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Gayle detailed the blackmail plan against Jimmy Thunder she’d heard at the reverend’s estate last night — but, no, she hadn’t heard what it was Didi had wanted from the man.

  Finally, she described how Didi had planned to kill her when they returned to her house last night. But the mountain lion had intervened.

  Corrie spoke up. “I know you must have been terrified, but did you notice if the animal had any distinctive markings?”

  Gayle recalled without difficulty that the lion had a scar over its left eye.

  She’d written down everything she’d seen and heard as soon as she’d run into her house.

  She’d also copied to a flash drive everything that had been on the hard disk of Colin Ring’s laptop computer, and photocopied all of his handwritten notes on her office copier. Then she’d mailed the works to her agent in L.A. She’d phoned him, told him what had happened, and he promised that he’d have an auction set up for the rights to her story by lunchtime.

  But Gayle didn’t mention any of this to the police. She simply told them that all the material Didi had forced her to take from Ring’s hotel room was down in her car. They were welcome to it.

  She further said she had a project to finish with a crushing deadline. If they didn’t mind, she was going to complete it down in Palm Springs. She didn’t say specifically at the Betty Ford Clinic. But since she had felt it best to flush all the drugs she’d had on hand before she called the cops, she thought she might as well check in now.

  Gayle gave Ron her attorney’s name and number in case they needed to reach her. She was pleased the chief was sophisticated enough to accept that. It made her think maybe she should have a cop around to give her technical advice on her new project.

  But someone younger.

  Ron, Oliver and Corrie regrouped outside of the Shipton house. The two cops glanced up to make sure Gayle wasn’t eavesdropping from her balcony. She wasn’t. But out of professional paranoia, they spoke quietly anyway.

  “So,” Oliver asked Ron, “knowing the woman makes up bullshit for a living, how much of that story do you think we ought to believe?”

  “The general outline. She admitted she picked DuPree up for sex. That was supposed to make us think she was being honest, had nothing to hide.”

  “She kept referring to the man as Didi,” Corrie offered. “Doesn’t sound like she was much of a slave to me.”

  Oliver barked out a short laugh. “Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to having her pick any cotton.”

  Ron smiled thinly. “Okay, let’s look at what we have here. Ring’s dead upstairs, and who knows how much of DuPree is left out in the woods. Just because they’re both dead, though, does that mean we like either of them any less as Isaac Cardwell’s killer?”

  “I want to read Ring’s notes and manuscript before I tell you how I feel about him,” Oliver said. “But I like DuPree better right now. Isaac Cardwell was about to wreck DuPree’s scam, and we all saw upstairs the man liked to exercise his right to bear arms.”

  Corrie gave a bemused shake of her head.

  “What?” Ron asked.

  “I was just thinking how ironic it would be,” she said. “DuPree turns out to be your killer, and he gets eaten by the mountain lion? Nobody will ever believe it wasn’t divine retribution. Maybe not even me.”

  Ron and Oliver looked at each other. Cops were professional cynics. They’d never admit to sharing such a belief. But they both knew if it worked out the way Corrie had said, Goldstrike would be stuck with its very own legend.

  The chief wanted to offer one more possibility, however.

  “Part of the blackmail angle DuPree had on Jimmy Thunder, maybe the biggest part for some people, was he’d had homosexual relations in prison. In Ms. Shipton’s word, the good reverend had a punk. How do you think Texas Jack might feel about that, if he’d heard about it somehow? Jack was raped in a jail cell as a young man by a black inmate. Then Jimmy Thunder stiffs him for two hundred thousand dollars in poker debts. Then, maybe, Texas Jack finds out the reverend had brutalized a young man the way he’d been assaulted himself. You think that just might set him off?”

  Oliver nodded. “Only thing is, if it did, I’d see Jack nailing Jimmy to that tree.”

  “Unless he knew it would hurt him more to lose his son,” Corrie suggested.

  The deputy chief knew deeply it would grieve him to lose his son.

  “Could be — if he knew that.”

  Ron said, “I’m going to push Sergeant Stanley on finding out where that nail I took from Jack’s place is sold in town. Maybe that will lead to something.”

  Just then Officer Benny Marx pulled up, having finished his work at the Reese house. He walked over to his superiors. He told them he hadn’t found any footprints in the area of the hammer, other than those of the tipsters: mother, son and canine. What he had found were marks indicating that the hammer had, in fact, been thrown to its final resting place. The tool was now on its way to the state police lab in Sacramento for analysis.

  Benny Marx looked up grimly at the Shipton house. “I used to think I’d never get a chance to practice all the evidence gathering skills I learned. Now, I get nightmares.”

  The comment raised a thought in Ron’s mind.

  He asked Corrie, “Will you need Officer Marx’s help when you find DuPree’s remains?”

  Benny blanched at the thought of going out into the woods. Corrie blanched at the thought of taking him. The deputy chief was enough of a tenderfoot for her.

  “Why don’t we just bag the cat first?” she suggested. “The other stuff can wait.”

  “Yeah,” Benny agreed fervently.

  “You ready, Deputy Chief?” she asked.

  “Yes, Mem’sahib,” Oliver replied. But they both grinned as they headed off to Corrie’s 4x4. Officer Marx hurried inside Gayle Shipton’s house in pursuit of nightmares that fell within acceptable limits.

  Ron decided it was time to return to the scene of the crime.

  The original one.

  Chapter 49

  Didi DuPree. Colin Ring. Jimmy Thunder. Texas Jack Telford.

  Those were the names of the men among whom Ron expected to find the killer of Isaac Cardwell. If he was overlooking someone, he’d have to give himself a kick in the ass to think who it could be. Which in a manner of speaking was just what he intended to do.

  He was going to look again at the tree to which Isaac Cardwell had been nailed. Look at it, not in the hope of finding new evidence, but simply to review the setting. To see if it would suggest which of his suspects had committed the crime. To see if he could imagine which of those men had driven the nails through Isaac Cardwell’s flesh and into the lightning-struck tree.

  To get to the tree from the Shipton house, Ron had to take Highway 99, the road that would lead him across the Tightrope. Ron didn’t have the same dread about the Tightrope that Oliver did, but he maintained a healthy respect about crossing the narrow, guard rail free length of blacktop.

  You wanted to make sure your tires, brakes and suspension were in good working order before you ventured out upon this particular stretch of road. A mechanical failure here would be more than costly. A twitch in an arm or leg muscle wouldn’t be a real good idea, either. And forget about sneezing.

  Of course, you could manage your end of things just fine, and a sudden stiff crosswind might still send you sailing. But Ron figured that would be a case of your number being up, and if that happened you could be at home in bed and you were still going to check out.

  The chief’s philosophical detachment was put to the Tightrope’s most severe test when, just after he’d begun his crossing, a semi-tractor rig appeared around the curve in the oncoming lane. The huge truck took up every bit of its own side of the road, and the overhang of its trailer intruded into Ron’s lane. Not much. But on the Tightrope you didn’t want to yield a millimeter of ground.

  The two vehicles crept toward each other. Tectonic plates moved faster. Ron saw the trucker staring fixedl
y at an imaginary point in the center of his lane. Guiding his vehicle as if it were on a rail. Beads of sweat stood out on the man’s forehead. The truck driver knew he had to take it slow, but a high-profile rig like his provided a much bigger target for a gust of wind than a car.

  Small comfort for Ron. If a strong wind caught the far side of the truck while it was passing his car, they would both go over the edge.

  Several moments — and lifetimes — later the front bumper of each vehicle broke the same plane. Now they were creeping past each other. As the trailer of the rig approached, Ron thought for sure he was going to lose his left sideview mirror. He was perfectly prepared to let it go. There wasn’t a hair’s-breadth of roadway to his right.

  But when he came abreast of the trailer, the mirror wasn’t snapped off — only its finish was removed. In a long screeching banshee wail that seemed to go on forever, the mirror’s housing was abraded by the aluminum body of the trailer. Oliver would have had a heart attack.

  By the time an eternity passed and the vehicles finally cleared one another, Ron’s nerves weren’t exactly rock-steady, either.

  The chief eased his patrol unit toward the center of the road to give himself some breathing room. Then, looking to his left at the staggering vista of mountains and lake he was now able to appreciate, he was struck by a sudden insight. He immediately moved his unit to the dead center of the pavement and came to a complete stop. Checking his rear view mirror to make sure the semi had cleared the Tightrope, and no other vehicles had moved onto it, he turned on his emergency lights.

  Even from this position of relative safety, he exited his vehicle carefully. He stepped as close to the town side drop-off as he dared and looked down. Far, far below were the pointed tops of countless evergreens. Not far beyond the stands of trees were houses and a road. Diamond Bay Road. Where the Reeses lived. Where the bloody hammer had been found.

  Now Ron understood that the killer had nailed Isaac Cardwell to the tree, driven up to the Tightrope and flung the hammer over the side. He had every right to expect it would never be found. If he’d thought to throw it over the wilderness side dropoff, he’d undoubtedly have been right. But in the dark, when the killing had occurred, and presumably somewhat agitated by having committed murder, the perp must have failed to make the distinction.

  Ron got back in his patrol unit, switched off the lights, and made his way off the Tightrope before any other vehicle came along.

  It was a small lead, to be sure. But the discovery made Ron feel lucky. Like the breaks would be coming his way now. One around each bend in the road.

  As Ron came around the bend in the road where he and Oliver Gosden had discovered the body of Isaac Cardwell, he saw something so outrageous he felt like he’d just been hit in the gut by a heavyweight left hook.

  Four teenage boys, all of them white, but one in blackface, were re-enacting the murder. The boy in blackface was being “crucified” by the other three. Everyone involved, including the “victim,” was laughing uproariously. They thought the whole thing was hilarious.

  Ron was infuriated.

  He pulled up on the wrong side of the road in a screech of tortured rubber. He flicked on his lights and sirens, and was out of the car with his riot gun in hand.

  The boys froze for a second when they realized what was happening. Then they started to scatter. Except for the kid in blackface, who was tied to the tree.

  Ron fired a round into the air and roared, “Police! Stop and drop!”

  There was no arguing with that voice of command, not punctuated as it was with gunfire. The three boys immediately fell to their faces with their hands stretched out. The kid tied to the tree raised his hands, but he wouldn’t meet Ron’s eyes.

  “Stay right where you are,” Ron ordered. “God help you if any of you moves a muscle.”

  Without taking his eyes off them, the chief made his way back to his car. He called for a back-up unit, and told the dispatcher to advise the responding officers to make sure they had four pairs of handcuffs. And for Sergeant Stanley to be prepared to book four juvenile offenders.

  His instructions were spoken loudly enough to produce moans and sobbing among the boys.

  Ron looked at the yellow crime scene tape that had been knocked down. Now, even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to look for any further evidence. The area had been tainted. It had never occurred to him that he’d need to post officers to protect the integrity of the site.

  He was angry at himself for that oversight. But right now his wrath was focused outward.

  In a hard, chilling voice he said, “I’m going to charge the four of you with trespassing on a crime scene. If the DA will go along with it, we’ll look into obstruction of justice charges. I don’t know if the FBI would consider this a hate crime, but I’ll check with them, too.”

  All four teenagers were sobbing now.

  “If any of you has a criminal record, you’re going to be looking at jail time. If you don’t, you’ll probably get probation, but you’ll have established a criminal record for yourself. And, without a doubt, you and your parents will have a very unpleasant meeting with Mayor Steadman. Don’t be surprised if he comes up with some punishment for you that would make jail seem like a pleasant alternative.”

  Ron wondered if Clay would go along with the idea of having these four cretins pilloried. He had to repress a laugh. Of course, he would. He’d probably make them build their own stocks.

  A patrol unit arrived within minutes. Nobody got a response time like the chief of police. It was one of the perks of the job. The four teenagers were cuffed and packed into the caged back seat of the patrol car. Ron gave orders for them to be booked and their parents to be called. But they were not to be released until he got back to headquarters.

  When he was alone again, he tried to calm his mind, douse his emotions. He looked at the dead tree. Now it was the site of two crucifixions: one real, one symbolic. Both profane. Both carried out on that ugly as sin stalagmite of decomposing wood, standing there in malignant contrast to all the vibrant, fragrant evergreens around it.

  Damn thing ought to be cut down.

  Unable to clear the stark image of the burlesque crucifixion from his mind, Ron got back in his unit and drove off. What he’d just seen made him think how graphically gruesome the real thing must have been: Isaac Cardwell, a living man, being nailed to a dead tree.

  The epiphany that came from that thought hit Ron so hard he almost ran his car into the side of the mountain: a brand new idea of who the killer could be.

  Who the killer had to be.

  Someone who had been right in front of him the whole time.

  Doing his subtle best to mislead Ron.

  But the charred tree itself was the most compelling evidence.

  Chapter 50

  The chief called Sergeant Stanley into his office as soon as he returned to headquarters.

  “What do you have for me on that nail I asked you to track down?” Ron asked.

  “Five retail outlets in town sell that kind of nail, Chief. Two hardware stores, two home improvement centers, and a lumber yard.” Stanley gave Ron the names and addresses of all five businesses. “Locating the stores was the easy part … and, I’m sorry to say, if you still think Texas Jack is your man, a guy at the lumber yard remembers him buying building materials, including nails, two weeks ago.”

  Ron saw the look of dismay on Caz Stanley’s face. The sergeant didn’t want to believe Texas Jack could be the killer.

  “Do all the stores have surveillance cameras?” the chief asked.

  “Three out of five,” the sergeant replied. “I thought of that, too. I asked the stores not to erase anything. But I haven’t picked up any DVDs from their security systems yet.”

  “Have somebody do it right away, Sarge. And one more thing: tell Benny Marx to finish any evidence gathering work he has to do on Colin Ring’s computer and notebooks first thing. I want to read everything the man wrote about Jimmy Thun
der.”

  Sergeant Stanley saluted and was about to leave when he remembered something. He took a small envelope out of his shirt pocket.

  “I almost forgot, Chief,” he said, handing the envelope over. “This came express mail this morning for you.”

  It was from Charmaine Cardwell. The copy of the letter she’d received from her dead husband.

  “Thanks, Sarge. That’ll be all for now.”

  Sergeant Stanley closed the chief’s door on his way out.

  Ron opened the envelope. There was no note to him enclosed, only a photocopy of the letter he’d discussed with Isaac Cardwell’s widow yesterday. Out of necessity, but with more than a little regret, he read the whole thing. It was, as Charmaine Cardwell had said, very personal and deeply moving, the heartfelt words of a man who had loved his wife and child.

  Reading Isaac Cardwell’s letter made Ron feel both deeply sad and profoundly angry that such a good man had been taken so brutally from his family. This couple should have been allowed to grow old together, to raise their son and any other child they might have had, to see their grandchildren being born and their posterity secured.

  Ron moved on to the passage that was most relevant to him now:

  I think my father could be in real jeopardy. There’s someone close to him, someone unlikely to arouse his suspicions, who may mean to do him harm or even kill him. I cannot imagine that it is only coincidence that has brought this man so close to my father.

  Hearing those words yesterday only made Ron wonder whom Isaac had been writing about; seeing them today made him more certain than ever he knew who the killer was.

  Now, he had to find out why the killer had struck, why he’d chosen Isaac Cardwell for his victim. He was about to go out looking for answers when his secretary buzzed him.

  “Yes, Dinah?”

  “Chief, there’s a Marcus Martin here. He’d like to know if you could see him.”

  Corrie Knox and Oliver Gosden followed the mountain lion’s tracks for a mile into the forest. Over the last hundred yards of that distance, the animal had dragged the body of its victim, leading Corrie to wonder if the animal had grown tired of carrying its burden. That would be consistent with her idea that they were dealing with an older cat.