Ridley Pearson - Killer Weekend

“Hide me until they drop the roadblocks,” Trevalian said. “Use your position, your power, your attorneys-whatever you’ve got-to keep me well hidden. Get me to someplace like Reno or Portland. That’s it. No money. No extortion. I have a reputation to protect. We both do.”

Holms exchanged a look with Tommy Bahama-impossible to read.

“The location of the mailbox,” Tommy Bahama said.

“Not yet,” Trevalian said.

“How do you know we won’t kill you once you’ve given us the location of the mailbox?” Holms asked.

“How do you know I’ll give you the right mailbox? What if it’s a UPS drop box that doesn’t get picked up until six P.M. tomorrow night? They can’t keep roadblocks up indefinitely. I don’t intend to be here past six P.M. tomorrow.”

“You didn’t post any letter,” Holms said.

“You can play that card if you want.”

“Thought it all through, have you?” Holms could no longer sit still. He came out of his chair and paced.

“That’s what you hired me for. Tell me otherwise.”

He stopped in front of Trevalian, glaring.

“It was the helicopter that got you,” Trevalian explained. “I heard the helicopter over the phone. How many guys have their own helicopter in this town?”

“More than you’d think.”

“Six P.M. tomorrow, and then you’re gone,” Holms stated. “And I’ll want those letters.”

The security guys all touched their ears at once.

“Perimeter alarms,” one of them said.

With his finger to his ear, Tommy Bahama nodded. “It’s a fucking army.”

Stuart Holms growled at Tommy Bahama. “Tell me you searched him for a wire.”

Bahama grimaced and looked over at the lead security guard, who stared back vacantly, dumbstruck.

Trevalian casually unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, revealing the tiny microphone taped to his shaved chest. “I was a little slow on this bum leg. Business is business. Am I right, Mr. Holms?”

“Shoot him!” Holms shouted to the paralyzed Tommy Bahama.

The door crashed open and in charged a SWAT team, all shouting at once for hands in the air.

The third man through the door was Sheriff Walt Fleming. He was grinning.

T hey separated the suspects. Stuart Holms was confined to the Situation Room, the small conference room down the hall from Walt’s office. Emil Guyot, Holms’s director of security, a man outfitted in Tommy Bahama casual wear, was given the coffee room, a closet-sized kitchen that held a beat-up aluminum-legged table for two in the corner.

Adam Dryer had no jurisdictional authority to question anyone, and with the general consensus being that Stuart Holms and his attorneys would find some way to get him out of lockup within the next few hours, and certainly by morning, for Walt it all came down to these two interviews.

He sucked down what remained of lukewarm coffee. Dryer nursed a milk tea, but kept looking into the cup, his acne-scoured face snarled in disapproval. They occupied Walt’s small office, overcrowded with stacks of journals piled on the floor and some backcountry gear crammed into the far corner. Dryer sat facing Walt’s desk.

“ Brandon!” Walt called out, his voice echoing down the hall.

His deputy arrived promptly, the only person in the office who didn’t look completely exhausted at 1 A.M. “Sheriff?”

“Shut the door,” Walt said.

Brandon closed the office door and stepped inside. Walt did not offer him the only remaining chair. He lowered his voice, despite the fact that both Holms and Guyot were down the hall behind closed doors, each being guarded by a deputy. “I want you to find me a plaster cast, a boot impression, in the evidence room. I’m thinking the Thompson case, or maybe the Ramone arson. Adult shoe size, no matter what. I want it in an evidence bag marked ‘Hill Trail, Adams Gulch.’ Date it yesterday: Saturday.”

“Got it,” Brandon said.

“And I need a contact lens. Find someone out there who doesn’t mind making a sacrifice for the cause. The office will buy ’em a new one. Now here’s the important part: Julie has a whole rainbow of highlighters in her desk. I want to use the blue highlighter to make a small dot on the side of the contact lens. Not too small, not too big. You got all that?”

“Shoe impression. Contact lens,” Brandon repeated.

“Go on. And close the door behind you.”

Brandon left them alone.

“I don’t follow,” Dryer said, once they were in privacy.

“The AUSA out of Boise isn’t going to get up here until tomorrow around noon,” Walt said, referring to the assistant United States attorney. “You and I both know that Stuart Holms will have four or five attorneys around him by that time-most from out of state-and that what we caught on Trevalian’s wire, while incriminating, and enough to give us probable cause, may not carry the day in court.”

“I’m no legal scholar,” Dryer said.

“We have Trevalian’s use of one of my deputies’ cell phone-he stole it at the hospital-that may be able to be connected to an incoming call he received. If we can confirm that call was from Guyot, then we have a substantially stronger case against them, and we took a cell phone off Guyot. Cloned or not, that could be the smoking gun we need.”

“I can hear in your voice that you’re doubting all this,” Dryer said.

“Holms is a shrewd businessman. You hear words like ‘tenacious’ and ‘ruthless.’ I have to think that if Guyot’s involved, and I believe he is, that Holms has promised him the moon if anything ever went wrong. Now it has. You can bet the two of them have coached each other, rehearsed, and worked through all possibilities, including this one: arrest. They’re following a plan that’s been in place for at least six weeks-we know that from the Shaler seating plan. Maybe six months. They’re too well prepared on the Shaler front. They know what to expect, what’s coming. My one hope is to end-run them before the attorneys get involved.”

“Fucking attorneys.”

“How are your acting skills?” Walt asked.

“With a baby face like this?” Dryer asked. Even a weary smile did nothing to improve his gangster looks.

I ’m not speaking until I have representation,” Stuart Holms announced from the far side of the conference table. He looked at home, as if this were another of his boardrooms.

“You just spoke,” Dryer said, “but I get what you mean.” He sat across from Holms, who’d been given time back at the estate to lose the terrycloth robe and don a pair of slacks and a plaid shirt. He wore loafers with no socks. He looked old.

Dryer’s chair fronted a corkboard where Walt had had the Shaler seating plan hung prior to Holms’s arrival. The man had been facing it now for the past ten minutes.

“The thing about businessmen like you: They’re always trying to save money, conserve resources.”

A tape recorder ran on the corner of the table. Stuart Holms could barely take his eyes off it. He said nothing. He seemed to be working hard to keep contempt off his face, but it was a losing battle.

“The sheriff has an interesting theory. You want to hear it? I’ll take that as a yes. It’s a little far-out for me-his theory. But he’s convinced Mr. Guyot has a lot more to lose than you, and so he’s starting there. With Mr. Guyot. Down the hall. The point being that one of you will deal. You think you won’t, but of course you will. Everyone goes into this thinking they won’t deal. And whoever deals first rolls on the other guy, and then that other guy is…pardon my French…fucked.”

Dryer sipped from his tea, and gave it that same look of disgust. “If you spend the night here, don’t ask for the tea.”