They’re still talking,” she said. “I left a few dishes behind, so should I—”
“Go!” Yang yelled at her. “Nail those bums!” He grinned at Lehigh. “We’ll earn our twenty bucks,” he said. He offered Lehigh a wonton. “It’s free,” he said. “Try it, you’ll like it.”
“I already do,” Lehigh said with a grin. “I bring my wife here once a month.” He dipped one into a small bowl of sauce the cook slid over to him. His mood dimmed. He hadn’t brought Stacy out to dinner in well over a month. Maybe if he cracked the Downey murder case—
The girl reappeared with a refilled bus cart and started to unload it. “Let someone else do that!” Yang said to her. “Come here and tell us what they said!”
“They said something about stopping a land deal of some kind,” Kim said. “Nightclubs or something.” She turned to Lehigh. “Are you Mr. Carter?”
“I am,” Lehigh said. “Did they mention me?”
Her expression darkened. “Not in a good way,” she said. “Mr. Carter, I think your life is in danger.”
“Did they threaten him?” Yang asked.
She looked back and forth at the two men. “They said, and I quote, they were going to ‘chop you to pieces and feed you to your dogs.’ End quote.”
“Let’s hope they were speaking metaphorically,” Lehigh said with a laugh he didn’t feel. “Did they mention anyone else?”
She nodded. “They said their ‘boys’ would take care of you. I heard a few names. Wills and DuPont. They said you’d be ‘out of their hair’ by Monday. Does that mean what I think it does?”
Lehigh pulled two twenties out of his wallet and set them on the counter. “It means I’ve been blind as a mole, and that they’ve stopped being careful. Thanks for your help.”
The girl eyed the money, then glanced at her boss. Neither took the bills. Finally the old man spoke. “You keep my share of the money, sheriff,” he said. “Put it toward your campaign. Kim, you earned yours. Take it.”
The girl shook her head. “My parents would never let me take that money.” She stared at her shoes.
A waiter scooted into the kitchen and tossed a dollar bill and some loose change into a large open jar on the counter. A hand-written sticky label stuck to the jar read “TIPS—Kitchen staff.” Lehigh stuffed the two twenties into the jar. “After you graduate college,” he said to her with a wink, “look me up. I suspect I’ll be needing some deputies by then.”
“Do you want me to listen some more?” she said, as much to her boss as to Lehigh.
“You stay near them and continue to speak only in Cantonese,” Yang said. He turned to Lehigh. “We’re behind you, sheriff. So is everyone I know. We’re tired of the way things have been done around here. We want you to stay. I understand if you don’t want to, with everything these guys say about you all the time. But I hope you’ll stick it out. I really do.”
Lehigh looked around the kitchen. All of the staff, from busboys to cooks, stopped and watched him, waiting for an answer, it seemed.
His chest swelled with pride—and, at the same time, shame. How could he have ever considered quitting with all of these people depending on him and pulling for him? He owed them at least a fighting chance.
“Of course, I’ll stick it out.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “But we don’t need to let them know that, do we?”
The grins that graced the faces in the room told him everything he needed to know about whether he’d made the right choice.
“YOU GOT TO HELP ME, Mr. Ferguson,” the young deputy said, his face a minefield of worry. “The sheriff’s got an all-points bulletin out on Dale and me, and it’s only a matter of time before he—”
“Keep your damned voice down!” Ferguson scanned the area for possible eavesdroppers. He’d agreed to meet with the young fool out of fear that he’d go rogue otherwise and jeopardize everything he’d worked so hard to build, but now he wished he’d kept his distance. They’d met in an old sports bar outside Twin Falls, a place called The Stadium, frequented by ruffians and cowboys who Ferguson doubted would ever recognize him, Wills, or pretty much anyone else from Clarkesville. Given the mid-afternoon hour and the high proportion of empty tables in the place, he felt confident in the privacy of the meeting, but no need to tempt fate.
“Sorry.” Wills sucked down the remaining half of his bottle of light lager beer and wiped foam from his lips. “What are we gonna do, Mr. F? We need a plan!”
“We’ll start with you calling me ‘Mr. Ferguson,’ not ‘Mr. F’ or—worse,” he said with a growl. He sipped on a Diet Coke, or what passed for one at this sleazy establishment. He’d call it a cup of wet ice with brown food coloring. “And of course there’s a plan. You only need to know your part of it. Anything else risks breakdown, and a failure of the entire investigation. That is something we cannot have. Do you understand?”
Bobby sucked at his empty beer bottle and slammed it on the table in frustration. “But things aren’t really going according to plan. It was all supposed to be under cover, but now the sheriff knows everything, and he’s trying to pin it all on me. What am I gonna do?” His voice disintegrated into a pathetic whine and he slouched deep into his seat, near tears.
“We each must be accountable for our own actions, Mr. Wills,” Ferguson said. He knew he sounded condescending, but this nincompoop disgusted him. No—Raymond disgusted himself. He’d picked the wrong man for this job, and for that, he had to hold himself accountable.
But not yet.
“What does that mean?” Wills said, his voice breaking. “Does that mean I’m going to go to prison?”
“If Sheriff Carter gets his way,” Ferguson said. “Is that what you want?”
“But you wouldn’t let them prosecute me, would you?” Bobby said. “I mean, I was trying to help your investigation.”
“I never authorized illegal activity.” Ferguson wagged a finger at the deputy. “If you’ve crossed the line into unlawful interference in an investigation, I’d be powerless to help you. In fact, I’d be duty-bound to ensure that charges were filed.”
“But Reverend—”
“How many times have I told you not to call me Reverend?” Ferguson shouted. The few patrons keeping the bar afloat that afternoon turned their heads in his direction, and the low buzz of conversation ebbed. Luckily, country music clanged over the speakers loud enough to blur the specifics of their conversation.
Ferguson ducked his head low and covered the side of his face with one hand. “Now you listen here, Deputy. You’ve put us—especially yourself—in a bad situation. But it doesn’t have to end badly for you. It comes down to who wins: our side, the side of truth and justice, or Sheriff Carter and his secrecy, lies, and cronyism. If Carter wins, we lose. I lose the case, you lose your badge and quite possibly your freedom, and the entire county loses, because the people here will never be able to trust the criminal justice system ever again. Do you want that, Mr. Wills?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Good.” Ferguson relaxed a little and leaned over the table, lowering his voice. “We’re going to have to finish the job we’ve started, and it’s going to take courage, and fortitude, and discipline. But if we prevail—when we prevail—we’ll have restored professionalism to the sheriff’s department in this county, which is essential to maintaining law and order around here.”
“But what about—”
“You’ll have to play your part,” Ferguson said over Bobby’s interruption, “in helping those of us with the higher perspective on these things and trust us to make the right decisions, even when you don’t understand. Are you on board, Deputy? Will you help us remove that scar, that two-bit rogue lumberjack, from the highest seat of law enforcement authority in this County? Will you?”
He sat back, gauging the expression of fear and wonder on the younger man’s face. Had Raymond been convincing, or would the little weakling crumple under pressure?
“I’ll help,” Wills said, his voice a tinny squeak. “I’ll do my part, if you promise to keep me out of prison.”
“If you do your part well,” Ferguson said, “you’ll have no such worries. But if you don’t, there will be nothing I can do to protect you.” He stood and dropped cash on the table for their drinks. He hated paying for the boy’s alcohol, but he’d do it to buy the young fool’s loyalty. He stared down at him, trying not to sneer. “I’ll be in touch with further instructions,” he said in as menacing a tone as he could muster.
He donned his rarely used cowboy hat and left the bar. He had no further use for Wills, but hopefully he’d bought himself some time.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lehigh logged in to the secure evidence tracking database, half-expecting his privileges to have been revoked. After a few heart-stopping moments watching the mouse pointer turn into a spinning, half-frozen hourglass on the screen, the system greeted him with a welcome message and a screen full of folders to choose from.
He went first to the forensics file and perused the key facts. A few items stuck out as unresolved. On the top of that list, the footprint in the mud he’d discovered. The forensics team had verified it as a smooth-bottomed shoe, like a dress shoe, size 8½. He then opened a new window and searched the personnel file. Security limited his access to only his own department, but that suited him fine. He wanted to see if any of his own deputies had contaminated the scene, as Ferguson intimated long before, but in this case, with a footprint that Ferguson insisted incriminated McBride. Luckily, since the county provided each deputy with uniforms, the database contained each deputy’s clothing and shoe sizes.
