3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3 (2 page)

Chapter 2

Samantha Ryder huddled against cold bricks hoping to avoid the worst of an icy wind that skittered the last of the leaves around the building’s corner. She hugged herself for warmth and watched as a childhood memory rolled into the parking lot. A fresh blast made her eyes water and blurred her vision. She hunkered her six-foot-three-inch frame, blinked back the tears, and focused again on a bright red Chevy Chevelle, SS 396, all three hundred and seventy-five of its dealer-installed horses rumbling through dual glass pack mufflers, the deep throbbing that turned men’s heads. Her father thumb-tacked pictures of that same car to his garage wall. She remembered seeing him staring at them, a faraway look in his eye. He’d dreamed of owning that muscle car. Some Sundays he’d pack Sam and her younger brothers into their dowdy family sedan and travel across town or out into the suburbs to look at a Chevelle—the Chevelle. Her father would circle the car and talk to the owner about carburetors, injection systems, and custom rear ends. Sam would stare at the machine and wonder. She never understood why that car so infatuated him. At the end of each meeting with a purchase price established, her father would frown, scuff his toe on the ground, and declare he’d have to think it over. He never bought any of the dozen or so he looked at. Years later Sam came to understand that he never intended to. He just liked the idea of owning one, of talking about it, but with four children to raise and educate, he could never justify spending the money to purchase it.

She watched as Whaite parked the Chevy carefully on a separation stripe, taking two parking spaces to discourage anyone from dinging his paint job with a carelessly opened door. The finish glittered in the morning sun, adding a dazzle of bright red to an otherwise dull day. She had not inherited her father’s love for Chevelles—or any other car, for that matter. She drove an old Subaru Forester she’d bought used when she was trying to manage the transition between college and the world of work.

“Where’s your truck?” she asked.

“Head gasket blew. I’ve got to replace it.”

“You going to do them both?”

“Oh yeah. Once you get down to the heads on a V8 you might as well do them both.”

“It’s a beautiful car.” Sam resisted the temptation to tell him about her father.

“A hobby, Sam. I always wanted a street rod so I bought this thing half restored and finished the job.”

“Love the paint job.”

“You think? Funny thing, that. When I got around to shopping for paint—I knew I wanted her red, that’s all—I met this guy who restores motorcycles. He told me the Harley dealer over in Waynesboro over-bought red paint, Midnight Pearl Red, a special run for the ninety-fifth anniversary or something. The manager figured there’d be a big demand for it. He had gallons in his stock room and was practically giving it away. So, you are looking at the only Harley-Davidson red Chevy in the world—well, in the county, anyway.”

They stood admiring the car.

“I thought we were getting some snow yesterday. Had the boss all worried, like,” he said.

“Blew over. Lucky us. What will you do with the car when you’ve finished fixing it up?”

“I guess I’ll sell her and start in on another one. I always wanted one of them pre-war cars, maybe a thirty-nine Ford coupe, one with a big flat head V8. I don’t know for sure. Long-range planning isn’t one of my strong suits. By the way, what’re you doing standing out in the cold?”

“Ike called me in early. I thought I’d wait for you and find out why. Something go down yesterday?”

“We got us a corpse over at the ME’s office. A John Doe from Floyd, we think. Ike says you and me are to partner up and work the case.”

“You and me…work a homicide?”

“That’s what the man said. He wants to see us this morning.”

Another gust of icy wind rattled the office door and invited them in. Sam waved a good morning to Essie Falco behind the dispatcher’s desk.

“He in yet?” Whaite asked.

Essie waved back. “Shut the door, you’re letting in all the cold air. Yeah, he pulled in half an hour ago looking a little worse for wear. He said to send you right in, Whaite. And Sam, he wants you to check out some things on the internet, and then go see him. The list is on your desk. I guess it’s about the dead guy.”

“Your boyfriend, the FBI guy, comes to town this weekend?” Whaite said as he pulled mail from his box.

Sam had found someone in the fall who matched her in both stature and brains. FBI Special Agent Karl Hedrick stood an easy two inches over her six-three. He had arrived in Picketsville that summer in pursuit of a missing felon. The case had gone south for him, but Hedrick lingered in town for another month—presumably to keep his connection with Sam—and they had become an item. When he was finally recalled to Quantico, Ike feared she would follow and he would lose his newest deputy, but she had stayed on. She said it was too soon to make a commitment like that. Nevertheless, every other weekend she took off for Northern Virginia and on the alternate weekends, Hedrick traveled down to Picketsville.

“No, it’s my weekend to go to Fairfax.”

“You ever see that movie,
Sleeping with the Enemy?
”

Sam closed her eyes for a second and shook her head. “The FBI is not the enemy, Whaite. The trouble with you is you just assume that they’re a problem for us locals. We need to learn to trust and work with them.”

“I bet you believe in the Easter Bunny, too.”

“Honestly. Until that attitude goes the way of the dodo, there’ll never be any progress in, um…interagency cooperation. Besides, that movie was about a woman trying to escape an abusive husband—”

“And you aren’t married yet.”

“No, but…well…wait a minute.”

Whaite perched a pair of out-of-kilter reading glasses on his nose and began sorting through his mail. He discarded half of it unopened and headed toward Ike’s door. “Hey, I like Karl, but I’m telling you, Sam, he’s one of them and would sell us all out in a heartbeat if he thought it served the Bureau’s best interest.”

“Karl would never do that. And, well, I’ll just tell him that when I see him this weekend. Then we’ll see what he has to say to you.”

“Not this weekend, Sweetheart. You and me are working a homicide. You better call him up and cancel your romantic dinner on the Potomac.”

“This weekend?”

“That’s right. You wanted field duty. You got it.”

“But the weekend? This weekend?”

“This one and all the ones to follow until we close the case with an arrest or it goes cold. Sorry.”

Sam’s heart dropped into her shoes. Her instincts told her that this was to have been an extremely important weekend, a turning point in their relationship. Maybe the big one. Now this.

“Couldn’t we start on Monday?”

Whaite, eyebrows up, only looked at her over his half-rim reading glasses and pushed Ike’s door open.

“Go clean up your desk and draw a parka, Deputy. It’ll be cold down in Floyd.”

***

Ike looked up as Whaite entered. He seemed preoccupied. He chewed on the end of a pencil and swiveled back and forth in his desk chair, which in turn made a horrific squeal on each pass. The aroma of fresh and, Whaite guessed, very strong coffee filled the room, overlaying the scent of linoleum polish and wet boots.

“I want you to take Sam with you when you check out our friend from the park. Work it like a routine John Doe homicide, okay? Go on down to Floyd and start asking questions. I’ll be on the phone to their chief first thing so you won’t have any jurisdiction problems. He’s a good guy and will help us if we need backup.”

“But if you know we ain’t looking for a Harris killer, what’s the point?”

“Well, we don’t know that, do we? Someone’s our man and the name on his driver’s license is Harris. He’s from Floyd. For all they know down there, he’s a Harris. It’s just that you and I know better. Look, Whaite, it’s important to see how Sam works out. She says she wants to be a real cop. Well, she has to learn sometime and this looks like as good a time as any. Whether we are looking for a descendent of…who did you say…that person you named yesterday?”

“Sutphin.”

“Right, or someone else, it works the same way. Sam doesn’t have to know about Kamarov to do a competent investigation. We still want to know who he hung around with, where he spent his time, and so on. You work it with Kamarov in mind, but at the same time, keep an eye on Sam. But be very careful. If we’re looking for a Harris named Kamarov, it’s pretty likely someone else is, too. Stay with John Doe as much as you can.”

“That’ll make it kinda hard, Ike. I mean, how’ll we find who he was with without letting on he was a Harris?”

“Do what you have to do, but until we figure out why Kamarov called himself Harris, he’s John Doe.”

“You’re the boss. Sam’s pretty bright. She might figure out we’re sending her out looking for the man who wasn’t there.”

“Whaite, the man is there. He just isn’t your mountain man. He’s someone darker, devious maybe, I don’t know. Either way, we need to find him. Work the case straight. She’s looking for someone who wanted to kill a Floyd man, you’re looking for someone who wanted to kill an ex-Russian agent using Harris as an alias. Let’s hope you both find the same guy.”

Chapter 3

Sam retreated to her work space. She never thought of it as an office. A converted holding cell crammed with computer equipment linked to nearly every criminal investigative site in the country and smelling slightly of electronically created ozone did not qualify as an office. She’d been handed the job of taking Picketsville into the twenty-first century and she’d done it. She’d gone a few hundred steps beyond that. The Sheriff’s Department did not have to call on Richmond or any other jurisdiction to tap into AFIS, FBI, or state databases. She didn’t like to think of herself as a hacker, but she had the skills to work her way into many more as well, even if that was not a matter of general knowledge.

Whaite pounded on her door. “Ten minutes, Sam, then we roll.”

“Okay, I just need to make a quick call and clear Ike’s list.”

She settled into her ergonomically correct chair and sighed. She’d need to call Karl and tell him the bad news. She riffled through the papers on her desk hoping to find a project needing her attention, and so important, she would have to be excused from this homicide thing. She really did want to learn police grunt work, but at the same time, her computer held her in thrall, and then there was Karl. Men like Karl came by once in a lifetime. She stared at the phone.

Whaite banged on her door again. “Let’s go, Sam. We’re wasting daylight.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” The phone rang.

“Hey, it’s me.” Karl.

“Hi. What’s up?” Be cheerful. Break the bad news later.

“I have to cancel this weekend, Sam. I’m sorry but we have an emergency and they sort of transferred me.”

“Transferred? What happened?” Sam felt the relief tinged with the guilt that comes when someone else does your dirty work for you.

“Well, I can’t really say. Same church, different pew, I guess.”

“A witness missing again?”

“Can’t say.”

“Okay. Listen, I have kind of a problem at this end, too, so it’s just as well. Next weekend?”

“We’ll have to see.”

She hung up. That was better. She’d miss the time together, but this way nobody got hurt. Whaite banged on the door again.

“All right, I’m coming.” She stood and tucked in her shirt. Because of her height, a regulation size, standard issue blouse did not work. The distance from the nape of her neck to her waist measured at least three inches more than an average woman, leaving her very little shirttail to tuck. She buckled her duty belt, grabbed her hat, and headed out the door. “I’m coming.”

***

Essie Falco tried unsuccessfully to work the buttons on the new intercom and, failing, shouted at Ike, “Miz Harris on two.”

“Which Miz Harris?”

“The Miz Harris that’s president of the college. How many Harris women are you squiring around anyway?”

Ike wagged his hand in her direction. “Sorry, I got Harris on the brain today.”

Someday, he thought, he would hold a training session on how to use the intercom. He’d get Sam to do it. She seemed to be the only one able to decipher the codes and buttons. For years, communications in the Sheriff’s Office had been a matter of shouting from one room to another, unless there were visitors in the building. Then they would walk across the room to the desk or office of the person they wanted to contact and speak in a normal tone. The office rarely had visitors.

“Schwartz,” Ruth Harris barked, “I could kill you.”

“Not today, Ruth, I’m pretty busy. You can kill me tomorrow. What’s up?”

“You know those new ‘tenants’ you got for me?”

Ike had managed to find someone to lease the abandoned art storage facility behind her main building. It had not been easy. A gigantic late nineteen fifties, four-level, mostly underground, reinforced concrete bomb shelter did not make for an easy rental, but he had friends in a certain governmental agency and they were ecstatic about it.

“Nice people, aren’t they?”

“Do you have any idea what they’re up to?”

“No clue. Hanging curtains, faux painting the walls—”

“This isn’t funny. They’re in there wearing guns and hauling in boxes of electronic crap that looks really suspicious and black paint and…did I mention guns?”

“You did. And black paint.”

“What are they doing to my building?”

“It sounds like they’re painting and installing their computers.”

“Black paint?”

“So it would seem. Not the usual color recommended by interior decorators, but who knows, maybe black is this year’s mauve.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Bubba. They’re packing heat.”

“They are carrying, not packing. How many times do I have to tell you? And why is all of this a reason for you to want me dead?”

“My faculty is up in arms. They want to know why they weren’t consulted on the lease.”

“I hope you told them it was none of their bleeping business. That letting the faculty of a college meddle in its management is like putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“I would.”

“Yes, you would. And putting you in charge of a college would be like putting…oh hell, I can’t think of anything.”

“Sugar in the gas tank, fox in the hen house, salt in the wounds, square peg in a round—”

“Enough already. Ike, if I put together a small group of faculty…wait, don’t interrupt me. Hear me out…a small group of reasonable men and women who will listen, would you come out here and talk to them about the Agency and how they are not…um—”

“Toxic?”

“Well, yes…sort of.”

“On one condition.”

“Here it comes.”

“I just want a level playing field. Every time I meet up with your people I get the impression they think I’m either some mentally challenged rube cop or part of some great police state conspiracy. They seem oblivious to the whole concept that police are here to protect and serve. To protect and serve
them
, I might add. I’m tired of being stereotyped by that bunch of—”

“I said I’d get reasonable ones, Ike. They are not all your enemies. I promise.”

“Okay, what time?”

“This evening work? Say seven o’clock?”

“You in that kind of a hurry? Okay, I guess I can manage that. By the way, you don’t have relatives living down south of here, do you?”

“Yes, I am in a hurry. I need to make this problem go away. What kind of relatives? You mean like uncles and aunts, cousins, that kind of relatives?”

“Yep. We have a murder on our hands and his last name is Harris. Any kin?”

“Ike, if his name was Nixon, would you be calling Whittier, California?”

“Guess not. Just a thought. Lots of men named Harris down on Buffalo Mountain and one of them got himself shot. In the old days there’d be another killing pretty soon, and then any Harris would be fair game.”

“Never heard of the place.”

“You have a local historian on that faculty of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Ask him to the meeting. It’s my compensation for coming. I need to talk to someone who knows the history of Buffalo Mountain.”

“You’ll come, then?”

“And stay over.”

“Well…”

“And nobody at the meeting will be packing heat.”

“Yes to the first, I can’t guarantee the second. Better wear your cop belt.”

“Duty belt…I think I’d make a very good college administrator.”

“Right. And Don Knotts would have made a very good linebacker for the Oakland Raiders.”

***

“Will somebody please explain to me how Kamarov managed to slip away from his minders and disappear?”

Andover Crisp sat behind his recently assigned large government-issue mahogany desk and glared at the half-dozen men standing across from him. Tom Phillips stood in the back of the hastily assembled group of men. From that vantage point he could just make out, in the reflected image made by the desk’s glass top, that Crisp had missed a spot on one of his chins when he shaved that morning. Tom blinked and suppressed a smile. He was not a stake holder in this one. His head would not be one to roll if things turned out badly. He just handled logistics, the HR guy, so to speak. As soon as this crowd developed their plan, he’d find the manpower to staff it. He only needed to hear the problem, listen to some likely responses, and he could begin his own planning.

“We go to enormous expense to get the guy and now he’s lost—Lost!”

Crisp’s voice gained a few decibels as the silence on the other side of the desk continued. “You boys have forty-eight hours to find him and get him back or there’ll be one hell of a shuffling of assignments around here.”

“Sir,” Palmer said. Palmer was senior and at less risk than the others in the room. “The problem we have, as you no doubt know, is the nature of Kamarov’s situation. If we bring in the wrong people, some of what he’s up to will invariably leak and…” He swept the room with a worried look. He didn’t have to say anything else.

Tom frowned. What in the devil was going on here? “Ah, sir, Mr. Crisp, perhaps I had better step out. This sounds like a NTK and I don’t need, or, for that matter, want to know,” he said.

“Yes, you’re right. Thank you, Phillips. You will be called in later. The rest of you, except Palmer and Kevin, step out. We’ll call you when we need you.”

The last words Tom heard as the door swished shut sounded like…
the Agency
.