T hey separated the suspects. Stuart Holms was confined to the Situation Room, the small conference room down the hall from Walt’s office. Emil Guyot, Holms’s director of security, a man outfitted in Tommy Bahama casual wear, was given the coffee room, a closet-sized kitchen that held a beat-up aluminum-legged table for two in the corner.
Adam Dryer had no jurisdictional authority to question anyone, and with the general consensus being that Stuart Holms and his attorneys would find some way to get him out of lockup within the next few hours, and certainly by morning, for Walt it all came down to these two interviews.
He sucked down what remained of lukewarm coffee. Dryer nursed a milk tea, but kept looking into the cup, his acne-scoured face snarled in disapproval. They occupied Walt’s small office, overcrowded with stacks of journals piled on the floor and some backcountry gear crammed into the far corner. Dryer sat facing Walt’s desk.
“ Brandon!” Walt called out, his voice echoing down the hall.
His deputy arrived promptly, the only person in the office who didn’t look completely exhausted at 1 A.M. “Sheriff?”
“Shut the door,” Walt said.
Brandon closed the office door and stepped inside. Walt did not offer him the only remaining chair. He lowered his voice, despite the fact that both Holms and Guyot were down the hall behind closed doors, each being guarded by a deputy. “I want you to find me a plaster cast, a boot impression, in the evidence room. I’m thinking the Thompson case, or maybe the Ramone arson. Adult shoe size, no matter what. I want it in an evidence bag marked ‘Hill Trail, Adams Gulch.’ Date it yesterday: Saturday.”
“Got it,” Brandon said.
“And I need a contact lens. Find someone out there who doesn’t mind making a sacrifice for the cause. The office will buy ’em a new one. Now here’s the important part: Julie has a whole rainbow of highlighters in her desk. I want to use the blue highlighter to make a small dot on the side of the contact lens. Not too small, not too big. You got all that?”
“Shoe impression. Contact lens,” Brandon repeated.
“Go on. And close the door behind you.”
Brandon left them alone.
“I don’t follow,” Dryer said, once they were in privacy.
“The AUSA out of Boise isn’t going to get up here until tomorrow around noon,” Walt said, referring to the assistant United States attorney. “You and I both know that Stuart Holms will have four or five attorneys around him by that time-most from out of state-and that what we caught on Trevalian’s wire, while incriminating, and enough to give us probable cause, may not carry the day in court.”
“I’m no legal scholar,” Dryer said.
“We have Trevalian’s use of one of my deputies’ cell phone-he stole it at the hospital-that may be able to be connected to an incoming call he received. If we can confirm that call was from Guyot, then we have a substantially stronger case against them, and we took a cell phone off Guyot. Cloned or not, that could be the smoking gun we need.”
“I can hear in your voice that you’re doubting all this,” Dryer said.
“Holms is a shrewd businessman. You hear words like ‘tenacious’ and ‘ruthless.’ I have to think that if Guyot’s involved, and I believe he is, that Holms has promised him the moon if anything ever went wrong. Now it has. You can bet the two of them have coached each other, rehearsed, and worked through all possibilities, including this one: arrest. They’re following a plan that’s been in place for at least six weeks-we know that from the Shaler seating plan. Maybe six months. They’re too well prepared on the Shaler front. They know what to expect, what’s coming. My one hope is to end-run them before the attorneys get involved.”
“Fucking attorneys.”
“How are your acting skills?” Walt asked.
“With a baby face like this?” Dryer asked. Even a weary smile did nothing to improve his gangster looks.
I ’m not speaking until I have representation,” Stuart Holms announced from the far side of the conference table. He looked at home, as if this were another of his boardrooms.
“You just spoke,” Dryer said, “but I get what you mean.” He sat across from Holms, who’d been given time back at the estate to lose the terrycloth robe and don a pair of slacks and a plaid shirt. He wore loafers with no socks. He looked old.
Dryer’s chair fronted a corkboard where Walt had had the Shaler seating plan hung prior to Holms’s arrival. The man had been facing it now for the past ten minutes.
“The thing about businessmen like you: They’re always trying to save money, conserve resources.”
A tape recorder ran on the corner of the table. Stuart Holms could barely take his eyes off it. He said nothing. He seemed to be working hard to keep contempt off his face, but it was a losing battle.
“The sheriff has an interesting theory. You want to hear it? I’ll take that as a yes. It’s a little far-out for me-his theory. But he’s convinced Mr. Guyot has a lot more to lose than you, and so he’s starting there. With Mr. Guyot. Down the hall. The point being that one of you will deal. You think you won’t, but of course you will. Everyone goes into this thinking they won’t deal. And whoever deals first rolls on the other guy, and then that other guy is…pardon my French…fucked.”
Dryer sipped from his tea, and gave it that same look of disgust. “If you spend the night here, don’t ask for the tea.”
“I’ll be home within the hour,” Holms said.
“A Sunday night, early Monday actually, in July? You think? You could be right, I suppose.” He sampled the tea again; same result. He said, “So here’s the thing. Have you had a chance to look at this seating plan behind me?”
Holms looked up and gave the impression this was the first time he’d paid any attention to it.
“You know why we got that out to take a look at it? Because we wondered if any of Cutter’s invited guests had missed the Shaler brunch. Because there could be two reasons for that: Someone was sick, or had a scheduling conflict; or someone wanted to avoid being present when the bomb they’d arranged to kill Shaler went off. And, as you can see by the Xs, only two people missed the talk: you and your late wife.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“This is the sheriff we’re talking about, but your point is taken. Anyway…the sheriff said something about a guy named Raphael. Your chef, I believe?”
Holms did a very good imitation of being bored by all this. Dryer knew differently-he had his eye on a vein in the man’s neck. His pulse was elevated, his eyes dilated, and he was growing increasingly restless. Walt’s emphasis had been on taking away the man’s sense of control. It seemed to be working, Dryer thought.
“He said how you don’t eat anything that isn’t prepared by this guy Raphael. And I suppose that’s a personal thing, and I’ve got no comment, although my personal chef is a guy named McDonald, but I doubt the two know each other. So, anyway, the problem for the sheriff is this seating chart, prepared back in June, that has you down for the regular meal. No Raphael. And I’ve got to admit, he has a point: It seems to suggest you knew back in June that you wouldn’t be attending the Shaler brunch.”
Holms glanced up at the seating chart. Then his eyes darted to meet Dryer’s before once more landing on the chart. Wisely, he chose not to comment. The blue bead on his neck was growing, and beating wildly. His Adam’s apple jumped as he tried to swallow.
“I figure-or rather the sheriff does-that you wanted to save Raphael in case the bomb took out the kitchen help. So you didn’t book him. Why lose a good chef? Here’s where it gets a little extreme, even for me,” Dryer continued. “The sheriff believes not only that you killed your wife-or had her killed-but that you planned it far enough in advance to make sure it gave you the ultimate excuse not to attend the Shaler brunch. Who was going to question a grieving widower? But that’s where the irony comes in: because here I am questioning you. So maybe that part didn’t work so well.”
Holms blinked rapidly but still managed to say nothing. Dryer smiled openly, well aware that when contrasted with his acne-scarred cheeks, he looked menacing when doing so.
“Here’s what may interest you, Mr. Holms. It did me. The sheriff has no intention of pursuing Trevalian and you for the attempted assassination of Elizabeth Shaler. That’s why I’m here-I’m federal, he’s state. He’s leaving all that to my office and the AUSA to sort out. He’s focused on one thing and one thing only: the murder of your wife. That was done on his turf. He says you’re good for it-something about a fingerprint developed on a contact lens-and who am I to argue? It’s his show. If he wants to make an ass out of himself, who am I to interfere?”
Holms endeavored to stay calm, but it was a battle he was quickly losing.
E mil Guyot, in his Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt and what had once been cream-colored trousers, looked like he belonged on South Beach. Walt perused a copy of the man’s California handgun registration, learning what little he could from it.
“So, Emil, you understand that possession of an automatic weapon carries a minimum sentence. Idaho has very liberal gun laws, but on that one we’re kinda strict.” He added, “Be advised that I’m running a recording device”-pointing to his iPod-“just so we don’t get into who said what.”
Emil mugged for Walt but didn’t speak. He was, no doubt, on orders to wait for Holms’s attorneys.
“The only hope for you on the gun charge is to have it dropped altogether. There’s no such thing as a lesser charge when it comes to customizing a weapon. Not in this state.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you. I’m waiting for my attorney.”
“We’re all waiting for something,” Walt said, pleased that the man had started talking. “For one thing, I can’t drop the charges without an attorney present.”
“You’re not dropping any charges.”
“No, you’re right. I’m adding to them,” Walt said. “How’s capital murder suit you?” He had to give it to the guy: He wouldn’t want to play poker against Emil Guyot. “A guy like Stuart Holms? Amazing businessman. A legend, I hear. Probably a pretty lousy husband. His love is for money and power, and since women love both of those, too, it comes down to control, and that can get nasty. I’m recently divorced-or about to be. Something of an expert. He’s probably a good guy to work for though, right? You must make five, six times what I do-”
“Ten.”
“Ouch,” Walt said. He leaned down and set the plaster cast on the table with a thump. It was enclosed in a large plastic evidence bag marked as he’d instructed Brandon. Then he pulled out the small evidence bag containing the blue contact lens. He spread Fiona’s crime-scene photographs out like fanning a deck of cards, where the handcuffed Guyot couldn’t help but look at them. “You strike me as a gambling man-a man who knows his way around a deck of cards or a gaming table. I’ve got some odds for you. In case you’re wondering why we collected your shoes a few minutes ago, it’s because of this.” He patted the plaster cast. “Thankfully my job doesn’t require too much thinking. It all comes down to the evidence. Juries just love evidence. The TV show CSI? That’s helped us prosecute cases in ways you wouldn’t believe. Juries eat this stuff up. They understand it better. They believe it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Me? What’d I do? You’re the one who killed her.”
“Fuck that.”
“We’re taking plaster casts of your shoes right as we speak. By the time they dry and are compared to this,” he said, patting the bag again, “any opportunity to plea-bargain is gone. Tell that to Holms’s attorney. Gamble all you like.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Guyot said.
“Then what do you call it?”
Guyot stared back with a stoic face.
“He promised you a ton of money, didn’t he? Promised you he’d get you out on appeal if anything went wrong and that you’d be rich as Croesus when you got out. The thing is, he was talking about the Shaler thing. Trevalian. And maybe he’s right. Maybe he could get you out of that at some point. He’s a powerful man, as I understand it.”
“You have no idea. He’ll have you chasing traffic tickets before this is through.”
“No. It’s through already. It’s over, Emil.” He held up the blue contact lens. “You know what that is? The lab uses fumes to develop prints on certain surfaces. They can develop prints on human skin, on fabric-on things you wouldn’t believe. Contact lenses, for instance.”
Walt pushed back his chair, poured himself some more coffee, and sat back down, making a point of his fatigue.
“You guys heard about us going into the pound, didn’t you? Word got out-it’s a damn small valley and people can’t keep their mouths shut, and that doesn’t help me any, I’ll tell you what. Once we made that connection, I imagine Mr. Holms became a bit concerned. The idea had been to blame it on a cougar, right? But you L.A. guys don’t spend enough time here: two separate cougar attacks in two days? Are you kidding me? Not in ten years. Twenty. Forty. Not ever. And when Holms realized we’d figured out you dumped her in the cage, when he knew we’d be looking at murder, he overreacted. You both did. He let his jealous-husband side take over. You should have been looking for that.”
“You been smoking contraband from the evidence room, Sheriff? You better watch out for that.”
Walt went absolutely still. He let a minute pass. Then another. To both men it seemed much, much longer.
Then he took a deep breath, let out a long sigh, and let his true emotions color his voice. “You picked the wrong car, asshole.” He waved the bag containing the contact lens in the man’s face. “Danny Cutter wasn’t driving the Toyota, Patrick was. Danny’s the one Mr. Holms wanted framed for this. Not Patrick. We were all over Danny until we found the contact lens. This contact lens. The one on which they developed a latent print. The blue stuff: That’s what the fuming does-turns any oils from fingerprints blue. But Patrick didn’t kill her-we can account for every second of his existence. And Danny never drove the Toyota. Duh! You should never have gone along with trying to frame Danny. You’ve got to learn when to say no to the boss.”
Guyot had lost all his color and found it impossible to sit still. His upper lip held a sheen of nervous sweat, and his eyes could no longer risk finding Walt’s.
“He’s in the other room, right now, hearing about this same evidence. He’s being offered a deal, a plea bargain. Now, who do you think is the better deal maker, you or Stuart Holms? Who do you think is going to come out on the short side of this one? When you found that contact lens, you should have just thrown it out. Those are your prints on it, right? We’ll be comparing them in the morning. They sure as hell aren’t his. Hers, if you’re lucky-but I don’t think you’re all that lucky, Emil. And forget about him ever springing you for this. You go down in this state for capital murder, they throw away the key. Welcome to the Wild West.”
The man was breathing hard. Like a runner at the end of a race. All that pent-up anger and frustration straining at the edges of his eyes and pursing his lips to where they’d gone white.
“Never follow the wishes of a jealous husband,” Walt said. He thought of Brandon and Gail.
He waved in one of his deputies to keep an eye on the man, but stopped at the door and jiggled the bag holding the contact lens and the other one holding the plaster cast. “You think either of these is going to implicate Stuart Holms? No. And he knows that. He was counting on that. That, and the power of your greed. He knows all about greed, Stuart Holms. All he needs is for your greed to buy your silence through the trial. Then he’s home free, and you’re the one in the orange suit.”
F iona ran off a series of photographs as Stuart Holms, Emil Guyot, and Milav Trevalian were walked out of the Sheriff’s Office in orange jumpsuits and wearing manacles. Some stragglers from the First Rights gathering, including Bartholomew, were contained across the street by the new city hall, chanting and waving their fists. Walt couldn’t make out their slogan.
Several of the national reporters had remained in town for the 3 P.M. news conference conducted by the assistant United States attorney. There would likely be even more press by the time the convoy reached Boise, a good two-hour drive.
“He confessed about two minutes after Holms’s attorneys arrived,” Walt told Fiona. “This was around three A.M. They walked right past him and went in to talk to Holms, and Guyot had a total meltdown. Lousy customer service, it’ll get you every time.”
“But you said Holms will get off?”
“I said guys like him always get off. Who knows?”
“His poor wife.”
Walt had a couple of things to say to that, but he kept them to himself. Tommy Brandon was one of the deputies helping to get the two into the waiting vehicles-the suspects were being driven down separately in their own Suburbans. The feds had bigger budgets. Dryer and his men were part of the escort. None of the three would have any further contact with one another until the various trials. If there were trials.
“And Trevalian?” she asked.
“A lot of this is still up in the air. We caught Trevalian shortly after my own people tried to arrest me outside of Liz Shaler’s. He’s no newcomer to this. He thought he knew the location of the person who’d hired him, and he parlayed that into a quick deal with the AUSA.” He answered her bewildered look, “Assistant U.S. attorney-and was promised a maximum of eight years if he cooperated, which he then did. He led us to Stuart Holms.
“He and Guyot,” he continued, “will both do time. Either one could benefit from further plea-bargaining. There are a lot of stories to tell.”
“I’d like to hear your story. The one you wouldn’t tell me,” she said.
He wondered about asking her out for dinner. Not a kiss-at-the-door kind of dinner, just food shared across the same table. The spark was there for a minute, but then it faded behind an aching fatigue that warned he might not wake up for days.
Brandon caught them standing together, maybe caught a glint of the spark Walt had felt, because he looked quickly away when Walt busted him for staring.
As he walked past them, he spoke to Fiona. “He tell you about the contact lens? Frickin’ piece of genius.” And he continued into the office.
“Genius, huh?” Fiona said, trying to make Walt look at her.
“At some point I’m likely to wake up,” Walt said, watching the Suburbans pull out, one by one. “And when I do, I’m going to be dying for a cup of coffee.” Start small, he was thinking. Work your way up to lunch.
“So call me,” she said.
“I will.”
“I hope you will, but fear you won’t.”
He drove home alone. Took a shower alone. Sat down on the bed alone with plans to call Mark Aker about the dog’s condition, and wanting to follow up on Kevin’s legal status. He looked forward to the girls being home and getting back some semblance of life. The phone rang, and he nearly didn’t answer it, but something compelled him to-he had a hell of a time saying no.
“Walt?” Liz Shaler’s distinctive New England voice.
“Your Honor?”
“You weren’t going to call me that, remember? Forgive me for taking so long to call.”
“Hardly necessary.”
“You did it again, Walt. Saved me. I hope this isn’t becoming a habit. I’m going to have to knight you, or something.”
He could only think of clichés, and he didn’t want to use one. While he tried to come up with just the right choice of words, she interrupted.
“I attended that conference for all the wrong reasons. Welcome to politics. And I listened to the wrong people. Most importantly, I ignored the few warnings you gave me, and I feel like a complete ass for doing so. I told you I was going to put my faith in you, and then I did the opposite, didn’t I? The good news is, maybe I learned something here, and if I did, it’s thanks to you, and that’s all I really called to say: thank you.”
He was too tired to play games with her. “I could say something like ‘Just doing my job, Your Honor,’ but it sounds so ridiculous that I’m trying not to. But that is the truth, more or less. I was just doing what I do. I like doing it. And I like you, Your Honor-Liz-so I’m especially glad it worked out. That sounds equally stupid, doesn’t it? Sorry about that.”
“No. Not at all. It’s touching. Listen, I know a little bit about the differences between your father and you-it’s a small valley-but if you ever have anything like an inkling to take your work to the federal level, I could pave the way, make the transition both smooth and rewarding for you. And if I happen to win this election…Let’s not lose touch in any case.”
“If you win this election and make Sun Valley your winter White House, you’re going to give me a whole bunch of problems. Maybe I’ll vote for the other guy.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Walt thanked her for the call and sat on the edge of his bed reflecting on the past few days. He considered taking an hour or two to start his report before he forgot the details. But he fell asleep still sitting up, slumped down onto the bed with his head nowhere near a pillow, his feet touching the floor. Woke up twice from nightmares, the first involving Trevalian and his thumb on a white button; in the second, he was being mauled by a cougar. He never found his way under the covers. He slept, buck naked, on the bedspread, through the rest of Monday and into Tuesday.
And when he woke up, he made a phone call and headed for a cup of coffee.