“Ethanol? Shoot, it could be another goddamn Jerusalem artichoke scam. There’s the same kind of gold-rush thing going on…the people who got killed weren’t only old, they were mostly pretty well-off. Could have been investors in another scam.”
“Yeah. Even the Schmidts. They had half a million in Vanguard.” Virgil thought for a second, and then asked, “Is Larry Jensen still out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Get him to check the Vanguard statements. There should be monthly statements, like with a checking account. See if there’ve been any big withdrawals in the past three years. Not like for a car…bigger than that.”
“I’ll call now.”
While he went to call, Virgil began going through Judd’s files, looking for anything involving Arno Partners or Florence Mills. Stryker came back: “Larry’ll check. What are we looking for?”
“Arno Partners, A-R-N-O, or Florence Mills. If you could crack open his computer, run a search on either name…”
“Why don’t I do the files, you do the computer. You gotta be better at computers than I am…”
JUDD’S COMPUTER wasn’t password-protected and had almost nothing on it other than Microsoft Word, with automatic formatting of letters and envelopes with Judd’s return address and a letterhead. Nothing at all in the documents file. The e-mail file hadn’t even been set up. A fancy typewriter, Virgil thought.
He was closing it down when he caught sight of the secretary’s machine in the outer office: non-networked, both freestanding.
“Judd still have a secretary?” he asked Stryker, who was sitting on the floor of the file room.
“Yup. Amy Sweet. We told her to go on home and to send the probate lawyer a bill for her last week of work.”
“Gotta talk to her,” Virgil said. He dropped behind the secretary’s desk, booted up the computer. More files, this time. He ran a search on Arno and one on Florence Mills, and the Florence Mills search kicked out a half-dozen documents.
“Got Florence Mills,” he called to Stryker. He opened the documents, one at a time: payments to High Plains Ag & Fleet Supply, in Madison, South Dakota. Stryker came to look over his shoulder: “Sonofabitch,” he said, reaching past Virgil to tap the screen, a payment for one thousand gallons of Bernhard Brand AA. “Look at this.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Virgil said.
“Anhydrous ammonia. They’ve got an ethanol plant somewhere, and they’re buying AA. I mean, it could be legitimate if they’re growing, as well as cooking, but I’ll tell you what I think: I think they’re manufacturing methamphetamine, bigger than life.”
“Ah, man,” Virgil said.
Stryker: “I checked Feur with the NCIC. He’s had some run-ins with the law, since he got out, but they were all bullshit. You know, disorderly conduct for protests, that sort of thing. Nothing hard, like dope.”
“Sit tight,” Virgil said. He got on his phone, called Davenport. “You told me once if I ever needed anything really bad from the federal government, you’ve got a guy high enough up to get anything.”
“Maybe,” Davenport said. “I’d hate to burn up a favor on an errand, though.”
“Call him. Tell him to go to the DEA and see if there’s anything on a George Feur—any possible connection to methamphetamine distribution through one of those fascist white supremacist convict groups. I need it just as fast as you can get it.”
“You break it?”
“Maybe; not what I thought, though,” Virgil said.
“I’ll have him dump it to your e-mail, if there’s anything,” Davenport said.
VIRGIL TO STRYKER: “Do you know any accountants that you can trust, who don’t work for Judd?”
“One…”
CHRIS OLAFSON ran a bookkeeping, financial planning, and accounting service out of a converted house on the west side of town. Stryker swore her to secrecy: “This is about the murder investigation,” he said. “Virgil has a hypothetical question for you…”
“Go ahead.” She was a bright-eyed, busy, overweight woman, of the kind that drip efficiency.
“If you had a rich father—a millionaire, I don’t know how many millions—and you borrowed a lot of money from him, over the years, how would that complicate your inheritance?” Virgil asked.
She knitted her fingers together and said, “That depends. Did the father gift any money to Junior…to his son?”
They all smiled at each other, acknowledging the fact that she knew who they were talking about, and Virgil said, “I don’t know. What do you mean, gift?”
She gave them a short course in the estate tax. When she was done, she asked, “So, hypothetically, how bad is Junior screwed?”
Virgil rubbed his head. “We’d have to get down some exact numbers to know that,” he said. “I’ve got some tax records down at the motel…but they’re all bureaucratic bullshit. So…I don’t know if he’s screwed at all.”
“He’s not a real good businessman,” Olafson said brightly. “They should have had an estate plan. Does anybody even know where all of Judd’s money is? Was it in trusts, or what? Did the killer burn down the house to get rid of planning documents?”
“We don’t know any of that stuff,” Stryker said.
“Maybe I ought to run for sheriff,” she said.
“Get in early, avoid the rush,” Stryker said.
THEY BOTH STOOD, and Olafson said, “Sit back down for a minute. Would you like Cokes? I want to give you my hypothetical.”
“We’re in a bit of a hurry,” Virgil said.
“Take you five minutes,” she said. “Cokes?”
They both took a Coke, and Olafson said, “Suppose Bill Judd had a big tank of money somewhere, that nobody knew about but his son. Like money and interest from the Jerusalem artichoke scam.”
Stryker started to say something, but she held up a finger. “Suppose Judd Senior starts to fail, first mentally, and then physically, and it looks like he’s about to die. Once he’s dead, any money taken from the account could only be taken by fraud. And the fraud would be pretty visible: the bank says money was taken out on August first, but lo, Judd was dead three weeks before that. Even Junior’s smarter than that.
“In the meantime, the son goes to his accountants, and they say, ‘It’s really bad. You’ve been gifted right up to the limit, so the whole estate is exposed to taxes. Plus, you’re so far in debt to him that you’re going to owe money to the state and federal government and they are going to foreclose you. You can’t even go bankrupt, because bankruptcy doesn’t wipe out back taxes.’ So what do you do?”
Virgil shrugged: “It’s your hypothetical.”
“So the old man is failing mentally, and you’re down there in his business office, and you know about this big tank of money. You know the codes, or you have the checkbooks, that you need to transfer money to the old man’s bank account…and the old man is so far gone mentally, he won’t see it. You couldn’t give it to yourself, because that would either be fraud, or more debt, and it would all be on paper. But if you were willing to forge his signature, if you gave that money to a business that the old man supposedly owned—even if he was too far gone to know that he owned it—and if you had a way to take that money back out of his business, whatever it was, say, for services that were never performed…”
“You’re saying he was embezzling from his old man.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m saying that if I’m elected sheriff this fall, I’ll look into it.”
“Suppose he was pouring money into a corn-ethanol plant?” Virgil said.
She shook her head: “The government would take the plant, and any profits should show up in tax filings. You have to remember: you have all this paper—checks and banks, purchases and sales. The government won’t believe you, if you say that you lost it.”
“Suppose the profits coming out of the plant were hidden?”
“What I’m trying to tell you is, you can’t hide it. Not very well. The feds would do the book
s,” she said. “They’re good at books.”
“Suppose the plant was making two products. The above-ground books worked out to the penny. The underground stuff, there were no books at all. You know, like they make a hundred thousand gallons of ethanol, sell ninety thousand, claim they only made ninety thousand, and sold the other ten thousand gallons as over-the-bar vodka, two bucks a quart, underground.”
“Then, if nobody gave you up, you’d make some money,” she said. “But the distribution network, the low unit value of the product, would hardly make it worth the risk. Somebody would talk, and there you are on tax evasion.”
VIRGIL TOOK STRYKER outside and asked, “You think she can be seriously trusted? No gossip?”
“She’s been an accountant here for twenty years, since she got out of school—you couldn’t get one word out of her about how anybody spent a nickel,” Stryker said. “And nobody’ll get a word out of her about what we were talking about. She’s like a Swiss bank.”
Virgil said, “I got a lot of paper in from St. Paul. Tax records, corporate stuff, stuff I took out of the bank. It really needs an accountant—somebody who can work it overnight.”
“Ask her,” Stryker said. “You’ll have to pay her—but there’s no question about trusting her.”
“We can pay her. We need the analysis.”
THEY WENT BACK to Olafson, and she agreed to do it: “Too many people dead. Of course I’ll do it. I’ll even give you my state rate—overtime, of course, rush job.”
“And that would be…”
“Hundred and ten dollars an hour,” she said.
Sounded like a lot, but then, it was only for eight or ten hours: “It’s a deal. I’ll go get the paper, you type up an agreement and I’ll sign it.”
BACK OUT ON the sidewalk, Stryker said, “If you’re supposedly developing an ethanol plant, but what you’re really doing is using the plant to buy bulk chemicals to manufacture methamphetamine—I mean, we’re not talking about a coffeepot on a stove somewhere; we’re talking about tons of it. The profits wouldn’t be two dollars a quart. The profits would be astronomical. You’d need quite a bit of up-front money…”
“From the Judd money bin. And you’d need a distribution network.”
“From Feur, if he’s really involved in it.”
They looked at each other, and Virgil said, “Let’s check back at the hotel. Maybe Davenport’s guy got me something.”
DAVENPORT’S GUY WAS Louis Mallard, who was something large in the FBI. He sent along a single paragraph: “A Rev. George Feur of the first Archangelus Church of the Revelation was one of a number of people under surveillance in Salt Lake City and in Coeur d’Alene for his association with extremist antigovernment groups like the Corps. The Corps was known to distribute drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine, to finance its activities and for the purchase of weapons. Surveillance was terminated after three months with no evidence of Feur’s involvement in illegal activities, although he had extensive connections with people who were involved in illegal activities.”
“That’s it,” Stryker said. “He’s involved. He’s got the connections.”
“What about Roman Schmidt and the Gleasons?” Virgil asked.
“I don’t know about the Gleasons—except that they had some contact with Feur. There was that Book of Revelation. Maybe they were investors. Roman…”
“What?”
“Roman was pals with Big and Little Curly,” Stryker said. “Guess who patrols west county?”
“Big and Little Curly?”
“That’s their country out there,” Stryker said. “They know it like nobody else. If you were moving a lot of meth around, it’d be useful to have a lookout with the sheriff’s department.”
“Hate to think it,” Virgil said.
“So would I,” Stryker said. “I’d rather lose the election than find that out.”
THEY SAT STARING at the laptop screen for a couple of minutes, then Virgil asked, “What’re you doing tonight?”
“Thought I’d go see Jesse,” Stryker said. “I’ve got something going, there. I don’t know…but the case comes first. What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t want to talk to the Curlys. I’m thinking we might want to do some trespassing. Feur and Judd have the ethanol plant over in SoDak, so what’s his farm all about? What I’m thinking is, it’s the distribution center. He’s way out in the countryside, he has those religious services, there are strangers coming and going from all over the place, not unexpected with that kind of church…might be when they move the stuff. Lots of guys in trucks.”
“If we’re gonna do it, best to do it late,” Stryker said, looking at his watch. “It’s almost four, now.”
“I wouldn’t ask, but I’d be a little worried going out there without some backup,” Virgil said.
“Wait until the town goes to sleep…and move,” Stryker said. “Meet me at my place at one in the morning?”
“See you then. You might bring some serious hardware,” Virgil said.
Stryker nodded. “I’ll do that. Feur’s boys have some heavy weapons out there.”
“One good thing,” Virgil said, after another minute.
“What’s that.”
“You’ll still get to see Jesse.”
“She’s got me if she wants me,” Stryker said. He seemed puzzled by it all. “I looked in her eyes last night, in that candlelight, and I thought my heart was gonna explode.”
“Where’re you going tonight?” Virgil asked.
Stryker shrugged: “I don’t know. Jesus, thinking of someplace interesting just about kills you. I can’t take her out to the club. I’m afraid to go to Tijuana Jack’s or anyplace in Worthington—it’s just too close, and I really don’t want to be seen out on the town. Not yet.”
“Life sucks, then you die.”
“Easy on the die stuff,” Stryker said. “I’m a little nervous about sneaking up on Feur.”
13
VIRGIL WAS STUCK. With the accountant working the records, he had nothing to do until four, and then he had a date—and the date wasn’t going to help with the investigation. On the other hand, wandering around town wouldn’t help much, either.
Time to talk to Judd? And look at other names in his notebook? Suzanne Reynolds, the overweight ex–sex groupie?
Judd first.
HE WENT DOWNTOWN; a guy at the SuperAmerica, gassing his truck, waved at him, and Virgil waved back. Parked in front of the Great Plains Bank & Trust, looked at a Red Wing jug in the window of an antique shop, and strolled down to Judd Jr.’s office.
His office was a mirror image of his old man’s: same dark wood generating financial gloom, a secretary at a desk behind a railing, two wooden chairs for visitors to wait in.
The secretary said, “Mr. Flowers. Let me see if Mr. Judd is available.” The door to Judd’s office was open, and she stuck her head inside and said, “Mr. Flowers is here.”
Judd said, “Send him in.”
JUDD WAS WEARING half-frame reading glasses, looking at a printed-out spreadsheet that he folded and pushed to one side of his desk. He pointed at a chair and asked, “You getting anywhere?”
“Somewhere,” Virgil said. “I can’t tell you how I know it, but I can tell you for sure that I’ve upset somebody…”
“That’s good,” Judd said. “That’s something.”
“I’ve got a question for you. I don’t know how far you’ve gotten in working through your father’s estate…”
“The Jesse Laymon deal is going to hose me off pretty good, I can tell you,” Judd said.
“That’s something else…”
“Well, I think there’s a question of whether she might have wanted the old man to disappear,” Judd said.
“That’s being looked into.”
“By the sheriff, personally, is what I hear.”
“By me,” Virgil said. “Anyway: where’d your old man stick the money from the Jerusalem artichoke business?”
Judd looked at him for a minute, then barked; he’d laughed, Virgil thought. “Virgil, there is no money. There is no secret account. As far as I know, there wasn’t much to begin with, and believe me, some very sharp investigators from the state and from the IRS tore up everything they could find. It does not exist.”
“You’re sure.”
Judd tapped his desk a few times, then sighed. “Look, how can you be sure? My dad grew up poor, and he was a hard-nosed sonofabitch. Came out of the Depression, and made his own way. So he might have hid some money, if there was any. But if there was, he never would have told a soul. I mean, if he had it, it was a crime, and he wouldn’t have taken any chances with that.”
“But then the money just would have been lost…”
Judd wagged a finger at him. “Not lost if someday you needed it. Like with anybody who dies with money. Say he had an account in Panama or somewhere, invested it in overseas securities. The investment would grow, and if he ever needed it, he could get it. He never needed it.”
“You’re sure.”
“It’s not that I’m sure—I’m not sure about any of this. What I believe is, there never was any money. You’re wasting your time looking for it, and if somebody killed him trying to get it, then the murder was a waste of time. There is no Uncle Scrooge’s money bin.”
THEY TALKED for a couple of more minutes, then Virgil was back on the street. Looked in his notebook, found the address for Suzanne Reynolds, and headed that way, in the truck. Thinking about Judd: and who the heck was Uncle Scrooge?
REYNOLDS CAME to the door of her house, blinking in the sunlight: she’d either been dozing, or watching TV, and her heavy face was clouded with sleep.
She opened the door and said, “You’re Mr. Flowers?”
“Yes, I am,” Virgil said, holding up his ID.
“Michelle said you might be coming,” she said. She pushed open the door.