In the Ground (David Wolf Book 14) Page 26

  McBeth nodded, looking at him with weary, haunted eyes while Lessiter pulled out a legal pad and gold pen. He checked his Rolex, smoothed his dark gray suit and crossed his legs.

  McBeth wore the same flannel he had the first time he’d been in this interrogation room, but it looked like he’d since washed it. No mud clung to the sleeves and the wrist buttons were fastened tight. The scar poking out of the one sleeve was already safely tucked away under his other hand. His hair was freshly cut to a couple inches all around.

  Lessiter cleared his throat. “I’ve advised my client to not answer any questions that may implicate his involvement in the deaths of Chris Oakley and Mary Ellen Dimitri. He will be conferring with me before answering each question.”

  McBeth shook his head slightly. He looked like a teenager whose father has made a stupid joke in public.

  Lessiter flicked his eyes to his client, then jotted another note on his legal pad. After another few seconds of silence Lessiter waved his hand with a flourish. Proceed.

  Wolf nodded. “Eagle, we asked you here because the more we’re learning about Mr. Sexton after his death, the more questions we have. We’re wondering if you might be able to clear things up for us.”

  McBeth kept his eyes on the table.

  Wolf picked up the remote control on the table. He pointed it at the flat screen television on the wall and pressed play.

  A black and white video popped up on screen, showing the inside of a grocery store from a ceiling camera. There were empty check-out counters and empty aisles. The movement was the running ticker in the bottom right corner showing the date as June 24th and the time as 11:35 p.m. and counting.

  “This is the inside of Lonnie’s Market up in Dredge on the Monday night of Mary Ellen Dimitri’s murder,” Wolf said.

  A figure walked into view and down an aisle. The camera changed, showing the back wall of the market. The figure walked into view, straight to a meat case. He picked up a package, turned it over, set it down, then went to another package and picked it up.

  Wolf paused it and used the arrows on the remote control. The image on screen zoomed in on the man’s face, enlarging it to fill the screen. It was a bit blurry, but clear enough to be unmistakable.

  “As you can see, this is James Sexton.”

  Sexton’s eyes looked just like Wolf remembered that night, the minute before he’d shot him. Animalistic. Feral. “He’s at Lonnie’s Market up in Dredge when he’s supposed to be at the Edelweiss Hotel. This is the night before you came in to speak with us.”

  “We’re well aware of the timeline of events, sheriff,” Lessiter said.

  “I’m just lining out the events for clarity’s sake.”

  “I understand—”

  “Keep going,” McBeth said, his robotic tone overpowering his attorney’s.

  Wolf opened up the folder and pulled out copies of credit card receipts. “Here we have your signature for the hotel rooms’ security deposit. Here we have Sexton’s version of your signature for the T-Bone steak, which he purchased at Lonnie’s Market.”

  Wolf pressed pause on the video, leaving an image of Sexton walking through an aisle of the market with a packaged T-bone steak in his hand.

  Wolf looked between Lessiter and McBeth, then tried his first question. “Did you know Sexton had left the hotel that night?”

  Lessiter turned to his client. “Do not answer that.”

  “I did,” McBeth said, putting up a hand in Lessiter’s face. “But I thought he was out getting a drink.”

  Lessiter sat back in his chair making another note.

  Wolf considered the dynamic between these two. Why have a lawyer if he was only a hindrance? Wolf had learned the McBeth family money had paid for the last three losing years up at the mine. The lawyer must have been paid for by the Triple-O ranch as well.

  Both Wolf and Sheriff Domino up in Jackson Hole had no luck speaking with Eagle McBeth’s mother, the sole beneficiary of McBeth’s father’s many holdings. She had her own lawyers that had kept her silent up to this point. Eagle McBeth, however, was rebelling. He was here of his own accord. Mrs. McBeth and her firewall of attorneys up there in Jackson Hole couldn’t stop that.

  “I thought he was at a bar, you know?” McBeth said, his eyes meeting Wolf’s for the first time. He was sincere. “Koling was out drinking. I thought he had gone out with him.”

  “What did you do that night?”

  “I stayed in the room.”

  Wolf nodded. “Thanks for telling me that.”

  Lessiter blew a puff of air from his nose.

  Wolf ignored him. “We’ve since tested this jacket he’s wearing in this video and we found gunshot residue matching that of Chris Oakley’s silenced G21. We also found blood spatter that matches Mary Ellen Dimitri. We know now that he fed this steak to Rick Hammes’s dog minutes after this footage was taken in order to get into the property and plant the gun in Hammes’s woodpile, making it look like Rick Hammes killed Mary Dimitri.”

  McBeth stared into nothing, shaking his head slightly.

  “Were you with him?”

  His eyes latched onto Wolf’s. “No, sir. I was in the motel room.”

  “Okay.” Wolf nodded, pulling out another sheet of paper from the stack. “We have your GPS phone records here that indicate you might be telling the truth. Your phone stayed in Rocky Points all night.”

  “Might be?”

  Wolf shrugged. “You could have left your phone in the motel room.”

  McBeth shook his head. “I wasn’t there.” There was no anger in his voice.

  “Okay.” Wolf flipped to the next page, pulling the folder closer. “We got extensive background information on James Sexton from Sheriff Domino up in Teton County. He did some digging over in Driggs, Idaho with the foster care agency that worked with James to find him a home.

  “We learned he’s originally from Pocatello, Idaho. We learned he was in the foster care system because his birth parents had died. His mother died in a car crash when he was thirteen. Two years later his father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

  McBeth’s eyes darted to the sheet of paper, to Wolf, and back to nothing in particular. “I never knew that.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Wolf nodded. “Okay.” Wolf licked a finger and removed that sheet of paper, revealing the next. “I’d like to talk about the night of your father’s death.”

  McBeth closed his eyes.

  “I know your father burned you with the ranch brand,” Wolf said.

  McBeth’s hand moved, but remained beneath the other.

  “Do you think your father really killed himself that night?” Wolf asked. “Or do—”

  “Eagle, we need to end this line of questioning right now,” Lessiter said.

  McBeth opened his eyes, letting out a flood of tears. He turned to his lawyer. “Will you shut up?”

  Lessiter backed away as McBeth leaned into him.

  “I don’t want to keep…not talking about this anymore! I don’t want to live with this anymore!” His shrill voice echoed off the walls. “I don’t want to cover things up!”

  The door opened and Rachette and Patterson stood in the entryway.

  “It’s okay.” Wolf put up a hand to them.

  “I don’t want you here.” McBeth’s wet eyes bore into Lessiter. “Does he have to be here?” He turned to Wolf, his voice pleading.

  “He’s your lawyer, Eagle.”

  “I don’t want him here. I want him to leave.”

  “Your mother hired me to be here with you, Eagle.”

  “You can tell my mother she doesn’t need to worry about me anymore.”

  “You’ll be defenseless against these people. You might end up in jail. Don’t you get that?”

  “Get out!”

  Lessiter closed his notes, put them into his attaché and left without another word.

  Wolf nodded at his detectives as they parted and let Lessiter out
, closing the door behind them.

  McBeth’s hands shook on his lap. But both of them were out in the open now, and he pointedly kept them that way, staring down at his scar with widened eyes. He slowly unbuttoned his shirt sleeve and rolled it to his elbow, revealing a trio of intertwined circles of scar tissue. He ran a finger across the raised flesh.

  “My father used to drink himself to sleep every night, and he started first thing in the morning. Not many people knew that about him. I did, though. He never hid it around me. He used to give me pulls of the stuff as early as I can remember.”

  Wolf remained frozen in his seat for fear of changing McBeth’s trajectory.

  “There was always a point when the monster would take over,” McBeth said. “It could have been any time of day. It just depended on how much he was drinking and who was around. If there were friends and family at the house he could keep it caged up until they left. If he was just working around the ranch and none of the other help was around it could have been by lunchtime.

  “He was real big. Used to play lineman in college. I learned to be quick on my feet.” He looked up at Wolf. “I learned to dodge and run, you know?”

  Wolf nodded and kept silent.

  “Anyway. My mom was smart. She knew that when other people were around the monster kept away, so she started the work program at the ranch, which kept people there all the time. We made one of the barns near the main house into a dormitory. We brought in travelers from around the world. Europe. Australia. And then we started taking in misfits that needed straightening out with good old-fashioned hard work. People like Chris Oakley and Kevin Koling.”

  “How did James come to you guys?” Wolf asked.

  “Jimmy was different. I met him through a sheep farmer he had been working for. Just got to talking one day when I was delivering feed and we became friends. I told him about our ranch and the dorms and everything. Next thing I knew he showed up. He told me he quit the other job and would rather work for us.

  McBeth smiled at the memory. “Anyway, since he wasn’t part of the work program my parents didn’t want him around, but I begged and got him a job with us. Like he was a stray dog or something. He was cool, though, you know? Something about him. We connected.”

  “Tell me about the scar,” Wolf said. “What happened?”

  McBeth ran his finger over it again. His eyes glazed over, looking like he was staring through time. “Jimmy broke a tractor. Ran it into a ditch in a place my dad told everyone to avoid because of the risk. That got the monster real mad that day. And since I’d fought for Jimmy to stay with us, my dad saw it as all my fault.

  “It happened late in the day. Right at sundown. I was in one of the barns when Jimmy came running in and told me about what he’d done. My dad wasn’t too far behind him because he’d seen what had happened.”

  McBeth’s voice softened. “Dad yelled. He made Jimmy leave. Jimmy left. And my dad went to the workbench and plugged in the electric branding iron.” Tears fell down McBeth’s cheeks. “I begged. I ran. He caught me before I could get out.” McBeth shrugged and held up his arm. “And he beat the shit out of me and got me with the iron.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wolf said.

  McBeth wiped his cheeks and chuckled. “Yeah. It was quite a thing. But…”

  “But what?”

  McBeth looked at Wolf. He looked at the empty chair sitting next to him. “But he got what was coming to him.”

  “He received justice,” Wolf said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” Wolf asked. “How was justice served?”

  McBeth shook his head. His eyes were calculating now. “But…I didn’t know any of this at the time.”

  “You didn’t know what?”

  “Back then I thought my dad shot himself. But, now…now I think now that Jimmy did it.”

  Wolf uncrossed his legs and leaned an elbow on the table, decreasing the distance between them. “Is that the truth, Eagle?”

  McBeth’s breathing quickened and he closed his eyes.

  “I wonder if it is,” Wolf said. “And I’m curious if you’re absolutely sick and tired of hiding the truth. You just kicked your lawyer out. Jimmy is dead. So is Kevin. So is Chris. So is Mary. A lot of people paid with their lives in service of hiding the truth.”

  McBeth said nothing.

  Wolf took the leap. “I think you knew that Jimmy shot and killed your dad back then.”

  McBeth looked at Wolf.

  “Am I right? Did you know back then that Jimmy killed your father?”

  “I…I…”

  “Stop fighting for something that doesn’t serve you,” Wolf said. “I know from experience. It’s not worth it. That sickening feeling inside? That’s the truth trying to get out. It’s draining you.”

  McBeth’s shoulders sagged. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what? Yes you knew back then that Jimmy killed your father?”

  “Yes.”

  Wolf stayed frozen, watching McBeth draw in a breath.

  “Yes,” McBeth said. “I did. I knew he killed him. In fact I saw him when I left the barn. I was bloody. I was staggering. I was holding my arm. Jimmy was right outside. Just standing there in the dark. He didn’t help me or anything. He just told me he would take care of it. He had a gun in his hand. I saw it. And I said, ‘Good.’ That’s what I said. I just walked away into the field, toward the house. When I got back I heard the shot.

  “Later that night the cops found him in the barn. It looked like he had committed suicide. They said that he’d shot himself. They found me the way I was—bloody and burnt on my arm. I told them what had happened. All of it. Except for the end. Except for seeing Jimmy with that gun.” McBeth nodded and closed his eyes. “Yes. I knew exactly what happened.”

  Wolf placed a hand on the table. “And when Casey dumped Chris’s body on your wash plant hopper grate,” he said, “this time you didn’t tell the cops everything, either. You didn’t tell us that Chris had burned you with a cigarette during that argument you’d had.”

  McBeth opened his eyes.

  “Koling told us in his interview about that,” Wolf said. “That was the mark on your jacket when I came up to visit you guys at the mine, wasn’t it?”

  McBeth nodded.

  “What was he saying when he burned you? Was he mocking you? Was he being a bully in typical Chris Oakley fashion? Did he mention how your father had burned you?”

  McBeth closed his eyes again. “Yes. I could tell it really pissed off Jimmy. But I didn’t think he was going to do anything. I mean…he didn’t do anything. We all just went to bed after that.”

  Wolf waited a few moments and then continued. “So that Monday morning when Casey dumped Chris’s body onto the hopper grate, you saw that gunshot wound. You must have known right then and there that Jimmy had done it. Again.”

  McBeth clenched his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. The scar squirmed as his forearm muscles flexed underneath. When he lowered his hands his face went slack. Again he looked at the vacant chair next to him, and then he nodded. “Yes. I knew. When I climbed up there and saw the blood under his chin I checked the top of his head. I saw it was a gunshot. I knew right then.”

  “And then what did you do?” Wolf asked. “Did you talk to Jimmy about it? Did you ask if he had done it?”

  “No.” McBeth shook his head and closed his eyes again. After a beat he looked at Wolf. His eyes were half-closed. Resigned. “Fuck it. Yes. I did. I asked him. He told me ‘I took care of it.’ I told him that everyone was going to find out. He told me ‘I’ll take care of it again.’”

  “Did you know he was going to kill Mary Ellen Dimitri and try to frame Rick Hammes for everything?”

  “No. I swear I didn’t know that.”

  Wolf nodded. “That Monday night you stayed in Rocky Points at the Edelweiss while he went to Dredge alone?”

  “I stayed in my motel room. Kevin went out drinking. I knew that Jimmy left, too. S
hit, I didn’t know he was killing another person so he could try and cover up what he’d done.”

  “But you knew he was ‘taking care of it.’ What did you think he was going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Wolf nodded. “You know you’re in trouble now, right?”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Wolf got up.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” McBeth asked.

  “That part’s not up to me, Eagle.”

  Wolf left, shutting the door behind him.

  Chapter 38

  Heather Patterson watched McBeth’s confession from a stool in the observation room. When Wolf finished and opened the door, he made eye contact with her first.

  “We have to speak in my office,” he said, glancing at his watch. “You two can book him,” he said to Yates and Rachette.

  “What’s up?” Patterson asked.

  Wolf ignored her question, leading her out into the hallway.

  She was on her own two feet now, without crutches. She still felt a spasm of pain in her ankle every now and then if she made a sudden movement, but all in all she was healing fast. Wolf was walking quickly, probably testing her. She kept up easily.

  He knew she knew. Wilson had gotten back into town from Denver this morning and those two had been speaking behind closed doors for hours. Things were playing out exactly like she expected they might. Wilson had gotten the job with the Denver PD, which meant there was a vacant spot that needed to be filled.

  Butterflies took flight in her stomach. Why was she nervous? Probably because it wasn’t every day she was promoted. How would she do as Wolf’s right hand?

  The butterflies disappeared. She would do fine. Wolf would be better with her working closely with him. The department would do better.

  She’d gotten little sleep the last few nights just thinking about it. Not because of anxiety for what might come, she had since realized, but because she was genuinely excited. When she had started her criminal law courses back in Boulder she’d dreamt of moments like these: moving up. Not that she had ever considered herself a ladder-climber before. That wasn’t it. It was what she’d always wanted, making a difference—doing her best and being acknowledged for it.