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18
Despite the three full face-lifts, Marty Boatwright’s neck flesh flapped like a luffing sail as he dialed out on his mobile phone. A tall man with flinty eyes and a cleft chin, he’d been mistaken for a Douglas most of his adult life, first Kirk and then Michael. It had been explained to him by one of his lawyers that mobile phones were digitally encrypted and therefore impossible to casually eavesdrop upon, and though the government could monitor any conversation on any phone, stiff warrant requirements meant mobile phones were the safest from unwanted ears. So this call was made mobile to mobile.
“It’s me,” he said, as Vince Wy
“Hey, Marty.”
“That cop was just here.”
“Coming here next.”
“I didn’t tell him shit. Let my boys do the talking.”
“Okay.”
“They don’t know shit about her. Nothing but a fishing trip as far as I can tell. Seems like they think it was all sex and power whoring and how maybe there were fees involved. Means she must have deposited the money. Can you believe that? What kind of dumb shit would bank the money?”
“Caroline-”
“No names, you asshole!”
“-may have been a lot of things, but she was not dumb.”
“You’ll be scratching that on a cell wall you don’t get your act together.”
“I’m fine, Marty.”
“We both know what this is about.”
“Yeah.”
“And whatever happened to her… She… We talked about this.”
“Yeah.”
“But it doesn’t have to involve us. Doesn’t involve us.”
“No. That’s right.”
“So keep it that way.”
“Of course.”
“He’s clever, this cop. Looks big and thick but he’s anything but. He’s more Howie Long than Lyle Alzado.”
“Got it.”
“Consider your answers carefully, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m good, Marty.”
“If you’re so good, what the hell were you doing shooting your gun off the other night?”
Silence.
“You thought I wouldn’t hear about that? The whole town’s heard about that. What kind of a dumbass thing-”
“It was a personal security matter, Marty. A disgruntled former player. They were warning shots is all.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Keep the damn gun in the closet, asshole. We don’t need any more attention than we’ve already got. This thing… her… People are going to jail for this shit. Jail, I’m talking about.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Not me. You hear me? Not me!”
“So noted.”
“Stick to one-word answers. Don’t get creative. That mouth of yours. And you’re under no obligation to-”
“Stu’s here,” Wy
“Stu? Well, tell him hello for me.”
“I’ll do that.”
“He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Be careful with this guy, for your own sake.”
“I will be. I negotiate for a living, Marty. No one ever knows what the hell I’m thinking.”
Marty Boatwright coughed out a laugh. Half his lung came up. Once it started he couldn’t stop it. He shut down the call without signing off and sank into his desk chair and weathered the storm of old age, his eyes and nose ru
Prison. No way.
19
“This isn’t charity,” Boldt stated as Walt pulled the Jeep up to the wrought iron gate blocking Vince Wy
“Far from it,” he said.
“You’d like in on this interview. That’s why the escort.”
“Not entirely true,” Walt said. “I’m interested in Wy
“I don’t see a guy like Vince Wy
“Agreed. But I can see him clubbing him from behind. Wy
“He could have been jacked, Sheriff. We talked about this. Lured out of the vehicle maybe. Struck from behind. It’s more and more difficult to see it otherwise. We’ve got to find that SUV.”
Gale’s missing SUV, a rental from Avis, had been the topic of much discussion. City and sheriff patrols were searching parking lots, motels, and campgrounds. State police had been notified and a BOLO-a Be On Lookout-had been issued in the six-state region surrounding Idaho. Walt had hoped for results by now and, along with Boldt, secretly feared they’d lost the vehicle for good.
“You think it was staged to look like a carjacking,” Boldt said.
“I think guys like Wy
“So he gives us what we want. I’d buy that.”
“Plays into our comfort zone.”
“A carjacking gone wrong,” Boldt said, nodding.
“It’s all after the fact,” Walt said. “He’s all boozed up and he does the guy and then has to backfill. But a guy like that reads the paper up here. He knows what kind of crime we see and how often we see it. We had a carjacking not six months ago where a man was struck with a tire iron while changing a tire. Wasn’t exactly like Gale, but close enough. The doer finished changing the tire and drove off in the car, having no idea the driver had already alerted OnStar. We were given GPS coordinates and had the guy in custody within the hour.”
“And the body?”
“Stuffed into a culvert twenty feet from the car. Wy
Boldt said, “If he’s the killing type.”
The gate opened electronically and Walt drove through, parking by a basketball backboard.
“Which is what we’ve come here to find out.”
“Indeed it is.”
“If Caroline Vetta got him started, broke his cherry, then doing Gale wouldn’t have mattered much to him.”
A wry smile overcame Boldt. “You and Matthews would like each other,” he said. He took a long look at the house and Walt thought he was using it as his introduction to Wy
“I’d just confuse things,” Walt said. “Only two can dance at a time. I’ll leave the advance work up to you. Maybe we’ll pull a Columbo on him and double-team him after you’re done, hit him with Gale five minutes after he’s done fending off Vetta.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Boldt climbed out. “You want to take off, I could call you. I hate to take up your time.”
“No worries. I’m going to put it to good use.”
The closest neighbors had a sport court behind the house that integrated te
The woman who answered the door could have been going on sixty but looked more like forty, and showed no signs of work having been done. She was all yoga and juice drinks and acupuncture, wearing stonewashed blue jeans and a tight-fitting T-shirt. There was no hiding her surprise at discovering a uniformed sheriff at her front door.
“Hello?”
Walt introduced himself by rank.
“Gwen Walters. I know your face from the papers,” she said. “I voted for you!”