C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

“You’re the man,” Cody said to Torkleson. “Both Coates and the judge will be happy to hear that Henkel-and his photos-are cooked.”

I TRIED to sort out what we’d learned as we drove. Cody seemed to be doing the same thing.

I asked, “How did Coates learn about Angelina in order to pressure the judge for her?”

“I’d wondered that myself,” Cody said. “Until I checked on the federal jail roster before the trial and found out that Coates shared a cell for two weeks with a slimeball named José Medina, who was in for trafficking. Medina is a bigshot Sur-13 gangster and a known associate of Garrett’s. Garrett probably mentioned to Medina he had this adoption agency hounding him-bragged about it, most likely-and Coates overheard Medina talking about it. That’s the kind of thing Coates would pick up on, especially since he had his deal going with the judge already. So he doubled down on his demands of the judge because Moreland had nothing to bargain with: the negatives and photos and a little girl of his own in exchange for an acquittal.”

“It makes me sick,” I said.

“No shit,” Cody said. “What makes me even sicker is that the judge would go along. Or appear to go along.”

“So why did Moreland and Garrett kill Dorrie?” I asked, guessing the answer.

“We’ll probably never get a confession out of either of them,” Cody said. “But I’m thinking Dorrie couldn’t live with her guilt any longer for providing an alibi for John on the night John’s parents were run off the road. The more she got to know him, the more she was convinced he’d done it- well, it was eating her up inside. She was going to church more, right? Pouring her heart out to God that she was married to a man who’d killed his own parents, and she’d provided the alibi. Maybe she asked John outright if he did it, or maybe he just guessed she wanted to tell somebody. Either way, John knew he had to get rid of her. Plus, he was probably already putting the hardwood to Kellie. So, if you’re John Moreland, you have a heavy guilt-ridden wallflower who can bring you down on the one hand and a blond knockout with money on the other. Easy choice for John.”

“But why did Garrett finish her off?”

“Because Garrett is a sick, twisted, evil little fuck,” Cody said. “Your instincts were right about him. Plus, by helping his dad with the crime, Garrett knew he’d always have a bargaining chip and something to hold over his dad’s head. In a way, killing Dorrie set Garrett free.”

“And John knew what Garrett was from an early age,” I said. “Imagine knowing your son is like that? And just living with it and covering up for him whenever possible. And the judge had to cover up for his son, or Garrett might confess what the both of them had done.”

I said, “Jim Doogan told me something at Brian’s funeral about men like Moreland. He said once a man like that gets his eyes on a prize-in this case the U.S. Supreme Court- every move he makes is in preparation for it. I didn’t realize what Doogan was saying at the time, and I don’t think he did, either. But if you’re John Moreland, and you want to be a Supreme, how can you even consider the possibility if your only son is a gangster?”

“Good question,” Cody said. “How?”

“You mitigate the situation,” I said. “You take in your bad son’s illegitimate child and raise her as your own. You show the world that even though your bad-seed son has no responsibility, you do. You clean up the best you can for your son’s indiscretion. You turn a negative into a positive. You also know that it’s only a matter of time before your crazy-ass son goes down, and you don’t have to worry about him anymore. It could have easily happened at the Appaloosa Club the other night. And when it does, you breathe a sigh of relief and go on.”

Cody turned and smiled. I could see his teeth in the dark. “You might make a good detective after all, Jack. But there’s something wrong with your theory.”

“What?”

“Why would John hand over the child to a known pedophile? Aren’t people going to find out?”

I thought about that for a while. Then it hit me hard. “Moreland is clever,” I said. “Clever enough to figure out a way for Angelina to disappear after a short while, maybe even to stage a disappearance or a kidnapping. I could see him making a tearful plea on television to the kidnappers, turning Angelina into a new Lindbergh baby who is never found. He’d be a hell of a sympathetic figure. And someday, if a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has the gall to question him about taking the child from our home all those years ago, he says he felt horrible about it and did all he could to help the young couple adopt another child, but not nearly as horrible as he feels about her fate at the hand of kidnappers and what an outrageous thing to ask! He comes off looking like a tragic saint.”

Torkleson whistled, and said, “For the love of Pete.”

“Now you’re thinking like a Moreland, Jack,” Cody said. “Ten steps ahead.”

CODY KNEW THE LAYOUT and geography of the canyon because he had planned the raid on Coates months before, but he complained that it looked different in the dark and covered by snow. There was plenty of bitching when he said the only way to move in on the trailer was from behind it on foot because there was only one road into the campground, and we didn’t want Coates to see us coming. So we parked on the shoulder of a gravel road on the other side of the mountain from the campground and plunged into the forest to climb. The snow was fluffy and knee deep. There was no wind at all, so the pine boughs sported three or four inches of snow looking like foam on the top of a beer mug. It was impossible to climb through the thick trees without hitting boughs and dumping snow down our necks. We all wore high-topped winter boots. The beams from our headlamps flew around in the trees as we climbed, and it was hallucinogenic, so I tried to keep my head down and concentrate on the trail in front of me. The SWAT guys carried automatic weapons with scopes, and Morales and Sanders had brought their hunting rifles. The.45 was in my parka pocket.

I was sweating hard by the time we reached the top, but my thoughts of Angelina and Melissa and Coates and Moreland propelled me. I finally stopped throwing up when there was nothing left in my stomach.

As we grunted and cursed our way down the other side of the mountain toward Desolation Canyon Campground, the eastern sky started to lighten into a dull, creamy gray. I doubted we would see the sun itself.

CODY GATHERED EVERYONE when it got light enough to see without headlamps. From where I stood, I could see a big opening below me and ahead of me: the empty campground. There were picnic tables stacked high with snow, and steel cooking grates mounted on metal posts. The roads to and from the individual campsites were untracked except from mule deer, as was the access road from the highway. Sheer canyon walls rose on either side, which made it darker than it should be at seven in the morning.

We all stood in the trees breathing hard, flushed from the climb and the descent. Billows of condensation rose from our labored breathing. One good thing about the falling snow was it muffled sounds.

Cody bent over and pointed out Coates’s trailer. We could barely see the top of it through the trees a quarter of a mile away. As I’d heard about in the courtroom that day, the aluminum roof bristled with antennae and both satellite television and Internet-access dishes.

Cody and Torkleson debated the approach, and they decided to flank the park with two SWAT officers on each side of the trailer. Torkleson told his men to stay in the trees with clear shooting lanes. Cody reminded them the trailer had a back door as well.