House Rivals Read online

  “How are you doing?” she asked him.

  “Fine,” he said. “And everything’s on track with the bill.”

  He went on to tell Marjorie who he’d spoken to over at the capitol and the number of votes it looked like they had for the bill. He seemed to be okay—not all mopey and listless like he’d been this morning—and from what he was saying it sounded as if he did his job the way he was supposed to. Still, making him take a vacation might be the best thing for both of them right now.

  About five minutes after he spoke to Marjorie, Heckler watched the raggedy-looking barefoot guy come out of the police station. He stood on the curb, hoping from one foot to another like his feet were cold on the concrete. He appeared to be waiting for someone. A few minutes later an old Mazda sedan with a dent in the left front fender, driven by a woman with wild-looking blond hair, pulled up next to where he was standing and he got into the car. Heckler jotted down the license plate number.

  Heckler called a guy he used in the DMV to find out who the car was registered to, but his DMV guy didn’t answer his phone. Heckler left a voice message giving the license plate number, said he pay the usual amount, and asked the guy to get back to him as soon as possible.

  A short time later, DeMarco and the good-looking FBI agent came out of the police station and got into the agent’s car. Heckler let them get a one block lead on him before he pulled out of his parking place. Marjorie would be pissed if he lost DeMarco but he didn’t care. He didn’t like the idea of following an FBI agent at all.

  DeMarco and Westerberg drove to Logan’s house.

  “Nice place,” Westerberg said.

  “Yeah, crime pays,” DeMarco said. DeMarco rang the doorbell a couple of times but no one came to the door. “He’s probably at his office,” DeMarco said.

  Half an hour later, they were parked half a block from the strip mall where Logan and Dawkins had their office. “That’s his Porsche,” DeMarco said, “so he’s there, but I don’t want to talk to him in front of his partner. She’s sharp, and she struck me as being a lot tougher than Logan. I think if we talk to him with her there, she’ll insist that he lawyer up immediately. Let’s wait until she leaves.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Westerberg said.

  Marjorie’s phone rang and she saw it was Heckler calling. She didn’t want to talk to Heckler with Bill close enough to hear, although Bill was on the phone. She told Heckler to hold on a minute, and then made a gesture at Bill that she was going outside for a smoke. Bill shook his head, meaning: That’s bad for you.

  “Now what?” she asked Heckler.

  “Well, if you look across the street, about half a block north, you’ll see a dark blue Taurus. DeMarco and the FBI lady are in the Taurus.”

  “Goddamnit. How long have they been there?”

  “They just got here. After they left the police station they drove to Logan’s house—”

  “Aw, shit.”

  “Yeah. They knocked on the door and when nobody answered they came here.”

  What in the hell did they want with Bill?

  “Did you find out who the homeless guy was?” Marjorie asked.

  “Not yet. I’m waiting for a call back on him.”

  “Call me when you know something but stick with DeMarco,” Marjorie said.

  Marjorie went back inside the office. She looked over at Bill. He was still on the phone. She didn’t know what to do next. It was apparent that DeMarco and his pet FBI agent wanted to see Bill, and she hated the idea of them talking to him without her being present. But she had things to do this afternoon, and she couldn’t stay glued to Bill’s side twenty-four hours a day.

  She had to pick up Bobby from school and take him to the orthodontist. Normally her husband would have picked up Bobby, but she’d given Dick permission to play golf this afternoon with some of his buddies who were just as useless as him. She could call him at the golf course and make him go get Bobby, but it might take him half an hour to get back to the clubhouse, then another half hour to get to the school. She didn’t want her son hanging around outside the school by himself for an hour. There were too many twisted creeps out there who preyed on kids.

  Bill was still on the phone and she heard him say, “I’ll see you about seven.” She wondered if he was making a date. She made an impatient gesture for him to get off the phone, and he did, saying “Honey, I gotta go now, but I’ll see you tonight. What’s up?” he said to Marjorie.

  “You need to listen to me, Bill. DeMarco’s parked outside, just down the street, and he’s with a woman who’s probably FBI. Heckler said DeMarco went to your place today and knocked on your door, and when he found out you weren’t home, he came here. So I think he’s waiting for you.”

  “Aw, shit,” Bill said. “What do I—”

  “Listen to me! If he tries to talk to you, you tell him to take a hike. If the woman tries to talk to you, even if she’s a cop, you tell her to take a hike. If she arrests you—”

  “Arrests me!”

  “I’m just saying, if she arrests you, don’t say anything. You ask for a lawyer, then you call me. Got it?”

  “Yeah, but why would she arrest me?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine that she would, but I can’t be sure. Most likely she just wants to question you, but like I said, if she or DeMarco tries, you tell ’em to go to hell. You got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m counting on you to hold it together, Bill. Now I gotta go, but I’ll call you later.”

  God, she hated to leave; Bill looked like he was going to be sick.

  DeMarco watched Dawkins drive off in a big black Jeep Cherokee. She looked too small to be driving a car that size. “I think we should wait until Logan leaves the office in case she comes back,” he said to Westerberg.

  “Yeah, all right, but I have to use the restroom. My bladder’s about to burst.”

  “So go into Subway. They’ll have a restroom. But make it quick.”

  He could see that Westerberg was about to snap at him, but then she didn’t, and just left the car. While Westerberg was relieving herself, DeMarco called Thorpe and gave him an update on where things stood. He was terrified that if he didn’t make progress on the case that Thorpe was going to do something on his own to avenge Sarah—like track down Tim Sloan and shoot the man.

  Westerberg returned from Subway with a big chocolate chip cookie; she was kind enough to bring one for DeMarco. As they sat munching their cookies, waiting for Logan to leave his office, DeMarco told her what he wanted to do next. He was pleased Westerberg agreed; Westerberg was more of a pragmatist than he’d expected. An hour later, Logan left his office, got into his Porsche, and they followed him to a bar a half mile away.

  They parked next to Logan’s Porsche and DeMarco said, “I think it would be best if I talked to Logan by myself. I mean, maybe it would be best for your career. You just sit off to one side and look like a pissed-off fed, and when I signal, you call the cops.” Westerberg nodded.

  Logan was sitting at the bar drinking what looked like scotch. DeMarco walked up to him with Westerberg at his side, and said, “Bill, let’s you and me go sit in a booth and talk. Oh, this is FBI Agent Westerberg, by the way. She’s going to wait until we’re finished talking before she arrests you.”

  Logan surprised DeMarco by smiling at him. “Nice to meet you, Agent, but I don’t think you’re going to arrest me for anything. I haven’t committed any crimes. So I’m just going to finish my drink, then I’m going to go home, take a shower and shave, and then I’m meeting a nice-looking young woman for dinner.”

  “Logan,” Westerberg said, “I have all I need at this moment to arrest you for the assault committed on Sarah Johnson on April twenty-fifth. I’ll drag you out of here in handcuffs if you don’t march over to that booth right now, and listen to what DeMarco has to say.”

&nbs
p; “You’re bluffing,” he said—but he wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Do I look like I’m bluffing?” Westerberg said, and DeMarco had to admit that she did a pretty good impression of a badass federal agent—and maybe that’s because she really was a badass federal agent.

  Logan hesitated a moment, then said, “Okay,” and picked up his drink and stood.

  DeMarco waved a hand at the bartender and said, “How ’bout bringing a Stoli martini over to that table. Easy on the vermouth. Would you like anything, Agent?”

  “No,” Westerberg said, glaring at DeMarco. Well, hell, he thought: she might have some requirement not to drink on duty but he certainly didn’t. In fact, drinking on duty was pretty much standard operating procedure when working for Mahoney.

  Westerberg took Logan’s seat at the bar and DeMarco joined Logan in the booth.

  “I’m going to play you a recording first,” DeMarco said, “so you can get over the notion that anyone’s bluffing about anything. The man speaking is your buddy, Tim Sloan.”

  “Tim?” Logan said. Before Logan could ask why his former brother-in-law would be making a recording, DeMarco hit play.

  “Bill Logan paid me to assault Sarah Johnson.”

  “How much did he pay you?”

  “Five hundred bucks. I gave a hundred each to Roy and Mark.”

  “That’s Roy Patterson and Mark Jenkins. Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And why did Logan pay you to assault Ms. Johnson?”

  “He just said she was causing him problems by writing a bunch of lies about his business or something. I guess she was a reporter.”

  “Did you kill Sarah Johnson for Bill Logan?”

  DeMarco hit the stop button. “Okay, let me tell you where things stand right now, Bill.” Logan looked stunned, like he’d just been told that he had cancer.

  Before DeMarco could speak, the bartender placed DeMarco’s martini on the table. DeMarco thanked the bartender and took a sip. “That hits the spot. Now where were we? Oh, yeah, I was about to tell you how I’m going to destroy your life.”

  “Sloan’s lying,” Logan said, finally reacting to the recording.

  DeMarco laughed. “Don’t even try to go there, Bill. First, you’re going to be convicted for paying Sloan and two other knuckleheads to assault Sarah. That’s a slam dunk. I got Patterson to give me Sloan and you just heard Sloan give you up, and you know Sloan was telling the truth. The next thing I’ve got is a lawyer over in Great Falls who will testify that you fixed a case so her son—who’s now dead—would get off on a robbery-assault charge in return for her dropping a lawsuit against Curtis. I’m not sure how that will play with a jury, but the lawyer in Great Falls is just one brick in the wall.”

  “Brick in the wall?” Logan said.

  “You remember what I told you when I met you and your partner in your office the other day? You remember me saying how you were no longer up against a girl with a laptop? You’re now dealing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bill. I’m talking about an agency that has Justice Department lawyers coming out of its ass, an agency that can get all the warrants it wants.

  “Agent Westerberg and her ten thousand friends at the Bureau are now reading Sarah’s blog—a blog that up until now only a few people ever bothered to read. Federal agents are going to investigate every accusation Sarah made and start scaring the shit out of the politicians you bribed. And what this all means is that the lawyer in Great Falls won’t be the only person testifying against you. Like I said, she’s just one brick in the wall.”

  Logan started to say something, but DeMarco held up a hand.

  “I’m not finished. Why did you go to Denver the week before Sarah was killed?”

  Marjorie walked out of the orthodontist’s office, Bobby trailing along behind her. She was thinking about how Bobby’s braces were going to cost over eight grand—the damn dentist was a thief!—when her phone rang. It was Heckler.

  “Go get in the car,” she told Bobby. “What is it now?” she said to Heckler.

  “The guy who wasn’t wearing shoes?” Heckler said. “The guy I thought was a homeless guy? His name is Tim Sloan. After he left the police station a woman picked him up and I got the plate number on the car she was driving. Then I called a pal at the DMV and he just got back to me a little while ago. He said the car was registered to Sloan, then he emailed me Sloan’s driver’s license photo. It was a bad photo but I’m ninety percent sure it was the barefoot guy.”

  “Tim Sloan?” Marjorie said. Then it clicked. “Aw, shit,” she said. Sloan was Bill’s idiot ex-brother-in-law, the guy Bill paid to try to scare Sarah Johnson.

  “What’s DeMarco doing now?” Marjorie asked.

  “I was just getting to that,” Heckler said. “Right now he and his FBI pal are sitting in a bar with Logan. They followed him after he left your office.”

  “Goddamnit!” Marjorie screamed—and her son inside the car looked at her with big eyes. She immediately disconnected the call with Heckler and called Bill’s cell phone. She had known this might happen and she wanted to make sure Bill wasn’t talking to DeMarco. But Bill’s cell phone rang only twice then went to voice mail. “Call me. Now!” she screamed into the phone.

  DeMarco had just said “Why did you go to Denver the week before Sarah was killed?” when Logan’s cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer that,” DeMarco said. “Why did you go to Denver, Bill?”

  “I’m not going to answer that question without an attorney present.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you why you went. You went there to hire somebody to kill Sarah. Which brings me back to the FBI. What the FBI is also doing right now is looking at suspected contract killers who operate out of Denver. They’re looking at passenger manifests to see if any of these guys took a trip to Bismarck. They’re looking at credit card records to see if any of them slept or ate in Bismarck. The other thing they’re looking into is a trip you took to Denver six years ago. So far they haven’t found anybody connected to you that was murdered at that time, so now they’re looking at folks who died under mysterious circumstances. It’s just amazing what the largest federal law enforcement agency in the country can do when it sets its mind to it.”

  Logan’s cell phone rang again. “Don’t answer that,” DeMarco said.

  “I’m leaving,” Logan said.

  “No, you’re not,” DeMarco said. “If you don’t agree to cooperate right now, Agent Westerberg is going to arrest you for assaulting Sarah. Actually, she’s going to call the Bismarck cops and have them arrest you. But I’m going to give you a chance. I want two things from you. I want you to confess that your partner and Curtis were involved in a conspiracy to kill Sarah and I want the name of the killer. The second thing I want is for you to spend the next several days with Agent Westerberg and tell her all the things you’ve done to undermine the political system for Leonard Curtis.”

  “I’m not going to do either of those things,” Logan said. “And I had nothing to do with Johnson’s death.”

  “Okay, have it your way,” DeMarco said. Then he yelled over to Wester­berg, “Make the call.” To Logan, he said, “While we’re waiting for the cops to get here—”

  Logan’s cell phone rang again.

  “Don’t answer that,” DeMarco said. “While we’re waiting for the cops to get here, I want you to think about something. You’re going to be tossed into a cell tonight, arraigned tomorrow, and then given bail. In other words, you’re going to be back on the street tomorrow where your buddy Curtis can find you. If Curtis was willing to have Sarah killed when she didn’t have any evidence that could hurt him, what do you think he might do to a guy like you who can actually cause him some damage?”

  Westerberg and DeMarco followed the Bismarck squad car containing Logan to the police station, and Westerberg went inside to assist the lo
cal cops. DeMarco returned to his car and drove until he spotted Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que. He was starving. The only thing he’d eaten since breakfast was the chocolate chip cookie that Westerberg had given him.

  Before going inside the restaurant, he called Thorpe again and told him that Logan was in jail. “You need to go home, Doug. I’m going to get these guys. I’m not leaving Bismarck until I do, and right now there isn’t anything you can do. “

  Thorpe didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay. But I’m telling you right now, DeMarco, if all that happens is that Logan spends a couple months in jail, that’s not going to be good enough for me. I want the guy who killed her. Somebody has to pay.”

  “Somebody will pay, Doug. That’s a promise. I’ll keep calling to tell you what’s going on. Now go home. And I’m sorry, but I probably won’t make it for Sarah’s funeral.”

  It was ten p.m. and Marjorie was getting ready for bed. She usually went to bed early because she was an early riser. And God help Dick and the boys if they made a bunch of noise and kept her up. She was dressed in an old flannel nightgown that was ten years old and wash-faded, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away because it was her favorite nightgown. She was brushing her teeth when her cell phone rang.

  She didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, only that it was a Bismarck area code. She thought briefly about ignoring the call but since she hadn’t heard from Bill in the last five hours, and after calling him a dozen times, she decided to take the call.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “It’s me,” Bill said.

  “Where in the hell have you been? Why haven’t you returned my calls?”

  “Shut up. This phone is probably being monitored. I’m in jail. I was arrested for the assault on Sarah Johnson. They fingerprinted me, took mug shots, and generally just fucked with me. This is the first chance I had to call. I’m being arraigned at nine a.m. tomorrow. You need to get me a lawyer and get that lawyer down here to see me right now.”