Phantom Purloiners, page 6
CHAPTER 10
One should always be cautious of one’s partners. Particularly if one is from Wyoming, a state whose history is replete with flimflammers, double-crossers, scam artists, disreputable lawyers, and bandits. A good Wyoming example is Mother Featherlegs. Mother Featherlegs was a madam and saloon owner near Lusk, Wyoming—a community, in her case, one letter away from the mainspring of her profession. She was known as featherlegs because she favored ruffled red pantalets that fluttered when she walked or flapped when she rode a horse. Mother Featherlegs was intimate with a local outlaw “Dangerous Dick Davis the Terrapin” and hid the loot and jewelry from his robberies in her brothel. Her luck ran out in 1879 when her body was discovered in the Badlands with moccasin prints of “Dangerous Dick” all about the corpse. “Dangerous Dick Davis the Terrapin” could not be immediately located, as he had absconded to Louisiana with all the money and jewelry known to have been in the possession of Mother Featherlegs. “Dangerous Dick Davis the Terrapin” did not give up his dangerous ways, and several years later he had a date with a hemp noose. Before he left this earth, he admitted to the murder of Mother Featherlegs. He said her name had been Charlotte Shepard, which, it was later discovered, was actually a name in a poem.
So no one knew the true name of Mother Featherlegs.
To this day.
But that’s how she is listed on the only tombstone in the United States to a prostitute—erected in 1964.
Joshua Three Trees and the Philadelphia lawyer had been cut from the same bolt of cloth. Three Trees was of the next generation after Vietnam, the generation of greed. No war had tempered his world view, and he had come of age in a day when it was the amount of money you made that was important, not how you made it. Had it been filmed in his formative years, The Wolf of Wall Street would have been his role model. He had taken in skepticism of the government with his mother’s milk. His life’s driving force was one of cash, not conscience. A high-school dropout, he had failed at every job he had tried. Counseling, tutoring, interning, and mentoring had not made a dent in his intellect or world view.
Quite the reverse.
He came to view the world as hostile because he believed himself to be more capable than anyone else, and the reason he was not successful was because the whites had all the jobs. The fact his Indian school compeers had gone on to lucrative careers because they were educated did not alter his world view.
Three Trees had never heard of Caerus, the Greek god of opportunity. Fleet of foot because he was winged, Caerus would rush by mortals, the embodiment of opportunity being fleeting. But there was a chance to catch both Caerus and good luck. Caerus had a single long lock of hair that hung from his forehead. If you could snatch that lock of hair as he ran by, you would have snagged opportunity out of thin air. Three Trees was able to grab the lock of Caerus’s hair the day his father was buried.
Caerus came in the form of a Philadelphia lawyer who was one-sixteenth Cherokee blood, one-fourth blue blood and 4/4th bad blood. He was the embodiment of every lawyer joke. Old Man Three Trees had known exactly what kind of a lawyer he was. Had read his personality like a book when they had served together in Vietnam. Being a man of the world, Old Man Three Trees knew life in Wyoming was a crooked poker game. When one is in a crooked poker game, one cheats. Just like everyone else in the poker game. To cheat big time, you needed a lawyer. One with an adjustable moral compass.
He knew one.
But for Old Man Three Trees time ran out. All he could do before Agent Orange ate him alive from the inside out was form the superstructure of profit. The old man had created the Nimerigar from thin air. He had converted fifty thousand acres of worthless government badlands into fifty thousand acres of Nimerigar badlands. It would be up to the next generation to take the next step.
Joshua Three Trees met the Philadelphia lawyer in a hotel room after the funeral. It had been the first time the lawyer had made it this far west. The lawyer had made it clear. What the Nimerigar had was fifty thousand acres of garbage. The dreams of a casino were on life support. The only access to the interstate was a wagon rut; there was no water table, and for the photovoltaic deal to go through, there had to be access to the Wyoming power grid.
So the Nimerigar had nothing?
“Not exactly,” the lawyer told Three Trees. “There are some possibilities but . . .” and he let the sentence hang.
Joshua Three Trees was no fool.
He nodded, and the deal was cut—without Three Trees even knowing what he was getting himself into.
But then again, he had nothing to lose.
When Old Man Three Trees had died, Joshua Three Trees had lost a place to live and board, cable television, cell phone, and car insurance.
CHAPTER 11
The bus-station manager, ticket agent, and janitor met Noonan with a handshake just as he, Noonan, entered the terminal “Everybody in town’s been talking about you, Heinz.”
“Bad new travels fast, I see.”
“Nope. This is Washakie. We’re a small town, and everyone knows everyone else’s business. And talk about a mystery! A man who never was, being killed in a locked room, and the suspect is himself with an alibi. How delicious! Anticipating your questions, nope. Neither of the two men, victim or suspect—or one and the same—came in or out by bus. I went back a week before the murder, and six buses came through. All six buses had passengers who got off for coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches, or to use the excellent facilities here.” He pointed to a sign reading RESTROOM in the form of an arrow. “No one got off and stayed off. I checked the records and with the drivers. A total of forty-five people came through. And I do mean came through.”
“I applaud your diligence. Now, let me ask you a question. How did either—or both—of the men come in?”
“I don’t know. What I can tell you is that they did not come by bus. If they came in a rented car, it’s not only well hidden but it also wasn’t rented in Casper, Cheyenne, Colter, or Bridger. The victim might have been dropped off in a rented car by the survivor, so to speak, and then the survivor came back later.”
Noonan flipped open his notebook and started to write.
“But he didn’t come by bus, did he?”
“Nope.”
“And if he came by rented car, the car’s nowhere to be found?”
“Correct.”
“So, he had to have been dropped off by someone driving down the highway?”
“Or come over from Cannibal Pass.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s a great mystery. I wish I was a mystery writer. This one would sell and sell and sell.”
Noonan thought for a moment. “Any chance the supposed victim is still in town?”
This took the bus-station manager, ticket agent, and janitor by surprise.
“But he’s dead!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. All anyone knows at this point is that a lot of blood was found in a hotel room. There has been no body found. So, where’s the body? An obvious answer is the individual is not dead, and the blood is simply a distraction. This means that the individual is alive and hiding. Or the individual is dead, and the body is in hiding. But you cannot hide a dead body very long before it starts to, shall we say, deteriorate and send off . . .”
At this point the bus-station manager, ticket agent, and janitor turned a shade of green.
“I see your point. But if there was someone hiding in town, everyone would know about it. After all, we are a small town. On top of that, Leonard, er, Chief Standing Bear and four other officers did a thorough search of the city. The chief is very good at his job. Doesn’t leave a stone unturned. Besides that, we had a robbery about two days after the murder, and there was another search of Washakie. Nothing turned up there either.”
“I heard about the robbery. You’re sure the robbers didn’t catch a bus out of town?”
“Nope. Checked on that too for Leonard, er, Chief Standing Bear. Six buses passed through Washakie the day of the robbery, and three days later. A family of four—who I happen to know—got off the bus from Colter. No one else.” Noonan started to speak, but the bus-station manager, ticket agent, and janitor cut him off, “And no one got on any bus.”
“The description of those robbers was pretty specific. Where do you think they are?”
“Oh, that’s easy. They went out over Cannibal Pass.”
This surprised Noonan. “Why do you think that?”
“No other reasonable way out of town. Roadblocks on the rural highway both directions and a search of the town. They didn’t drive out, and they weren’t in town. They’re on the dodge, and the only place for them to be hiding out is somewhere along the Cannibal Pass road. The cops had the exit blocked on the interstate, but there’s lots of places to hide in the Badlands.”
“You think they’re still there?”
“Well, they ain’t here.”
CHAPTER 12
Nothing in life is simple. Even something as mundane as replacing a washer on a dripping toilet tank. No matter how easy a YouTube video makes it appear, the actual work is major undertaking involving tools you do not have, strength you have not acquired, parts not available, and a wife who keeps asking “Is it done yet?”
This project had a lot of moving parts. It also had a timetable that was set in stone. This was not going to be a simple undertaking, but then again, it would be very profitable. The two of them would walk away with $2 million apiece. Everyone else would get a lot more. It would take a while for the truth to out, but by the time it did, everyone with greasy fingers would be long gone.
So far everything had gone according to plan. Even the outside investigator. The Philadelphia lawyer had expected an outsider, most likely someone from the FBI. He would have preferred an FBI agent. FBI agents were predictable. They were also closemouthed. You never knew what they were doing. Better yet, they took a long time to make an arrest. In this case, delay was the greatest of all blessings of the FBI. As far as he was concerned, all the two needed was time. By the time the FBI and that outside investigator put the pieces together, everyone involved would be in the wind. Then it wouldn’t make any difference what anyone knew and when they knew it.
CHAPTER 13
Harold Standbow—who was German-Irish by ethnicity rather than Shoshone, Arapaho, or Sioux—was quick to point out his heritage to Noonan. “In a department run by a Standing Bear, when you have a name like Standbow, everyone thinks you’re Native American. Sometimes it’s good; sometimes it’s bad.”
“Cops are cops,” Noonan said. “Once you put on the uniform, you are one of the men and women in blue. You don’t have ethnicity.”
“That’s easy to say”—he paused—“but some folks don’t look at it that way.”
“There’s one in every crowd. I’m . . .”
“Heinz Noonan, the ‘Bearded Holmes’ for the Sandersonville, North Carolina, Police Department. You want to be called Heinz, and you have a passel of questions about the murder of Harrison, the robberies of the Bodacious brothers, and if there’s a link to the Nimerigar.”
“That’s quite a mouthful.”
“We’re a small town.”
“Then I don’t have to worry about the niceties of introducing myself,” Noonan said as he pulled out his notebook.
“Cop to cop, nope. As far as Harrison, the first one, the professional answer to your question is in three parts.”
“Three parts?”
“I like to be thorough.”
“Please proceed.”
Standbow smiled. “I’m not being rude, just efficient. We’re, that is, we in Washakie don’t want to waste time. I apologize if I seemed abrupt.”
“Not a problem. I don’t want to appear nosey just because I am.”
That cut a bit of the ice. Standbow smiled and extended his hand to Noonan. “I should have done this first.”
Noonan shook his hand. “That makes two of us.”
“OK,” Standbow continued. “The discussion of the murder has three parts. First, what we did, that is, the Washakie Police Department. Second, what the forensic person out of Casper did, and third, what’s happened since. As far as what the Washakie Police Department did, the answer is close to nothing. We responded to a possible murder, opened the door to Harrison’s room, closed it, and called the State of Wyoming’s forensic people. It did not take a brain surgeon to know we were out of our league. We could have processed the crime scene if we’d had the equipment needed, but we don’t, so we called for help.”
“Good decision.”
“Yes and no. Yes, it is a good idea to ask for help when you need it. No, you look incompetent when you say you don’t know what’s going on in a murder investigation in a town this size.”
“It all works out in the end. Were you the one who went to the hotel room?”
“There were two of us there. I don’t remember which one of us opened the door, but we shut it pretty quick. We didn’t go in.”
“Smart choice. When you were in front of the door, did you see anything like a trail of blood, drag marks or footprints?”
“We answered all of those questions with the forensic people. No, no, and no. Which is very odd, if you ask me. You have a room coated with blood and no sign of anyone leaving the room. I was told—told because I did not see them—there were bloody footprints in the room. Well, if so, why no bloody footprints outside the room.”
“Good question. Are you sure there weren’t and that they hadn’t been cleaned up?
“I was there when the forensic people used luminol. No blood, no bleach stains.”
“Was there a window in the room? My room at the Frank M. Canton has a window.”
“Yup. The window does open, and the forensic people sprayed luminol on the sill, inside and out. Nothing. No scratch marks on the window, inside or out. No footprints of any kind on the soil outside the window. I checked the room of the hotel immediately above the room where the murdered man was to make sure the perp didn’t get out the window and haul himself up to the second floor. And I checked the roof. Nothing. No disturbance of any kind. Forensic guy used luminol on the area immediately above the window just in case.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“So he must have flown out.”
Standbow thought that was funny. “Hardly likely. The perp was just a little cleverer than we are. But give us a bit of think time, and we’ll figure it out. The perp and the body didn’t just vanish.”
“Anything else you can tell me about the room?”
“Only what I have heard. It was empty of any personal effects—and, of course, no body. Someone had been in the room, or at least messed it up for two nights. Other than that, goose egg.”
“OK,” Noonan said as he smiled. “That takes care of the forensics. “As to the second part of your answer, what did you, that is, the Washakie Police Department do?”
“The usual, which, in the case of a small town like this, did not take long. We started searching for any car that might have been associated with the deceased. We did a circular search around the hotel, getting farther and farther from the scene of the crime. We ran about a hundred plates. Five came back from rental-car agencies, but we matched people to their rented car within the hour. Checked with the bus terminal. Of course, you’ve already talked to Sandy. Asked the state troopers to stop traffic on the highway, which they did. We got all the names and licenses of everyone from the roadblocks. All of them checked out, and no one fit the description of the deceased. We ran the road over Cannibal Pass and got nothing.”
“Maybe the perp was long gone by the time the roadblock went up.”
“Maybe. We don’t have a time of death. The forensic people haven’t given us a time yet. They are also running the DNA through the national database. But it is going to take six or eight weeks. We might get lucky.”
“Not lucky for Mr. Harrison.”
“If there was a Mr. Harrison.”
This took Noonan by surprise. “You think there might not have been a murder?”
“I’m not sure of anything. But all the evidence points away from a murder. I mean, where’s the body? Anyone can splash blood around a room and then change his—or her—bloody clothes. Heck, the victim himself could have done it. Go into his own room, splash a lot of blood around, strip off his bloody clothes, put on a jump suit, change shoes, put them into a garbage bag, and then walk out the door. If he did it after about ten p.m., there was only one person at the front desk. The victim could have carried the garbage bag out the back exit, and the person at the front desk would never have known he was gone. The Frank M. Canton Hotel doesn’t have any security cameras, so it would have been easy.”
“Then where’d the blood come from?”
“Blood bank, maybe. I don’t know. Human blood is not hard to come by. You could buy it from derelicts for twenty dollars a pint or quart or whatever size is standard. Then splash it all over the room to make it look like a murder had taken place. Then skedaddle out of town. If the victim faked his own death at, say ten p.m., he could have been picked up by someone on the highway within fifteen minutes and been in Casper or Cheyenne before the sun came up. He would have beat the roadblocks by a dozen hours.”
“Could he be hiding in town?”
Standbow shook his head and gave a kind of a shrug and smiled. “Very doubtful. Like I said before, we’re a small town. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. We didn’t do a house-to-house, but we did check the empty buildings, hostels, high-school outbuildings, and the derelict shacks we know about. Nothing. If the victim had been hiding, we would have found him two days later when the Bodacious brothers got robbed. We did another thorough search for the perps in the robbery. And we had roadblocks up within minutes of that robbery. All we got from the roadblocks were names, addresses, and plate numbers. They all checked out.”
