THREE DAYS BEFORE
It was midafternoon on June 1 when County Sheriff Phillip Westphal circled the block in his SUV around Club Moderne on Park Avenue. He found what he was looking for.
Undersheriff Doug Duplisea’s civilian GMC pickup was parked on Ash Street on the side of the club and Matthew Annan’s BMW was in the alley behind it. He looked around for Tim White’s Silverado but he didn’t see it.
Westphal had been in town long enough to know that locals kept a good eye on him and his movements. He knew that if he parked behind Duplisea’s truck and went inside for very long there would soon be rumors about it.
Why did the sheriff meet up with his undersheriff in the middle of the afternoon on Doug’s day off?
Or worse: was the sheriff starting another of the benders he was known for at Club Moderne?
After all, he’d done it before.
So he swung around the building and parked behind Annan’s aging BMW. His vehicle couldn’t be seen from the street that way. He knew Annan favored that parking location for the same reason.
Westphal killed the motor, got out, and hitched up his uniform pants. It was unseasonably hot. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and clamped his brimmed hat on tight as he walked around the corner to the front. This was official business, after all.
Phil Westphal had a thick red gunfighter’s mustache peppered with silver that looked like strands of tinsel. His thick middle strained the buttons of his uniform shirt. He had deep-set dark eyes and jowls that quivered above his shirt collar when he walked. His deep voice came from three decades of chain-smoking Camels. Instead of reaching for his pack of smokes, he popped a 6mm tab of nicotine gum and chewed it fast as he walked. The sensation was not as satisfying as filling his lungs with smoke, but it would do.
The Club Moderne was an iconic bar in Anaconda. Built in 1937 in a style known as Streamline Moderne, it was a quaint corner neighborhood tavern with a wrap-around façade of Carrara glass. It had been fully restored to its art deco roots the previous decade after a fire.
He entered and tipped his hat to the barmaid. She said, “Hey there, Phil. It’s been a while.”
“It has,” he said.
“The usual?”
“No thank you. But I’ll have a ginger ale.”
She looked at him sidewise as if amused.
“Seriously,” he said. “Ginger ale.”
Three retired locals sat shoulder to shoulder at a long table watching Family Feud on a television mounted on the wall. Two of them looked away when he eyed them. He knew them, too. All too well.
“Art, Ted, Howard,” he said. “Good to see you. Who’s winning?”
The three old-timers were retired miners who watched Family Feud every afternoon and shouted out their answers to the questions. Ted kept track of who was winning. They sipped light beer on tap while they did it.
“Howard,” Ted said. “But I’m right on his heels. Do you want to join us?”
“Not this time, thanks.”
“We kind of miss you around here,” Ted said.
Westphal nodded and approached the bar. It had moody back-bar lighting that looked great when it was dark outside. The place didn’t have the same vibe in the afternoon, he thought.
A local newsbreak came on the television and the finely coiffed newsreader announced the recent sale of the Montana ranch that had served as the location for the movie A River Runs Through It for one hundred and thirty-six million dollars.
Behind him, the table erupted.
“A hundred and thirty-six million?” Art hollered. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Who in the hell bought it?” Ted asked.
“You have to watch at ten to find out, I guess,” Howard said.
“It’s fucking ridiculous,” Art said again. “I keep telling you guys—we’re gonna get priced out of Montana.”
“I wonder what my house is worth?” Ted said.
“Nobody wants your house. Besides, where are we gonna have to move? North Dakota?”
“I ain’t moving to North Dakota,” Ted said.
Westphal ignored them. “Is Doug in the back?” he asked the barmaid.
She nodded as she handed him his ginger ale.
“Thank you,” he said.
“On the house,” she replied.
Westphal grinned. “That’s a new one.”
“So’s ginger ale for Phil Westphal.”
He carried his soft drink through the small bar to a larger room in the back. The room had been added on sometime in the sixties and it didn’t have the charm of the art deco bar. Instead, it had pool tables, shuffleboard, and high-backed booths lined up along the side wall. A poster advertising a gopher hunt sponsored by the Anaconda VFW had been tacked above the booths. The winner was eligible to win a .30–06 rifle.
“There you are,” he said to Duplisea when he approached the last booth in the room. “I thought I’d find you here on your day off.”
Duplisea greeted him warmly and told him to grab a chair. Westphal did.
In the booth with Duplisea was Matthew Annan, as expected. Annan couldn’t have been nicer, offering to buy the sheriff another round.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Ginger ale,” Westphal said.
“Bullshit,” Duplisea said.
“Really. I’m on duty.”
“When has that ever sto—” Duplisea started to say but caught himself before he finished. Westphal was his boss, after all.
Westphal let it go. “Where’s Tim?” he asked. “Don’t you guys travel in a pack?”
Duplisea, Annan, and Tim White were rarely not seen together. They’d grown up in the town and Annan, at least, was a kind of royalty.
Annan’s great-grandfather, Frank Annan, had been one of the early labor leaders who fought against the copper barons for better wages and fewer hours. He’d been famous all over the country at the time, and he was one of the reasons Anaconda was known as the heart of the American labor movement. He’d been beaten and lynched for a crime he didn’t commit by surrogates of the mine owners in 1919. There was a bronze plaque in his honor on a wall of the courthouse.
Matthew Annan was a charmer. He had an easy manner and he was well-liked in town and he did a lot for the community. Westphal had once heard Matthew portrayed as “all the men want to be like him and all the women want to be with him.”
In response to the question, Duplisea and Annan both shook their heads.
“We haven’t seen much of Tim lately,” Duplisea finally said. He didn’t offer any more.
“How’s Jillian doing?” Annan asked.
“She’s doing better,” Westphal said. “The radiation treatments were rough on her but her hair is coming back. She’s doing all right for now.”
He didn’t want to tell either Doug or Annan that his wife Jillian’s bout with cancer had scared him straight. She’d stuck with him over the years for reasons he couldn’t quite fathom but he was grateful for it. Years of drinking, vanishing, running for office, ignoring her and their two children. Even when she first got sick he didn’t realize how bad it was at the time because he was in a fog of alcohol.
Once the realization of her condition hit him, he’d vowed to keep sober and clean so he would be more attentive if and when the cancer came back in full. He’d accompanied her to her chemo and radiation treatments and he’d cooked for her when she was too weak to get out of bed. The doctors had given her a 45 percent chance of a full recovery.
“So what can I help you with?” Duplisea asked.
Westphal glanced at Annan, indicating that what he was about to say was meant for Duplisea alone.
Duplisea shook his head. “Anything you have to say you can say in front of Matthew. I’m not going to ask my good friend to leave.”
Annan watched the exchange between Westphal and Duplisea wordlessly as if he were watching a tennis match.
Westphal cleared his throat. He said to Duplisea, “Do you have any idea where your buddy Tim is? The owner of the welding shop he works at called me and said he hasn’t been to work since May 22. I checked with his live-in and she says she hasn’t seen him around since then, either.”
“Yeah?” Duplisea said. “So why are you asking me?”
“Because you two have been tight all your lives, I thought. Everybody says that. I thought you might know—”
“Well, I don’t,” Duplisea said, cutting him off. “We kind of had a falling-out and I haven’t been keeping track of him lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in rehab somewhere.”
“Hmm.”
“What are you hmm-ing about?” Duplisea asked, red-faced.
“I guess I was hoping for a better answer. And there’s something else.”
“What?”
“You know Lyla Hayes, I’m sure.”
Hayes was a local woman in her mid fifties who pushed a shopping cart filled with her possessions from one end of Anaconda to the other, then repeated the process. Her brain injuries, it was said, had been the result of a car accident when she was in her teens. She was a familiar sight to anyone passing through town.
Most of the locals took pity on Lyla and made sure she was fed and clothed. Although there were facilities for the homeless in both Anaconda and Butte, Lyla refused to stay in them longer than a day or two.
Duplisea rolled his eyes. “Of course I know Lyla. I’ve brought her in to jail to sleep it off or stay warm a half-dozen times over the years. She’s pretty harmless.”
“I know she is,” Westphal said. “She came in this morning with a story to tell and a question to ask.”
Both Duplisea and Annan nodded, urging him to continue.
“Well, Lyla said about two weeks ago she was pushing her cart on the sidewalk up on Seventh Street when she saw something suspicious.”
Westphal noted that when he said “Seventh Street” that Annan’s expression froze.
“Lyla said she saw a gray four-door sedan with out-of-state plates pull up in front of the construction site. You know which one I’m talking about,” Westphal said. “She said a portly gentleman got out of the car and approached her. He asked Lyla if she knew who owned the lot across the street. Lyla said sure—everybody knew who owned that lot.”
Both Annan and Duplisea remained silent.
“A half hour later, Lyla said, she saw your patrol vehicle show up at the location,” he said to Duplisea. “She said you and the portly guy had a pretty heated argument and she pushed her cart the hell out of there. She asked me if I knew what happened to the fat guy. Was he arrested for something? Was he escorted out of town? I had to tell her I had no idea what she was referring to.
“So I checked the duty log for May nineteenth, which is when she said she saw the incident. There was nothing on the log about any kind of interaction or confrontation with a man driving a gray car with out-of-state plates.”
Westphal leaned forward toward the two men in the booth but his eyes fixed on Duplisea.
“You may know this, but we have an open missing person notice in our office. The person who called it in said their man went missing on or about May nineteenth. He was described as an overweight private investigator from Florida named J. D. Spengler. He was last known driving a gray Chevy Malibu with Idaho plates.
“I’m just wondering,” Westphal said to Duplisea, “if you can help enlighten me a little on this odd coincidence.”
Duplisea’s face remained blank but Westphal noticed that the blood had drained from it.
“First,” Duplisea said, “why are you relying on the testimony of a mental defective like Lyla? Who knows what she saw when?”
“I’ll grant you that,” Westphal said. “She isn’t exactly reliable. But for some reason, I believed her. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t appear to have any reason to lie.”
“She doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie, Phil,” Duplisea said.
“Maybe. Are you saying you didn’t encounter this missing man on May nineteenth?”
Duplisea hesitated, then looked away. He said, “I’m not saying that at all.”
Westphal sat back, a little surprised. Annan looked puzzled as well.
“I was on the street and I saw him parked there looking at the construction site,” Duplisea said. “I noticed he looked out of place and I saw he had Idaho plates. So I stopped and asked him if I could be of any service. There was no ‘heated argument’ or confrontation of any kind, Phil. Lyla made that part up.”
Westphal said, “You didn’t note this in your duty log for that day.”
“Of course not,” Duplisea scoffed. “Do you really think I document every time I help a lost visitor with directions? I mean, come on.”
Westphal conceded the point. Then: “But this guy obviously matched the description of this Spengler. And his car does too.”
Duplisea shook his head with emphasis. “No, Phil, you’re reading this all wrong. I had no idea there was a missing person report on file when I met the guy. I wasn’t looking for him, you know? I didn’t call his plates in or anything. And I didn’t put it together that this guy might be Spengler until you just told me.”
Duplisea’s eyes went cold and he said, “Phil, I resent the hell out of you coming in here on my day off and making these kinds of accusations. You, my friend, are way out of line.”
“I’m not making accusations,” Westphal said, holding up both of his palms in surrender. “I’m just trying to clear something up.”
Duplisea glared at Westphal and he seemed to cool down. “I can’t believe you’d take something Lyla Hayes said and run with it. I’ve been an officer in the sheriff’s department for nearly twenty years. I hope to hell you’d believe me over her.”
“Of course I do,” Westphal said. “Thank you for telling me otherwise.”
“Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?” Annan offered. He was obviously trying to bring down the temperature of the conversation.
“I’m sure,” Westphal said. Then to Duplisea: “What was Spengler trying to find?”
The question took Duplisea aback. “What?”
“You said he was asking for directions—that he was lost. What was he trying to find?”
Duplisea’s face flushed red and it was obvious to Westphal his undersheriff was trying to hold back his anger.
“Do you want me to show you?” Duplisea asked with heat. “Do you want me to show you what he was trying to find?”
“You mean now?” Westphal asked.
“I mean now,” Duplisea hissed.
“Can’t you just tell me?”
“No. Not after all this shit has gone down. Not after you practically accuse me of doing something wrong.”
Duplisea launched himself out of the booth and Westphal had to scoot his chair to the side to avoid being bowled over.
“Come on, Phil,” Duplisea said. “My truck’s out front. Follow me, goddammit.”
Duplisea stormed out of the room into the bar area.
Westphal turned to Annan. “What just happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Annan said. “Doug can be a hothead, as you know. But I suggest you follow him.”
Westphal pushed back and got up. He said, “I guess I will.”
Annan’s look, the sheriff thought as he clamped on his hat and pursued Duplisea, was an odd mix of pity and sorrow.
Westphal followed Duplisea’s pickup down Park Avenue. His undersheriff was driving too fast, likely because he was so angry. Westphal hoped their speedy departure wasn’t observed by any of his more critical constituents.
But he was also annoyed at Doug. Duplisea was obviously keeping secrets from him, which was unacceptable. If he knew of the location of a missing person, he should have revealed it days before and he better have a damned good reason why he hadn’t.
Duplisea didn’t signal when he took a sharp left toward the Old Works Golf Course. The course was designed by Jack Nicklaus on an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, and had once been the location of a copper smelter. Westphal rarely played golf, but when he did it was with county commissioners on the Old Works.
Why was Duplisea taking him there?
His answer came a few minutes later, when his undersheriff proceeded past the entrance to the golf course and he turned onto an old asphalt-paved road that wound up into the foothills. The surface of the road was breaking up and was marked with potholes. Westphal was grateful for the potholes because they made Duplisea have to slow down.
They wound up and over a hillock into a wooded pocket nestled into a gulley. Westphal recognized the old house there as one used at times as a safe house by county law enforcement. It had been pointed out to him by Duplisea himself after he was hired.
The old structure was a shambling Victorian two-story home with graying wood shingles and faded yellow paint. Duplisea drove straight up to the front of it and his brake lights flashed.
Westphal parked his SUV next to Duplisea’s pickup and climbed out.
“He’s here?” Westphal asked. “Why?”
“I’ll show you,” Duplisea said.
As they walked toward the front door, Westphal got a sudden bad feeling. The house looked unoccupied, and there was a layer of dust on the front steps that appeared undisturbed. Duplisea faded back as they approached the porch.
Westphal heard a creak of leather from behind him and when he felt cold metal on the back of his neck he reacted by turning his head and darting sharply to his left. The muzzle of Duplisea’s Glock exploded at the same time.
The sheriff almost couldn’t comprehend what had happened until he clapped his right hand over the side of his temple. His ear had been shot off and blood pulsed through his fingers. The detached ear lay like a potato chip in the spring grass in front of him.
He wheeled around to find Duplisea in a shooter’s stance with his weapon out.
“Doug?” Westphal asked.
“I’m sorry,” Duplisea said a half second before he shot the sheriff three times in the heart.
Duplisea stood over the dead sheriff and drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket. He speed-dialed the second number on his contacts list, the name and number directly below Phil Westphal’s.
“Yeah,” he said, “everything went pear-shaped. All I could think of at the time was to get him out of there. Do you still have that key to the gate for the mineshaft?” he asked. Then: “Yeah. We’ll need to drive up there again tonight, I’m afraid.”