In Harm's Way Part 28

"Your mother's dialysis," he said before even addressing the woman. Behind him deputies Milner and Tilbert leaned against the grille of their cruiser.

Maggie Sharp gnawed on a fingernail. Couldn't keep her eyes from wandering to the two deputies. She said nothing.

"Your employer need not know," he said, surprising her. "It won't be in the papers. You'll get off with some community service and even that will be kept off the books. Meaning no criminal record. This is a one-time offer. If the information you give me is good enough, if you tell me the truth about what you saw that night and don't try to give me the runaround, then my guys won't go tearing up every tree and plant and making a mess of this place. This is a critical decision you're about to make, Maggie. It has far-reaching implications that will not only affect you but your mother and all your loved ones."

As she stood stone still, tears burst from both eyes, though she did not sniffle or sob.

"I didn't know what else to do," she said. "It's so much money and without insurance . . ."

"Marijuana cultivation?"

She nodded.

"My guys will dismantle it, collect the plants, and we'll dispose of them. You will agree to two hundred hours of community service. You fail to keep your end of the agreement and there will be dire consequences. Are we in agreement?"

She nodded.

"You saw something. The dead man."

She nodded again.

"Tell me."

"A pickup truck." She hung her head and touched a knuckle to either eye, catching her tears. "I heard it . . . heard it hit something. It must have swerved to avoid an elk or deer, but I didn't actually see the animal. The pickup came off the road-this is maybe two in the morning-this side of the road and it stopped. Driver gets out. I'm watching all this from hut two. There aren't any lights in any of the huts. My stuff is underground."

"Show me."

Walt turned to his guys and waved them forward.

Inside the open-ended plastic hothouse, Maggie Sharp pulled back one of the s.h.i.+pping pallets used as floorboards between the various rows. Using a spade, she sc.r.a.ped away two inches of dirt, revealing a wooden hatch. An elaborate disguise that would have been impossible to detect. The hatch was six feet square and the hole beneath it contained well over fifty three-foot-tall pot plants heavy with reddish buds. There was an automatic watering system and a row of grow lights. The aroma was pungent.

As the deputies climbed down into the pit, Maggie Sharp pointed.

"I was standing right here."

"He or she?"

"He."

"Got out and did what?" Walt asked.

"Started looking around. Don't know for what. It was a long way, and it was very dark that night."

"The truck?"

"Had a light rack, I think. Maybe a ski rack. On the top of the cab."

The description fit Boatwright's caretaker's pickup truck. He had no way to reconcile the Engleton bat with Boatwright's caretaker but for a moment he felt partial relief, as if this might work out okay for Fiona and, more important, Kira.

"Color?"

"Couldn't see."

"Make?"

"Pickup truck. That's all I can tell you. I don't think it was an extended cab, but it was really dark. I don't know exactly."

"Did he find anything? The guy looking?"

"He was outside the truck for, I don't know, a couple of minutes at least. Maybe he was peeing. Maybe puking. Maybe freaking out at hitting the game and surviving to tell about it. No idea."

"Just the one guy?"

"Didn't see anyone else. From that distance, backlit and all, headrests look like heads, you know? I only saw one guy get out. Don't know about inside the truck."

"He use a flashlight?"

"No, sir."

"And you say you heard him hit something?"

"Absolutely. That's why I came out of the hole. I heard the contact. I heard the tires. Saw the truck off the road."

She was facing him now, her eyes averted. Frightened. With every sound of destruction from the hole, she winced.

"So you didn't actually see him swerve off the road?"

"No, I suppose not. But I heard it all."

"A light rack."

"Or ski rack. Yes, sir."

"No extended cab?"

"Correct."

"Lights? Do you remember the taillights? Would you recognize the pattern, maybe be able to identify the make?"

She shook her head. "It's not that I'm not willing to try, but it was way far away. You want me to look at something, I will. Of course. But I doubt it."

The deputies started throwing the lighting equipment and torn-up plants up out of the hole. They were joking around down there. Walt didn't call them out for it.

"We're going to keep the equipment on file. Our insurance you'll keep up the community service."

"I will. I promise I will."

"This was a stupid thing to do, Maggie. Can get you twenty years in this state."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not saying I don't sympathize with your situation. Wish I had an answer for your mother, but this is not it."

"No. I get that. I was desperate. I don't smoke it. I'll take tests or whatever."

"Random tests will be part of the agreement."

"Rotating the plants like that, I could make a couple thousand a month. It was just too easy, I guess. I'm not saying it was right."

"Twenty years," Walt said.

"I understand."

"You talk this up . . . if I hear about this deal from anywhere, I'll have to charge you. Strictly speaking, I can't make a deal like this. We occasionally make exceptions. That door will close if you mention it to anyone."

"I won't."

"Report to my office tomorrow. Talk to a woman named Nancy. She'll have your community service outlined and some literature on how to apply for exceptional health care needs."

She hung her head and nodded.

"I'll want you to look at taillight patterns."

"Understood."

Walt called down into the hole, barking orders at his guys. He then drove straight to the county courthouse, knowing this time he would win his warrant.

30.

Walt trained Beatrice by the side of the road as he awaited Barge Levy and Fiona. He enjoyed the dog training, found it relaxing, appreciated the need to repeat it several times a week, whether on a walk around the neighborhood, or more formally with some of the other Search and Rescue dogs. He heeled her. He put her on a scent, hiding a rag among the sage and rabbit weed. Beatrice responded with heightened excitement, pleased with and hungry for Walt's full attention. Basking in it. She practically flew into the scrub after the rag. Found it and barked until Walt released her. She heeled flawlessly, ever attentive of his slightest movement, ears perked, tail wagging high.

He kneeled and lavished her with praise and she reveled in it, as if this moment with him were all she lived for. And he loved her for it.

He picked some cheat gra.s.s from her hair and double-checked the pads of her paws for cuts. She sat without command as he checked her paws, head held high, her nose working furiously. She turned toward the arriving cars before Walt ever heard them.

He met Fiona's eyes through the Subaru's winds.h.i.+eld and something immeasurable pa.s.sed between them, something he was too out of practice to understand, but he thought she immediately picked up on the change in him and regretted he hadn't been able to hide his emotions better. It was something he would have to improve upon, and it struck him as odd that, as he entered this relations.h.i.+p, one of his first thoughts was how to hide what he was actually thinking.

And from her, a distant look of worry and concern, too complex for him to decipher, too buried behind a pantomimed, bright-eyed h.e.l.lo for him to know what exactly he was seeing.

Thought of the baseball bat wormed around in his abdomen, souring his mood. He felt slightly sick to the stomach. Light-headed. Beatrice whined and nudged him with her wet nose and brought him back from a few seconds of paralysis.

Levy's Volvo wagon pulled up behind Fiona and he leaned from the window and squinted and shouted h.e.l.lo. "All set," he called out.

With Fiona's window down as well, Walt moved to within earshot of both drivers and said, "The warrant is limited to the worker's truck but gives us plain sight, so Fiona, you'll get shots of everything you can. Barge, you and I will take the tire impressions. We'll ink them first, and if we get a likely match, then we'll impound the vehicle. We can pull full impressions later at the shop. All three of us are looking for any sign of a collision or damage to the truck, and Fiona will cover us by shooting the whole truck in detail while looking like she's just covering us on the tires. Any questions?"

"You mentioned the flower bed to me," she said.

"Yeah, that's correct. They redid one of the beds. Replanted it. If we see anything left of what they pulled up, I want that recorded. I'm going to ask the caretaker about that-where he dumps the garden waste. There may be a compost pile, which would make it plain sight anyway, but I may want pictures."

He tried to see something behind her eyes, to read her, to find some indication of what she knew about the bat, about why it would end up alongside Gale's rental. But he saw only Fiona, saw the two of them eye to eye in the throes of need and satisfaction, and realized he was too far gone to be objective. In the end, it might take a call to Boldt, some independent eye, to straighten him out.

They arrived at the gate and Walt called through. The caretaker met them, accepting the warrant through the bars of the gate, which seemed symbolic to Walt.

They drove through and parked, and Walt asked the caretaker to stay away from his pickup truck as the man approached, saying they were welcome to look it over. He stood to one side and the trio went to work with a practiced efficiency. Levy had butcher paper and black acrylic paint in hand as he kneeled beside the front left tire. Fiona circled the vehicle, slowly taking dozens of shots.

"Sheriff?" Levy called.

Walt joined him.

"Sorry to burst your bubble. These are Goodrich all right, but Brandon's wrong about the model. They aren't Long Trail, they're Rugged Trail, a step up. Not the same tire."

"No way," Walt muttered.

"Afraid so."

"There's a light rack."

"Yes, there is."

"You're sure? The Gale crime scene impressions . . . could we have been wrong about those?"

"Very different tread patterns, Walt. I'm sorry."

"Well . . ." Walt's mind reeled. "We're here. Let's take the impressions and we'll have them on file."

"Got it."

Walt headed away but turned and approached Levy once again. "He could have switched them out."

"Certainly could have."

"New tires?"

"These? Not brand-new, if that's what you're asking. But listen, we all keep multiple sets. These could be his winter tires-they're serious tires."

"So the old ones might still be at his place."

"Or long gone."

"At the dump." The county trash dump out at Ohio Gulch had a tire dumping area. Walt wasn't past sending a team out there to look for a set of discarded Long Trails.

He joined Fiona. "It may come down to you," he whispered. "Any dents? Anything?"