Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

“I don’t see a guy like Vince Wynn dumping a body alongside a highway, especially not the busiest road you’ve got. The bottom of a construction site maybe, but more likely he’d drive him, or more likely pay someone to drive him, a long way into the wilderness and leave him for the scavengers.”

“Agreed. But I can see him clubbing him from behind. Wynn’s too smart to take on a guy like Gale face-to-face. You hit him when his back’s turned. You make sure he’s not getting backup.”

“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 Wynn know what guys like us expect to see. An agent at his level, he’s all about selling an impression of something that maybe isn’t true, maybe isn’t all it’s made out to be.”

“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. Wynn could easily have read about it and pulled a copycat.”

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 Wynn. “You’re welcome to join me if you’d like.”

“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 tennis, basketball, volleyball, and a backboard onto a single slab of asphalt. Walt crossed it and an apron of green grass to reach a single-story adobe house with four wings running in an X from a central living area, the back of which was a twenty-foot-high wall of tinted glass that faced the ski mountain. He found the front door at the apex of a horseshoe driveway that housed what appeared to be a centuries-old pagoda through which the same stream that passed through Wynn’s estate gurgled in and among an Asian rock garden.

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!”

Walt thanked her. He got that a lot, but wondered how often it was true.

“I wanted to ask you a few questions, if you have a minute?”

“Of course.” She motioned him inside. “Tea? Juice?”

“I’m fine.”

Sunlight flooded the living room. The outside patio was about the size of Walt’s city lot. They took seats at a teak table in padded chairs covered in Sunbrella fabric.

“Vince Wynn,” Walt said.

“Yes,” she said. “I thought as much.” She squinted, and squirmed uncomfortably in the chair. “The shooting?”

“Yes. Among other things.”

“I’m not a gossip, Sheriff. And I respect my neighbors’ privacy. It’s important to all of us.”

“I agree.”

“Vince is something of a celebrity in his own right.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Though my husband calls all agents bloodsuckers. He’s in the film business, my husband. Not that you’d know him. An effects director.”

“Mr. Wynn claimed he had a trespasser. The other night? The shooting?”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she said.

“The shooting or the trespasser.”

“I didn’t see anyone.” She looked off into the sky, then back at Walt, still squinting, now choosing her words carefully. “Vince is very… social. I suppose in his business one needs to entertain a great deal.”

“It’s busy up there,” Walt said.

“It is.”

“At all hours.”

“Yes. All hours. A lot of… partying.”

“Men guests? Women guests?”

“Guests. Many guests.”

“The gun incident. Was that a first?”

“Vince… How do I put this? The entertaining can go quite late. Can get… I think he enjoys a party as much as the next person. Sometimes it gets a little rowdy, a little late and a lot loud. And if I had to guess, I’d say Vince doesn’t have the best control of his temper.”

“Hot-headed.”

“I’m painting the wrong picture.”

“Fights?”

“Shouting. Arguments. But they could be phone calls for all I know. He seems to be on the phone more than he’s off, and he likes to take calls outside, I’ve noticed. And his work is confrontational by nature, isn’t it? All that dealing. And the sums! Mark, my husband, keeps up on all of it. A sports fan. Loves living next to Vince. But my God, some of the numbers.”

“Arguments,” Walt said.

“He can be loud,” she said.

“Drugs?”

She squinted, looked pained to speak.

“Have you seen drug use in the home?”

She hesitated and finally nodded. Walt felt a jolt of adrenaline-if he could get her to say it, he had probable cause to search Wynn’s home.

“Is that a yes?”

She nodded again.

“I need a verbal answer.”

“He’s my neighbor.”

“He lives a matter of yards from your kids,” he said, keeping in mind the sports court.

She tilted her head and looked at him curiously.

“The basketball court. I’m assuming-”

“Teenagers. Two boys and a girl.”

“A neighbor like that doesn’t make for the best role model,” Walt said.

“Don’t patronize me, Sheriff.”

He was losing her. He’d been so close.

“Does he… interact with them at all?”

“He’s great with the boys. Gets them autographed balls and things. But Vince is… proud of his working out. Likes to go around barechested. Personally, it kind of grosses me out, and I don’t love for my daughter to see that.”

“The night of the gunshots?”